The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (22 page)

Urus stared out at the barren landscape, the pain so deep he could not even shed a tear. It looked like nothing from any world he had ever seen or dreamed of. The only parts of the blighted vista before him that even vaguely resembled his home were the outline of the Dragonspine mountains to the west and the dried up canyon that was once the Riffscag River.

Overcome with a wave of nausea and dizziness, he dropped to his knees, only vaguely aware of Luse and the newly freed radixes assembled behind him. His fingertips tingled and his arms and legs felt numb. The last time he had felt like this was when he had gone days with only scraps of food.

"You're weak," Luse said. "Using sigils, especially ones as powerful as traveling through portals, takes a lot out of you. Here, eat this." She reached into a pack and handed Urus a piece of hard bread.

Urus took the bread and stood up, again scanning the scene before them. From horizon to horizon lay a dark brown, desolate wasteland. Off in the distance to the east, the pattern of the rippling waves of heat shifted and swirled, hinting at a massive void in the desert.
 

That crater is too far from the mountains and on the wrong side of the river to be Kest
, Urus thought.

"So this is home?" Lu asked, stepping in front of him, blocking the terrible view. She let Mist down, who took up position a few feet away, guarding her mistress.

"It was once," Urus said. He took a few steps on the strange ground, then bent to study it. The surface of the desert had turned to a layer of cracked glass the color of light brown sugar, a color that reminded him of the cookies he used to steal from the emperor's personal baker. He picked up a piece of the glass and held it up to the sun, watching the light filter through.

"What is this stuff?" he asked.

"You said the blood mages pulled something from the heavens and crashed it into Kest," Lu said, also examining a piece of the glass. "That impact would have been hot enough to melt the desert sand. Once the melting sand cooled, it turned into this."

"That crater over there," said Urus, pointing into the distance to the east. "Whatever landed there missed Kest, but not by much. We should be standing right where the imperial palace used to be."

"I'm so sorry," Lu said. "I was hoping you were wrong, and that your home would still be here."

"So was I."

"I don't see what this wasteland has to do with finding the sigilord," said the radix called Enoch.

"It was the only place on this world I knew well enough to focus the portal on," Urus replied. "It was the best I could do."

"So how do we get from here to the sigilord before the arbiters kill him?" Enoch asked.

Lu turned toward several radixes who had been searching nearby debris.

"They're shouting—they've found something they want us to see," she told Urus.

Urus followed Lu to a group of radixes led by Choein, feeling his feet crunching on the cracked glass. It felt strange walking across the desert without the soft sands giving way underfoot. As they walked the glass grew more sparse, replaced by massive chunks of broken, misshapen sunstone.

Able to absorb sunlight during the day and emit a yellow glow at night, sunstone was once one of the most precious commodities on the continent. Now it lay beneath his feet in ruin.

Urus knelt to see what had caught everyone's attention. There, in the middle of a pile of rubble, was a hole. Surrounded by sunstone boulders, the crater sank into darkness below the glass desert.

"It's a hole," Urus commented, unsure what hidden meaning he was supposed to notice. "I'm sure the rubble is full of them."

"Look closer, right near the edge, on the stone," said Choein with exaggerated mouth movements, making sure Urus could see him speak.

Urus raised an eyebrow at Lu.

"I explained to them that you're deaf," she said. "Don't worry, they don't think any less of you because of it. When I told them you speak with hand sigils, they warmed to the idea."

Urus shook his head, then focused on the edges of the stone. A light coating of desert sand covered the rock, except in a few spots where the sand had been disturbed. His heart raced as he recognized patterns and voids in the sand.

Hand prints!
He gasped and stood up, barely able to breathe.
 

"Survivors," Urus said. "There are fresh handprints on the stones. Someone was down in that hole recently."

Lu beamed and looked back into the opening. "It's not very deep—I can see more stone down there."

"Shouldn't we be looking for the arbiters and the sigilord?" asked Enoch.

"Urus's people may be down there, Enoch," said Choein. "We owe him our lives and our freedom. If he wants to look for survivors, I say we look. You would do the same if it were your people."

Enoch nodded.

