The Blood Wars Trilogy Omnibus: Volumes 1 - 3

by T. A. Miles

  Before they reached the nearest bridge, they were stopped by a soldier who inquired of their presence, whom was duly informed, and who they asked where the captain could be found. They were directed across the water.

  Finding Gairel was not a difficult task. The man was located amid a large gathering of soldiers, receiving information and delivering orders for the further preparation of a highly anticipated assault.

  Lerissa approached him at once. “Excuse me, Captain.”

  He was far too busy to acknowledge her for several moments, though he did visually note her presence in one specific instance. In the moments following, he quickly took in her companions and otherwise set about his affairs. The ill news, even without having spoken to the man directly, was that it sounded as if enemy troops had been spotted on the high ground. That determined, if a camp hadn’t been discovered nearby, they might well have marched from a considerable distance. That could work in their favor.

  “We may simply have to fight alongside them,” Lerissa murmured.

  Vlas was not keen on the suggestion, but understood that this was a situation that might call for just that. At least Irslan was safely stashed in the city’s safest location, for now. He did imagine that the man would fight if he had to, however.

  “If it comes to that,” Firard was saying to Lerissa, appearing more than eager to relive the days of his soldiering youth … if he’d even departed from them to begin with. He might not have.

  Regardless of that, Lerissa precluded the notion with, “You, my dear sir, are not battle ready.”

  He seemed mildly perplexed by the manner in which he had been addressed, but he overcame it quickly. “Be that as it may, young madam, it may come to that anyway.”

  Lerissa looked over her shoulder at him. She was nearly smirking. “I suppose I do look like a ‘young madam’, don’t I?”

  She did, of course. “You might be younger than I am,” Vlas said, because he was fairly certain that was true.

  “Oh, might I? I would wager you on that if there was time for it, Mage Vlas.”

  “I’m not a wagering person,” Vlas told her. “And it’s unimportant besides. I’d forgotten how irrelevant you can be, for one of Ceth’s most excelling students.”

  “Irrelevant? How rude.” Lerissa dismissed him, his words, or their conversation entirely with a wave of her hand.

  Vlas let her do so, giving attention to Gairel when the captain was allowed a moment away from the cluster of soldiers trying to gain direction from him.

  The man approached with a look that hovered between wonder and apology. “Did you bring word from Governor Tahrsel?” he asked, as if he’d expected that, though maybe not from the three before him.

  “We have,” Lerissa replied. “We’ve been asked to help you reorganize the defense of this area.”

  That evidently was not what he’d expected to hear by the pause the comment drew. Still, he didn’t fight it. “Reorganize how?”

  “We’re going to help you to plot a trap for the invaders,” she explained. “It won’t require most of your men. I think it might be possible to arrange a false path to the water, which Mage Vlas and I could then arrange for the enemy to fall into. What have you to stop them advancing now?”

  Gairel looked toward the water as it was mentioned, then said, “The first line of defense will be the arbalests. We’ve done our best to conceal them against the enemy eyeing them up prematurely, now that we’ve seen the ability and range they have using fire tactics.”

  “Yes,” Lerissa said thoughtfully. “And now that gives me another idea. Rather than the water trap, might it be a better option to….”

  “Shroud the pending battlefield,” Vlas finished for her, presuming they were coming to the same scenario.

  They were. Lerissa nodded. “Yes, and conceal the arbalests altogether. Though, once begun, Morenne might assail us blindly with their fire tactics, it will at least afford us a valuable first strike.”

  “Yes, it would,” Imris agreed.

  Gairel was nodding, not in immediate agreement, but in consideration. “Yes,” he said. “It might.”

  Firard added further justification to Lerissa’s and Vlas’ plan. “It’s not as if visibility is paramount with the arbalests. Launching an entire panel of arrows into a formation of men, it’s probable that most will strike something.”

  “What does the layout look like?” Vlas asked the captain.

  “Morenne has a sloped approach from the north,” Gairel said, gesturing behind him in the general direction. “There’s no way around it, unless they go a great length—that of many miles—to attempt a western advance. The terrain rises slower in that direction and is less craggy, but again, to circumnavigate the rocky terrain and the wall, as we call it, would take them considerable time. Their confidence thus far makes me believe that they’ll try the most direct path.”

  “I believe so as well,” Lerissa said, and Vlas nodded, agreeing.

  Gairel took another moment calibrating their conversation and ideas, then said, “All right, let’s employ these new tactics.”

  “Take us to the wall, please, Captain,” Lerissa said, then held up a hand. “But first….”

  She turned toward Firard. “I’m going to take a look at your arm, young sir.”

  Gairel presumed that to mean he was no longer needed for the conversation at hand, and departed for the time being. Vlas watched him to a group of soldiers, whom he undoubtedly meant to inform of the alterations to their defense. In the periphery of Vlas’ view, Firard was allowing Lerissa to attend to his lingering injury, which was more than any of them could have done for him before her arrival. Vlas was not a healer of any kind and Cayri’s abilities were to do with emotional balancing and recovery more than physical. In fact, he knew she had performed a casting on him lately to help alleviate some of his distress over recent events. He didn’t resent her for it—quite the opposite—but he disliked knowing that he had exposed himself to such response over a stranger.

