For a moment he regretted the decision not to hire a skilled diviner because he longed to watch the events unfolding behind the tall Avani’s passage, to see what the men he talked to, that he paid out gold to, were doing once the elf had gone. Were those men hunting for someone like Ammon, someone looking for Celewyn or Prince Lian? He considered that it was his paranoia talking there, however. Celewyn didn’t know he was being followed, and he was likely buying supplies to bolster whatever he’d brought across the sea with him. After all, if the elf had realized that the scrying was occurring, the first thing he’d do is to destroy the link. Of that, Ammon was sure.
Chapter Eighteen
“As the Pelorian Empire began its fall into barbarism and chaos, the long-silent volcanoes of Vella began to erupt one after another. Although most of these fiery peaks were distant from the major Pelorian cities, they spewed choking ash clouds across the eastern continent, killing thousands, often with little warning. Many were not even that fortunate, for three of the major cities were built near volcanoes, and two of those erupted with a greater fury than can be imagined by mortal man. The earth heaved, rivers were redirected, and long streams of lava poured over most of these accursed cities. Only the trade city of Kavris was spared; for reasons known only to Vellantis, the dormant volcano there slept on, unperturbed by the sulfurous wrath being visited elsewhere.
“Most of the priests agree—and their argument is compelling—that the volcanic eruptions and destruction were the volcano god’s anger made manifest, for the Pelorians had long held his volcanoes in check, suppressing even small eruptions with powerful Earth magic. The lesson to be learned from the fate of the Vellan cities is that one must always be wary of treading on the domains of the gods, of trying to warp the natural and supernatural laws too far. The repercussions may be delayed—Peloria had kept up this volcano-suppressing practice for centuries—but they will come.”
-- “Magic and the Natural Order” by Sage Kommath, originally written as an introduction to “The Pelorian Empire, Volume V,” but eventually published as its own work, c. 1525 PE
After the wraiths’ attack, Lian’s dreams had become much less frequent, though no less vivid or disturbing. While they still woke him from time to time, he was much better rested than in the days leading up to their climax. This dream was different.
Unlike most of his dreams, even the oracular ones, he was fully aware that it was a dream from the onset. He stood before the empty throne in the scrying room of the Tower of Firavon, right on the spot where the Key had rested on its stand. He’d spent only a short time in that room, but every detail stood out in stark relief, almost as if he was seeing the room better in his dream than he had in life. Everything was exactly like it was when he’d last seen the room, save the missing Eye of Khiseveth that should have been where he was standing. The massive scrying tool, constructed out of the eye of an ancient dragon, had risen up out of the scrying room’s floor to take the Key’s place, and it should have surrounded his hips from this vantage point.
The alcove where Lord Grey had rested for so long sat empty (and dust-free, for there had been no dust in the chamber, then or now). The seeing crystal he’d used to observe his aunt and uncle was exactly as he’d left it: viewing a random room in the Tower, one which appeared to be empty. He’d spun the selection wheel before leaving so that those in the Great Hall wouldn’t know someone could have been watching them.
Odd, he thought, I’d have thought a permanent guard would have been set in this room. Could it be they never found it? He realized it was also odd that he could see the other room clearly in the crystal lens from his vantage because the viewing crystal was a fair distance from him. He felt no urge to leave the spot upon which he stood, and this surprised him. He felt no curiosity about the seeing device itself, no desire to further explore the contents of the room to which he’d sworn to return.
I’ve felt this way before, he thought with a chill that did manage to penetrate the emotionlessness that he was experiencing, and as soon as he thought it, he sensed some kind of movement or noise—though he already couldn’t remember exactly what it had been—and his gaze fell back upon the throne. Draped sidelong across the throne’s massive seat was a female goblin in black leather garb, cleaning her long claw-like nails with a gray dagger.
That dagger is…the broach…somehow, Lian thought as he looked at the matte gray weapon. Though it had been a gray scarab broach the last time he had seen it, it was somehow the same horrific thing it had been before. And although she wore the form of a gobliness instead of a human, the female’s black-in-black eyes were the same ones he’d seen before. The ones he’d seen in Fulnor in the dream-vision after the wraith had nearly killed him in Firavon’s Tower.
