Blood Solace (Blood Grace Book 2)

by Vela Roth

  Once again she found herself racing toward all that remained of someone she loved too late to stop the king’s destruction.

  At last white marble and black thorn thickets came into view. Cassia was dizzy from lack of breath, but she pushed herself through the shrine’s crumbling doorway and into the antechamber.

  Cool darkness and the fragrance of roses wrapped around her. Shattered tiles chimed against each other under her aching feet. She ducked beneath the fallen pillar that barred the inner door and fled into the Ritual Sanctuary. The sensation of Hespera’s magic crept under her skin and whispered through her blood.

  For the first time, she froze. The knowledge of what she could not do paralyzed her. Knight twined around her legs, silent and frantic. She stared at the pedestal that had once held a statue of Hespera and knew she had no magic that would protect this place. She had no strength in her limbs great enough to lift the stones. She had no time to transplant a single, precious rose from the soil.

  Our roses, Lio.

  But she had her seeds. A few of the roses, in anticipation of autumn, had finished flowering and begun to produce fruit—rose hips, legend called them, which carried precious seeds within. Cassia had collected them with the utmost care and hidden them among her stock of more mundane plants. She could, she would grow their roses again. Hespera’s rare, sacred blooms would live on as long as Cassia did.

  Cassia spun in a circle, taking one last, long look at the fanged, verdant rose vines with their blood red blooms, the fractured mosaic of the night sky on the floor, and the domed skylight that let in the moons when night fell. How many people had rested or rejoiced, prayed or celebrated here since the mages of Hespera had built the shrine?

  She and Lio had been the last. She could think of no better way to honor this place than with what they had shared. Her blood. Their bodies. Honest words. Freedom.

  The voices of men echoed through the woods.

  They must not find her here.

  Cassia darted back through the antechamber, but once outside the shrine, she halted. She could not bear to turn her back on this place carrying nothing more than her memories. There must be something more she could salvage from the ruins.

  Perhaps there was one stone she had the strength to move, if she acted quickly.

  She paused to clutch a hand to the capstone of the arch over the front doorway. The faded engraving of Hespera’s glyph was still stained with Lio’s blood and her own, which had brought the roses back to life. She dug her fingers into the grooves around the glyph stone.

  Through the linen of her glove, she felt the ancient mortar crunch. She gasped a breath and dug harder. She felt the stone shift ever so slightly under her hand.

  Yanking off her gloves, she drew her gardening spade from her belt pouch and began to dig.

  She dug and carved with her tool and her hands until her fingers bled. The sight of the red smears on the stone encouraged her. Blood was power. She had the power to do this.

  She put away her spade so she could get better purchase with her fingers. The mortar and blood turned to a paste that lodged under her nails and plastered her hands to the stone. With a groan of effort, she took hold of the stone and heaved.

  In a rush of blood, the glyph stone slid out into her hands. A sigh or a sob escaped her as she clutched the relic to her, balancing its weight. Through the linen and slick of blood, she felt a pulse.

  The throb of magic. The power in the shrine wouldn’t die, not today. She was carrying a part of it.

  Bits of stone and mortar fluttered to the ground at her feet, and then the top of the arch crumbled. Dawn cast golden light on the collapsing doorway. Knight pushed his weight against Cassia’s legs in warning, urging her to move. Over the crack of the scattering stones, she heard the men’s voices again. Closer. She could make out Chrysanthos’s and the king’s.

  She fled with the glyph stone cradled to her breast. She was out of the thorns and on the other side of a massive ash tree when the voices clarified into words she understood, but did not really hear. If she ran any further now, the noise of her movements would give her away in return.

  She dropped to the ground at the foot of the tree and wedged herself between its roots. Knight flattened himself in the underbrush with his bulk between her and the rest of the world. She focused on quieting her breathing. She could only hope the odors of flametongue and liegehound, which could fill a room, would not carry far in open air amid other forest scents.

