The Last of Her Line (The Shorall Chronicles Book 1)

by Valerie Veden

  Mervin. It was Mervin. Never before I had experienced similar dreams, but I knew that el'ero could give such an ability. Mervin, so careful and distrusting, had let the enemy come too close.

  I jerked up into a sitting position and reached out for my dress. Now I knew how to approach the Source, how to scoop power, and how to operate the Portals, all due to Mervin's thoughts and his knowledge, still living in me. I knew the wards weren't in the place any more.

  I hurried on to the place where the voice of the Source came from, where it sang, calling for me. The Source wasn't truly sentient, but it came alive through magic. While Mervin was its old friend, it saw me as something new and exciting.

  I opened the last door and saw it, a silvery little lake, framed with stahnin, in the center of a spacious hall. As I came closer, a few flames of fire rose above the water. It was a beautiful and rare phenomenon: a Source made of two opposite Elements. All the Sources I had seen before contained only one. Mervin's ancestors, who had created it, were great sorcerers.

  I came up to the stahnin easel and stretched out my hands.

  "Give me power," I asked.

  The flames stopped dancing, listening to me, and then exploded in a shower of numerous sparks. I didn't feel either pain or heat, nothing but pleasant warmth, as they landed on me. Then I saw the light, coming from the Source in great waves and filling my body. I felt like I was sinking in it, sinking happily and readily...

  It lasted for some time, until I came to my senses, kneeling on the stone floor, with no light and no sparkles around. The little lake was again a calm silvery surface with tiny flashes of light.

  Magic was singing in me. My reserve was full.

  The first Portal had to be opened in the open air, so I went out of the castle. The sun was high in the beautifully blue sky, with only a few puffy clouds around and birds singing happily in the trees. I took a deep breath, concentrated, and said the necessary words at the same time attempting to connect all the elemental threads.

  Finally, something began to happen. A black pulsing entrance appeared in front of me, framed with opaque rainbow curves to stop the changed space of the Abyss from intruding into reality. I licked my suddenly dry lips and stepped into the heart of darkness.

  Part 2

  POSSESSED

  Chapter 1.

  My Portal opened onto a wide and paved road, originally built for commoners. Aristos used physical tracks only while travelling with convoys too numerous to be magically transferred. The route was empty now; the forest on both sides looked dark and forbidding. Fading elemental threads revealed that some el’Tuans had passed through here, but nothing could tell me whether Mervin was one of them. I had opened the Portal following his memories, and that was the only thing certain.

  I wasn’t sure how to locate him. I wasn’t a pathfinder. All my forest knowledge could be summarized in seven words: “A lone girl should not go there.”

  I could do something, though. I could send out elemental threads with imbedded imprints of Mervin’s personality. The Air threads were usually used for such a work, yet, if Mervin were unconscious, they would yield nothing and waste my reserve. Frost threads could bring about a better result.

  Our magical science considered the Air, the Water, the Fire and the Earth as the only primary Elements while the teachings of the Ancients added a fifth, the Frost. My tutors had called my affinity for the latter “freakish.” It was unflattering yet justified after all the destruction I had caused with it. Once, I accidentally froze half the plants in the royal greenhouse and some of the rare Ru-Tu butterflies. Our gardeners hadn’t welcomed me after that for a month.

  I closed my eyes and up-turned my hands, letting the Frost threads flow. They came easily, ready to notice anything big and warm, and flew in all directions, much further than any ordinary thread.

  A mile from the road, my magic encountered something shaped as a male body. I left the road and went deeper into the forest, up to the windfall where the trees piled up on each other. The thread showed my find to be under low hanging branches of one of the trees. I used a thread of the Air to move the fallen trunk out of the way.

  Dark vampire eyes stared up at me, burning with hatred. I had found a wild unmarked vampire.

  I stepped back, shocked…

  It didn’t take me long to realize, though, that the vampire couldn’t hurt me, not now, not with the amount of injuries clearly visible on his body. Not while dying. And he was dying. His eyes glazed over, his chest stopped moving and two thin trickles of blood spilled from the corners of the eyes. His final tears.

