Sacrament of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 3)

by Kathrin Hutson

  A splintering crack filled the Blood of the Veil’s domed shield of natural forces, and a wooden staff protruded through the spinning wall of sand and clay and salty ocean, so very like Kherron’s tears. The staff jerked upward, and the barrier split, as if it were a curtain being ripped in two from the bottom up. Then Torrahs stepped through the barrier, grinning at his final success until he saw the shattered amarach vessel in Kherron’s arms and knew it was too late.

  “You fool!” the Wanderer roared, bringing the end of his staff up and aiming it at the mortal who was not wholly of man and therefore had the means to bring the immortal age of exile to an end. “You cannot—”

  Kherron’s scream of rage terrified even himself. He heard it as if from somewhere very far away—as if he were somewhere else, silently viewing the horrible thing he had done which now heralded the redemption of every creature beneath the Unclaimed’s watchful gaze and the restoration of balance her very existence had corrupted. The hand that had left the Sky Metal dagger lodged in her breast flew toward the old man who had sought this moment until the very end. But the Wanderer had not known the thing he wanted Kherron to achieve so badly was the very same thing that would, by definition, end his lifelong pursuits and leave him with nothing to show for it but old, empty hands.

  Whatever force Kherron unleashed with the gesture—he did not know what had responded to his plea, only that he wanted Torrahs gone, away from him, the taint of his presence removed from this last shred of time he had with Dehlyn—the Wanderer repelled. The man’s grimace of concentration contorted his features.

  “What lies inside her is mine,” the old man snarled. He pressed the entire weight of his own body and the force of the resisting magic he had called farther into the swirling dome.

  Kherron screamed again, as endlessly as he had upon first plummeting into the void but now because he knew what he’d done, and he knew what his betrayer could not have. His fingers caught upon the Veil—the very thing that separated the natural world around him from the unseen forces on the other side, forces more ancient still than the amarach. Forces that had called Kherron into being within his mother’s womb. He ripped the Veil down, like throwing pottery from a shelf, and pounded a tightly curled fist against the doorway. The void, which had never appeared but through passageways and frozen time and with a delicate transition from the plane of life and balanced forces, shuddered into being behind Torrahs now with none of those things to draw it open.

  The old man seemed to know exactly what had happened. His furious resistance faltered, blue eyes wide with comprehension and refusal and a fear Kherron had never seen on the man who had chosen quite unwisely to make Kherron his pawn. Torrahs slammed the butt of his staff into the slick, muddy earth, using it to steady himself against the open void behind him, which lapped with hungry tongues around the hem of his cloak and pulled his long hair back—tasting him, waiting to consume his life and his hope while he withered and did not die within the purple mists.

  Kherron grabbed the Sky Metal dagger once more and jerked it out of the Unclaimed’s hardened flesh, choosing to ignore how much it felt like removing an axe from a block of wood. Then he sent the weapon hurtling toward its final end, not at Torrahs himself but at the staff through which the man channeled the unseen power keeping him in this world. The Sky Metal blade struck the staff and cleaved it in two before spinning endlessly into the purple mists. Torrahs fell, his foundation broken, his power unleashed, and though he clawed at the muddy earth beneath him, the void was even more desperate still than he. It drew him back into its timeless clutches of endless torment and stagnant non-existence, then sealed itself without a sound.

  Kherron turned back to Dehlyn again in his arms, her head hanging limp behind her, her hands splayed across the ground because she no longer clutched his tunic. The slivers that had spread across her hardened skin grew, thickened, spilling that purple light within her like a dam on the verge of bursting. Then her body shattered, the pieces of the woman he had come to cherish, been compelled to obey, and in some ways still deeply loved scattering in every direction. They stung his cheeks and hands, pelted his tunic like so many broken shards of pottery.

  Kherron hardly felt it. The whirling dome of earth and sky he’d entreated into existence moved faster and faster, spinning at a dizzying speed until it hardly existed anymore. But it still remained. He looked up from his now empty hands to see what had become of the battle upon the coast of the Amneas Sea.

