Betrayer Of Blood Page 2

  Runehaven was the dwarven city where most of the children had originated. They had been sent away by their families for schooling at the Asincourt seclusionary where they could learn the ways of their Lythnian neighbors. On discovering this after their escape from the fallen seclusionary, Eydis had cobbled together a hasty plan to return the dwarf children to their kin. She hoped to deposit the adherents in that safe place as well. Then she and Geveral would be free to go to the oracle at Silverwood Grove. Their way forward was unclear, and they needed guidance from the oracle for the next step of their mission.

  But she cast those plans aside now. With the unforeseen obstacle of the griffin, she must find a new way.

  “But what of you?” Geveral was asking. “I will not flee to safety while you sacrifice yourself for our survival.”

  Eydis smiled, despite the gravity of the situation. “Your loyalty does you credit. But the adherents and the children will not make it without you. They need protection.”

  “Then you provide it,” he said earnestly. “You take them to Runehaven and let me draw off the griffin.”

  Eydis shook her head. “This is something I alone must do. I am leaving the party in your charge.”

  She hid her misgivings as she said it. During the brief time she had known the dryad, she had learned to trust him implicitly. But he was still a youngling, not more than seventeen or eighteen summers old, and he had lived a sheltered life in the village of Treeveil. And although she had foreseen he was capable of great feats of weather magic, he had yet to fully command his powers.

  But there was no other option. Young and untrained though Geveral was, he must play his part, just as she must play hers. She could only trust to the Mother that they both had the strength to see this through.

  Eydis said a hasty farewell to Jula and the other adherents and to the dwarf children. Choosing not to deplete what little supplies they had, supplies that had a long way to stretch yet, she took only a water skin and a day’s worth of bread.

  She caught Keir watching her preparations with an expression of understanding. She was struck by the fleeting feeling that he knew more of her plans then she herself.

  Pulling Geveral aside, she said, “Keep an eye on that one. Something tells me his safety is vital to our greater cause. He may ultimately prove of more importance than any of the catalysts.”

  Geveral cast a surprised look in the child’s direction but did not argue.

  After advising the others to linger awhile yet in the trees, Eydis set out on her own.

  The woods soon thinned, and it wasn’t long until she left behind their comparative safety and stepped out into the open.

  After the shadows of the trees, the glittering of the snow beneath the bright sun was blinding. The wind sweeping over the mountain bit hard, penetrating her thin cloak and stinging her hands and cheeks.

  She kept an eye to the sky, but there was no more sign of her winged enemy. She knew better than to hope it was gone for good.

  Splitting off into a new direction, away from the route the remaining party would follow, she trudged along the edge of a long ravine. Climbing down into it would have afforded some cover from the wind, but she wanted to stay as much in the clear as possible. If the griffin was watching from afar, she wanted it to notice she had left the others and to see which way she traveled.

  Mentally she summoned up a fuzzy map of a landscape she only half remembered. A place she had never seen with her waking eyes. Contrary to Geveral’s assumption, she had no intention of sacrificing herself. She knew where the griffin came from, had glimpsed its master before. And she intended to do something that master did not expect.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Eydis caught occasional glimpses of the griffin throughout the day but always in the distance. It circled in the sky, seemingly watching her, but did not approach. What was it waiting for? If its master wanted her dead, why did the creature not attack? Relieved though she was to know she had successfully drawn it away from Geveral and the others, it troubled her to wonder what the beast was planning.

  As dusk came on she began looking for a place to pass the night. It grew icy cold in the mountains after the sun dipped below the horizon. She needed to find a good spot to sleep and to build a fire while there was still light enough to see by.

  Thinking the high walls would block some of the wind, she picked her way down into the ravine. The temperature was dropping already, and the rocky ground was slick, making it difficult to find a safe path down. Fortunately, she did not have to descend all the way to the bottom. She found a large flat rock jutting out from the sloped ground at an angle that created a sheltered nook below it. The ground was clear of snow here, and there was enough room for her to crawl beneath.

  Finding kindling was difficult in the semidarkness, but at length she had collected enough sticks and dry broken branches to last her through the night. With a fitful fire glowing at the mouth of her shelter, she crawled beneath the out-jutting rock, cradled her head on her arm, and tried to get some sleep. The many pebbles poking into her ribs and the cold seeping up from the ground were powerful distractions from the gnawing hunger in her belly. She couldn’t consume what little bread she had. Not this early. She would need the food and the strength it would give her tomorrow.

  For now, she scooted closer to the warmth of the flames and told herself she had experienced worse cold and hunger than this. Her years at Shroudstone had made her soft. But once she had not enjoyed the safety and shelter of an inherent-in-training’s cozy cell. Once she had lived on the city streets with the thieves and beggar children. She had survived those early years, and she would survive this challenge too.

  Drifting off to sleep, her last thought was to wonder how Geveral, the adherents, and the children were faring.

