By Blood Hunted: Kingsblood Chronicles Part Two (The Kingsblood Chronicles Book 2)

by David J. Houpt

  Alo’s injuries, to Alan’s relief, had been relatively minor, just some very nasty flesh wounds from the wooden splinters—painful, but not life-threatening. Others among the crew hadn’t been so lucky, and Snog had had to finish removing the rigger’s hand, using the incredibly sharp enchanted dagger that Alan had bestowed upon him.

  The rescue of the Belladonna’s crew and docking the merchanters had taken most of the afternoon, and by that time Arden’s company had accomplished its goals. The garrison had somewhat foolishly come out to meet them, but after a brief clash of arms the Varshans had laid down their weapons and surrendered. Arden’s casualties were light—five wounded and one dead—but the garrison had suffered more from the exchange, with over a dozen killed and twice that wounded.

  With the garrison suppressed and locked into their own quarters, Arden’s men had the freedom to locate the shrine and make preparations to set it ablaze. He’d waited dockside as the merchanters carrying the Varshan marine force had tied up, and the company secured them in two warehouses on the quayside.

  Once the island was secure, Arden fired the shrine and split his mercenaries onto the two merchant ships. Although many of them weren’t expert sailors, enough of them were trained in ship operations that they could rig up the lateen sails of the merchant ships and maneuver out of the harbor, where they could steer clear of the island.

  Searcher had pulled anchor and rendezvoused with the two merchant ships, coming alongside the clumsier ships with grace and power that still filled Alan with wonder and admiration. Once they transferred crew, each ship was left with her sails struck and trailing a sea anchor. With the sea anchors deployed, the ships would hold to a speed not much faster than the prevailing current.

  It was unlikely that the Varshans would be able to track them down, but the slow speed the anchors provided made it possible, and Arden wasn’t about to aid pursuers by giving them seaworthy vessels. Setting them adrift was preferable in the mercenary captain’s opinion to simply scuttling them. Alan wondered what the ones who discovered the derelicts would think about the abandoned vessels. It would no doubt be one of the many ghost stories of the sea in the years to come if it wasn’t the Varshans themselves who found the ships.

  Ignoring the skull’s comment about the captains’ expectation of Varshan mage support for the moment, Alan said to Snog, “It’s a pity about Dollan’s hand.”

  The goblin replied, “Couldn’t be helped, milord.” The scout’s tone was one of commiseration at the man’s loss, not a defensive one. That had been the case when Mari Suris had seen the wound and castigated Snog heavily about being too hasty to remove the hand.

  Cedrick had forcefully put a stop to her recriminations and sent her away to tend other injuries. With a sigh, the ship captain had said, “I may have to put her ashore if I can find another healer, Snog. I don’t care if she hates you boggles; that’s her business. Boyle over there hates Dunshorians, though he keeps that locked down fair-to-well. In her case, though, it’s getting in the way of her work.”

  Snog had simply smiled one of his fanged grins and walked away; there was little to say about the sorceress’ prejudices that hadn’t already been said.

  “I know,” Alan replied. “I saw the wound, and Mari was hours away from being available. Better to be done with it and make sure it’ll heal cleanly.” Fortunately for the wounded man, the return of the sorceress ensured that infection wouldn’t be an issue, for like most healers, she knew several spells for preventing or combatting it.

  The rigger’s loss of a hand would condemn him to a less prestigious job on the warship, for he could not haul the heavy lines with one hand, even with some kind of prosthesis. Alan trusted in Cedrick to find the man a place; the captain wasn’t the sort to send a wounded man away if he could still perform a useful function.

  Gem surprised the human and goblin both by returning to the skull’s statement, saying, “Lord Grey’s right. If he’s forced to reveal himself on this ship, we might as well reveal me, too. Even if Rishak’s assassins don’t glom onto the fact that you’re the fellow with the magical spellsinging skull, there will be those who will want such a thing for themselves and hunt us for that reason. Although we’re avoiding magical pursuers, being trailed for a robbery will be another matter. That’s a whole different sort of hunter, and we don’t need that kind of trouble.”

