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

by David J. Houpt

  She adored and worshipped the queen as much as she feared and hated Her, and none of that had changed. She felt, in fact, twinges of remorse, as alien as that emotion now felt to her, in having circumvented Her will by disobeying the overriding order to destroy Lian as quickly as possible. Breaking free of Jisa’s control hadn’t been like Alec slipping Radiel’s leash. That had been mere brute force applied at just the right moment. Hers had been much more subtle, accomplished over many days and nights’ effort as she made her plans and gathered resources to aid her in her task.

  She no longer knew what she’d do if Jisa were to appear before her and issue new orders. Would she obey Her? Would she not? Would she attack Her?

  That was a thought she barely dared think, and she quashed it whenever it occurred to her as quickly as she could, turning her thoughts to other matters and focusing on those. She didn’t know the answer to that particular question anyway.

  It helped that she’d managed to mostly convince herself that slipping her mind out of the binding spell was the best way to obey the queen. Surely, the wraith had told herself so many times she half-believed it, the queen would be proud of Her servant for having found a way to accomplish the task she’d been bid! She knew on a deep level that it wasn’t really true, that Jisa would very likely be enraged at Her servant’s actions, but it helped.

  Outside, one of the ogres was tormenting the lesser ones again, and the need to discipline one of her stronger slaves was a welcome distraction from her mental torment. Even so, she had to suppress her first urge: to suck it dry as an object lesson. It wouldn’t do to rob herself of even more of her tools, oh no.

  The ones she had devoured had served their purpose, to create terrified obedience in the creatures she’d driven into her dragon’s lair cave, to make them submit to her magic and her will.

  In her living days she’d never worked mental binding magic of her own. Not because it was unethical—though it most certainly could be—but simply because the subject hadn’t been explored yet in her lessons. To her delight, for she reveled in dominating lesser beings as much as her queen did, she had a strong talent for such magic. Once she had creatures safely in her sanctuary, she could work to bind them to her will. She was unaware that weaving that sort of magic, developing that part of her magical power, had helped her slip Jisa’s bondage; ironically, had she been aware of that loophole ahead of time, she might not have been able to make herself cast those particular spells.

  Learning how to enslave the creatures she’d captured hadn’t been easy, either. She didn’t know any binding magic save what had been used to bind her and her siblings, and that magic, she’d only experienced from the wrong side. She’d had to derive new spells while resisting the constant impulse to obey Jisa’s command to go kill Lian right now. She’d had to experiment with the spells, and more than one of her early catches had slipped away from her control and tried to escape.

  Not that they’d gone far enough to evade her. She couldn’t penetrate Lian’s scrying protection—she’d tried to spy on him, reasoning that since she could find him she should be able to watch him—but she could certainly use magic to track escapees, and she was vastly too fast for any of them to get away, even when they scattered.

  I don’t believe that I authorized any torture this evening, she said archly, appearing suddenly from the inner cavern where the goblin shamans had carved her ritual circles to exacting specifications. (At that point, they had been so terrified of her that they’d have cut the hearts out of their own mothers and children to avoid rousing the wraith’s ire.) She could see that the ogre in question was the smallest and weakest of the six, Grung or perhaps Krung; she didn’t have Lian’s talent for names and she had dozens and dozens of slaves to remember. It was up to her more important slaves to remember the names of the others for her, she felt.

  Grung, if that was the ogre’s name, froze, holding the terrified goblin warrior in one meaty hand, his other closed in a fist and ready to pummel the goblin.

  Ready to pummel him again, she observed to herself, seeing the goblin already looked somewhat damaged and her eyes narrowed.

  Put him down gently, she ordered the ogre, who obeyed with a shaking hand. The simple-minded and brutish creature had believed she was too busy conjuring to catch him hurting the smaller ones, and he’d picked one of the very smallest ones just in case it annoyed her. Unfortunately for the ogre known to his fellow ogres as Krung, the goblin he’d picked was one of the better hunter/scouts, and she was unamused to see him fall to the ground, his ankle obviously broken from the ogre’s earlier rough treatment.

