The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (33 page)

"Hardly," Anderis replied, nodding into the darkness beyond their arena.

"Look what I found, sir," called the henchmen as he stepped out onto the field. He shoved a bound and gagged Colin to the ground in front of him. "I caught this one trying to sneak into our little show."

"Colin!" Cailix shouted.

"So you've kept this one around," Anderis said. "You care for him?"

"You've got to be joking," Colin shouted, sitting up on his knees. "She's a bitch! Always telling me what to do, where to go, complaining that I was raised in a barn."

Bitch?
She thought. She hoped Colin's act would be convincing enough to fool Anderis.
 

Anderis reared his head back and laughed. "That sounds like Aerlissa."

Cailix put her hands on her knees. "I can't be expected to carry my own things, now can I?"

"So the boy is your slave?" Anderis asked.

"More like my mule," she replied. The distraction had given her a few moments to catch her breath and try to recover some strength. She still hadn't thought of her next move, however.

"No matter," said Anderis. "Once I've killed you, I'll exact my revenge for his little stunt with the pitchfork."

Cailix stifled her instincts to react to that statement. She couldn't let her enemy know that she cared about Colin.
 

Do I care about him?
she thought.
What does that even feel like?

The henchmen resumed their positions, with Colin sitting tied up on the ground next to the one with the feeder ball. They dropped new blood into their bowls, and the ball was held aloft.

Cailix's knees gave way and a wave of nausea and dizziness crashed into her. She watched the ball drop. Unable to tear her eyes away from the dropping ball, she followed it all the way to the ground, only partly aware that she too was dropping.

She and the ball hit the ground at the same time. The ground stung her face and knocked the wind from her lungs, which spurred another long fit of coughing, drops of blood spattering on the ground in front of her face. She didn't even have the energy to lift her head off the ground as she coughed.

"This is absolutely not fair," Anderis said, stomping across the field and looming over her.
 

She was done. All she could hope for was that he would end her life quickly and not make her suffer any more than she already was. She tried to speak but only managed to cough.

"What have you done to yourself, Aerlissa?" Anderis asked. He knelt in front of her and turned her hands over, examining her palms and fingers. "Your veins are darkening, your fingers are turning purple, and you're coughing blood. You're wearing a bloodstone, and it's turned black."

She heard Colin say something, but couldn't make out what it was. She was too busy hoping for death to take her to notice anything else.

"I knew you had used dead blood that day," Anderis said. "I never taught you about the corruption. You foolish girl, there is no cure for this. You are going to rot from the inside out until there is nothing left of you but an ice cold corpse."

"Kill me," she whispered. "End it."

"You have spoiled my victory again, Aerlissa," Anderis said. "Tie her up and wrap her in blankets. We're bringing her with us."

"Sir? You're not going to kill her?" asked one of the henchmen.

"Of course not, you fool. I can't kill her while she is in this condition. And besides, I am certain that Autar would enjoy meeting her."

Chapter Twenty-Two

"Come," said Autar. "Let us get out of this cold and dank muck to somewhere warm where we may talk. I am sure you have as many questions for me as I have for you."

Autur turned, his robe billowing out and swishing behind him, and trudged back into the hallway from which he had come, his yellow avatar knight leading the way.

Urus gazed at Lu, wide-eyed, but she just smiled and followed her avatar knight into the hallway, as did the other radixes. He looked around, trying to find some clue as to why the sigilord would have been in this awful place, and why he would have been using his powers there. He hurried to catch up to the others after noticing he was alone in the hallway.

They wove their way in and out of the basements of buildings, some of which were flooded, and they traversed shoddy wooden bridges to get across the icy waters. When they finally made their way to the surface, they emerged into the cold darkness of the small hours just before dawn. No longer in need of the light cast by their avatar knights, Luse and the other radixes dismissed them.
 

A thin coating of snow reflected the light of the waning moon, offering Urus a glimpse of his surroundings. It looked like a city long dead and abandoned; buildings falling over, streets heaving and broken, all being reclaimed by vines and other hardy plants reasserting their dominance over this failed manmade landscape.
 

"My lord Autar," asked Choein. "May I ask where we are?"

"The old ranks are no more, friend radix," said Autar. "Choein, was it? We can dispense with the formalities. We are on the abandoned island of Findanar, in the harbor of the city of Niragan. I assume you know that you are on world Emys."

Urus noticed that some of the obstructions in the streets were not just random decay, but instead were deliberate mounds of rubble, discarded furniture, and other scraps. The mounds lay staggered at uneven distances and hugged opposite sides of the street.

Siege countermeasures
, he thought.
Someone is preparing for an attack. But who?

"Come." Autar ushered them toward a relatively undamaged building at the end of the street. Beyond the house, looming over the island even in the darkness, stood an enormous stone tower. Unlike the rest of the island's structures, the tower seemed unaffected by whatever decay sapped the life from the place.

"What's in that tower?" Urus asked.
 

"It was once the central spire of the main castle," said Autar. "The people of Niragan abandoned it, along with the rest of this area, when the rising sea level turned this part of the city into an island. The isolation of this island suits my needs perfectly."

His needs
, Urus thought.
So he's the one who set the countermeasures. But he's been using his power enough to draw the attention of the Council of Balance.
Nothing about his surroundings felt right, and Autar certainly wasn't behaving like a sigilord in need of anyone's help.
He's baiting a trap
.