  Chapter 28

  It all looked very much the same as when Kherron had summoned the doorway for the hurried passage of time, lying beside Aelis and Paden on the side of the mountain while the day flashed before their eyes and Paden’s men searched for their abducted healer. Only this time, he knew it for what it was and could follow what occurred. Though he did not know if the world beyond his place on the jutting cliff moved because he had entered the doorway or if the Unclaimed’s release by his hands had set it into motion, he did not try to stop it. Kherron did not have it in him to do a thing more than watch.

  The streaking blazes of amarach light blinked in and out with unpredictable urgency, like so many fireflies on a summer night. He caught them locked in battle with one another in the sky, skewering their brethren with Sky Metal blades, puncturing immortal flesh with strokes unseen in this warped speed. And on the damp, sodden ground, a legion of armored soldiers flying the blue banners of Lord Rattegar’s sigil raged across the scattered battle. At what point Paden had arrived to enter the fray, Kherron could not guess. But they were here now, as the man had said they would be, fighting valiantly against an immortal foe they could not in their wildest dreams hope to best.

  The amarach engaging Paden’s army, however, were few. Most of them fought their own, though a small number apparently assumed the mortals in the mud might be easily cowed by brilliant steel and flashing light. The real enemy of Paden’s forces came in the form of two dozen old men wielding the unleashed power of the magic they had studied, yearned to possess, and now could summon far easier than ever in their wildest imaginings.

  Everything moved so swiftly still, Kherron only caught mere glimpses; these were enough to convince him everything had changed. The members of the Brotherhood cast powerful magic, flaring in every color. Lorraii stood above the bodies of two fallen amarach, her Sky Metal blade held aloft as she leered over her targets, her mouth torn wide in a scream of victory. In one instant, Aelis’ bear had risen on her hind legs, towering over two Brothers with their fists extended toward her. In the next, she stood on two legs still, but they were a woman’s legs, her bearskin cloak whirling behind her. One old man lay on the ground, and the other struggled against the Nateru woman made whole, her hand locked around his throat while her bear’s deadly claws still protruded from the ends of her fingers. He thought he saw Mirahl once too, clad in amarach armor and diving toward an unseen foe. A man who looked like Zerod Ophad, arms outstretched, cast a blaze of light at one black-haired brother with a thin goatee, who stared with wide eyes, as if he’d seen a ghost.

  Kherron saw new faces too, strangers he did not recognize and felt no urge to name. He cared for those he did know and hoped they made it through the bloody day, but his heart had turned away from any desire to remain a part of it. The Blood of the Veil had fought his battle. He had won, and he had lost, and his duty had been fulfilled in this time and in this place. All he wanted was to be free of it.

  He wondered briefly if this was how Dehlyn had felt—harboring every element of ancient knowledge for centuries, loving those who stepped into her long, winding path, hoping they were well while still completely aware that anything she did would have no effect on the outcome. Over and over again. Kherron endured this pervading detachment as the sun drifted from its mid-morning place to sink behind the Bladeshales in the west in a matter of minutes. And he let himself weep for what he had never wanted but had lost all the same.

  Finally, when the darkness of night had enshrouded the Amneas coas
t, he released the spinning dome around him with a heavy resignation. The clay and saltwater and whipped mud fell around him with a hush, and he stood. A few bodies still littered the narrow path leading to Deeprock Spire’s doorstep, but the battle that had really mattered very little, once Dehlyn had made it into his arms, had apparently ended swiftly with almost no traces of what had happened here. No fires burned now within he fortress, and he did not see a single amarach or soldier or robed Brother. None remained. If he had come upon this in another time, he might have thought the entire thing had been a dream.

