The Blood King’s Apprentice

by David Alastair Hayden

  “Of course, master.”

  “Does Awasa still need to be guarded?”

  “She doesn’t trust herself, master. But with me nearby, she can relax, knowing that if she goes out of control I can stop her before she hurts anyone.”

  Turesobei nodded. “Alert us if Kurine wakes.”

  Motekeru bowed and departed.

  Enashoma handed her letter to Iniru. “Could you put this in my room for me, please?”

  Iniru took the letter and patted it in her hands. “This new Awasa shows promise.”

  Zaiporo reached the third page of his letter and exhaled. “Definitely, though I think she’s still gonna be a lot of work.”

  As Turesobei left for his first day of training, Iniru gave him a good luck kiss. “Sobei, whatever he teaches you, don’t let it change who you are.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  With his spell books in a bag slung over his shoulder, Turesobei stepped into the Throne Room and bowed.

  The violet-eyed Blood King stood. “About time. Follow me.” He moved around to the back of his jade throne, walked into the wall and disappeared.

  “Good morning to you too,” Turesobei grumbled under his breath as he followed.

  Let’s see, the violet-eyed one is…the impatient one, obviously. Better get moving. He raced up the steps and lined himself up exactly with the back of the throne, in case that mattered. Okay then. He walked straight at the wall.

  He didn’t bust his nose against the stone. Everything went dark for a moment, his skin prickled and the hair rose on his arms. Then he passed through the wall and entered a room that perfectly mirrored the enormous Throne Room, minus the throne on the dais. The Blood King waved a hand and lanterns hanging from the ceiling flared to life, adding their light to the simmering sconces on the walls.

  Turesobei gasped when he saw the light flickering on the summoning pentagram and protective circle carved into the stone floor in the center of the room. White iron filled the grooves of the protective circle, dark iron the pentagram. These alone would have made the Blood King’s Workshop the envy of any wizard.

  “Welcome to the Workshop,” the Blood King said.

  A stone door without a handle led to what should have been the outer garden corresponding to this section of the octagon. Based on the runic patterns engraved on the door, it probably led to something more significant than gardens. Rows of shelves held all the items a wizard might need: books and scrolls, sheets of paper, empty glass vials and jars, bottles of ink, boxes and more. Near the shelves stood two large work tables.

  “So where do we start?” Turesobei asked with fake enthusiasm.

  “Master?” the Blood King prompted.

  Turesobei cringed. “Where do we start, master?”

  “Today, we will discuss what you will be doing and you will demonstrate your skills to me.”

  “As you wish—master.”

  “The fetch might as well join us, since he can observe everything we do. Provided he can keep his mouth shut.”

  Lu Bei popped into fetch form, stuck his tongue out at the Blood King, then ferried Turesobei’s books onto one of the tables. Why did he have to antagonize the Blood King?

  Fortunately, the Blood King’s eyes had shifted to pale green. Lu Bei’s antics didn’t bother this version of him. “Come, I wish to show you something.”

  Turesobei followed him to the stone door. Up close, the runes he’d seen from a distance turned out to be only the largest in a network of runes covering the entire door. Waves of kenja emanated from the wood and crashed across Turesobei’s skin. It was rare for passive runes to generate enough force that you could feel them.

  “Though I am vastly more powerful than anyone else, my inherent power was not enough to create the realms or conduct my research,” the Blood King said, his eyes shifting to emerald. “I needed a greater source of power.”

  “But Chonda Lu knew the origin of the Kaiaru, right?”

  Annoyance flickered across the Blood King’s face. “Indeed he did.”

  “So how did he figure it out without access to so much power?”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized he had foolishly risked angering the Blood King. Still, it was a good question. If the answer was easy to find, then it meant the Blood King was lying, and all the power was actually going to be used for something else. When it came down to Turesobei deciding between endless torture or helping the Blood King win, it would be best to know as much as possible.

