The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (31 page)

"Good point," Urus signed. She was an endless source of enlightening bits of knowledge and philosophy. He found her outlook on life, her optimism and simple joy, infectious. The future seemed brighter just being near her.

"How much longer do you think we have to wait?" he signed. "You're sure I didn't etch the sigil wrong?"

Lu shook her head, stopping to stroke Mist's chin before she signed, "Stop asking me if you etched it wrong. I think it's working. If this sigilord Autar knows the arbiters are looking for him, he might be lying low and avoiding his power so he doesn't draw their attention."

They sat in companionable silence in the secret library for a while. The radixes were off exploring the city, searching for more food stores and other sigilcraft artifacts that might be useful.

"How did you come to live in Almoryll?" Urus asked. "I know you were born here in Vultara, and then the Fulcrum War happened. How did you survive that and escape?"

"That's a question with a long answer!"

Urus shrugged. "We seem to have plenty of time."

"By the time I was born, the war had already been raging for a few hundred years," Lu said, switching to speech. "You have to understand this wasn't like a conventional war, with swords and horses and sieges. The Fulcrum War was all about terrible, city-destroying battles, and then years, maybe decades, before the next big battle. In the years between these battles, some of which even toppled mountains or dried up lakes, both sides would send assassins to murder leaders and other key people." Lu paused, her eyes distant as she revisited ancient memories. "We all did terrible things. The blood mages sought out and killed our most powerful sigilords, the teachers and leaders, while we targeted the strongest blood mages, especially the ones with a talent for mind control."

"Mind control?" Urus asked.

"Some blood mages could implant orders in the minds of those without magic. They used non-magical assassins to try and catch us off guard, and some would charge into battle behind an entire battalion of enslaved soldiers. They thought this tactic would be hard to counter because we wouldn't hurt the innocent soldiers."

"What happened to the enslaved soldiers?" asked Urus.

"I don't really want to talk about the war," Lu signed.
 

So much pain
, Urus thought. He knew the damage even a small exposure to war did to people and couldn't fathom what surviving thousands of years of war might do. He resisted the urge to ask how she could live for so many years and still look so young, but he decided to save that question for another time.

"So how did you escape and end up in Almoryll with the arbiters?" he asked instead.

"Near the end of the war, there were no longer enough of us left on either side for the big battles," Lu explained, shifting in her seat to sit crosslegged. Mist immediately took advantage of the newly available lap and jumped up into it. "We were killing each other one by one, but the blood mages had the advantage. There were so few of us left, we focused on survival rather than winning a war.

"Our spies told us about the arbiters' plan to seal off the world with the vertices. This would prevent us from escaping and leave us stranded for the blood mages to feed on us whenever they wanted. The arbiters were tired of waiting for the blood mages to finish us off slowly, so this plan to seal off the world wasn't to keep anyone safe. It was to pen us in and let us all kill each other.

"My former teacher, Geluro, hatched a plan. We waited for an arbiter to come here from Almoryll for an inspection. We stole his portal seal—a little metal rod with a sigil on it that we can use to recall anyone touching it back to Almoryll—and four of us fled the war. At the time I think only ten sigilords remained alive."

"So you've been in Almoryll ever since?" Urus asked, enthralled by the story.

"No," she replied. "During the war it was too dangerous to be in Almoryll. To make it harder for the blood mages to find us, we each picked a random portal in Almoryll and went through. That's where I met the people who gave me my current name, Luse Lingxiu. They're the ones I told you about who write in symbols that look like sigils instead of letters and words. An author on their world is the one who wrote the book we used as the key for this library. I thought that a world without magic might have less war, but the people there were always in some conflict or other. After a very long time, I finally went back to Almoryll so I could keep an eye on the arbiters and be there in case one day another sigilord showed up."

"It wasn't really that long ago that I thought magic was just something I read about in storybooks," Urus signed. "I thought my life would be spent translating for trade deals, and I had never been further than the mountain range that overlooked Kest."