  Although Cassia was hidden by the forest and Knight, she felt exposed. She had never felt so fragile, so vulnerable. If the glyph stone led Chrysanthos to her, that would be the end. He would find her with evidence of heresy in her lap, which would lead to the truth of her treason.

  She curled herself into a tight ball around the stone, tallying all the magic she and Knight were carrying between them. Her gardening spade, warded against rust by the Kyrian mages. The enchanted bath they gave Knight for fleas. He still bore whatever lost magical arts the original breeders of liegehounds had used on his ancestors to make them immune to Hesperine magic. Solia’s wooden pendant, carved in the shape of a triqeutra of ivy, held Lustra magic as ancient as trees and soil. Cassia could only hope all this would be enough to obscure the aura that must surely emanate from the glyph stone, which any Aithourian war mage was trained to detect.

  “Look at this!” One of the mages. “Blood.”

  “Fresh blood.” Another mage. “Someone was just here.”

  “Hesperines?” Lord Titus demanded. “On the grounds of Solorum?”

  “Fear not,” the Dexion answered. “A mortal did this.”

  “You’re here to destroy it, and you’re worried about a little vandalism?” Lord Hadrian sounded impatient.

  “This was no act of vandalism,” Chrysanthos said. “Who would spill her own blood to remove the glyph stone moments before our arrival? Only someone who recognizes, but does not fear its power.”

  “Her?” Lord Titus echoed.

  “Small hands. See the prints in the blood? No common hedge witch would have the boldness to salvage a relic of the dark goddess and risk toying with such dangerous magic. This was the work of a Hesperite, and she can’t have run far.”

  Chrysanthos launched into the Divine Tongue. Cassia could not understand the orders he gave his fellow mages, but half a dozen robes began soughing through the underbrush. Two swords whished out of their scabbards.

  “No need, my lords,” said the Dexion. “There is little purpose in beating the bushes with steel when dealing with a Hesperite sorceress. Mortal heretics who worship Hespera practice the vile arts of blood sorcery, and their females are especially sly. Our revelatory spells will be of greater use than swords.”

  Cassia’s heart pounded so hard she felt light-headed. She listened to the mages spread out in a search pattern. They began at the shrine and moved outward through the thicket. It would not be long before they reached the ash trees.

  “Who would have known we were coming?” Tychon asked.

  “All of Solorum,” Lord Titus answered. “Everyone in the capital has eagerly anticipated your arrival.”

  “They anticipated aromagi who would bless the harvest,” Chrysanthos said. “No one expected the Akron to send members of our circle. Our discovery of the shrine must have alerted the sorceress to our presence and our power. It has caught her by surprise that we are war mages. Her removal of the glyph stone was a hasty act that speaks of fear, desperation—and fanaticism.”

  Oh, so Cassia was a fanatic, was she? Was that what Chrysanthos called someone who thought children shouldn’t be executed for heresy? Someone who believed the Hesperines’ deeds of kindness for the people of Tenebra should not be rewarded with persecution?

  “Did you know there was a heretic in your capital, Basileus?” Chrysanthos asked.

  “There won’t be for long,” said the king.

  “No,” Chrysanthos agreed. “We will see to that.”

  The mages’ fine sh
oes trod closer between the fern fronds and thorn bushes. Cassia heard fabric rip and an angry outburst in the Divine Tongue. But still the footsteps drew nearer.

  Knight’s whole body tensed to spring. She dug her hands into his fur, willing him to be silent and still. She could feel his muscles twitch under her fingers. Everything in him told him to charge out and face the threat, to rend to shreds those who endangered her. His mistress’s command told him to lie on his belly and wait for death.

  She was so sorry. Just as she had gone to the Summit with Knight at her side knowing Dalos planned to assassinate them all, she now led her trusting protector toward certain demise yet again.

  This time, there were no Hesperines to save them.

  Cassia didn’t know any spells or prayers. All she knew to do was rely on herself and keep trying.

  She could not let this be the moment when all she had worked for came to naught. What did it matter if she saved the glyph stone and lost Orthros?

