Chains of Blood

by M. L. Spencer

  The loop of a rope slipped around Xiana’s neck and jerked taut. Eyes bulging, Xiana struggled as she was dragged backward toward the fire, men on all sides surging forward, brandishing spears. Rylan sprang after her with a cry, but another rope slipped over his head, tightening around his neck and holding him in place. He bucked against it, but his struggles only served to tighten the rope further. He sagged back against his captor’s legs, unable to fight. He watched helplessly as they spread Xiana out on the ground in front of the fire and tied her down.

  Then they started killing her.

  All around the fire, men and woman scooped up rocks and started throwing them at her.

  Xiana screamed when the first stone hit. Another rock struck her temple. Blood sprayed, showering the ground. The next stone cut the side of her face open, while another smacked against her ribs. Her screams didn’t overwhelm the dull sounds of rocks thunking off her bones.

  Rylan couldn’t stand it. No matter what Xiana had done to him in the past, she didn’t deserve such a horrible death. She wasn’t his enemy. Not really. In her own, peculiar way, Xiana had been trying to help both their people.

  He fought against the rope that held him, which tightened until he couldn’t breathe. In desperation, he flailed blindly for the magic field. Of course, it wasn’t there. He couldn’t catch it.

  Instead, he caught something else.

  He pulled it in and clung to it with all his might.

  The night became suddenly, inexplicably darker, almost as though a hungering shadow had gobbled up the moon. In the eerie absence of light, a sickly green glow appeared and spread over the ground. The fire’s flames paled to white, all color bleeding rapidly from the world. Rylan moaned as something terrible crawled up inside him, making his skin squirm and his insides shiver.

  The barrage of rocks stopped falling. Xiana lay unconscious, her face bathed in blood. The people surrounding her let their hands fall to their sides and edged backward. All the while, something cold and sinister was coiling inside Rylan. He didn’t know what it was, but he could feel it filling him, tearing at his insides. Clawing its way out.

  The people around him started screaming.

  A cloth-wrapped man next to him groaned and wilted like a flower, collapsing to the ground. Another man flung his hands up and danced backward, screaming, turning in circles until he fell over and lay there thrashing. Across the fire, a group of women emitted horrendous, gurgling shrieks and collapsed where they stood. Cloth-enshrouded people bolted and fled. Others toppled and lay rigid like felled trees. Those running didn’t get far. They collapsed in mid-stride, then lay twitching on the ground. None got back up again.

  Rylan looked on, aghast.

  Eventually, there was no one left to scream.

  The awful green glow leaked back into the soil, absorbed by the ground.

  Xiana remained where she was, unmoving.

  The people who had bloodied her lay sprawled across the ground like the victims of a god’s exacting wrath.

  Rylan blinked his shock away. He groped for the rope around his neck. It took him long seconds to realize it was gone. He turned to find the man who’d held him lying flat on the ground, a black and swollen tongue protruding from his leprous mouth. The rope was still clutched in his misformed hand, his face frozen in a mask of anguish.

  Repulsed, Rylan scrambled over to where Xiana lay.

  She was breathing. Alive. But unconscious—her head was a bloody mess from a cut on her temple. He probed the wound with his fingers, assuring himself that her skull wasn’t cracked.

  “Xiana.” He patted her gently.

  She didn’t stir. Her eyes didn’t open.

  He didn’t know what to do. She wouldn’t wake up. He looked around at the carnage that surrounded them. The people who had captured them were all hideously dead. He thought about carrying her away, but then dismissed the idea. He had no idea which way to go, and he feared getting lost in the desert without her guidance. So he decided to remain there, within the grisly circle of bodies.

  A terrible exhaustion stole over him. He sank down beside her. He had no idea why he felt so tired. He fought to keep his eyes open and kept jerking himself awake. At last, he gave into it. Curling up beside Xiana, he fell instantly to sleep.

  He awoke to the feeling of being shaken. At first, it was just an annoying disturbance to his sleep, something he was able to ignore. But it grew insistent, at last breaking sleep’s rigid grip on him.