  Alan sat down on the bunk next to Snog, regarding the blade and skull in their respective sheaths on the hammock. “You both feel it’s more vital for us to leave the ship early, don’t you?” he asked.

  “We three feel that way, Mr. Alan,” Snog said quickly, over the last few months having fallen into the same manner of addressing the chief engineer as the other members of the ship’s complement. “It were foolish t’a leave us without a mage if they thought a good wizard’d be on Belladonna, much less two. An’ if there’s been two or three warships…?”

  Snog didn’t seem annoyed by the observation, unlike the necromancer.

  “We should have eliminated the sea threat and then landed at our leisure,” Lord Grey said, his voice still betraying his annoyance at what he perceived as the captains’ poor planning. “Any number of things could have gone wrong with the landing and sea battle both, and many of those things would have cost the entire company harshly.”

  He’s not far wrong, Alan thought to himself. The attack had gone very well, but it had been in his mind too flamboyant and intricate, relying upon everything going right. Had Reidar been interrupted in his singing for more than a few heartbeats, the entire company might have plunged into the sea in full armor, and that was just one weakness to the captains’ plan.

  He knew, because Arden had mentioned it while in his presence, that part of the attack’s purpose was to further enhance Reidar’s reputation as a more powerful wizard than he was, and to confuse the Varshans and any other potential enemy as to how much magic the company possessed, for rumors already credited Reidar with creating the ship’s powerful firebolts. Allowing that much extra risk to enhance a reputation that may, or may not, follow them into distant waters didn’t seem to be justified, but he knew he wasn’t privy to all of the two captains’ plans.

  Alan nodded. “The plan was too clever by half, I’ll agree with you on that. It’s settled, then, we’ll leave them at the next port, and if that’s not on Vella somewhere, we’ll buy passage on a Southron galleon or an Eastern tradeship, if it’s going that way.”

  “‘On Vella somewhere’ is a pretty wide mark, Alan,” Gem said. The southern continent, named for Vellantis, the god of volcanoes, was more than twice as large as Shara. The Inner Sea at its heart was larger than the entire Kingdom of Dunshor.

  “We aren’t heading anywhere in particular, Gem,” he replied, brow creased in thought. “I want to find this Fulnor, though, and the Southron Empire’s got some very good libraries. Anywhere a merchant ship is likely to call will be near one of the major cities.” Fulnor had not been on any of Cedrick’s charts, but none of them had reached south of the equator, either. The captain might have had other charts, but Alan didn’t want to be remembered asking after any specific one.

  “Kavris would be the best place to find the information, I would think,” Gem opined. “It’s by far the largest city in the Empire and its libraries are famous.” Built on the slopes of a huge dormant volcano, the capital of the Southron Empire’s northernmost province was one of the largest and oldest cities in all of Tieran. Legend held that the Pelorians had called forth titanic demons of flame from the caldera of the volcano, demons so powerful that their northward trek along the sea bottom didn’t quench or diminish their flames.

  Legend also held that the volcano’s fiery power had been drawn upon so heavily by the Pelorian spellsingers that it had gone dormant forever. Whatever the truth of that, it had not so much as rumbled in thousands of years.

  “Kavris is as good a place as any to start,” Alan said. “If we find a seaworthy ship bound there or Turila we’ll seek pass
age.” Turila was only fifty leagues east of Kavris, and the Imperial Road wound down the coastline to connect the two cities. The ancient thoroughfare curved sharply inland from both cities, the Kavris end heading roughly southwesterly, ending on the shores of the Inner Sea.

  The Turila side criss-crossed southeast through the mountains and several of the larger cities, ending at the Imperial capital city of Delikar. Alan had seen drawings of the mountain passage leading to Delikar. The road had been carved by sheer power through the mountains in many places, and its three great tunnels were an almost unbelievable achievement of magic and engineering. The longest of those tunnels passed more than five miles through the heart of its mountain and was so cunningly contrived that fresh air flowed through it at all times, even at its deepest reach.

  “Does the Cerulean Order still control the libraries?” Lord Grey asked, his tone now thoughtful. The blue-robed monks of the goddess Sina dated back to the Pelorian Empire, one of the few monastic orders to have survived the fall.

