Children of the Blood (20 page)

“No.” Darin shook his head. “She’s from the Empire. She was in a boating accident here a few weeks ago. She hit her head and almost drowned, and it’s done something to her so that she doesn’t remember anything.”

“Darin, boy, use your thick little brains.” Cullen rapped the counter. “If she’d been here a few weeks ago, wouldn’t someone have noticed?” The cook shook his head.

“But I know she isn’t lying. She—the lord told her about the accident. She told me.”

“The lord,” Cullen said softly. “Maybe there is a game being played. Be careful, Darin.”

Darin didn’t tell the cook that Lord Darclan had also called him by name. Instead, he thought over what Cullen had said as he made his way out of the kitchen.

He didn’t see the way that Cullen stared at his curled shoulders. Didn’t hear the whisper of a prayer that formed on Cullen’s lips.

Lady
.

 

For the next two days, Lord Darclan began and ended his daily routine on the same note: He would knock on the door of Sara’s chamber, and Darin, greeting him, would shake his head from side to side. He did not believe that he could endure a third such start to a day, and so began the morning in the breakfast hall.

He sat at the head of his table, engaged in a vague conversation with Lord Daldrem, which interested him solely because he did not desire silence. The elderly man in the green and silver did not seem to notice this and continued his monologue unchecked, until the door to the inner hall flew open and crashed into the stone wall.

Darin stood, gripping the edge of the door and trying to catch
his breath. Behind Darin, two male slaves also stood, their expressions worried as they looked up to meet the eyes of their lord.

“You have done well,” Lord Darclan said, his crisp voice carrying the length of the hall. “Both this boy and master Gervin are to be given access to me even if I have indicated that I do not wish to be disturbed. At his request, he is to be given immediate access to my presence, regardless of time or circumstance.”

They relaxed slightly and nodded at his command.

“Now, Darin.” He saw the way that the two slaves looked at each other and then fixed their gaze on Darin’s back. “What is the reason for this disturbance?”

“It’s Sara!” His chest rose and fell as he tried to fit words between breaths. “I was sitting by her this morning and she went all tense. She started to kick and hit out at nothing.”

“Did she wake?”

“No.” He gasped. “I thought she was having a nightmare. I tried to wake her. It seemed to help.” He bit his lip before continuing. “Then she screamed. Just screamed and fell back.”

“She’s sleeping, then?” He rose and walked over to Darin. His hands reached out to steady the boy’s shoulders, and perhaps to steady himself.

“I don’t think so. She’s—it’s like she’s been broken. She’s all pale and she doesn’t move anything. It doesn’t even look like she’s breathing. But she keeps saying something, over and over. I thought it was nonsense at first, because I don’t understand it. But it’s the same thing.”

Lord Darclan took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Do you think you can repeat it?” He waited, listening intently.

“It’s something like ‘mayvanna.’ ”

“Mayvanna?” Lord Darclan’s eyes snapped open.
“Me venna.
” He cut the air with sudden intake of breath. He turned and ran, leaping deftly through the open doors of the breakfast hall. Darin followed at his heel.

 

Sara lay in bed. She was white and still; limbs and forehead were cool to the touch. Even her lips were colorless in the alabaster cast of her face. Lord Darclan’s hands clenched in tight, large fists as he stood looking down upon her. Darin moved quietly to stand at the other side of the bed. The motion caught his lord’s eyes. They met Darin’s brieny—cold, smoldering
blackness, no hint of white to allay their chill. Darin shivered and looked away, doubting what he had seen.

They stood for fifteen minutes, watching, caught in the red light of the curtained room. Sara did not move at all.

Something’s wrong
, Darin thought. It was several minutes before he realized what it was: The curtains of the room that filtered the sunlight were blue.

Blood-magic
. He paled, clasping his hands tightly together to stop himself from drawing the two Wards he knew. Lord Darclan had named him, but he could not trust him further.

Sara’s lips opened a crack, and the whisper of words came rasping out. The tone of her voice matched her eerie pallor; free from life or expression, it hovered between the two who stood watch.

