Heirs of Destiny Box Set

by Andy Peloquin

  “Hailen, I need you to get to Lady Briana and stay as close to her as possible,” Evren said. “Right now, the mansion’s going to be on high alert, so the safest place to be is by her side.”

  “What about you?” Hailen asked.

  “I need to get to Killian and tell him everything.” Evren placed a hand on Hailen’s shoulder. “But I’ll be back before—”

  “Wait!” Excitement sparkled in Hailen’s eyes. “Before you go, I need to show you something.”

  Evren’s brow furrowed. “Can it wait?” He’d had a long couple of days and nights—he could use a few minutes of rest before the sun rose.

  “No!” Hailen seized his hand and hauled on his arm. “You need to see this.”

  With an internal sigh, Evren allowed the boy to drag him through the corridors.

  The guards in gold breastplates fixed the two of them with a hard look, but they’d all seen Evren dragging the unconscious Samall. Right now, he guessed the guards would mostly leave him alone—at least until it came time for someone to serve Lady Briana’s breakfast. He was, after all, a servant.

  Hailen led him to the door at the far end of the hall. Evren recognized it—it was the one room in the mansion that he hadn’t been permitted to clean.

  “Hailen!” Evren hissed. “This is the Arch-Guardian’s private study. We’re not supposed to be here.”

  “Just trust me,” Hailen whispered. “This is important.” He slid open the door and slipped inside.

  Evren’s brow furrowed as he followed. What’s important?

  Suroth’s office was surprisingly neat, for a Secret Keeper. Evren had expected chaos on par with the hurricane of clutter that adorned every surface in Graeme’s secret back rooms. Here, parchments lay strewn across the vast desk that occupied the center of the room, but the shelves stood empty save for a handful of strange-shaped stone ornaments. He could make out no discernible use for the objects, but his eyes flew wide as he recognized the strange Serenii symbols etched into their smooth black surfaces.

  Hailen strode over to the shelf and reached for one, a long cylindrical stone roughly the width of Evren’s middle finger and half the length of his forearm.

  “Remember when I told you that Father Reverentus and the Cambionari were teaching me magic words?” Hailen asked, hefting the object. “Serenii words of power?”

  Evren narrowed his eyes. “Yes, but what does that—”

  “Watch.”

  Excitement sparkling in his eyes, Hailen touched a finger to the wound in his neck. The bleeding had slowed but crimson still glistened on his skin. He pressed his crimson-stained finger to the flat end of the cylinder.

  Hailen began to chant in a strange language Evren had never heard. Though the words held no meaning to him, there was no mistaking the power they held. A shiver ran down Evren’s spine and the room seemed to fill with a subtle crackle of energy. Evren could almost feel his hairs standing on end as Hailen’s voice grew louder, the power filling the room.

  His eyes flew wide as the cylindrical stone in Hailen’s hands started to glow, brighter and brighter, pushing back the gloom of Suroth’s office with an azure brilliance.

  Evren stepped back as the blue glow emanating from the stone in the boy’s hand grew blinding. He shielded his eyes, but it seemed the light passed through his palms to pierce his eyelids. The energy grew so thick Evren felt he could cut it with a knife. Something pressed on his eardrums and thrummed deep within his stomach, all the way to the core of his being.

  With a loud fwash, the stone gave off one final brilliant flash of light and dimmed to a low radiance, as if the room was lit by torches and oil lamps rather than the midday sun.

  Yet the light came from no lantern or torch. Instead, a soft glow emanated from the stone in Hailen’s hand, which shone with an internal light.

  At that moment, the door to the adjoining room burst open.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Kodyn had never felt as helpless as he did at that moment. He sat on Arch-Guardian Suroth’s bed and held Briana as she wept, but he could find no words of comfort to offer.

  She wouldn’t care that her father had slain nearly a dozen of his assailants and saved the Pharus’ life. All that mattered was that her one parent, the only one she’d had since birth, had been taken in the Long Keeper’s arms. She was alone in the world now.

