The Seeker and the Sword (A Hollow Fate Novella)

by Todd Herzman

  Lilah stared at her father. ‘Unjust is a very light word for what I’m thinking he may have tried to do.’

  ‘Did you see her at the Red Rose last night?’ Jercolf asked. ‘Something tells me her parents wouldn’t have allowed such behaviour.’

  ‘Parents don’t always know what their children get up to,’ Lilah said, stopping herself from glancing at her father as she did so. She closed her eyes and brought herself back to the Red Rose in her mind. Warrick and Jerome drinking ale at the bar, sailors loud and laughing in the corner, the soldiers playing cards with blank faces… Much of her time had been spent looking at Serena, but she would have remembered seeing the girl in the tavern.

  She opened her eyes. ‘No, the girl wasn’t there last night—not that I saw.’

  Seeker Haldin put a hand on the pommel of his Starblade and looked to be about to walk toward the girl. ‘We shall question her anyway.’

  ‘Perhaps I should speak with her alone?’ Lilah said. ‘If it’s as we think, she’s unlikely to open up to large men wielding weapons.’

  Her father and Jercolf exchanged a glance, then her father nodded. ‘Perhaps you are right.’

  Chapter 5

  Lilah sat in merchant Kellan’s wagon. It was the largest of the five, and best of all had a roof and walls, providing ample privacy for her chat with the girl. Her name was Kianna, and she was fifteen summers—only a year younger than Lilah had guessed.

  ‘Thank you for allowing me to speak with you, Kianna.’

  Kianna sat on the opposite bench, arms crossed, looking away from Lilah. ‘I assumed I had no choice.’

  Lilah bit her lip. The girl was already adversarial. She was right, of course, she didn’t have a choice, but Lilah needed to make her feel as if she did. ‘I saw Warrick at the Red Rose Tavern last night, before he died. My girlfriend works in that tavern. He leered at her the whole night.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’

  ‘He has done the same to you?’

  Kianna looked her dead in the eye. ‘I know what question you wish to ask. And the answer is no, he never touched me. He leered and spoke crass words, but he never touched me.’ She pulled up the hem of her dress to just above her calf, drew a dagger from a strap there, and thrust the point into the wood of the bench. ‘He knew I carried this, knew I kept it in hand as I slept.’

  Kianna pried the dagger from the wood and slid it back into its sheath. As she did, Lilah looked at the girl’s ankle. She had a scar.

  It almost looked like it had been caused by teeth marks.

  Something shifted in Lilah’s mind. The hem of Kianna’s dress fell back over her ankle. Lilah’s breath came fast. She couldn’t have seen what she thought she’d seen—perhaps Kianna had been bitten by a dog. Assumptions only breed mistakes.

  Lilah looked the girl in the eye and saw a very different expression than she had before. One of pleading. The whole mood between them had changed.

  ‘I see. It gladdens me to hear that man never laid a hand on you.’ Lilah tried to keep her tone the same as before, but her voice shook slightly as she spoke.

  She needed to leave the wagon. Now.

  What if the entire caravan had scars like that, on their ankles, on their arms, on their necks?

  Lilah stood. Fast. Too fast. Kianna’s expression changed again—from pleading to eerily blank—and Lilah knew her fears had been correct. The girl who’d been sitting in front of Lilah disappeared, replaced by an emotionless thrall.

  Kianna drew the dagger from her calf-strap in a flash as she rose from the bench. She flung herself at Lilah.

  There was no room to dodge.

  Lilah’s hands came up in a movement she’d practiced a thousand times. She grabbed Kianna’s wrist, stopping the blade short, then twisted—the pain should have caused the girl to drop the dagger, but Lilah knew thralls weren’t bothered by pain.

  With Kianna’s wrist gripped tight, Lilah forced the girl’s arm behind her back. In one swift move, she dislocated her shoulder. There was a loud pop. The girl’s hand opened, and the blade clattered on the wood floor.

  In a moment, Lilah had the girl’s other arm locked behind her, with the blade at her neck.

  Lilah’s heart thudded against her chest. A shout rang from outside of the wagon. More thralls... or the blood mage who controlled them.

  Her training told her to kill the girl. To slit her throat and be rid of the threat—but Lilah couldn’t. Kianna was too young, and her actions weren’t her own.

