by Spurrier, Jo
His horse snorted in fright, throwing its head up and threatening to rear, but Isidro simply kicked his feet from the stirrups and slipped down from the saddle, loosing the pony. The guards could chase it down later.
The clearing was a scene of carnage. At a glance it was impossible to tell how many had died there — most had been caught between the blast and a jumble of fallen timber from some long-gone flood, and had simply been torn apart. A few other bodies lay mostly intact, though ravaged and torn, with flames still licking from their smouldering clothes. Amid them all lay a young woman, slumped and boneless, fallen in a heap on the bloody snow. Sierra.
Isidro went to her at once, sweeping a hank of blood-matted hair back from her face to press his fingers into the hollow of her jaw.
One of the guards stomped towards him, kicking an odd white stone out of his way. ‘She alive?’
Her pulse throbbed steadily beneath his fingers. Her skin was pale and cold, her cheeks sunken and hollow. Sirri, by the Fires Below, what are you doing here? ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She’s alive.’ There was blood on her face, too, but as far as he could tell it wasn’t hers. Inside his head, he felt Rasten shiver with relief.
Satisfied she was unhurt, Isidro crouched on his heels to survey the scene. The air was full of power, as chokingly thick as the inside of a steam-house. Much of it was Sierra’s — he’d recognise that thunder-scented energy anywhere — but mingled with it were sour and acrid notes of Blood Magic.
One of the dead was an Akharian soldier, identifiable by the red tunic peeking out from beneath his coat, though Isidro had no explanation for the fist-sized hole that had been scooped out of his chest, blackened and charred as though the edges had been scorched with hot irons.
Aside from the soldier there were four others spread around Sierra, all wearing plain and nondescript clothing. Scattered around and over the bodies were dozens of strange pale stones. They were oddly familiar, but it took him a moment to realise where he’d seen them before — Milksprings. There had been hundreds of them embedded in the cavern roof, holding a complex net of power.
He heard footsteps crunch towards him over the snow, much smaller and lighter than the guards’ heavy stride. ‘Aleksar? Can you tell me what happened?’
He wiped his bloody fingers on the snow and stood, turning to find Delphine standing at the edge of the clearing, her dark skin turned sallow and grey at the sight of the bloody ruin. ‘I think they were Blood-Mages, madame.’ It now made sense that his skin had been crawling, that the memories he’d tried to bury had been rising to haunt him as they’d drawn nearer to this place.
Her eyes widened, but if she was shocked, it was only for a moment. Isidro saw her gaze track down to the woman slumped at his feet, and then to the bare fingers of his good hand, still faintly smeared with blood.
One of the guards was prodding through the pile of bodies that had been thrown against the woodpile. ‘No sign of life here,’ he said, straightening.
‘The only survivor, is she?’ Delphine asked, and turned to Isidro. ‘Can you wake her up?’
He crouched down again and shook her, but she did not stir.
‘Step back, boy,’ the other guard said. He shouldered Isidro aside and stooped to give Sierra a sharp slap across the cheek. Isidro held his breath. He’d never seen Sierra wake without spilling power — but if she’d been hiding among the slaves she must have found some way to conceal herself.
The slap roused no response. ‘Afraid not, madame,’ the soldier said. ‘What in the hells happened here? Did she have aught to do with it?’ He nudged Sierra’s limp form with his toe.
‘I doubt it,’ Delphine said. ‘The power’s thick as fleas on an alley cat, but there’s no unusual amount clinging to her …’ Steeling herself, Delphine came forward to pick up one of the stones, but Isidro saw her swallow hard as she moved closer to the mangled bodies. ‘Blood-Mages. Aleksar, are you sure?’
‘I’m certain, madame. Can’t you smell it? It stinks like hot metal and rot. But where did these stones come from?’
