Still alive, with a chance of actually reaching Valshoa in time, Blaine thought. An acceptable trade.
Penhallow laid a hand on his shoulder. “Your friends are safe and undamaged,” Penhallow said, answering the unasked question. “Niklas’s battle healer has his hands full with all the men who are injured, but most are in no danger. We’re in the lower levels of the old manor, as safe a place as to be found. Now sleep. I’ll make sure someone sits with you. And if you need my help, I will know.”
Blaine started to protest, but exhaustion washed over him, and between it and the compulsion in Penhallow’s voice, he sank into sleep before he could say another word.
“You’re looking better,” Connor said as Blaine opened his eyes sometime later. “Glad you’re still with us.”
Blaine drew a deep breath. He felt a dull pain in his side, but he had a vague memory of it being much sharper not long ago. For a moment, he felt completely disoriented. Then he remembered the conversation with Penhallow, the battle, and his near brush with death.
“Thank you,” he said raggedly. “Penhallow said you called him to me.”
Connor chuckled nervously. “At the time, I wasn’t sure whether you’d thank me or not when you woke up, but I didn’t think Kestel and Niklas intended to leave me any option, regardless.” He sobered. “And if you hate me for it, I’ll understand – although I still think it was the right thing to do. Your Edgeland mates took turns sitting with you. Kestel wouldn’t leave your side until she knew you were going to live.” He shuddered. “I didn’t fancy facing her if you didn’t.”
“What… is it like?” Blaine asked.
Connor took his meaning immediately. “The kruvgaldur? Takes a little getting used to. Most of the time I don’t think about it now. Being with Penhallow all the time makes it stronger.”
Connor paused. “It still makes me nervous when he takes blood, but he’s as kind as possible. I mean, someone can only be so gentle about it.” Another pause. “I had to get used to the idea that I might not have any real privacy, any secrets. Not that I had much to be private about. It was the thought, really, of not being alone in my own mind that took a bit to adjust to.”
He sighed. “Penhallow says he only wants certain information, that he doesn’t go rooting around to see what he can find. I believe him – after all, I don’t think about anything that’s all that exciting.” Connor met Blaine’s gaze. “I don’t think you have to worry. Whether you ever offer up your blood to him is up to you – unless you nearly get yourself killed again.”
“Does he control you?” Blaine managed to meet Connor’s gaze and found a mix of emotions swirling in the young man’s eyes.
“Penhallow? I don’t think so.” He gave a nervous laugh. “If he could, I wouldn’t have gotten banged up quite so badly in a few of the fights. He certainly doesn’t control Traher Voss.”
“I saw you fighting at the hedge,” Blaine pressed. “You gained a lot of skill in a very short time.”
Connor looked away. “Oh. That wasn’t Penhallow. It was the Wraith Lord. He can take over my actions when he possesses me.” He looked down, anywhere except at Blaine. “He’s saved my life by taking me over, fighting through me.”
“By possessing you?”
Connor nodded with an uncomfortable expression on his face. “Yes.” He paused. “So far, he’s been honorable and departed when it would harm me, or when the situation that required his presence was over.” He paused. “There’s something else you need to know. The Wraith Lord was one of the original Lords of the Blood. Before Mirdalur.”
Blaine lay still for a moment, letting that bit of information sink in. “So I’m not the last Lord of the Blood,” he said finally.
Connor shook his head. “Yes, and no. The Wraith Lord is the essence… maybe the soul… of one of the original Lords. But you are the last living Lord of the Blood, and from everything Treven’s found in Quintrel’s books, that’s what really counts. The magic is in the blood – your blood.”
“Will the kruvgaldur change anything?” Blaine asked.
Connor shrugged. “You and Penhallow are connected. Beyond that, I don’t know how it will work for you. I thought about that when I asked for Penhallow’s help, but if you were dead, there’d be no working the ritual at all.”
“Has the Wraith Lord told you anything – about bringing back the magic, or Valshoa?”
Connor gave a grim smile. “When you’re feeling better, he’s requested a meeting with you and Nidhud.”
Blaine looked at him skeptically. “He waits until I nearly die?”
“He needed to observe you. He wanted to come to his own conclusions about your motives, to assure himself that you were not aligned with Reese.”
Blaine sighed. “Here’s hoping he’s got some ideas on what to do when we get there – assuming we find it. We may have come all this way for nothing.”
“He believes in Valshoa. So does Nidhud.”
“I wish I did,” Blaine said tiredly. “Despite the maps, I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Then you won’t have long to wait,” Connor replied. Blaine heard him push back his chair and stand. “One more thing,” he said. “The talishte scouts have spotted magic storms. They’re still a distance away, and their direction is always uncertain, but it’s possible they could head this way.”
“Just what we need. One more complication,” Blaine murmured.
“Thought you’d want the warning. The only thing worse than being hit by one is not knowing it’s coming.”
“Thank you,” Blaine murmured.