  His blood, now dried and blackened, had soaked the wide circle of last year leaves. He must have been lying here for many hours, waiting for help.

  A strange mixture of disgust and pity settled in me. He was one of the damned, but death smoothed his features and made him look innocent. Vampires lived almost as long as the el’Tuans, but this one, judging by his appearance, died young.

  The vampire was probably from Mervin’s convoy. With the thread of the Air I moved his body. There it was: the seal of the Lord Dragon, embroidered on the man’s clothes with simple white threads.

  The dead vampire wasn’t scary anymore. Still too pale in the face and too red in the lips and eyes, but if you stepped back and glanced at him, you could have easily mistaken him for an el’Tuan…

  “No,” I said to the heretic thoughts slipping into my mind. “We are not the same. We never were. We will never be.”

  I raised my hand and made the sign of the holy circle. “Please, Creator, forgive his cursed ways, take his soul and give him a new beginning.”

  Evening had fallen but I had found neither Mervin nor anything to point to his whereabouts. I thought of returning to the castle when one of my threads jerked desperatelyand began vibrating. Frightened, I cut it off and tossed its end away. No el’Tuan was able to catch others’ threads. We knew how to destroy or blind them, not how to steal and attach them to ourselves. Such a skill demanded both upbringing in a different magic school and different blood. I feared it was the Kadaries’ doing. They were considered our allies but never friends; the Abyss’ mark on them was too strong. Still, these Kadaries could know where Mervin was. They could have him captured. Or killed.

  The last thought made me feel sick. I could imagine all too easily the black eyes of my taheert glazing over, empty of life, his fair skin turning waxy, his body broken beyond even our healing abilities, broken and dead.

  No, he was mine. No one was allowed to take or hurt what was mine.

  I had known him to be my el-ero from the first moment our eyes met that many years ago…

  I shook my head, pushing the memory away. I had to make a decision.

  One of my other threads, still roaming around, ran into a familiar indentation of power. I stilled for a moment, then knelt, hugging my shoulders as if feeling cold and scared, as if being lost here, in the wild and frightening forest.

  Interlude 1.

  Power of a highborn el’Tuan could be felt from a considerable distance. Stinn had known there would be an aristo at the opposite side of the caught thread, but he hadn’t expected to see a frightened girl with huge, wide-opened blue eyes. Her outfit was plain, her face childlike, as would be of someone a few years below the age of maturity.

  “Your Highness!” exclaimed the el’Kadari’s companion, making Stinn start. “Your Highness, you are alive!”

  The girl stared at the speaker perplexedly, then gave a loud sob, jumped to her feet and ran to the old man, babbling something incoherent. Stinn gleaned only “Uncle Eddir” as it was repeated over and over. Funny, because Eddir had neither siblings nor cousins.

  The newfound kin of his companion looked pretty even in her disheveled condition. She must have wandered through the forest for a long time judging by the leaves and thin branches in her long blonde braid, dust on the trim of her long dress and the spider web fragment stuck to her forehead.

  “They were killed, Uncle E
ddir. They were all killed!” That was the first complete phrase the el’Kadari caught. “I saw F-father and Kamir b-beheaded!”

  She spoke with a shuddering breath, her voice broken by sobs. Stinn wondered if the girl was going to burst into hysterics. He didn’t know of anything worse than female hysterics.

  “Hmm,” Stinn voiced his presence. The effect was immediate. The sobs stopped and the girl whirled around, her blue eyes, still gleaming with unshed tears, filled with surprise.

  “Who are you?”

  Stinn wasn’t in a hurry to answer, so the young el’Tuan looked at the man she called uncle and demanded, “Who is he? What is he doing in our kingdom?”

  Such royal arrogance sounded in her words that Stinn lost all doubts about the girl’s origin.

  “Are you Riel from the Great House of Shorall?” he asked.