  * * *

  Eydis stirred in the night. Dimly she was aware of her body lying curled on the hard ground beneath the overhanging rock. But she felt little connection to that shivering form. Another part of her was wandering, traveling to a distant place far away. As a disembodied spirit, she roamed the dark halls of an underground crypt. She passed bone chests and funerary urns. Skeletons shrouded in cobwebs reclined on shelves built into the walls.

  But she was not interested in these resting corpses. She followed a faint light ahead. From its direction came distant crashing sounds, like the noise of groaning, crumbling rock. And above this rose an angry roar that reverberated like thunder through the passages. It was a terrible sound that made Eydis want to draw back. Yet something compelled her instead to follow the noise.

  The enraged cries led her down winding stairs to another level of the crypt. This was no place for burial but a great cavern lit by glowing braziers. There were friezes on the walls and decaying cobweb-covered tapestries.

  Eydis saw evidence of the recent damage she had heard on her way down. Great pillars in the center of the room had been reduced to rubble, their dust still lingering in the air. This destruction was not wrought by time, she sensed, but by something venting its anger upon the columns. The very walls of the room bore claw marks, as though raked by the hands of some furious giant.

  A raised dais at the head of the cavern remained intact and suggested the purpose of the place. A throne room. But what sort of palace was this? What manner of king would choose to bury himself beneath the corpses she had seen in the upper levels?

  Eydis knew with a chilling certainty. For she had been in this cavernous labyrinth before, had faced in a dream the one who dwelled here.

  As if summoned by her thoughts, he appeared from the shadows. Rathnakar. He was encased in ornate black armor that glinted in the orange nightmarish light cast from the braziers. The pauldrons over his shoulders were spiked, his helmet worked into a winged skull design with red gemstones for eyes.

  Taller than any mortal, his shadow loomed large against the walls. He had no need to tread the grimy floor stones but traveled suspended through the air. When he finally came to light on the floor, it was with a booming thud that shook the hall.

  Slowly he turned toward where she hovered along the wall, wispy and insubstantial as a ghost. He knew she was there, she realized.

  She could see little of the skeletal face within the black helm, but his fiery eyes glowed like angry coals. As those all-knowing eyes burned into Eydis, she had the overwhelming feeling he saw straight through her, directly into her heart and mind. Afraid, she tried to break the contact, tried to withdraw from the dream that had carried her here. But the dream had hold of her and would not let go.

  As if the sight of her refreshed his fury, the Raven King’s eyes blazed hotter. His voice shook the room like a roll of thunder.

  “Come not to bask in my defeat, trespasser. The living corpses of men have failed me and the scepter of power eluded me at Asincourt. But your interference shall not long deprive me of my freedom. And when the scepter and I are reunited, I will escape my shackles to roam the earth again.”

  Eydis found the courage to say, “If you are so powerful, how is it you were bested by the three catalysts?”

  His eyes flamed so bright she could almost feel the heat of them. “It is not you who defeated me, Catalyst. You are but a pawn in the hands of she who guides you.”

  Eydis ignored that, answering, “I survived the enemies you set against me and destroyed even your eyeless creature and his fiery hounds.”

  “Naroz and his hunger hounds were unworthy servants,” he boomed. “And Varian will suffer great pain for his failures at Asincourt. But now I summon a weapon that has served me of old, one beyond this world and hidden from the eyes of mortals.”

  As Eydis watched, he reached a massive, gauntleted fist toward the shadowy recesses of the room.

  “Air and shadow, come forth,”
he commanded, beckoning into the darkness. “Arise and take form, creature of the abyss.”

  As if in answer, a cool stirring of air whispered through the room. A foreign scent reached Eydis’s nostrils, neither sweet nor foul, but subtle and unfamiliar. There was a shifting movement at the corner of the room. Eydis tried to fix her eyes upon it. But whatever it was defied human sight. The firelight from the braziers seemed to warp and bend around the creature.

  With a closer stirring of cold air, Eydis sensed the invisible thing was passing by her. In the dust-covered floor, she saw prints forming, the tracks of a two-footed beast at least twice the size of a man. There was no rational reason for the rush of fear she felt at the arrival of this new enemy. If Rathnakar or his minions could hurt her in dream form, they would surely have done so before now. Yet fear she did.

  The Raven King seemed to sense her dread. “You do well to be afraid,” he told her. “For I have seen into your heart and viewed the place where your feelings will lead you. My creature will hunt you there. You carry the scepter of power. I can see it. But soon the scepter will be in my hands.”

  Horrified at realizing her thoughts were exposed to him, Eydis recoiled. She willed herself away from this place. She imagined the stone walls and ceiling crumbling to dust and herself rising, drifting like a column of smoke above the caverns and passages to the freedom of the open air.

  Surfacing from the dream, she found herself huddled in darkness. Her campfire had gone out, cloaking her world in shadow, except for the cold light of the moon reflected on the snow. While she had been asleep, more tiny white flakes had begun to fall from the sky.

  She rubbed her arms for warmth and decided to stay awake for the rest of the night. She would not risk returning to the dream. What had Rathnakar meant when he spoke of a scepter of power? This was not the first vision she’d had involving such a scepter.

