by Carol A Park
Cursebreaker
Book Two of The Heretic Gods
Carol A. Park
Shattered Soul Books
Pennsylvania
Copyright © 2019 by Carol A. Park
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
Shattered Soul Books
2600 Willow Street Pike North
PMB 259
Willow Street, PA 17584
www.carolapark.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Cover art/design © 2019 Brit K. Caley
Interior illustrations © 2019 Andrew Park
Book Layout © 2017 BookDesignTemplates.com
Cursebreaker/ Carol A. Park. -- 1st ed.
ISBN 978-1-7321491-4-4 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-7321491-5-1 (e-book)
TO ROBIN
For being a cheerleader, friend,
and all-around awesome mother-in-law.
Given the number of times you’ve taken the kids so I can write,
I figure you deserve at least one dedication.
Contents
The Shrine
The Donian
The Journal
Insights
Old Friends
The Xambrian
Carradon
New Enemies
Blood and Magic
Nightmares
Homecoming
A Moment of Rest
History in the Making
The Chest
Yaotel’s Plans
Lost
Conclave Lapdog
New Friends
The Widow
Family
Wounds
Demands
Marakyn
A Grumpy Old Man
A Friendly Game
Puzzles
The Assassin
Purified in Flames
Sky-Fire
God of Fire
The Xchotli
Helpless No More
Silver, White, and Blue
An Overdue Visit
Monster
Uninvited Guests
Greatly Honored
Teoton
Ethically Nebulous
A Worthy Ally
Planning
Normal People
An Odd Pastime
Practice
A Pretentious Chamber
Not at all Suspect
Marching Orders
The Ri of Ferehar
Love-Beams
Company
Just to Be
The Commander
Echoes of Silence
Always, Yet Not
The Abomination
Barriers
A Dangerous Game
Leading by Example
The Calm
The Storm
Cursebreaker
Choices
A Long Tradition
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Cursebreaker is my first true sequel, though it’s my third published book. That presents new and different challenges than writing a first book: How much will people have forgotten? Have I re-explained too much? Not enough? Are the details consistent with the first book? Can I do that with the magic system based on the rules I’ve already canonized?
And that’s not to mention that between Banebringer and Cursebreaker, I decided to write Ivana’s backstory in Sweetblade. Since I wrote Sweetblade with the intent that it could be skipped (or read as a stand-alone), I know there are people who won’t have read Sweetblade before diving into Cursebreaker, and there will also be people who have. Since character arcs are so central to the stories I tell, and since Ivana’s backstory is, of course, important to her continuing arc, this presented another challenge. I wanted to write Cursebreaker in such a way that wouldn’t penalize those who hadn’t read Sweetblade and yet reward those who had.
The story didn’t happen in a vacuum, of course. My husband, Calvin Park, reads all my stories in the earliest forms I’ll let him see. It’s apparently becoming a time-honored tradition that he tells me I need to change something, I argue with him for a few weeks, and then I cave, realize he was right and change it.
My faithful beta reader, Tam Case, helped me polish up the story even more, and both she and Wes Allen graciously agreed to help me proof the final version. And, of course, my editor, Amy McNulty, gave it that professional touch.
There’s also more than just the story that goes into producing a book. I have the pleasure of continuing to have the very talented Brit K. Caley illustrating and designing my covers. Andrew Park has also provided a few more very cool interior icons to make the inside just that much prettier.
I also must acknowledge some of my fellow authors in the trenches, with whom I have traded advice, stories, laughs, and sometimes whines, in no particular order: Angela Boord, Barbara Kloss, Clayton Snyder, Dave Woolliscroft, Devin Madson, Jon Auerbach, Josh Erikson, Kayleigh Nicol, Phil Williams, Steven McKinnon, and Travis Riddle. I’ve also interacted with many other lovely people too numerous to list on Twitter and other social media.
Finally, I have to thank my readers. It makes writing that much more fun to know that there are people who are interested in and even excited about the stories I have to tell and who want to come along with me on these characters’ journeys.
It’s you I think of when I ponder the ultimate question: Will people who liked Banebringer also enjoy Cursebreaker? Well, I believe so—and I’m very excited to get part two of Vaughn and Ivana’s story finally into your hands. Enjoy!
Chapter One
The Shrine
Vaughn stood nose-to-nose with a fire-breathing serpent.
He peered into its empty eye sockets, which had once held jade stones, if the illustrations were accurate, and then stuck a finger into a hole in the middle of its open mouth.
He yelped and jumped back as a stream of fire spurted out of the hole and then vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.
Uproarious laughter came from behind him, and he spun around to find Thrax doubled over nearly to the ground.
“Very funny,” Vaughn said. “What is it with you and trying to burn off my eyebrows?”