  “Master used an object that let him see into the past,” Lu Bei said. “What it was I cannot recall. I know only that he destroyed it along with both of our memories of what he learned.”

  “The object was the Anakarion,” the Blood King said. “A unique pyramidal crystal the size of my hand. If you stared into the crystal, you would learn the one thing you most desired to know.”

  “The thing Chonda Lu most wanted to know was the same thing you’re searching for?”

  “Yes. No matter what you did, the Anakarion could only reveal knowledge to you once. You had to be certain when you used it. So you see, Chonda Lu and I were not so different in our quests to understand the world. We differed only when it came to what purpose the information should serve.”

  “You can’t make another device like it?”

  The Blood King shook his head. “I ghosted into the past and watched Chonda Lu use the Anakarion. I studied it as best as I could, but all my efforts to duplicate the crystal failed. And I searched through the past, following rumor after rumor without ever discovering the object’s creator. So either the object was made in the early years at a time I cannot yet reach, or it is a natural crystal that possesses those properties by accident.”

  “You traveled back in time?”

  “As an observer, unseen by the people of the time and unable to interact with the world.”

  “As if you were merely dreaming about the past?”

  “Exactly. I can travel backward in time as a ghostly observer, but I cannot physically travel through the time stream. The laws of nature will not allow it. Believe me, I tried.”

  “So your problem is that you can’t ghost as far back as the origin of the Kaiaru….”

  “Correct. It takes a tremendous amount of power for me to view even a few centuries into the past.”

  “How did Chonda Lu get the device?”

  “He found it,” Lu Bei said, “buried in a ruined temple lost to the deserts of Pawan Kor.”

  “The object was once worshipped,” the Blood King said, “but after several high priests went mad from the knowledge it gave them, it was locked away. And eventually forgotten.”

  “Master spent many decades searching for the device,” Lu Bei said.

  “I’m guessing Chonda Lu never spoke of what he learned,” Turesobei said.

  “Master was careful not to do so and only possessed the knowledge for a few weeks,” Lu Bei said. “I wouldn’t even know that I had forgotten it had I not witnessed it through his eyes.”

  The Blood King’s eyes burned scarlet. Turesobei took a discreet step back. This version was often violent.

  “You see, Chonda Lu could have prevented all of my troubles with the Shogakami…the necessity of creating the realms…countless deaths. All he had to do was tell me or give me the Anakarion. He chose otherwise.”

  Turesobei gestured toward the door, changing the subject away from Chonda Lu. “So your greater power source…?”

  The Blood King’s eyes switched to emerald. “Is a set of stone cylinders. I call them heart stones. A linked pair exists for each of the nine realms. I have access to the Nexus pair and one of the stones from each of the other realms. But I need all eighteen to complete my research and break free of this prison.”

  “And that’s where I come in.”

  “Indeed. I need you to retrieve the remaining stones.”

  “And the ten heart stones you have are beyond this door?” Turesobei asked.

  The Blood King
touched the door and frowned. His eyes shifted to steel gray, a color Turesobei had never seen before. After several minutes of silence, he dared to ask quietly, “Are we going inside to look at them?”

  The Blood King stared at him with those cold eyes. Turesobei swallowed nervously, took half a step back and fidgeted.

  The eyes returned to emerald and he shook his head. “You are not yet ready for the room that lies beyond.”

  That was disappointing. “Um…okay. So what exactly are the heart stones?”

  “While they appear to be granite cylinders engraved with numerous channeling grooves in abstract patterns, they are actually multi-dimensional runes carved into a remarkably rare mineral. The channeling patterns work in tandem with the network of crystalline structures that make up the rock. I went to great lengths to find enough of the material to construct all eighteen cylinders. As for how they work….”

  The Blood King waved a hand, and from nowhere two cushions appeared on the floor nearby. He gestured. Turesobei knelt on one and the Blood King knelt opposite to him.