  “I am,” the girl said cautiously, but then a little wicked fox peeked from behind her tiredness and hurt. “Although a well-mannered man should introduce himself first.”

  Stinn stared in her eyes unblinking, and a second later, her acrimony disappeared, giving place to uneasiness and then to open fear, because no el’Tuan could withstand the Abyss reflected in the eyes of the Chosen People.

  “So, who are you?” she repeated.

  Stinn blinked. He hadn’t expected the girl to come to her senses so quickly. He was starting to like that little fox.

  “Your Highness,” the former chancellor interfered. “Let me introduce to you Stinn ar’Gor, the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of our long-time friends and faithful allies, the Kadaries.”

  Stinn inclined his head in greeting, wondering, if Eddir believed his own words or if it was his old habit of smoothing things over. In reality, when the el’Kadaries had found the chancellor and offered him to become both their guide in the country and a middle-man in negotiations with resistance brigades, their wording sounded more like, “Do you want to live or not?”

  Still, Riel Shorall. The last of the royal family would make a great trophy. “The Golden Child of Shorall”, as some had called her, a symbol of the time when the Shorall kingdom had been free. The el’Tuans would fight for her and die for her, and for the one who would become her husband.

  The girl was perfect for a dynastic marriage and pretty enough to make it worthwhile until the Lord Dragon lost interest in this world. Then… then Stinn’s young wife would tragically die, supposedly in the labors, together with the child. Yes, that would be for the best, because the blood of the Chosen People was not to be diluted.

  Stinn ar’Gor, the eldest son of the clan’s Mother, smiled to his future bride.

  Eddir’s cautious inquiries revealed that Riel Shorall had been kidnapped on the day of the final battle, though Stinn had heard it wasn’t a battle so much as a slaughter. The princess had been kept under terrible conditions. She was wearing rugs, was fed with disgusting food, was given no maids, and had her magic blocked. Then, a few weeks ago, her jailer disappeared. His magical restraints became weaker and weaker until the heroic maiden managed to open the Portal and escape. At this point, the princess sighed heavily, looking disheartened. It seemed the place where the Portal had opened was not to her liking.

  Stinn had listened to all that pitiful babbling with an expression of proper sympathy, thanks to Mother’s acting lessons, and nodded in all the right places.

  Quite soon, the princess gathered that the newcomers didn’t mean her harm and brightened up. Eddir’s carefully worded promise of support set the girl smiling and his mentioning of a real Ettel chef present in the camp made her clap her hands in delight and tell them she was hungry as a vampire.

  The princess’s words about her jailer’s disappearance gave Stinn an idea, but he decided to clarify that later. When he opened the Portal, Riel looked scared again and clutched Eddir’s arm before entering.

  The camp had grown into a small tent town. A lot of el’Tuans refused to accept the Lord Dragon’s rule, and the el’Kadaries had been helping those people with magic and weapons, waiting for the belligerent sides to bleed each other white.

  The arrival of the miraculously survived Shorall heir caused a commotion. A few present el’Kadaries looked watchful, but the el’Tuans came running from all sides. The princess smiled to everybody and chattered amicably, reveling in all the attention. For a while, Stinn watched everything, then moved closer.

  “Let me show you to your tent, Your Highness.”

  The girl flashed him a smile, and pretty dimples appeared on her cheeks.

  “I would appreciate that, Stinn,” and she stretched her hand royally, letting him take her under the elbow. Stinn didn’t remember that being a part of the etiquette, but he trusted Riel to know what the court tradition was.

  The princess chattered about everyone being so kind and sympathetic with her terrible loss, while Stinn nodded dutifully and added suitable interjections. But as soon as they approached the tent, the princess’s beautiful face grew red with indignation. The tent he had led her to was no better than a tattered canvas propped up on sticks.

  “Am I supposed to live here?”

  “Not at all, Your Highness,” the el’Kadari soothed her, hiding a smirk. “We shall visit somebody.”

  Riel stared at him suspiciously.

