The Elder Blood Chronicles Book 2 Blood Honor and Dreams (4 page)

Moving closer Jala knelt down beside the
fallen man and surveyed his wounds. Resting a hand gently on his
chest she summoned a healing spell and watched Madren’s wounds
begin to recede.

His eyes flickered open and after a moment
focused on her. “Thank you,” he mumbled.

“Why didn’t you leave with Shade?” she asked
quietly.

“I couldn’t. I haven’t learned what I need to
know yet,” he mumbled and tried to sit up.

“What is so important for you to learn that
it’s worth this, Madren,” Jala asked, leaning back on her heels to
watch him. She didn’t think he was fully healed yet but he seemed
to be well enough to sit up.

“How to lift the curse on my land,” he
whispered.

“Goswin?” Jala asked, and then remembered he
had known his way to the Tolanteer because he was from Goswin.
“I’ll help you with that, Madren, I need the curse gone there,
too,” she offered, trying to reassure him.

With a gasp, Madren wrapped his arms around
her and buried his face in her chest. “Oh Jala, I knew you cared,”
he said, his voice heavily muffled by the fact that he was
burrowing his face between her breasts. Frantically, she pushed him
back, trying to dislodge him and glanced up quickly at a snarl
behind her. Marrow stood nearby, glowering and Finn was quickly
approaching with an expression of fury. She wasn’t exactly sure
which of them the snarl had come from.

“Valor, stop him while I get Madren off of
me,” she pleaded motioning at Finn.

“Mmm, no,” Valor replied with a smile and
stepped back to allow Finn to storm past and wrench Madren to his
feet.

“That is my wife, you little bastard, and you
will not touch her. If it were up to me Cassia’s thugs would still
be beating you to a bloody pulp.” He shook Madren roughly as he
spoke and then held him up to force him to meet his eyes. Madren
let out a whimper and Jala stood slowly, her eyes locked on Finn,
silently warning him that she was not happy. “I’m going to let you
go now and you are quickly going to get out of my sight. If I blink
and you are still here I’m going to make Cassia’s attentions seem
pleasant. Are we clear?”

“Clear, very clear,” Madren squeaked and Finn
dropped him with a look of disgust. His feet had no sooner touched
the ground then he was running.

“So horribly pathetic. Do you think he was
always that weak?” Valor asked, his voice thick with disgust.

“From what I hear, it’s the only reason he
survived the fall of Goswin,” Finn replied and glanced at Jala.

She bent slowly and brushed the grass from
the front of her gown. “He doesn’t mean anything by it Finn. He is
like a child with no manners. There was no need to threaten him
like that. He is terrified of you.”

“He should be terrified. I’d be happy to
teach him some manners more effectively than Shade did,” Finn
grumbled.

Meeting his eyes, she raised an eyebrow.
“Speaking of manners, care to explain why you forced a duel out of
Cassia?” she asked with no trace of anger, just simple curiosity.
Saving Madren was one thing, getting in a fight with Finn over him
was quite another. She would defend him if needed, but she wouldn’t
push the topic where Finn was concerned. It was far better to
simply turn the subject of conversation.

“My wife didn’t leave me much choice in that.
Had she listened and simply walked on by, it wouldn’t have been
necessary, but no, she had to help the pervert,” Finn replied with
a smirk.

“How does me helping Madren mean you have to
duel?” she asked incredulously.

“Because my reputation was close to ruined
before you interfered. If I would have simply sat back and done
nothing it would have been gone completely. The only choice I had
was to humiliate her and then win the duel that resulted. No one is
going to hire a duelist that won’t even defend his own wife,” Finn
explained patiently.

“What?” Jala asked her expression
dumbfounded.

“I depend on the people in that crowd for
work. Those are the sort of people that hire duelists. Jala, do you
expect to rebuild with no money? If I have no reputation then I’m
not working. If I’m not working we are poor,” Finn clarified.

“I thought we would just use magic to do it,”
she admitted meekly.

“Magic can be dispelled, Jala. It has to be
done with coins and true labor,” Finn explained and gave her
another smile. Glancing over his shoulder he watched Nigel approach
and nodded to the man with respect.

