By Blood Hunted: Kingsblood Chronicles Part Two (The Kingsblood Chronicles Book 2)

by David J. Houpt

  “Light the sage!” Lian said, excited despite himself. The men all gathered on deck at sundown for this important day. They had passed through the dark season once again, and every one of them, even mad Virinos, was joyful, at least for that moment. The sage punks used when Dalshana entered their world’s orbit had been carefully preserved, to be set alight once again and drive out the last of the dark moon’s evil influence. It was not lost on Lian—and, he supposed, every other member of their company, living or not—that the wraiths had attacked shortly after the height of Dalshana’s season, and it was to be hoped that Radiel’s power would be at least somewhat reduced by the moon’s departure.

  The crew enthusiastically lit the large sage punks, and the entire company broke into song together to bid the dark moon farewell. Even Lord Grey and Gem sang, continuing what the necromancer had started: to work to try and help the crew see that the two spellsingers were on their side.

  Dark Lady, fly thee well ‘round thy brother moon

  Dark Lady, fare thee well, in thy distant path

  Darkness came to rule the sky

  And all below did tremble in fear before thy light

  And all below did bow down before the dark moon

  Sleep now, Dark Lady, and sleep in peace

  Rest now, Dark Lady, and stay thy hand

  Thy time is done, but comes again

  Thy time is done, but comes again

  Dark Lady, fare thee well

  Dark Lady, fly thee well

  The elves had their own version of this song, and Lian had labored a long time to understand it, for it was a love ballad, expressing the elves’ deep love and respect for the dark goddess. It was at odds with most of what he’d known of elven culture at the time, but he’d eventually come to understand that with the one exception of the Dark Corruptor, the elves revered all of the gods, great and small, even the goddess of evil herself.

  Even though the dark moon’s influence had undoubtedly made possible the culmination of Queen Jisa’s dark spells and the conversion of his brothers and sisters into vile weapons, Lian tried in his heart of hearts to emulate his greatest teacher. He tried to put meaning into the fare thee wells of the song, to wish the dark goddess well in her cold and distant circle of the Moon of Power. He added a silent prayer to Dalshana. Dark Lady, let my sister go, he prayed. Help her cross the veil into death and not be trapped in the Dark Corruptor’s awful grip. Have mercy, Dark Lady, please.

  He’d give nearly anything to see Radiel freed from that dark bondage, and he prayed nightly to all the gods and goddesses (except, of course, He Who Must Not Be Named) that his parents, Alec, Darwyn, Keven, and Jenine were at peace. His prophetic dream visions had never included Jenine and she had not been with the others during the attack, so Lian assumed that the spell had not worked properly upon her remains. He hoped that her spirit simply hadn’t come to answer Jisa’s necromancy, but he really didn’t know her fate.

  “It is done,” Lord Grey said, surprising Lian as much as the tiny ship’s company. “She has left our skies to orbit mighty Lushran, and the dark season is over.” The sage smoke, which was largely mixed with the char smell of the half-burned punks, swirled about the ship as the wind blew it forward from their gathering point near the helm, and one could almost imagine the cloud pushing evil spirits away from Indigo Runner.

  All the evil spirits save one, according to them, Lian thought sardonically, wondering if he’d been mistaken after all. Would Lord Grey better serve their cause by refraining from his pronouncement and reminding the crew he was there? Much of the battle between the sorcerers had been invisible to the crew huddling on the afterdeck, but the magic that had seared the air between Lian and his former sisters had been terrifying to them. The superstitious nature of nearly any sailor was amplified by the terrors of that night, and at least Gem was a sword, not some mysterious thing in a sack. Lian had toyed with the idea of taking Lord Grey out and introducing him to the crew formally, but rejected it; seeing the blackened skull would only have fed their prejudices against the mage.

