But she didn’t hate that unknown thing. Instead, she found she rather coveted it, for reasons she didn’t understand. Her hatred was mostly reserved for her brother and that damned sword.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Miserably aware that his twin sister was out in the night, waiting for an opportunity to strike, Lian stood in the bow under the makeshift jib Virinos and Snog had rigged up out of one of the yardarms. He’d come forward ostensibly to inspect that rigging, but mostly he just wanted to be alone, or at least as alone as he could be given the constant companionship of both Gem and Lord Grey. But they were patient companions, and when he wanted time to think they were content to remain silent for as long as he wished.
Truthfully, he was worried about the yard-turned-mast if a strong wind should come upon them unexpectedly, for the stresses on the wood weren’t balanced by a proper set of stays, and a sudden gust could potentially snap the wood in half. He didn’t have enough men to keep a constant watch near the bow, so it could take time to get to the lines Virinos had cleverly set up using the deadeyes Indigo Runner employed as blocks-and-tackle to hoist cargo. The arrangement wasn’t quick or easy to trim, but it distributed the load on the spar as evenly as possible, and that was vital to protect the crude but so-far effective arrangement.
After he and Vir had inspected the crude assembly, they’d worked out some improvements, the most important one being to run the forestay lines—such as they were—in such a way that they could release the tension on them quickly without killing anyone. It would haul the mast down onto the foredeck in a hurry, dragged by the brace lines’ tension, or at least that was the plan, if a gale began to blow. It wouldn’t work if the jib was under too much tension, but it was better than nothing. They simply didn’t have enough of a mast and yard to set brail or clew lines, so they had no ability to reef the sail, and because of the placement it was impossible to rig the jib as a quick-release storm sail and still balance the forces on the mast.
The jib wasn’t crucial to the damaged merchantman, but the rudder provided some steerage with the jib in place and nearly none at all without it. Steerage, slight as it was, could be the difference between life and death if they couldn’t find a cove or bay for harbor. None of them had any desire to survive the wraiths and the open ocean, only to die in sight of land on the rocks.
Even though it was night and he hadn’t brought a lantern with him, the ship and the sea were clear to him, for so long as he carried Gem he could see in the dark as well as any goblin. He knew he should be studying the rigging to try to identify any weaknesses that they should address, but he found it difficult to focus. With a sigh, he leaned on the railing and gazed out at the sea. It was fairly calm, and in the distance he could see the blows of a small pod of whales, though they were too far away for him to tell what kind. Even though he’d seen whales of all sorts in his days aboard Searcher and the merchant ship, he was still amazed by them, but even the distant whales didn’t keep his attention.
You’re in a whole lot of trouble, Lian, he told himself, an understatement, he knew, but he was trying to shake off the hopeless feeling that threatened to overcome him. Quite probably, the entire Kingdom of Dunshor, the western kingdoms, the Islanders, and probably half the goblin clans were looking for him to collect Rishak’s reward. And that was just the start of his problems.
His siblings’ horrible fate, especially his twin, haunted him terribly, but it was at least something that was clearly not his fault. It was done because of him, because he’d evaded his aunt and uncle’s hired killers to date. However, although he felt guilt for having lived while the others died, he didn’t feel any guilt about what Queen Jisa had inflicted upon Radiel, Darwyn, Keven, and Alec. It was something that angered him, that fueled his desire to take revenge upon the Usurper and his queen, and it grieved him. In the first hours after the battle, only Gem’s mindlink with him had kept him from going comatose with the overload of emotions from facing his family in that way.
But to succeed against Rishak and the whole of the kingdom he needed a strategy, and he knew that “keeping alive,” while a laudable goal in and of itself, didn’t count. He needed allies he could rely upon. He needed to start building a force able to rival the Dunshorian armies, and he needed to face the fact that he was going to have to use that force to kill soldiers of his own kingdom at some point.
I suppose that’s what bothers me the most, he thought. The men serving my uncle, even the ones all the way from Mourning, don’t deserve what’s coming. He could hope for mass defections—in fact, he expected defections to be a factor in the upcoming struggle—but many of the loyal Dunshorian soldiers were going to die. And they were going to die by his hand, directly or indirectly.
I could walk away, he thought suddenly, for the first time thinking in those terms seriously. It had occurred to him before, and he’d instinctively rejected it as wrong, but facing the idea of using force against the men and women of Dunshor, he reconsidered. A letter to my uncle won’t stop the assassins, but it might reduce the number. He can’t afford to keep an army of killers after me indefinitely, and if I formally abdicated the throne in his favor and swore never to return to Dunshor, I might just be able to find somewhere to live out my days in relative safety.
He was a little surprised and more than a little pleased at his own reaction to this idea, for it did not tempt him in the slightest. He might have to dispense death to his countrymen and find a way to live with that, but it was clear to Lian that he wasn’t going to cry off. He was afraid of the coming storm, just as he was afraid of what Radiel was going to try next, but he would face it, come what may.
