New Blood

 

 

 

NEW BLOOD

 

 

 

GAIL DAYTON

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK

 

 

 

 

 

NOTE
: If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

 

This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

 

NEW BLOOD

 

Copyright © 2009 by Gail Dayton

 

All rights reserved.

 

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

 

www.tor-forge.com

 

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

 

ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-6250-6

ISBN-10: 0-7653-6250-3

 

First Edition: March 2009

 

Printed in the United States of America

 

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For the “big guys”—Richard, Andrew, Peter, and
Christopher, gentlemen all. Can't wait to see what
mountains you climb, oceans you swim, and
dragons you slay . . .

 

 

 

 

Thanks again to C. E. Murphy for looking stuff up for me and showing me where to look it up. You're always looking out for me, woman. Thanks go to my agent, Elaine English, for sticking with it, even when I whined about that third revision, and to my editor, Heather Osborn, for recognizing genius (wink, wink). And always, thank you to Myles for putting up with me and worrying about me when I'm not writing. You're the best. I'll take another thirty-something years with you.

 

 

 

NEW BLOOD

H
E HAD BEEN
searching for a long time.

Just how long a time and just what it was he sought, Jax didn't know. But something, and a very long time.

There were a lot of things Jax didn't know. Many more things he wasn't certain of. Nor did he think he wanted to know them.

Now, Jax stood in the shelter of deep forest with Crow circling and cawing overhead, and knew he had finally found what he had been seeking over such an undetermined age. She—not it, for now he'd found her, he knew the object of his search was a woman—worked in a clearing of the forest, in a garden surrounding a tidy cottage.

She was tall and strong, the hoe she wielded biting deep into the earth as she fought encroachment by weeds. Her white-blond hair, the color of a ray of sunlight, was bound into a braid as thick as Jax's own bony wrist, and it fell past her shoulder to brush the herb plants where she labored. She wore a brown
dress, woven of some sturdy fiber, simple shapes sewn together that clung to the womanly figure it covered.

A faint chill went through him. Without seeing her face, Jax knew she was a beautiful woman, and beautiful women made him uneasy. As did knowing things without understanding how he knew them. At this moment, though he stood motionless and unseen, blending into the shadows of the forest, inside his head Jax was rapidly descending into panic.

A tiny replica of himself ran screaming in circles, where no one could see or hear. Jax had no doubt whatsoever that this beautiful, terrifying woman meant something, and that same certainty told him he did not wish to know what that was.

Nor did he know what would happen next.

The woman straightened from her task and looked up, shading her eyes with a hand as she searched the sky for Crow. Jax faded deeper into the shadows, turning his face so its paleness would not catch her eye. His heart pounded, faster and harder than it had in as long as he could remember. Which wasn't saying much.

“I know you're in there.”

The sound of a human voice—her voice—startled Jax into looking up. Had it been so long since he'd heard anyone speak? He couldn't remember.

She looked straight at him. How? And Lady—she was just as beautiful as he feared. Not young or dewy fresh, but the years and the knowledge made her stronger, more beautiful. Her skin was clear perfect sun-kissed gold, her mouth wide and generous, her chin stubborn, her jaw square, matching the strengt
in her arms. Her eyebrows flared like pale crow's wings over eyes so blue, it seemed a piece of the sky had been stolen.

Jax wanted to look away, but could not.

He felt like a maiden in one of the tales he couldn't remember hearing, mesmerized by the stare of a serpent. A dragon. But he was no maiden—he was fairly sure. And she was certainly—he hoped—no dragon.

“Did you hear me?” She raised her hoe, gripping it like a weapon. “I said, I know you are there. Come out.”

He would leave. Go back into the forest and live as he had been. Solitary. Safe. His mind formed the intention, sent messages to his limbs to turn and walk away. Yet somehow he found himself walking forward into the sunlight, and he knew that his life had made still another of those fateful changes he could not recall. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Not for him. Not for her. Not, he feared, for the whole world.

 

A
MANUSA SQUARED HER
stance and lifted her hoe as the man walked out of the forest. She did not read danger in him, but she had not lived this many years without learning that pain and death often lurked behind an innocent face. And this man looked far from harmless.

He was big, taller than she, which was a rare thing in this corner of the Austrian Empire. Amanusa towered over most of her neighbors. This man was taller yet, broad-shouldered and rangy, with a loose-limbed stride as if he hadn't been fastened together quite tightly enough. The features of his long narrow face
had that same rough, not-quite-finished appearance, but there seemed to be neither anger nor cruelty in them. Overall, he seemed . . . brown.

He wore a long brown leather overcoat, almost to his ankles, brown trousers, and a brown brocade waistcoat over a tan shirt. Even his silky neckcloth was a pale, creamy shade of brown. His thick hair glinted red in the sunlight, but despite the hints of russet, it was brown. Only his skin decried all the brown. He was pale, as if he had not seen the sun in a long time, even now, in high summer.

“Stop there,” Amanusa ordered. She should have bade him stop sooner, farther away, but she could sense no harm in him.

The man stopped, showed empty hands, and she opened her senses wide, tried to read his mood. She found only confusion and . . . fear?

What would a man his size have to fear from a woman?

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want?”

Slowly, keeping his blue-green gaze fastened upon hers and his open hands spread wide, the man went down to one knee. “I am called Jax,” he said in a language Amanusa had not heard in far too long.

She fought back the memories that wanted to rush over her, memories of home and safety, and of terror. How had this man come so far from that place?

“Whether Jax is my true name or I have another, I do not know. Only Jax. As for what I want—”

A shiver passed over him. When he blinked, someone else knelt before Amanusa, looking out at her through coffee-brown eyes. A shiver whispered
through Amanusa as well. There was magic working here. Inside the man.

“Greetings to you, blood sorceress.” A different voice, bearing only the deep timbre of the man Jax, spoke through his mouth in the same foreign tongue.

Amanusa shuddered again with a sudden, deep chill.

“I left my search for an apprentice too late,” the voice said. “I am taken up—but the magic would have swallowed me soon even so. I am left with binding my servant Jax to this task, of finding the next blood sorceress. And so he has.

“He can teach you what I have given him to teach. He can show you where to find the other things you will need to know. He will serve whatever needs you may have. He is not a bad servant. I do not know that he is a good servant, but he is not a bad one. Now he will serve you, perhaps better than he did me.

“Listen to the words I have given him. The blood magic must not be lost. I have seen terrible things coming, and the blood will be needed. Knowledge is all very well in its place, but some things are so terrible, so dire and awful, that only the magic borne in blood and bone and flesh can hold them back.