The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (11 page)

"I could only read Vogon's lips though," he said, "not the other council members'. I couldn't see their faces, so I didn't know what they were saying."

Lu seemed lost in thought, her eyes wandering, fingers twirling a lock of her hair as she receded deeper and deeper into thought.

"Lu," Urus said, tapping her shoulder. Mist looked up, gave his finger a little lick, then returned to her nap.

"What? Oh, yes. The sigilord, Autar Kelus, on Emys. If they find him, they will execute him on the spot and they will kill anyone who gets in their way. They won't even give him a mockery of a trial like you had."

"We have to save him!" Urus shouted.

"Quiet," Lu said, holding up a hand. "This chamber may be warded against magical eavesdropping, but nothing will keep that deep voice of yours from carrying through the stone."

Urus lowered his voice. "Another question. Why do the arbiters keep radix slaves with the collars? And if the arbiters really did murder the sigilords, why are you here, living with them?"

"That's two questions," Lu replied with a laugh. Urus had never met anyone who smiled or laughed as much as she did, especially considering how much reason she had to despair or be bitter. "It's a bit ironic, that for all their worry about the dangers of sigils, the arbiters enforce their balance using artifacts powered by sigilcraft. That means they need radixes to activate the portals and just about everything else around here. You've seen the collars can inflict pain, but they can also control you with it, like a puppet."

Her smile vanished as she continued. "I live among my enemy so I always know what they're doing, hoping that one day they will get what they deserve for what they did to us, or that I might find another sigilord."

"There are no others here?" Urus asked.

Lu shook her head, fighting back tears again. "Until you showed up I thought I was the last one."

"When they were sentencing me, they said something strange." Urus still didn't know how much he could reveal, so he made sure to phrase his next sentence carefully. "Why would they think one color sigilord would be more dangerous than others? Isn't all sigilcraft one color?"

Lu nodded. "That's not strange at all. The name I use, Luse Lingxiu, actually means 'Green Leader' in a language from another world. They gave it to me when they saw me use a sigil to save one of their villages from a band of brigands. You should see these people, little bull. They write using symbols that look like sigils, similar to your hand signs but on paper. It's so beautiful, as though they paint with words."

"But why would he mention other colors?" Urus asked, still not sure how much to reveal.

Lu blinked, taken aback. Urus had seen his teachers react the same way to a particularly foolish question asked by a student. "You ask some of the funniest questions. The effects of sigilcraft are green, of course. On extremely rare occasions, a yellow sigilord was born. I doubt any of the council members have ever encountered a yellow sigilord, though. I think the last yellow was born maybe two thousand years ago. That was a terrible time, like so many others. The day after the baby was born, the arbiters and blood mages showed up and slaughtered everyone, sigilord or not, for miles around. Before that the only yellow sigilords I know of are just words in a history text."

Urus smiled a little.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing, it's just that you talk more than anyone I've met," he replied.

"You should try talking more," she countered with a soft jab to his shoulder. "If a bull could talk I'm sure it would sound like you, and I like the way you talk. It's different."

"You like my speech problem?" Urus asked.

"It's only a problem if you make it one," she grinned.
 

"So nobody's ever seen a blue sigilord?" Urus asked.

"Blue?" she laughed heartily. "Of course not, there's no such—" Lu started, but stopped, mouth agape, as Urus stretched his fingers out and let the power flow through him. The release felt euphoric after spending the last few days terrified of even thinking about sigils. The heat ran from his fingertips to his shoulders, carrying with it the contrast of soothing warmth and sharp pain. This time he welcomed both and let the power continue to flow, the tendrils of blue smoke drifting up to the ceiling and swirling there like little storm clouds.

"No, no, that's not… it can't be… there's no way that…" Lu stammered, sliding away from Urus, a terrified look on her face. Mist scampered back into a shadowy corner.

"What's wrong?" Urus asked, withdrawing the power, immediately longing for its return.

"A blue sigilord? That's just… I never…" Lu continued to back away from Urus until she bumped into the far wall of the small chamber. "Never mind that."

"Lu, please tell me what's going on; you're scaring me," Urus said, dismissing the blue power, feeling sad at its absence.

Lu regained her composure and leaned forward, staring deep into Urus's eyes.

"I've given you the basic history lesson. In their pursuit of the false ideal they call balance, the arbiters and the council committed genocide. They hunted us into near extinction, and when they weren't doing the killing themselves, they either watched the blood mages do it or outright helped them."

"Why would the blood mages work with the council?"

"They shared a common goal and they didn't interfere in each other's plans. The sigilords and the blood mages managed to start the Fulcrum War all on their own, without any help from the arbiters. The council and their army considered the sigilords a greater threat to the balance than the blood mages. They don't claim to be neutral, only to fight to preserve balance. It's a fine distinction, and a painful one if you're on the wrong side of their views."

Urus could think of nothing to say, so he waited for Lu to continue.

"It took over a hundred years to do it, but in the aftermath of the Fulcrum War and the efforts of the council and their arbiters, only a handful of the sigilords remained. When we left Emys, the elders sealed it behind the vertices to keep the blood mages from escaping and consuming the people of other worlds like livestock."

"And these arbiters knew what they were doing? They knew the council was ordering the extinction of an entire race?"

Murin was an arbiter.
How much did he know about this?
Urus wondered.
Was Murin involved in the mass killing of sigilords? Was that the pain he bore that he refused to discuss?

Lu nodded. "Without a doubt. They were the swords who enforced the council's will, the ones on the front lines often doing much of the killing themselves, though they justified what they were doing as serving the balance. Maybe it helped them sleep at night not to think of it as genocide, but I doubt it."

