Unleashed Fury (BloodRunes: Book 1) (31 page)

A bawdy redheaded girl came over and asked if
they wanted a drink, with a no-nonsense attitude born of years of
dealing with drunken louts. They each ordered a round of the house
ale and settled back to regroup. Gryffon told her that there was a
place here that was a drop - a place where he could leave a message
to be picked up by his countrymen.

“What kind of message are we going to send
them?” she asked him.

He leaned back, letting the waitress set
their drinks in front of them, and then nodding his thanks. He
waited for her to saunter out of hearing range before answering.
“I'll have to let my handlers know that my previous position was
compromised, and they'll no longer be getting the reports they were
used to. I'll have to let them know about the hellhounds too. I
think our encounter pretty well proves that blood-magic is being
used again, don’t you?”

Layna nodded soberly.

“If Jezebel has gotten her hands on the
knowledge to create them, it leaves little doubt that the knowledge
has been unearthed, and is available to be used to recreate the
beasts of old. Unfortunately, now we'll have to rely on information
that we can pick up from the streets,” he paused again looking at
her sheepishly. “That is, of course, if you'll be alright with my
continued work and want to help with it.”

Layna nodded. “From what you've said, it
sounds like the people you've been watching need to be stopped,
whether by your country or mine. They're just plain evil, so yes. I
didn’t want to believe it about the blood-magic, but I don’t think
I can pretend like it doesn’t exist anymore after seeing it
firsthand. I’ll help however I can to stop it from spreading any
farther.”

Gryffon smiled. “Good.” They sat drinking
their ale and listening to the chattering around them for a while.
They made some small talk, but their hesitant speech betrayed their
discomfort. Layna felt more nervous than when she had first found
out she had talent and had spent the first week looking over her
shoulder expecting there to be a priest behind her. She laughed at
herself. It seemed like forever ago that she had been a simple
maid. How much had happened in such a short time. Even using magic
seemed to be something she had been doing for years rather than the
reality of a matter of weeks.

Gryffon looked around the tavern and said,
“We'll have to come back here tonight and pick a good spot to sit
and listen. Places full of drinking people tend to find them
loose-lipped and bragging, so we might learn something useful.” He
waved the waitress over then, and asked if he might have a mug of
milk.

“It'll cost ya extra,” she told him, and he
nodded his understanding. Layna looked askance at him and he held
up a hand, motioning that he'd tell her soon enough. The maid came
back with the milk and Gryffon thanked her, rising from the table
and nodding his head towards the stairs for Layna to follow. They
made their way back to the room and shut the door.

“Alright,” Layna said, “you got me. What's
the milk for?” Gryffon muttered a word and the air around him
shimmered for a second. “And what was that,” Layna added.

“That,” Gryffon answered, “was a shield so
that no one can overhear or look in to see what we're doing. And
the milk,” he said, setting it on the desk next to a parchment, “is
for the note.” He picked up a quill and dipped it into the milk,
scrawling out a message. Layna watched dubiously as the liquid was
absorbed into the paper and it disappeared. Gryffon finished
writing and held it up, revealing a damp, but blank-looking
parchment. “See?”

“Okay,” Layna said, “and how does that help
us?”

Gryffon grinned. “When it dries it's
invisible, but if you hold it up to firelight,” he held it over by
the fire, and the light behind it revealed the note he had just
written, “you can see what was written. Not all that complicated,
but since no one but me and the person picking it up should know
that there is a message here, most people would just see an empty
piece of parchment and not look at it further.”

“That's useful,” Layna said, but then asked,
“Why not just use magic?”