Dalgarin, the Southron goddess of vengeance, lay before him on Firavon’s throne in the artificer-king’s hidden scrying chamber. He was gripped with a desire to go down on his knees before the goddess, but he couldn’t do that any more than he was able to move from the place he was standing. This primal impulse to prostrate himself surprised him, given how much anger he should have been feeling toward the goddess; the anger he’d felt on Indigo Runner’s afterdeck when he realized what had happened to his siblings.
She smiled knowingly at him, revealing the tips of her goblinish incisors, teeth that were perfect, long, and sharp. Her eyes held no hint of mercy or kindness as she peered at him, and he couldn’t hold her gaze, blinking and looking to the side like a dog yielding to a superior pack member. “Lian Evanson,” the goblin woman said in slightly goblin-accented Dunshorian. “It is well that your injury has healed, for I suspect you shall need that strong left arm in the days to come.”
“Should I call you A’shriv’ka, goddess?” he asked, amazed that he could speak at all, much less speak clearly. He’d expected his voice to tremble.
She shrugged, both a minimal gesture and still somehow sensual and earthy, even erotic. “You may refer to me as you did on Indigo Runner,” she said, her voice suddenly cold and angry, and despite the isolation from his normal emotions, Lian felt an immediate stab of fear. “Dalgarin is the name you used then, was it not?”
“It was,” Lian replied, forcing himself to meet her black gaze unapologetically. If she was going to strike him down for his blasphemy on the afterdeck, he’d meet his end as his father and Elowyn would have expected him to.
She grinned a wide goblinish, fang-filled grin, an expression so much like Snog that he blinked. “You have bravery enough, I can see,” she said, sitting up more fully on the throne, although it still dwarfed her. She folded her legs under her sideways. Her face took on a more somber mien and she said, “I am sorry about your brothers and sisters, Lian Evanson. Queen Jisa, in doing this, has committed a foul crime, though I cannot say that it’s the worst she’s ever done.”
He wanted to swallow, but he couldn’t, as if he was merely disembodied eyes and ears and mouth. He ignored this ghostly sensation as best he could, and said, “Why didn’t you tell me…”
The goddess interrupted him with a wave of the dagger. The exceedingly dangerous dagger, he realized, whatever it truly was. He couldn’t decide if he was more afraid of the goddess or the weapon she wielded. She said, “Because it had not yet happened. Because I am bound, as are all of the gods, to follow the rules, Highness.
“Would it have changed your answer?” she asked, one eyebrow arched.
He found that he was angry after all, despite his disembodied state, and he wanted to tell her yes, that he’d have taken up the path of an Agent of Vengeance if he’d known his siblings’ fate. But he knew better. If she’d asked him at that very moment on the afterdeck of the merchantman, when he was raging against the storm, against the queen, and against Dalgarin herself? At that moment he’d have taken her offer without thought to the consequences.
But in his first meeting with her in the Tower of Firavon, he hadn’t been in a position to feel the rage and fear and horror. The goddess had summoned him to t
he hot southern land of Fulnor in a state similar to the one he was now in, and that had kept him from feeling the brunt of his grief, anguish, and anger. Like she’s doing right now, Lian thought, suspecting the goddess could hear his thoughts just as easily as she could see him before her. It was clear that for whatever reason, when she spoke to him the goddess wanted his thoughts clear and unburdened by the feelings that came largely from the physical self.
So if she had told him then what was coming, or if she offered him the same choice of vengeance or justice now, he’d still choose the path he was on. The people of Dunshor were going to suffer under the resumed rule of the mages of Theocracy, whether Rishak managed to keep his line in power or not. He and his legitimate claim to the throne could prevent that—maybe, if fortune and fate smiled—and she’d made it clear that he would have to abdicate that claim in order to enter her service directly. He couldn’t do that and honor his parents. He couldn’t do that and do his duty to the people of Dunshor. Even though he longed, here and now, to swear himself to her service and let vengeance become his be-all and end-all.