Vedelta, blessed Shieldmaid, guard my sister’s soul from complete destruction, he prayed, tears tracing down his face as he turned his thoughts toward what was left of his sister. Damar, I pray you, grant her peace and an end to her torment. And bright and blessed gods, all of you, please let me have the strength to withstand what she’s going to bring down upon me. As he prayed the last, he felt something undefinable slide off of him, away from him. He was still afraid—he’d have to be mad not to be, given the situation he was in—but he’d given part of that over to the gods and he felt somehow better.
He took a deep breath of sea air and let it out, turning his thoughts back to his sister and the wraith she had become. Radiel had been smart, although she’d spent most of her education harnessing her voice and her power. She was smarter even than Lian, who besides her was the smartest of the remaining five children of the king and queen. She and the other wraiths had been extremely overconfident, even after Alec’s destruction, and he supposed they’d had the right to be.
Three of them were spellsingers, and whereas none of them was truly Masterclass, they’d all been skilled journeymen, and they should have been able to kill their magically untalented brother without effort. Even after Keven’s fall, they must have still believed the two of them would eventually land a spell through the defenses woven by the sword and skull. After all, Lian was only human, and there were so very many ways to end a mortal man’s life.
But Lian and his friends had not only survived the Undead, they’d destroyed three of the four of them, and Radiel was undoubtedly aware that had she dared reenter Lord Grey’s range, she’d have met Darwyn’s fate as well. So she’ll come at me some other way, he thought, nibbling on his thumbnail gently. She can’t overcome Gem and Lord Grey by herself, and she won’t go back to the queen without my death. He had sensed this when she broke off, and just as both meetings with Dalgarin had felt true to him, so did this sense of obsession with his destruction.
She needs allies, just like I do, he realized. “Lord Grey?” Lian said quietly.
“Yes, Lian?” the skull answered. “What is it?”
“Radiel can’t defeat us alone,” Lian said, “at least I think so at any rate.”
Lord Grey replied after a moment’s thought, “That is very likely true. She’s a skilled singer for a fourteen year old girl, and she has
a surprising reserve of magical power. By the time she was twenty, I suspect she would have successfully tested for a Master’s robes.”
Gem and Lian both felt a renewed and all-too-sharp pang of grief, for both of them had instinctively wanted to correct the skull’s statement of Radiel’s age, but the terrible truth was that Lian’s twin had never reached her fifteenth birthday. “You didn’t say it that way to hurt me,” Lian said hoarsely. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
The skull was silent for a few moments, and then said, “She was brilliant in life; one only needs witness the skill she used in our battle to see this. A journeyman by the age of fourteen…”
“She was thirteen when she achieved that, actually,” Gem interrupted harshly. She was usually patient enough not to, but talk of the Radiel-that-was had her feeling the urge to slash something.
“Indeed?” Lord Grey said, sounding angry, but his next words made it plain that it wasn’t directed at the sword spirit. “Such a gods-damned waste,” he pronounced with vitriol in his voice. “What she might have accomplished had she lived…” He fell silent for several minutes, and Lian was content to wait, staring out at the tear-blurred ocean blankly.
“My apologies,” Lord Grey said after the delay, his voice calm again. “I did not know your sister, but I find that I grieve her fate quite deeply.”
Lian put his hand gently on the bulge that was the top of the necromancer’s skull. “Thank you for that, Lord Grey,” the prince said. “She was something special; all of my siblings were.”
The skull didn’t reply. “My point is that although she’s brilliant and more powerful than most wizards ever become and despite the fact that she can draw upon a truly staggering amount of magical reserve, she’s inexperienced, young, and at least a little naïve. She might even be somewhat romantic,” he added.
“Romantic?!?” Gem said, more loudly than she’d intended. Lowering her voice instantly, she continued angrily, “How in the gods’ names could she be romantic, the way she is now?”
“I see I must apologize to you as well, Gem,” Lord Grey replied. “What I mean is that she may have romantic ideas of how the attack on Lian will go. She is arrogant—they all were—and she knows she’s smarter than Lian. I don’t pretend to know what her plan will be, or how she’ll carry it out, and I suspect we’ll struggle to survive it, if survival even proves possible. She may find a way to offset her lack of experience and maturity, but I suspect that she’ll map out a strategy and then assume it will all go as she planned it. It’s a mistake, after all, many young commanders make.”
Lian said, “So you’ve already been thinking about what she’d do and came to the conclusion that she must assemble some kind of army with which to attack us?”
“Perceptive as always, Lian,” Lord Grey said. “I suspect she’s searching for slaves right now, as she’s not going to be trusting enough, or patient enough, to make alliances. She’ll compel whatever creatures she finds through a combination of deadly threats and magic, probably after killing a number of their companions to prove she not only can but will. I don’t know if it will be ogres or ghouls or even dwarves, if she stumbles on an unwarded entrance to one of their citadels, but it will be something, or several somethings.”
“And they’ll be physically powerful,” Lian continued. “She might keep her magic in reserve specifically to counter your spells, Lord Grey. She certainly knows that offensively, Gem is quite limited.”
“That seems logical,” the necromancer said, “especially because if she did go on the offensive, Gem would unravel nearly anything she could hurl at you and the others.”
