First Blood

by K. Gorman

  Her mouth tightened in a smirk at the thought. It was part of her woodcraft, after all, even if it was discouraged among the Raidt elite. Maybe she ought to return with a pet raccoon. It could go on patrol with her, rummage through the Raidt’s kitchens, fight with their dogs. It was in the bear family, wasn’t it? Perhaps she could—

  Without warning, the forest’s spirit thundered into a roar.

  She jumped to her feet in an instant, the silent cacophony of a hundred tree spirits running through her woodcraft senses like the rush of a wildfire—trees, rocks, mushrooms, animals, the latent energy of the land, all communicating in a hiss of whispers.

  For a second, she felt split—one part of her reeled from the sensation that swarmed through her woodcraft, while the other part stood still, grounded in reality, feeling the quiet, tense calm of the air around her.

  And, vividly, for the briefest of moments, she felt the pure cold of Kodanh, caught a flash of his glowing eyes in her mind, the curl of frozen water in her flesh, the dusting of frost on her skin.

  Then, the explosions came.

  They sounded distant. Lost. Great pops and rumbles that echoed through the trees like cannons. Insignificant, except in their size and shape.

  But her woodcraft told her otherwise.

  The fey found the demon.

  A cold prickle edged through the skin over her shoulder blades, and her jaws clenched together, back molars grinding. The forest whispered of fey magic—high, silent, crackling—but the roar and explosions had been something entirely different.

  She shivered.

  Hells.

  With a quick thanks to the spirits, she snapped from her woodcraft fugue and glanced around. Doneil watched her, yellow eyes shadowed in the gloom.

  “Demons?” he guessed.

  “Yes.” His woodcraft wasn’t as good as hers, but the roar had been a strong communication—as was the fire she could now feel at the edge of her consciousness. Whatever was going on, it was big. Gods, hadn’t Nales said his greater demon could fire-rend?

  They should probably move.

  “Can you tell more about it?” Nales, this time, awake on the other bend from the fire. Closer to her.

  Likely, he’d read about woodcraft. Knew how well a rnari Twelfth Circle would use it.

  She tilted her head, seeking the connection again, dipping into the seething awareness the forest had become, and found her answer.

  “It’s a big one. Smells of fire. And rot. Likely that necromancy you mentioned before.” She bared her teeth as the sensation of death rolled through her. The soft, moist scent of broken earth came to her, followed by the overpowering stench of tainted blood, stinking like a milk tray left to sour. “Definitely that necromancy you mentioned before.”

  “Ten hells.” Nales rose from his bedroll.

  “Is it the greater demon you talked about earlier?” She didn’t even try to pronounce the name—spoken rentac did not move easily off her tongue. “Is it him?”

  “Fire and necromancy, lots of power? Most likely.” Teeth flashed her way as Nales grimaced, the coals of the fire lighting his face briefly as he threw off his bedroll and reached for his sword. “We need to check it out.”

  Her eyebrow twitched. “Check it out?”

  “Yes. Only greater demons would have anything close to his power, and there is only one greater demon accounted for in this area—historically speaking, anyway.” He grunted, pulling on his swordbelt. “If he’s back, it’s bad news.”

  “I’m supposed to protect you,” she said.

  “Those fey are attacking it.” Doneil, this time, tapping into his woodcraft by the way his head tilted to the side—his must finally have stirred enough for him to sense flashes of things.

  “Precisely,” she said. “We can’t just walk into a fight.”

  “Yes, we can.” The prince’s voice rang calm as he shoved his foot inside the first boot and laced it up. “It’s quite easy to, I assure you. We can even join in.”

  Disbelief punched through her. It felt like all the air around her head was expanding, making her dizzy.

  Join in? Was he mad? He wanted to join in on a fight against a greater demon? One who, according to his earlier metaphor, likely had power rivaling greater fey like Kodanh?