  Lian wasn’t fool enough to believe that the necromancer hadn’t done dark deeds, maybe the blackest deeds ever done, for he’d never heard of a punishment like the one the mage labored under. But he believed Lord Grey did regret those actions and that the skull-bound man had no wish to repeat them. The former blackrobe wizard at least appeared to feel that way, and Lian knew that Gem worried about how much trust Lian was willing to extend to the skull’s occupant. But the crew, Lian knew, was probably terrified of the blackened skull and the shade of the man bound within it, whether they’d seen him or not. Still, Lord Grey didn’t do anything without some kind of reason, so the prince decided to withhold judgement.

  The duties on Indigo Runner were for the most part light, since many of the ship’s repairs were simply beyond the small group’s capabilities. The ship was watertight, the improvised sail seemed to be holding (though there was little they could to if it didn’t), and they could keep the ship’s heading fairly well. But for all of that, the need to keep watches, to man the helm, to trim the sails, and the stress of waiting every night for the wraith’s return was taking its toll. Even Dalshana’s departure wouldn’t alleviate the fatigue all of them felt, and this was while the seas were calm.

  Once the punks had burned down to the holders, Lian cleared his throat as he stood the wheel. “Dismissed, shipmates,” he said firmly. “Mr. Snog, check the fore’s’l if you would.” It wasn’t his shift, but Lian wanted to let the men get some supper and some rest before he turned the wheel over to one of the others.

  He ordered the others to head for the mess and to have some of Naryn’s stew, prepared ahead of the evening ritual. “Relieve me after you’ve eaten your fill, Jin,” he said as they climbed the undamaged stair toward the galley. The sailor nodded, and Lian knew he’d be punctual.

  Once he was alone on the afterdeck, he rubbed his face with his free hand. “I presume you had a reason for speaking as well as singing the prayersong, Lord Grey?” he asked the skull. He refrained from the obvious comment that he’d have preferred the wizard had not.

  “They know I’m a spellcaster and they suspect I’m some form of Undead, though they’ve never seen my physical form,” Lord Grey explained. “That makes them fear me and adds to the tension they operate under.”

  “You think that by singing the blessing for the dark moon, or by saying something, that they won’t still fear you?” Gem asked, and Lian nodded in agreement with the sword spirit.

  “Not at first, Gem,” the skull replied. “But if they come to see me as some kind of advising spirit rather than something inimical and evil, they may latch onto me—or you, Lady Sword—as a good luck talisman. I’m unlikely to make the situation worse, and it might work to make it better, but I can desist if you wish it, Lian.”

  Lian shook his head. “No, there’s no reason for you not to talk to them,” he said, being careful not to phrase the sentence in a way that might inadvertently silence Lord Grey. “They know I have two spellsingers at my disposal; no point in pretending otherwise. I trust your judgment in what you tell them, Lord Grey.”

  The skull made a thoughtful hmmm sound. “I appreciate the trust you do put in me, Highness,” he said. “I won’t do anything to undermine it, of course.”

  That you do put in him? Gem asked Lian mentally. Odd way to phrase it.

  Lian thanked Lord Grey, touching the bag gently, as was become his habit. Afterward, he replied to Gem, He’s making sure I’m aware that he knows I don’t trust him completely. I don’t know why he bothered to point it out, however.

  Aloud, he said, “I’ve tried to fix our position relative to the coastline, but most of the maps match the ones I saw in the library back home.” That meant they were woefully out of date, likely copied from maps dating from before the cataclysms that wracked the southern continent.

  Lord Grey said, “I agree with you. You’d think someone would have surveyed the Vellan coastli
ne, at least.”

  Lian shrugged. “I’m sure someone has, but Qan had no need to pull charts that detailed the western regions,” he said. “Indigo Runner occasionally made runs to the Island Kingdoms, Dunshor, or even the eastern lands.

  “Oh,” he continued, waving his left hand illustratively, “he might have happened to have a more recent map of the Vellan coast by chance, but he wouldn’t have sought it out. Truth to tell, in his shoes, I probably wouldn’t have done so either except for our interest in the deep southern regions.” He sighed. “With Qan’s navigator’s compass I can pinpoint our location relative to Kavris with a fair degree of precision. What I can’t do is figure out the distance to the shoreline with precision, so it could be days or weeks away, and that means moving at night, unless Snog or I are on watch, is dangerous.”

