The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (37 page)

"We can't let these creatures get off the island," Urus told her.

"And we must not allow Autar to engage the arbiters," Murin added.

"If he finds the arbiters, or if they find him, then he'll have a returning rod," Luse said, her face showing fear for the first time. "He could use it to travel to Almoryll."

"The consequences would be catastrophic," said Murin. "That has likely been his goal all along."

The building shook and trembled. Off in the distance to the north, a pair of homes collapsed into a pile of dust and debris.
 

"Help! Somebody help!" One of the children traveling with Goodwyn and Therren burst into the group. "Help!"

"What is it?" Urus asked.

"It's Spider," Ferret wailed. "He's gone!"

Chapter Twenty-Five

Cailix rolled over on her side and curled up into a ball. No position allowed her to get comfortable. She was so exhausted that she no longer cared about the pressure in her lungs or the pain in her stomach. It didn't matter that her limbs were so cold she couldn't feel her toes or fingertips.

She was ready to die, to give in and let her own blood kill her. She deserved it for experimenting with blood magic without learning everything she needed from Anderis. The only thing keeping her alive was that she had unfinished business. She still had to defeat him.

She pretended to ignore the approaching scuffle of footsteps.
 

Someone was trying to sneak up on her, and they were doing a terrible job. She controlled her breathing, struggling to keep from coughing or letting her would-be attacker know she was awake.

Amateur
, she thought.
Just means he'll be easier for me to kill
.
 

The footsteps stopped.
Waiting for me to move, show a sign that I'm awake
. Despite her best efforts, a cough escaped her lungs, scraping at her throat on the way out. She scrunched back up into a ball, suppressing her urge to shiver.
 

After a few minutes of silence the footsteps returned. As the man approached, Cailix remained still, forcing her breath into the long, deep breaths of someone fast asleep. She heard the man step right near her feet, then kneel down.

Without warning, she sprang up and had her opponent gasping in a stranglehold before she realized who it was.

"Colin?" she whispered, relaxing her grip. A surge of dizziness and nausea washed over her, the effort of simply rolling to her knees simply too much to handle. She dropped back to the stone floor, succumbing to a terrible coughing spasm.

Colin knelt over her and helped her sit up.

"How did you escape?" she asked.

"It seems you aren't the only one who makes a habit of underestimating me," he replied. "They kicked me a few times. When I pretended to be unconscious they left me alone. They didn't even check the cuff on my wrist. It was loose."

"You should go," Cailix wheezed.
So tired
.
Just want to sleep, maybe not bother to wake up again.

"Not without you," he said.

"Leave me," she urged with as much energy as she could manage. "I'm dying. Just get out of here and let me die."

Ignoring her comments, Colin unfastened the cuff on his shirt and began rolling it up.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"When they thought I was unconscious, I overheard those two guys talking," he said. "One warned the other not to get too close to you. He said you could use fresh blood to regain some of your strength. It staves off whatever disease you have."

"No, Colin, you can't," Cailix pleaded. She longed for death at this point. She just wanted to close her eyes and give up.

"I'm not leaving you here to die." He pulled a small iron nail from his pocket. "You'll spend your entire afterlife complaining that Anderis had beaten you."

He was right about that. Every part of her wanted to die, but she also needed to win. She needed to kill Anderis. Colin grasped her as she bobbled back and forth, about to fall back onto the floor. He had a surprisingly strong grip.

Colin then clenched his fist, raising his veins to the surface. He stuck the nail in his arm and pulled it to the side, letting loose a steady trail of blood.

"No, Colin, don't…" she said, trying to fight free of his grip.

"I'm not letting you die here," he said. He pulled her closer, propping her up and leaning her head against his chest, like a mother about to feed her baby.

"No, you can't…stop," Cailix begged. "I'll be a…you can't…please don't!"

But as the open wound on his arm grew close enough so she could smell the blood, resistance became impossible. She was so cold, so hungry, and the blood was so warm, and smelled so good. Her mind lost in a haze, she moved on instinct alone.

She gripped his arm and held it to her lips, drawing the wound to her mouth. She sucked at his arm, the taste of the blood like licking a wet anvil.
It's so hot!
 

Colin gasped, clenching his teeth as she pulled more of his life blood out through the wound. She drank like a woman who had just crawled out of the desert and found water. The blood warmed her from the inside out. Within seconds she could again feel her fingertips. Her toes thawed, and she wiggled them for the first time in hours.

"Stop!" he said with a grunt, struggling to free his arm. "I need some of that blood too."

She couldn't stop, didn't want to stop. Strength poured through her veins, recharging her with energy. The fog the corruption had cast over her mind lifted. Colin finally managed to pry himself loose, pushing her away. He tore some of his shirt and fashioned a tourniquet around the wound.

Cailix got to her knees, rubbing the blood off her face and lapping up what was left like a starving dog. She might even have made growling noises, but she couldn't be sure. It didn't matter. She wasn't just alive, she was
strong
. She was strong enough to fight, strong enough to kill.

As her strength returned, so too did her clarity of thought. The reality of what she had done set in. The shame and embarrassment only magnified as she looked across at Colin.