“No!”
Darclan grabbed Sara’s hands, crushing them in his own. “You are not going anywhere!”

“Do you understand what she’s saying? Is it a name?”

“Not a name, no,” he answered. His eyes began to change, from black to steel gray, edged and hard. “It is an old tongue, Darin. Some of your scholars may have remembered it.” He smiled bitterly. “It is a dead tongue, now.” Closing his eyes, he bent his head over Sara and began to murmur. It was a strange, rhythmic litany of words, matched in meter by the swaying of his black-robed body. His voice grew quieter. Time faltered, warping itself to the timbre of his words and the cadence of their rise and fall.

Darin watched. He wanted to offer his help, but the words wouldn’t come. His lord’s knees gave, but he continued his chant until the words creaked out of a parched throat. Only then did he raise his bowed head. He gave a low, furious snarl and dropped Sara’s hands. They fell limp to the covers. He stood, gripped her shoulders, and started to shake her. She didn’t respond. He touched her face, called her name. No answer. At last he pulled her into the circle of his arms and rocked her body gently.

“Lord?”

Darclan shook his head. “She is—still alive.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Do not ask.” He tucked her head under his chin. “Go to master Gervin. Tell him to send me a knife. ”

Darin’s hands were on the door before Darclan could continue; he froze to catch the last few words.

“Tell him that I need you. Do not forget this. You are to wait until he gives you leave to return. Bear what he gives you to me.”

 

Darin stood warily inside of the small vestibule outside Gervin’s living quarters. He knocked tentatively on the door and waited. A brief rustle sounded, followed by quick, light steps, and the door opened a crack. Gervin peered through it. He wore a blue woolen robe; the belt had been clumsily tied and was already slipping. Gervin looked decidedly less friendly when newly awake than on his regular duties, something that Darin would have sworn to be impossible.

“What’s urgent enough to wake me at this time of night, boy?”

“Night? But it’s late morn, master.”

Gervin slid his curious eyes over Darin’s upturned face. “Morn, is it?”

Darin gazed around the vestibule searching futilely for windows. He thought back briefly. How long had he been with Lady Sara and Lord Darclan? Not that long. Certainly not that long.

“It—it must be morning. It was when we entered the Lady’s room.”

“Oh, it’s morning all right, Darin, but I don’t suppose you’re here to debate which end of the morning it is.” He opened the door and stood aside, allowing Darin to enter.

Darin glanced around the sparse, stone walls of the third tower. There was a grate for the fire in the far right corner and a small, neatly closed desk. At one end was a bed with a few blankets and no pillow. That was all. Gervin grinned at the boy’s swift appraisal of his worldly possessions.

“Well, boy? Did the lord send you?”

Drawn back to the task at hand, Darin nodded. “He’s with the Lady Sara.”

“And what does the lady request? Shall I have the linen maids redress her bed? The women draw a bath? The boys start another fire in her grate? Or, worse still, shall I screw up all my courage and rouse Cullen, as she has missed meals this three-day?”

“None of those, master,” Darin replied, serious in the face of the older man’s teasing. “Lord Darclan says that you are to send him a knife.”

The wrinkles around the corner of Gervin’s mouth froze in a grizzled mask. Even his eyes seemed momentarily dead. He
turned and walked rigidly over to the small desk, his right hand fumbling for a key.

“Did he say anything else, child?” he asked in a light, cold voice.

Darin nodded, although Gervin couldn’t see it. “He said that he needs me. I’m to wait here until you give me something to take back to him.”

“I see.” Old hands removed a plain wooden box from the top drawer. Old eyes gazed bitterly at the symbol burned carefully into the sheen of its lid. “Then wait. Do not touch anything.”

“Where are you going?”

“To do as we all do.” The box shook gently in Gervin’s grip.

“Stay; here you are safe.”

Darin watched, as the old man left the room. Something coiled tightly in his chest, waiting to spring.

He remembered suddenly the home and freedom of his childhood and the strong voice of the matriarch of the line as she delivered, again, the old warnings. He wanted to shut the memory out, as he’d done many times before, but it was stronger in the isolation of Gervin’s tower than it had been in many years.