  Gem said, “If you slept on deck, Lord Grey and I could help keep watch.”

  Lian nodded thoughtfully. “Do you need to be on deck for that, Lord Grey?” he asked, glancing down at the sack on his hip.

  Lord Grey was silent for a few moments, and Lian and Gem waited for him to answer. “If I am merely spotting coastline or shallows—assuming the moons are bright enough to reveal them in the tint of the water—yes. If I am looking out for your sister’s return, that is also a yes,” he said. “But if you want me to keep an eye out for non-Undead fliers, sea creatures, or the like, then I need a mostly unobstructed line of sight.”

  Lian cracked his neck as he thought. “I’d prefer Snog or I be on deck at night anyhow,” he said after a short pause. “I should have set up the watches that way from the beginning, but the men probably won’t object to changing over if it means they get more daylight and less darkness.”

  “There’s another option,” Gem pointed out. “We could enchant their eyes to see in the dark.”

  “We don’t have the right gemstones, do we?” Lian asked.

  Gem replied, “No, we’d need carnelians for the spells I know for darksight. But with Lord Grey’s help, it’s possible that I can duplicate the darksight enchantment on me, using the better quality weapons on board. Not your shortsword or Snog’s dagger, of course.”

  Lian blinked. “You can bind enchantments?” he asked, referring to the power of an artificer to place permanent magic in otherwise mundane items. Most mages had some talent for this, but it was very difficult for most.

  “Not something like the enchantments that give me flight, or sentience, no,” Gem replied, “but the darksight enchantment, yes, I think so, if he and I can work out the spell formula.”

  “I know several such, actually,” Lord Grey said softly. “You’re born of an artificer… I should have asked about this before now.”

  Gem said, “I’m not certain I can do this at all.” Her tone made Lian think she would be blushing if she were human. “Adrienne gave me much, far more than I could ever have repaid her, but while I have a vague feeling for how it might be done, I don’t know if I can quicken the magics.”

  “Even if you cannot,” Lord Grey said, warming to the subject as he almost always did when magic was involved, “we can probably work out how to bind them loosely. It won’t protect the enchantments against being disrupted, and they’ll unravel in a short while, but weeks to months should be possible. That is, if you can do it at all, and it’s not a ghost memory.”

  “A what?” Gem and Lian asked simultaneously.

  The skull said, “I mean a memory of what Lian’s mother could do, transferred during the soul shard creation. My apologies for the phrasing, given recent events.”

  Lian and Gem both laughed weakly, for both of them had startled at the necromancer’s choice of words. Lian shook it off and said, “Next time I’m sleeping, I’ll leave a few suitable items, not just weapons, lying next to you both so you can experiment. If you keep me awake with the spellsongs, so be it.” It would be worth having his sleep disrupted if Gem and Lord Grey could produce items that allowed men to see as the goblins and elves did.

  ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

  It occurred to Ammon, as he stood on the balcony of his apartments inhaling the acrid tang of the sage being burned nearly everywhere in Kavris, that he didn’t really know much about the herb. These small distracting thoughts came to him from time to time, and despite his long years of self-discipline, he’d never managed to banish inanity like that completely.

  They must grow it by the dunam, he thought, referring to an Eastern unit of measure equivalent to more than ten acres, if they have this much twice a year for the dark moon’s crossing. Even the assassin had punks of sage burning behind him in his sitting room, and like the rest of the people in Kavris, had sung a hymn to the black-hearted goddess. Clearly, whatever prayers Lian and the other people aboard Indigo Runner had made, Dalshana had not smiled upon them or the merchanter would already be in port.

  And this business would be done, he thought with a touch of impatience. He chastised himself for this, as he knew full well that the game demanded patience above all. A hasty assassin would not become an old assassin.

  But keeping an eye on Celewyn’s movements and transactions was proving to be exasperating and exhausting work because the elf kept exceedingly odd hours, rising at nearly any time of day or night from the base of his inn room to stalk about Kavris. Even with the scrying bowl, it was hard to keep up with him.

