The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (46 page)

"So why do you want my help?" Urus asked.

"Revenge against our common enemy, Urus. Revenge against the arbiters."

"I thought the enemy of the sigilords was the blood mages. And we have nothing in common," Urus said, struggling to keep from staring at the image of his world, his home, floating in the sky. "You're a butcher. You unleashed a horde of undead and hell-spawned creatures on a city just to get the arbiters to notice you."

"And you ruined that. Now you owe me. For millennia the arbiters either hunted us or helped the blood mages hunt us. They stole every relic, every artifact, every book, everything of power they could find. Our people dwindled, fled, died, and had their heritage erased. We could go to Almoryll and burn those purple towers and take back all that they have taken from our people! How could you possibly take their side in this?"

"I don't," Urus said. "But I don't take yours either. I don't want to take anyone's side. I just want to be left alone, to be left out of all of this."

"You cannot be left alone," Autar yelled, throwing his hands up in frustration. "You cannot squander the gifts you have been given. You have it within you to be a
god
. Imagine the things we could do!"

"I don't want to be a god. You've shown me what you wanted to show me, and I'm not helping you."

"Then it seems I shall be able to grant you the death you so desire," Autar said, shrugging back the sleeves of his robe and holding out his hands. "I will take the returning rod from your corpse and have my revenge on the arbiters without you."

"Without your powers?" Urus asked, hoping beyond hope that Autar suffered from the same amount of drained energy during the trip as he had. "Fight me without sigils, and if you win, you can have the returning rod."

Autar laughed and removed his robe, revealing muscles bulging out from beneath a pale white jerkin. For a man who had lived a hundred lifetimes, he seemed in remarkable shape.

I hope this wasn't a mistake
, Urus thought. But he really had no option. With no sword and no magic, the only tools he had left were his fists.

"I know all about you, Urus," Autar said. "What I have not observed directly, Anderis has conveyed to me. You are a pacifist. You were rejected by your own people because you lacked the basic skills of a warrior necessary to contribute to your society. Without your sword, powers, or friends, you have no chance against me. I have spent the last several millennia fighting creatures that you could not conjure even in your worst nightmares. You will not win this fight."

So he doesn't have his powers, either
, Urus thought.
Otherwise he would've just used a sigil to take the returning rod and then killed me.

Urus stood his ground, straightened up, and lifted his chin. "Then I guess we will both get what we want."

What do I want?
He asked himself. An image of Luse Lingxiu came unbidden to his mind, her infectious smile and joy one of the few sources of real happiness in his life. He didn't want to be a god or a lord or a general or anything else, but he didn't want to be alone, either.

The hail of blows came before he had a chance to prepare. Punches, knee thrusts, and elbow attacks struck him fast and hard, so much so that it felt as though more than one person was fighting him. All he could do was duck behind his forearms, but he was thrown to the ground even as he raised his arms.

Something about the way he bounced when he hit the ground struck him as odd.
I'm lighter than I used to be
, he thought.
Impossibly light.

Urus opened his eyes to see Autar looming over him. The pain was excruciating. His ribs had been either refractured or broken. Everything hurt.

"You had it all, Urus. The power of a god, that beautiful green-eyed sigilord woman at your side, an army of men and radixes ready to follow you to the ends of the earth. And you give it all up because you are too much of a weak, spineless coward to exact revenge on the arbiters for what they did to
us
…what they did to
all of us
. You betray your own kind!"

Urus kicked up with both feet, sending Autar sailing through the air like one of the Waldron soldiers in a windrunner cloak. He flailed and thrashed around, finally plunging down amid a mushroom cloud of dust and loose rock fifty yards away.

Not wasting his advantage, Urus charged. He tried to sprint but fumbled forward, unable to time his leg movements with the bizarre lack of weight. He bounced, sailed through the air, and bounced a few more times before skidding to a halt.

As he stood, another furious storm of punches beat against his back. He spun, dodged, and tried to block, but Autar was simply too fast. The man had inhuman speed, fast enough to even be a match for Goodwyn.

A kick launched Urus backward, and he slid up against the base of one of the stone archways where he finally saw the softly glowing sigils etched into the stone.
Why would the sigilords use the moon as a military base?
It's not like any of their enemies were nearby.