Delphine rolled the stone between her gloved fingertips. ‘I can’t sense it the way you can. Your exposure has altered the way you sense power, I think. As for the stones, I couldn’t say. The mechanism by which they’re formed is not well understood.’ She turned to the guard and gestured to the girl. ‘Move her out of the way,’ she said. ‘Aleksar, people died here. That would taint the residual power —’
‘Not like this. I know Blood Magic when I feel it, madame.’ That same sickly scent of fear and pain and power had filled Kell’s tent the day he was tortured, but he couldn’t bring himself to say that out loud.
Isidro turned away, trying to collect his thoughts as the guard hoisted Sierra over his shoulder. His gaze fell on one of the nearby bodies and he hooked his toe under its shoulder to heave the corpse over. Beside it was a scattered mass of charred wood, the fragments studded all over with twisted and misshapen gobs of metal, mixed with jagged shards of stone.
‘Aleksar —’ Delphine began, but then she broke off, staring at the scorched wreckage. ‘What in the hells is that?’
He stooped to take a closer look. None of the fragments were bigger than his thumb, but after a moment’s study he began to see what it could have been — that part was a handle, and this the remains of a trigger, and here a collection of fragments made the arms of a small, stout bow. ‘It could be a crossbow, madame.’
Delphine crouched at his side to peer at it, and Isidro lifted his head to look around the clearing, focussing not on the circle of gore this time, but the patchy forest around them and the cliff that loomed to the east. Then he looked down at the body again. The face had been spared the impact of the blast — a man well past his middle years, with an iron-grey beard and close-cropped hair, and a priest’s tattoo on his face. Isidro bent down for a closer look, but the stench of Blood Magic that clung to the man forced him back, threatening to make his stomach heave. ‘A priest, were you?’ he muttered in Ricalani. ‘Tigers take you, you bastard.’ It was beginning to make sense. Earthblood was remote and insular, and fed with a steady supply of bodies to serve the temple. No one would notice or particularly care if one of those wretches disappeared, or turned up with strange and unexplained wounds. Earthblood was one of the few places in Ricalan where an aspiring mage would have access to victims from which to raise power and any chance of escaping Kell’s notice.
‘Aleksar, what did you say?’ Delphine asked.
‘He was a priest, madame,’ Isidro said. ‘The others, too, I think. They probably left the temple when they saw the army coming. The other priests might not realise there were Blood-Drinkers in their midst, but they’d never slip past the Akharian mages.’
‘Four of them?’ Delphine asked, looking over the bodies.
‘A master and his acolytes,’ Isidro said.
‘But why in the hells would they attack our men and draw attention to themselves?’ one of the guards asked.
‘They needed sacrifices,’ Isidro said. ‘Blood-Mages have no power without them. I wonder why they didn’t just take them from the temple servants? They must have thought a work-team an easy target.’
‘But something went wrong,’ Delphine said.
Isidro suppressed a smile. That would be Sierra — no one could plan for something like her. ‘I think these devices ran on enchantments, madame,’ he said. ‘Can’t you feel the spilled power in the air around us? Maybe they were flawed, or corrupted by exposure to Blood Magic.’ He turned to Delphine. ‘Is that possible?’
‘Perhaps. It’s not something we’ve been able to test,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I suppose these must be weapons, but they failed and tore them all to shreds. The slaves too, poor things, but at least it was a swifter end than these savages had in mind for them.’
‘How did the wench survive?’ one of the guards asked, nodding to where Sierra lay.
Delphine frowned at the spot where she’d been found and at the dead Blood-Mages arrayed ar
ound her. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Perhaps an interference pattern in the flux of power protected her. You see, when two sets of waves intersect, the peaks and troughs —’ She broke off when she saw the soldier’s eyes glaze over. ‘Oh, never mind. Aleksar, remind me later and I’ll explain it to you properly, but I think it may be linked to the formation of the stones, as well. I hope she’ll be able to tell us what happened when she wakes. You there,’ she said, gesturing to the nearest of the guards. ‘Stay here until one of the other fellows guarding the slaves turn up. They shouldn’t be far away. Have one of them ride back and tell the commander that some Blood-Mages from the temple were found and killed. Have the other slaves give these poor creatures a decent burial; and oh, when that girl wakes, I’ll want to question her. Make sure the slave-masters know.’