Thrax gained control of himself and straightened up. His exuberance had caused curls of his shoulder-length, chestnut hair, which he kept bundled at the nape, to come loose. It gave him a sort of wild, disheveled look that, in combination with his muscular build, would have been intimidating were it not for the grin plastered on his face. “What in the abyss are you doing?” he asked.
Vaughn scratched at his newly grown beard and then shrugged. “Investigating?”
Thrax snorted. He waltzed over to the same stone relief—carved into one of the shrine’s walls—that Vaughn had been examining and leaned in to take a closer look.
While he was bent over, Vaughn promptly dumped his waterskin over Thrax’s head.
Thrax flailed and sputtered. “What—?”
Then his eyes went to the empty skin in Vaughn’s hand, and he touched a finger to his forehead in a mock salute. “Well played.”
“Would you idiots keep it down?” Dax called from the other side of the clearing. He and Saylyn, a researcher Vaughn had briefly worked with back when the Ichtaca still had their base at Gan Barton’s manor in Weylyn, were huddled over the book that had caused all this trouble, arguing again. Saylyn’s silver-streaked, blond hair and
light skin stood in contrast to Dax’s dark brown hair and warm beige skin. Both she and Dax, their resident archaeologist, called Cadmyr home, but Vaughn recalled that Saylyn’s father was from Fuilyn, where pale, almost white skin was more commonly found than in the rest of the Setanan Empire.
Thrax was from Arlana, another of the three original Setanan regions, and the hue of his skin was closest to Dax’s, though it had lost the youthful smoothness of Dax’s complexion to middle age.
And then there was Vaughn himself, more bronze than brown. The forebears of his late father, Ri Gildas of Ferehar—dead at Vaughn’s own hands—were originally from Weylyn, and his father’s family had remained Setanan through-and-through ever since. His mother, on the other hand, was Fereharian, and Vaughn had inherited her skin tone.
It was a very visual reminder that none of them really had a home anymore. Their little subset of Banebringers, held together by Yaotel, found solidarity in being part of the Ichtaca more than anything else.
Thrax put his finger to his lips and winked.
His merriment didn’t last long.
Yasril burst into the clearing. “Soldiers! Coming this way!” The man—even older than Saylyn—doubled over, panting.
Vaughn cursed and scrambled to string his bow. Not again. “Go! Go!” he shouted, but the others were already scattering to their predetermined locations.
Yasril stumbled over to one of the walls of the crumbling shrine, right around the corner from the fiery serpent, and leaned against it.
Vaughn joined him. “How long?” He propped his bow up against the shrine, pulled his qixli out of the pouch he wore slung across his body, and held it firmly between two hands. Then, he willed it to find the qixli of Danton, the last and youngest member of their team, also from Arlana.
“Maybe five minutes.” Yasril took another gulp of air. “I’m not cut out for this. I don’t know why you brought me on this damned expedition.”
A seventy-year-old man with a perpetual tremor in his arm would not have been Vaughn’s first choice, but he’d wanted another moonblood, and Yasril had been the only one available. “You’re doing great. How many?”
A trickle of sweat ran down Yasril’s wrinkled, deep brown temple. “Three.”
Vaughn scanned the edge of the clearing, where rubble from the shrine’s broken stairs turned into natural rock, and then disappeared beneath the undergrowth of the forest beyond. The clearing was silent but for the chirping of birds in the trees around them.
He nodded to Saylyn, who was crouched behind the pedestal where they had been examining the book, which was now snugged safely to her side.
She closed her eyes, and the undergrowth crept across the area they had cleared, hiding their footprints in the dirt, the trampled grass, the ashes of their cooking fire. Vines snaked up the side of the shrine—obscuring the relief Vaughn had been inspecting minutes before—and then across the broken steps to twine around each other until they hung down to block part of the yawning entrance into the shrine itself.
When Saylyn was done, the shrine looked as though it had lain undisturbed for decades—all within the course of a minute or two.
Vaughn exhaled and laid his head back against the wall. Three soldiers.
Thrax hid on the opposite side of the shrine from Vaughn and Yasril, and Dax was inside the shrine itself. Either of them could handle three if need be. And, if necessary, he had his bow.
The silvery, viscous liquid caught between the two glass panes of the qixli—lightblood aether—finally began to stir. It molded itself into the shape of a face, indistinct and featureless because Vaughn wasn’t a lightblood. Danton’s voice, made tinny by the device, came through. “What’s up?”
“We’ve got company coming from Yasril’s side,” Vaughn said.
“Got it,” Danton said. “Let me know if you need me.”
Vaughn slid the qixli back into the pouch and picked up his bow. “Ready?”
Yasril nodded.
Vaughn burned the aether in his blood. He didn’t bother with the hardened slivers he had in his pouch; this was too critical a situation to chance having to replenish if he ran out—and he rarely used his own aether externally anymore, anyway. With increased practice and increased need, it had become impractical to harvest all the aether he needed from himself rather than burning it directly.