“Ah-hah,” said Gryffon, “a question I myself
have asked. And the answer was twofold: One, that not everyone can
use magic to the same extent; and two, that magic itself can be
traced. Whereas this piece of parchment right now is nothing more
complicated than paper and milk, were I to enchant it only to
become visible when a certain word was uttered, say, it would
suddenly radiate power to anyone else who happened to have a talent
greater than my own.” He guessed her next question and answered it
before she asked, “because you can 'hide' your work with magic, but
those with more talent than you can always break through those
barriers and see what you did, so unless I was the most powerful
out there, which I am not, it would be like a beacon to anyone with
more talent than me that this piece of paper was no ordinary blank
sheet.”

“Huh,” said Layna, impressed.

“There are a lot of different ways that you
can hide messages, either by encoding the message itself so that
unless you know how to decipher it, it will mean nothing. Or, like
this paper, concealing the very fact that there is a message at
all. A lot of my work consisted of trying to break codes or read
messages that I intercepted and then recoding them to send
home.”

They made their way out into the busy streets
and made a tour around the city. They took a round-about route to
the drop point, both to see what they could find out and for the
purpose of being less conspicuous, just in case.

The weather was somewhat warmer here than
back at the capital and a breeze blew through the city that smelled
strangely salty to Layna. When she commented on it, Gryffon told
her that it was because Avonmora was a port city; its southern side
was the sea coast. The whole section was encompassed by wharfs
where trade ran to other places, even Treymayne, though very
limited and only by way of certain merchants. This was why he would
be able to get a message through more easily here since routes of
communication were possible, whereas along most of the border they
were not.

They meandered around an isolated wharf,
where Layna was impressed by the sight of the sea. “It goes on
forever!” she exclaimed to Gryffon.

He laughed, amused by her appreciation.
“Well, not forever. But it is a relatively large body of water. You
ever been fishing?”

Layna shook her head negatively.

“I love to fish,” Gryffon said. “Back home, I
grew up on the edge of the Great River that feeds into the sea.” He
nodded towards the water indicating that it was the same. “We used
to fish all the time. It was the livelihood of a lot of people
there.”

“This is the first time I've ever been
anywhere other than my family's home out west and the capital” she
confessed.

Gryffon quickly glanced around and almost
imperceptibly drew the note out of his pocket and dropped it into a
barrel. “Really,” he said to her, making no outward sign that he
had just made the drop. “You've never been anywhere?”

Layna thought back as far as she could
remember. “Maybe when I was little, but nowhere exciting, and
certainly not that I remember well.”

Gryffon turned down the corners of his mouth.
“Hmph. Well, enjoy the wonderful sights,” he said with a grin,
pointing around to the abandoned docks.

Layna pursed her lips at him, trying not to
smile. “Well, it actually is quite beautiful if you look out over
all of the barrels and dead fish.”

Gryffon laughed and went over to a post and
picked at a nail. It came loose and he let it stick out, moving on
along the docks. Layna gave the nail a glance, but didn't comment,
making a mental note to ask him about it later. She was intrigued
by the secrecy of his movements, and wondered if perhaps he wasn't
just a bit over-paranoid as no one should even know they were here.
She knew first hand, however, that depending on who found out they
had some pretty harsh punishments if you were caught. She didn't
know what the official punishment for espionage was, but she
shuddered to think of what Jezebel would do if ever she got her
hands on them again. There certainly was a lot more to life than
she previously known, and it was nerve-wracking how close Layna had
been to such vile events without even having been aware of
them.

They wandered back to more populated streets
and wound in and out of the people, making quiet conversation with
one another, but mostly just listening to the talk around them.
Gryffon had advised her to try and listen to people's conversation
without overtly turning her attention to them to gather
information. She caught bits and pieces of people's lives, mostly
babble that meant nothing to her out of context, and she felt
herself wishing that she could follow some of these people and see
what a day in their life would be like. As they came around a bend,
she heard a portion of a sentence that caught her interest, and
Gryffon gave her a slight nod that he had heard it as well. They
made their way over to look at the goods on a cart that was
fortuitously close to the speaker.

“Why would they attack us now? We've done
nothing to them,” a woman was saying to another.

