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

by David J. Houpt

  Elowyn had taught him that eyewitnesses were the worst form of evidence to be had, although that fact could be turned to Lian’s advantage in certain circumstances. Lian, however, was a better witness than most, for he had been trained by one of the best master assassins in the world. Despite the coup, he still believed that to be true, even though Elowyn would have considered the mass assassinations of Lian’s family a failure, but the prince didn’t think so. No one had guessed the depths of treachery of which Rishak was capable—or the sheer wealth he’d somehow had at his disposal—and that treachery had allowed the majority of the Dunshor Castle defenses to be neutralized without warning.

  “Why has she taken such an interest in my boy?” Gem asked, setting aside her normal viewpoint that the vision he’d had in the Tower (and moments before) might not be the actual goddess in fact.

  “Who can say what motivates a deity?” Lord Grey replied flatly.

  “Her sphere of influence is vengeance, and there’s more than enough reason in that alone to make me of interest to her,” Lian said. “She said that what the queen did to my brothers and sisters wasn’t even the worst thing Jisa has done.” He didn’t believe that was all of it, and he didn’t think his companions did, either.

  “That she did, my lord,” Snog said, a deep frown on his face. “But she’s reminding you—again—that a path of blind vengeance won’t serve your people. And that Fulnor is a place you should go.”

  “I’m certain Lian noticed the obvious messages, Snog,” the skull said gently. He was well aware the goblin was afraid of him, and afraid of rousing his necromantic wrath, and he typically treated the scout with kid gloves because of this. “But in my long life, and imprisonment in this skull afterward, I have never encountered a deity face-to-face, and now this has happened to Lian twice. That worries me.”

  Lian nodded. “Me, too, Lord Grey,” he said, knowing it was a huge understatement. “But let’s set that aside for the moment. How did she find me through the veil the marble provides?”

  The skull chuckled. “The maker of that bauble was one of the most powerful wizards of history, Lian, and Dalgarin is one of the more minor deities, even in the Southron Empire where she is more commonly worshipped. However, she is not bound by mortal constraints, and though I know the marble makes us safe from scrying and other forms of divination, I would never assume it blinds the gods to your whereabouts.”

  Lian’s brow furrowed. “Then why haven’t the priests Rishak undoubtedly consults told him where to find me?” he asked. The priests of the One-Eyed Crone, especially, were likely to be working to pierce the protection around him, and if Dalgarin could see him, could find him, then the Sleepless One could, too.

  “She gave you the answer in the dream, my lord,” Snog said, now chewing thoughtfully on the mouthpiece of his unlit pipe. “The rules she spoke of.”

  “Exactly,” Lord Grey said. “The device shields you from mortal eyes, so the information is withheld, at least up to now. I don’t believe for a moment that the Keeper of Secrets couldn’t tell her priests our location if she wished, but she keeps to the Great Compact because if she doesn’t, none of them will.” That was, of course, the term mortalkind had coined to describe the pact between the gods to prevent the destruction of Tieran, a pact that set them apart from the world and protected it from their direct involvement. The sects of the oldest and most powerful of the gods had preserved that information in their legends, that the gods had once nearly annihilated the world in their struggles against one another.

  “Even with the pretense she spoke of,” the skull continued, “she may be pushing the limits of the rules to speak to you directly as she has, but I suspect the odds against you have something to do with that, as well.”

  “What?” Lian responded, surprised.

  “The gods can be cruel,” the skull explained. “But they can also be merciful, and your plight may allow her to bend the rules while the others look the other way. Or, to say it another way, you may have friends among the gods who want to see you succeed.”

  “But if I have such…friends, if you will, among the gods,” Lian said, “won’t my uncle have some as well? I imagine some of the darker gods, at the least, would approve of his actions.”

  Snog shrugged. “We’re just mortals, my lord,” he said. “The motives of the gods, A’shriv’ka to Saael to He Who Must Not Be Named, are forever closed to us. I’ll put it this way, my lord: she knows far better than any mortal what she’s doing, and you should treat everything she’s done up to now using that lens.”

