The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (10 page)

Hopelessness and despair welled up within him as he imagined his own execution at the hands of the council. But his situation wasn't entirely hopeless. The things he had done, the wonders he had seen, the mysteries that remained undiscovered, these all gave him hope and told him that anything might be possible. He might still escape this fate. All they needed was the right opportunity.

He was about to step back from the railing when he felt an odd sensation. The hair on the back of his neck rose, goosebumps erupted along his arms, and he had the overwhelming feeling that he was not alone.

"Duck," he whispered, pulling Luse down.

On a bridge below that led to another outer spire, Chancellor Vogon and three other members of the council strode out to the center of the span and stopped, the powerful canyon winds buffeting their robes. It occurred to Urus that having multiple bridges between the central and each outer spire served to add support to the impossibly tall structures. If he weren't fleeing for his life, he could spend days studying Almoryll's architecture.

Instinctively, Urus flattened himself behind the balustrade, peering down at the group through gaps between fluted columns. The men seemed agitated. The three council members gesticulated and shouted. With their faces blocked from view, Urus couldn't make out what they said.

That changed when Vogon spoke, his face clearly visible. The chancellor continued his conversation with the council members, seemingly oblivious to the dark-skinned observer perched on the nearby bridge with his birdlike companion.

"Calm down," he said, the shapes of the words coming from his lips not matching the meaning that came to Urus. "One at a time. You are acting like a bunch of pups fighting for their mother's teat."

The shortest of the council members—a thin, balding man—spoke, struggling to contain his anxiety. Something was definitely wrong.

"Something's got them upset," Urus whispered.

"How do you know?" Luse asked.

"I can read their lips," he replied. "And then…I know what they're saying, even though I don't know what language they're speaking. Does that make sense?"

Luse nodded. "It's the translation effect. The whole castle is covered with it. I don't even know what language you're speaking. What are they saying now?"

"I am aware that we have scouts in Emys. We have scouts on all of the portal worlds," Vogon said. "I am the one who ordered them there. Get to the crux of your problem or get out of my way."

The shortest of the council members spoke for a long time, pointing at the central spire a few times as well as the spire where Urus had arrived after being taken from Aldsdowne island.
 

"Impossible. Absolutely impossible," Vogon said.

The men argued again for some time, the three councilors struggling to convince their superior of something. What that thing was, Urus couldn't tell.
 

"When we searched the boy's mind, did you see any evidence that he might know about this?" Vogon asked.

The others shook their heads, again launching into lengthy diatribes.

"A sigilord on Emys, actively using sigilcraft," Vogon mused, pacing, hands clasped tightly behind his back. "I need more proof than just the word of your scouts."

Urus's eyes opened wide and he nearly bolted upright after seeing the word
sigilord
on Vogon's lips.
 

"What?" Luse demanded, tugging at his arm. "What is it?"

Urus held up a shushing finger and returned his attention to the conversation below.

More back-and-forth between the men followed and then Vogon issued a command. "Redouble their efforts; send more scouts to Niragan. I need confirmation before we act, especially if you are right and this is the work of Autar Kelus."

The council members bowed, one of them sprinting down the bridge to the purple spire, the one containing the portal to Emys.

"We need to get to that purple spire," Urus whispered.
 

Luse nodded, then pointed back at the target of their eavesdropping.

The remaining two took on pleading poses while Vogon turned, making his way back to Almoryll's center spire.

"Of course," he said. "While we await confirmation from the scouts you will assemble a strike team. Gather as many of the radixes as you need and be ready for travel tomorrow. If Autar has found a way to Emys, he must not be allowed to remain alive. And execute the boy immediately. Two sigilords from Emys is too much of a coincidence for my liking."

A sigilord? On my world?
Urus thought.
And they're going to kill him!
Urus couldn't let that happen.
 

"There's a sigilord on Emys," Urus whispered. "Someone named Autar Kelus. He's using sigilcraft and the council knows it. They're taking a group of radixes to kill him tomorrow, and they've moved up my execution. They'll find my empty cell any minute now!"