  The girl struggled in Lilah’s arms like a wild animal.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kianna,’ Lilah whispered in her ear as she put the girl in a sleeper hold, gripping her neck tight in the crook of her arm.

  The girl wouldn’t be unconscious long, but if they were able to find and kill the blood mage who held her thrall, Kianna would have her freewill returned.

  Lilah counted breaths as she held the girl. The girl went limp, and Lilah released her grip. She gently placed Kianna on the bench, then drew her sword.

  She stared at the door, exhaled, then kicked it through.

  She stepped into a world aflame.

  A ring of fire circled the wagon. The heat washed over her. Her father and Jercolf stood within the circle. Seeker Haldin had his Starblade drawn—the starstone darker than the night sky—and Jercolf held his spear in hand. Every traveller in the caravan surrounded the flaming ring. All their faces were blank.

  Except one.

  Kellan, the head merchant, had his arms raised. His eyes glowed red, his rage burning as bright as the fire. ‘Why couldn’t you people have just left me alone?’

  Lilah stabbed her sword into the dirt and unslung the crossbow. It was already cocked back and ready, and she swiftly loaded a bolt from her quiver. The blood mage brought his hands together. Flames flew at the three fighters, swirling around them like a coiling snake—but not touching them.

  Lilah squinted through the heat, thanking the stars for the crystal necklace she wore—but it would only protect her from the fire for so long.

  The fire barely got close to Seeker Haldin, the Starblade keeping it at bay.

  Lilah shook her gaze from her father and focused on the blood mage. She sighted down the crossbow at the man’s chest—a large target—and pulled the trigger.

  The bolt hit home, but only served to enrage him.

  The blood mage looked down at the crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest. Then he raised his chin and set his eyes on her.

  ‘You little bitch.’

  Lilah set the bow on the ground, braced it with her foot and pulled back, then loaded another bolt. She was aiming her second shot when her father yelled out to her.

  ‘Aim for the thralls, Lilah!’

  The fire was keeping him within the circle, pushing him back. The Starblade may have protected him from the magical fire, but once the fire had caught and spread on the ground, the blade no longer held it at bay.

  She could aim for Kellan’s head this time, but she knew her father was right. The mage was pulling his strength from every traveller around them. She’d read about blood mages and their powers, heard her father tell countless stories about their abilities.

  She knew what she had to do.

  She took a breath, then aimed her shot at the nearest man under the head merchant’s thrall. It was one of the caravan guards. She got a good look at his face before she let loose the bolt—time seemed to stop as she stared at him down her sights. He was far younger than Warrick had been, perhaps only a few years older than herself and Jercolf. He was clean shaven, which came as a surprise to Lilah, as most caravan guards never took the time to shave.

  The bolt hit him in his exposed neck. His eyes widened in the moment before death—when his bloodlock was released and he was free from the mage’s control, and when his last breath rattled out of him less than a second later.

  The blood mage yelled, but he looked no weaker. There were too many unde
r his thrall.

  Lilah saw Jercolf make his way to the edge of the fire. He tried to spear one of the guards through the flames but couldn’t reach the man.

  ‘You want to fight them?’ Kellan roared. ‘Then fight them you will!’

  A heavy weight smashed into Lilah’s back as she loaded the third bolt. Something slashed her arm and she was met with a piercing pain. She tumbled to the ground, barely able to hear a thing over the flames and the shouts of her father. A horse neighed somewhere in the distance, and her mind registered surprise, having thought all the horses must have fled the second the fire had been lit.

  Lilah regained her wits and managed to pull the girl who’d tackled her off her back and throw her to the ground. Kianna had woken from her unconsciousness, and her dagger was once more in hand. Lilah’s crossbow had been knocked out of reach, and her sword still sat in front of the wagon’s door, stabbed into the dirt. The girl didn’t hesitate. Once she’d made it back to her feet she plunged herself and the dagger at Lilah again.

  Lilah couldn’t be gentle this time. She had to act—swiftly and definitively. She drew her own dagger from her belt as Kianna closed the gap between them.