  “Oh, well said, Snog!” the skull cheered, his tone approving. “I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  “The scout puts it well, my prince,” Lord Grey continued. “She’s doing this for a reason, and whether she involves another deity against you because she’s bent the rules too much, or not, that will be deliberate. She’s clearly interested in you, and I think finding this southern land is likely to be in your best interest. Perhaps the natives will form the core of your army, or maybe you’ll find something to aid you there, or possibly it’s just a place to lie low for a time, out of the reach of your uncle’s men.”

  “So what is the reason?” Gem asked. “What does she want?”

  Lord Grey sighed expressively, and one could almost imagine him spreading his arms wide and shrugging his shoulders to show his ignorance. “In the short term, to get Lian to Fulnor,” the necromancer said. “In the long term, to visit vengeance upon those who deserve it, to bring low those whose crimes have gone unanswered. It is her province, after all.”

  Lian nodded as he kept the damaged merchantman on course. “So what did the cat charm mean?” he asked. “It was the same shape as the one Elowyn left for me in the scrying chamber, of that I’m sure.”

  “Of the entire dream, my lord,” Snog replied, “it’s the part that makes the least sense, though the other ships don’t make a lot of it, either.” Two of the ships had been recognizable to the prince: Searcher and Indigo Runner. The other two—a sleek elven warship and a lateen-sailed caravel in the Southron style—were unknown to him.

  “Why remind you of Elowyn’s spell?” Gem said quizzically. “The elf gave you a lot of information and allowed you to take the marble through it, but how else is it relevant?”

  “Many things happened in that space of time,” Lian said, rubbing his chin absently in that way that was so achingly familiar to Gem. Unaware that he’d unconsciously mimicked his father’s mannerisms, he began listing what had happened in the scrying chamber. “Elowyn used it to confirm my identity, for example. He used it to confer upon me the spell power needed to give instructions to the marble; we used a little of that later to bolster Gem’s flagging reserves. He used the message to trigger the end of an order to silence Lord Grey.”

  “He did?” Gem said, surprised.

  “He did,” Lord Grey said sardonically. “He told me I must remain silent until I heard his voice again, and had you not come along, that would have been a very, very long time.”

  Lian shook his head, almost absently. “Or until someone told you to speak again; I seriously doubt that command is irreversible, or your usefulness as a tool would end with the death of a given master who gave a similar command.”

  “Still,” Lord Grey replied, sounding amused. “It could have been a long time before someone realized that I was in here and thought to speak to me.” He did not sound the least bit repentant that he’d tried to float a misleading idea past them.

  He’s more shaken than I am about Dalgarin’s involvement, Lian said silently to Gem, who signaled her lack of comprehension. He reverted to his old habit of trying to deceive us about the limits of his binding.

  He felt Gem’s thought deride that idea, long believing that Lord Grey had never stopped trying to do that all along, but she did so softly. She didn’t want Lian to react to her thoughts and possibly alert the skull they were communicating. It was something the two of them had been working on ever since the
skull had made it plain he could tell they were talking. Truth to tell, the sword spirit was glad Lian hadn’t forgotten that the necromancer served him because it was of use to him, and not out of loyalty. Trusting Lord Grey to a point, she had learned to live with as a necessity of their desperate situation. Trusting him completely? Not bloody likely, she thought to herself. Not ever.

  Lian shook his head at the skull and said, “Apologies, Lord Grey. I told you I wouldn’t try to plumb the limits of your binding.”

  The skull was quiet for a moment, then said, “No need for apologies, Lian. It came up in conversation as a result of the goddess’ interest in our affairs. Or, perhaps, merely your affairs.”

  Lian nodded and touched the leather sack holding the skull affectionately. “Our fates are interleaved at the moment, so anything that affects me does for all of us,” he said. “Now, Elowyn said that he told me all of the workings of that spell-stone in his message, but what if he did not?”

  “Interesting idea,” Lord Grey and Gem said simultaneously, eliciting a laugh from all four of them. It had a bit of a gallows humor tone to it, but it still served to release some of the tension.