  “On a major convergence of ley lines, at the center of each realm, the heart stones gather power. Normally, the mate to each of those heart stones channels the gathered power here to the Nexus and stores it. Additional power is also stored within the two heart stones here in the Nexus. Whenever I use up the power within the stones here, they draw in more from the realms.”

  “The realms lie at different points in the world’s past and future, right?”

  “You are wondering how I got them there when I cannot physically travel in time and can only ghost into the past? The key is the Principle of Resonating Magical Frequencies.”

  “Huh?”

  The Blood King spent the next several minutes explaining the theory. “Does that make sense to you?”

  “Not at all.”

  Violet streaked through the Blood King’s emerald eyes as he gritted his teeth.

  “Think of it like this, master,” Lu Bei said. “Imagine two giant zither strings several feet apart. If you pluck one hard enough—”

  “The other will vibrate.”

  “Exactly, master. The same applies to objects and kenja fields.”

  “Oh, that makes sense.”

  “Don’t let him make you feel bad. This is incredibly advanced stuff that you don’t have any grounding in, because using the principle is beyond the capabilities of human wizards.”

  The Blood King sighed. “I do forget that you lack a Kaiaru’s education and experience.”

  Yeah, no kidding. “So how did you use the principle?”

  “An intersection of ley lines in central Okoro forms the most powerful convergence in the world. Below that point is a spike of stone that goes hundreds of feet down into the earth. The stone I made the cylinders from is of the same rare type. I placed each cylinder at the convergence point directly above the spike. Then, using a complex ritual involving major blood sacrifices, I resonated the cylinder forward or backward in time. How far depended on factors beyond my control. Upon arriving, the cylinders each made a copy of the land from the convergence point to three hundred leagues outward. The copies shifted into pocket dimensions linked to the Nexus, which only I could access at the time. Later, I made links between the realms and Okoro. That was a mistake we will discuss another day.

  “The purpose of having the realms is so that the kenja the land naturally generates cannot flow across the earth as normal. Instead, the excess energies accumulate within the heart stones giving me access to far greater power than I would otherwise have. And of course, there are additional benefits to having the realms and their resources.”

  His eyes turned fiery blue-white and he beamed with pride. “So, my apprentice, that is the magnificent system I built—and that only I could build—which powers all my greater magic.”

  Turesobei frowned as he digested all the information. “Major blood sacrifices…. So what you’re saying is you built all of this with the blood of thousands of innocent people? I see neither brilliance nor beauty in that. I see only greed and cruelty.”

  “Out of everything I told you, that is what you decided to focus on?” The Blood King sighed with disappointment. “You know what your problem is? You neither understand nor appreciate the nature of sacrifice.”

  “Killing innocent people is not okay.”

  “Why am I reviled for sacrificing a few lives to achieve a greater goal? The Jade Emperor once marched two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers against Pawanaré. Tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides died. Old men and boys were murdered during the invasion. Women and children starved or died from disease. Millions perished. Many more suffered. I never killed even a tenth as many as the Jade Emperor did on that one campaign. Many more lives were lost in the war the Kaiaru you call the Shogakami launched against me than I ever took through sacrifice. And those sacrifices did not spread disease or starvation. I am no emperor seeking new territory and wealth. My motives are pure. I seek only to understand the true nature of the Kaiaru and restore our kind to their former glory.”

  Turesobei laughed. “So you’re not worse than the Jade Emperor, and maybe the Shogakami have blood on their hands, too. That still doesn’t make what you did okay.”

  “When a bridge is built to span a wide river a few workers will die. To build something great, a price must always be paid. That is the way of things. I think by the end of our time together, you will come to understand the power and true meaning of sacrifice.”

  Turesobei sighed. There was no point to this debate. “So you want me to go to each realm to retrieve a heart stone? Why bring them back here? Wouldn’t that deprive you of power from the realms?”