"We can't travel again for a few hours anyway," Lu said. She turned to Urus. "The travel sigil takes a lot out of us. If you tried one again too soon, especially after traversing universes like we just did, it could kill you."

"Well then, it seems we've got a couple of hours to look for survivors," Choein said. He lay on his stomach on the edge of the hole and lowered each of the others down, Urus and Lu going last and catching Choein as he dropped.

Luse etched a green sigil—the same one Urus had used to illuminate the city of Vultara at the bottom of the ocean—and the cave lit up with a soft emerald light that followed them as they descended further into the hollows made by toppled walls and crumbled stone.

When they got to the base of the crater, Urus recognized their location. It was the street where he had landed the night he had tried to take his own life, when he had jumped from the palace roof and landed without a scratch. The last time he had been on that street, it had basked in the soft amber glow of the sunstone road and palace walls. Now there was little more than rubble, hidden under a layer of brown glass.

"I was right," Urus said. "Up there, where the glass sand is, that was the top of the palace. We're standing on what used to be a Kestian street."

"Fan out, find more tunnels, and see if any look like they've been used," Choein ordered his men.

The radixes spread out, disappearing into every crack and crevasse they could find. They each returned a few minutes later, most shaking their heads indicating a dead end. One, however, appeared hopeful.

"I found a tunnel, definitely looks manmade," said Feth. "It goes under the building these walls used to hold up."

"That's below the palace," said Urus. "The dungeons and the cistern were down there."

"If that cistern still holds water, that's where I would set up camp," Choein said. "Not that I would have thought to live in a desert like this in the first place."

"How do your people handle the heat?" Enoch asked, wiping his brow and tugging at the neck of the shirt he had grabbed from the armory.

"We've never known anything else," Urus said. "I don't know how other people deal with winter, or live in Waldron where it's so wet you can squeeze rain from the air."

"I can show you the tunnel," Feth said.

"Lead on," Urus replied.

The group followed Feth, sometimes having to crawl on their knees or squirm on their bellies to get through the rubble. Just when it seemed as if they might run out of breathable air, they emerged on the other side of the tunnel in a wide, open chamber. One side of the chamber held an empty fireplace, and three fortified iron doors hung bent and twisted from their hinges.

"We're in the dungeons," Urus said. "There's a way to get from here to the cistern."

"Which way?" Lu asked.

Urus looked around and sighed. The dungeons were designed specifically to confuse intruders, with each area looking exactly like all the others, right down to the size and shape of the interconnecting hallways. One had to descend to a lower level to find a stairwell that led to a higher level. Without memorizing the layout, or being a quiver like Goodwyn, anyone would be hopelessly lost down there.

"The last time I was down here, my friend led me through," Urus said. "He's something called a quiver, and that—"

"Your friend is a quiver?" Choein exclaimed. "A blue sigilord who keeps company with a quiver! These truly are omens of better times to come."

Urus shrugged, unconvinced. "Before, my friend used his ability to get us to the cistern. I don't know how to get there from here on my own."

"We'll mark our way as we go," said Lu. "I can etch a sigil on the hallways we take, so we avoid going in circles."

They slowly and painstakingly worked their way through the dungeon, marking each direction they chose with one of Lu's sigils. It felt as if hours had passed before they finally descended to a level that looked different from the others. The long walk had given them time to talk, the radixes constantly prodding and pressing Urus about the events that led up to his arrival in Almoryll. Urus hated talking about himself, but the radixes were relentless and would not accept silence for an answer.

Eventually they stepped out of the dungeon and onto the shoreline of a vast underground lake that had once served as a cistern for the city of Kest.

"It looks the same as it did when I left," Urus said. "There was a vertex in one of the caves down here. It took Goodwyn, Murin, and me to Waldron."

"Destiny at work," remarked Choein. The other radixes seemed to agree.

"Random chance," Urus corrected. "I tripped and fell into it."

"What makes you think it wasn't fate that made you trip?" asked Enoch. "Had it been anyone else who fell, nothing would have happened but a bruise and a bump. Destiny."

"Look, fires," Lu said, pointing to the far side of the cistern. Lighting up an island at the other end of the cistern were dozens of huge bonfires. Though he couldn't make out who or what they were, dark silhouettes moved about in front of and behind the fires.