  A twinge of guilt ran through him. If I’d delivered Suroth’s purse to the Black Widow, would it have changed anything? He still felt the smooth, round object sitting in the purse in his pocket, a burden far heavier than its true weight. The question had no answer—if he hadn’t followed the Gatherers, he wouldn’t have been back in time to help fight off the last of the assassins. The Gatherers hadn’t spoken of killing Suroth, so Kodyn had made the choice to come for Briana first.

  He didn’t regret the decision, yet he couldn’t shut off the part of his mind that felt he deserved the blame. Just as he’d blamed himself when Sid got kidnapped in Praamis. He’d promised to protect them—look how that had turned out both times.

  Aisha stood nearby, a solid presence that filled him with a sense of comfort. She hadn’t let Briana down. Aisha had defeated more than a dozen assassins alone. Her strength and determination throughout the entire ordeal—including whatever internal struggle she’d been fighting—humbled him.

  Aisha tensed as the door opened, but relaxed as she caught sight of Nessa. The grey-haired Steward nodded at the Ghandian girl and padded quietly across the plush carpets surrounding Suroth’s massive bed.

  “Briana,” Nessa said in a calm, soothing voice, “I know this is the last thing on your mind, but you need to eat.” She glanced around. “At the very least, let me get you out of those clothes and into something clean.”

  Briana hadn’t washed the crimson from her hands and face or changed out of her blood-splattered dress. She shrugged off Nessa’s hands. “No,” she sobbed. “Just let me be here a little longer.”

  Upon learning of her father’s death, she’d fled to the safety of his bedroom. Her tears stained the velvet pillowcases, but she was beyond caring.

  Nessa tried again. “Please, taltha. A little broth or some fruit? You need to keep up your strength.”

  For answer, Briana only shook her head.

  Nessa’s expression looked as helpless as Kodyn felt. With a little sigh, the grey-haired Steward stood.

  “When she finishes grieving, I’ll have a servant standing by with food and fresh clothing,” Nessa told Aisha in a quiet voice.

  Aisha nodded, sorrow sparkling in her dark eyes.

  As Kodyn watched Nessa slip out of the Arch-Guardian’s room, his eyes fell on the strangely smooth black stone trinket on Suroth’s bedside table. No, not a trinket. An object of indeterminate purpose, yet upon closer inspection, he saw the familiar strange, intricate markings of the Serenii etched into the stone.

  With Suroth’s death, where does that leave my Undertaking? The thought came to his mind unbidden, and he shoved it away, cursing himself for his selfishness. He worried about something as inane as stealing the Crown of the Pharus when Briana had just lost her father.

  The Arch-Guardian’s death made it all the more important for him to stay in Shalandra. Not only because it was a huge setback to his plans to get into the Serenii vaults, but because he felt obligated to protect Briana. He’d brought her home knowing the danger she faced—had he unknowingly caused her father’s death?

  Blaming myself isn’t going to get vengeance for Briana’s father. He clenched his jaw. I’m going to make sure the Gatherers are stopped, once and for all. Even if I have to kill them all myself.

  That would be stupid. He couldn’t take them all on alone. He’d need help—from the Black Widow, certainly, perhaps from Ennolar and the Secret Keepers. They’d want vengeance for their Arch-Guardian’s death as much as Briana.

  But he couldn’t do that if he had to worry about her wellbeing.

  “Briana,” he spoke in a quiet voice, “h
ow would you feel about returning to Praamis? My mother would—”

  Briana sat bolt upright, eyes flashing. “You’re thinking of running?”

  “Never!” Kodyn shook his head. “I’m staying in Shalandra so I can hunt down every damned one of the Gatherers. I will avenge your father’s death, I swear on my life.” He let out a slow breath. “But I’d feel better knowing you were somewhere safe, far out of the Gatherers’ reach. In the Night Guild—”

  “No!” Briana’s response, a defiant shout, surprised him. “I will not flee!”

  Defiance shone through the tears filling her eyes. Her face, puffy from crying, twisted into a mask of determination.

  “The Gatherers tried to use me to cow my father into submission,” Briana said, her voice a half-snarl. “They attacked my home and killed my father. I’ll be damned if I let them get away with that.”