He scrambled to his feet in time to meet Autar's next attack. The two traded blows, dodges, and blocks for such a long time that both were wheezing and sweating when Autar finally managed to sweep Urus's leg, then kick him twenty feet back with a blow to the stomach.

I can't wait to tell Wyn about this,
Urus thought.
Fighting on the moon! If I survive, that is.

Urus had spent his life flinching in combat, doing everything he could to avoid being hit. He blamed his father for that, but it didn't matter. He had to win, whatever the cost. He couldn't imagine the kind of damage Autar could do if let loose across multiple universes with the power of Almoryll's artifacts at his command.

That's why the arbiters sent him to hell in the first place
, Urus thought, struggling to his feet. If he survived, his body would be all purple and brown bruises for the next week.

Urus leapt for his opponent again, and was again met with superior speed and training. Urus threw combinations of punches, elbows, and knees that would have destroyed even a Kestian opponent, but Autar was too fast and evaded them all. A quick hip throw sent Urus flying into a stone column at the edge of the circle of archways.

"Give up, Urus," Autar called, breathing heavily. "You're no warrior. Join me and I will let you live."

Autar was too fast. Urus had spent all of his energy trying to avoid the disgraced sigilord's blows and rarely ever able to land any of his own.

Then don't dodge
, Urus told himself.
Don't flinch. Take the hit.

Urus got up and charged again. As usual, Autar was ready and stepped to the side, unleashing a powerful punch to Urus's stomach. Urus could have dodged, could have avoided the pain of the punch, but it would have thrown him off balance, set him on the defense, and probably left him curled up on the ground again.

Instead, he let the punch land, stood on Autar's feet, and uncoiled a ferocious elbow to the sigilord's face. Autar blinked and stepped back, stunned. Urus didn't let him recover. He started low, hammering his palm into Autar's knee, following that up with a series of gradually rising blows, attacking the kidneys, up into the soft spot under the ribcage, then a punch straight into Autar's throat.

Urus's boot to the chest sent Autar sailing across the circle, stirring up a huge cloud of dust as he slid to a halt near the edge. Urus walked over, expecting to see Autar either dead or yielding, but was greeted instead by the man flipping up to his feet.

Autar swung, again connecting with Urus's stomach. Urus leapt straight up into the air—a feat that was remarkably easy on the moon—flipped, and as he came down grabbed Autar's head. He pulled down hard, bending his enemy's neck over his shoulder. Urus didn't need to be able to hear to feel the bones in Autar's neck break.

Exhausted, Urus fell over and rolled onto his back.

Through wheezing lungs and broken ribs, Urus breathed in the cold, sigil-provided air and stared up at the stars.
 

The stars
, he thought.
I am lying on the moon. I wanted to be alone, and it doesn't get more alone than this
.

With tremendous effort he rolled to his knees, then finally managed to stand up.

He stood over Autar's body. Urus nudged it with his boot. When nothing happened, he kicked it, still unable to believe that he had actually defeated Autar.

In a way he felt sorry for him. The man had spent his life literally in hell, plotting his revenge against the arbiters. There was no question the arbiters were guilty of perpetuating the near-genocide of the sigilords, and Urus wanted to see them all sent off to hell as well.

Unlike the stories he had read from his bed on lonely nights in Kest, he had learned that good and evil didn't exist. Things were always more complicated than that, and happy endings were reserved for books alone, not for real people.

He sighed and pressed his hand against his chest, willing himself back to Niragan.
 

Nothing happened.

He gritted his teeth and tried to force the power of sigilcraft out through his fingers, as he had done so many times over the past few days. Again, he could not avail himself of that magic.

It took me a day to recover from traveling to Waldron
, Urus thought.
How many days will it take me to recover from traveling to the moon?

There was only one option. Otherwise he might end up stuck on the moon starving to death or dying of thirst as he waited for his power to regenerate enough to escape. He slipped the returning rod out of the leather tube tied to his waist.

Urus examined it, rolling it over in his hands. Almoryll was the last place he wanted to go. He hated the arbiters; he hated what they had done to the sigilords and their culture and artifacts; and he especially hated how they had enslaved the radixes and used them to power their horde of stolen objects.
 

But the arbiters have a portal
, Urus thought.
They have a portal that leads back to my world
,
to my family, to my friends, and to Luse
.

Urus lifted the returning rod, pressed his palm to the sigil on the round tip, and the moon, the stars, and the impossibly ancient stone circle all vanished.