Oathen (30 page)

Meena laughed and nodded. “I believe it does.”
She sniffled and looked around the table. “Stars and darkness,” she
murmured, her breath catching on a lump of emotion. “Arisson always
wanted a big family.”

~~~

Bailik stormed across his study, fuming.
Focusing his anger and frustration, he shot a black zag through the
air toward an etched glass lamp on his enormous desk, and the lamp
shattered into a thousand pieces, fragments littering the thick
woven rug beneath his desk. Its fragile flame vanished into thin
air.

Gone. Taken by the meddlesome
Scions! I’ll not survive his wrath this time. And I’ll deserve
it!

Most of Bailik’s rage was due not to his
impending death, but to the fact that he had forgotten about the
Scions in light of the exceptional prize he’d been on the verge of
capturing. They didn’t strike with any regularity, but many of
their attacks were specifically to free future victims of the Blood
Plague. In hindsight, they would have seen a blitz on the farmhouse
as some sort of moral imperative.

Now I need to find another way to get the
meddlesome bitch!
he raged inside his skull, slamming his fist
into a wall tapestry depicting the
Great Tome
raised in the
hands of a devoted Dzur i’Oth leader. The last leader who had been
able to hold the book in person, in fact, because Jacasta Triserren
stole it out of the Ritual Chamber after his sudden, untimely and
rather grotesque death. He glared at the tapestry, then cut his
eyes over to the shattered lamp.

Always hiding behind her magic barrier
,
he thought, nostrils flaring.
My death will serve no purpose!
She will still be out there! Oolat’s obsession with her, and his
harsh punishments for failure, has wreaked havoc within the ranks
of Dzur i’Oth. We are no closer to our goal, but she is closer to
hers. I
need to succeed. I need to prove I can deliver
results. Not to Oolat, but to the rest of the cult. Once I’ve taken
him down, we can get off this wild horse ride and return to Dzur
i’Oth’s traditional methods of success. Our glory won’t be found in
playing decades-long games, but in controlling nations and their
trade. And we can’t get there until I placate the Hand of Power
with what he wants.

He stalked across the room to his bookshelf.
Nearly half his magic-research books were open on the table next to
it. He had embarked on a long and fruitless search for a way to
break through the ancient magic that surrounded her. A way to
pinpoint her when she was so solidly invisible.

Solidly invisible
. Bailik squinted in
thought. He turned to the lamp he had broken, motioning the
shattered glass back into a sphere, relighting the flame within. He
strode to the edge of his desk and crouched by its side, gazing
through the mended glass at the yellow light.

Reaching out a finger, he tapped the glass,
hearing its crystalline chime.

A slow smile spread across his
face.

An hour later, he was summoned before the Hand
of Power. He kept his eyes downcast as he approached the
basalt-and-diamond throne upon its dais.

“I return from managing affairs in the Ochre
Tower to find that you have apparently captured and then lost our
best link to the thief in the last four hundred cycles?” Oolat
said, his voice breathy.

Bailik was not fooled. He could see the fury
in Oolat’s whitened grip on the left arm of the throne.

“Did I not warn you properly,” Oolat
continued, nearly hoarse with anger, “what would happen when next
you failed me? I did not think we had reached that point so
soon.”

Only the knowledge that he had just acquired
enabled Bailik to reply in a steady voice. “Master,” he said,
staring at the bottom step of the dais, “it was all according to
plan. Your servant may appear to have lapsed in judgment, but this
is to lull the enemy into a false sense of security.”

Oolat leaned forward. Bailik could feel his
master’s white stare piercing the top of his hairless head. “I’m
listening.”

“The followers of the thief were allowed to go
free, to be rescued and taken in by the Scions,” Bailik lied, “in
order to gather them all at the same location with her, that we
might be able to take them all at once.”

“The Scions have many hiding places,” Oolat
barked, flicking his silvery fingers. “We’ve not found one in a
generation. And you have been singularly unsuccessful in breaking
through the thief’s magic barrier.”

Bailik met his master’s gaze, held up his own
hand. “With your permission, Master?” None of Oolat’s followers
were allowed to use their magic in his presence without his
consent.

Oolat lifted his silver digits in a gesture of
agreement.

Bailik created a glowing yellow-and-black
image of his study lamp hovering above his palm. “We seek the
flame, yet cannot reach it,” he said. “Her glass is too strong. So,
I decided to seek it instead of her. I reviewed the last seeking
spells we cast, and cast a resonance spell into them.”

Oolat’s eyes flared wide. “And?”

“I found her. I can track her, not by her
person, but by the absence of information her shield returns. The
void that protects her also marks her.” Bailik let the illusion
dissipate.

“Where is she now?”

“At the Red Cliff. I’m sure, Master, that you
see the conclusion I do. She has joined the Scions in one of their
protected bolt holes. And she has left us a hazy trail of void
energy, leading straight to it.”

“Ahh,” Oolat sighed in pleasure, sitting back
in his throne. “They are indeed all ours. Well done, Bailik. Take a
large force with you. Don’t let any of them escape.”

Bailik bobbed in eagerness, nearly forgetting
to keep his eyes on the floor. “Right away, Master.”