“Ogres or the like, perhaps,” Gem said. “If she can find any in the wilderness, and then get them into position to intercept us, that is. It’s unlikely she can find enough flying creatures to allow them to keep up with her.”
Lian nodded. “Unlikely, but possible. More likely, she’ll have to drive her band, whatever they are, in a forced march in order to strike at us. She knows where I am,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m certain of that, though I couldn’t tell you precisely why I’m certain.”
“You’re connected, Highness,” Lord Grey said softly. “It’s how they found you in the first place and why they can ignore the marble’s protective sphere. Any wraith or other greater Undead could do this, of course, but the reason the queen did this is that they already had a connection to you so they could start hunting you all the way from Dunshor City. Another Undead would have had to be close enough to you to sample your aura, as Sir Temvri did in Whitefall,” the skull continued, referring to the Undead knight who’d served the necromancer Lyrial. Temvri had been able to track them through the mountains, down into the forest of Greythorn, and to Greythorn City itself.
And if they had not had the aid of the vampire king of Greythorn, the knight would have been the end of them. Lian had no doubt that Temvri would have been able to follow them, even across the sea and throughout Searcher’s movements, for once an Undead like the cursed warrior had your “scent,” they were relentless and without mercy. Lian cocked his head, rocking his eyes sideways as something occurred to him. Before he could say anything, Lord Grey said, “Yes, or an Undead like me, Lian.”
"Another reason to continue to benefit from your fine company, my friend,” Lian replied with a grim look. It hadn’t occurred to him that Lord Grey could be used to track him through the veil provided by the Key.
“Were I to become separated and in the hands of another necromancer,” the skull replied, “I would make it very hard indeed to find a way to compel me to track you, my prince. I consider you a friend as well, and I won’t lie: with sufficient skill or force, I could be compelled to track you in that way. But I promise you this, such a caster would pay as high a price as I could exact for the service.” The anger that had colored his voice when speaking of the waste of Radiel’s exceptional talent was evident.
I think that’s one of the most honest things he’s ever said, Gem said to Lian through their mindlink. Lian agreed, but then he trusted Lord Grey a lot more than the sword spirit did.
“I’ve seen firsthand what can happen to someone who underestimates you, Lord Grey,” Lian said, referring to Lyrial again. Lord Grey’s recalcitrance proved more than inconvenient to Lyrial in the battle outside of Greythorn City, costing the black-hearted necromancer his goblin allies in an opportune moment. “I also have no intention of losing you, even temporarily.”
“I appreciate that, my prince,” the skull said without any trace of irony. “I appreciate that very much indeed.”
“Fortunately,” Gem said aloud, “she wasn’t witness to the battle against Lyrial. She doesn’t know how to neutralize you, Lord Grey—at least I hope she doesn’t. It’d be pretty damned inconvenient if she could manage to get some creature to grab you and then command your silence.”
“That’s an understatement,” the skull said sardonically, with a chuckle. “But of the living, I imagine only you, Snog, and Lian know about that particular restriction. Even you discovered it by accident, after all.”
Lian, Gem, and Snog all knew that the necromancer hated his bound existence in his own skull and the various bindings upon his actions inherent in his imprisonment. Neither of them knew what the Greylord, as Gil had called him, had done to warrant such a terrible punishment, but whoever had done the binding had made the skull invulnerable and apparently immune to the ravages of time. The spirit inside the skull could not use magic directly against its master (currently Lian) and could be commanded to silence.
The three of them also knew that while the necromancer couldn’t use magic directly against the one who held it, he could certainly use magic against that person’s allies and servants. He’d used a necromantic spell on the goblins serving Lyrial, and done it in such a way that the Govlikel soldiers had believed it was Lyrial turning against them. They’d revolted against their former master immediately, although many of them had paid for that treachery, and most
of the goblins had fled headlong back into the forest south of Greythorn City. The change in odds had been critical at the time, and Lian still felt gratitude toward Lord Grey for so clearly declaring himself as Lian’s ally.
Some of the things Lord Grey had said during their time together implied that he had other bindings, ways to compel him to take certain actions, even to cast spells for the benefit of his master, but he also had refrained from telling Lian or the others in their band what any of them were. Lian didn’t blame him, and since he wanted to build trust with the ancient skull-bound magician anyway, had never tried to uncover those other bindings.
“True,” Lian said, acknowledging that pure accident had let him uncover the means to silence the skull. “But Lyrial discovered it, too, though it was too late to stop you from betraying him.”
The skull sighed. “That particular one,” he conceded, his voice sounding weary, “is fairly easy to discover, given that I must sing in order to perform the majority of my magics.” There were a few powers bound in the skull’s enchantments that did not require spellsinging, such as his ability to shield his bearer from cold and to focus necromantic magic cast through him. There were also a few aspects of the skull’s magical nature that all of them wished weren’t true. Undead and necromancers, it seemed, could sense Lord Grey through the protection granted by the Key of Firavon, for Lyrial had been attracted to the presence of the skull in the small abandoned town of Whitefall, even though the group hadn’t done anything that should have alerted him to their presence.
By Blood Hunted: Kingsblood Chronicles Part Two (The Kingsblood Chronicles Book 2) Page 27