"The multiverse is a big place," Lu signed, again with her infectious smile. "I once heard a story of a sigilord who had traveled through all the portals in the spires of Almoryll. Can you imagine? More than two hundred worlds! And those are just the ones with portals. There are countless others out there."

"It makes me feel so small and insignificant."

"Small, yes. Insignificant? I don't think so."

Urus got up, stretched, and paced idly around the room.
 

"Luse," he said. "Something's been bothering me about what we're doing."

"Relax," she said. "The sigil you etched is fine."

"That's not it," he replied. "The only way anyone can track a sigilord is when he uses his power, right? That's why the arbiters in Almoryll were so upset when we saw them talking to Vogon. That's how we can use the net sigil to find him."

"Yes, that's right."

"So why did he use his power in the first place?" Urus asked. "If he's been around for as many thousands of years as you have, surely he would have used his power before then. Why now? And why make such a show of it that the arbiters would take notice? Surely he would know they would be watching."

"I don't know," Luse signed. "I just…I can't believe I didn't think to ask that before."

"I know why I would do something like that," Urus said. "If I knew the arbiters could find me if I used my powers, the only reason I would use them would be because I wanted them to come to me."

"Why would Autar want to draw the attention of the council?" asked Lu.

"I hope we get to find out." Urus paced some more, until wandering past the open codex of sigils. He stopped to see if he could read any of the pages.
 

Lu came to stand on the other side of the book and signed, "Careful with the pages. They're older than this city."

There were so many sigils, capable of so many amazing things.
 

Still can't conjure a turkey
, he thought. The wizards in the stories that had sent him off to sleep for so many nights always seemed to be able to conjure the most useful things at just the right moments—whether that be dragons, balls of fire, or freshly roasted turkeys.

He turned the page and saw a sigil that looked like the crests of two ocean waves, rolling across the top of a straight line. He raised his brows at Lu.

"We call that one the push sigil," Lu said. "In the battles against the non-magic soldiers controlled by the blood mages, it was a staple. It creates a ribbon of space-time and sends it rolling toward your target, like when you crack a whip or shake a blanket."

"What happens to the target?" Urus asked.

"The ribbon sends them flying backwards. It's like getting hit by a moving wall. You just need to be careful because it doesn't pick and choose targets; it just pushes everythingthing in the direction you pick. You need to be especially careful, because with the strength of your blue sigils, there's no telling how far that ribbon will push."

"What about healing?" Urus asked. "Are there sigils for that?"

Lu shrugged. "Just the ones you saw etched on the walls in the infirmary. They've saved lives, but they aren't perfect, as I'm sure the pain in your knee proves."

Urus frowned. He hoped no one other than Luse had noticed his limping, or the occasional flinch when he twisted his ribs the wrong way.

"After I nearly died fighting Draegon, Cailix healed me," he said. "She used her blood magic with my blood, and all my bones mended as though they had never been hurt. I would have died without her power."

"Impressive power," signed Lu. "Sigilord blood lets blood mages do terrible or wondrous things. It is a super catalyst for their power. Sadly, we don't have any records of blood mages healing or helping sigilords."

Urus continued to study the book, trying to take his mind off the boredom. He hoped that the sigilord would somehow turn up in the same place where his Aegaz might be, or Goodwyn. Though he hadn't been gone long, he still missed his uncle and his friend.

He pored over the unending pages of sigils as the radixes returned from their foray into the city, carrying bundles and packs filled with goods and supplies. Some bore new weapons; others had boxes of artifacts. They dropped their loot on the floor and set about sorting and dividing it up amongst themselves.

"So," Lu began with a little wave to attract his attention. "Are you and Cailix courting?"