  Then the wagon exploded. A great swath of fire impacted it as if from the heavens. Lilah was thrown backward, Kianna thrown beside her. If Lilah hadn’t known any better, she would have thought a meteorite had fallen from the sky. Her head thudded hard against the ground and everything seemed to buzz. The world became blurry as her eyes struggled to take in all the light.

  Her breath shuddered and rasped. She knew she needed to move. She knew she needed to get up and find a weapon—she’d been holding her dagger, hadn’t she? Where had it gone? She knew these things, but she didn’t know why.

  Flames surged around her. They must have been loud, but she couldn’t hear them. Her ears rang as if someone had shoved a bell over her head and smashed it with a hammer. The world was smoke and ash and flames. Her lungs burned and she started to cough, deep and ragged.

  Lilah managed to sit up and look around. A blonde girl lay beside her, blood dripping down her forehead. Broken and splintered wood lay all around them—even embedded in the girl’s back. Lilah looked down at herself—she was covered in ash, cuts, blood. She looked to the side, through the flames, and could just make out a wagon’s bulk receding into the distance.

  A shadow fell over her. A tall man with a dark cloak and a silver clasp at his neck.

  Seeker Haldin grabbed his daughter’s hand and helped her to her feet. Lilah stumbled, the pain from all her small wounds—and the slash Kianna had gifted her arm—hit her like a horse at full pelt. Her father’s strong hands lent her balance, and she finally remembered where she was.

  ‘The blood mage?’ she asked her father.

  ‘Gone by the time we’re able to make chase,’ a deep voice said behind her. Jercolf came around and stuck the butt of his spear into the ground. He looked about at the flames. They were far too wide to risk running through. He coughed into the crook of his arm.

  ‘As the horses will be,’ Seeker Haldin said. His Starblade was safely sheathed at his side.

  Lilah looked at her father and forced a weak smile. ‘We’re not doing so well on our test, are we?’

  Haldin looked off into the distance. The flickering flames threw shifting shadows on his deeply lined face. ‘I would have been the last to assume a man like that could be a blood mage.’

  ‘Assumptions breed mistakes,’ Lilah said in almost a whisper. Her gaze fell to the girl on the ground. Lilah’s lips parted. Kianna’s chest still rose and fell. ‘What do we do with her?’

  Kill her, like I should have done to begin with, the thought ran through her mind. Lilah gritted her teeth—the girl was still innocent, but the guard she’d shot in the neck had been too. If killing her weakened the blood mage, wasn’t it their duty to do so?

  Seeker Haldin looked down at the girl. ‘We bind her limbs.’ He looked off in the distance again. ‘Then we go after the mage.’

  Chapter 6

  Once the flames had died down, they’d found rope in one of the left-over wagons, which the fire had blessedly left untouched. Lilah bound Kianna’s limbs herself—popping the girl’s shoulder back into place as she did—relieved her father hadn’t wanted to kill the girl for being a thrall.

  Every seeker knew how dangerous blood mages were, and how insidious their control could be. All they needed was a person’s blood to take control over them. Though Lilah hoped the process was more difficult than that; the basics boiled down to the mage ingesting a person’s blood, exerting their control, and putting the person in their thrall.

  Then the thrall was in the blood mage’s control until either one of them died.

  It was often impossible to tell if someone was a thrall, as the mage didn’t always exert full control. But when they did, the thrall could change in an instant...

  Just as Kianna had.

  Lilah stared down at the girl. She stirred, perhaps waking up.

  ‘I've not heard of a blood mage coming this close to the capital,’ Jercolf said. ‘I thought they sailed ships and kept to raiding coastal villages.’

  ‘The God King’s blood mages, perhaps,’ Seeker Haldin replied. Lilah shivered at his mention of the God King. ‘But not all blood mages belong to him.’

  ‘He definitely spoke like a Kharleon trader. I don’t think he’s from Albion.’ Lilah sat on one of the open top wagons as her father pulled splinters from her wounds.

  ‘Why did you choose against armour?’ Her father raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I didn’t think a mage would use weapons.’ She winced as her father cleaned the slash on her arm, the one she’d received from Kianna. ‘I know, I know. I shouldn’t have assumed.’

  Jercolf walked over to the dead guard, the one she’d killed, then looked over his shoulder at Lilah. ‘You could take his armour.’

