The Dread: The Fallen Kings Cycle: Book Two

by Gail Z. Martin

  “Is Buka one of the Durim?” Berry leaned forward. “He seems to share their love of cutting up victims and leaving a bloodbath behind.”

  Hant frowned. “I don’t think so. The Durim we interrogated seemed to be truly ignorant of his crimes.” He shook his head. “Unfortunately, I think we have a separate problem with Buka. And it’s getting worse.”

  Jonmarc moved to see Hant better. “How many people can one man kill?”

  Hant grimaced. “Apparently, this one has a talent for killing, and for not getting caught. That’s bad enough. But there’ve been reports of other problems near the sites of the killings.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “Ghost attacks.” Hant met Jonmarc’s eyes. “You traveled with Martris Drayke. I believe you and the queen both saw, firsthand, just how dangerous angered ghosts can be.”

  Despite herself, Berry shivered at the memory. To escape the slavers that had imprisoned them two years ago, Tris Drayke had used his power, then mostly wild, raw, and uncontrolled magic, to set the wronged ghosts of a haunted forest on their captors. It had been more terrifying than any battlefield horror Jonmarc had ever experienced. The ghosts had been merciless taking long-overdue vengeance, so much so that only bloody bits of the slavers remained after the fighting was over.

  “I remember,” Berry murmured.

  “Now imagine ghosts like that in a tightly packed city, bound to the place where the body was found. We’ve tried all the normal ways to set spirits to rest, even called on the mages we could find, but nothing’s worked yet.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, we’re short on summoners, and Tris Drayke has his own problems in Margolan.” He met Jonmarc’s eyes. “Do you think that the serroquette you brought with you could help? What was her name?”

  “Aidane,” Jonmarc replied. “As I understand it, Aidane’s gift lies more in being possessed by spirits than in dispelling them. If this Buka favors young women victims, then we could end up with a bigger problem if the ghosts were to take her over.”

  Hant nodded. “I thought of that. And I agree, it’s too risky to take her near the places that are being haunted. But perhaps, with her skills, she’s heard something from the spirits? I don’t pretend to know how these things work, but I’d like to talk with her.”

  “Agreed.” Berry gave her consent, but with a glance to Jonmarc that made him sure Berry would expect him to be present to watch out for Aidane’s safety.

  “I’m placing General Valjan and General Gregor in charge of establishing a line of defense along the coast,” Berry said. “They’ll be leaving with their troops within a few days. As Queen’s Champion, Jonmarc will serve as my proxy. He and Prince Gethin will lead another division north as soon as we’re sure that the situation in the city can spare them.”

  Jencin frowned. “Prince Gethin is a guest, m’lady. Is it wise…?”

  “Gethin petitioned the crown in person, accompanied by his ambassador, asking for the privilege of representing Principality in the conflict,” Berry replied shortly. “I understand the sensitive nature of his position, which is why I’ve assigned him to Jonmarc.”

  Jonmarc kept his face neutral, even as his fingers began to drum against his chair under the table. First I’ve heard this. Gethin had to know when we were in the salle, and he didn’t tell me. He’d better expect a good pounding the next round I go with him.

  Berry gave him a slight, knowing smile. “Your presence is required at dinner tonight. Our guests will be the prince and his ambassadors.”

  Jonmarc gave her a look that he knew she would read correctly. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

  Berry regained her solemn expression and returned her attention to the seated group. “Gentlemen, you know what we’re facing. The Winter Kingdoms hasn’t seen an invader from beyond the Northern Sea in generations. You and your forces are the only thing standing between Principality and invasion. I pray to the Lady for your success.” With that, Berry rose and swept out of the room, followed closely by Jencin and surrounded by the palace guards. The rest filed from their places without conversation and scattered in different directions as they left the war room.

  Jonmarc headed down the corridor toward the stairs that would take him to Aidane’s rooms. After the briefing, he’d come up with quite a few questions for the serroquette.

  “Vahanian! I’d like a word with you.”

  Jonmarc’s hand was on the pommel of his sword as he turned. He recognized the voice even before the figure of a man strode into the torch light. Gregor.