Urus registered the look of shock on Luse's face as he peered after the council members, waiting for them to leave.

As soon as Vogon and his men were out of sight, they ran back for the center spire. Once off the wind-blown span, they ducked into a shadowy corner below a staircase.

"Before we go, I want answers," he whispered and signed, too agitated to resist the urge to speak with his hands. "I want to know how you know so much about sigilcraft, like what it feels like in your fingers. And, I want to know how to use those portals so we can get out of here and warn that sigilord on my world."

Lu checked to make sure they were still alone. She moved her mouth as if to speak but her throat remained still. "We can't have this conversation here," she mouthed. A serious, stern look washed over the usually light-hearted, strange girl. The pastry chef vanished, replaced by someone who reminded him of a Kestian general. "Follow me. We need to get to the portal before the alarm sounds when they find your empty cell."

They descended a level in the central spire and then took one of the lower open-air spans across to the purple spire. Luse led them to a small, inconspicuous wooden door barely visible in the shadows beneath one of the countless sets of stairs. Almoryll and its myriad spires and towers had more stairwells than Urus had ever seen.

She reached for the door, but Urus stopped her. "Take my collar off," he said. "I can't use my power and I can't fight with this chain around my waist." He couldn't understand how Goodwyn managed to move around with the suzur coiled up at his waist. For Urus, the chains still reminded him of the culling ceremony and he wanted them off.

"If I unlock the collar and the council is paying attention, they'll know. They'll sound the alarms and seal off the portals," Luse said.

"But—" Urus started to protest, but Luse put her finger to his lips.

"Someone's coming," she mouthed silently.

A guard—though he bore no collar like the radixes—pulled the small door inward and stood in wide-eyed silence, staring at the pair.

His moment of hesitation cost him. Luse spun, slamming her foot into the man's face on the back end of the spin. She kicked him in the throat twice more before he fell, crushing his larynx before he slumped to the ground, dead.

"We didn't have to kill him," Urus whispered.

"It was him or us," she replied, relieving the corpse of a small knife. "And unlike the radixes, this man was here of his own free will. He chose to support the council."

"But—" Urus protested again.

"This is
war
, Urus," Luse said, gripping him by the shoulders and staring deep into his eyes. Nothing remained in her eyes of the carefree, joyful woman he had first met. Only sadness remained. "We have to do things in war that we're not proud of. You of all people should know that."

Urus nodded. "Let's get out of here," he said, ushering Luse through the door.

They raced along a set of narrow tunnels usually reserved for kitchen staff to make their way between kitchens and dining halls. The only constructions that seemed to fill Almoryll as abundantly as stairwells were kitchens. After following Luse through more mazes and avoiding the main thoroughfares in the tower, they burst into yet another kitchen, its walls made of a glistening purple stone and its floors dusted with flour and hay. The kitchen was as big as one of the massive ballrooms back in the emperor's palace in Kest.

"This kitchen shouldn't be empty," Luse said, turning to face Urus, her chest heaving as she caught her breath. "Something's wrong."

As if in response to her concern, soldiers burst into the room from every door at once. A mix of collared radixes and heavily armed guards of every size and color, likely from a dozen or more other worlds Urus had never heard of, they drew their weapons and readied for battle. They were outnumbered thirty to two.

"You have nowhere to run, scullery maid. You're to be put to death for aiding a sigilord's escape," snarled the man leading the group. "It almost seems ironic that you will meet your end here in a kitchen."

"
I
am a
sigilord
," Luse said proudly, her back stiffening. "I always have somewhere to go."

With a flourish of her right arm, a trail of glowing green power flowed from her fingertips. The soldiers charged, leaping over countertops and knocking over cauldrons and cook pots, destroying the kitchen as they leapt for her. She finished etching a drawing of a glowing doorway that hung in mid-air, grabbed Urus's arm, and pressed her palm to the sigil.

The world vanished, swallowed by a bloom of emerald light.