  There must be something she could do. She wracked her thoughts as her heartbeat made her whole body rock around the stone. She ran her bleeding hands over the glyph, feeding it the only resource at her disposal that she knew was effective. She had ample fuel for blood magic. Useless, when she was no blood mage, nor any sort of mage at all. She had never even heard Lio recite a spell. He had simply pricked his finger and, in a silent act of Will, conjured a lovely bauble of light or a veil spell powerful enough to hide her from a war mage.

  Cassia had blood and Will.

  Could the glyph stone provide the magic she lacked?

  Lio had told her of the Great Temple Epoch, when his goddess’s sacred sites had offered Sanctuary to all, from the lowliest criminal to the mightiest king. The mortal mages of Hespera who had built those refuges were long gone.

  Did their spells live on in the stone? Could Lio have left a little of his magic behind as well?

  Would awakening their power only serve to draw the war mages’ attention?

  If Cassia did nothing, they were sure to find her. Better to act on the one chance she had of protecting herself from them.

  And if she was to face the Order’s judgment, she would do so fighting.

  Wrapping herself more tightly around the stone, Cassia rubbed her blood into the shallow grooves of the glyph. She mustered all the determination she had brought to bear on the free lords, all the courage she pitted against the king and the Cordian mages, and every promise she had made to herself, Lio, and all those under her protection. Everything that had determined Tenebra’s course in the last six months, she focused on the artifact in her arms, while she imagined herself wrapped in the safety of a Hesperine veil.

  A soft sensation eased the tension in Cassia’s body and cooled the sweat on her skin. Knight’s fur stood on end, and he trembled.

  The smell of roses filled the air an instant before darkness wrapped around Cassia.

  It was all she could do not to gasp. She had seen that darkness before, felt it all around her as a little child of seven. It had hidden her from two armies while a Hesperine errant held her close and told her she was brave.

  From beyond the deep, pure shadow that enfolded her, the smell of Dexion Chrysanthos’s hair oil washed over her.

  In its wake came a blast of magic.

  She was aware of the probing heat of his spell, the way she might hear a storm raging outside the shelter of the shrine. The hairs on the back of her arms didn’t even stand up.

  The heat faded. The robes swished away.

  Cassia let out a breath. He didn’t turn back toward the sound. He couldn’t hear her. Hadn’t even seen the shadow wrapped around her.

  It seemed Hespera’s sanctuaries still turned no one away, regardless of their creed, status or deeds. Not even dogs bred to hunt her people.

  Cassia held fast to the power she sensed in and around her. Her fingers stuck to the stone where her blood dried, and her limbs ached. But she huddled as still as she could inside the darkness, and Knight, true to his purpose, waited with her.

  After what seemed like an hour, Eudias’s voice carried from the direction of the shrine. He delivered a breathless report. “Dexion, Basileus. There’s no one here.”

  “We found no one,” one of the war mages corrected.

  “Has she escaped?” Lord Titus asked. “Or perhaps concealed herself in some way?”

  “Both are distinct possibilities,” Chrysanthos said. “She is no hapless, superstitious peasant. She is someone with power. How very interesting. It seems my brothers and I will get to enjoy a little challenge.”

  For once, Lord Titus did not sound composed. “Will you be able to find her before today’s festival? We cannot have her at large during the Autumn Greeting. A female under Hespera’s influence is a dangerous abomination! We must not give her a chance to seduce others and spread destruction.”

  “With us in attendance,” the Dexion replied, “everyone at the sacred festival will be perfectly safe. Besides, she will most likely return to her lair now that the sun is higher in the sky. Come nightfall, we shall see the chase through.”

  “Are we to continue with the purging of the shrine, Dexion?” asked his apprentice.

  “Certainly. This will be the best blow we could strike against her and her goddess. One that is long overdue.” Chrysanthos’s robes rustled. “Well, well, Hespera. It has been some time since we last saw each other. There is something I’ve been wanting to say.”

  There came a roar in the air. Fire.

  When Cassia heard the first impact of the magic against the stone, her whole body flinched. It sounded so much like catapults.