One by one, the others he could see blinked out of visibility, following his lead. Other than Yasril, they didn’t have the option of using their own blood to turn invisible, so they had to use what he and Yasril—the two moonbloods—had lent them.
A flock of birds stirred from the nearby trees. Their wings rustled and their chattering increased until they took flight as one to find a different perch.
Shortly thereafter, three Setanan soldiers stepped into the clearing from the trees, their hands on their swords, their faces wary.
The middle soldier, a middle-aged man who had the stripes of an officer on the shoulder of his jacket, scanned the clearing with a frown on his face. “Nothing here, but let’s make sure.”
The soldier to his right stared at the ruined shrine, his mouth agape. “I wouldn’t say nothing…”
Vaughn could sympathize. He had felt the same way the first time he had seen this place.
The officer gave his men a sharp look. “Search the area—but don’t touch anything.”
The soldier to his left, the youngest looking of the three, rolled his eyes, but even he skirted the stones of the shrine as they spread out to do as their commander ordered.
It didn’t take the soldiers long. The shrine was just that: a shrine, not one of the enormous temples or temple complexes described in some of the ancient texts they had—described but never found.
The officer paused at the entrance to the shrine. He bent and peered beyond the vines into the darkness, hesitated, and then straightened up.
“No signs anyone was here,” the officer said as the other two soldiers joined him. “Human or demonspawn.” He cast a dark look at the shrine, as if the rocks themselves might taint him.
Hold, Dax, Vaughn thought. He couldn’t see the man, but he could envision the hatred burning from his eyes, because he’d seen it before, not that long ago. Vaughn was pretty sure Dax had learned his lesson, considering what it had cost them, but even so.
As an iceblood, Dax could freeze the soldier’s blood in his veins if he wanted to.
The officer waved his hand. “Let’s keep searching.” The three soldiers disappeared back into the trees.
Vaughn counted to two hundred and then pulled out his qixli. “They left,” he said quietly. “Status?”
“I see them,” Danton said. “Headed away.”
“Good. Let me know if that changes.” Vaughn released his aether, and soon the others also turned visible again as well.
They met near the pedestal, and Dax’s eyes flashed as soon as they were all assembled. “I could have killed him,” he said. “I could have killed all three of them myself.”
This was an old argument, and Vaughn was tired of it. “No, you couldn’t have,” he said. “Not unless you wanted to chance suicide in the process.”
“Fine.” Dax gestured to the group. “But three of them against five Gifted? They would have been dead before—”
“Dax, you know that’s not why we’re here,” Saylyn said.
Dax threw up his hands. “We’ve been here for almost a month, and nothing about this place has helped us interpret that”—he pointed to the book, which Saylyn had placed back on the pedestal—“any better.”
“I have to say,” Yasril put in quietly, “I don’t much see the point in remaining here. I don’t think we’re going to learn anything else.”
Saylyn was already shaking her head. “But what if we come up with something, and we’re not here to test it out? Then it’s another trek back—”
“What if, what if, what if,” Dax said. “Every day we’re out here is another chance we’ll be discovered.”
&nbs
p; “And whose fault is that?” Thrax asked, rolling a tiny fireball up and down his knuckles.
The group fell quiet. Dax’s face reddened, but he made no reply.
Yaotel, the leader of the Ichtaca, had allowed the expedition only under strict orders not to engage any Setanan forces unless it became necessary. Their mission here was supposed to be secret. Dax had ruined that by losing his temper and killing one of a two-soldier scouting party not even a week after they’d arrived, even though they’d known in advance and had hidden themselves well enough. Instead, they’d been forced to eliminate the other scout as well.
They’d hidden the bodies, of course, but the damage had been done. Setanan scouts disappearing without explanation in the southern end of the Fereharian mountains? It was only a matter of time before a search team would be sent out to find the missing men. At least the Conclave’s attention was split in a thousand different directions, and to their minds, this was probably a minor annoyance.
A major annoyance to Vaughn’s little group, however.
Vaughn put his fingers to his temples. How did Yaotel do this? He could barely stand three weeks of squabbling among his five-person team, let alone the hundreds of Ichtaca that Yaotel managed.
He sighed and turned to Thrax. “Thrax? You have something more substantive to offer?”
“Eh, as much fun as this has been, I vote we head back to Marakyn,” Thrax said. He looked down at the book that had started this whole mess. “Doesn’t seem like we’re making much progress for the risk.”
Saylyn put her hand on the book, almost possessively. “So that’s it then? All of this was for nothing?”
Then, as one, they all turned to look at Vaughn. His stomach clenched. Gods. I hate being the one in charge.
Which was, case in point, why he had to figure this out.
At that moment, Danton strolled into the clearing, his hands in his pockets. He blew his mop of russet brown hair out of his eyes. “So, how’d we do?”
Dax threw his hands up in the air. “Danton, I’ll take over for you.” He stomped away.