  “Rylan.”

  He opened his eyes and stared up into Xiana’s golden face. She was leaning over him, her hands on his shoulders, the sun’s brilliant aura haloing her head. Her face was crusty with dried blood, and she had a cut on her cheek under her right eye. He pushed himself upright, and gazed around in shock at the extent of the carnage that surrounded them.

  Every man and woman, even children, were sprawled on the ground in gruesome poses. Their clothing was charred, their features frozen in grimaces of horror. Some had died upright, their muscles locked rigid, as though death’s rigor had stolen upon them prematurely. One man’s arm was thrust upward, the flesh seared away, leaving only a charred, skeletal hand.

  “What happened?” he whispered, his stomach clenching in nausea. Bile rose in his throat, and he choked on it.

  “I don’t know,” Xiana whispered, looking at him with a fearful expression on her face. “Did you do this?”

  “No!” Rylan gasped, shaking his head adamantly. He didn’t. He couldn’t have. He was dampened—he couldn’t even sense the magic field, much less use it. But he had tried. He remembered reaching out for it.

  Rylan’s breath caught in his throat.

  Somehow, he had done this. Only, he hadn’t used the magic field; he had used something else. A different power. A darker power. He remembered its sickening green glow, remembered it clawing its way out of him. He thought of the oath he had sworn in the cornfield, pledging his soul to the God of Chaos.

  There was something terrible inside him, and somehow it had gotten out.

  He shook his head in denial. Xiana pulled back from him.

  “What?” she asked.

  He couldn’t tell her. She’d say the Word and kill him. She could never know….

  A soft whimper caught his attention. Across the campfire, someone in the sprawl of bodies was still alive.

  Using the sound as an excuse to escape Xiana, Rylan pushed himself unsteadily to his feet and wobbled like a drunken man over to a cluster of bodies fallen together on the ground. One of them, a woman, was moving. Kneeling beside her, Rylan rolled her over.

  He jerked back with a gasp.

  The woman’s face was ruined. Her features were grotesquely distorted, as if they had twisted and melted, running together. What was left didn’t look human.

  A raw, skinless hand groped across the ground toward his.

  Xiana lowered herself beside him and peered down at the woman, vast sympathy written on her face. “There’s nothing we can do for her.”

  Desperation welled inside him, along with a cold, numbing mixture of horror and self-loathing.

  “We can’t leave her like this,” he said. Biting his lip, he bent over her and took her head in his hands. With a powerful wrench, he snapped her neck.

  Trembling, Rylan rose to his feet and stood staring down at his victim, his breath shivering in his raw throat. He looked around, his gaze traveling over the bodies hideously arrayed before him. A staggering coldness filled him as he grappled with the magnitude of the atrocity he’d committed. He’d killed men before. Men whose faces still haunted his sleep and eroded his peace.

  But this… this was different.

  This was evil.

  “Come,” Xiana urged, already limping away from him, one hand clutching her head. “We have to get away from here. Before whatever killed them comes back.”

  But Rylan couldn’t move. All he could do was stand there hating himself, wishing he could blame these deaths on anything else. But that
was impossible. The evidence of his depravity lay all around him, irrefutable.

  Thinking of his demon father, he started forward, picking out a path through the carnage, tears blurring his vision.

  26

  The Weight of Chains

  Gil felt a hand on his arm and flinched.

  He’d forgotten Ashra was there, seated next to him at the desk. Scrubbing his hand over the unshaven whiskers on his chin, he glanced up at her. She smiled back sympathetically.

  “Why don’t you take a break?” she suggested.

  Gil drew in a deep breath and leaned forward again, rubbing his eyes. Ever since the lines had stabilized, he’d spent too much time staring at papers on a desk. Spread out before him were lists of requisitions. He’d stared at them so long, the letters had blurred and run together like wet ink. Wearily, he straightened the pages and started over again, ticking off items with a quill pen. He slid the parchment aside and gestured for Ashra to give him the next.

  “This is taking too long,” he mumbled. “I’ve got to get back out there.”