“Just save the magic, huh? That’s all the thanks I need.”
Blaine awoke sometime later to find that the pillar candle on the floor beside his pallet had burned down from its previous height, and he wondered how long he had been out.
“You slept for a couple of candlemarks,” Kestel answered his unspoken question. “Verran came down to check on you, and he brought food for both of us.”
She nodded toward a loaf of bread, a wineskin, a length of dried sausage, and a hunk of cheese that lay on a kerchief nearby. “Candlelight dinner. Romantic,” she said, but the humor in her voice did not match the concern in her eyes.
“This almost-dying shit is getting old,” Blaine muttered. “Bad enough in Velant, but I thought I’d gotten past those days.”
“Not much fun for the rest of us, either.”
Blaine sighed and reached out to take her hand. “Sorry.”
“You’re alive. That’s all that matters.” Kestel’s voice was brisk, but her eyes told another story. She bent down to kiss him, and he drew her close. “I’m glad you accepted Penhallow’s help.” She paused. “Are you angry with us for asking him?”
Blaine grimaced. “I didn’t have much choice.”
“There’s always a choice.” Kestel paused. “If it makes you feel better, I knew Penhallow’s reputation from court. Even people who didn’t like talishte allowed that Penhallow was a man of honor. I took a risk and trusted him. It was better than losing you.” Abruptly, she forced a smile and changed topics. “Eat your dinner. You’ll feel better.”
With a grunt, Blaine managed to sit up without her assistance. He winced at a sharp pain in his side, then realized it felt more like a pulled muscle than a nearly fatal injury. Not too bad, considering.
He leaned back against the stone wall and reached out to rip apart the bread. He offered some to Kestel, but she shook her head.
“No thanks. While you were sleeping, I ate. What’s left is for you.” She nodded toward a small cup Blaine had not noticed. “That’s an elixir from Niklas’s healer. Said it would help with the pain and promised that by morning, you’ll feel good enough to ride.”
Blaine ate his dinner and washed it down with wine. “Any word about Pollard’s troops?”
Kestel shook her head. “After you went down and the sun set, Penhallow’s men – and Nidhud’s Knights – showed up, although by that time, our folks had taken
quite a toll on Pollard’s troops. Your crazy maneuver worked – except for the part where you almost died.”
Blaine shrugged. “No plan is perfect.” He paused. “How about Voss? We could use some reinforcements.”
“Not yet, although Penhallow believes he’ll be here before you work the ritual.”
“Nothing like cutting it close.”
Kestel sighed. “Speaking of which – I’m to tell you that Nidhud, Niklas, Lowrey, Penhallow, and Connor will be down to see you after eleventh bells. Piran and I would like to stay as well, and Zaryae asked to come along. It’ll make for a tight fit in here.” She smiled, and Blaine could see her concern. “After what you’ve been through, I figured we could be your ears and memory, in case you’re not quite back to being yourself.”
Blaine squeezed her hand. “I’d appreciate that.” Food and wine fortified him, but the battle had taken its toll. Despite the elixir and Penhallow’s healing, Blaine felt exhausted and laid back down on his pallet.
“Go ahead. Sleep,” Kestel urged. “One of us will be here. We’ll wake you before it’s time for the meeting.”
Blaine thought of several responses, but sleep took him before he could say anything more.
When Blaine next woke, he was surprised to find that the ache in his belly was almost gone, and he felt much improved. Enough so that he insisted on sitting up to greet his visitors, who extended so much concern over his recovery that he was actually happy to get down to the business of mapping out the next day’s ride.
Piran had found two barrel halves and a wide board, and he made a low table next to Blaine’s pallet. The others found seats on the floor around the table, and Kestel spread out the maps once more.
“While you were sleeping, Treven and I did a little more work to decode what the disks mean for the maps,” Kestel said with a smug smile. “Connor helped.”
“Actually, it was the Wraith Lord, not me,” Connor said self-consciously.
“Much as it pains me as a scholar to admit,” Lowrey said, “I wasn’t the one to have some of the best insights,” he said, peering over his spectacles at Kestel with avuncular pride. Kestel grinned and jokingly preened.
“Put a spy and a scholar together, and watch out,” she joked.
“Along with an immortal with a long memory,” Lowrey added, with a glance toward Connor.
“And Nidhud caught up with us, but there’s still no sign of Voss,” Piran added.
“Anyhow, with Nidhud, Grimur’s book, and the benefit of having all the maps together, we noticed a pattern to the odd markings and the slits in the disks,” Kestel said, looking as if she would burst with excitement. “See?”
Using a thin piece of muslin, Kestel had created an overlay for each map and marked them with the symbols and slits of the disks. “Four maps, thirteen Lords of the Blood – that’s three disks for most of the maps, and four disks for one of the maps.”
“But we don’t have the thirteenth disk,” Blaine protested. “Quintrel does.”
