The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (6 page)

The idle tracing changed to angry picking as he recalled the culling ceremony, remembered the searing pain and horrible smell of burning flesh as the battlemaster pressed the red hot brand into his chest. He wondered if he could peel the scar away, rip it off and bleed to death there on the floor of his cell. At least then he would be free of this curse. But some part of him knew that removing the scar would change nothing.

Shaking off the dark thoughts, he rose from the bed and watched the sun rise out the window. This world was as confusing as it was strange. The sun seemed larger and, though he couldn't figure out why, it seemed to rise and set in the wrong places.

Just before the rising sun crested the mountain range surrounding the valley, a group of people making their way into the courtyard far below caught his eye. Beneath the shadows of the mountains and surrounding spires, they spread out on the cobblestones, each doing stretches and some basic calisthenics.
 

Morning exercises
, Urus thought.
Just like back in Kest, only without the weapons.

As the group warmed up, their instructor appeared and hopped up on a marble bench, resting there like a bird perched on a tree branch.
 

It's Luse
, Urus thought.
The pastry baker is leading morning exercises?

Urus watched her lead the students through various forms. At first they looked gaudy, full of exaggerated movements and flourishes, but the more Urus watched the more he understood and admired them. While on the surface they looked like dance maneuvers, all of them could be adapted to combat: throws, counters, leg sweeps, parries, even disarming locks. Though very heavy on the
art
, Urus knew that Luse was teaching them
martial
arts.
 

Does the council know she's teaching them how to fight, or do they think it's just a dance?

A hand grasped his shoulder, startling him. He jumped and spun to see one of his guards standing there, a bored, distant look on his face.

The man pointed toward the exit but sad nothing.

Urus hesitated.

The guard grabbed Urus, detached his leash from the wall, and prodded him out of the cell and into the hands of a second guard.

They conducted him down hallways and up staircases. Thankfully they didn't cross over into the other spires. He wasn't looking forward to another long climb up those crazy, seemingly infinite stairwells.

The procession halted before a marble staircase that rose up to meet a wide set of gilded double doors, a sentry standing guard on either side.

Urus waited, his mind conjuring images of what he thought this trial might be like. He didn't even know which laws he had broken, or how he had broken them.
 

After nearly a half an hour of anxious waiting, an old man poked his head from behind the gilded doors. "The Council of Balance will see you now."
 

His guards transferred ownership of Urus's iron chain to the old man, who then ushered him through the doors.

The chamber was arranged in an oval, with three ascending rows of high-backed, plush seats lining the walls, except at the head of the chamber, where twelve thrones sat in a row with an even bigger, more ornately sculpted throne placed in the center. The room had a full audience; not a single seat lay empty.

"Thank you, seneschal, you may leave now," spoke the man seated on the center throne. He had short gray hair with a matching thick beard, bright yellow eyes, and skin as pale as every other person in the room.

"Sire," the old man said, bowing. He fastened Urus's leash to a post in the middle of the room as if he were some kind of horse in need of hitching, and then bowed and scraped his way out of the chamber.

Nothing ever changes
, Urus thought.
No matter what I do, people always treat me like this
.

"Urus Noellor, step forward," said the man in the center throne.
 

Urus did as he was told.

"You stand accused of violation of the Continuum Preservation Act. This council has been convened to render a verdict and judge you accordingly. Do you understand your circumstances?"

"Not really," Urus said. "I honestly do not know why I am here."

The council member sighed and leaned back in his chair. "You are on trial. This council will determine your fate. I should think this is fairly self-evident. Do you understand now?"

"I think so," Urus said. "But what is the Continuum Preservation Act, and how can I violate it if I don't know what it is?"

"Ignorance of the law does not exempt you from the consequences of its violation," the council member snarled. His face contorted with pent-up rage. Whatever Urus had done, these people were not happy about it.

