Death Comes To All (Book 1) (63 page)

“
There
are dozens of small villages between here and there where we could
purchase a horse for her to ride,” Drom returned, unrelenting.
The more he thought about it the better he felt about the idea. At
his parents home they would be safe, they could find a midwife
without worry, and they could make their marriage intentions official
and finalized. Drom would prefer to have the wedding at a location
where his parents might be able to attend, and their own village
would be ideal. He was not going to let Raiste talk him out of it.

“
I
think it’s a wonderful idea,” Raine commenting, adding
her support to her intended husband. She had been listening to the
two without saying a word one way or the other, perhaps waiting to
hear everything before making a decision herself. Drom was glad that
she had decided to take his side. “I would like to meet his
parents anyway. I don’t think we should mention what else is
going on to them, at least not at first, but aside from that, I don’t
see anything wrong with the plan.”

“
We’d
have to avoid the cities,” Raiste cautioned thoughtfully.
“Bloodheart is likely to have spies posted in all of them,
watching for me.”

“
That
shouldn’t be a problem,” Drom pressed. “The two of
you already know the safest routes, or at least most of them I’m
sure. When we get to a small town, Raine and I can go in to purchase
the horse, that way if Bloodheart has spies looking for you there,
they won’t find you. He shouldn’t be looking for us after
all, and you wouldn’t be there.”

“
Bloodheart
is looking for you actually,” Raiste informed him. “Or
more accurately, he’s looking for a human man by the name of
Roland. That’s why I was in Miani for so long. I was gathering
information, trying to find out how much Bloodheart knows about us.
He also has people looking for Raine, though when I left the city the
only name they knew of for her was Tara. Still, they know about my
other aliases. I’m sure it won’t be long before they know
of hers.”

Raiste
went on to tell them about everything he had learned during his
sojourn in the city, and everything that had happened there. He had
not intended on telling them about the assassin's guild, but in the
end decided that it would be best to tell his friends everything. The
only thing he left out was his relationship with the guild leader,
Loretta. That was his business, and his alone.

“
So
even according to everything you learned there, it should be
perfectly safe for me to go into one of the small towns,” Drom
concluded for him. “They aren’t looking for a sorvinian,
but a human man. Once we have mounts we can stick to the roads that
Bloodheart's men won’t be guarding. It’s as safe as
staying here would be, at the very least.”

“
We’re
going to do this Raiste,” Raine stated with an air of finality.
She had made up her mind, and was going to follow Drom's suggestion.
Once decided, nothing was going to sway her. Raiste recognized that
immediately.

“
I
would like you to come with us,” she continued. “If you
feel so strongly about staying, we will have to leave you behind,
though I don’t want to do that. Still, what you do is your
choice. This is our choice, Raiste. This is something Drom wants to
do, and I understand why it’s important to him.”

Drom
looked at his future wife with surprise. He had never, even for an
instant, considered leaving Raiste behind. He wouldn’t have
thought that she would have either.

Raiste
didn’t even need to consider that. He had no intentions
whatsoever of leaving his friends again. He had his own reasons for
wanting to avoid Drom's farm, at least for now, but if this was the
course that his friends set, than he would see it through.

The
assassin let out an audible sigh. “Alright then,” he said
at last, relenting. “I need to go take a bath. Afterward, we
can make the travel plans. We’ll have to travel light. We don’t
have any horses right now to carry any of our things, so we won’t
be able to take more than what we can carry ourselves. Our travel
packs can hold quite a bit, but even they have their limitations.”

“
Don’t
take too long,” Raine cautioned. “Everything that we are
going to take will have to be packed tonight. I want to leave at
first light tomorrow morning. Come on Drom, let’s go upstairs.
Raiste and I are used to traveling fast and light. I’ll help
you pack.”

Without
another word, she turned and quickly left the room. Drom watched the
rapidly retreating feral woman with amazement. He had never expected
that sort of a response to his plan, which was little more than an
idea that had come upon him at the last minute. He heard Raiste
chuckle behind him.

“
You
do realize that neither of us are going to get to make decisions
anymore, right?” he said. Drom turned around to find the
assassin grinning ear to ear. “I’m almost thinking that I
should be offering condolences instead of congratulations, but you
seem to be happy, and I’ve never seen Raine like that, so I
know she is. I wish the two of you the best of luck. I think you’re
going to need it.”

Drom
feared that the assassin was right. They would all need every bit of
luck they could get, just to survive. Regardless of what happened
though, he was grateful for one thing. They would be together. They
would have each other. Working together, Drom thought that there was
little they couldn’t accomplish.

He
was a little worried about what his parents would think about his
chosen wife, but only a little. He believed they would be happy with
whatever choice he decided to make, and he was certain of his choice.
Without a single word, he left Raiste behind, heading out of the room
and up the stairs after the woman he loved.

Epilogue

Bloodheart
glared back at the men who surrounded the massive, round, oak table
that dominated the center of the room. Like the other men around him,
he wasn’t actually in the room at all. What they all saw, the
men he looked at now and the shining suits of armor that surrounded
the room, were nothing more than projected images. The room he
actually sat in was completely empty. The only real thing here was
the chair he sat in.

The
inside of the council chamber changed from session to session. Each
and every mage in the council had a room like this, or very nearly
like it. The location of the council session would change every time.
It was considered a great honor to host the gathering of the mage's
council. Bloodheart had hosted it only twice himself. With the latest
debacle, he didn’t think it was likely that he would be hosting
it again any time soon.

“
So
could you tell us once again how it was that a single man has somehow
continued to elude you and your men?” Slyvax asked with false
sympathy, a wry smile played out on the man’s thin lips.
Bloodheart wasn’t fooled. Slyvax was a well known sadist. The
only time he ever smiled was when he was torturing someone, watching
someone being tortured, or was thinking about torturing someone.

