by Todd Herzman
Jercolf stripped the armour off the dead guard as Lilah held the girl close.
‘We must make haste,’ her father said. ‘We cannot take the girl with us. As soon as we get close enough—’
‘She will become his thrall once more.’ Lilah stroked the girl’s hair, the straw-coloured strands darkened by ash. ‘I know, but we cannot simply leave her bound.’ Lilah helped Kianna sit up, then took the dagger from her belt. She didn’t look at her father for approval as she cut the rope tying the girl’s ankles. A small part of her mind knew this could all be a trick—Kellan could have relinquished his control just so they would let down their guard—but she didn’t care.
She left the girl’s arms bound and helped her up to stand. Lilah put her hands on Kianna’s shoulders and stared into her blue eyes. She nodded east, toward Hirlcrest. ‘Walk to the West Gate. Tell the sergeant there Seeker Haldin sent you, and that you’re to be confined to a cell until our return. Do you understand?’
Kianna nodded numbly. ‘My family?’
‘We will do all we can.’ Lilah wished she could promise the girl they’d bring her family back to her, but she couldn’t. Until the blood mage was killed, her family, and every other member of Kellan’s caravan, was the enemy. He controlled their every whim, and the connection he held only served to strengthen his powers. It was what made him able to withstand a crossbow bolt to the chest, it was what made his Affinity for fire so strong.
Kianna didn’t say another word. She took one last look at Lilah before turning east down the Emperor’s road, back to Hirlcrest.
Seeker Haldin came to stand beside Lilah. ‘We mustn’t linger any longer.’ He looked at his daughter. His face hid his feelings toward what she’d done.
When he’d spoken to the head merchant, Lilah had admired her father’s ability to guard his emotions. Now, it only frustrated her. Had she done the right thing, letting that girl go? Did her father think she had?
Lilah turned from him and found Jercolf holding the young guard’s armour, ready for her to wear. Parts of it were stained red, but parts of Lilah were stained red, too. She let Jercolf help her put the armour on, and they left the havoc of the exploded wagon and fire-darkened road in their wake.
Chapter 7
The wagon the blood mage had escaped on was easy to follow. Too easy. When they’d walked for an hour, they found it burning on the side of the road, with bootprints leading into the Emperor’s Forest.
‘He fled into the forest?’ Jercolf asked.
‘Perhaps he thinks we would be wary to follow,’ Seeker Haldin said. ‘With his power, he could cause the whole forest to burn. A fire like that…’ He looked to the sky. Lilah looked too. It was clear of clouds, no chance of rain.
‘It might spread to the farms.’ Lilah was the first to step toward the trees. ‘But we know this forest far better than he does.’ She glanced over her shoulder at her father, remembering all the times they’d spent in the forest—all the things he’d taught her there.
‘That won’t stop him from setting them alight.’ Jercolf’s steps thudded behind her. He may be a fantastic tournament fighter, but he was no woodsman.
‘No,’ Seeker Haldin said. ‘We’re the ones who will stop him.’ Her father was right beside her. His steps had been deathly silent, so much so that Lilah hadn’t heard his approach at all. They would need that stealth if they were going to take out the mage and spare Kianna’s family—along with the other members of the caravan.
They entered a dense part of the forest, and Kellan and his thralls were easy to track. Few people were allowed to hunt in the Emperor’s Forest, and so few people knew it as well her father.
Lilah kept the crossbow on her back cocked. She’d retrieved the bolt that had killed the guard, and it sat waiting in her quiver. Pulling it from his neck had felt far different than pulling an arrow from a deer. It was as she’d wiped the tip on the guard’s clothes that she’d realised his life was the first she’d ever taken.
They followed the tracks through the brush and the trees in silence, her father leading the way and Jercolf trailing behind. She had far too much time to think on how she felt about having killed a man. Part of her felt hollow, another simply felt the pain of her injuries on every step she took.