The small chamber lit up with a pale green luminescence. The ceiling was so low they had to stoop to avoid hitting their heads. The stone chamber was just wide enough to accommodate a small table and four cushions on the floor. Sigils had been etched into nearly every flat surface.

"We'll wait down here here for a bit," Luse said. "After they think we've already escaped because they can't find us, then we can figure out how to get out of here."

"Down where?" Urus asked. "Where are we? What happened?"

"We're in a gap between the ceiling of one room and the floor of another," Luse said with a smile. "The only way in or out is with sigilcraft."

"I have so many questions," Urus said, taking a seat.

Lu nodded, shifting to sit cross-legged and letting her coattails spread out on the floor beside her. "I will try and answer them, though I can't guarantee anything I say will make sense. I'm not very good at this sort of thing. But first, let's get this collar off you."

Luse pressed her hand to one of the sigils on the ceiling and then touched his collar. After a green flash, the iron collar snapped open. Urus rubbed his neck, happy to be rid of the terrible device and the constant reminder of the time he had worn a similar collar while standing behind the ass-end of an elephant.

Before Urus could ask his first question, a small creature with silver-grey fur, a bushy black tail, and little black paws stepped out of the shadows. It gave Urus an appraising sniff, then hopped into Lu's lap. It marched a little circle three times before curling its tail under its chin and lay down.

"This is my familiar, Mist," Lu said, stroking the animal behind an ear. "She's a silver fox."

"Your familiar?" Urus asked, a little surprised. Timoc had once used that word, when he said that Urus had made Murin his familiar. "Someone told me that an arbiter was my familiar, once. I think."

Urus wondered what had become of Timoc and Murin, the grey-skinned men who had helped him find the ancient city of Vultara and defeat Draegon. All of his friends and family seemed so far away.

"An arbiter as a familiar?" Lu laughed, disturbing Mist's napping position in her lap. "I didn't take you for a joker."

"It's not a joke," Urus said, but he decided to focus on the questions he needed to ask rather than hard-to-explain tangents. "There's so much I want to know. Are you a sigilord or a radix? How many sigilords are there? If you're not a sigilord, how did you draw that sigil that took us here?"

"Slow down," Lu said, chuckling, though her smile faded quickly. "As you have discovered, the council will not suffer the existence of a rogue sigilord, or any sigilord for that matter."

She took a deep breath and gripped the table. As she exhaled slowly, her eyes watered and she worked to hold back the tears. "You don't understand these people, little bull. During the war, sometimes they let the blood mages slaughter our kind. Other times they actually helped with the killings. Once, long ago, we sigilords were everywhere, in every city and town. But by the time the Fulcrum War was over, all the sigilords on Emys had been killed. A living sigilord makes the council and their arbiters very nervous. Two in as many days—well, you saw what that did. They've sent a hunting party to Emys."

Urus nodded. "Before I fought Draegon, the leader of the blood mages, I was in a ruined city, one that used to be filled with sigilords. It was called Vultara."

"Yes," Lu said, a warm smile spreading on her face. "I was born in Vultara, before we had to sink it to keep the blood mages and the arbiters out."
 

Urus thought for a moment about how pretty her smile was, but pushed the thought away. There were far more important matters at hand. "So I'm not the only sigilord then."

"Shh," Lu said, putting a finger to her lips, her smile broadening. "It's a secret!"

"How many are there? How do I learn to cast sigils? What are you doing here in Almoryll? What was Vultara like when you were there?"

"All in good time, little bull," Luse said. "You know, at first I thought it rather odd that you seemed to stare at my mouth while I talked. I thought maybe I had something stuck in my teeth, or you had some kind of weird mouth fetish. But now I kind of like it, I know you're listening when everyone else just pretends to pay attention. The arbiters actually stole that language translation ability, you know. They took it from the grey men of Vyes. The arbiters are parasites, everything they have came from somewhere or someone else."

Grey men?
Are Murin and Timoc these grey men of Vyes she's talking about?
Urus wondered.