Children of the Blood (3 page)

“Lord. ”

He turned to look down at Vellen, resplendent in his mortal robes. The high priest was pale, as the First, but his hair was gold, his eyes blue, and his expression so much more definite. The high, red collar of his office framed him perfectly.

“It is almost over.”

“Yes,” Stefanos said, and turned his gaze back toward where the last of the light was dying.

Vellen barked an order, and another priest came forward, hands holding an ebony box. Vellen took it, opened it, and looked almost reverently down the fine edge of a black blade.

“We consecrate this ground tonight.”

Stefanos said nothing. Here and there voices still erupted, passing over the clash of metal and the crackle of preternatural flame.

Many times had he seen such an end; many times had he been the instrument of it. Unbidden, the thought of her returned to him, her fire and light strong enough to be felt against even his best effort. Upon such a night as this had his course been decided.

“None of the Lernari,” he said, suddenly and coldly.

“Pardon, Lord?”

“None of the Lernari.” Stefanos stepped forward. “Gather their servants if you wish, and sacrifice those that you choose from among them. But the Lernari are to be given swift passage to the beyond that they seek.”

Vellen opened his mouth to speak, and then clamped his lips down firmly over the words that he had been about to say. He looked at the First Servant, Lord of the Empire, and saw the nightmare of children: nightwalker, devourer of souls. Almost against his will, he shivered. For although he and all the rest of the Karnari had always known in truth what the Lord was, they had never seen it until now.

Still, it was hard not to feel anger at this unwarranted interference. The Church had its own laws, and not even the Lord of the Empire could contradict them on whim. Nor had he ever tried, in living memory. Vellen started to speak, and again thought the better of it; the time to confront this Lord was not upon the field of battle, and not without the power of God behind him. When he returned to the capital, however, he would bespeak the Dark Heart; perhaps this once he would receive a
solid answer. He nodded, and his anger grew at the subtle play of smile around the First Servant’s lips.

Soon the swords brought the wounded and the whole, dragging them toward the gentle hilltop upon which the Servant stood. Stefanos watched the faces of the prisoners. Some stared at him in open fear, some in confusion, and some with a hatred that time would do nothing to ease.

Nightwalker.
He heard the murmur as it passed between adults and children. Here or there a child gripped the skirted thigh of a mother or the robe of a father. Tears fell, mingling with blood and silence. They gathered before him, these cattle, these mortals, as they had done only once before.

“Is this all?” Vellen said, his voice steady.

“Yes, Karnar.”

“The rest?”

The Sword smiled grimly. “None escaped the watch on the perimeter. ”

“Good.” Vellen echoed the soldier’s smile. “Ready the army, then, for the ceremony. Secure the city.”

The man saluted once, crisply, and walked away.

 

Kerren held his mother’s dress, his grip too tight to be dislodged easily. He was large for his age, and at any other time he would have stood aside, fearing to look too much like a baby. Nor did Darin notice this, for his fingers held the other side of Helna’s fine-spun nightgown.

Only the woman cried, her tears silent. She looked around from side to side, knowing that she would not see her husband here, but hoping nonetheless. Her arms still clutched the two children as she stood witness to the fall of Culverne. They had done their best to run, and failing at that, had done their best to hide. The screams and the fighting had provided no cover for them, and they had been brought back at sword point, traversing the growing graveyard of Lernari and servers alike.

Kerren looked up at his mother, and she pulled him more tightly to her. Darin looked at the Servant. The nightwalker stood so close, an emblem of the Dark Heart. But here, unlike in history books and upon tapestries, there was no Bright Heart to defy him.

The fire was still burning; if Darin looked hard enough he could see the flickering outline of the house that had been his. He said nothing; did not even look around at the gathered crowd. He knew he would not see his family here.

An icy hand gripped his heart too tightly for sorrow.

This creature was the horrible wrongness that he had felt. No nightmare, no daydream, no story, could have prepared him for it.

Death walked among them all.

 

Stefanos surveyed the crowd with growing disinterest. He saw their fear, but did not allow himself to feel it. These were, as the others who toiled within his empire, beneath his notice, beneath contempt.

“Lord.” Vellen bowed low. “Should you wish it, you may preside over the ceremonies.” In his hands he held the knife of the Karnari. There was no warmth in the words, but Stefanos expected none. He was tempted to accept the high priest’s offer, if only to discomfort the mortal, but decided against it.

“You may continue.”

Vellen nodded smoothly, a sure sign that the knife was proffered for the sake of formality alone.

Did I travel this far and wait this long to suffer the presumption of a priest?
It had been long since the luxury of thwarting the Church had been his; but the time had come for many things, and here, perhaps for the first time in centuries, he could relax.

One dark claw shot out and caught Vellen’s pale hand before the priest could begin his benediction. The susurrus of muted whispers echoed around his back; the Swords were surprised. He could feel them join him as he studied Vellen’s face. Anger was there; so intense an anger that for a moment Vellen could not help but let it show. For anyone else, such an offence merited death at the least; Stefanos knew it and allowed his smile to show the knowledge clearly.

“Perhaps, High Priest, I shall accept your offer after all.”

All anger vanished as the Servant released the priest. They stood matching wills for minutes in the sudden silence. The blood of the Dark Heart stirred as blue eyes met red-tinged black.

It was Vellen who broke away first; this, Stefanos had expected. What surprised him was the mien of the priest as he bowed smoothly. Power recognized power. But there was grace in the acknowledgment; grace and no hint of the bluster or fear that had marked any other encounter that Stefanos had chosen.

“Lord.”

“High Priest.”
A pity, Vellen, that you are merely half blood. You might have otherwise proved a worthy opponent.