  “No, Emperor Hyrax III created a ministry to safeguard the libraries,” Alan replied. “The Ceruleans are still the librarians, but they report to the Emperor through the Minister of the Blue Eye, as he or she is called.

  “That was about a century ago, I think,” he finished, scratching his head.

  “There was confusion over the lack of an uprising among the Sinar over the matter,” Gem continued, “and no one knows why they didn’t try to put a stop to it.” The Cerulean Order was but a small part of the church of the Lady of Song, and her priesthood, the Sinar, held a tremendous amount of power in most nations.

  As with most of the lunar deities, Sina was equally revered nearly everywhere, and her priesthood had more Mageborn in their ranks than any other religion including that of the Lord of Power, Lushran. The political power they wielded was substantial, but their magical might was greater still.

  “Ardori Pellwater wrote that it was because they did not wish to seek outright war with the Empire,” Alan said, recalling one of the histories he’d read during his studies. “Pellwater speculated that the Sinar had known it was going to happen and had agreed to it in order to leave the blue-robes in key positions throughout the libraries.”

  Switching his attention to the necromancer, Alan asked, “Why do you ask, Lord Grey?”

  “The one nation that the Sinar shunned was the Theocracy, Alan,” the skull said. The mage-led nation had driven the worshippers of Sina out of Dunshor, in fact, when they would not support some of the more extreme beliefs and practices the Theocracy boasted. Their attempt to bend the Theocracy back toward Krysa’s original teachings was met with violent reprisal, and the followers of the goddess were banned within Dunshor’s borders for centuries.

  Once Evan and Adrienne had broken the Theocracy’s power, the Sinar had returned to Dunshor, although they hadn’t taken part in the war. “Are you suggesting that my uncle’s return to the Theocracy’s ways might create natural allies within the Sinar?” Alan asked.

  “I am, if we can find the right way to approach them without setting the hunters on your trail. But that will be problematic, and we may have to settle for the fact that they will tend to be hostile to any Dunshorian inquiries or overtures,” the skull’s rich voice stated. “We will have a problem going to the Cerulean-staffed libraries, though.”

  “You?” Gem asked flatly.

  “Aye, you have the right of it, Gem,” he replied just as flatly. “The libraries are—or were, at any rate—temples to Sina, and they’re warded against the children of the Dark Corruptor. Like it or not, and I do not, I fall into that classification.”

  “They may not still be consecrated to Sina if they’ve come under secular control,” Alan said. “But we won’t know that until we get there; not much point in worrying about it today.”

  “True enough,” Lord Grey said. “And it wouldn’t prevent you from entering and using the library, although you might have to leave me behind somewhere reasonably safe from thieves.” He didn’t sound happy at the prospect. Given how hard the necromancer had worked to convince Alan to carry him as he stood his watches, Alan suspected he really wasn’t.

  Alan’s mouth crooked a half-smile. “I can’t go in there, either, Lord Grey,” he said. “They’d hardly let me walk into the library bearing a longsword, and I dare not leave Gem behind.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Lord Grey said thoughtfully. Gem was well known to the Usurper and his queen, and even if they thought her damaged or destroyed as a sentience, they might be trying to find Alan through her physical blade. If he allowed her to leave his immediate presence, she might leave the protection circle of the bauble the four referred to as “the marble.”

  The marble was anything but a simple gimcrack, however. It was the decades-lost Key of Firavon, which had allowed Alan to seal the great Tower that bore the Artificer-King’s name during his escape. Alan suspected that had he not inadvertently sealed Rishak, Jisa, and several of their chief wizards in the tower at the time, his flight from the city might have been a lot more dangerous and uncertain, even borne as he was by the powerful gryphon named Gilaeshar. Jisa and her magical allies had been very skilled and powerful indeed.

  The Key had several different forms in addition to its ties to the Tower of Firavon, and it provided extraordinarily effective protection against hostile scrying magic. The shielding against divination was a large part of why the prince was still alive. In its other forms, all bigger than the pebble’s size it was now, it lost much of that effectiveness but gained in other ways. Had Alan the freedom and magical power to use it in its larger forms, it was a powerful seeing device in its own right.