"I am Chancellor Vogon," said the man in the center throne. "I will be conducting this inquisition." He flashed the other council members a dark look. "You are only allowed to speak when we grant you leave to do so. For the duration of this trial, you will answer all questions truthfully, and be subject to any and all of our interrogation measures. Do you understand?"

Urus nodded.
It's not like I have any other options
, he thought.

"Good," said Vogon. "I hereby order this trial to begin. Are there any objections?"

Each council member shook his head,
no
.
 

"Urus Noellor has been accused of altering the balance, of fomenting chaos, and of use of the banned practice of sigilcraft to endanger the continuum, the multiverse, and all inhabitants therein," Vogon intoned. Two scribes sitting in the far corner of the chamber each dutifully wrote down everything the man said.

Vogon leaned forward, staring deep into Urus's eyes. "Are you a sigilord?"

Urus thought about it. He recalled all the times when the blue smoke had come from his fingers, when he had used the power of the sigilords to travel through the vertices, and to light up the underwater city of Vultara and even control a battalion of animated suits of armor. Despite all the wonders he had seen, and surviving his encounter with Draegon, he had never felt that he really knew what he was doing.

"No," Urus replied.

"Why not?"

"I don't know what this power is or how to use it. I don't know where it comes from or what it can do. Just because a boy picks up a sword, that does not make him a warrior."

"An apt analogy, but an unsurprising one given your nature."

"My nature?" Urus asked.

"Yes, you are a Kestian of Ehmshahr on the world of Emys. Your society measures everything of value by its potential to defeat enemies. You are a people defined by war and the preparation for it."

Urus briefly considered keeping his mouth shut, and letting the comment pass, but he was sick of being labeled and judged, and there seemed to be little he could do to make his situation worse.

"I am not my people," Urus said, holding his head high and meeting Vogon's gaze. "I am not a sigilord. I am not a Kestian. I am Urus. If this is a fair trial, you will judge me by my actions, not by my associations."

"Fascinating," Vogon said. "I have never encountered anyone from Ehmshahr who acts this way."

"A lot has happened since I left Kest," Urus said.

"Indeed, which brings me to my next set of questions." Vogon settled back in his chair, a throne that would have outdone even the emperor's throne back in Kest. "It is our understanding that the Order of the Sanguine Crystal attempted to destroy the vertices that sealed your world off from the others."

Urus nodded.

"And you used your abilities, however unskilled they may be, to travel through the vertices in an attempt to thwart their efforts?"

Urus nodded again. "Yes."
 

"Why then did you absorb the last vertex instead of preventing the Order from destroying it?"

"Absorb? I don't know what you mean," Urus said.

"You absorbed the last of the five warding vertices. In many ways, you
are
the fifth vertex," Vogon said, leaning forward, his brow furrowed.

"I—I didn't mean to," Urus stammered. "I didn't know what I was doing."

One of the council members bolted up out of his chair. "The boy freely admits to tampering with the continuum!"

"Elris, sit down," chimed in another council member. "The boy also prevented the escape of the blood mages. I need not delve into the details of what would have happened had they been unleashed upon the multiverse unfettered, or worse, had their run of Almoryll."

At least one of them doesn't think I'm guilty
, Urus thought. Maybe there was hope after all.

"He wears the fifth vertex on his chest like some badge of honor," said another councillor, not bothering to mask the look of derision and disgust on his face.

"It's not the fifth vertex," said Urus. "At least it wasn't when I got the scar. It's a brand. The Kestians burned it into my chest during the culling. It was my punishment for failing to live up to the standards of Kestian warriors. When I absorbed the vertex…it just…I don't know…went into my scar. It was the same symbol. I had no control over it."

"Again he demonstrates no respect for the impact of his own actions," said Elris. "He is like a toddling baby deity, able to destroy worlds with but a tantrum. The law is clear; his existence is a threat to balance itself."

Two more council members rose, their mouths open and ready to launch into a diatribe.