  “Here,” Stinn tossed the canopy aside and made an ushering gesture. The princess glanced at him angrily but obeyed, and immediately gave a yelp of surprise.

  “That’s him, who captured me!” Riel turned to the el’Kadari, grabbed his arm, and pulled him in. For such a fragile looking girl, she was unexpectedly strong.

  The prisoner was tied up, his power blocked and his voice silenced. Stinn had been careful enough to include defense against the magic of words. The man lay on the ground with his injuries unattended, though the guards had thrown a few weak healing spells to stop the bleeding. Mervin an’Toel had been staring at the princess from the first second she had entered and spared Stinn only a short glance.

  There had been no real need to take the governor as a prisoner after the ambush, but Stinn’s curiosity got the best of him. It was the prisoner’s power that enticed him. They had first met a few years ago, when Stinn had visited the kingdom of Shorall. The el’Kadari didn’t forget the alien presence of the taheert’s magic; it was so different from any other. Stinn had come to the tent a few times to examine the prisoner’s power, but it eluded him, slipping through his probing threads.

  Stinn wondered ifMervinan’Toel’s power explained the Lord Dragon’s appointment of him as the head governor. He wondered if it was possible to take some of that tantalizing magic for himself. He wondered, as he had done many times before, if there was any way for the el’Kadaries to not be rejected from the constant worlds, and if any magic, perhaps that unusual magic of Mervin an’Toel, could help. However, leaving a powerful enemy alive for a long while was far too dangerous, and he would need to get rid of the governor soon.

  “How did you catch him?” the princess interrupted his thoughts.

  “There was an ambush, planned and executed by yours truly,” Stinn slightly bowed to Riel who stared at him with naive delight.

  “Oh? It was you who came up with that?”

  It seemed such a successful scheme gave him some points in the girl’s eyes.

  “A few hours of planning and you can see the result.”

  Stinn had heard that murdering children was frowned upon in the el’Tuan society, so he wasn’t about to explain in detail how the right hostages were taken and how one of the governor’s people, after the delivery of the first dead body, betrayed his master.

  “Are you going to execute him as a traitor?” Riel looked excited at the prospect.

  “Of course, tomorrow —” Stinn didn’t finish when she interrupted.

  “The full moon! I want him executed on the night of the full moon!” the princess stomped her foot haughtily.

  “Why so?”

  “It’s our old custom,” there was a ting
e of surprise in Riel’s voice, as if she expected Stinn to know such minor details.

  “The delinquent beasts have always been executed in the light of the full moon and he,” she made a scornful gesture at the governor, “he is a half-blood.”

  An odd custom. At least her last phrase explained the Lord Dragon’s goodwill.

  “As you wish, Your Highness,” Stinn forced himself to meet her gaze cordially. “Next full moon is in ten days, we shall execute him then.”

  The princess favored him with a radiant smile. Good graces of his future bride were worth the risk of keeping the prisoner alive a bit longer. Nevertheless, Stinn reminded himself to increase the camp security and double the number of the governor’s guards.

  The whole evening, the princess spent creating a cozy nest for herself. Many camp inhabitants, the el’Tuans, of course, had to part with their belongings, but Riel Shorall was their new beacon and nobody complained.

  Stinn watched, hiding his growing amusement, as Riel visited her subjects, pointed at the best things they owned and told them in her sweet innocent voice how she really loved this or that. The unlucky el’Tuans sometimes winced and looked pained but still bowed and asked the king’s daughter to accept whatever she liked as their modest gifts. Riel had even acquired a maid, confiscating the girl from some aristo woman.

  The whole process looked hilarious, and it put Stinn at ease, too. The princess showed all indications of staying here voluntarily, there was no need to use force and alienate both her and the present el’Tuans.

  After dinner, Riel calmed down and when Stinn looked into her tent, he could barely believe his own eyes. The girl was embroidering. The man knew the el’Tuan society to be more patriarchal than his, but it was still unsettling to see a born sorceress doing such boring manual work of her own free will.