Lu started to speak again but glared up at the ceiling.

"What is it?" Urus asked.

"I etched these sigils to hide my sigilcraft," she said, looking up. "But I never expected anyone else to come down here, let alone someone with blue sigils. I don't think my wards blocked it."

"So what does that mean?"

Luse gave Urus a dark look. "They've found our hiding spot."
 

Chapter Seven

Cailix stood before the small headstone protruding from the top of the hill overlooking the Jepps family farm. A simple engraving was etched into its rough surface: "Orla. Wife. Mother."

Long, wide scars of loose soil ripped through the normally smooth, green turf of the hillside, torn apart when she had fueled her magic with Urus's blood. Like the previous time she had used his blood, upheaval and devastation had been left in its wake. Last time had she had nearly blown the tops off of half the city of Waldron, conjuring wind with but a drop of her friend's blood.

A tear dripped from her face onto the headstone and she sniffed, irritated that her whole face seemed to be leaking.

"I'm sorry, Momma," Cailix said to the grave. "This was all my fault."

Cailix knelt and placed a large burlap sack next to the headstone. It held everything that remained of the items she had stolen: knives, forks, sconces, oil, even some cheese. She hadn't trusted Miss Orla, even though the woman had taken her in and accepted her as part of the family. No matter how much Orla had loved her, Cailix had still expected things to go wrong; that things would change for the worse and she would need to run again and fight to survive.
 

"If I had killed Anderis that first time I had the chance six months ago," Cailix said as she wiped her nose on her sleeve, "then you would still be alive, Waldron might not have been attacked, and Urus's home might still exist. He never would have come here. It's all my fault. None of this would have happened if I hadn't let him live. I was selfish and I hesitated."

The memory of that night was as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. She could still see Anderis's sleeping face in the bed as she chose to leave her knife as a warning rather than kill him while he slept.

Cailix stood up, smoothed her skirt, and wiped the last of the tears from her face.
 

"I will never make that mistake again," she said. "I will make things right, Momma."

She climbed down the hill and crossed the farm without stopping. In the farmhouse she immediately made for her bag, starting to pack for the trip. Huddled around the wood stove in the center of the living room, Woss and his two children watched her with sad eyes. They had just lost a mother and wife, and now Cailix was preparing to leave, despite her injuries.
 

"It's only been two weeks," Woss said, standing up. He was a tall man with a farmer's build, but that day he seemed shorter, diminished somehow. The gray had won the war in his beard, and new bags had appeared below his wet blue eyes. "You're not fit enough for travel."

"I have to go," Cailix said, stuffing the last piece of clothing into her bag. "It's not safe here."

"But this is your home; your family is here," Drayna said in despair, raking her fingers through her long blonde locks. "You'll be safe with us."

"No I won't, Drayna, and you won't be safe with me," Cailix said. "I have to do what needs to be done to survive. All my life I've done whatever it takes, no matter the cost. I stole food from you, even though Miss Orla freely offered it any time I was hungry. I was preparing for the day she got sick of me and sent me away."

Sooner or later, they all got sick of her. Three foster families had grown tired of her before she had ended up with the monks in Naredis, and they had all died, leaving her with Anderis, the man who would become her nemesis.

"She knew," Woss said, the expression on his face warm and soft. "She hoped that some day you would trust us."

Orla knew all along?
Cailix felt her heart twist.
 

"This time I'm doing what needs to be done so that you all survive," she told the family. "If I stay here, you are all in danger. Anderis will come back, and he'll kill everyone."

"Where will you go?"

Her thoughts returned to the day she had arrived on the island. It had been more of an accident than an arrival. She had escaped from the blood mage naval ships and used the last of her power to swim as far away as she could. Washing up on the shore of the Aldsdowne lighthouse had been pure chance. It felt like a lifetime ago. She remembered the stink of the gloomfish as she sat in Huster's boat the day he rowed her to the island from the lighthouse.

"Huster knows most of the ship captains moored in the harbor," she said. "I don't know what story he's made up to convince one of them to let me stow away, but I'll take what I can get."

"But where are you bound once you catch a ship?" Woss asked.

Cailix shook her head. "I can't tell you that. If you know where I am, then Anderis can use that against me…against you all. If you are of any use to him, he'll use you to keep me from killing him."

"Orla wouldn't want it to end that way. She wouldn't want you to hate, to want revenge."

"I know, and maybe when this is over and Anderis is dead, I can come back and try to live like Momma would've wanted. But for now I need to leave, and none of you will be truly safe until Anderis is dead. I can't fight him here."

She packed in silence for a few more minutes. Then Woss helped her fill another bag with salted meats, breads, and even a few sweet candies left from the last batch Orla had made before her death. She rubbed the now-empty glass that hung from her neck on the thin cord next to the bloodstone. Those few tiny drops of Urus's blood that she had taken that day on the beach had saved her life, but at what cost? She'd used it to heal the worst of her wounds, the ones that would have killed her had she left them untended, but the image of the earth surging outward in a wave had been seared into her memory. She still hurt everywhere. Her ribs ached, and bruises of every shape and size covered her body—but at least she was alive.

She sighed and ducked out the door, slinging her bags over her shoulder. The sight of cracks in the lintel and the foundation in the family's home pained her, cracks she had caused with Urus's blood. The charred remains of the barn still smoldered—her fault. The idea of a painful goodbye was too much for her to bear, so she figured the best thing was just to go quickly and quietly.