  Over strangers, he amended, reminding himself of Imris’ presence. He had witnessed how automatically she had come with him, Lerissa, and Firard. And he had witnessed in himself, no protest whatsoever.

  Korsten felt trapped in the open. He felt trapped by something intangible, but by something that also was not giving him its full attention yet. It was as if he were as small as Analee, caught beneath someone’s cupped hand to hold him in place until they completed whatever other engagement was occupying them. But he wasn’t actually being held. It was only a sensation, a strong impression of emotion which bore a weight that only just in these moments felt physical. He could leave, and he determined that he would.

  Withdrawing his emotions, in effect dampening Allurance and thereby cancelling Song and the associated spell that may have been pending—or so he hoped—Korsten took steps through the abandoned street, toward where he knew the battle was taking place. In only a few paces, he was compelled to stop by images chasing through his vision. They were images of the demons in their falsely made vessels, scurrying along the walls of buildings that had been emptied of their residents. Amid their movement, glimpses of Serawe raked across his memory, as her claws had done over his skin. Whispers filled the air, some of them her voice, some of them unidentifiable, and one of them….

  “Korsten….”

  His mother.

  He believed her voice had come from behind him and he turned to face her ghost, straining to see anything in the lay of shadows and in the way Serawe’s red form continued to hurry in front of his mental view, as if to deliberately obstruct his view of Zerxa. He strained against the heavy and insistent presence of her memory, saw the silhouette of his mother’s tall, slender form….

  And then she was gone. Serawe was as well and in their place, he heard the forced cackle of a young man, one who Korsten would never forget. Alsaide’s demented pitch
would never leave his memory. No matter how many years magehood or the gods might grant him. Immediately afterward, he heard Dacia as she’d been when in conflict with the crone, and it struck him then that Alsaide’s madness might well have been owed to living or being in close proximity to a demon.

  And that was when he thought of Renmyr. In the same instant, the sounds of footsteps began, at first clicking against pavement, but then resounding in the very air, as if made among the clouds by the gods. The sensation of the danger he was in at just that moment had never been stronger. And it was coming from Renmyr.

  This was not the first time he’d been held beneath Renmyr’s will.

  The first time? His words echoed back at him darkly. You beautiful fool. You’ve never been free of it.

  Whether the words had come from Renmyr directly, or some tainted aspect of him haunting Korsten’s memory, he couldn’t wait to be discovered. At every occasion where he had been so stalked by his lover since the horror of the demons had been revealed to him, it had nearly cost him his life. He turned toward the muffled sounds of battle once again, and took deliberate steps away from what he determined for the sake of his current presence of mind was memory. He felt followed, and so moved quicker.

  He might have run, but his path appeared suddenly to be no more, as if the ground had been scooped out by an invisible hand … the same that had been trying to pin him in place. That was impossible, and he knew now, for certain—if he didn’t before—that he was hallucinating. He also understood that the visions were very likely being induced and quite probably by the very presence he was trying to leave.

  To abandon, don’t you mean? Who’s the betrayer? Which of us left the other?

  “Renmyr,” he whispered, looking into the blackened abyss at his feet. Years ago, he’d have welcomed that abyss. He’d have gone willingly into its destructive embrace.

  But not now. He couldn’t return to that place. It would only lead to further ruination. He had come to understand that, and his hope for Renmyr had dwindled in that time to a mere firefly in the darkness, but it remained nonetheless. He would see his path through. His path, not a course designed by a demon.

  The wails of many gravelly voices rose up from the pit … from Hell’s depths, literally gaping beneath him. He could see the many limbs of the Vadryn clutching and writhing at the walls of this dark womb, waiting to be disgorged from the mouth of despair onto a world they would devour, if allowed. These were the children of gluttony, and of greed.

  We’re yours….

  The notion streaked to the front of his thoughts, boring through him and leaving a hot trail of blood across his mind. “No,” he said quietly.

  And now he could see faces in the abyss.

  Master….

  Eyes lit across the darkness, like dying stars caught in the veil of an adulterated vision of Heaven.

  A deep, depressive ache came to life inside of him. It throbbed malignantly and clouded his vision with tears. Whatever this was, it was not right. It should not have happened, but he knew that he had brought it onto himself. Through the Siren spell and through his own ignorance before that. He had given himself to demons, but he refused to give in. There had to be a way to turn this back … or to control it.

  Again, the cries of protest from below. The thundering footsteps began again as well, coming faster. Korsten looked over his shoulder, at darkness that concealed itself within itself, growing absolute in the few moments he watched it. And in front of him there was the wound in the earth that should not have been. That could not have been.

  That wasn’t.

  It was in that moment, knowing as she so often did precisely when Korsten required her support, that Analee appeared in his plane of vision. The crimson butterfly fluttered just ahead of him, the brilliance of her color creating a glow of its own, like blood against blackness … life against death.