But it was the guilt in her stomach she hated feeling the most. She tried to overwhelm that guilt with justifications for her actions, with rage for the person truly responsible—Kellan. But the guilt stuck with her, and when she closed her eyes she saw the final expression that guard’s face would ever give—that wide-eyed surprise at being about to die.
A twig snapped somewhere through the trees, bringing Lilah’s mind back to the present. The trio froze. Lilah and Seeker Haldin’s hands went to their hilts. Jercolf’s spear was already in his grasp. They were all tense until they spotted a deer through a gap in the trees.
Jercolf sighed. ‘Just a deer.’
A branch broke above, and a man came tumbling down onto Jercolf’s head. His weight took Jercolf straight to the ground, but the way he’d fallen left the man—Lilah recognised him as one of the apprentice merchants—impaled by Jercolf’s spear.
Jercolf lay stunned on the forest floor, the young man with the spear through his stomach coughed blood—his last breath.
Lilah sprung forward and pulled the man off Jercolf. Seeker Haldin’s sword was drawn, Lilah drew her own, her eyes searching the trees for more threats as Jercolf wrenched his spear from the body’s gut.
It didn’t take long for her to find them.
Two people sprinted at them through the trees—a man and a woman. Lilah had only enough time to thank the stars that neither were Kianna’s parents before she engaged them.
The woman came straight at her. All she had was a carving knife.
Not a very good ambush, Lilah thought, sidestepping the woman’s wild running swing. Lilah kicked the woman to the ground. In her peripheral vision, she saw her father separate the head from the other man.
‘Should we bind this one as we did Kianna?’ Lilah asked as the woman scraped back to her feet, carving knife gripped in her hand.
‘No time!’ her father shouted.
No hesitation. Lilah focused on the woman’s torso. No mercy. She dodged a left-ways swing. Only justice. Lilah slashed at the woman’s stomach and avoided the wide-eyed look of surprise she knew she’d find on the dying woman’s face.
‘Why would he do that?’ Jercolf held his spear so tight his hand shook. ‘Why would he send these people at us when he knew they would die? They weren’t even the guards.’ He knelt and picked up the knife the young man had dropped. ‘They didn’t even have real weapons.’
‘He is evil.’ Seeker Haldin scanned the trees. ‘Pure and simple. People like Kellan are why we exist. Magic must not gain a foothold in the empire. Get up, Jercolf. We’ve no time to mourn their loss.’
Jercolf looked numb as he stood to his full height. He was as tall as Lilah’s father, and almost matched him in strength and bulk. But he was only twenty, just as Lilah was. The guard back at the caravan was the first man Lilah had killed—she assumed the same must be true for Jercolf and the apprentice. He may have fought and won tournaments, but people rarely died in the games.
This, however, was not a game, and it was clear on Jercolf’s face that he hadn’t expected it to be this hard.
Lilah stepped up to Jercolf. ‘Come on,’ she said in almost a whisper. ‘We can do this. Together.’ She looked down at the dead apprentice merchant and shook her head. ‘Kellan will pay.’
‘We must move.’ Seeker Haldin’s voice came from ahead in the trees. ‘He knows exactly where we are now.’
Lilah glanced at Jercolf before hurrying after her father. She couldn’t think on what she’d just done. She needed to focus. They had killed three more of the blood mage’s thralls. He would have become weaker because of that. Jercolf’s question was right, had Kellan really thought that ambush would work? Lilah foll
owed her father as he found the trail: a bent twig, disturbed ground, and a dozen other almost imperceptible signs she knew he’d conditioned himself to recognise over the years.
‘He must be insane,’ Lilah said under her breath.
‘What was that?’
Lilah was surprised to find Jercolf had already caught up—she hadn’t heard his steps, she wasn’t as focused as she should be.
‘Kellan. You’re right—that ambush had no way of working. He must be insane, why else would he sacrifice three of his thralls—thralls that bring him power?’
‘A distraction,’ Seeker Haldin said from a few steps ahead of them. ‘He doesn’t care for their lives. He’s kept the guards—with fighting experience and the weapons that go along with it—close to him to ensure his own safety, and sent those he deems expendable after us to slow us down while he escapes.’