Most
likely he’s considering torturing me at the moment,
Bloodheart thought.

Unfortunately
for Bloodheart, Slyvax was also one of the oldest and most
politically influential members of the mage's council. On more than
one occasion he had pitted himself against Bloodheart. Bloodheart
would have loved to send him a nice gift, perhaps a poisonous adder
to visit him in his sleep.

As
much as he desired it, he knew that it was impossible. Such magic
required a mental picture of the person it was being cast upon, and,
like all of them, only part of Slyvax's face was visible. The rest of
his face was hidden in the depths of the thick black hood that he
wore. Bloodheart was wearing one just like it. It was the only way
that they could protect themselves from each other.

If
a mage wanted to go to war with one of his fellows, he had to do so
openly, sending either men or created monsters to do the work for
him. It was a rare enough occurrence, one that had only happened once
in Bloodheart's lifetime. It was, in fact, that one occasion, over
thirty years past, that had sparked the dangerous situation that he
now found himself in.

Against
all odds, the son of Goldstone had survived. More than that, he had
returned wielding the power of a battle mage. According to the men he
had questioned, either this Raiste Goldstone was a battle mage
himself, or he had one with him. The reports varied from person to
person, none of them truly certain of what they saw. They had not
lied, under the spell of his magic they would not have been able to,
but that did not mean that they knew what it was they had seen.

The
woman from the inn had proved more valuable in her information,
though she had not been present during the fight, and had been much
less willing to tell what little she knew. Against his magic,
however, she had not been given a choice. She had given detailed
descriptions of Goldstone's companions, as well as a description of
the sword that the red-haired man wore on his back on their last
encounter.

From
the information he could piece together, it was likely that it had
been this man, not Goldstone, who had been the battle mage. It was
also possible that neither of them had battle magic, but had merely
been powerful warriors. It didn’t take battle magic to be
dangerous. Raiste Goldstone's father had been a powerful mage, but it
was not his magic that had been feared. It had been his beliefs.

Fallon
Goldstone had been a dangerous man, with dangerous ideas. His plans
for the control of the people of the world would have destroyed the
power that the mages enjoyed. Bloodheart would never understand the
man’s ideals. He had been a threat to them all, and so all the
mages, or most of them anyway, had agreed that he had to be
destroyed.

Bloodheart
remembered that time fondly. He had been young then, and had been
rising in the ranks of the magi for some time. More importantly for
the ruling mages at the time, he was at a point in his career that,
if he was willing to take a risk, he would be well poised to fill the
position that they intended to make vacant.

He
knew that they had intending on using him. He had known it when he
agreed to their proposal. They intended on pooling their magic and
attacking one of their own, and they needed someone to wield that
magic for them; someone who could take the blame for them if their
venture failed.

The
risks of attacking a mage with great power were exponentially
increased with the power of the mage who was its target, and Fallon
Goldstone might very well have been the most powerful mage alive in
his time. Attacking someone like that was a terrible risk. As great
as the risk was, however, the reward would be even greater.

Under
normal circumstances, Bloodheart would never have had an opportunity
to move into the position of a ruling mage. However, this was hardly
to be a normal circumstance. If he could defeat Goldstone, he would
be thrust into the position that the man filled. If he failed, he
would take the fall for that defeat himself.

Had
he been wielding nothing more than his own magic, Bloodheart wouldn’t
have had any chance at all of defeating Goldstone. Bloodheart,
however, had all the power of the mage's council at his disposal, and
he knew just how to use it. He did not know what Fallon Goldstone had
looked like beyond vague descriptions, like now the mages hid their
features from each other when they attended the council, but he did
not need to see the man to send a dragon.

With
the power infused into him by the other mages working together, he
had summoned a great red dragon, one of the oldest yet living of its
kind. With the power of all of their magic together, he bound the
mighty beast to his will, and sent it to kill Fallon Goldstone and
his family. He had thought that the beast had succeeded, despite the
rumors that the mage's children had somehow survived.

Since
then, he had often employed the use of dragons in his endeavors,
though with only his own power he could only summon young ones, and
could not bind them. He could, however, use their image to create his
shadow dragons. Such a creature would be useless against the power of
a great mage, certainly none of the men in this room would have
difficulty against one, but they were more than enough to deal with
the general rabble when such a thing was necessary.

He
had sent a shadow dragon to hunt down Goldstone's son, Raiste. His
spies had told him that they had witnessed the dragon following the
man outside of Miani, deep into the swamps. They had wisely not
followed, knowing that there would be nothing they could do against a
man that the dragon couldn’t handle. The dragon would do its
work well enough, they had believed. Bloodheart would have agreed
with them at the time.

That
belief had been shattered, along with the delicate, glass dragon
figurine that had sat on his desk, a precise replica that create a
link between his magic and his creation. Somehow, this Raiste
Goldstone had defeated that creation, though Bloodheart could not
fathom how he had done it. Certainly shadow dragons were not as
deadly as the living animals that they mimicked, but only the
greatest of mages could hope to defeat one.

He
had believed that the battle mage his soldiers claimed to have seen
had to have been faked somehow, a glamour perhaps to make the men
think they were facing an opponent that was more than the man they
truly faced. There hadn’t been a battle mage in well over a
century after all, and many low level mages could construct a decent
enough illusion if given enough time to plan ahead. It was far more
likely, in his opinion, than believing that a battle mage had
suddenly appeared out of nowhere and attacked one of his men. Such a
man could have gained power for himself in a dozen other ways.
Starting a fight with the mages so unexpectedly didn’t make
sense.