  “Are you stupid?” she asked, following him the few steps to the end of his bed roll. “Even if it is your greater demon, those fey are attacking him. They’ll rip through us like paper if we get in the way of their spells. Doneil’s shield spell won’t hold that!”

  “You don’t have to go,” he grunted, bending for his swordbelt—deliberately putting his back to her. “I can go alone.”

  “What?” A laugh dropped out of her, light and hysterical. “You can’t go alone. You’ll die if you go out there.” She paused, unbelieving, watching him prepare. He’d fed the swordbelt through his trouser loops and had almost finished buckling it.

  Was he really serious?

  “I’m supposed to guard you,” she said.

  He grunted, finishing the last buckle and adjusting the hang of his sword. “Then guard me, rnari. But do not get in my way.”

  She stepped into his path as he made to leave. “You’re not going.”

  “What are you going to do, rnari? Break my hand?” His calm mask broke, anger twisting his face into a heated snarl. Sarcasm cut around his syllables like a knife as he spoke, his face coming so close, his breath brushed over her nose. He made a wild gesture, pointing into the darkness. “They could die if we do nothing. The demon could win.”

  “You could die if we do,” she spat. “I can’t allow that. This is your life we’re talking about. This is a real battle, not some whim.” The ridiculousness of the situation made her head swim—was he really serious? Was he really going to do this? She shook her head. “You can’t go. This is stupid.”

  His jaw tightened, and her stomach hardened, already seeing the answer in his eyes.

  “I’m going.”

  He pushed past her and walked into the trees. The crunch of cracked twigs and the rustle of leaves followed him.

  She listened as his footsteps retreated into the forest, a hollow mix of disbelief, anger, and anxiety eating at her chest.

  Slowly, her gaze moved to Doneil.

  “I’m going to end up breaking another prince, aren’t I?”

  “They do seem to bring it out of you.” He paused, tilting his head. “It’s quieted.”

  So it had.

  Maybe the fey had won.

  Somehow, she doubted it. That explosion had been big. It was more likely they were all dead, and the demon was picking apart their bones.

  And Prince Nales, her charge, was about to go waltzing in, blind as a deaf bat.

  Fuck.

  She let out a low hiss and snatched her go-pouch from where she’d left it. Her steps made quiet stalking sounds as she paced around the campfire, running a hand down to check her blades and armor before she left.

  “Stay awake. Saddle the horses. And give the other human his firearm. It’s in my saddlebag—you know where.” She threw out a pointing hand as she jogged away from the fire. “We’ll be back.”

  Chapter 14

  She caught up to him easily, her steps soft and quiet on the forest floor. He flinched when her fingers locked around his wrist.

  “You’re planning to do something stupid. When I find out what it is, I’m probably going to murder you,” she informed him, her tone quiet, clipped, and irritated as she directed him around the large bush he’d been attempting to breach. “But if you insist on this idiocy, then I’d better lead. At your rate, we’ll be lucky to get there by morning. Elrya, you humans are blind at night.”

  Actually, he was surprisingly not blind for a human. A small dose of shock zipped through her nerves when his eyes met hers in the dark, seemingly without trouble—and, large bush aside, he had gone a fair distance for a human.

  The fey’s words from earlier came back to her.

  Be careful
of that one. He has devil’s blood.

  She snorted softly. No time like the present to find out. “Do you have demon in your ancestry?”

  Nales’ arm jolted in her grip. “What?”

  “I’ve been thinking—how could a human line so specifically wield a special, powerful demon sword? It makes sense if it’s locked to a lineage.”

  There were a few like that, historically—the Raidt palace had several locked away in vaults, though not nearly as powerful as the Cizeks’ sword. Goblin-made items could be hard keyed to an owner’s blood, but they had an iffy success rate on even first-generation descendants. If the humans wanted something multigenerational, they had to tap into older magic, like the fey.

  Or demons.

  “I’m not going to just tell you the secrets of my family’s ancestral workings.” Nales’ voice was terse, closed—though she detected an undertone of incredulity beneath it.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’ then.” She led him around a patch of fallen timber, the rustle of their footsteps grating on her skin. “One of the fey told me you had demon blood.”

