The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (17 page)

The same was not true for the two other radixes now within the bubble of the light shield. Unflinching under the power of their slave collars, they reacted swiftly. Two radixes each tackled the collared men while another relieved them of their weapons. Luse and Urus removed their remaining collars.

Shocked at the sudden disappearance of their companions, the other radixes in the room charged, swinging wildly without regard for what they might hit. Chaos swallowed the room and Urus and Lu and their freed radix companions grappled and struggled, at times rolling on the ground, wrestling their opponents into submission long enough to get their collars off.

It was ugly, awkward, dirty combat, but no one died. Bruises abounded, and everyone took a long time to get back to their feet, but the room had been won. Urus and Lu were now in the company of sixteen radixes.
 

A strange feeling, like a pressure releasing from his neck down his spine, hit Urus with no warning. He looked around, searching for the source of the feeling, swatting at his back, trying to crush whatever had bitten him.

Lu laughed so hard she doubled over, pointing at Urus. Her laugh morphed into an out-of-breath wheezing—she had laughed her lungs empty.

"What?" Urus asked, so confused he didn't even know if he should be embarrassed.
 

"The light shield dropped," she said, fumbling her way through a few signs she had seen him use. "And you danced around like a mosquito had gotten you."

"That's what that was?"
 

Lu nodded. "And now that you know what it feels like when it goes away, you should be able to feel it when it's there."

The radixes made the rounds, exchanging introductions and clasping hands. Some of them had known each other during the Fulcrum War, but most were strangers to each other. They could remember everything they had done under the control of the arbiters, including how helpless they had been to resist.

"The arbiters went ahead with an advance group," said one of the newly freed radixes. "Twenty radixes and four arbiters."

"They will be on guard, expecting an attack from the sigilord on Emys. It will not be easy to engage the arbiters without casualties," said Choein.
 

"Just make the arbiters the casualties," said one of the radixes. "Problem solved."

"How will we even find them?" Urus asked. "If the portal works like the travel sigil, then the arbiter picked a location when they went through, didn't he?"

"They did not tell us exactly where they were going," said one of the radixes. "All we know is they went somewhere on Emys."

"Well, that narrows it down," Choein said sharply.

"If the arbiters are on Emys, that sigilord needs our help, and he needs it now," Luse said. "Does anyone here have a strong memory of a place on Emys? A place that is still likely to exist?"

The radixes gave each other looks and all shrugged.

"We've been slaves here for more years than we can count," Choein said. "Those of us who lived on Emys would be lucky if we can remember where we were born—certainly nothing strong enough for a travel sigil, and we were captured before the elders sank Vultara."

"I guess that leaves you, little bull," said Lu. "What's the place you remember most on Emys?"

"My strongest memories are from Kest," said Urus. "But the blood mages destroyed it. I don't know if any of it even exists anymore."

"If that's the best we have, it'll have to do," Lu said. "No one else can set a good focus for the portal. Just focus on where you want to go like we did to get here and then touch the travel sigil on the plinth holding the wings."

"Now hold on just one second," interjected one of the newly freed radixes. "While I am certainly grateful for being out from under the yoke of the arbiters, I intend to stay here and murder every last one of those sons of bitches, not go off on some fool errand searching an entire planet for one sigilord who may or may not already be dead."

"He makes a good point," said another. "We are within striking distance here. Hell, with this group and two sigilords, we might be able to retake Almoryll itself. We can free the other radixes."

"You can choose to stay if you like," added Choein. "But these folks just freed you, and though it may have been a thousand years ago, you all swore an oath to protect and serve the sigilords. They need our help, and I for one plan on giving it."

"If we can get to this sigilord before the council does, we can save him," Urus said. "If we save him, he can come back here with us, and we can free the rest of the radixes."

The radixes said nothing.

Luse broke the silence with her broad smile. "So it's settled then."
 

Urus stepped over to the ornate stone block that held the curved wings framing the edges of the portal. On it was carved a sigil that likely represented Emys, alongside the travel sigil. He reached out to touch the travel sigil, then pulled his hand back.

I can't believe this is happening again,
he thought.
I'm getting sucked into another fight, more killing and bloodshed. Why can I not escape this life?

"What's wrong?" Lu asked, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"I can't do this," Urus signed, and whispered so that only Lu could hear. "I'm angry…so terribly angry, at the arbiters, at the blood mages, at everything. When I get angry people die, and I don't want any more people to die. I just want it to stop, to go back to the way things were…before."

"We're all angry, little bull," said Lu. "And not all of us were meant to be soldiers. I certainly wasn't. But we have to do what we have to do, and right now that's saving a sigilord. And remember, it isn't anger that made people die, it was being afraid and unable to control your power. You're not afraid of your power anymore. These radixes are looking to you to show them that there is hope, that sigilcraft is not dead, and that the arbiters haven't won."

"But why me?" Urus asked.

"Why not you?" Lu said with her signature smile. "Now let's go to Kest."

Lu faced the door, then grinned and opened her arms as Mist scampered into the room. The silver fox jumped into Lu's arms and gave her face a few licks before settling in.

Urus gazed around the room at the radixes, at the eyes of people who were centuries—maybe even millennia—older than he, people who had seen and done things Urus could barely imagine. Those people viewed him as though he was some kind of leader. They believed in him because he was a sigilord, not because they knew him.
 