  Lord Grey continued. “What else do you think it might have done?” he asked.

  Lian shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted, “but remember that I’ve been having visions of something Elowyn’s hand set in motion, and now one of those ships is an elven warship. Elowyn was Silei and I know he had numerous contacts at the Sylvan court, but I can’t see how he could have arranged for someone to follow us down here.

  “He didn’t know our plans or in which direction I would flee on Gilaeshar—or even that I would meet Gil, for that matter,” he added, referring to the magnificent golden gryphon he’d somehow managed to befriend in his escape from Firavon’s Tower. To him, that was almost as much of a miracle as his conversation with the Southron goddess had been. The powerful and deadly beast had saved them repeatedly during his travels with Lian, and he wished the great creature was here with them now, but Gil had taken his leave of the prince and sword after the business with the necromancer Lyrial and the vampire Saul; the latter known, thirty years ago, as Kolos, the vampire king of Greythorn.

  Snog nodded. “So he arranged something with an individual beforehand, mayhap?” he said, scratching the back of his pointed ear thoughtfully. “Something that will let that person follow us despite the marble’s veil, and let him make contact with us.”

  He snorted. “Of course,” he added, “that’s a lot to infer from a cat dangling from a charm bracelet belonging to a goddess in a dream.” He laughed again, unable to stop himself as he sat down on the deck emitting gales of laughter. When he could speak again, he apologized and explained, “That was a plain and obvious hint compared to the ones Saael gives me, my lords and lady.”

  They all chuckled at this idea.

  “It’s a good idea,” Lian said, “and it fits with my visions, but I don’t know how it helps us in the current situation. In the immediate future, we must keep the crew from mutinying, keep ourselves from becoming shipwrecked and drowned, and then find a way to safely cross the southern wilderness. Although I appreciate any help where I can get it, the Young Avenger’s will have to be secondary to the more pressing problems.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Aesidhe words for Rula Golden and Sineh are the same as those for father and mother, though inflected quite differently, because the three races of the elves are their children. Though the most ancient of the elves are long passed, they were said to have literally walked the primal forests of Tieran with Eluri and his sister Dwu’liel.

  Likewise, the dwarves revere Kargon the Maker as the father of dwarvenkind, the goblins have their creator gods and goddesses, and so on.

  Only humans, among the races, cannot claim a creator deity. No one knows, save the gods, and they have not illuminated mortalkind. It is not known from whence humans came or who their patron deity might be. Even the religions of the gods most commonly revered by humans—Rula Golden, Asha, and Vedelta, or even Ushra the Dreamlord—do not claim that any of these are the source of humanity.

  It is a mystery, to be sure, and there must be times that one must look upon the works of their fellow men and find one’s thoughts turn to blasphemy. Is humanity’s creator deity ashamed of man? Does the creator feel remorse that mankind was ever created? One sees the evils we have done, the evils we do, and one must wonder.

  -- Unpublished chapter by Sage Kommath, written c. 1766 PE, shortly before publication of “The Rise of the Wizard Kings”

  The dragon should have been an awe-inspiring sight, silvery scales reflecting moonlight as it soared over the stormclouds below. Centuries old, it was still far too young to be awakened to sentience, but it was nonetheless huge, with a wingspan four times the beam of her brother’s ship. If it was aware of her flying overhead it showed no sign, and Radiel considered it dispassionately, unmoved by its grace, its power, or its beauty. Instead, she observed it with cold malice, wondering if it could be made to obey her.

  If it were awakened, it would have a mind that I could control, she thought, but it would be so powerful I couldn’t control it. Such a paradox would have amused her in her living days, but now it was simply frustrating. She followed the dragon as it began to descend into the cloudbank, apparently unafraid of either the shear winds or the lightning that crashed within the inland storm. Dragon means lair, she said to herself. I could use such a place, perhaps.

  She wasn’t worried about attacking the dragon. For one thing, her touch was death to the living, no matter that it was such a creature. It just might take a little longer, and that would be a pleasure. For another, she should be completely immune to anything it could do to her, and if that proved to be untrue and it could hurt her, she was far faster than it was and could pass through solid rock if need be.