  “What?”

  “The one right at the end. That grabbed me. He said to be careful of you.” She paused, taking a moment to sight through the forest with her senses. Everything had gone still, back to its restful state, though she detected a wariness to the trees that hadn’t been there previously.

  Nothing around. All the animals were either hiding or sleeping. Mostly hiding. She could feel threads of attention over her shoulders as they moved.

  Ahead, the raw energy seethed like hot air.

  It hadn’t gone away, or dissipated, since the explosion.

  Not a good sign.

  Face grim, she turned her attention to Nales.

  The shadows bisected him, only a few slants of scant moonlight dappling his hair and shoulders. The darkness of his clothing stood out in the dimness as a darker shade—not an unnoticeable shade, like thieves and assassins tried to mimic; it was too dark for that, unless he decided to go sneaking around some of the obsidian caveforms she heard the dwarves kept. Though he presented a slight figure, she realized that was misleading. He was actually quite broad in the chest, with more muscle than she’d initially given him credit for—he had to be, in order to have kept up with her during the demon attack on Abiermar.

  But maybe the demon blood fed more than a bloodline key to him.

  He had been keen to leave the next morning. She’d thought it regular human desperation and vengeance, but…

  Something was niggling at the back of her mind.

  She blew out a breath.

  “Anything else I need to know about this demon that you aren’t telling us?”

  “He’s powerful.”

  “Yes. You mentioned that. Any other fun talents, apart from the fire-rending, necromancy, and mind control?”

  Nales grunted. “Three hundred years ago, when the gates were active, this demon nearly corrupted the entire forest ley vein with his power.”

  She halted. “What?”

  “My ancestor put a stop to it, along with a group of elves. It was, perhaps, the one time elves worked together with a demon. She used her power to cast the demon from the realm and helped the elves seal the gate.” The corner of his mouth twitched in a grim cant. “This was before the Quickening, when Eolos sealed the rest of them. A precursor, most likely. He had been her grandson.”

  Ah. So now he was admitting to demons in his lineage.

  It wasn’t unheard of. As far as she knew, the four main races were, more or less, compatible with each other. Elf and human mixes were common, same with elf and fey and, to a lesser extent, fey and human. Dwarf, human, and goblin mixes also existed.

  But demons?

  They’d been gone so long she’d never even considered them.

  How would a demonic line effect a person? Based on what she’d seen so far, demons were malevolent creatures—but the ancestors Nales spoke of did not seem evil. They had helped the other races.

  Around them, the trees were silent, the air still. Ground fog was beginning to rise in places, giving the dips and breaks in the trunks an eerie chill.

  She held his gaze. In the dark, his stare never lost hers.

  “So,” she said. “In short, we have a very powerful demon who has a specific reason to be pissed off at you?”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyebrow twitched. “And you want to walk on up to it and poke it with a sword?”

  “If the opportunity presents itself, yes.” His jaw worked. “Like I told you before, I have a duty.”

  Duty. There was that word again.

  She remembered how angry he’d gotten in the courtyard. How they’d snapped at each other.

  She’d thought they’d end up fighting, right there.

  Maybe he does believe in what he says.

  He wasn’t naive, that much was certain—he was as wary and cautious as one would expect a prince of the Cizek line to be, given their power dynamics—but neither did he shirk. When the demons had attacked, he’d been with her all night, putting his life on the line again and again to hunt down and kill every last one of the things they could find. Then, he’d tried to keep going, all on his own.

  Maybe she’d finally met a prince who wasn’t a complete, self-serving asshole.

  Tarris isn’t completely self-serving. He’s a good prince, when it suits him.

  Which is what had really twisted the knife for her. Having experienced his bad side, when she’d known he was capable of so much more. Living with the damage she’d done, knowing he’d also ride at the head of the rangers when the time for war came.

  Gods.