  “I do not have access to that power now. I have only what is currently stored in the stones. Your Shogakami placed a shielding spell over the heart stones within the realms, cutting off the power flowing here to me and redirecting it to them. It is what gives them great power, making them much more than accomplished Kaiaru. You will destroy these shields and bring the stones back to me.”

  “But wouldn’t it be better for you if the stones remained in the realms after the shields are destroyed?”

  “Normally that would be the case. However, I need more than what the normal exchange would give me. Each heart stone holds a tremendous amount of power, and the spell that brings the power to me can only channel so much at a time. Completing my research will require an enormous burst of power. I know from my previous attempts how much power I am going to need, and I have had a long time now to reconsider my process. This time, with help from you and Hannya, I know that I can succeed.”

  “If you disconnect the stones,” Lu Bei said, “the Shogakami will once again be mere Kaiaru. Assuming they yet live, of course. Even Master, who was on good terms with them, had no idea where they disappeared to.”

  “My enemies diminishing is a fortunate byproduct,” the Blood King said. “But I never based my actions on revenge. I seek only to further my loftier aims.”

  Separating the Shogakami from their power source? Turesobei hadn’t even had a chance to consider that yet. Until a few minutes ago, he’d had no idea the realms were the source of their powers. The Shogakami were worshiped as minor deities throughout Okoro. The idea that he could be responsible for taking away their power…. His mind reeled as he tried to sort out the consequences.

  “I can see that I have overwhelmed you,” the Blood King said. “Shall I go over it again?”

  “Just tell me what I must do. Leave out the metaphysics for now.”

  The Blood King’s eyes shifted to violet. “I will teach you how to open the gates. You will travel to the realms, taking Hannya with you. The spell that prevents her from opening the gates from within the Nexus does not prevent her from traveling out should someone else open them.”

  “And she can open the way to the Nexus so that we may return.”

  “Precisely. Once you reach a realm, you will use a spell to teleport to the location where
each heart stone lies, then back to the gate. This will save you weeks of travel time and keep you from running into any trouble in the more dangerous realms.”

  “A teleportation spell?” Turesobei asked. “I thought teleportation was impossible!”

  “It is not impossible for me, so it will not be impossible for you. It will, however, take considerable effort on your part to learn the spell. Once you reach the heart stones, you will have to defeat the guardians the Shogakami created to defend the source of their powers. Based on what Hannya has told me about these guardians, you will need all the help you can get. That is why you will be taking your companions into the realms with you.”

  “Except for Enashoma and Kurine, to guarantee I will return?”

  “If Kurine is well enough, she will go, too. I need only keep your sister here to ensure your return. I know that will be enough.”

  “And you think that my companions and I can defeat guardians the Shogakami left to stop you?”

  “The guardians are not there to stop me. The Shogakami were rightfully confident that I would be unable to escape my imprisonment. The guardians were designed to stop other Kaiaru from stealing their power, in the event anyone discovered their secret. No one else, save themselves and Hannya, knew about them.”

  “Master spent years investigating the Shogakami and the realms,” Lu Bei said. “And he did not know about any of this.”

  “If Chonda Lu could not find out, their secret was obviously safe. Until Hannya arrived here, I had no idea precisely what had caused the reduction of power flowing into the Nexus. Imagine my surprise in learning that my enemies had made gods of themselves.”

  The Blood King stood and went to one of the work tables. Turesobei followed. The Blood King picked up Turesobei’s spell book and thumbed through the pages. “This is what humans must do? It is pathetic. You are better than this rubbish.”

  Turesobei bristled. “I can’t even do all those spells yet. I’m only sixteen. I have four more years of training to complete.”

  The Blood King’s eyes flickered between scarlet and violet. “We will accelerate your training. I think you are ready to do much more than what you did at home. Nothing beats real world experience. You should know—” his eyes shifted to emerald “—you are not my first pupil. Long ago, I trained other Kaiaru who knew not the fine arts of magic.”