The Sworn

by Gail Z. Martin

  “I have this awful feeling you’re going to feel the need to ride out there and take a look for yourself,” Soterius said, resignation in his voice.

  Tris gave a lopsided grin. “Of course.”

  A small group of heavily armed soldiers rode out from Shekerishet with Tris and Soterius the next morning. Sister Fallon also rode with them, and Beyral the rune scryer, along with Esme, the king’s healer. Although the morning was bright, the group rode in silence, alert for signs of danger. After a candlemark’s ride, they arrived at the crossroads just beyond the village lane.

  “Can you feel it?” Tris said to Fallon.

  She nodded. “There’s power that shouldn’t be here. It feels wrong.”

  Tris nodded. “Just as well it’s daylight.”

  If they had doubted Evan’s word, the stench of rotting bodies quickly proved the truth of the boy’s tale. The villagers’ bodies, many of them torn to shreds, lay strewn across the village green. Nothing else appeared to be touched, verifying that the murders had not been the work of raiders.

  Tris nudged his horse on, past the carnage and toward the path that led from the village into the forest. Soterius and two of the guards led the way, with Fallon and Tris in the middle, followed by three more soldiers. Tris appreciated Soterius’s attempt to protect him, but if the dimonn manifested, the soldiers were unlikely to be able to hold it off.

  They had timed their arrival for just after the sun’s highest point, since the netherworld was at its closest at noon and midnight. Dimonns were among Tris’s least favorite supernatural foes, and he had the scars to justify his opinion. After a short ride, they reached the barrow.

  The barrow was a mound covered with sod. If someone hadn’t looked closely, it might have passed as a hill, and many of the ancient barrows were assumed to be part of the natural landscape by those who lived in their shadow. Tris knew otherwise. Barrows like these dotted the landscape of the Winter Kingdoms. Some were just the resting place of long-dead warriors and warlords, men who lived and fought before the kingdoms had come into being. Other barrows held the remains of something else, and while Tris was not sure what that something was, the legends said it wasn’t human.

  Those barrows had been thought to be so dangerous that the nomadic Sworn patrolled them, making their circuit from the Northern Sea on Margolan’s far border down across Dhasson to Nargi. Tris had not met the Sworn, but as he dismounted from his horse and approached the desecrated barrow, arranging a meeting with one of their warriors suddenly jumped to the top of his list of things to do.

  Tris’s mage sense prickled a warning the closer he got to the barrow. He heard nothing unusual with his ears, but on another level, it seemed as if voices whispered just beyond hearing range. He did not need to recognize their words to sense the malevolence.

  “I need you and the men to step back,” Tris said to Soterius. “Protect Esme.”

  “We’re here to keep you in one piece,” Soterius said levelly, meeting Tris’s gaze.

  “I appreciate that. But if a dimonn’s what we’re really up against, it won’t care about swords. Magic’s the only thing that can turn it.”

  “We’ve vowed our lives to keep you safe.”

  “Then honor that vow by stepping back. If I’m distracted by worrying about protecting you, I’m that much more likely to make a fatal mistake.”

  Soterius yielded, but his dislike for the order was clear in his face. “Fall back!”

  When the soldiers had stepped back a dozen paces, Tris joined Fallon in walking a circle around the barrow, using his drawn sword as an athame as they raised wardings for protection. Or, more precisely, to protect the soldiers and anyone on the other side of the warding from what was inside it with him and the two mages. When they finished, Tris kept his sword in hand, although he knew it was unlikely to deter whatever dwelled within the barrow.

  “Look here.” Fallon bent over a pile of rubble. Beyral knelt next to the stones, and Tris could see that her hands were working in the complex motions of a spell.

  Beyral’s magic made the runes on the broken pieces of stone glow. “Someone set sigils of protection over the entrance to the barrow,” Fallon said quietly. “These are old—very old.”

  “The Sworn?”

  Fallon frowned. “I don’t think so. I’ve come across the barrows they patrol on occasion and their magic feels completely different. No, I don’t think this is one of theirs.”

  “Can we seal it back up and put protections back into place?”