As she spoke, Isidro turned away, raked his hand through his hair and looked up at the sky. His heart was only just beginning to slow from its frantic pace, and he still didn’t know what to make of the fact that Sierra was here, a slave like him, when for all this time he’d comforted himself thinking that she was safe in the midst of the Wolf Clan’s army, with Cam watching her back. Did this mean Cam was in danger, too? No, that couldn’t be — she’d have found a way to tell him if that were the case, no matter what it cost.
Once he’d moved as far away from his mistress as he dared, Isidro turned his attention inwards, and sought out his connection to Rasten.
He was still there, watching in silence, but a little calmer now, it seemed.
What in the Black Sun’s name is she doing here? Isidro demanded.
Hiding, Rasten replied. Dremman thought her too dangerous to keep around. He tried to get rid of her by selling her back to me. When that didn’t work, she thought his next step would be to poison her. With the Slavers, she’s beyond his reach as well as Kell’s.
And no one had thought to tell Isidro about it. He knew full well that Rasten only told him what he needed him to know, and though Sierra must have some way to keep herself hidden from the Akharian mages, he could see it would be too risky for her to contact him directly. Still, the thought of her hiding in the women’s camp filled him with a burning rage, a tangible heat that seemed to coil around his spine like a serpent of fire. He knew how the soldiers used the female slaves, and if she’d been forced to endure that, he’d …
Isidro swallowed hard and pushed the thought aside. What could he do? He was a slave himself, powerless, and crippled as well.
A hand on his arm made him start violently. It was Delphine — she’d circled around the gory scene to his side, and when he jumped at her touch she took a hasty step back. Slave or not, he was much bigger than her, and in the last few months he’d regained much of his strength. Isidro bowed his head. ‘My apologies, madame.’
‘What’s the matter, Aleksar?’ she asked, folding her arms. ‘You look upset.’
‘It’s the Blood Magic, madame. It’s all around us, and it’s got me on edge.’ It was the truth, if not the whole of it. The greasy feel of tainted power clung to the air as thick as fog, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was drawing it in with every breath.
Delphine regarded him with sympathy. ‘Can you bear it a little longer? These Blood-Drinkers must have a bolthole nearby if they intended to spirit away half a dozen slaves. If there is a hidden passage into the temple, then they could be one and the same, and who knows what records or artefacts they have hidden away.’
Between the shock of seeing Sierra and the taint of corrupted power clouding his mind, he’d forgotten the task that brought them here. ‘Yes, madame. That makes sense.’ He turned to look over the scene again, searching for the tracks the mages must have made … only there were no prints to be seen in the crisp snow, other than those of the slaves and the ones their own party had made.
‘There’re no footprints,’ Delphine said. ‘The soldiers noticed that already. They must have some means of hiding their trail. It stands to reason — they couldn’t spirit the slaves away without having soldiers hunting after them. But if they reek as badly as you say, have they left a trail you could follow?’
Isidro shook himself, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. If he was to have any hope of helping Sierra, then he needed to guide Delphine to what the Akharians sought. They needed to find the way into Demon’s Spire. The best thing he could do right now was to put all his shock and worry at this new revelation aside, and deal with it later.
Isidro pointed to the east. ‘It’s clear as day, madame. They came this way.’
They set out with just one guard, while the other remained to carry out Delphine’s orders. Sierra was left where she lay, still unconscious but safely bundled up in her coat to keep from freezing.
The trail led due east towards the cliffs, near as straight as a crow flies, and he followed it to a narrow crevice where the walls were coated with a milky rime of ice and the ground was covered by a deep drift of snow.
There, they stopped, and Delphine swung down from her saddle with an expression of dismay. ‘What on earth … Aleksar, are you sure this is the right place?’
‘Madame, I’m afraid your hound’s led us astray,’ the guard said.
Isidro ignored them both and clambered into the crevice, over the drifted snow. Surprisingly, it bore up under his weight. Perhaps that was how the mages had hidden their tracks, by freezing the surface too solid for them to break the crust.