Autar led them into the building. As he opened the door the group was met with a blast of warm air and the smell of cooking stew. The radixes wasted no time in pressing through the door and making for the fire.

Urus stopped before going inside and took another look up and down the street. A feeling struck him, similar to the way the hair on the back of his neck had risen when the net sigil had tracked its prey. As he took another step toward the open door and the inviting smell of the warm room, a stain on the ground caught his eye.

The stain was fresh, and some of it had spread out into the surrounding snow.
 

Blood
, Urus thought.
And not very old.

He entered the home and closed the door behind him. His group had already helped themselves to the stew and found seats around the large sitting room. Autar sat in a broad chair upholstered with plush, furry pelts, his smile wide though he hadn't removed his helmet or the glass visor that covered his eyes.

"Eat up, young man," he said, waving at the cauldron of stew. "Travel sigils are hungry work. I must hear the tale of how so many of my kin long thought extinct would appear at my doorstep, humble and decrepit though it may be."

"Thank you, but I must decline," Urus said, trying as hard as he could to enunciate without giving away his speech impediment.
He doesn't need to know about either of my birth defects
, Urus thought.
 

"The trip seems to have upset my stomach," he added. He felt fine, but needed an excuse to avoid eating the stew. There was nothing he could do about the others who had already started eating.

Urus walked over to the fire and stood warming his hands. It also had the added effect of keeping his back to Autar.

"We escaped from Almoryll," Luse said, barely able to contain herself. "We saved these radixes."

"Escaped the lion's den, did you?" said Autar, eyebrows raised in surprise. "No small feat, that."

As Luse happened to look in Urus's direction, he signed to her, "I don't trust him. Something fishy." Pretending the exchange never took place, Urus sat down next to Luse.
 

Where is Mist?
he wondered. The silver fox never left Lu's side.

"We overheard that the arbiters were coming to kill a sigilord they had discovered on this world," said Luse. "We wanted to stop that. We used a net sigil to find you, and it seems we have found you before the arbiters did."

"Arbiters? Coming to kill me?" Autar said, his face the perfect mix of fear and anger that Urus would have expected.
Too perfect
, he thought. Urus had spent his whole life studying people's faces while they talked, and he could spot a liar easily. He wondered now if that ability had also come from being able to read people's surface thoughts.

Regardless, Autar was hiding something with his finely crafted reaction to the news of the arbiters.
 

He wants them to come
, Urus thought.
He's waiting for them here
. Now Urus was truly worried about who had left the bloodstain outside. Had it been an arbiter? Had Autar killed someone there?
What if he is planning to kill arbiters? That wouldn't be such a bad thing, would it?

As adrenaline poured through his veins, fear threatened to take hold. Focusing on the details of the room, Urus calmed his breathing and let none of his fear show through in his body language.

"We came to warn you," said Luse. "If we found you with our net, then the arbiters can find you as well."

Autar finally lifted off his helmet and placed it on the table beside him. The dark glass visor had been concealing countless scars on his face and a missing eye that had been sewn shut and scarred over.

"The arbiters did this to me," Autar said. "Between them and the blood mages, our kind didn't stand a chance. It is by luck, miracles, and my own sheer stubborn refusal to die that I have lasted this long. Seeing that I am not the last of my kind may add yet a few more years to my life."

I doubt luck had anything to do with his survival
, Urus thought. He knew when he was in the presence of a skilled warrior, and this man exuded power, confidence, and skill. He positively reeked of lethality. He was holding something back.

Moments of awkward silence passed as no one seemed to be able to think of anything to say in response to Autar's revelation of the damage to his face. He finally broke the silence by saying, "Now, I must learn of how you escaped the rat's nest to end all rat's nests."

"Our lord, Urus, is a b—" Choein began, but Lu cut him off.

"Beginner!" she said, with a wide grin and a giggle. "We got lucky with the spires being empty while the arbiters all set out searching for you. We sneaked out while their guard was down."

Autar grinned and leaned back in his chair. "Very well done! I would give anything to see the looks on their faces when they return to find that you have escaped with so many of their precious batteries."

"Batteries?" Urus asked, unsure if he was reading the man's lips properly.
 

"A battery is a thing that stores power," Autar explained, leaning forward to rest his arms on his knees. "The arbiters keep the radixes around because they cannot power any of their plundered sigilcraft items without them. To those evil bastards, the radixes are just another source of power, ripe for harvesting. But still, there should be thousands of arbiters and their soldiers in Almoryll. How did you evade all of them?"

Luse eyed Urus, clearly uncertain how much or what information to reveal. If something about this man did turn out to be wrong, then revealing too much information could be a terrible mistake.
 

"I've been in Almoryll for a long time, hiding among them as a pastry cook," she said, beaming with pride. "The arbiters didn't suspect that I was anything more than that."
 

Urus loved that look on her face, but even her smile couldn't bring him comfort now, nor could it counteract the fear building within him.
 

"I got to know the layout, and we knew a way to get up to the Emys portal without anyone seeing us," Lu concluded.

"A spy in their midst!" Autar clapped and sat back in his chair. "Absolutely spendid!"

"So what are you doing on this island?" Urus asked. "And how long have you been here?"

Autar's expression grew curious. "Do all of your people sound like you? I have never heard speech such as yours."

"I'm deaf," Urus said. He didn't know if that knowledge could be used against him, but it wasn't something he could easily hide. Revealing it might also build trust, and keep Autar from thinking they were suspicious of him.