Kestians
! Urus gasped.
They still live!
 

"They're alive," he said. "We need a boat!"

"Since when does a sigilord need a boat?" asked Tol. Choein said something Urus couldn't quite make out and shoved the smaller radix.

"Pardon his tone, my lord," Choein said. "It has been a few centuries since he has needed to use manners."

Just the thought of using another sigil made him tired. He was still exhausted from the previous effort, and it hadn't even really been his power—they had borrowed the power of the portal, something made by people who actually knew what they were doing. More importantly, Urus feared what might happen if he did use his sigilcraft. There was no predicting the result—or who he might hurt.

"I can't manage another sigil," he said to Lu. "The water here should be shallow enough to walk out to the island."

"We walk then," Choein said.

"Everyone ready?" Lu asked. The radixes all drew their weapons in response.

"These are my people," Urus said. "We shouldn't need weapons."

"If it's all the same to you, my lord," Choein said, "we'd rather live long enough to sheathe our weapons than die trying to reach them."

"You sure you're not a Kestian, Choein?" Urus asked, genuinely amused by the lieutenant colonel's attitude.

Urus had been right; the water remained shallow all the way to the shore of the island. It wasn't an easy walk, and many of the radixes grumbled and complained about being dragged through mud and water for strangers, but Choein kept them in line.

The damp, muddy island flickered in the red-orange light of torches, cook fires, and pits to burn refuse. The place smelled of rancid food, waste, and body odor. The stench reminded him of the warrens in Waldron, only hotter, with a far worse smell.

In response to their arrival on the shore, two dozen Kestian soldiers—including women and children—took up defensive positions on the shoreline, all with weapons drawn, their faces the cold, stoic glares of seasoned warriors. Urus had almost forgotten that hard, heartless stare. It was the look his father had when he beat him, and it was the look the Kestians prized above all else—the
killer instinct
that Urus had lacked.

"It's all right," Urus said, holding out his hands. "I'm Kestian. We're not here to fight."

Movement at the back of the group caught his eye. The line of Kestian warriors parted to admit a tall, menacing figure wielding a jewel-encrusted sword. His armor was dented and covered in stains, but still retained a hint of the bright sheen that had once been its hallmark. Urus instantly recognized the armor, and the jewel-encrusted sword.

"A Kestian, you say?" called the man, trudging through the mud and pushing his way through the line of warriors. "I know who you are, crowfeed, and the one thing I am certain you are
not
, is Kestian."

"Battlemaster Guren," Urus said, struggling to maintain his composure. His voice threatened to crack and his bladder threatened to empty. He wanted to turn and run, to be anywhere but there, with anyone but that man. Battlemaster Guren had been the one to lift the hot brand and sear the mark of the culled into Urus's chest.

"Well, look at you," Guren said, sticking his sword into the mud and planting his hands on his hips.
 

Things must be really bad here,
Urus thought. No Kestian in his right mind would ever deliberately stick a good blade in the mud. He said nothing, but kept his gaze upright and tried to look strong. Underneath the facade, he longed to find somewhere to hide.

"I don't know what all the rest of you are doing down here, or how this worthless crowfeed convinced you to come with him, but you all can just turn and go back where you came," said Guren. "There may be nothing left standing of our city, but while Kestians still draw breath here, this is Kest, and you're trespassing."

"Battlemaster Guren," Urus began again, but Guren cut him off.

"It's emperor, now. Aegaz and his First Fist abandoned their posts on some fool mission that I suspect had something to do with you. That snake Kebetir is dead, as is the emperor. So that leaves me in charge."

More soldiers had gathered behind Battlemaster Guren, drawn by what must have been anger in the man's voice. Deaf or not, there was no mistaking Guren's tone. The man had hated Urus since he was a child, and loathed and envied Aegaz and his position. The people gathered behind Guren were but shadows of their former selves. The proud, strong, undefeated stance of a Kestian had been pressed into the hunch of the hungry, scavenging, and defeated. Seeing Kestians this way pained Urus almost as much as knowing how many had died.