  Korsten stepped forward, onto the solid surface of an Indhovan street. The sounds of the fighting flared into full being. He looked behind him at darkness that was no deeper than the rest of the city. The presence previously surrounding and pursuing him seemed to have departed, or he had created all of it … as he had been creating visions of demons and of other beings since his altercation with Serawe. Dreams and memory were infringing upon reality. An ill consequence of casting Siren perhaps was madness.

  “They won’t ever stop.”

  Upon hearing the girl’s voice, Korsten looked toward its source, to Dacia Cambir, whom he knew starkly in that moment was no vision. He could feel her physical presence as much as he could detect the unbodied presence of the Vadryn.

  He stepped over to her, recalling vividly the first time they had met in the streets of Indhovan. “What won’t stop?” he asked her.

  “The dreams,” she said, as simply as if he’d asked her the color of the sky they both stood beneath.

  It crossed Korsten’s mind to explain to her that their situations were not the same, but he realized that it might be an untruth. At the core of it, for their own reasons, they had both been intimate with demons. Their blood had been connected with the Vadryn. They could see on both sides of what was no dream. This was a reality for each of them, but the important difference was that Korsten was a willing agent. He entered this darkness of his own volition, even before becoming a mage, and it was his duty to control himself and to control its effect on him, if he couldn’t control the darkness itself.

  “How did you get here?” he finally asked Dacia.

  “I saw you in my dream and followed.”

  Korsten believed her. The girl had not only been touched by a demon’s magic, but she’d been exposed to the manipulation of magic by both her father and her adoptive mother. She understood well more than she knew. She was an incidental practitioner. He wondered if sheltering her was enough, or if Ersana should have been educating her instead. A passive form of control seemed to be Ersana’s goal, and that had been the avenue by which the crone had used both her and their coven.

  But now was not the time. Korsten reached out and lightly touched the girl’s face, letting his hand settle on her shoulder while he regathered his bearings. It seemed that Morenne was being held near the waterfront so far; the fighting had not penetrated beyond the point where Sharlotte had joined and regained Indhovan some ground in driving the enemy back at least a short space. That meant that the forum should yet be safe.

  “Let’s get you back to your mother,” Korsten decided. And he turned Dacia around, away from the waterfront area.

  The forum was indeed still a safe location. Korsten didn’t expect it to be otherwise, but the hour was anything but certain now that Morenne had arrived. Dacia had walked with him as easily as she had the first time he had brought her back to her home. She had a notable lack of fear, or perhaps of awareness. Korsten couldn’t decide which it was and he supposed it didn’t actually matter just now. The important thing was for her to stay protected, and away from danger. That meant she could no longer follow whatever or whomever she envisioned in a waking dream. Whether she had performed some manner of Reach or literally taken steps in Korsten’s direction, she would only get herself into trouble doing so.

  “Stacen,” Korsten called out when he saw someone that he recognized; in this case, the onetime house servant of Irslan Treir. The man was slight of build and long in the features, and quiet in a way that still seemed notable to Korsten.

  “Master Mage,” the dark-haired man replied, stepping in their direction, but not quite over to them. He even performed a small sidestep upon seeing Dacia, maintaining distance between himself and the girl.

  Korsten recalled that he had been assaulted by Serawe, through Dacia. He understood the man’s caution and decided that it would probably not do to have Dacia escorted to her mother. It would be better to take her back to Ersana himself. “Could you tell me where….”

  “Ersana is in the s
tudy chamber behind the main floor,” Stacen directed, as if aware of the task he narrowly avoided.

  “Thank you,” Korsten said to him, and turned Dacia in the proper direction. He didn’t see her make any notice of Stacen at all, but he supposed that detail would not have mattered much to someone who had been a victim of such unfortunate circumstance as Stacen had. The precise circumstances were unknown to Korsten, but knowing them was not essential to understanding the man’s position.

  “He thinks that I’m a monster,” Dacia said after a few steps.

  Korsten slowed to a stop, drawing her to a halt as well. “Dacia.”

  She faced him and nearly smiled. “Mother was a monster. She tried to hurt you, didn’t she?”

  “Hush, Dacia,” he told her, in a tone that insisted that she do so immediately.

  She did, and he squeezed her arm lightly to let her know that he wasn’t angry—if she even required such assurance.

  “Dacia,” he began again while she continued to look at him. “It’s probably better if you don’t think about such things right now. You should give attention to Ersana and to the shelter she’s providing for others. It’s very important that you stay here, with her. Can you understand that?”

  “Yes,” Dacia answered. “But I leave anyway.”

  “Well don’t leave anymore,” he told her firmly. “Do you remember what happened before? Do you recall being chased by a shadow through the streets?”

  “No,” she said.

  Korsten studied her. His gaze passed over the blunt honesty of her expression and then the crystal she wore on a rope around her neck. It served a similar purpose to the mark put upon Korsten’s neck; to put off infection and the influence of the Vadryn. At least, she still had it. Even so, it had not proved a difficult thing for her to lose and, given her helpless state of being, she might again attract a demon in search of a body to either occupy or feed upon.