  “You went over my head to Valjan and Hant. Why?” Gregor was a dark-haired man with intelligent brown eyes and a hard line to his mouth. Years ago, Carina had been unable to save Gregor’s brother. Gregor had never forgiven that, and the few times he and Jonmarc had crossed paths had not been pleasant.

  Jonmarc stood his ground, hand firmly on his sword. “Because I knew they’d listen. And you wouldn’t.”

  “You brought that damned ghost whore into the palace.”

  Jonmarc clenched his jaw. “Aidane carried essential intelligence information to the queen at great personal risk, and she put herself further at risk to identify the traitors at the coronation. She saved the queen’s life.”

  Gregor’s lip twisted. “You’d know all about whores and that ilk. You shame the queen with your presence and with the vermin you bring with you.”

  A killing glint came into Jonmarc’s eyes. “And what ‘vermin’ would that be?”

  Gregor spat to one side. “Whores. Biters. Shifters. You probably had something to do with the fact that we’re coddling that Eastmark prince, didn’t you?”

  “Gethin is here at the invitation of King Staden. I had nothing to do with it.” Jonmarc paused. “And he hardly needs coddling. He’s much better in a fight than you are.”

  Gregor reddened, and Jonmarc thought the general might swing at him. Veins stood out on Gregor’s neck, and Jonmarc guessed that it was taking great effort for Gregor to control himself. “I’ve heard the stories about you. My brother and I were mercs, too. We fought for those bloody Eastmark bastards who thought they were too good for us, for sathirinim. You should know that. They betrayed you worse than anyone.”

  Jonmarc was losing his fight to keep his temper. “So one minute I’m vermin, and the next I’m a martyr?”

  “You leave a trail of dead men in your wake, Vahanian. I don’t trust you, your biter friends, or the Eastmark bastards. They threw our mercs into the front lines first, to draw fire before they risked their own precious skins. And now they send one of theirs to marry the queen, and you, of all people, you’re going to stand for it?”

  Jonmarc saw the glint of Gregor’s drawn blade and parried fast and hard. Practice against vayash moru opponents gave him an edge in strength and speed. He sent Gregor’s sword scuttling down the corridor, and he body-slammed the general against the corridor wall.

  “Take your opinions about Eastmark and shove them up your ass.” Jonmarc’s voice was a hiss, close to Gregor’s ear. Gregor struggled, but Jonmarc kept him pinned with a blade at the general’s throat. “I’ve been betrayed by too many people to blame it on anything more than old-fashioned greed.”

  He twitched the blade slightly under Gregor’s chin, raising a thin line of blood. “This is the second time I’ve let you off without breaking some bones or running you through. So you say one more word to anyone about ‘vermin’ and I’ll cut out that tongue of yours and pin it to the wall for a trophy. I’m expecting you to do your duty and keep your opinions to yourself.” He poked the tip of his blade into the soft skin beneath Gregor’s chin. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Jonmarc pushed away hard from Gregor, giving himself space and slamming his opponent into the wall again for good measure. He kept his sword in hand as Gregor straightened his uniform and recovered his sword.

  “Is it your doing that my men and I are in the first wave while the Queen’s Champion takes his time to reach the battlefiel
d?”

  “Thank the queen for that decision, not me. Perhaps you didn’t notice that, so far, there’ve been more casualties here in Principality City than on the coast?” Jonmarc sheathed his weapon in disgust. “I don’t have time for this. Now get out of my way or, by the Dark Lady, I’ll cut a door right through your hide.”

  “I’m leaving.” Gregor turned and strode away. Jonmarc did not relax from a ready stance until he was certain that Gregor was truly gone.

  Chapter Five

  Drink this.” Kolin pushed a cup of kerif into Aidane’s hands. Aidane accepted the strong, bitter drink gratefully and sipped at it as she sat beside the fireplace in her room. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having nightmares?”

  Aidane shrugged and looked up at Kolin where he stood beside the fireplace. The glow of the fire made his vayash moru–pale skin less pallid. His dark blond hair framed a sharp-featured face that was distinguished if not quite handsome. By comparison, Aidane had the coal-black hair and dusky skin of a Nargi native. Dark eyed and with high cheekbones, she had heard more than one courtier describe her as “exotic.” She had yet to decide whether or not that description was meant as a compliment.