~~~

Oolat sat back in his throne and watched
Bailik depart in a swirl of robes. His minion was doing well
indeed. Already respected and feared by the Dzur i’Oth’s general
population, he had now distinguished himself by cracking the
unsolvable mystery of how to track the thief. And in reporting his
success, he had not cowered, but merely bowed in deep respect
before his master.

And while he had been bowing, Oolat had been
plumbing him. The secret ability had more than once proved useful
in the past. Though he made a regular habit of counting the
abilities of his high-ranking spellcasters, tracking their
bloodmagic additions, he had not done so with Bailik for some
weeks.

The last time Oolat had plumbed Bailik, he’d
possessed seventeen magics. Now he possessed eighteen. The minion
had been very careful not to use it, whatever it was. Which meant
he was merely waiting for his chance to strike and take
control.

Useful as he was to Oolat, and to all of Dzur
i’Oth, Bailik’s time with the cult needed to come to a close. It
was clear that Oolat’s second was reaching a level of competency
that rivaled his own. And Oolat did not tolerate rivals.

Not even useful ones.

Count Stam Aponden took the proffered note from his
assistant’s hand. “Who delivered it?”

“Didn’t see, my lord. Likely one of the
pages.”

Aponden unscrolled the parchment and found a
message from Giril n’Hara, asking for a quiet meeting in the
gardens behind the palace.
Something to do with Runcan’s return,
no doubt
, he thought.
And why no one else returned with
him
.

Several minutes later, Aponden found himself
braving the chill fog of the winter afternoon, wrapped in a warm
cloak. The rains had let up, but the paving stones at the back of
the gardens were mired in cold mud. He stepped carefully to keep
his boots clean.

A blob of color resolved into n’Hara’s cloak
as Aponden drew closer. Hunching to keep warm, they both drew
together.

“What’s happened?” Aponden asked.

“You’re asking me? You called me here,” n’Hara
responded, looking doubtful.

“I did no such—” Aponden’s eyes widened, and
his heart began to pound.
Someone knows something they
shouldn’t!

Without a word, both men turned and began to
stroll away.
I need to get back to the manor, retrieve
my—

“Wait, my lords, if you please,” came a
voice.

Turning back, Aponden saw a woman step out
from among the leafless trees. Her cloak, a light grey, blended
well with the fog. Her accent was not one he recognized.

“Who are you?”

“You may call me Lady Mist. I hail from the
gracious lands of Hynd, and I have an offer for you, Count
Aponden.”

He exchanged a glance with n’Hara. “What sort
of offer?”

She stepped closer, and a tantalizing scent
wafted through the damp air. “The sort that nets you an
empire.”

Aponden’s eyes widened.