She could see his answer without him having to articulate it. She nodded curtly, conveying a sense of approval in the gesture.
“If you are not here to punish me for my blasphemy…” he began, but was interrupted again by her cackling, goblin-style laughter.
“I care little for blasphemy, Lian Evanson,” she said after her outburst of mirth, “and you certainly had good reason for your anger, even though it was unwise to express it the way you did. Do you not know the gods are vengeful?” Her tone was sarcastic and even a little threatening.
“I am here, however, because of your abuse of my name,” she continued, lightening her tone back to neutral. “I’m once again stretching those rules I spoke of to converse with you, but your spoken blasphemy—and the curse you directed at me in your deepest thoughts—gave me the pretense I needed.”
He blinked, for he had not shared that dark thought with anyone, not even Gem. “Why use the pretense? For what purpose are you speaking to me?” Lian asked, his mind racing to try to understand this.
A’shriv’ka/Dalgarin smiled, her lip curling up on her right side to expose the fangs on that side. Ignoring his question and gesturing about her, she said, “I find it curious that in all the months since your escape from this place you have never melted down those coins. Surely, you don’t want to give anyone a clue where you’re headed, do you?”
That had been his intention, to melt the Fulnorian coins into shapeless lumps of copper, but he’d never gotten around to it. Lian realized in hindsight that was alien to him; procrastination had never been a fault of his. “Are you why I never did so, goddess?” the prince asked, perplexed she’d bring up the coins. “And if so, why?”
“Perhaps you simply didn’t want to sully a gift of the gods,” she said, a charm bracelet on her wrist tinkling softly as she gestured.
He realized with a start that the dagger was gone, and that the bracelet was the same muted gray color of the knife she’d been toying with, as well as the broach she’d worn the first time he’d met her in the shape of a muscular human woman. His odd, sharply focused senses saw that the charms were a variety of familiar objects: a skull, a sword, a sphere (he presumed this was Firavon’s Key), several different ships, and a cat.
“I forgive you the moment of blasphemy, Prince Lian,” the goddess said, clasping her taloned hands together on her belly. “As I said then, I’ll say now: I wish you good fortune on your journey.” As had happened before, he found himself unable to make any sound, drowning in the darkness that was her eyes, until all was black.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Lian woke suddenly and completely, the myriad sounds of Indigo Runner and the sea around him as he dozed in Qan’s cabin. He’d fallen asleep poring over the charts, committing as many of them to memory as he could and making smaller copies of portions of them he could take with him in his pack. Although he’d been sleeping on his arms at the table, he found he wasn’t in the least bit stiff or sore and suspected that minor fact had something to do with the goddess’ presence.
Gem had never completely accepted that the prince had literally met Dalgarin in his comatose state, even with the physical proof of the two Fulnorian coins to back him up. He thought this was because she didn’t want the gods taking a personal interest in her boy rather than simple disbelief of a fantastic story.
“Good morning, Lian,” Lord Grey said from his spot on the table where the prince had left him. Although the skull had advised them to go back to using the pseudonym of Alan of Staikal, he hadn’t pressed the matter. After all, everyone on board—not to mention the remaining wraith-sister—knew his real identity. So it was that Lian had decided not to do so, at least for now.
Lian sat up, nodding slowly and with a troubled look on his face. His eyes scanned the cabin’s walls quickly, seeing nothing as his mind was directed inward, going over the dream and the events in Firavon’s Tower in great detail. Lord Grey and Gem recognized Lian was thinking about something important, and they both remained silent as he processed the experience.
He opened his belt pouch and reached in to find the oversized Fulnorian currency. He took the pair of coins out and placed them on the table before him, one head up, and the other reversed. He’d looked at them a number of times, always in private, but hadn’t done so in months.
Oh, Lostatos, let this not mean what I think it does, Gem prayed to her patron god silently. The last time she’d seen that look on Lian’s face he’d told her about his meeting with the Southron goddess of vengeance. He’d never melted down the coins as he’d originally intended, and now the sword’s spirit wondered why he hadn’t. And finding that she now feared why he hadn’t.