  Haldin finished cleaning the slash and wrapped a cloth around her arm. ‘The armour mightn’t fit well, but it’ll help.’

  Lilah stared into her father’s hard eyes. ‘How are we going to defeat him? He’s got a whole caravan under his thrall, and we have only one seeker.’

  ‘Should we go back for reinforcements?’ Jercolf asked.

  Haldin shook his head. ‘No time.’ He stood. ‘We must not let a blood mage run rampant in our lands, close to the capital or not.’ He looked from Lilah, to Jercolf. ‘Often, as a seeker, it comes down to facing our enemies alone. We are the only defence our empire has against the threat of magic. There are too few of us. There always has been; there always will be.’

  Lilah stood. The slash on her arm stung, and every little cut she’d gained when the wagon had exploded throbbed. The air was full of smoke, making her cough. Her head still ached; her throat still burned. She’d cleaned her eyes with water found in one of the wagons, but the ash still clung to her eyelashes. All she wanted to do was head back to Hirlcrest and make it straight for the Red Rose. She wanted to fall into Serena’s arms. Stars, she wanted ale.

  Kianna stirred. Her eyes opened. She looked at Lilah, at Jercolf, at Seeker Haldin. A smile split her lips—she didn’t seem to feel the pain she was in at all. The smile wasn’t right. It was too wide, and it never met her eyes.

  ‘If you come after me, you will all die.’ Kianna didn’t speak with her own voice.

  She spoke with the merchant’s—the blood mage’s. Kellan’s.

  Seeker Haldin stepped up to the girl, standing over her. She was so small compared to him. He rested a hand on the pommel of his sword and stared down at her, and his gaze felt like the blade itself. ‘You will not be the first blood mage to meet my sword, nor will you be the last.’ He nodded his head at Jercolf. ‘Gag her, lest we hear more of this heathen’s words.’

  Jercolf nodded. He took a piece of spare cloth—left over from when Haldin bandaged Lilah’s wound—and knelt by the girl. Her expression shifted, eyes widening.

  ‘L
ilah!’ Kianna said, staring up at her.

  Lilah put a hand on Jercolf’s arm, stopping him from gagging the girl. She knelt beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Kianna?’

  ‘It’s a trick.’ Jercolf held the gag ready in his hand.

  ‘Maybe not,’ Seeker Haldin said. ‘Only the most powerful of blood mages can hold sway over their thralls at a distance.’ He looked to where Kellan’s wagon had gone. ‘He might very well be out of range.’

  ‘You mean this could really be the girl talking?’ Lilah asked.

  Her father nodded.

  ‘It’s me,’ the girl said, a tear falling from her eye. ‘He only holds control over us when he needs to—or when he wants to.’ She coughed. She must have gotten as much smoke in her as they had. ‘I was hoping you would see the mark—the bloodlock—on my ankle.’ She moved, but her restraints prevented her from getting far. ‘Please.’ She looked up at each of them in turn until her eyes finally rested on Lilah. ‘Please, save my family.’

  ‘How long have you been under Kellan’s thrall?’

  ‘Six months, perhaps?’ She shook her head. ‘It is hard to tell.’ She coughed again, and more tears fled her eyes.

  ‘Get her some water,’ Lilah said to Jercolf. He stared at her a moment before nodding his head and rushing off.

  ‘We were new to the empire. My family. Mother and Father were merchants back in Guhrat, but struggled finding work here.’ She coughed.

  Jercolf returned with the water. Lilah held it to the girl’s mouth.

  ‘Small sips,’ Lilah said.

  Kianna drank, then let out a breath. ‘Then they met Kellan at an inn. We were in Devien, he had my parents come out to his caravan, when they returned…’ She faltered, choking on her words. ‘When they returned, they brought Kellan to our rooms, my father and mother weren’t themselves anymore. They held me down, held my mouth so I wouldn’t scream while Kellan bit my ankle—drank my blood. They did the same to my little brother.’

  Kianna cried then, having gotten out all the words she could. Lilah held the girl in her arms, felt the deep sobs shake her entire body. Lilah wished she were back in the Red Rose, Serena in her arms… but more than that, she wished to see this blood mage suffer and die for what he’d done to this girl. To her family. To the dead guard with the bolt through his neck.