Nigel stopped a few feet away from them and
looked her over from head to toe and then nodded slowly at Finn. “I
agree to your terms, I will spread the word for you. I look forward
to this fight. It should prove very interesting,” he said and bowed
his head slightly to Jala and then Valor. “Good day, Milady,
Valor.” His voice held a thick accent that she didn’t recognize and
she remained silent, watching him leave, and then looked back to
Finn.

“What was that?” she asked motioning toward
Nigel.

“What?” Finn asked innocently and turned to
look in the direction she pointed. “Ahh, that was Nigel. He is a
decent friend of mine. A merchant here in Sanctuary actually, very
wealthy,” he explained.

“I think she meant, ‘what did he mean by I
accept your terms?’” Valor corrected with a smirk.

“Oh that, just a little matter of a bet we
made. He seems to think I’ll lose the duel,” Finn said with a shrug
as if in dismissal.

Valor raised an eyebrow and exchanged glances
with Jala. “Why would he think that, Finn? Nigel usually bets on
you and you are considered the best sword in the city,” Valor
prompted.

Rubbing his jaw, Finn pursed his lips and let
out a breath. “Remember when Nigel stopped me at the edge of the
crowd?” he asked. They both nodded and Finn nodded once. “Well, he
wanted to warn me to stay out of it. Apparently Cassia spent a good
deal of money to hire a new duelist,” he explained.

“Who did she hire?” Valor asked
cautiously.

“Kithkanon,” Finn replied with a smile.

“What?” Valor demanded, his voice rising to a
near yell. He stared at Finn in horror and began shaking his head
slightly. “Why would you do that? Why would you provoke that fight?
Have you gone fucking insane, Finn?”

“Who is Kithkanon?” Jala asked, cutting into
Valor’s tirade.

“Just like that, Val, I want you to throw a
fit just like that later tonight at the bar. Let everyone believe
you think I’m going to lose,” Finn said, happily pointing a finger
at Valor whose face was rapidly draining of color.

“I do think you are going to lose, Finn.
Kithkanon is a seven-hundred-year-old mercenary. They don’t live
that long because they can’t use a sword,” Valor cried and threw
his hands up still shaking his head.

“You are going to fight a
seven-hundred-year-old mercenary?” Jala gasped, staring at Finn in
disbelief.

Finn glanced between the two of them and
flashed a charming smile. “And we are going to bet my life savings
on the fight,” he said.

“What?” Jala and Valor both spoke at the same
time and froze to stare at Finn in disbelief.

“I will win. I always win. You both know
that. We are going to spend the next two days making everyone
believe I’m going to lose, though, and then we are going to bet
everything on the fight,” he explained. He watched them both,
smiling happily until the silence stretched uncomfortably. The
smile slowly faded and he frowned slightly. “It will work,” he
assured them.

“Do you know why we are going to see my
brother, Finn?” Valor asked finally in a voice filled with
resignation.

“Not a clue, Val. You said it was a
surprise,” Finn replied, unbothered by the change of topic.

“I reached majority last year but I never
collected the funds. I’m about to ask my brother for what I’m due
in the form of lumber, food, and supplies to repair Merro,” Valor
explained with a sigh.

“Well, I hope we have both learned a valuable
lesson about surprises. Had I known that, I probably wouldn’t have
chosen the path I did. Too late for regrets, though,” Finn said
dryly.

“I’m regretting this entire day. It’s not too
late,” Jala said weakly, her gaze fixed on Finn. If she had
listened to him and not interfered he wouldn’t be in the position
he now was. If he died during the duel there would be no one to
blame but herself. She watched him and felt a lump of dread settle
into her stomach.

Valor stared up at the passing clouds for a
moment and then gave a long weary sigh. Reaching across to Finn he
plucked the flask from his pocket and took a healthy swallow.
Returning his gaze at last at Finn, he raised a slender silver
eyebrow. “So she called you daddy?” he asked, sounding faintly
amused.

Finn shook his head slowly and reclaimed his
flask. “No, I lied about everything but her sleeping with me and
her father catching us. That’s the benefit to having a reputation
for telling the truth. When you do lie, everyone believes you.”

