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

by David J. Houpt

  “I remind you, Alan,” the skull said, “not to overestimate her recollection of things from her breathing days. The process that made her into this deadly weapon must have broken her mind in many ways, and memories are often the first thing to go. Oh, she remembers who you are, and who she was, but specifics like Gem’s capabilities? Especially when the queen—and the wraiths, remember—believed Gem destroyed by the diabolist runes the Trakalan carried? Unlikely.” The assassin who’d attacked them was one of a pair, and part of Ashira’s blessing on Lian that night had been that the pair had been greedy. They’d split up, one of them going to loot the royal treasury, leaving only one to kill the prince. He’d nearly done so by himself anyway, but Lian’s training had sufficed to stop him.

  The assassin, from the western kingdom of Trakala, had borne a rune-covered amulet that they’d assumed, at first, was merely to dull Gem’s senses, to prevent her from interfering with the assassination attempt. It turned out that the amulet contained half of a terrible draining curse intended to destroy her. Had the second assassin attacked with his Trakalan partner, both halves of the spell would have been close enough to the lashthirin weapon to take effect, and she’d have been utterly annihilated, the magic that bound her spirit into the sword drained away to nothing. As it was, the half of the spell that had taken effect had nearly been the end of her.

  “Unless Jisa knows that only half the spell was used,” Gem pointed out, never having been completely comfortable with the necromancer’s certainty that Radiel wouldn’t remember more of her life.

  “Remember, the queen does not know about my being with Alan,” the skull said, meaning that only a few people had known of his presence in the Tower. “Even exposed to but half the spell, by now you’d be a very sharp but mundane blade, and she knows it. I’ve always said our meeting was fortunate, my prince, and for Gem doubly so, because I will say without ego that most wizards could not have unwound that curse.”

  Lian patted Gem affectionately and protectively. “I will always be grateful to you, Lord Grey, for that,” he said. “And for other things you’ve done for us since then, as well, of course.” He gave a little courtly bow to the skull, then went to a knee to pick it up along with the rest of the items.

  “Your servant, my prince,” Lord Grey said warmly.

  Chapter Thirty

  “The fall of the kossir has long been a mystery, for the lizard-like creatures once dominated the surface of Tieran, not just portions of its underground.

  “I believe the fall was because of their singular worship of the night goddess and their rejection of Rula Golden from their pantheon. Everyone knows the might, beauty, and power of the Sun Lord, and anyone who opposes light itself must perish from the world.”

  -- “The Kossir Heresy” by Lord Daerish of the High Realms, 2721 PE, lobbying the Realmsknights to attack the kossir dwelling under the mountains, written shortly before his disappearance one dark night

  What is that little monster doing? the queen pondered angrily as she once again attempted to make mystical contact with the one remaining wraith. It had been slightly over a month since the other three wraiths had been destroyed, and while Jisa couldn’t see Radiel any better than she could find the princess’ accursed brother, she knew the Undead creature was still far away. Presumably, Radiel was somewhere close to Lian, looking for an opportunity to strike at him again, but Jisa wasn’t sure even of that. If she could make psychic contact with her she could not only determine what the wraith was up to but also work to strengthen the control she had over the creature.

  The connection between a necromant and her Undead creations was nothing if not variable. Some Undead were directly linked to their creator, some to the point of allowing a necromancer to see through the Undead’s senses. Others were very weakly linked, usually with deliberate intent, so the wraith or ghoul or other Undead creation couldn’t be linked back to the wizard who’d created them. Sometimes the weakly linked sort were known to turn on their creators, so it wasn’t always the safest practice.

  Of course, that was what controlling spells were for.

  In the case of the four wraiths, the queen had chosen a middle ground. A definite connection existed between them and her, enough that she had a sense of them but not enough that she could actually touch their sentience. As all four of them had been driven mad—a very specific and selective variety of madness, to be sure—by Jisa’s ritual magic, she didn’t really want to do so anyway. Or rather, she hadn’t wanted to. Jisa rather thought that she’d risk her sanity right now to catch even a glimpse of what her remaining wraith was up to, because the feelings and vague impressions she got from the linkage between them were disturbingly…independent.

  As she’d warned Rishak, over time Radiel’s need to operate autonomously had weakened the binding of obedience between her and the queen. It had been a gradual thing, and even though Jisa was monitoring it she was no longer sure if destroying the remains in her secret sanctum would be sufficient to degrade her niece’s mind to a minor wraith. It was a consequence of whatever had occurred the night the four wraiths had attacked Lian—she knew she was making an assumption there, but nothing else made sense—and whatever events had occurred afterward. It was therefore unsurprising, if frustrating to the young-appearing sorceress-queen.

  It was clear from Jisa’s dim impressions that Radiel was doing something, and in fact devoting quite a lot of time and effort to that something. It was for that reason that she and Rishak had jointly decided not to destroy the remains despite the continuing decay of the binding. That Radiel was continuing to work on destroying Lian was the only thing that seemed likely to either monarch.