“True,” said Nidhud. “But there is a reason Quintrel chose Valshoa as his hiding place, and a reason he kept that particular disk for himself.” The Knight smiled, making his teeth plain. “As you can see, the symbols were keys to items in specific manuscripts and to markings on the map. When the correct disks are matched with the correct map and manuscript, a path emerges.”
Kestel laid out the map of the Continent, the star map, and the map of Valshoa, then she and Lowrey worked to coordinate the muslin overlays until the pattern became apparent.
“The hidden city is no longer hidden,” Lowrey said triumphantly. “Look there,” he said, pointing.
Blaine and the others leaned in to see. The markings from the disk matched with those on the map, and the result, when all of the pieces were combined, was a winding path through the mountains to a valley nestled within the mountain range.
“But the disks had magic,” Connor protested. “At least, the one I took to Garnoc did,” he said with a glance toward Penhallow.
Lowrey nodded. “Before the magic died, the disks would have required less effort to draw the same conclusion,” he said, motioning toward the muslin overlays Kestel had created. “When brought within range of each other and the proper map, they would have aligned to reveal the hidden messages.” He shrugged. “Anything magic can do can also be done with effort – it just takes longer.”
Lowrey paused and consulted the notes Blaine’s group had brought back from the lyceum, then compared the jottings to Quintrel’s journals. “If I put all the clues together,” he said, “Valshoa should be there,” he said, pointing to a place on Connor’s map of the Continent.
“In the mountains,” Kestel said, peering at the map. “And on a spot the map says should be a place of power.”
Blaine studied the markings, then looked up at Nidhud. “Do you know if that’s where Valshoa should be located? Is this really the path?”
Nidhud frowned as he examined the marked trail. “I’ve heard stories over the centuries. This seems to match the landmarks.”
“And we know that Vigus Quintrel believed his clues would lead a worthy champion to his hiding place,” Lowrey said. “Connor and I have spent a good bit of time parsing through the journal and manuscripts. We found a few more hidden memories,” he said with a look at Connor, who glanced away, uncomfortably.
“Quintrel left us clues within clues within riddles,” Lowrey continued. “The information that connected the dots, he hid in Connor’s memory. We just had to find the rest of the pieces to be able to trigger what Quintrel made sure Connor knew.”
“If we’re agreed then,” Piran said, “let’s make a copy or two of the final map so that we don’t have to fumble with all these pieces to know where in Raka we’re going.”
“You’re forgetting something,” Zaryae said. She sat apart from the group, outside the pool of lantern light that illuminated the map. “The Guardians.”
Blaine recalled the cryptic warning that Quintrel had left in Connor’s memory. “So how do we get around them?”
“I don’t fancy coming all this way only to get killed by falling rocks or tumble into a pit because the people who live there don’t like visitors,” Piran grumbled.
“Connor and I have been working on the Quintrel journals,” Lowrey said. “There are four Guardians along the road to Valshoa, a combination of puzzles and physically dangerous challenges.” He paused. “Of course, before magic failed, there would have been magical obstacles to deal with in addition to the Guardians. Now, just the physical traps remain.”
Lowrey grinned. “We believe we’ve found a few clues to the Guardians.” He glanced at Connor as if to give him the chance to speak if he wanted to, but Connor looked away.
“The first clue said ‘Look to the stars,’” Lowrey said. “So naturally, we looked at the star map. All of the constellations are named for the major gods.”
“Four major gods, four Guardians,” Kestel mused. “Charrot, Torven, Esthrane, and Vessa.” She frowned. “How does that provide a clue for getting by the obstacles?”
Lowrey smiled. “This is where all of the trivia rattling around in my scholarly brain finally comes in handy,” he said. “I won’t bore you with the dead ends we pursued trying to match clues to the gods. But we found something.” He leaned forward as if imparting a great secret. “The oldest, most famous of the stories about each of the four major gods involves their solving some kind of riddle or passing a test.”
Kestel grinned, and her eyes sparkled. “Of course! That makes sense.”
“Only to you,” Piran muttered. “Some of us pay the gods as little attention as possible.”
Kestel rolled her eyes and sighed. “And for you, Piran Rowse, it’s probably a good thing if they’re ignoring you, too.” She turned back to Blaine and the others. “The first one that comes to my mind is Charrot, who crossed the ancient sky before the stars were lit to bring back fire.”
“Torven had to prove that he coul
d master the spirits of the dead in order to become lord of the Sea of Souls,” Zaryae said quietly.
“Esthrane navigated a maze filled with traps to rescue one of her handmaidens who had been kidnapped by a lesser god,” Nidhud added.
“Vessa had to pass through fire to prove her ability to become the goddess of flame,” Connor said.
“Darkness, ghosts, maze traps, and fire,” Blaine said quietly. “So finding Valshoa’s location is only the beginning. We still have to survive the journey.”
“Who’s to say Reese and Pollard won’t be right behind us with an army?” Piran asked. “I’m more concerned about getting an arrow in my back than working out some ancient puzzle.”
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