  She listened to the mages level the shrine as if it had never been there. Like the roses, she could not scream.

  AUTUMN EQUINOX

  TENEBRA

  A lady always dresses correctly.

  —Solia’s instructions to Cassia

  Cassia's Gauntlet

  When utter silence made her certain the men were gone, Cassia dared move. As soon as she stirred, Knight leapt out of the underbrush in a challenge stance and scented the air. She untangled herself and struggled out of her hiding place, holding the glyph stone close.

  The chill, dark embrace of magic slid away from her, and morning sun glared in her eyes. The odors of smoke and ash threatened to choke her. But she went deeper into them, rounding the tree to return to the site of the shrine.

  She knew what she would see, but nothing could have prepared her to confront what the mages had done. She stood numb and wordless before the charred swath that had once been the shrine and a garden of thorns and roses. In the center of the burned-out area glowed a glyph of Anthros, branded on the ground in embers and spell light.

  Cassia’s awareness of time passing threatened to shatter her moment of silence. Day had come. The Autumn Greeting drew near. She must go.

  She must put the last resort into motion.

  She and Knight retreated across the grounds, a procession of two with only the birds for mourners, and bore the glyph stone away from where it had rested for a millennium and a half or more.

  Cassia knew of only one place steeped in magic that old, where the aura of past spells might be powerful enough to hide an artifact of Hespera from a band of war mages. Solorum Palace had stood since the Mage King’s time, when the Hesperines had left Tenebra to found Orthros. But his wife, the Changing Queen, had possessed power that was older still. Lustra magic, which the Orders had never understood or controlled.

  Everyone knew their line had died out long ago, but their power lived on in all they had built. It was the Changing Queen’s sort of power that imbued the ivy symbol and made the walls of the king’s stronghold porous to the women of the royal house. It would always be a mystery to Cassia how the pendant and its secrets had come down to Princess Solia, but she would never cease to be grateful that it worked for bastard daughters as well.

  In the passage behind her sister’s hearth, gentle red light emanated around Cassia, the glow of f
lametongue through the bloodstains on her clothes. By that light, she laid the glyph stone on the dusty floor. She had no place of honor to keep it, but it would be safe here, and she had made her libation of blood.

  She had done all she could. For now.

  She stripped off the treated garments and dropped each in turn in front of the stone, until she stood before it in nothing but the pendant and her own skin. She let fall her last glove.

  She did not weep. She made a new promise. “I will deliver you safely into Hesperine hands. But first, I will bring this kingdom to its knees.”

  Not So Fragile

  In a different wing of the palace, Cassia emerged from the wall and pushed aside a tapestry to step out into her own bedchamber. She shielded her eyes from the morning sun that poured through the open shutters of the large window.

  She had yet to chart the full extent of the maze the ivy pendant had opened to her, but the passages she had already discovered gave her an astonishing advantage, not least when she needed to get back inside her room without the king knowing she had ever left it.

  Perita was another matter.

  That pounding was not Cassia’s throbbing headache. It was Perita’s hand on the door. Knight put his ears back and eyed the panel as it shuddered on its hinges.

  “There’s no time for washing, my lady!” came Perita’s customary, frantic admonition.

  Cassia looked down at herself. As always, she had put her own clothing back on before leaving the passageways. For all the good that did her. Perita had seen her wear this tunica to bed clean last night. Now it was wrinkled and begrimed with dust and hardly disguised the bloodstains smeared all over Cassia’s chest. Although her hands had stopped bleeding, they needed a healer’s attention.

  She stared at her dry blood and torn skin. Chrysanthos must never, ever get a look at her hands.

  Now she would pay for throwing her usual caution to the winds. She hurried to stow the ivy pendant in her gardening satchel on the table beside her bed, planning to don the talisman again after her companion had dressed her. Perita knew nothing about Solia’s secret, and if she knew her lady went on forbidden excursions, she officially didn’t know anything about that, either. How was Cassia to explain doing herself such an injury when resting alone behind the closed door of her bedchamber?