  Fetch A’vik, she instructed one of the other goblins, sending him running to bring the best healer among the four shamans that survived. She floated over to the ogre in a flash of motion, almost too fast to see.

  It will go poorly for you if this scout cannot be healed, she promised the cringing ogre, who fell back on his rear to try to scoot away from her frightening visage. Her voice held all of the cruelty and hatred she felt, and it was no surprise to any present that the ogre lost control of his bowels. Glad she couldn’t smell anything, she noted the results of the ogre’s terror with grim satisfaction.

  She floated much more sedately over to the goblin scout. Since they were required to go afield and look for more potential servants for her to enslave, she’d used the most effective of her binding spells on all six of the tribe’s scouts, so he wasn’t afraid as she came close. She knew, since there’d once been seven scouts in this tribe, he’d gladly embrace her even knowing what that would mean. It had been accidental, but that seventh scout was no less dead (and to her, wasted) because it had been unintentional.

  Be still, my sweet, she said lightly, enjoying the look of abject servility in the goblin’s eyes as he stopped trying to inch close enough to his mistress to touch her. He had an ecstatic look of pleasure on his face, despite the pain of the broken ankle and other injuries, for to him the honor of fulfilling the least of her whims was a gift beyond price.

  She didn’t really care if he couldn’t be repaired, of course. He was a tool, and if he was broken she’d put his life force to use in other ways. It was tempting—always tempting—to just devour him, but she’d learned that whereas eating a soul was satisfying in the moment, it neither nourished her nor replenished her power nor served any other useful purpose save frightening her slaves.

  But frightened of her, they were already.

  “Krung is a good fighter,” came the rumbling, deep voice of the one troll she’d managed to snare. She’d found his mind impossible to bind in the end, so she’d settled for a curse upon him to compel his service. If he disobeyed her, the curse would blind him permanently, and he knew it, for she’d demonstrated it upon one of the goblins the huge creature had wounded when they’d helped her corner him. That unfortunate had stumbled off a cliff as he fled blindly from her cruelty, and even that had not saved him from the wraith, for he’d survived the fall just long enough for her to swoop down and devour him. It had been a very strong object lesson.

  I have little use for stupidity, she retorted hotly, angered immediately at being defied.

  “Even stupid he will smash our enemies’ defenses and take many of them with him before he falls,” the troll, who’d refused to tell her his name, replied angrily. He hated her as much as she hated him, and if he could have, he’d have used the great enchanted axe he bore to end her Undead existence. All he had to do was to accept being struck blind.

  “You are clearly on a timetable,” the giant armored warrior reminded her, for her haste to complete her preparations had become obvious. The fact that the troll could tell angered her again, but she held her tongue. “The scouts have found you fewer and fewer potential servants, so you can ill afford to waste any of the ones you have, especially among the ogres.” He pointed one tree-thick arm at the cringing Krung.

  She didn’t speak any of the languages of the goblins, ogres, werewolves, and trolls of the Vellan continent,
but she’d found herself able to understand them, and to be understood, regardless. She realized that to be part of being a wraith; she wasn’t really talking or listening, anyhow. The troll spoke the ogres’ and goblins’ common tongue, a form of Govlikel she’d never heard before, but he was using a different tongue now, one the others didn’t appear to speak. She realized he was trying to be tactful and respectful by doing so, and her anger faded as quickly as it had arisen, as was true of most of her emotions. More, she liked being shown deference and respect, even if it was solely because her slaves feared her. Even this massive troll, six yards tall and strong beyond measure, feared her and what she could do to him.

  You are right, Tenkiller, she said, using the name the goblin chiefs had coined for him because he’d slaughtered ten of the goblin warriors before being forced to surrender to her sorcery. She gave him a mirthless smile. But Krung need not know that.