  Kherron wiped his eyes and stepped down the rising bluff, his footsteps silent in the sea-soaked mud. He turned down the narrow road away from the coast, which would take him back to the mountains, or north into the ice lands, or south to the sandy, humid beaches lining the Teriborus Ocean. Perhaps he’d go all the way west, beyond Hephorai to parts still yet unknown to him, or anywhere in between. This road, though, had ended at the sea, and he had no other option but to move on.

  After a few minutes walking through the frigid darkness, he passed one of the strewn outcroppings of black rock and heard the rustle of something moving around it. He only stopped when Aelis’ shadowed form stepped out from behind the rising structure; she must have waited hours for him to appear, while it had been mere minutes for Kherron. They stared at each other for a moment, and then she approached him. Her tangled, fiery mane of hair was muted by the lack of moonlight in the greyed-out sky, but her nod of gratitude—of acknowledgment and pride and something not unlike sorrow—brought the sharp lines of her face to light within Kherron’s mind. The Unclaimed had been unleashed, forever now, and with that had come the return of all Aelis’ forms—of all Nateru forms. What else the annihilation of an immortal vessel brought with it for this new dawn of the world remained unknown. But when Aelis cupped his cheek with one hand, he remembered why he’d done it.

  Chapter 29

  The Blood of the Veil heard the call as if it had carried upon the wind to find him, and he came. The woman with the bearskin cloak draped over her shoulders, despite the gentle warmth of summer’s comfort in these mountains, walked beside him. Through the forest they moved, taking their time, relishing in the soft breeze and the excited birdsong and the whispers of so many voices rejoicing in the coming of this new life—one more to deliver into the knowledge of the old ways that had now become the new.

  When they reached the sacred hollow hidden away within the trees, they found a woman lying there upon the ground. She’d built herself a bed of uprooted ferns, now stained with the blood of life and the miraculous thing she had just done alone, in these mountains, with no one there to comfort her. But she was not alone. Not now.

  The babe who could not have been more than a few hours old suckled at her mother’s breast, wrapped in the cloak the woman had shed when she’d felt within her tired bones the rightness of the place in which she had stopped to give birth. She looked up at the pair of strangers, who had appeared so quietly and without warning, and for a moment, terror pinched her features. It must have been the sight of the man standing before her, his bare arms and torso revealing the roped, glistening, impossible scars he carried now without shame. But when the broad-shouldered man offered a gentle smile, the new mother seemed to both remember why she’d come and accept the presence of her visitors, despite the proof of what the man had endured. She was not, after all, ignorant to the inexplicable wonders of this world; it had been one such wonder who’d appeared to her less than a year ago, a man made of water and light, who had given her the daughter she now held in her arms.

  The redheaded Nateru crouched beside the woman on the ground and smoothed back the mother’s hair from where it clung to her face in now-dried sweat. The babe finished nursing, working its tiny mouth in satisfaction before her blue eyes opened to gaze in fascination at the two new characters who had stepped into her very short life.

  “You made it just in time,” the Blood of the Veil said, his voice low and kind.

  The woman smiled up at him, caressing her daughter’s pink cheek. “Her name is Tataari,” she said.

  The scarred man knelt beside the woman he had never met, pausing to wait for the new mother’s nod of approval; she was quite obviously at peace here, in the safety of the forest, face to face with the man she had been told would guide her and the child both when they came. With her silent permission, the Blood of the Veil lowered two fingers upon the child’s forehead and smiled. “Welcome, Tataari.” To the mother, he added, “You are safe and among friends. Stay as long as you wish.” Then he met the redheaded Nateru’s glistening brown gaze—the kind shared between two souls so intertwined, they did not need words—and nodded. She would stay with the new mother, tend to her, and then she would tell the stories.

  Then the Blood rose again and turned toward the hollow, eager in his heart to begin what was to come. He lifted aside the curtain of vines and stooped inside the dark shelter against the mountainside. His hand trailed along the one wall made of stone, cut into the mountain itself, until he came to the place beckoning him. The fingers that had touched the new babe’s forehead now pressed against the stone, communing with it, revealing the story, entering the past and bits of the future that were known already to him. The rest could be written later.

