Island Shifters: Book 03 - An Oath of the Children (35 page)

* * * * *

Kane’s hand shot out and grabbed Samara’s wrist, stopping the sword that hovered inches
from Izzy’s chest.

Every Ellvinian in the room unsheathed his sword.

Samara’s eyes blazed with fury.
“I will have her blood, Prince.
I demand it!”

“She is a child!” Kane retorted forcefully. “Chandal deserved to die for what he
tried to do
to her.”

Samara tried to yank her sword arm from his grasp, but he held it firm.
“I gave you the prisoners,” she spit at him. “They are being freed as we speak. You
will
give me the life of this child. It
will serve as a necessary reminder to the Massans of what will happen if they dare try to raise a hand to an Ellvinian
again.”

“Lady Samara—”

“All those lives for this one life, Prince!
It is not so much to ask!” she screamed,
trying to jab her
sword toward Izzy
once again. “Think on it. Otherwise, our deal is off. I can get those hostages back with
very
little effort!”

Kane felt hot breath on
the back of
his neck. “Let go of her.”

He turned. It was Emile.

Kane
glared at
the tall Ellvinian for a long moment before
finally
releasing
Samara’s wrist.
He moved toward the center of the room. “If you must do it, I cannot be witness.”

Samara eyed him. “Very well, go
hide in a corner
if you must, but justice will be served here today.”

Kane made his way to the door
grateful that all eyes were on Samara and what she was about to do.
He
took full advantage of the
inattention of the Battlearms
and
summoned
his magic
to
create a replica right before he slipped outside.

While Kane made his way toward the kitchens, the
replica turned back to the scene unfolding in the ballroom
and
he
watched through its eyes.

Samara stood over Izzy
ready to
mete out the death she deemed just, but Emile
put his hand on her arm and whispered in her ear. Whatever he said made her angry. With a resigned shake of his head, Emile brushed by the replica as he also left the ballroom.

Samara looked around at all of the Massans. “Let it be known that the death of a child does not please me, but
I cannot allow her murderous act to go unpunished.”
The Eyereader
turned to Izzy, brought her arm back and
thrust the sword directly into her chest.

When the sword did not bite into flesh as she had anticipated, the Ellvinian woman spun completely around, lost her balance and fell
back
into the crowd
with a shriek.
The moment her
body made contact with the illusion of the seated Massans, it winked out of existence.

Samara looked around wildly at the empty room.
“Somebody bring me that boy’s head!
Now!”

C
HAPTER
28

D
ARK
L
EGACY

Kellan frantically waved the prisoners toward the outer gates. “Hurry!
Over here!”

As soon as their frightened eyes recognized him, they ran with every bit of energy they could muster. Women hiked up skirts and men scooped up children. Older adults wobbled as fast as they could toward safety.

The Ellvinians escorting them looked on in confusion. With orders to deliver the prisoners to the gates, they seemed unsure about the sudden
frenzied
behavior of the Massans.

Jala, Reilly, and Izzy and some of the servants from the mayor’s estate ran out to help those struggling to make it. Poor Digby leaned against the wall, breathing heavy. Unlike Reilly,
the
subterranean watershifter could not be out of the water for long
periods of time. Kellan tried to talk him into leaving, but
he
refused.

“Hurry!” Kellan shouted
again, not sure how long Kane’s
ploy
would keep the Ellvinians in the ballroom occupied.

He watched one of the fighters race back through the streets toward the mayor’s estate, no doubt to report the odd behavior he witnessed. It did not matter. The Ellvinians would come sooner or later. Kellan’s only real hope was to get as many
innocents
as possible through the gates
before that happened.

When the first Massan family
ducked under the curtain wall,
Kellan
sighed in relief.
One by one, the people of Northfort filed out of the city and hurried toward the relative safety of the Grayan Forest beyond.

But, no matter how fast they moved, the line just seemed to continue to grow longer.
There had to be at least three
hundred
people
or more. Quite a bit more than Kellan anticipated. They were never going to make it.

Come on!
He urged silently while keeping an eye out for Kane. Then, he thought of a better way to see if his brother had made it out.
“Keep them moving!” he screamed to Gregor and Haiden and sprinted to the curved stairs cut into the outer wall and led
to a
small gatehouse at the top. From there, he would be able to see back along the main thoroughfare toward the wharf.
Taking
the steps two at a time,
he raced up as fast as he could with Maks following closely behind. At the top, he pushed through the gatehouse door, crossed the narrow walkway, and leaned out over the parapet.

Kellan
felt like a punch had
just
been delivered to his stomach
and it left him
winded. Dark-haired Elves flowed through the winding streets of the city toward the gates. Light and lithe, they
were
coming
on fast.

* * * * *

Beck pressed his lips to Kiernan’s forehead. “I’m fine.”