He stood up without a word and buckled on his swordbelt, placing Lord Grey’s skull in the leather pouch that hung opposite the longsword. He gathered up the coins in his hand and opened the door carefully, making sure one of the crew wasn’t waiting outside. Elowyn had taught him well, and just because it was unlikely the crew might mutiny at this juncture, it wasn’t impossible. Still silent, he went on deck and climbed the undamaged port-side stair to the poop deck and strode over to the helm, where Naryn stood at the scorched but surprisingly intact wheel.
“I relieve you, Naryn,” Lian said almost distractedly, taking the wheel one-handed from the cook. The weather was calm, so he didn’t need both. “Please ask Snog to join me, if you would.”
Naryn’s heavily tattooed face screwed up as he regarded his new captain’s expression. He started to ask a question, then his bushy eyebrows dropped and he merely said, “Aye, sir, you have the helm. I’ll see if I c’n find Mr. Snog.”
Part of Lian was pleased that the grizzled old salt was referring to Snog with the honorific normally reserved for officers, but he merely filed that bit of information away for now. He made sure their heading was true—at least, as true as it could be given their situation—and his trained eye moved across the ship, looking for anything out of place. Many things were out of place, of course, but nothing they could repair with their current resources.
After a short delay, he saw the former clan sh’rek k’lass’rik scout making his way across the deck, a thickly woven basket gripped in his left hand. Translating to “Silent Fangs,” the deep-earth clan was one of the most powerful and far-reaching, though they had little truck with the humans on the surface. Sh’rek also meant spider, for the Silent Fangs was one of the spider-riding clans, as well. Snog didn’t speak much about his life with Silent Fangs, nor the A’kra Vilsha, the surface clan he’d ended up serving before Lian met him. To the goblin, the past was done and not to be revisited without good reason.
The goblin climbed up to join Lian at the helm and pulled something the cook called “pocket bread” out of the basket, filled with fish and somewhat wilted greens, handing it up to the prince while putting a steadying hand on the wheel. The bread was unleavened and slightly tough, but it contained the co
ntents extremely well and was fairly easy to eat with one hand.
Lian nodded his thanks and ate the odd sandwich in silence, enjoying it more than he’d expected to. The cook had lightly flavored the greens with salt, vinegar, and olive oil, and the combination with the broiled fish was quite tasty. After he was done with the food, he accepted a tankard of cold black tea from Snog. It was traditional in the Southron Empire to drink tea cold, even on ice, and cold—albeit without ice—was how the beverage was usually served on Indigo Runner; the two had gotten used to it.
Snog broke the silence. “Zu e ni vala, li dor?” he asked, the Govlikel meaning “are you all right my lord?” Lian had learned more of the goblin tongue from Snog as the scout had worked to better master Dunshorian and Aesidhe, but that particular phrase was one the prince had learned when he first met the goblin.
“Sri zu,” Lian answered in the affirmative, switching to Dunshorian. “I had a dream just now.”
Snog’s eyes widened slightly. “Did you, my lord?” he asked coolly. Lian’s dreams were a matter of deep concern for all four of them.
Lian nodded slightly, his teeth clenching for a moment before he relaxed. “About her,” he said, showing Snog the Fulnorian coins and then putting them away. “Or more precisely, with her.”
Far more calmly than he felt, Lian carefully recounted the dream meeting with Dalgarin in the form of A’shriv’ka, using every scrap of training to try to leave no detail out. He knew some of the memories were already fading or even changing to fit his own mindset, his own experiences outside of the dream. Elowyn had trained him to take all of the scene in at once, not to focus on any particular detail. He’d failed in that regard, having allowed his attention to be focused on the malevolent gray thing the goddess had brought to both visions, but he could counter that this time because everything he’d seen had been in sharp, almost painful focus.
By Blood Hunted: Kingsblood Chronicles Part Two (The Kingsblood Chronicles Book 2) Page 25