"Please don't look at me," she said, turning away. "You must think I'm some kind of monster."

"After what I've seen?" Colin scoffed. "If I didn't think you were a monster then, I certainly don't now."

"But I…" she stammered. "I just drank…" She couldn't even bring herself to say it.

"You just need to get out of here," Colin said. "Come on, follow me."

He led her down the damp hallway, over a watery crack in the floor, and stopped at an iron staircase built into the foundation of the building.
 

"This is as far as I've explored," Colin whispered. "I don't know who or what is up there."

"I'll go first, then." Cailix pressed past him onto the stairs. She tiptoed up to a landing and then to another, finally circling around to a dead end where the stairs terminated at a smooth, unbroken section of wall.

"What the—Who builds stairs up to a wall?" Colin asked.

"It's the back side of a hidden door, silly," Cailix said. She ran her fingers along the wall until she found the seams she knew would be there. It only took a few more seconds to find another piece of stone that didn't match—a lever.

"Wait here," she said.

"You're in no condition to—"
 

She shushed him, then pulled the lever.

The wall slid back and swung out, revealing a warm, cozy-looking room, with a large kettle simmering a stew in a fireplace opposite the hidden door. As she entered the room, two men stood up from a table and reached for their weapons.

They were Anderis's henchmen. Cailix could barely contain her smile.

"Don't get up on my account," she said. She called to the blood in the men and took control of it with a mere thought. Their blood sped up, warmed, and obeyed her every command. They howled in pain and dropped back into their seats.

"Cailix—" Colin called from the hidden stair.

"Stay back!" she warned. "I can't let you see this."

"I'm not letting you—"

"You have no say in the matter, and if you argue I'll turn your blood into pudding," she snapped. It felt good to be strong again, to be powerful, and most importantly, to wield her powers.

Cailix returned her attention to the two men occupying chairs near the pot of stew, paralyzed and wracked with pain.
 

"You." Cailix pointed to the one on the left, the grabby one who had slapped her backside on the ship. "You are a disgusting, lecherous old pig, and you get to die slowly and painfully."

She moved to the kettle and kicked it over, soaking the floor in lukewarm stew. She dragged the kettle into the middle of the room and gave it a few good raps with the ladle.
 

"Do you know what I'm going to do with this?" she asked the other henchman. His eyes widened and sweat beaded on his forehead. He managed to wiggle his pinky fingers, but otherwise remained silent and motionless. "I'm going to put you in it."

With little more than the furrow of her brow, the man exploded, his clothes shredding apart from the force of every droplet of his blood bursting out of his veins. Cracked and powdered bone settled to the ground with a pile of useless flesh as the cloud of blood hovered above. She summoned the cloud, and it flew across the room to settle in a pool in the bottom of the kettle.

Relishing the wide-eyed look of terror on the old lech's face, she took a few steps closer to him. "He was lucky," she said. "You, on the other hand, will not enjoy my mercy."

She raised the temperature of the man's blood by a single degree. Sweat poured from his head as his body trembled. She spun and returned to the kettle, all the while slowly raising her victim's temperature. A surprisingly easy trick, her power allowed her to speed up and vibrate every molecule in the man's blood.

Cailix knelt in front of the kettle and tried to upend it, but it proved too heavy. So she compromised. With her mouth open, she summoned the blood up out of the kettle and let it flow in a gentle stream into her throat. Swallow after swallow, she consumed the fresh blood, drunk with the power it bestowed upon her, relishing in her freedom from the corruption, however temporary that might be.

By the time she finished drinking the first henchman's blood, the other was nearly dead, his flesh a bright red, his body covered in sweat.
 

"I suppose I can let you die now," Cailix said. As she crushed her fist, the man was crushed as well. His bones snapped, and his flesh stretched and tore. With a blink, she liquified him. This time she didn't even bother with the kettle, but simply streamed his blood into her mouth.

She returned to Colin on the stairwell. She met his eyes as he stared at her. The eyes gazing back at her were no longer the same as when they had been back on Alsdowne, no longer the eyes of a simple farmer. Did he pity her? Did he hate her?

Now he knows what kind of a monster I truly am
.

"All right," she said. "Let's go find Anderis."

Chapter Twenty-Six

"Any sign of the arbiters?" Autar asked, standing near the edge of the balcony that overlooked the entire western side of the sinking island of Findanar. The cold, the snow, the fog…he didn't know how these people tolerated such conditions.

In a strange, twisted way he longed for the extreme temperatures of his former home in the banished realms.
 

I suppose if I could learn to tolerate hell itself, these people could have learned to cope with cold winters
, he thought.

"My spies haven't reported any sightings yet," Anderis replied, his voice echoing throughout the chamber behind him.

"All of our work hinges on the presence of the arbiters. Without them, all has been for nothing," Autar reminded his companion, a companion whose presence he suffered only because the man was crucial to his plan.
 

Working with a blood mage
, he thought. After spending millennia fighting the likes of them, he now stood as partners with one.
How has my life come to this?

"I don't know what's taking them so long," Anderis said, moving next to him on the balcony. He leaned against the trellis that once held beautiful, flowering vines and now held nothing but rot and decay. "If they were in the city, my spies would have seen them."