  Fallon and Beyral exchanged glances. “If it were the two of us alone, I’d say no. Whoever did this the first time was a powerful mage. But your magic is stronger—and you’re a summoner. I really don’t want to think about anything you can’t bottle up.”

  “Let’s get started,” Tris said, with an anxious eye toward the sky. Although late-summer afternoons seemed to last forever, Tris knew that strong magic required time, and he would prefer to finish the working long before the sun began to set.

  Tris had just lifted the first of the sigil stones into his hands when he felt a rush of frigid air. A black shadow spread from the gaping hole in the barrow’s side, growing like a bloodstain.

  Beyral began to chant, while Fallon and Tris stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking the shadow’s way. Tris had given Evan’s talisman to Fallon, and its protection gave her more freedom to move.

  “Lethyrashem!” Fallon spoke the banishment spell as Tris gathered his power for the first salvo. The dimonn fell back momentarily, and then surged forward once more. Magic arced between Tris’s hands and a blinding flare of light streaked toward the growing shadow. The thing shrieked, and the odor of burned, rotted meat filled the air.

  The dimonn twisted, evading the worst of the blast, and this time it was Beyral who sent a curtain of flame, cutting off the dimonn as it lunged for Fallon. Tris anticipated its next move, and his sword-athame drew an opalescent scrim between himself and the dimonn.

  “We can’t contain it forever—any great ideas?” Tris shouted.

  “If you can get it to back down, Beyral and I can seal the opening with runes,” Fallon replied.

  What are you? Tris stretched out his magic toward the shadow.

  I am hunger. The dimonn’s voice sounded like a hundred screams in Tris’s mind.

  Who loosed you?

  Those who would be my master.

  Why have you come?

  To consume everything.

  “Wrong answer,” Tris said between gritted teeth. To make the next magic work, he would have to drop his shielding. That would make it a contest to see whether he could be faster than the dimonn.

  In one breath, Tris dropped the coruscating power that shielded him from the dimonn. It rushed toward him, and the dimonn slashed at him, and one clawed arm sliced through the chain mail that protected Tris’s arm and shoulder. He could feel the dimonn’s hunger for blood, for life, for power. The fresh blood drove the dimonn into a frenzy. Tris fought vertigo as he ignored the pain, and he saw his opportunity. Tris met the dimonn with the full brunt of his power, drawing on the magic of the Flow, his own life force, and on the fire within that pumped the bright red blood from his wounds. Everything else seemed to dim as Tris poured his power into forcing the dimonn back into the darkness of the barrow. Distantly, he could hear Fallon’s spellcasting and Beyral’s chanting, and beyond the wardings, the shouts of his soldiers.

  Tris shut it all out, everything except the screeching wail of the dimonn as his power forced it backward. He could feel the old magic of the barrow, the sundered charms, and the broken spells. The old power buoyed him, feeding back into his magic.

  “Ready, Tris!” Fallon shouted.

  Tris charged forward with a cry, and a wave of power roiled up around him, rising from the barrow itself. The dimonn clawed at the sod, its talons gouging into the dirt as the magic forced it back from the edge of daylight into the darkness of the tomb. Beyral and Fallon ran past Tris, each carrying part of the sto
ne lintel that had once capped the barrow entrance. They pushed the broken stone into the hole that had been dug into the mound, and their chants raised the dark runes on the stonework into fiery lettering. The dimonn gave one last shriek from the depths of the mound, and Fallon and Beyral brought down the rest of the marked stones, burying the talisman Evan had found in the center of the stone sigils.

  Warily, Tris let the power flow out of him and gasped as the pain of the gashes on his shoulder fully registered. He did not drop the outer warding until he had helped Beyral and Fallon completely seal the barrow entrance. Together, they stood and made one last working over the mound, incorporating magic to deter any who might think to repeat the desecration.

  “You’re hurt.” Fallon looked at Tris with alarm, and her gaze followed the bloody trail from his shoulder to his ribs.

  “I’ve felt better,” Tris said, shaking from the expenditure of power. Magic usually left him with a headache, and the severity of the pain depended on the difficulty of the working. A reaction headache was already beginning to pound behind his temples, but he guessed that the fever he felt had more to do with the dimonn’s poison.