  “Excuse me, Warden.”

  Gil looked up to find Lambert, a lean man with drooping eyes, hovering in the doorway. Wearily, he motioned the acolyte forward.

  “Sorry to bother you, Warden,” Lambert said, taking a stiff stride toward the desk. “It’s Payden, sir. He’s not eating or drinking. It’s like he’s given up.”

  That was the last thing Gil wanted to hear. He had more on his plate than he could handle already—and a war to get back to. And yet the news of Payden was disheartening.

  He blew out a heavy sigh. “I’ve a city falling around me, and you want me to worry about one man who can barely speak his own name?” Even as he said it, he knew it was a baseless complaint. Worrying was what he did. It was his job now. And he was going to worry about Payden, too, whether or not he wanted to.

  The acolyte bobbed his head. “Just thought you’d like to know, sir.” He took a step backward, as if trying to retreat.

  Gil put his hand up, halting him. “Where’s he at?”

  Lambert pointed with his thumb in the direction of the stairs. “He’s still in the subbasement, sir.”

  Gil grimaced. He’d forgotten to have Payden transferred out of there once it became evident they weren’t going to get any useful information out of him. Payden had been down there, in the dark, for four days. Gil wondered if the man was still mourning the loss of the enemy mage he’d been chained to.

  “Well, that might be why he isn’t eating,” he grumbled.

  The acolyte shook his head. “Oh, it’s not, sir. Believe me, if you go look at him, you’d understand.”

  Gil glanced at Ashra. She was staring at Lambert with a concerned frown. Gil wondered why. She’d never deigned to socialize with Payden, or any of the other acolytes from the Kingdoms. When Payden and Gil had been Raised with the rest of their class, she hadn’t bothered to attend the ceremony.

  “Thank you, Lambert,” he murmured.

  The acolyte ducked his head and stepped back through the doorway, disappearing quickly. Gil looked at Ashra.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” she said.

  Gil bit his lip, shaking his head in frustration. “I don’t have time to worry about one traitor.”

  “Aren’t you at least curious? What happened to Payden could happen to any one of us.”

  She was right. He was curious. And that was the problem. He didn’t have the time or energy to be curious. Curiosity meant he’d have to walk all the way down the stairs to the subbasement, then all the way back up again. He’d already walked miles that morning and would have to walk miles more before evening. All to find out what? Something he already knew.

  He sighed, pushing aside the papers on the desk. “All right. Let’s go take a look.”

  He shoved back his chair, the legs sliding across the floor with a terrible shriek. Ashra winced at the noise. She rose with much more grace, then paused to stretch. The strain was showing on her too. She looked haggard.

  They left his office and headed in the direction of the stairs. The old manor house that had been converted into the Lyceum had belonged to one of Rothscard’s original crime families. Below the ground floor was a basement consisting of networks of tunnels that extended out from the old manor’s footprint under the streets into the surrounding neighborhoods. Many of the subterranean rooms were now used to house artifacts and the growing collection of mystical secrets the Lyceum had amassed.

  As they descended the steps to the level of the transfer portals, the air grew steadily cooler. And cooler still when they reached the level of the first subbasement. It was an enormous chamber that had been a cistern at one time, before it had been converted to a central hub from which the network of passages branched off. It was a great, dark hall with a vaulted ceiling supported by rows and rows of pillars. The cistern was empty now, just a sprawling space that had once been packed full of items. The acolytes had been working hard to evacuate as much of the Lyceum’s irreplaceable treasures as they could.

  “I’ve always hated it down here,” Ashra said, producing magelight at her feet. “If any place has ever been haunted, it’s this place.”

  Gil silently agreed with her. He’d always avoided the subbasement too. The cistern had been drained long ago, but the air still felt humid, as though the water that had been contained here had seeped deep into the stone. The whole place had a sinister and ancient feel to it that gnawed at his nerves.

  They walked through the basement until they came to an opening in the far wall. There, an iron door stood closed and bolted in front of them. Gil tugged on the bar, and it slid to the side with a fatigued groan. The door swung open on creaking hinges, revealing a dark corridor lined with bricks that smelled of mildew.