  That immunity wouldn’t hold true if the dragon were older, of course. An awakened dragon was capable of magical force that could stop even a greater wraith like Radiel, but fortunately, they weren’t very attached parents. This dragon might have a mate or even offspring of its own—she wondered for a moment what such young draconic souls would taste like—but no awakened wyrm would be nearby. The awakened ones stayed far away from the younger, bestial ones for some reason unknown to her.

  Someone, she forgot who, had once told her that it was as if the sentient dragons shunned their bestial origins. For some reason, this partial memory enraged her, so she supposed it was some useless fact her twin Lian—Lian! she growled to herself as she processed the thought—had prattled, trying to impress her. The former princess of Dunshor didn’t realize it—couldn’t realize it because of what Queen Jisa had done to her—but her altered psyche translated anything Lian did in the most negative way possible. Anything she remembered of her twin fueled her hatred of him and her desire to kill him.

  She also couldn’t know that far to the north, that same queen was worried about her last remaining creation. Not about her wellbeing, oh, no, far from it. In the final analysis, the queen didn’t care if Radiel joined her ghostly siblings in true death. Rather, she worried about her hold on the wraith’s will. Radiel was being forced to innovate, to make plans against Lian without the support of her wraith-siblings, in turn forcing her to operate more independently. The distant queen could feel the binding spells beginning to unravel at her end.

  Radiel already hated Rishak, as she hated anyone who shared her bloodline; she had been rooting for Darwyn along with the others when her older sister had almost touched the king from the weak spot in her binding circle. Would she grow to realize that her “beloved” queen was the true source of her hellish existence? The distant queen didn’t know the answer to that, and it troubled her.

  Despite the obscuring clouds and the crashing thunder and lightning, Radiel found it easy to follow the dragon through the mist and torrential rain, for its life force was vastly stronger than that of a mere human or elf. As she suspec
ted, the beast was making for a cave mouth that she’d never have spotted from her lofty vantage. It was heavily overhung, and this dragon, at least, was smart or clever or lucky enough not to leave the remains of its meals outside of the cave.

  It landed and crawled inside, and Radiel paused to gaze at the cliff side and the cavern entrance. Defensible and certainly able to keep me out of the sunlight, she thought. It’s a little remote from the shoreline, but it should be well situated to strike from. If he lands anywhere close to this point, it will serve well enough. Strategy wasn’t her strong point, she knew. But if she worried overmuch about the precise positioning of her soon-to-be stronghold relative to her remaining brother, she’d become immobilized with indecision.

  One of the things she did remember from her living days was Elowyn telling her that the wrong decision now was often preferable to the right one too late. Or was that Alec? she thought, for a moment confused by the conflicting thoughts and flashes of broken memory. It must have been Elowyn, she told herself. Alec, after all, was a moronic fool, not someone who could ever have given such advice.

  She shook herself back to the here and now, focusing on the cave before her. It was as close to ideal as she was likely to find, and the simple fact was that she needed somewhere to hide from Rula’s hateful light. She’d estimated to the best of her ability the course the damaged merchanter was taking, sighting on certain stars from far behind Indigo Runner. She knew it was at best a good guess as to Lian’s landing point, but once he was ashore it wasn’t like he was going to be able to move very quickly, not compared to her anyway.

  It was no longer enough just to kill him, no. Lian had to pay for the effrontery of killing her sibling wraiths, and death wasn’t enough. It’s a good start, however, she thought with a cackle that only she could hear, but reined herself in. If she allowed her rage at Lian to drive her actions, she’d make mistakes. It was more than evident she could not afford mistakes, given her thrice-accursed brother’s magical helpers. That thought did enrage her, for it reminded her of Gem and the way the enchanted blade had turned aside spell after spell during their battle. Whatever lay within the sack on Lian’s belt, and she was convinced the magic had somehow come from the sack, not being channeled through it, was dangerous in its own right, capable of casting spells with deadly effect.