  “I’m a serroquette. I should be used to dreams—my own, and others.” She sipped the hot tea and repressed a shiver.

  “Are the dreams always like these?” Kolin looked at her with a mixture of horror and sympathy. “You woke screaming and fighting for your life. If I’d been mortal, I’m not sure I could have contained you.”

  Aidane sighed and looked away. “I allow ghosts to possess me to make peace with their lovers. My sanity depends on being able to keep most ghosts at bay and allow only certain ghosts to possess me. But something’s going wrong.”

  Kolin frowned. “So are you dreaming, or being possessed?”

  Aidane sipped her tea again as she thought. “I think it’s something in between. Not a full possession; I can tell that my own spirit is still in control. But more than a dream. And they’re not just any ghosts. They’re young women, and they’ve been murdered.”

  “By whom?”

  Aidane met his eyes. “Buka.”

  Kolin’s eyes widened. “The killer in the city?”

  Aidane nodded. “He’s not vayash moru, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ve seen the ghosts’ deaths… felt them. It’s a knife, not teeth, that does the killing. But the funny thing is, I don’t think he’s Durim, either.”

  “Why?”

  “Through the ghosts, I’ve gotten glimpses of what he does in the moments around the deaths. He… carves up the bodies,” Aidane said, swallowing hard. “He takes pieces of them. But it doesn’t feel like what we found on the road, when we came upon where the Durim had fouled the barrow. And yet…”

  “What?”

  “I think that Buka does make some kind of offering. He mutters to himself as he does the cutting. Sometimes, I can hear him. He says things like ‘honor the master’ and ‘make the master welcome.’ The Durim worship Shanthadura, a goddess. Whomever Buka is trying to please is a man.” Aidane finished her drink and set the empty cup aside. She stared into the fireplace, trying to dispel the awful visions from her memory.

  Kolin sat down across from her and gently took her hands in his. “Dying once was bad enough. I can’t imagine what you’ve been though, reliving all those deaths.” He paused. “What can I do to protect you? Are there charms, talismans that would keep out the ghosts? Can a mage help ward your chamber? Tell me, and I’ll make it so.”

  Aidane squeezed his hands in appreciation before moving away to wrap her arms around herself. Although the fire was warm and the autumn night was not yet wintry, she felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. “Yes, I’d like to be free of the dreams. Of course. But… I think there’s a reason the ghosts are trying to contact me. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m afraid that if they can’t reach me, something worse will happen. They’re angry. So angry.”

  “So you’ll let them consume you instead?” Aidane heard anger in Kolin’s voice, and his eyes blazed. “Maybe they’re jealous that you’re alive and they aren’t. Maybe they intend to take you with them.”

  The thought had occurred to Aidane. “I think that if they meant to kill me, they’d have done it already. Maybe they just want me to carry a message.”

  “Do you get a choice?” he asked, and his eyes met hers with a gaze that was difficult to elude.

  A sad smile crossed Aidane’s face. “I’m just a ghost whore, Kolin. No one worries much about my choices.”

  Kolin’s eyes darkened. “Even as a vayash moru, we choose how and where to slake our thirst.”

  Aidane turned away. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said quietly.

  “No? What part of not having a choice do you think is beyond my experience?” There was an edge in Kolin’s voice Aidane had not heard before. “It was not my choice to be brought across. When I was new in the Dark Gift, the hunger that drove me to kill like a wild thing didn’t obey my choices until many years later. It was not my choice to submit to the will of my maker for a hundred years until Lady Riqua purchased my freedom. It certainly wasn’t my choice to lose Elsbet to her father’s rage.” He struggled to temper the anger in his tone. “And it is not my choice to be denied the chance to ever walk in the sunlight again.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Kolin looked at her as if he were debating with himself. “You have a dark gift of your own, I think. Why are you ashamed of it?”

  Aidane looked up defiantly. “Who said I was?”