  At his touch, the rock glowed with a dull copper warmth, etching the shapes and colors of its own life there in one such heartrock of the earth. There Tataari was named, and here she would return when it came her time to deliver her own stories.

  Then he moved to the back of the hollow, where the long tunnel stretched down below the earth—where the twisted willow sang against the column of light spilling from the world above and the sacred pool awaited the next in a long lineage of first rites. In time, that place would become well-known by the babe as she grew—his sister, the man supposed. His ward and his successor. Tataari, Blood of the Veil.

  Looking for More?

  Visit KathrinHutsonFiction.com for news and updates on more LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction, Dark Fantasy, and Dystopian Sci-Fi. You can also sign up for Kathrin’s newsletter, where you get some exclusive dark surprises not seen anywhere else.

  Do you like Dark Fantasy?

  Check out Kathrin Hutson’s other series:

  The Unclaimed Trilogy (NA Dark Fantasy)

  Sanctuary of Dehlyn

  Secret of Dehlyn

  Sacrament of Dehlyn

  Gyenona’s Children Duology

  (Grimdark Fantasy)

  “The Jungle Meets Kill Bill... with dragons!”

  Daughter of the Drackan

  Mother of the Drackan

  Blue Helix Series (LGBTQ Dystopian Sci-Fi)

  “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo meets X-Men”

  Sleepwater Beat

  Sleepwater Static

  Love Dark Fantasy?

  Can’t get enough fast-paced action and intricately carved worlds? Get ready to journey with a vicious, feral, no-apologies heroine the likes of which you’ve never seen. Daughter of the Drackan and the entire Gyenona’s Children series hold all this and more.

  Available on Amazon, wherever good books are sold and at

  KathrinHutsonFiction.com

  “The Jungle Book meets Kill Bill... with dragons!”

  Keelin becomes a terrifying legend among assassins, hunting for answers to violent blackouts after waking covered in blood. Born of humans, raised by beasts who despise the legacy of man, only Keelin can redeem, or destroy, the future of both races.

  READ ON FOR A PREVIEW of Daughter of the Drackan.

  From

  Daughter of the Drackan

  Book One of

  Gyenona’s Children

  “AND THE GREAT DRACKAN resumed its place upon the stone.” The child’s eyes sparkled with delight. Honai rolled the parchment again and set it back on the shelf. The child jumped on the bed, her dark curls bouncing between her shoulders as she pulled the skirt of her nightgown as far out as it would go. Honai laughe
d. “What are you doing?”

  The smile the girl gave her wet nurse was fierce and wild. “I want to be a drackan.”

  Honai smiled and walked to the bedside. The girl jumped high, landing blindly on her knees as the nightgown whipped over her head. Honai giggled with her, tickling the child’s body, then straightened her out on the mattress. “But I’m sure the mighty drackans are not so careless as to let their wings cover their heads?” The girl grinned, wiggling under the quilts. Honai situated her in bed and knelt. “Why do you wish so much to be a drackan?”

  “They’re the greatest things that ever lived.”

  Honai smoothed a lock of dark hair from the child’s face, frowning in mock consternation. “These are the same drackans I know, yes? The terrifying, ruthless brutes, who destroyed villages, ate livestock, and burned forests with their firebreath?”

  The girl patiently shook her head. “They only killed people who scared them. They only ever wanted to fly and protect their babies. And they saved the one boy who would not run from them. He believed in them, and I believe in them.” She held up her hands, casting shadows upon the bed, and pulled a face at them. “I wish I could hear their stories.”

  Honai stood and straightened her skirts. There was no point in arguing with a child’s vibrant imagination, especially before bed. Especially this child. “Well, I’m sure they have their stories, my dear, but they are not for tonight. Sleep well, and perhaps you may dream of your drackans.”