  Wavecrest was scheduled to depart the next day at noon, and the Easterner planned to be aboard her in the hiding place he’d located—the steering gear compartment—because he needed to remain near the elf in order to spy upon him. It wasn’t completely certain no one would access the space, but unless something happened to the steering gear, no one was likely to enter, and it would have to do. On a larger ship the rudder post, cables, and pulleys might have shared space with some of the ship’s stores, but on the caravel the space was cramped and not very easy to access. He’d have an uncomfortable ride in there, to be sure, but so long as he kept clear of the moving parts, it was tolerable.

  In his long career, he’d hidden in many more unpleasant places, and it was vastly preferable to be cramped than try to hide in the bilges. He’d tried that once, long ago, and had never forgotten the filthy and disgusting experience. The steering compartment was watertight (but thankfully, not airtight) to prevent the bilgewater from below from sloshing up and corroding the metallic components, so he’d be isolated from the bilge. The only direct connection to the sea was through the rudder post, and the seals were mildly but permanently enchanted, as they were on most well-built ships, to bar water from passing. The compartment, therefore, would probably be bone dry despite the direct connection to the sea, unless it was raining hard enough to leak inside. His reconnoiter, however, had found both dust and a lack of water staining, so he wasn’t worried about that possibility.

  Had his quarry been someone less capable, he might have merely relied upon an unseeing spell to keep his presence on the ship secret, but such magic would not fool the elven assassin. His senses were too keen, and his mind too sharp, to be lulled into ignoring a threat. A true invisibility spell might have been more effective but would have been impossible to maintain over the length of a sea voyage. He had to sleep sometime, and that meant he needed a sanctuary. He snorted, imagining Celewyn’s reaction if the elf were to stumble across the sleeping Ammon. Oh, he’d probably just invite me to tea and to join his enterprise, Ammon thought sarcastically. He knew what he’d do to an assassin who allowed himself to be caught out like that.

  The biggest disadvantage of not having hired a diviner is that now, with the ship about to depart and the elf making his final preparations, I’m going to have to let him remain unwatched, he thought with a deep sigh. He needed to rest before boarding the Wavecrest and that meant that tonight Celewyn would have to remain unobserved. The constant divining had drained his reserves alarmingly, and he was grateful that he recovered from conjuring quickly.

  He’d looked for an opportunity to attack Celewyn and take the fetish, but the elf hadn’t con
sulted it again. Perhaps it’s something he can only use infrequently or that has a limited number of uses before its magic is spent, Ammon considered with a deep frown. Given that possibility, the Easterner would have to very carefully unravel the enchantments on the item before he dared use it. That meant taking time to examine it, possibly as long as a month’s time, though he hoped not. Some items’ enchantments were, for lack of a better term, accessible to the magical senses and analytical spells most spellsingers could perform. Others, and he allowed that any item created by assassins or for assassins was more likely to be in this class, had their enchantments closed in upon themselves, making perceiving them very hard indeed.

  A smaller class of items were magical traps, intended to harm anyone who tried to analyze their enchantments, and it was all too likely the figurine was trapped to prevent anyone but the Avani elf from using it. He’s probably poisoned its surface with something nasty, Ammon thought, then shook himself lightly.

  Worrying about what to do with the small green statuette was something he could do when he actually had it in his possession and he had a few hundred sea leagues between him and the elf. Or if the Shadow is no more, he amended with a slight smile. He had nothing against Celewyn, and in fact respected the elf a great deal as a fellow artisan in a challenging and oftimes hated business. But this was business, and the other assassin’s interference could not be tolerated. It would be preferable to steal the figure without alerting the Avani at all, but if Ammon couldn’t find a way to get it away from Celewyn without killing the elf, then he would have to die.

  ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

  It was becoming easier to notice when his unseen adversary was watching him, now that he knew what to look for, or more accurately, what to feel for. It wasn’t a visual cue but a magically visceral one, possible only because of Celewyn’s own talent with sorcery. Celewyn had kept an erratic schedule as he traveled all over the city. Many of his errands were meaningless in the scheme of things; the important thing was that they were at all different times of day and night.