"Courting?" Urus asked, hoping she wouldn't see the color in his cheeks as they flushed. He had never really seen relationships with women as a possibility. In Kest, it was the girl who generally approached the boy about a courtship. Since Kestian girls valued the same traits in boys as most Kestians, Urus's lackluster behavior as a warrior had allowed him to avoid relationships with girls entirely. Goodwyn was always the one who attracted the attention of the girls.

Neither Lu nor Urus would get to comment on the question further. The hair on the back of his neck rose, and he suddenly felt nauseous and dizzy. A blue flash erupted in the center of the room and the net sigil reappeared, hovering a few feet above the floor. It spun slowly as the net bulged and warped the way a fishnet looked after snagging a flapping fish.

"You've found him!" Lu shouted and rushed over to the sigil. "The net sigil has sensed his power!"

At the sound of Lu's shouting, the radixes hurried into the room, where everyone gathered around the pulsating sigil, their faces cast in its blue glow.

"What do we do now?" Urus asked, feeling a sense of loss at having to speak out loud again in the presence of the radixes.

"That's the easy part," said Lu. "According to the codex, we just etch a travel sigil and connect it to the net. It will take us to the exact spot where the sigilcraft was used."

Part of him wanted to run and hide, to find a dark corner somewhere in the library and pretend that none of this was happening. For whatever reason, people were looking to him for direction and leadership, and he wanted none of it. But for Lu's sake, and to figure out what was really going on with this sigilord, he would have to pretend like he knew what he was doing.

"Everyone make sure you take whatever gear you need," Urus said. He was still not used to the bows and salutes that followed, but he was getting better at not letting anyone else see his discomfort. He had learned enough about leadership from Uncle Aegaz to know that you never let people see your indecision.

Once everyone indicated they were ready—the radixes had all found shirts and leather armor—Urus etched the travel sigil in the air. The feeling of the power surging from his fingertips now felt as familiar as the feel of a sword hilt in his hands. It was a familiar pain, one that should have given him strength and confidence. Now all he could think of was his multiple birth defects, and the dangerous instability of his cerulean power.

He dragged his finger from the edge of the travel sigil, drawing a glowing blue line that connected to the edge of the net sigil. At first nothing seemed to happen. Then, just as he began to doubt his sigilcraft, the room again flashed a brilliant blue.

He didn't close his eyes in time, and as a result was sure that he saw the backs of his own eyeballs as the group emerged in their new location. He leaned against a wall to keep from falling over. The wall had been smeared from top to bottom with blood.

They stood in a stone-walled chamber lit by torches placed in sconces. Wide, dark puddles covered the floor with what looked to be more blood. The air was cold and damp, and where the walls had not been splattered with blood, water ran down from a seam in the ceiling.

"Where are we?" Choein asked.

"It feels like we're underground," Lu said, rubbing her arms. "Somewhere cold."

"We didn't bring any heavy cloaks," Urus signed to Lu.

The radixes drew their weapons in response to some sound Urus could not hear. Lu opened her fans and settled into what the Kestians would call a dragon stance, with one fan raised defensively in front of her face, the other to her side, ready to strike. Urus unsheathed Hugo and reached out to touch the avatar knight sigil at the base of the blade just above the guard. Remembering the children's book image of the children being blown away by the power of a cerulean sigilord, he decided against summoning his own blue monstrosity.

The room erupted with flashes of green light as the radixes summoned their avatar knights, those manifestations of pure sigil power given form by the sigils etched into their weapons. Each had a unique body size and shape, modeled after the radix who summoned it, though none had any facial features or clothing—they were more like shadows made solid. Lu's green knight appeared and took up a defensive stance at the side of her mistress.
 

Urus marveled at the sight. Sixteen radixes stood at the ready, each standing next to a luminous sigilcraft warrior. Urus stood next to a sigilord with her own sigilcraft knight. Never in his life had he ever felt as though he belonged. He was forever the outsider, forever culled and shunned, reminded daily that he was a failure and would amount to nothing. This was as close to belonging with a group as he had ever come, and his mind seared the image of the people in that room into a memory he would forever treasure.