They don't know
, Urus thought.
They don't know that I was culled, that I'm not a soldier or a leader.
They don't know that I'm not really a sigilord
.
I'm a fraud
.

Urus thought of Kest and searched through his mind for his most vivid experiences in that city. His mind blocked out everything else and he let his strongest memories come to him. The most potent of his memories bubbled to the surface. Urus closed his eyes and let the vision fill him. In the memory, he stood on the top of the palace roof in Kest, focused on the glowing light of the sunstone beneath his feet, the smell of cooking meats and spices, the feel of that long winter's night, warm air blowing against a dirt-stained face that seemed so much younger than the one he currently wore.

Urus opened his eyes and pressed his hand to the travel sigil. Blue light filled the recesses of the carved symbol, then bloomed outward until there was nothing but blue.

Chapter Eleven

"I think it's time we gave up, Murin," Timoc called from the hill behind him, his voice barely audible over the hissing and popping of the magma squeezing out through the cracks in the earth below them. Murin's former apprentice was usually a near-infinite source of optimism and levity, but even Timoc's reserve stores of hope appeared to have been used up in the long search for Urus.

"I will not give up on the boy," Murin said, following the narrow stone path deeper into the heart of the volcano. A simple, hooded gray robe covered most of his stone-gray skin. Despite the large opening at the top of the cave, Murin and Timoc both occasionally had to stoop to allow their towering forms to fit. "I refuse to let the arbiters decide his fate."

"We have been searching for six months. Surely his fate has already been decided."

"It has only been six months here. In Almoryll only a few days may have passed," Murin replied, turning to face his longtime apprentice. In this form, both of them were practically immune to heat, but this far into the depths of Mount Kebel's core, even they could succumb to sweat and exhaustion.

"I just don't know what makes you think spelunking into the base of this volcano will yield any better results than all the other places we have searched," Timoc said, stepping past Murin and continuing down the winding path between pools of glowing red magma.

"I can feel it. The quantum superpositions here are more likely to include a state that supports a rift entanglement," Murin said. "I can practically smell it."

Smell wasn't an accurate description of the sense, but it was a sense nonetheless. He couldn't see quantum states like the quivers, but he could feel when there was something wrong, a rift that allowed things that should be stuck in one universe to drift across the multiverse. He had used that sense before, eons ago, and it had cost him dearly.

Timoc sighed. "That's what you said about the last three places we searched, master. Just because the wards are gone and I was able to reach this world, doesn't mean that we can get from here to Almoryll."

"There are cracks everywhere, Timoc," Murin said, kneeling, then hanging from a cliff and dropping to a ledge below. They were getting close to the point where they would be incinerated if they ventured much closer to the volcano's core. "One of them must to lead to Almoryll. The place is a nexus within the multiverse. Rifts are naturally drawn to it."

Timoc dropped to the ledge, grumbling again. He folded his arms across his chest and said, "And what if one of them leads to a place worse than the last? Do you remember that one time going through a crack, we stepped out into empty space? We nearly died."

"We survived," Murin said.
Barely
, he didn't say aloud.

"I understand your devotion to the boy. You feel responsible for his predicament. But we need to be realistic. Without the aid of a quiver or a sigilord, we will never reach Almoryll, let alone rescue him once we're there."

"I will not give up," Murin repeated. They spent the next several minutes in silence, Murin making his way down the treacherous cascade of cliffs and narrow outcroppings that led them even deeper into the volcano.
 

After a time Murin stopped in front of a wall made of black volcanic rock, permeated with holes of different sizes where gasses had escaped the magma as it cooled.
 

"This is it," Timoc said. "A dead end."

"I said I will not give up," Murin said, examining the rock face.

"Master, it's a solid rock wall. There's nothing here."

Murin wasn't convinced. The ability that allowed him to sense disturbances at the quantum level told him that something was rotten here. If indeed it was a smell, it would have been as if Murin was standing atop a pile of fresh manure. He had felt the disturbance when they traveled through the permanent winter above in the city of Naredis, and he could feel it even more strongly here. There was a crack in the fabric somewhere in the boiling volcanic deep, and Murin wasn't leaving without exploring every nook and cranny, no matter how hot or dangerous. He wasn't going to abandon anyone again, ever.

I will never stand idly by and watch,
Murin thought.
Never again
.

He touched the wall, only vaguely aware of the fact that it seared his skin. The toxic gasses alone at that depth would have killed most people, but neither Murin nor Timoc were from this world, and they could withstand far more than most people.

Something caught his eye, and he stared intently at the way the air warped as heat drifted up from the magma flow. He willed his vision to change from normal sight to infrasight and the world was bathed in a spectrum of heat from blue to red.

"There," he said, pointing at the air directly in front of the wall of volcanic rock. "Look at the heat flow."

Murin watched as the intense waves of heat rose from the magma flow and then stopped abruptly a few feet off the ground, as though the heat simply disappeared.

"The heat is being diverted," said Timoc. "I can't believe it—you were right. The air here is being sucked through a rift."

"There will come a day when you are unsurprised by my lack of failure." Murin allowed the faintest hint of a smile to crease the side of his mouth.
 

"I suggest we throw something through first, rather than risk the trip ourselves," suggested his apprentice.

Murin found a few loose rocks. Taking a few steps back to make sure he was a safe distance from the rip that connected universes, he tossed the first rock at the spot in the air where the waves of heat vanished.