  But Nales…

  She narrowed her eyes, silently examining him in the dark. His brow furrowed, sensing this, but he kept still under her scrutiny.

  Maybe he was a decent royal.

  “What?” he asked after a few seconds.

  “Nothing.” She brushed off his question and twisted, readying to lead him farther through the forest. “We’re on this path now. It’s gone quiet, but we’ll try to find this demon of yours. Keep close behind me, follow my lead, and don’t do anything idiotic.”

  She was expecting a smartass remark back, something along the lines of ‘you can’t tell me what to do, underling.’ Instead, his gaze remained calm and focused. Studying her as she had studied him only a few moments ago.

  Then, he nodded.

  She stepped off into the forest.

  Chapter 15

  The forest was a series of grays and blues for her, the air unnaturally still. Wary. Like a layer of electric tension draped across her shoulders. Only the pull of their breaths and the rustle of their steps among the leaf litter disturbed the air. She was reminded of Abiermar—finding the bodies, moon shining on blood, on mangled flesh, the way the stablehand’s face had been unrecognizable. The unearthly way the demon had unfolded from the ceiling, its poison barb gleaming in the dark as slick as a scorpion’s sting.

  A game trail opened up, then led into a second. She ducked and pressed its branches to the side. Twigs pulled across her skin, skittered and scratched over her bracers and pauldrons. A spiderweb slung across her shoulder like the touch of a ghost. The prince followed in her shadow, smaller, taking her lead. As her woodcraft fed into her intuition, the fresh scent of pine and soil rose to her senses, water dampening the air close by.

  The atmosphere hung around them. Quiet. Watchful.

  All too soon, the smell of death came to her.

  It was one of the fey horses. Ripped apart and strung across the ground in a grotesque, violent manner, what was left of its coat practically glowing against the forest floor, so pale was it. Blood splattered and smeared parts of its hair, muscle and viscera a mass of darkness against the leaf litter below its stomach, the harder slopes of its saddle juxtaposed into the mess. Several ribs jutted up, gleaming in the filtered light of the crescent sliver of a moon. Its head and neck lay limp on the ground, eyes clo
sed as if in sleep. Leaf litter clung to strands of its mane.

  Though parts of it steamed, its corpse had already been cooled by the air.

  Her jaw locked as emotion threatened to choke her throat. She wrestled it down and forced her gaze to slide over it, calculating, dispassionate.

  A quick kill. Violent. Near ripped in two. Three ripping teeth marks in its haunch brought the image of the hellhound’s jaws to her mind.

  Two of them, most likely.

  The horse’s rider was nowhere to be found.

  “No sign of them,” she said, turning her attention back to the surroundings, skimming over the soil and tree trunks that faced them. The air lay silent around them, the forest still. So quiet, it felt like the entire world was holding its breath.

  A light breeze shifted through the trees, bringing the first few tinges of smoke in the air with it. She frowned as her mind followed them, the scent glowing in her woodcraft senses like cooling iron in a dark forge room.

  Up ahead, the forest felt… different. Hard. Hot. Except… She tilted her head, trying to reach through the connections with her woodcraft, but grasping only the bare minimum—like a root touching a different type of soil, or a person walking into a crowd of strangers. Still able to see, but the tone felt off. Unfamiliar.

  “What’s wrong?” Nales’ eyes met hers, his frown a mirror of hers.

  “Nothing. It’s—” She clamped her mouth shut and gave her head a small shake. No, keeping him out wouldn’t help anything. And, as much as she hated to admit it, he had already proven himself useful, especially when it came to matters involving demons.

  “My woodcraft is acting up,” she admitted.

  Given his education, he should have a good idea of what that meant. Plus, he’d seen her use it several times already.

  “We’re going in blind?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I can still see things, but it feels off. It’s hard to connect.”

  She winced. It jangled at her senses, kept slipping and sliding. It felt as if two images kept climbing into each other—what had the fey said? About ‘disruptions’? Like two places running together, as if the land itself had been sliced and transplanted?