She leaned back to look at him. “Fine? By all rights, you should be dead right now.
I still can’t believe I have you back.”

“Well, I am not dead and we have some friends that need our help.”

She snuggled back into his chest. “Fine, but promise me something.”

He stroked the back of her long hair. “Anything.”

“No more of these goodwill ventures for a while. I would like to stay at home where I know my family is safe.”

He closed his eyes tight against the pure
elation
of having his wife back in his arms.
“You know
how
powerless
I am
to refuse any of your requests, Kiernan Atlan,”
he told her huskily.

“Good,” she murmured contentedly.

A polite cough at the cave entrance drew Beck’s attention. It was one of the Ellvinian fighters that helped carry him to safety. While he was healing, he heard the Elf offer some measure of comfort to Kiernan.

Beck gently put Kiernan aside and
gestured
the Ellvinian
inside. “You have my eternal gratitude, sir,
that, unlike me, you are able to resist the requests of my wife.”

The Ellvinian’s face colored. “She was not in her right mind, Master…?”

“Beck Atlan. Please call me Beck
and this is
Kiernan.”

The dark Elf nodded. “I am Alric and the other fighter is Yurek.”

“Alric, do you know why your Premier would want to harm us when we have come to help the Ellvinians?”

He was silent for a moment and then said, “I think I do. Why don’t you sit and I will tell you what I know.”

Beck and Kiernan sat cross-legged on the cave floor while Alric perched on a large piece of volcanic rock. “What do you know of my people?”

Beck shrugged.
“From what I gathered at the feast
by
talking to several guests there,
your ambassador, Chandal, lied to us. The
wormwood plants the Ellvinians so desperately need are not for medicinal purposes at all. They are for sustenance.”

Kiernan looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“It is true,” Alric confirmed. “We must have the blood nectar in the plants to survive. We mix the nectar and other ingredients and prepare a draught that must be ingested or we will
become
very ill and eventually die.”

“I did not realize the plants were so critical to your survival,”
Kiernan commented.

“Aye,
they
are.
In the past ten years or so,
our own natural resource of
wormwood
was infested with a Titsu bug that destroyed almost all of our crops. As a result, the draught has become more difficult to obtain for every Ellvinian on the island. The Premier and the Seconds created eligibility lists
to ration out the increasingly meager
provisions, but
it soon became apparent that only those who could buy their way onto the
lists
would receive the draught. The poor started dying off in staggering numbers.”

“That is terrible,” Kiernan
said softly in shock.

“Aye,
it has been a very difficult time for Ellvinians.”

“But, we were bringing a new supply of wormwood plants and shoots here to the island. What would make the Premier act in such a way to people who
are
basically saving the lives of his people?”

Alric looked down. “Centuries ago, before the Ellvinians found a way to survive on the wormwood plants, we…they drank human blood.”

“Human blood?”

The Elf looked back up and met
their
eyes squarely. “More specifically, the blood of magic users. It is an intoxicating and life-sustaining elixir to the Ellvinian.” His eyelids reduced to slits. “I can smell your magic where you sit and can only imagine what it would be like to drink it.”

Beck moved his body closer to Kiernan.
The implication was hard to dismiss. “So, in order to drink the blood of a human, you would have to kill them in the process?”
Beck
thought of the watershifters the Premier admitted to killing.

The dark Elf shook his head
vigorously. “No, not
necessarily. Humans make more blood every day. You can keep a person alive for a long time if…”

“If what?”

“If you do not become too greedy.”

Kiernan stood up. “This is very hard to believe. Is the Premier after our blood?”

“Based on rumors I have heard,
I am assuming those are his plans, but he does not share that kind of intelligence
with the fighters.” He hesitated again. “But,
we
hear things. We talk.”

“What more can you tell me?”

Alric
stood and began to pace the small confines of the cave.
“The process for extracting magical blood has not been in practice for many, many years. It is said that our ancestors had…well, they
had fangs for this purpose.”

“Fangs?”

“Aye, fangs that allowed Ellvinians to not only drink the blood, but
to
siphon
the magic. Just killing a magic user and drinking their blood
is not sufficient.
You have to have a way to draw out
the magic.”

“And, now
Ellvinians
no longer have these fangs?”

“No, as magic users became extinct and the wormwood solution
became
available, this physical trait was bred out of the Ellvinians.”

“Then, how does the Premier
propose to extract the magic from our blood?”

“He will use the Vypir.” Alric held his hand up to
indicate that he already
knew
what
Beck’s obvious next question
would be. “The Vypir is a
by-product of the experiments of the Mages of old
and possesses the requisite fangs. When the
capability
began to breed out of Ellvinians, the Mages turned to
the
dark arts to try and recreate
it. That is how the Vypir came to be.”