“Why not?” asked the second, shrugging.
“Maybe they've gotten greedy and want our land.” The ladies walked
farther away and Layna started to follow but Gryffon waved her over
instead to what must have prompted the conversation. A poster was
hung on the side of a cart which implied, without actually saying
it, that Treymayne might look at Gelendan as a way to increase
their living space. It also pointed out that behind their closed
borders they could easily prepare for war without anyone here being
the wiser. Without comment they moved on and Gryffon led the way
back to their rooms.

“That's an interesting new development,” he
commented. “The new King is wasting no time in spreading
propaganda.”

Layna shrugged. “Might Treymayne actually
think of it that way, or consider attacking us?”

Gryffon looked ready to argue with her, but
changed his mind. “I don't know for sure I guess,” he admitted,
“But I don't see our government as ready to try and take over
yours, if for no other reason than you are still a much bigger
country and no doubt you would squash our attempt, especially if
even a select few are dabbling in the blood-magic.”

“You've been cut off from us a long time.
That could make it very easy for a lot of people to build
resentment towards you if given these types of implications as
their only source of information about you. After all, we don't all
have our own personal Gryffon convincing us that you Treymaynians
aren't big bad wolves hiding behind your borders that for all we
know you've been expanding north.”

Gryffon looked serious despite her attempt at
humor. “No doubt,” he said soberly, “it could really be a problem
if that's what they're gearing towards.”

Layna was thoughtful for a moment. “What was
the reason for the nail you pulled out at the wharfs?” she asked.
“If it had any significance.”

“Indeed it did. Good eye,” Gryffon answered
and went on to explain. “It's the indicator for the person I'm
sending the message to that there is a message available to be
picked up. That way he's not checking it all the time when there's
nothing there and drawing more attention to the spot than is
necessary.”

“Ah,” said Layna, her curiosity satisfied.
“So what do we do now?”

“We wait.”

CHAPTER 26

Jezebel spent the morning playing with the
remainder of her hellhounds, delighting in the aura of fear it
caused in the servants at her country hide-away. One of them, at
the beginning of her little venture, had made the mistake of
commenting on them. He had found himself as live bait as she taught
the pack to hunt. She found it most amusing now, the way the
servants acted as if there was nothing unusual going on here. They
even refused to look at the hounds as they brought down the meat to
feed them; instead they just placed the food in the dishes as if
simply disposing of it.

The book had recommended that she retrace the
beasts' runes once a week. Although she had at first thought that
this task would be tedious and unnecessary, she found that she
enjoyed it, and sometimes did it even more often than really called
for. The ones she had sent after Gryffon and the slut, of course,
had to have a crash course. It almost made her sad now to think
about how much power had been lost because of the speed of the
training.
Ah well, it can't be helped now. Hopefully the last
one is already on its way back with evidence of having just killed
the slut and dragging along behind it that useless traitor.

She climbed into the carriage and barked
orders for the driver to bring her to her suite at the palace. She
had a luncheon with her father that she wanted to get over with
quickly. He had politely offered her his expertise on the current
political situation, and she had found herself unable to turn him
down gracefully. However, she was not looking forward to this
little interview and hoped that he wouldn't stay long.

The King had requested a private meeting with
her later, as the appointed speaker for the Council, which she
wanted to have time to prepare for. She needed to speak with Devon
beforehand in order to be ready to impress him with her knowledge,
and be armed with anything she could to use to manipulate him.
Jezebel already planned to demand answers from the King, ready with
the defense that as his Councilors they must know what his intimate
plans were so that they could best advise him. She also planned to
get to know more about him, to assess his weaknesses and determine
whether or not she could sway him towards her goals or if he may
need more prodding. She had also done a little more research into
the ancient arts from the book she had been given and had found a
little trick she meant to try on him to use the power to influence
him.
And spending time in the presence of such a perfect
specimen of a man won't be a trial of patience either.