‘Another assumption?’ Lilah asked.
‘More like a hope,’ her father replied. ‘It’s easier to anticipate the actions of an evil man than an insane one. Now, focus on the trail. Your surroundings. We’ve already been ambushed once, and this investigation has become far more than a simple test, especially when failure means death.’
Haldin plunged ahead. Lilah let him. She tried to shake out her thoughts. Whatever the blood mage’s motives, it didn’t matter, their objective was the same.
Lilah tightened and loosened her grip on her sword and scanned the trees around them. She wondered where Serena was—she must still be under guard in the Red Rose. How could Lilah’s day be so different to her last? Yesterday, all she’d cared about was beating Jercolf at swordplay and spending her night with Serena, about becoming a seeker and making her father proud. Now, she had killed two people and was likely to kill more before the day was done.
Was this what life as a seeker would be? She wanted Kellan dead. She would see this to the end—and she hoped it would only be the end of Kellan and not herself. She wanted to free Kianna’s mind from being enslaved.
But after that. After the battle was done, all she would ever want was to be in Serena’s arms. The thought almost took her by surprise.
I will drop out of the Choosing. I will not become a seeker. Not if it means a hollow life filled with death and guilt and sadness.
She didn’t know if the thought was a true one. She didn't know if she would change her mind when all was done.
Her father stopped. Lilah and Jercolf did the same. Seeker Haldin raised his off hand in a fist for silence. Lilah crept forward to look over his shoulder.
There was no one there. Lilah fought the urge to ask why they had stopped. She took a silent breath, cleared her mind, and let her senses roam free.
She inhaled through her nose. It was hard to smell anything other than the smoke that clung to their clothes—but she caught a hint of something familiar. A scent she’d smelled coming from the head merchant, a horrid perfume—perhaps meant to mask the man’s body odour.
He was close. Close enough to smell. Lilah tracked the way the wind blew and turned her head the opposite way a split second before her father did. The breeze had carried his horrid scent to them like a gift. She glanced back at Jercolf, he looked slightly confused but followed their gazes.
Seeker Haldin took a step in the direction the scent came from, and the recruits followed him as silently as they could manage. Jercolf, surprisingly, barely made a sound as he moved—perhaps the apprentice dying on his spear had shocked him into checking every step he took.
As they crept ever forward, the trees they passed seemed more and more familiar. A massive oak stood thick and strong in their path. The base of it was almost as large as a room in the Red Rose, and its branches reached higher than those around it. Lilah wondered, given enough time, if those branches would reach the clouds.
She knew this tree, knew the path they now walked upon. She’d walked it before. With her father, and alone, on her own hunting trips—hunting in the Emperor’s Forest was one of a few privileges afforded to the family of a seeker, and one she often took advantage of.
Lilah examined the ground. The tracks Kellan and his followers left on this path would have been obvious even to someone as unskilled as Jercolf. The oak tree was behind them now, and, though her memory was fuzzy, Lilah knew there was a clearing up ahead somewhere. And there, the blood mage might be waiting.
Her father turned to them, pointed two fingers to his eyes, then out at the trees on each side and the branches above. Keep your wits about you.
He expected another ambush, and Lilah was sure he was right. What she wasn’t sure of was how they were going to prevent the mage from setting the forest on fire. She and her father might know it better than the blood mage, but that wouldn’t stop Kellan’s fire from burning it all to the ground.
She took a deep breath. They must be getting closer now. For Kianna, she thought. And for the chance to be in Serena’s arms once more.
An arrow thunked into the tree beside her. Too close. She grabbed Jercolf and shoved his bulk behind a tree, following fast after him. Her father had already taken cover. She ducked her head out, eyes flicking about until she spotted a glint coming from the head of the next arrow being nocked.