"Enough!" Vogon silenced the council with a slam of his fist on the throne. "I still preside over this trial, and I have not completed my interrogation." He waited for the rest of the council to retake their seats.

"I am curious," Vogon began, "how someone who claims not to know the first thing about sigilcraft managed to defeat Draegon, the leader of the Order of the Sanguine Crystal, and arguably one of the most powerful magic users on the world of Emys at the time."

"The boy lacks the context to give a proper answer," Urus's only defender on the council said. "His inexperience may make his answers misleading. I suggest we take a look directly."

Vogon stood. "An excellent idea."

The council members stepped down from their raised chairs and made their way to the center of the floor, where Urus stood hitched to his mule post. They each pressed a hand to the top of the post, with Vogon's hand resting atop them all.
 

In unison they closed their eyes.

A presence invaded Urus's mind. It felt as though Murin had once again invaded his mind, only this time the foreign presence was stronger, more aggressive, and bashing about inside his skull like a charging bull rather than treading carefully, as Murin the gray man had.

Urus dropped to his knees and howled in pain, clutching his head in his hands. This was unlike anything Murin had done to him before. Memories rushed before his mind's eye. His childhood sped past in mere moments, as did the pain and sorrow that had accompanied most of that time. Unseen hands rifled through his memories like a beggar sifting through discarded kitchen scraps.

At last the whirlwind of his past came to a halt, and Urus stood in a memory that, until recently, had been buried beneath a mountain of guilt and shame. Shades of the twelve council members stood in his childhood home, observing. Urus's young self sat on the floor, crying, blood running from his ears after his father had beaten him, punishing him for the birth defect that had rendered his son deaf.

A moment later the toy doll made by Urus's mother flashed a brilliant blue. The council watched in horror as the creature of pure magical power stepped out of the doll, grew to the size of a full-grown man, and followed Urus's father into an adjacent room where it avenged the weeping boy.

Vogon waved his hand and the room spun. It whirled faster and faster, shapes and colors blending until they became nothing more than a jumble of light. The swirls slowed, the colors changed, and the room stopped spinning.

The room had changed. They now stood in the dark caverns that formed the cistern below Kest. The memory was from the day of his culling, the day he had received the brand on his chest and been exiled from his home and his people. Urus and the council watched as his memory-self paced around a stone obelisk, accompanied by Goodwyn and Murin. This was the memory of the time they had encountered the first vertex, the one Murin had come to warn them might be a target of the blood mages. Even though the memory was not that old, his memory-self seemed much younger, more innocent somehow.

The council gasped as the younger, innocent Urus stumbled and fell, reaching for the obelisk to brace his fall. His hand pressed against one of the images carved into the stone and Urus and his companions disappeared with a flash of bright blue light.

The world shifted, colors blended, smells faded, and memories flitted in and out of view like summer gnats. With a searing pain in the back of his head, they stopped in another memory. This time, Urus and the other guests of his mind had come to rest in a dimly lit stone room. It was one of the tombs in the catacombs deep below the ancient city of Vultura.

This memory was far more recent. This time, the creature of blue power, now bound to Urus's sword, struggled to defend its master. The council members riffled through the memory, stopping it, starting it, and forcing it to repeat over and over again until they had scrutinized every detail. They repeated a scene in which Draegon had used his magic to cure Urus's deafness, a moment that would have looked to anyone else as though Urus had considered joining forces with the evil mage. In truth, he had just been stalling for time, hoping someone else would come and rescue him.

 
The council examined the blood mage, Draegon, as his magic held Urus aloft and utterly helpless until the moment when Urus used a destruction sigil to crush his enemy, to fold him over and over until no trace of the blood mage remained.
 

Even that had been an accident. The knowledge of the destruction sigil had actually come from Draegon. Embarrassment was all he could feel as he watched the confrontation. There were no heroics, no legendary sword battles, not even skilled use of magic. There was nothing but Urus stumbling about, accidentally using Draegon's mistake and ego to eke out a victory.