  Tris eased himself to the ground. Esme ran to him and began to tend his shoulder as the guards formed a protective ring around them.

  “Dammit, Tris! You should have let us in to help,” Soterius swore, giving the injury a worried glance.

  “It went through the chain mail. The only reason it didn’t take my arm was because my magic was holding it back,” Tris said tiredly. “Your soldiers wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

  “Can you heal him?” Soterius said, looking to Esme.

  Esme nodded. “Yes, but it’s going to hurt like hell.” She glanced at Fallon and Beyral. “I’ll help them once I get Tris patched up.”

  Tris lay back into the dry grass. Esme removed what was left of his chain mail. The dimonn’s claws had sliced through the heavy metal rings as cleanly as a sword. Already, the wound was beginning to putrefy. Tris could smell it. He concentrated his own power on containing the poison. He could feel it beginning to flow through his blood, feel his arm and shoulder growing feverish. Drained from the battle, Tris marshaled his magic, drawing on his life force. If the dimonn’s poison reached that blue-white thread as it had with Evan, there would be no summoner to save Tris’s life.

  Tris felt the poison war with Esme’s magic. The cuts had been deep, and the poison was strong. While Tris had used his magic many times to help heal others, he had rarely turned the power inward. He didn’t need Esme to tell him that his life depended upon finding a way to do just that. Tris could feel his heart struggling to beat. It was getting harder to breathe.

  Tris focused his magic on the putrefying wound. I have the power to breathe life into the dead, although it is forbidden. Perhaps dead flesh is just dead flesh. Tris called his summoning magic to him and concentrated on the flesh of his shoulder. He could feel the death spreading, and he met that death with magic, willing the necrotizing skin to live and forcing the blue-white light of his life thread into skin and tissue. He fought back a scream at the pain as his body warred against his spirit and his power. Esme was amplifying his magic, channeling it into the most damaged places.

  “It’s working, Tris,” Esme urged. “But it’s not gone yet.”

  With a cry of pain, Tris forced blood and spirit back into the blackening flesh. He felt death yield to him, and with its surrender, the sullied skin and muscle began to thrum once more with blood and life. In moments, the wound was cleansed. Four raw gashes still laid open the left side of his arm and chest nearly to the bone, but they were clean of rot and free of poison. Tris swallowed hard and sank back against the ground, barely conscious.

  “I’ll take it from here,” Esme said, bending close to his ear. “You’re safe now.”

  “I really don’t want to explain this to Kiara,” Soterius muttered, kneeling next to Tris on the other side. “I don’t think she’ll take it well.”

  “She’s used to… this sort of thing,” Tris managed. He meant to say more, but Esme’s healing magic swept over him like a warm blanket, taking with it both pain and consciousness.

  Chapter Seven

  I fail to see how this is any of our concern.” Astasia leaned back in her chair, letting her long, chestnut-colored hair fall across her shoulders, spilling down over full breasts barely hidden by her revealing neckline. The vayash moru’s pale skin was a sharp contrast to the deep burgundy of her gown. Astasia met Jonmarc’s eyes with a look that combined both seduction and malice.

  “It’s your concern because you’re the Blood Council, dammit!” Jonmarc glared at Astasia. Once, being the only mortal in a room of vayash moru might have tempered his comments. Now, a year after he had come to Dark Haven as its lord, he had fought and bled for its residents, living and undead. The insurrection he’d quelled that winter had set him directly against two of the Blood Council’s members, Uri and Astasia, at peril of his life. He still had a scar from two puncture wounds at the base of his throat, where Malesh, one of Uri’s renegade vayash moru, had tried unsuccessfully to kill him. Surviving that attack had made Jonmarc a legend, as had returning alive from making Istra’s Bargain, a pledge to forfeit his soul in exchange for the death of his enemy. Having stared down both the goddess and Malesh, Jonmarc found his fear of the undead was considerably diminished.

  “My brood has no quarrel with the Durim,” Astasia said blithely.