The shutters to the single window in the third tower swung awkwardly in the breeze. There were no curtains—Gervin disdained them—and starlight, clinical and distant, glittered like frost in the night sky—little vicious eyes, pockmarks of light. Words, buried deep, were unearthed.

They stalk at night. Darin, pay attention when I speak. The Darkness draws nearer and what you learn may save your life. All power needs life, mind. All the costs of power are measured in the blood. Lernan will only accept what is given willingly, but the Darkness trades in any life. And they come in the
—

Moonlight, streaked and oddly painful, touched his upturned face, mingled with breeze and a soft, acrid smell. The sound of hoarse voices filled the inner courtyard and dwindled into a silence suddenly unbearable beneath the naked sky. Darin slammed the shutters into their stone frame, grappling with the cold wire latch. He walked over to the bed and sat down, clapping hands over his ears to ward off the voice of the past and the choice of the choiceless present. He thought he knew why this particular memory came.

The box should have been ebony, the blade, toothed and curved.

Lord Darclan was a priest. Malanthi, born with the blood of the Dark Heart. It chilled him.

He sat there until Gervin returned. Although there were lamps, Gervin carried a heavy torch held high in his left hand. Darin could see a large purple bruise around the old man’s right eye. Washed in torchlight, clutching the small wooden box in scratched hands, Gervin seemed ghostly. He stopped in front of Darin, roughly shoving the box toward him.

“Here. Take it. Tell the lord it’s done.”

Two small hands stretched out to relieve Gervin of his burden, but they stopped before touching it.

He had to know. “Master Gervin, what’s been done?”

“Don’t you know, boy?” he said, his voice a hoarse rasp.

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen by the calendar of Malthan.”

“Young, then,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Keep your youth a little longer. Take the box.”

Darin shook his head.

“And brave as well. If you’d been older when you were taken, you’d know.” Keen eyes met the dull glint of young ones. Gervin gave a small start of surprise. “I believe you do know after all.”

Darin scrambled backward and stopped when his back hit the wall. He eyed the box with fright and sick fascination. “I can’t. I can’t take it.”

“You can take it all right.” Gervin dropped the box at Darin’s knees. “You
will
take it.”

“No!” This was the stones all over again. This was supposed to have stopped.

A weary, bitter voice answered. “Now is not the time for heroics. The blade has been blooded; nothing you can do will change that.” Darin still made no move toward it. “Damn you! Take it! I will not have done this for nothing!” His hands were shaking with rage and a rawness Darin knew for pain.

“I can’t. Not for her. She’d never accept it.”

“Do you think she’ll care?” A red film coated Gervin’s eyes; the reflection of firelight obscured his pupils. “Nobody important died!”

“She wouldn’t want anyone to die for her sake!”

“She’s a noble, isn’t she? Maybe full of pleasant, meaningless words, but still above the rest of us! Maybe she will be upset if you tell her—she’ll have to acknowledge a slight twinge of conscience! What are you staring at?”

Anger and pain stretched Darin out between them. He had been at the castle nearly two months and had seen Gervin many times, but never like this.

Tears sprouted down Darin’s cheeks, and with them a sense of desolation so keen it splintered his visions of the past.

“You’re wrong,” he said, forcing a choked whisper from between clenched teeth. He grabbed the box and held it as if it burned him. “She’s nothing like that—you aren’t a slave, you haven’t see the worst that nobles can do! I have—and I know her for better!”

Gervin watched Darin with eyes so full they seemed oddly vacant of expression. “Have I not?” he whispered, the anger gone suddenly from his voice. He walked over to the wall and placed the torch in the metallic ring. “Go. Lord Darclan will be waiting for you.”

Darin glared at Gervin’s back, knowing that the older man would not turn to face him again. “Even the lord knows she’s special. He loves her, too.”

“He must want something from her to order this.” His head dropped a little, and Darin thought he was staring at his upturned hands.

“He loves her!”

“Darin, I have been with the lord for forty years. Lady help us if what you believe is true.” Gervin waited until he heard the loud thump of Darin’s feet. Only when he heard the distant click of the vestibule door did he turn.