  “You first,” Ashra said with a smile, motioning for him to go ahead.

  Gil eyeballed the corridor for a moment before stepping inside. He walked forward, Ashra’s magelight swirling ahead of them, groping across the ground, until they came to a chamber lit by oil lanterns hanging from rusted brackets. There, Ashra let the magelight go.

  All around the circular room were storage nooks that had been converted to cells. The air was warmer, heated by conduits that brought water up from the hot springs that existed beneath the city. As far as Gil was aware, the cells had never been used, at least not by the Lyceum. Not until now. Sweeping a glance around the room, he quickly found the only cell with its wooden door shut and barred. He moved toward it.

  The key to the cell hung on an iron ring from a peg on the wall. Gil unlocked the door and used his shoulder to shove the door open, spilling light into the darkness on the other side. The sound of a groan was the only sign that there was anyone alive in the cell. Gil hesitated, feeling suddenly guilty. By his order, Payden had been locked down there for days in the dark, for no greater crime than mourning the death of an enemy.

  “Payden,” he hissed into the darkness. “Do you hear me?”

  For a moment, there was only silence. Then came another low groan. Gil handed the key to Ashra, then took a step inside, instantly hit in the face by an eye-watering stench that made his stomach roil. He glanced at a waste bucket in the corner. It didn’t smell like it had ever been emptied.

  Wrinkling his nose, he said, “Payden. It’s me, Gil. I’ve got Ashra with me.”

  His announcement was greeted by the sound of quiet sobs. Gil glanced at Ashra. Then he moved forward, conjuring a dim glow of magelight that revealed the form of Payden lying on a cot, curled up in a fetal position. He was clutching his arm, which ended in a freshly healed stump. Gil moved further into the cell and knelt beside him, Ashra lingering in the doorway.

  Reaching out, he touched Payden’s remaining hand. “What’s wrong?”

  In the dim magelight, Payden’s pale cheeks glistened with tears. He stared miserably up at Gil through greasy mats of brown hair. Lips trembling, he whispered, “You didn’t have to kill him. Why did you kill him?”

&
nbsp; Gil felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to look up at Ashra. She was hovering over him, staring down at Payden with an expression frozen somewhere between revulsion and pity. Gil could follow her thoughts, which had to echo his own. They’d done something to him. Something bad. He squeezed Payden’s hand. His action only served to make the man weep harder.

  Gil whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  Payden’s face distorted into a grimace of immeasurable pain. He jerked his hand away. “It was me! I did it! It wasn’t his fault!” His body quaked with sobs. “Why did you kill him?”

  Gil looked around helplessly, his eyes falling on a bowl of rice that had been left on the floor at the foot of the cot. He picked it up. “Here. You need to eat. Why don’t you sit up, and I’ll help you?”

  The man only shook his head miserably, clutching his stump.

  Gil set the bowl down. “Look. You’ve got to let him go.”

  Fresh tears spilled down Payden’s cheeks. “I can’t,” he sobbed, curling into a tight ball.

  Gil was growing frustrated. “Payden, you didn’t know this man more than a couple of days. Why does his death bother you so much?”

  Payden gasped. “Almir loved me! He loved me like no other! And I loved him! Oh, gods, why did you have to kill him?”

  Gil squeezed his eyes shut. This was going nowhere and, besides, he’d had enough. He didn’t think he could stand any more. Rising to his feet, he cast one last, regretful glance at Payden, then turned his back on him and walked out of the cell.

  “Lock it,” he said to Ashra, feeling defeated.

  He paced across the room and waited, staring at the flickering dance of the lantern light. It was a few moments before Ashra left the cell, locking the door behind her. He saw on her face that she was just as disturbed as he was. She moved toward him with her hands clasped together in front of her, looking like she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words.

  He shook his head and ran a hand over his face, feeling immeasurably weary. “He’s insane,” he sighed at last. He sent his magelight trailing forward into the corridor and forced his feet to move after it.