Lilah stuck her sword into the ground before her and unslung her crossbow, loading a fresh bolt. She poked out from the side of the tree and almost received an extra hole in her head before retaking cover. She’d seen her target. She breathed in, out, and tried to clear her mind. The more she thought about it, the more likely she’d be to miss. She took to one knee—the guard would start high on his own shot—and came out of cover looking down her sights straight at him.
Lilah loosed the bolt.
She was back in cover before she heard the thud and a slight groan that told her the bolt had hit home.
‘Nice shot,’ Jercolf said.
Still on the ground, Lilah leveraged her feet on the limbs of the crossbow and pulled back the string. She reached blindly for another bolt from her quiver. As she loaded it, she saw the blood dried on its tip and down the shaft. She’d already killed with this bolt before.
‘Any more?’ she called to her father, as she did, she heard the tree she and Jercolf hid behind catch another arrow.
‘Just one more I can see. No sign of our target,’ Seeker Haldin’s deep voice replied.
‘I should have worn a helm.’ Jercolf looked down at the crossbow in Lilah’s hands. ‘And brought one of those.’
‘The other archer is down,’ her father called.
Lilah stood, placed the crossbow in her left, and pulled her sword from the dirt. She nodded to Jercolf, and they came out from their cover on either side of the tree. Two guards lay dead on the ground. They caught up with the seeker.
‘Why only two?’ She scanned the trees but couldn’t find more attackers. ‘Why not throw the whole caravan at us?’ Lilah looked down at the second guard she’d killed that day. He was older than the last, perhaps by ten years. The sword was gone from his scabbard. The bolt had pierced through his chainmail, straight into his heart. An amazing shot, but she struggled to feel proud of it.
The other guard had a throwing knife in his forehead. Seeker Haldin bent down and pulled it out. He wiped it on the guard’s clothes then secreted it away in his cloak.
‘Why not throw that fire of his at us?’ Jercolf asked. ‘Not that I want him to.’
Haldin stood. ‘We need to keep moving.’ He plunged forward toward the clearing, all pretence of stealth abandoned, Starblade black as night in his hand, dark cloak trailing just above the ground.
Jercolf was about to follow behind when Lilah grabbed him by the arm. She handed him the crossbow. ‘You take this. You might get a shot off before dropping it in favour of your spear.’ She looked down at the guard’s abandoned bow. ‘Besides, I’ve always been better with a bow.’
Jercolf took the crossbow with a nod and followed Seeker Haldin down the path. Lilah sheathed her sword, retrieving the bow
from the ground and the quiver from the man’s hip. It was a composite recurve bow, popular in the lowland plains near the empire’s southern borders. She tested its draw—pleasingly heavy, plenty strong enough to pierce the remaining guard’s armour from close range.
Except it was Kellan’s skull she wished to pierce.
Lilah had almost caught up to Jercolf when she halted. She sniffed the air and turned her head around before rushing back to the dead guards. She knelt by one of them—the one her father had killed—and smelled his clothes.
He had the same scent on him—that horrid perfume she’d sworn had come from the merchant. She didn’t remember the guard wearing it when she’d questioned him at the caravan.
She hurried off to catch up with the others. Her mind turned as she came to walk behind Jercolf. Things weren’t adding up—she was beginning to think the blood mage was leading them astray. But what was there to do? The tracks led nowhere else—all they could do was keep following the path.
Evening came faster than Lilah had expected. They’d left Hirlcrest in the early morning, and the sun was already falling out of sight through the trees. Her mind continued to turn. The clearing wasn’t as close to the last ambush as she’d thought—it had been at least a year since she’d ventured this far into the forest. Two fumbled ambushes, and a clear path left for them to follow. The mage wasn’t even attempting to hide his tracks.
She hurried her steps to walk beside Seeker Haldin. ‘Father, something is wrong. None of this feels right. I smelled something on the guard—’
‘The merchant’s perfume.’
‘You knew?’
‘I’ve been coming to the same conclusion. The blood mage likely isn’t in the forest at all.’ Seeker Haldin didn’t slow his stride as he spoke. ‘He has left us a trail to follow. By the time we get to its end, he will no longer be there.’