Gaelyn

Wind whipped through his clothes as Shade
moved to a lower ledge of the roof. As far as he could tell there
were no streets in the city that were safe. Absently, he brushed a
lock of hair from his face and cursed as a talon grazed his skin.
You have claws he reminded himself for what seemed like the
hundredth time. Though the Fionaveir had given him a week to get
used to the Blight form, he still wasn’t. He wasn’t sure if he ever
would be. Mastering the camouflage talent and remembering he had
talons seemed to be the most difficult part of it so far. It had
been the only way they had determined that he could locate Charm
inside this city without being killed. They had guessed that
Eldagar had fallen completely and from what he could see they had
guessed right. The city had a sweet rancid smell to it filled with
rot and old blood. Had he been in his normal form it would have
sickened him. The instincts of this form relished the smell
however, and it was mental revulsion he felt, not physical.

Reaching a hand into his pocket he gripped
the trinket the Fionaveir had given him to locate the missing
rogue. The stone pulsed in his hand and grew warmer as he turned
toward the southern part of the city. With caution bordering on
paranoia, he headed toward the south where the legendary fortress
loomed dark against the skyline. As far as safe houses went, the
Blights couldn’t have chosen a better one. Eldagar was infamous for
its walls and defenses.

His plan was a simple one: locate Charm,
break the Spell Hawk out of the storing gem in his pocket and get
out of this city without another glance back. It sounded simple at
any rate. He had thought, with the use of the trinket, finding
Charm would be easy. So far, he had been looking for two days and
it was proving quite the opposite of easy. If the Fionaveir were
testing him with this assignment, they had chosen a difficult
test.

Movement on the street below caught his eye
and he froze in place, watching two of the creatures infesting the
city pass by. From this distance they looked normal. He could have
seen them in Sanctuary and not given them a second glance. That was
perhaps the most frightening thing about the creatures. At least
with Kali’s other creations you knew what death looked like. A
Bendazzi could hardly be mistaken for a house cat. The Blights
however simply looked like everyone else, true wolves in sheep’s
clothing. The creatures were silent as they passed. Most of them
that he had seen so far had been. He was beginning to believe they
used mental communication with each other. It was that, or they
simply didn’t communicate, or it was pheromones perhaps. He had
heard of creatures using scent to communicate, though it didn’t
seem an effective way to him.

With a silent sigh of relief, he watched them
continue down the street without glancing back at him. Cautiously,
he began moving again. He felt a tug from the stone in his hand and
changed his direction accordingly. This had been his problem for
the past two days. Charm never seemed to rest. He always moved
before Shade could close in and it was turning into an endless game
of hide and seek. Unfortunately, from what the Fionaveir had told
him of Charm, the rogue definitely had the upper hand at
hiding.

He really only had two options that he could
see. Either abandon caution and move swiftly or try to anticipate
where Charm would move next and cut him off. Neither option was a
good one. The city was crawling with Blights. Abandoning caution
would likely get him killed, and anticipating Charm’s movements,
from what he had seen so far, would be like guessing where a rain
drop would fall. Muffling another curse, Shade scanned the horizon
and tried to make a guess. At worst, he would be following a
greater distance. At best, he would finally catch up with the
rogue. From the direction the stone pulled him, Charm was either
moving directly toward the fortress or into the noble district.
Shade nearly groaned at the thought of trying to locate a master of
stealth among the labyrinth of gardens in the noble district. The
thought of trying to find him in an impregnable fortress filled
with monsters was even less appealing, though. He idly tossed the
idea of shifting to a bird around in his mind but dismissed it
quickly. From what he had seen of the city, the Blights killed
animals as freely as they did humans. He had yet to even see a rat
in the city, which meant the scavenger work on the bodies in the
city below had been done by the Blights themselves.

Shifting his feet slightly, he turned his
gaze from the noble’s grand houses to the fortress and back again.
Had he been Charm, the fortress was the last place he would want to
be. Hell, for that matter, Eldagar was the last place he wanted to
be. He hadn’t realized there was a threat, let alone a threat of
this magnitude, before joining the Fionaveir. From what they had
told him of the Blights, it was the whole of Sanctuary in
danger.