  Lord Grey continued, “I think that Gem, being your possession, would probably remain protected by the marble’s influence indefinitely. However, it would be foolish to take the risk that my metaphysical theory is correct.”

  Alan nodded. “And while I trust your metaphysics knowledge and experience a great deal, it would be a bad time to be wrong, to say the least.” If Gem wasn’t still protected against divining while physically separated from her charge, the seers and oracles Rishak was undoubtedly paying to find him might well make contact with her.

  That would have catastrophic consequences.

  “Well, I certainly can’t go,” Snog said with a snort. Although the goblins weren’t as despised in the south as they were near Dunshor, they were treated like second-class citizens at best. Slavery was practiced in the Empire of Shardis, as the Southron Empire was actually called in the southern region. Many of the slaves were goblins and their various kin, and although not all goblins in the Empire were slaves, they were typically denied access to the finer places except as slaves in the service of their masters and mistresses.

  “You’ve clearly been thinking about this, Alan,” Lord Grey said. “Do you have a plan?”

  Alan nodded. “We find a sage who’s both competent and discreet, and we research Fulnor through him. It leaves someone who knows where I might have gone, but then, he won’t know who I am, hopefully.”

  “Forgive me sayin’ so, Mr. Alan,” Snog said, “but if he discovers that, he can’t be left alive, and ye know it.” The goblin was as ruthless as he was loyal, and both traits tended to endear him to Gem, whose primary goal was protecting Alan.

  “I can’t kill everyone who knows something dangerous, Snog,” Alan said. “If he somehow knows I’m Prince Lian Evanson, then, yes, I don’t see that we’d have a choice in the matter. Anything less than total revelation, though, probably won’t require slitting the sage’s throat.” He didn’t carry any revulsion at the goblin’s bloody-mindedness in his tone; he was just stating his preference.

  Alan had killed a number of men in his fifteen short years, the most recent ones just the day before, and had not so far developed a taste for it. He knew he’d have to kill many more—or order the deaths of many more—to attain his goal of the Dunshorian throne, but he didn’t relish the idea.

  “I me
ant more on the total revelation side, milord,” Snog said drolly. “Sooner or later, you’ve got t’a reveal yourself anyhow, so I certainly can’t slit everyone’s throat what knows ye fer what ye are.” The goblin grinned one of his toothy grins.

  Alan hadn’t thought that far ahead, but he knew Snog was right on both counts. At this stage, he didn’t have the military or magical power to stave off the inevitable assassins once he announced his presence and intentions, if he ever had that much power. Anyone who found out who he was represented a dire threat to his continued existence. But the day would come when he would take up his true identity and bring the war to his uncle, though that seemed impossibly far away at the moment.

  Chapter Seven

  Trustworthy as an elf.

  -- Pejorative saying in the Pelorian Empire

  The Searcher’s two captains knew that the Varshan navy would be looking for them in force, so they set their course southwest toward the southern Sharan shore. In the westerly winds, they initially made good time away from the Island Kingdoms, but as they reached the deep ocean, the wind shifted to the south, bringing stormy seas with it.

  Even in heavy seas, the fore-and-aft-rigged ship could make headway against the fresh gale, but at a fraction of her usual pace. When they could sail in a broader reach, that pace ate up the sea leagues with dispatch. The only advantage the rough seas gave them was that the angle they were forced to cut into the wind was sharper than what the big square-riggers could attain unless they struck all but their staysails. In these conditions, they’d wallow dangerously in the swells if they tried it; in those circumstances, the big galleons were more likely to be pushed northward with the waves and wind than to make headway. That was assuming, of course, they didn’t have a weather witch on board. That would change the situation completely, for as long as the witch could sustain his or her spells.

  By the time the storm passed, the winds had calmed significantly and shifted around to westerly, so Cedrick altered their course closer to due southerly, which would cause them to miss the continent entirely, but with the wind coming in from nearly directly to starboard, the warship glided quickly through the seas.