  The decision to leave Radiel’s mental construction intact wasn’t an easy one for either monarch. The wraith was immensely powerful, highly skilled in magic, and driven to destroy her family. Besides Lian, the only known surviving members of her family were King Rishak Garvelson and his two sons, Prince Stevan and Prince Ruthold. Jisa was her aunt, to be sure, but the blood relationship didn’t extend to her.

  Not that Radiel wouldn’t destroy me in a heartbeat if she completely shatters her bindings, Jisa thought, but the wraith would definitely go after her husband and their sons first.

  The need to destroy Lian was utmost in Radiel’s motives, and that would continue to be true even if the binding magic failed completely. That part of the wraiths’ creation was independent from the obedience bindings, and it was the remaining wraith’s central driving force. Once the prince was dead, given the sorry state of the remaining binding magic, Radiel’s hate-filled thoughts would turn to her three other relatives. And after that? No doubt, Jisa would be on her list of people to kill, but the uncontrolled wraith would become a blight on the kingdom, draining countless people dry in her attempt to sate her terrible and insatiable hunger.

  Still, Jisa believed quite strongly that if Radiel succeeded in killing her brother the queen would know it, and she’d already started taking precautions to protect her husband and children. If the wraith came back to the palace in a headlong assault upon the family, she’d be caught and destroyed by the wardings now tuned (in certain strategic locations, and shielded from magical senses) to her presence.

  If, on the other hand, she was craftier, she might prove a lot more dangerous, for she was a good enough spellsinger in her own right to find ways through or around that kind of warding.

  But still, Jisa reasoned, I’ll know she’s coming long before she comes, and if she’s not my creature any longer, I’ll know that as well.

  It wasn’t by any means a strong connection, the one between Radiel and her tormentor/creator, but Jisa had studied it carefully, especially after Alec, Darwyn, and Keven were destroyed. She had worked to increase her sensitivity to Radiel’s actions, especially her movements, and she felt that she had a fairly good sense for how far away the former princess was. It might not be accurate enough to pinpoint whether she was ten miles away or a hundred, but the queen could certainl
y sense if the wraith was still overseas or within the borders of the Kingdom of Dunshor. She wished her sense of the wraith’s location was directional, because she could have used it to pinpoint Radiel’s position and sent conventional assassins to find Lian.

  In point of fact, the queen had made a significant oversight after creating the wraiths, because their sense of Lian was directional and they could have been used to triangulate on the prince’s location. If she’d realized that, she wouldn’t have even needed to dispatch them at all and merely used them as Undead compasses. This oversight wasn’t really her fault; the queen had never been taught to read maps at more than a cursory level and certainly didn’t have the head for mathematics required for navigation. She simply wasn’t aware that she could have used them for triangulation on Lian’s location, and Rishak—who did understand maps and the basics of navigation, and might have grasped the possibility—didn’t have sufficient knowledge of the wraiths’ capabilities.

  From a certain point of view, that was Rishak’s fault, though the queen wouldn’t have faulted him had she been in a position to realize it. He had forced himself to accept that he was as responsible for what was happening to his brother’s children as Jisa was, and he had forced himself to enter Jisa’s sanctum while it was going on, to face their agonized screams as her magic warped the fundamental nature of their spirits.

  But he’d been unable to completely countenance the creation of the wraiths, and so he’d unconsciously minimized his understanding of their creation and capabilities. It was enough for him to understand that they could track down Lian, find him, and destroy him. He thought of their ability to find Lian as a bloodhound following a scent, and although that was a fair analogy, it wasn’t an accurate one.

  The queen knew that she could ill afford to be so consumed with the remaining wraith, though she wasn’t sure how she could avoid it given the need to try to keep track of Radiel to the degree possible. The old Theocracy mages who had allied with them were power-hungry, and they tested the boundaries of what Rishak and Jisa would and would not permit regularly. They were especially interested in the boundaries Jisa could not enforce. So far, her skill and powers were sufficient to keep them cowed at least to some extent, but the three most powerful Masters, especially, were always looking for signs of weakness in the Queen of Dunshor, and her distraction in needing to try to divine what her creation was up to might provide one.

  The fact that the Masters’ number had once been four helped. In the Theocracy, wizards held what position they could wrest from others, and strength and power was the only real determinant of that position. Guile, deceit, and misdirection could certainly amplify one’s innate talents, but sooner or later the challengers would require a demonstration of power to ensure they continued to demonstrate the proper respect (and fear). The longest-reigning Wizard-Kings had understood this, and the viper’s nest of wizards vying for the top position had often risen up to strike the ones who hadn’t. Neither Rishak nor Jisa intended to create a new line of Wizard-Kings—for one thing, neither of their children had much in the way of mage talent, much to the queen’s disappointment—but their supposed allies, they both knew, were waiting for the chance to depose the king and queen and take over.

  Dwylian, one of the four Master mages that had been deeply involved in their plot against Evan and Adrienne, had made two mistakes. One was that he began to move against the Usurpers too soon and the other was that he trusted at least one of the other three. She didn’t know why Karak had decided to inform her about Dwylian’s plotting, but the Master mage had done so and had assisted her in gathering sufficient proof that Rishak was satisfied of the wizard’s treasonous plotting.