“I met Counts Sengril and Armala in
Ha’Lakkon—a profitable exchange for all of us. There, I learned of
your goals, and how they mesh well with my own.” She slipped a
fragment of paper into his hand. “I do not have much time; your
Count Runcan has the ear of the Magister, and by the hearth, I know
not what lies he may be whispering. Do nothing unusual today. Come
to that address tonight after the last bell, both of you, and we
shall discuss Vint’s future.”

With that, she slipped back through the trees
and vanished in the cloaking mist.

“We can’t possibly go see her,” n’Hara
muttered, crossing his arms beneath his cloak.

Aponden ran his tongue along the inside of his
upper teeth. “Yet, we can’t
not
go, either. She clearly
knows enough to cause us problems if we don’t do as she
says.”

“May I suggest,” n’Hara said after a moment,
“an alternate plan.”

~~~

“There is a second purpose to bloodmagic, and
because of it, we try never to let our spellcasters be taken
alive.” Ahm reclined on a stone bench next to the hearth deep
within the Red Cliff, a pewter cup in his hand. Scions and their
guests gathered around on fur rugs and padded leather
benches.

Sanych leaned forward to listen, both repulsed
and desperate for information.

“When Dzur i’Oth captures one of us, Oolat
chooses several of his own spellcasters to benefit from our magical
ability. They each get a portion of blood to consume, and from then
on, they can manifest a weak version of their victim’s gift.
Naturally, Scions don’t survive the experience. Death isn’t
necessary to pass on the gift, but if they kill us right after they
take our gift, they ensure no one else can possess it.

“We have a defensive spell that protects some
of us. For the rest, their only defense is death before capture.
We’ve learned the hard way never to hesitate with a mercy
stroke.”

Sanych felt her face pale. She shuddered at
the casual relationship the Scions had with death. Meena’s
immortality was one thing, but being willing to be killed by
someone they knew and loved? She wondered if she’d have to adopt
that philosophy herself, and couldn’t help imagining Geret’s sword
plunging through her chest.

Ahm continued relating the situation in
Shanal. The cult had a terrible grip on the realm, controlling
everything from the food crop production to the countries who were
allowed to trade with them. They’d wormed their way into the palace
itself generations ago; the Ochre Mask spellcasters in Cish were
merely a front for Dzur i’Oth business dealings. And the cult had
spent the last year spreading rumors of the Blood Plague supposedly
ravaging the countryside, able to take an entire village out in a
single night.

At that, Sanych hissed through her teeth. The
victims of Heren Garil Sa’s eruption and quake ripples, including
everyone aboard the
Kazhak
, were not the only victims of the
cult that fateful day, she realized. Her mind recoiled at the
enormity of such horror, and she felt dwarfed by its power, here in
its home country.

Ruel, by her side, nudged her shoulder. “The
song doesn’t end here; it’s got another verse left,” he murmured.
“We can avenge them all.”

Sanych looked up at him. She now possessed
magic like many in the room with her, but she had no idea how to
control it. Meena had said she’d get Sanych trained, but all the
Archivist could think about was how she’d burned Rhona’s arm.
Thinking of using magic again terrified her, though it wasn’t as
grotesque as imagining someone drinking her blood.

Ahm and others asked Meena to speak next, and
she shared her recollections of life in Shanal. The room was
completely silent as everyone listened to the ancestor of the
Scions speak.

“Imshi was born when I was just eighteen, the
year before I entered Queen Anzadi’s service with Arisson. It feels
so far away, now; it’s more a fact than a memory. Our work for the
queen was dangerous and unpredictable, so I decided not to have any
more children, though I knew Arisson wanted more; he came from a
large family, always saying he wanted to spread the love
around.

“Imshi was raised at the palace, by the royal
staff and the other agents as much as she was by us. And while we
weren’t looking, she grew up and fell in love. She married a
captain in the Queen’s personal guard when she was seventeen. They
had to postpone the wedding ceremony until Arisson and I returned
from a mission in the north. Two years later, she had a son,
Casson. I…don’t even know if they had other children.”