He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe deeply. It wasn’t possible for the foul and rancid power to taint the very air, and he wasn’t poisoning himself by breathing it in, whatever his senses told him.
In the back of his mind, Isidro felt the faint tickle of Rasten’s attention turning his way once again. Rasten had been looking in on him every few minutes since they’d left Sierra behind. Isidro had the impression that Rasten wanted to tell him something, but for some reason held himself back.
Isidro pushed that matter aside as well and focussed on the problem at hand, trying to keep his throat from closing up with revulsion. There had to be a doorway of some kind here. Holding his good hand out to keep himself from walking straight into the wall, Isidro took a step — and then Delphine gasped aloud, and the guardsman swore an oath. It broke Isidro’s concentration, and with a twitch of irritation he opened his eyes and turned to them, only to find they were both staring wide-eyed at his hand. He turned back to find his forearm had vanished up to the wrist, apparently swallowed up by a solid wall of ice and rock.
‘By the Black Sun herself,’ he said, forgetting himself and speaking in Ricalani. He drew a breath and held it, as he would if diving under water, and stepped through the wall.
Power flowed over him like a waterfall, cool, crisp and clean. For a moment, it seemed to wash away the foul taint of Blood Magic, but only for a moment, for when he stepped through the air on the other side was just as thick with corrupted power, if not more so.
A moment later, Delphine ducked through after him, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘It’s an illusion! It’s been theorised that such things were possible, but no one’s ever managed to make one … not like this, anyway. Remarkable!’ She stepped closer and craned her head back, peering up to the ledge where the veil of power seemed to originate. The passage was tall enough for a mounted man to enter and wide enough to allow a horse to turn about. A little daylight drifted through the enchantment, but it was muted, as though filtered through a filmy curtain. Just beyond the entrance, the passage curved away to the right, vanishing into darkness.
Isidro pulled out the lantern-stone he always wore on a leather cord around his neck. He wrapped his hand around the stone and set it glowing with a flicker of power.
Again, Rasten stirred, and once more Isidro thought him about to speak, but instead he pulled back and settled into a watchful silence.
The wide, tall passage was eerily reminiscent of Milksprings. Like those caves, this tunnel had clearly been shaped by human hands, but the stone was very differen
t — nearly black, and stained here and there with a rusty red, utterly unlike the pale limestone to the south.
After a short distance they reached a branch in the tunnel — one section opened onto a set of stairs that marched upwards to the temple, Isidro presumed. The other continued into the rock, with the trail of power drawing them deeper. ‘This way, madame,’ Isidro said. ‘I think we’re getting close.’
Around another corner they found a pair of rough-hewn doors. One of them hung ajar, and faint lamplight gleamed through the crack.
The guard went to take the lead, but Delphine called him back. ‘Let the slave go first,’ she told him. ‘They may have set traps, and a Sensitive will spot them before we do. I’ll give you a shield, Aleksar, but do be careful.’
When her mantle of power settled over him, it came as a relief. It was harder to sense power through the veil, but it finally dulled the reek of it and let him breathe without choking.
Isidro sidled up to the door and peered inside. There were staples on the other side, but the bar that secured them lay discarded to one side. He scrutinised the floor for trip-lines, but found nothing, so gingerly eased the door open.
The chamber beyond was a mudroom lit by a single lamp, its wick over-long and smoking. Racks held the everyday implements of survival — snowshoes, axes and spears, and a toboggan propped against the wall. Split wood was piled high around the edges of the chamber.
On the far side of the room another set of doors led deeper into the mountain. Isidro pressed his ear to them, and when a long moment passed with nothing but silence, he cautiously stepped through, with Delphine and the guard trailing behind.
It brought them into a good-sized hall. A few trestle tables filled the centre, and all around the edges were cubicles set up as bedchambers. Some were empty and unused, but others had been recently inhabited, screened with blankets snagged back to reveal rumpled bedding on the pallets and baskets of belongings shoved underneath. Other cubicles had been turned into makeshift cells, sealed with crude lattices of wood, the doorways hanging open and ready to receive new prisoners.