  “But here, you’re in danger,” Kodyn protested. “At least in Praamis I’ll know you’re out of harm’s way.”

  “I will not let them win!” Briana straightened, a hand dashing the tears from her cheeks. “They seek to use fear as their weapons, but they will find I am not afraid of them.”

  The fear in Briana’s eyes belied the firmness in her voice, but Kodyn had to admire her strength of spirit. Despite everything she’d lost, she still stood strong. Or, at least, tried to. It would take her time to grieve her father and come to grips with his death, but just hearing her words brought a sense of peace. She would get through this. And he’d be here beside her to help any way he could. He owed her that much, at least.

  Briana stared down at her hands, still covered in blood, and suddenly she gave a little gasp. “Oh!”

  Kodyn was instantly alert. “What is it?” His hand dropped to his sword. “What’s wrong?”

  “The map!”

  To Kodyn’s surprise, Briana leapt up and darted out of the room. He raced after her, Aisha on his heels, as she rushed into her bedroom. She grimaced at the disaster of her bedroom—the guards had dragged out the bodies, but blood still stained the floor.

  She scooped up the leather scroll tube and turned back to the door. Kodyn’s eyes flew wide as she stooped and dipped a finger into a puddle of crimson.

  “Here.” She thrust the scroll tube into his hands. “Open it and spread out the map on my father’s table.” Tears still rimmed her eyes, but a strange excitement seemed to have pushed back her sorrow.

  Stunned, Kodyn followed the girl back into Suroth’s bedroom, fumbled open the scroll tube cap, and, with Aisha’s help, unrolled Ennolar’s map. He spread the blank scroll out on the table and fixed her with a curious gaze. “What now?”

  Triumph shone in Briana’s eyes as she held up her bloody finger. “The blood is the key!” She pressed the finger against one corner of the paper.

  Kodyn sucked in a breath as the material seemed to absorb the blood from her skin. Instantly, thin lines of crimson began to appear on the papyrus, spreading outward like a spider web. But these lines were neat, crisp, drawn by a confident hand. Beside them were neat annotations written in a language he didn’t understand, but recognized as Secret Keeper script—the same script that filled the book Journeyman Donneh of House Scorpion had stolen from the Temple of Whispers in Voramis.

  “My father called it invisible ink,” Briana told them. “It only works on a particular type of papyrus, made using a recipe known only to the Secret Keepers. The more mundane inks work with the heat of a candle’s flame or acids, but for something this important, only blood can activate it.”

  Kodyn’s mind raced. “So Ennolar did give us the real map!”

  Briana nodded. “He assumed my father would tell us how to use it.” Sorrow flooded her eyes and her face fell.

  Kodyn placed a hand on her shoulder, and Aisha gripped her arm. Briana brushed a tear from her cheek and gave them a sad smile. “I-I’m fine.”

  “You don’t have to be,” Kodyn said. “I know I wouldn’t be if I were you.”

  “Here in Shalandra, we view death differently than the rest of Einan.” Briana gave a little shrug of her shoulders. “Each of us is called to the Long Keeper’s arms when it is our time. If my father is gone, it was meant to be.” She looked like she was trying to convince herself of the words. “He would want us to continue fighting. And he would want me to honor the bargain he made with you.”

  The words, spoken with such strength and determination, caught Kodyn by surprise.

  Briana fixed him with a firm gaze. “I might not be the Arch-Guardian of the Secret Keepers, but I will do what I can to help. Starting with this map.” She bent over the parchment and studied the thin crimson lines and markings. “I can read a few of these symbols, but I’ll need time to fully understand what they’re saying. And I’ll need my father’s private journals.”

  She strode around the bed and set about rummaging through the drawers in her father’s bedside table.

  “My father used two types of ciphers to write,” she explained. “One was the secret language used in the Temple of Whispers, but the other was a special cipher he devised just for the two of us to understand. That way, he could translate everything he wanted to share with me into that code, but the information would still be protected. No one would be able to steal it and the Secret Keepers would never know what secrets he was teaching me. Aha!”