The black of obsidian shivered in his palm as Vellen passed the dagger to him. Stefanos looked down at it. His lips curled over his teeth. In any other heart, this legendary blade might invoke fear. His head rose, and he gazed out at the gathered crowd of slaves. He did not need the dagger; it was an emblem of a lesser power. With barely concealed contempt, he laid it aside.

“Will you choose?” Vellen asked, an edge in his voice as the symbol was put aside unblooded.

“Indeed.”

 

The shadow began to walk. It descended the grassy hill that had been trampled by the feet of hundreds of soldiers. It advanced upon the cowed and silent throng. As if they were water, the people standing near Darin, toward the front of the crowd, pulled back in a wave. The boy felt Helna’s grip grow stronger as she pulled him back as well. He followed her wordless direction without realizing it. If the shadow walked, it would find him. That conviction grew in him until he could not contain it; he trembled visibly.

Helna would risk no words, not here. But she tried to calm Darin by drawing him yet further into the meager shelter of her arms. In silence, they waited.

Everyone had heard the stories of the priests and their dark communion with the Heart that none ever named. They knew what the dagger meant, and what the man in black-traced red had intended. He was not their fear.

No, their fear came to them in icy shadow, carrying a darkness too deep for the night, and too final. Even the children were silent as he began to walk among them.

 

This close, it was harder. Stefanos’ red eyes trailed across the faces of gathered servants. If they could, he knew they would bolt like a panicked herd. With the Swords on the perimeter, however, they chose instead the guise of rabbits; they stood straight and still, moving very little, as if movement alone could catch his attention. Thus had they stood, Sarillorn at their head, too many mortal years ago. And he had chosen to live each one of those years alone.

He saw her then, as he often saw her, a trace of green light warming the lines of her body, hands clenched tightly at her side, chin tilted up in defiance and resignation both. She stepped
forward, a human ghost, and he stopped before the memory of her hands could pass through him.

For lives such as these, she had bargained away her own. He wondered if she had been aware that he’d had no intention of living up to his word once he’d taken what he desired. He had never asked.

But he had chosen to play the game, and it had grown, in short hours, beyond either’s understanding. For a moment he ached at the haunting.

He shook himself and walked further into the crowd, seeing other faces, another time.

And then he stopped.

The air carried just the faintest hint of wrongness here, a trace of what had been. He looked back at the high priest and then shook his head; time had weakened the half bloods, and Vellen’s power alone was not enough to detect this. But he was First; in him the power of the Awakening flowed undiminished.

Perhaps one of the Lernari had fathered a bastard among the servers. In times past, such a thing would have been unlikely, but mortal blood had weakened the light as well.

 

Darin’s eyes grew wide as the nightwalker suddenly gestured. A red haze shimmered around him, deeper and darker than the red of his eyes. In panic, he raised his arms, hands flying futilely in the air. Helna gasped and reached out to grab them.

Too late.

The nightwalker turned, his gaze falling on Darin.

“So,” he said softly, and began to walk, his gait as measured and precise as before. But this time he did not walk at random. People moved to grant him passage; anything else was death.

He came to a stop in front of Darin, and his black claws reached out.

Darin gave a little gasp as they enfolded his chin. They were cold; he had not imagined that anything so red could be so icy.

“What is your name, child?”

“D-Darin. ”

The claw tightened. “You will learn,” the nightwalker said softly, “that you are a slave now. You have no name. ”

Darin said nothing.

“You.” The nightwalker spoke to Helna now, relieving Darin from the pressure of his eyes. “Is this child yours?”

“Yes.” There was no hesitation. She trembled, that was all.

“The father?”

“Dead.” Her voice grew weaker as she felt Kerren’s sudden lurch. She held on to him as if he were life, and he was wise enough to say nothing.

“Dead.” The nightwalker smiled. Then he drew his free hand back and slammed it into the side of the woman’s face. She collapsed, pulling the other—man? boy?—with her. “That was not the question I asked.” He waited for a moment, but she had been silenced; he would get no answers there.

Darin stood alone, without Helna to anchor him. His blue eyes were wide beneath the pale glow of his hair. He saw, out of the comer of his eye, Kerren struggling to tend to his mother. He might have helped, but he could not move; his face was still locked within the nightwalker’s grip.

“And you, boy, how do you come here?” Darin said nothing.

 

Stefanos smiled, but it was an odd smile. Once before, he had encountered a Lernari alone among the slaves. And once before, he had spared that life.

The lines, he thought, pressing his claws deeper into fair skin until they drew blood,
must perish. They stood between us, as they must not stand between us again.

He raised one hand again, a perfunctory gesture.

She stopped him, or the memory of her. Her pale face, framed by auburn, highlighted by green, looking up at him in silent pain and pleading. Six times in the past he had looked through the memory. Too much had been at stake, too much arrayed against the armies he had led. But this seventh ...

He looked at Darin as if seeing him for the first time. A small, frightened boy, mortal in seeming and carriage, stared back. He could not judge the age well; human children had not been a concern of his, or an area in which study seemed useful. The boy was short, thin, his face so angular that were it not for the softness of youth, it would be sharp. And his eyes were blue and blinking.

He lowered his hand.

Without another word, he turned and walked to where the high priest still waited.

“There will be no ceremony,” he said softly.

Not even Vellen had enough control not to blanch. “No ceremony, Lord?”

“Not unless one of your number cares to volunteer.”

Vellen said nothing, but after a tense moment, he nodded. He retrieved the dagger, staring down at it as if its unblooded presence accused him. In anger and in silence he ran his thumb along its edge, giving it the blood that it claimed as its right.

Stefanos began to leave, then turned back to stare at the crowd once again. The child, too small to stand above the head of the newly acquired, was lost to sight.