  The troll nodded curtly. “Of course, mistress,” he said. “He must be made to believe that his continued, worthless life is a gift from you and that damaging any of the other lesser servants”—the troll never called any of them slaves, probably to avoid thinking of himself that way—“will be the end of him.”

  Tenkiller nodded his huge head again, as if something he’d suspected had been confirmed. “Are you at least going to tell the leaders what our objective is, mistress?” he asked, his voice at least somewhat respectful if not any less gruff and gravely. “And what kind of opposition we may be facing?”

  She pondered the troll’s request, one that he’d made before in various subtler ways. This was the first time he’d dared say it directly, and she supposed it was her roundabout admission that there was a timetable that had given him cause. I must be careful of what I say, and do not say, in any slave’s hearing, she thought to herself. It was something to remember for the future. She’d never had slaves before and found that she liked it, but she also realized she had a lot to learn about being an effective mistress. She envied her queen, who had been so capable and confident in Her dominion over Radiel and the others.

  She had frozen into immobility as she’d thought about Tenkiller’s questions; the trappings of her living existence, like breathing and blinking, tended to fade away when she was otherwise occupied. She looked him up and down appraisingly, arching one eyebrow. She could still pretend to have a living woman’s gestures and emotions, even though she was capable of feeling only a handful of them. She doubted the giant warrior cared about her affectation of human expression, but then again, she hadn’t done it for him; it was useful to be able to pretend, and she needed to keep in practice.

  A Master wizard, a particularly troublesome journeyman wizard, a goblin, and less than a dozen humans, she enumerated, estimating how many of the ship’s crew might have evaded her and Darwyn. One human and the goblin are well-trained warriors, she added, and I doubt any of the others are anything but shipwrecked sailors.

  Tenkiller pondered this for a moment. “I don’t expect you to inform me of your limits, mistress,” he said carefully, “but it would be useful to know if either mage, or both, are a match for you.”

  She folded her arms as she floated before him at eye level and thought about whether to just devour the creature and be done with his impertinence. But what was true about one of the ogres was doubly or triply true of Tenkiller; she couldn’t afford to kill him now. The Master is a necromancer and he likely represents the greater danger to all of us, she said after a time. The sword spirit that is the other wizard will make it difficult to cast spells upon the enemy.

  Tenkiller’s eyes narrowed, considering this. “And how do you plan on dealing with the two wizards?” he asked.

  She growled harshly at him and was rewarded by the troll taking an involuntary half-step backward. Leave that to me and the shamans! she said angrily. Your role is to kill the non-spellcasters, save the wielder of the spellblade. Now that she’d said it, she wondered at her own temerity. Why shouldn’t she have Tenkiller or the ogres just smash Lian’s brains out? It’s what the queen wanted, but for the first time Radiel realized that it wasn’t what she wanted. Death was by far too kind for Prince Lian.

  “You want that one alive, fine,” the troll said in his deep and rough voice. “But strong as I am, as strong as the ogres are, we have to survive to reach the enemy. I surmise your magic alone wasn’t enough to counter the blackrobe and this other caster, so…”

  Do not question me! she hissed, raising her hands like claws.

  He swallowed but stood his ground. “If I am to help you succeed,” Tenkiller said deliberately, his voice a deep basso growl, “then we must discuss tactics and strategy, mistress. You have spent weeks building this force, and your sudden haste tells me that you don’t have time to do it again.”

  He also gripped the enchanted axe he’d been captured with and that she had returned to him once the curse was in place. Now, well within striking distance of the troll, she wondered if that had been a wise thing to do. Would he risk blindness to end me? she wondered. She appeared to take a deep calming breath, holding up one hand in a forestalling gesture.

  You are right, Tenkiller, she said without apologizing.

  The troll knew he wasn’t getting one, but he nodded and grunted in acceptance of her concession to him. “I want you to succeed, sorceress,” he said. “If you are pleased with my efforts, you may lift the curse and let me go my own way, and that can only happen if you reach whatever goal has brought you to Vella.”