  The king and queen had presented the evidence of Dwylian’s plotting to the other three Masters—Karak had not revealed that he’d been helping Jisa acquire the evidence—and all three of them had formally distanced themselves from their compatriot. In the custom of the Theocracy, it was tacit permission to make an example out of him.

  Rishak hadn’t liked the idea, but she’d convinced him—as she usually could—that an effective demonstration of her power was more important than a safe, quiet assassination. Yes, Dwylian was a Master mage, and yes, it had been dangerous to challenge him openly to a wizard duel, but in the end Rishak had consented.

  Sorcerous duels had been fairly common in the Theocracy, and many ritual spells had been developed to constrain them in various ways. Some circles prevented magics beyond a certain power level; others merely contained the battle, no matter what each wizard unleashed upon the other. Dwylian had agreed to meet her in the Circle of Sterath, as it was called, though Jisa doubted it had any relation to the pale moon or its stern god. This circle limited the ability of the casters within it to summon outside aid—for example, demons—and prevented either caster from leaving the circle unless one was dead or both consented to break it. The latter was useful only if one of the wizards was willing to spare the other, of course, and it had been plain from the outset of the battle that Dwylian had no interest in giving any quarter.

  Well, neither had I, she thought with a wry smile as she remembered the events.

  The circle also prevented either wizard from completing a deathcurse, no matter what their preparations; any such outburst of magic would be channeled away by the circle, actually strengthening its protections. This last feature of a dueling circle was common to most of them, for no sane Master wizard would duel another Master to the death knowing that it still might result in theirs.

  She wasn’t entirely sure what Dwylian’s plan was if he’d won the contest and destroyed her, because Rishak wouldn’t have let him live long after her death. Rishak’s cadre of loyal mages, who maintained the defenses he kept about him at all times, were not individually as powerful as Jisa, Karak, or the other three Masters, it was true. They’d worked together a long time, however, and before becoming king Grand Duke Rishak had spent a lot of his tenure as lord of the southern lands hunting down wizards, including more than a few who’d worn Master’s robes.

  Perhaps Dwylian believed that with me dead the other older wizards would join him in reestablishing the Theocracy? she thought. If so, he would have been disappointed because the other three were wise enough to realize that the people of Dunshor were unlikely to accept such and that, for now, they lacked the sheer power to force them to.

  Perhaps Dwylian hadn’t comprehended how much the magical landscape had shifted since the rebellion and that the people of the kingdom had taken numerous steps to ensure they were capable of defending themselves from wizards.

  The fight against Dwylian had been thrilling and exciting, and it had been challenging as well. He’d been more cunning than he’d appeared, and although she had more personal power than he and a better voice, his knowledge of sorcery had been deeper. He’d used magics she’d never encountered before, and the bout had been closer than she had expected it to be. Rishak had been more than a little angry with her and Karak afterward, since they’d assured him that Jisa was more than a match for the wizard, but she’d come through it unharmed in the end. Though the king had grumbled and glowered, he’d also been proud of his queen, she knew, and that night had proved he’d been excited by the danger as well.

  It was only fair, she believed, since she felt the same when he risked himself in battle. Danger was one of the spices of their marriage.

  The effect on the various mages in their service was exactly as they’d intended, and the wizards were forced to acknowledge that Jisa was powerful enough not only to defend herself but to go after one of them, no matter how powerful, if they crossed her. She didn’t know what favor Karak would demand in return for his aid and hoped it was something she was willing to grant. She had a better voice than him, but he was by far the most powerful of the Master mages, and in a duel between them she wasn’t sure who the victor would be. Rishak, ever the pessimist, suspected it might merely drive the other wizards’ resistance underground, but Jisa pointed out that
was why they employed a large network of spies, both within the capital city and without.

  Jisa forced her mind back to the question of her wayward Undead princess. If she does not act soon, she thought, I must destroy the remains and attempt to unweave the spells that hold her intellect and memories together. She no longer knew if doing so would unravel the wraith’s mind, but it was something that needed to be done in case it worked as intended. She was almost certain, in fact, that she’d waited too long. The possibility that Radiel would succeed was too important not to take some risk, and the king had agreed.

  Unhappily, it was true, but he’d agreed.

  With a sigh, Jisa began to work another spell to try to make contact with the wraith who had once been the sister of Prince Lian.

  ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

  Far to the south, Lian held the group on the beach in the same location, telling the sailors that a friendly ship would be approaching up the coast. Mikos had started to ask about the source of that information but then his eyes had snapped to Lian’s pack—where the skull resided—and he thought better of it. Instead, he had merely asked how long they would need to wait until the ship arrived.

  “No more than a week,” Lian had replied. “After that, we’ll make sail back to Kavris. I can attend to the business I had there.”

  The sailor’s eyes narrowed. “And what of us, Captain, sir?” he demanded.

  Lian’s eyebrow raised. “What of you, Mikos?” he returned coolly. “What is it you want?”

  Naryn spoke up. “Not to get our throats slit because we know too much,” he said angrily; it was plain this had been on his mind for some time.

  Lian had to force himself not to laugh when Jinian said, “What do we know?” The simple-minded mariner did know who Lian was, but he didn’t quite understand what was dangerous about it.