  A memory flashed through her mind. Again, she saw the Head Hearer of Asincourt speaking with her dying breath of the Tears of the Mother, proclaiming them to be the way to the scepter. Eydis also remembered yesterday’s vision in the sacred cave. Remembered the voice’s message to protect the Tears. Everything pointed to those gems she had carried away from Asincourt being far more precious than she had imagined. Perhaps it was no accident the workings of the Mother had brought her to that place and time. Maybe the real mission had been not to rescue the adherents and dwarf children, but to rescue the Tears of the Mother. Somehow they held the key to the scepter. And if what Rathnakar said was true, that the scepter would give him the strength to break free of his tomb-like prison, it was surely vital they not fall into his hands.

  Suddenly it was more urgent than ever to escape these mountains and return to Silverwood Grove. The oracle alone would know how to protect the Tears. But Eydis was a long way from the rangelands and many mountains stood between her and the oracle.

  Fleetingly, she wished the barbarian from Kroad were here. She had never exactly trusted Orrick. He had aided her on her way to Asincourt only for reasons of his own. But his help would be welcome now.

  Was he really dead? The last time she had seen him he was being overwhelmed by the undead soldiers pouring over the walls of the Asincourt seclusionary. It was difficult to imagine he could survive that. And yet something told her he was still alive out there. She had developed strong powers of premonition since first learning her destiny as one of the catalysts of chaos. And that sense told her she had not seen the last of the Kroadian.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Griffin

  White flurries of snow swirled around the griffin as it soared high above snowcapped mountains and deep gorges. The beast flew on against the wind and ice particles until it crested a rise. There, nestled in the bottom of a valley below, was a granite tower spiraling up into the sky.

  The griffin circled the column and drew in to land on an outward jutting balcony near the pinnacle. The balcony led onto a shadowed interior, a vast hall with high ceilings and great columns. The griffin did not go inside. It had no need.

  Its master appeared, stepping out onto the balcony and into the storm. The icy wind stirred the wizard’s multitude of silver braids and swirled the hem of his velvet over-robe.

  “You have succeeded, my winged servant,” he observed. “The gazing ball shows the mistress of masks traveling this way.”

  Another figure stepped out onto the balcony, separating herself from the pillars that had concealed her. “Is this your purpose then?” she asked the wizard. “To drive the mistress of masks to you?”

  She stood untouched by the swirling wind, this ghostly pale lady clad in a trailing shroud. A silvery circlet rested atop her loosely flowing hair.

  The wizard started at her sudden appearance. “You again?” he asked with apparent distaste. “Must you always lurk among the shadows and appear where you have not been invited? Other eternals keep to their own domains.”

  The pale lady shrugged. “My spirit wonders where it will. And I must protect my investment in the mistress of masks. Or have you forgotten that I helped you before? How I aided this Eydis and her friends on their way, at your request. How I shepherded them toward the seclusionary and the Tears of the Mother. In return, what do I receive from our alliance? Your promise of protection for my territories when the chaos comes?”

  “My word on that has already been given,” the wizard responded irritably. “It is not necessary to spy on me to ensure I fulfill it. The mistress of masks will soon be within my grasp and, through her, the Tears of the Mother. The scepter will be mine and, when I deliver it to the Raven King, I will have his favor.”

  She arched a pale eyebrow. “A more ambitious eternal might keep the scepter and its power for himself.”

  His smile was as cool as the wind whistling over the balcony. “I will weigh that option when I have the scepter in my hands. But first this Eydis must be dealt with.”

  “And her friends?” asked the pale lady.

  The wizard turned back to his waiting griffin. “Destroy the dryad and the women and children,” he ordered the beast. “I have no further use for them,” he explained to the white lady. “Now that the mistress of masks heads into my trap, the others are nothing but loose ends.”

  The griffin beat its great wings and took off from his perch, soaring up into the sky.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Geveral

  Geveral kept an eye out for a place to make camp. They were coming up on the second night since Eydis left. Thus far, all had gone well. There was a small snowstorm the first night, but that ended quickly and had not slowed the party’s progress. There were no more sightings of the griffin. It seemed Eydis had succeeded in her attempt to lure the beast away. Geveral tried not to think about what that might have cost her. He had seen the redheaded young woman survive many dangers since their first meeting back in Treeveil. He told himself if anyone could outwit the griffin, it would be her.

  The group came upon a rocky rise where scattered boulders offered shelter from the night wind. Knowing it was the most suitable spot they were likely to find, Geveral called a halt to make camp for the night.

  The children chattered cheerfully while darting between the rocks, collecting firewood. Geveral thought how quickly they forgot the dangers and hardships they had endured these past few days. All except the quiet boy, Keir. Although only a child himself, Keir seemed somehow too old for the games of the other youngsters. Maybe Eydis had been right when she said there was something special about the boy. Certainly his appearance stood out from the rest, with his leathery skin and golden eyes.

  Geveral turned his attention to Jula and another adherent, who were preparing dinner. The somber looks on the women’s faces told him what he already knew. They were about to finish the last of the food. Jula had been rationing it carefully to get them this far. But their meager supplies could not be stretched indefinitely.