  Briana held up a thick, leather-bound volume in triumph. “This holds the key to translating the Secret Keepers’ language into our shared code.” She plopped the book onto the bed with a loud thump, opened it, and flipped through the stiff pages. The markings within made no sense to Kodyn, but Briana seemed to recognize their meaning.

  “Huh?” She stopped on one page, which bore six lines of neatly printed symbols. “That’s odd.”

  “What is it?” Kodyn asked.

  “I’ve never seen this before.” Briana ran a thumb along the symbols and read aloud:

  When sword and scepter unite

  The blood of ancients revived

  Child of Secrets, Child of Spirits, Child of Gold

  Half-master seeks the relic of old

  Then Hallar’s blood shall rise

  And sow the final destruction from midnight eyes

  She looked up, confused. “What does that mean?”

  Kodyn’s blood ran cold. He knew exactly what it meant.

  “The Gatherer, Necroset Kytos, he rambled on about some Final Destruction before my mother ended him,” Kodyn said. “He warned of ‘Hallar’s prophesied destruction’, said the world would be washed away in a torrent of blood and scoured by fire.” He frowned. “It sounded like the ramblings of a madman, but—”

  “But if my father wrote it here, it has to mean something!” Briana stared down at the symbols, her lips moving as she read.

  “When we were coming into the city, did anyone else notice the words ‘Child of Gold’ painted onto the walls?” Aisha asked.

  “Yes!” Kodyn sucked in a breath. “And I saw ‘Child of Spirits’ painted on the Artisan’s Tier.” His mind raced. “That can’t be a coincidence.”

  His brow furrowed. “The way Kytos talked about it, he was terrified of this Final Destruction. And it seems your father placed some importance on it as well.”

  “But what does it mean?” Briana’s expression grew puzzled. “Hallar’s blood shall rise? Blood of ancients revived? Sow the final destruction from midnight eyes? That makes no sense!”

  “I don’t know.” Kodyn shrugged. “But if your father put it in his private journal, it has to be important enough for us to find out, right?”

  After a moment, Briana nodded. “He only included things related to the Serenii in here.” She tapped the journal with a delicate finger. “Somehow, that strange poem is connected to the Serenii that built the city thousands of years ago.”

  Eager excitement burned within Kodyn. He’d always loved stories of the ancient race of immortal beings that had disappeared from Einan, leaving only their strange buildings behind. But as
Kodyn looked around the bedroom, he realized that the Serenii hadn’t just left buildings.

  “These things,” he gestured to the black stone objects sitting on Suroth’s bedside table, “they are Serenii artifacts, aren’t they?”

  Briana nodded. “Yes, my father was studying them.”

  Kodyn couldn’t help gasping. Serenii artifacts were beyond rare, considered some of the most valuable objects on Einan. Few in the Night Guild could ever boast of seeing any, much less stealing one. Yet here, hundreds of leagues from home, he stood in a room littered with them. He couldn’t help marveling—how much power does this room hold?

  Something strange reached his ears, and every muscle in his body tensed. It was a sound, yet like nothing he’d ever heard before. A deep humming that set his heart racing, piercing to the core of his being. It seemed to come from everywhere around him at once, yet his eyes caught a glimmer of light through the closed doors that led to Suroth’s office.

  Aisha seemed to see it, too, for she drew her assegai just as he pulled a dagger from his belt.

  “Get down!” Kodyn hissed to Briana. The Shalandran girl ducked behind the desk as Kodyn and Aisha slipped toward the closed doors.

  The light in the room beyond grew painfully bright, almost shining through the dense wood of the doors. Kodyn exchanged a nervous glance with Aisha and, together, they reached for the door handles.

  A loud humming echoed in the room, setting Kodyn’s ears buzzing. Two figures stood in the room beyond. One was a youth roughly Kodyn’s age, with the dark skin of a Shalandran and a red-and-gold headband that marked him as a servant. His jaw hung agape. “Hailen, what in the bloody hell did you do?”

  The other figure, the light-skinned Hailen, Briana’s servant, stood a few paces away. Kodyn’s eyes flew wide at the sight of the glowing stone sitting in the boy’s hand.

  “I don’t know,” said Hailen, “but I think I can wield Serenii magic!”

  End of Book 1