  “Then you are a fool.” Riqua wheeled on Astasia. “The Dark Gift is no protection against their torches. They hunted me when I lived, and I hid from them when I was first brought across. No more. I will fight.” In life, Riqua had been the wife of a wealthy merchant, and that sensibility still served her. She was a handsome woman in her midfifties, with upswept, dark blonde hair. Her gown was of the most current fashion favored at court, and the expensive jewelry that glittered at her throat and on her wrists was a testimony that undeath had been favorable for building wealth.

  “Of late, you seem ready to battle anyone,” Astasia purred.

  Riqua’s scorn was evident on her face. “I’m not ashamed that my brood fought alongside Lord Gabriel’s to defeat Malesh. We preserved the Truce with mortals to protect ourselves. I paid a price for that; half my brood was destroyed in the fighting. You might not have dirtied your hands with battle, but I recognized many of your brood among those who fought for Malesh.”

  “So?” Astasia pouted. “It’s the way of things. Uri’s fledge started the war. Mine just played along. Immortality without conflict is… boring.”

  “You brought our kind to the edge of destruction because you were bored?” Riqua hissed. “You were a stupid, empty-headed whore in life and you haven’t learned anything in death to improve on that.”

  Astasia started from her seat, and Jonmarc thought she might attack Riqua, but just then, Gabriel rose to his feet. He fixed Astasia with a cold glare, and she sat down. She’s afraid of him, Jonmarc thought, suppressing a smile. He knew just how formidable Gabriel could be. Astasia might be willful and utterly self-centered, but if she recognized Gabriel’s power, she wasn’t quite as stupid as Riqua supposed.

  “One war is behind us,” Gabriel said. When he was certain Astasia was silenced, he turned his gaze toward the other members of the Blood Council, the ruling body whose word was law to the vayash moru in much of the Winter Kingdoms. “Now, another threat has risen. The question is: What will we do about it?”

  Gabriel’s cold gaze went first to the Council’s chairman, Rafe. Though dead for centuries, Rafe still had the look of a priest or scholar. He had the ebony skin of an Eastmark noble and eyes that were almost black. Although he’d been in his early thirties when he’d been brought across, his hair had grayed to a sand color. “You’re certain the Durim are behind this?”

  “Does being dead affect your hearing?” Jonmarc growled. “I just took a strike force of vayash moru and mortals into the caves to burn out a group of Durim. It took a mage and a
hell of a fight to get out of there in one piece. They were draining vayash moru and slaughtering vyrkin. I’ve got a manor house full of vayash moru and vyrkin refugees. The war has already started.”

  “You’re good at burning things, aren’t you?” Uri tented his fingers over his chest. He had the olive skin and dark features of a Trevath or Nargi native, and even centuries after his death, he still had the air of a card sharp and two-skrivven hustler.

  Jonmarc met his eyes. “When I have to be, yes.”

  Uri made a show of sighing, a completely artificial gesture since he no longer had to breathe. “As much as it pains me, I actually agree with you for once.” Uri toyed with the heavy gold rings on his fingers. “The Durim’s threat is real. Like Riqua, I also remember when the followers of Shanthadura drove us from our homes and then from our crypts. I have no desire to see their ilk return to power.” His expression darkened. “It was plague that brought them to the fore, long ago. Lady knows, I have no love for the Crone priests, but they are nothing compared to the Durim.” He leaned forward, looking past Astasia toward Rafe. “We must do something.”

  Rafe frowned. “What would you have us do? We’ve only barely restored the Truce. The people of Dark Haven may suffer the Lord of Dark Haven to lead his guards against other mortals, but if we begin to strike the living, they’ll all turn against us.”

  “Leave the Durim to Jonmarc and King Staden’s men,” Gabriel countered. “Our own kind needs our help. Riqua and I have been funneling supplies and funds to help the Ghost Carriage.” He met Uri’s dark eyes. “Kolin has led dozens of vayash moru and vyrkin out of Nargi and Trevath to safety in Dark Haven. As plague spreads, the need becomes more desperate. Even in those areas where the Durim have not yet gained power, as the mortals die with the plague, they fear and hate us because we’re untouched. And the burnings begin.”

  A shadow seemed to pass over Uri’s face. For once, all bluster was gone. “Unlike Jonmarc, I did not get out of Nargi alive. I swore I would never return.”