  She wanted to ask him how he knew she was from elsewhere but decided that such a question would be an admission of ignorance, and in turn, an admission of weakness. I plan to deal with the spellcasters by refusing to attack them, she explained. The sword by herself can stop any spell that I can cast, and all four of the shamans acting in concert can’t even do that well against her. She was made to stop hostile magic.

  He nodded in approval. “So you refuse to play the sword’s game and keep our magical strength for defense against the necromancer’s magic and whatever the sword can do offensively.”

  Her magic, not in defense, is on par with the shamans, for the most part, Radiel explained. She can certainly kill one of the goblins and maybe one of the ogres, but battlefield magics are beyond her. She wasn’t actually certain of that, but she wasn’t about to admit that to the troll. Still, Gem hadn’t thrown any effective battle magic during the fight aboard and above Indigo Runner, and she’d certainly had opportunity. Each of the most dangerous spells that had been unleashed against the wraith-siblings had originated from the necromancer.

  “If you can ward us from their spells,” Tenkiller said flatly, “we will crush a mere dozen men and a goblin. The goblins and I alone could manage that, and with the ogres? They have no chance at all, mistress.”

  Chapter Thirty Two

  “Perceiving the patterns of five that surround us is not always easy. The unenlightened believe in vain that Fate can be beaten or avoided. The wise know that He has chosen the outcome long before the first star shone in Tieran’s skies.”

  -- Words, unattributed, written in stone upon the altar of the Sterath Temple in Thrace’s capital city

  Lian slept fitfully during the day, waking several times from shapeless nightmares, though the experience of the earlier dreams had given him the self-discipline not to cry out. To a sailor on watch, had they even noticed Lian’s discomfiture, it would look like he’d merely startled a little then rolled over to go back to sleep. Since the sleep of the three surviving crewmembers of Indigo Runner wasn’t pleasant either, none of them would have thought it unusual in any case.

  Once he’d woken and as soon as Lian and Snog were alone, Lord Grey asked the prince about the dreams. “I’m sorry, Lord Grey,” Lian said. “I don’t remember any specifics from the dreams at all.” He and Snog had tended to their ablutions and eaten some of the fish Naryn had buried, wrapped in seaweed, at the base of the fire. It was nearing dusk and they were heading back to the sentinel rock to keep
their watch.

  The prince was a little shaken by the dreams but not as he had been by the nightmares about his siblings. “Maybe I ate something that disagreed with me,” he said in a sardonic tone that implied he didn’t really believe that. He sighed. “I don’t know what it means, and we’ll keep especial watch tonight,” he said, “but there’s not much more we can do in that regard anyhow.” They were already keeping careful watches, and the sword and skull were, of course, always vigilant.

  “Walk me around the beach before we take up our post,” the skull said firmly. “All the way to the treeline and from waterline to waterline at that radius.”

  Lian nodded, signaling Naryn to stay put on his perch for a moment. The cook had been preparing to climb down for the night, but he settled back down at Lian’s uncharacteristic request. The prince was never late for his watch, nor did he stint his time. As the quartet of man, goblin, sword, and skull moved around the long circle Lord Grey had outlined, the necromancer’s clear and lovely tenor sang a song they hadn’t heard before. Gem quickly identified it as a warding line, although she couldn’t see it any longer a few moments after they passed a given location. It was fading away to her magical senses as Lian moved the skull away from it.

  When they reached the shoreline again, which took more than thirty minutes at the radius Lord Grey had demanded, he directed them to cut a chord across the long arc to where they started, without interrupting his spell. Gem saw a brief flare of magic when the line connected to its origin point, and then the warding became invisible in its entirety to her mystical eyes.

  “Now again thirty yards closer in,” the skull instructed, singing a different song as Lian walked, occasionally having him correct his angle. This ward left a palpable presence in the air, a feeling of malevolence and darkness that could be felt anywhere near it. To her magical senses, the dark warding was visible for quite a distance.