  “If you really believe that with your gift you are ‘just a whore,’ in Principality of all places, where they worship Athira the Whore and even the temple oracles join their bodies with the supplicants, then yes, I think you’re ashamed. And I wonder, why?”

  Aidane’s heart was pounding. No one had ever questioned why she felt shame. Everyone, from her parents to the Crone priests to the other whores, all made it clear to her that being a serroquette was even worse than the common strumpets who sold their bodies but did not permit their entire being to be possessed for coin. “You, of anyone here, know what I am.”

  “You’d be hard-pressed to find a virgin in Principality, with the exception perhaps of our queen,” Kolin replied. “They worship the Lover and the Whore, and the kingdom is full of mercs. ‘Experience’ isn’t shameful here, Aidane. You’re not in Nargi anymore.”

  Aidane wanted to flee the room. This was not a conversation she had ever imagined having with anyone, certainly not Kolin. And although she had told him that she retained no memory of the reunion between Kolin and the spirit of his dead lover whom she had channeled, she had remembered almost everything. It had been easy, over the years, to block out the awful experiences, the beatings, the enraged clients, the betrayed lovers bent on revenge. Those she could honestly say blurred into a jumble.

  But Kolin’s reunion with Elsbet had been so tender and his love for the ghost so sure that the memory burned brightly. None of those feelings were actually for me, she reminded herself sternly. And the kindness now is just gratitude; it’s because of the memory of Elsbet, not really for Aidane.

  “Did you know that a vayash moru takes more than blood with a bite?” Kolin’s question pulled Aidane from her discomfort. He did not wait for her to answer. “We taste the life that’s in the blood. With animals, there’s a sense of its fears and abilities. A deer tastes of the forest, of flight from hunters. But with humans, it’s much more.”

  Kolin usually kept his eye teeth hidden, but now she could see them plainly. “We can’t subsist completely on animal blood. Sometimes, we’ll feed lightly from a drunk or a willing donor. Through the ages, villages have tied their criminals outside the gates as an offering to us and to the wolves. There and in battle, over centuries, I’ve drained the life from hundreds of people. And in the draining, there is a… joining… of sorts. Not bodies but memories, consciousness, thoughts. You eat a piece of deer meat
and need not really think of the deer. But with the blood, I drain life and self. It’s a far more intimate twining than bodies can ever make.” An edge of bitterness tinged his voice. “So who is the whore?”

  Aidane looked up at him slowly, surprised and confused by his confession. “Why tell me this?”

  Kolin’s smile was self-deprecating. “I wanted you to know that we have more in common than you thought. I’m willing to bet that, through Elsbet, you saw me as Kolin and not as a vayash moru. I’m impressed by the serroquette, but I’m more impressed by Aidane.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  This time, Kolin’s smile held more warmth. “You stayed alive in Nargi, when it’s not a healthy place for our kinds. When the Durim took you, you fought them. When my team rescued you, you took a huge chance to get us out of that ambush. You were willing to carry Thaine’s ghost to warn Vahanian and the queen when holding her inside was difficult, maybe painful for you. And I’m betting that you lied about not remembering the night you brought Elsbet to me, for my sake.”

  Aidane blushed and looked away. “Clients prefer to think that,” she mumbled.

  “You have the heart of a warrior. You don’t back down. And even though you’re mortal, you risk that precious life—and that is a choice.” He shrugged. “I’m impressed.”

  To Aidane’s overwhelming relief, a knock at the door saved her from having to respond. Jonmarc Vahanian stood in the hallway.

  “Sorry to trouble you, but may I come in?”

  Aidane stepped back to permit him entrance. Jonmarc and Kolin acknowledged each other with a nod. “If it’s about Thaine, she’s really gone,” Aidane said.

  “I’m not here about Thaine,” Jonmarc said. He glanced up as Kolin moved to slip out the door. “Please, stay. I don’t want anyone running back to Carina with tales of me alone with a serroquette.”

  Kolin raised an eyebrow and suppressed a smile. “So I’m to be a chaperone?”

  Jonmarc shrugged. “Call it what you want. Actually, I’d value your opinion on this, too. Berry asked me to find out if Aidane knows anything about the Buka killings.”