Leoht (BloodRunes: Book 3) (2 page)

“Examination of the situation with Karl also
led us to disturbing information of someone killing and then posing
as members of the Order to distribute commands. We believe now that
this was Nathair. This is why we have shut down the lower ranks of
the Order until further notice, and why we can no longer afford to
mask our identities from one another.” Telvani cut in once again.
“We can’t risk having him contaminate our plans. All of the members
must be neutralized or tested for inclusion into our inner circle
and all those must know the others by face.”

“I’m still confused,” said Lady Margarette.
“If we know that it is Nathair who we need, why are you even
bothering to look for the heir?”

Ranis smiled. “When it became evident that
Nathair was the one through which the power of the Bloodstone would
be available, that left us with the need to reinterpret the meaning
of the prophecy. Think back to the wording. If it is actually
describing two different people - which we have found that it must
be as both the heir and Nathair were found to fulfill the
requirements of the chosen one - than we are presented with a
problem. Once we took this approach to deciphering it, we realized
that it meant that instead of there being one person capable of
either using or destroying the stone that we could sway to our
cause, it indicates that there is one person who would use it,” she
paused so that her words would sink in, “and another who could
destroy it.”

After the murmuring died down, Lord Telvani
said, “So now we find our attention divided and our forces
diminished. Hence, this meeting and the need to take a vote. Do we
divert all our efforts towards finding the girl and extinguishing
the threat of her destroying the Bloodstone, which would leave
Nathair time to gather strength and be harder to control? Or, do we
concentrate all our efforts on bringing Nathair under our thumb,
leaving open the possibility that the mystery girl will swoop in
and destroy this immense source of power we’ve been seeking for
hundreds of years.”

Ranis waited a moment for them all to gather
their thoughts before asking for a show of hands.

The vote was unanimous.

*

Gryffon stood staring slack-jawed at the
sight before him. Layna had just stepped out of the mists suddenly
holding a very real sword, apparently emerging from her weeks in a
coma unscathed. Her eyes had shone a brilliant white for a moment,
giving her an extremely unnerving look, before settling into their
normal color.

Now they were fixed intently upon him.

“Um,” he started lamely, suddenly at a loss
for words. He had spent hours during the weeks she had been in her
coma thinking about all of the things that he wanted to say to her.
To explain that he did not have feelings for Aria as Katya had
hinted that Layna might be thinking, that he didn’t want her to go
around telling people that they were only friends, about the stolen
kisses they had had and how much they had meant to him, and so much
more. But staring back into those intense eyes, all of the words
that had been on the tip of his tongue suddenly evaporated. Her
demeanor was so alien, so unlike the Layna he knew, that he was
speechless.

Luckily, Katya spoke up and Gryffon was freed
from the stare.

“Are you alright?”

Layna shook her head as if to clear it and
then scrunched up her forehead at Katya, looking much more like the
girl he knew. “I think so,” then, “who are you?”

“My name is Katya,” she responded, “It
appears that you were ‘accidentally’ poisoned by Lady Aria who
erroneously believed you to be responsible for her father’s death
and you’ve been in a coma for the last few weeks. I’ve been
traveling with Gryffon here to follow the advice of the Word of the
Three that if we brought you to the source of the river, you would
be cured. Apparently it worked.”

“Apparently,” Layna looked thoughtful for a
second, and then seemed to suddenly realize there was a sword in
her hand. She raised it up and looked at it, her eyes wide. “I
think I need to sit down…”

Gryffon rushed forward and helped ease her
into a sitting position before she fell over. The smile of
gratitude she gave him warmed him and he saw the woman he knew
emerging from the strange place she was in.

“Thank you,” she said in an exhausted voice,
“I think there’s something very important that I’m supposed to
remember, but I am too tired to think clearly. Do you think we
could rest for a bit?”

“You’ve been sleeping for the past few
weeks,” Katya complained, and Gryffon shot her a warning glace. The
woman scowled at him. She sighed at his look and amended, “But I
guess whatever it was that just happened was probably draining, and
I know Gryffon and I could use it. We may as well set up camp in
here.”

Katya set out their sleeping rolls and
Gryffon carried Layna over to one. She protested that she could
walk, but Gryffon wanted the excuse to hold her and she didn’t seem
to mind. Had her arms lingered around his neck a moment longer than
necessary, or was it his imagination? As soon as her head hit the
blanket, however, she was out. Worry creased his brow, but she
moaned softly when he laid a hand on her cheek which was more
response than he had gotten in her comatose state.

“What do you suppose that was all about,” he
whispered to Katya as he took a seat next to her.

“Which part?” Katya asked him with a small
snort. “The stones talking to us to have us perform their little
test in exchange for them helping Layna, the fact that a sword
suddenly appeared that very well could be Leoht, the sword that
killed the Dark King, or that she appears to be no worse for wear
after having been in a coma and dragged around the last few weeks
other than a little disoriented and tired.”

Gryffon smiled at her. Sometimes her humor,
though blunt, was enjoyable. “All of it, I guess.” He stood and
picked up the sword that had been laid next to Layna’s bedroll and
returned, holding it out in front of him to Katya. “What do you
think? You know more about it than I do, think it’s really the same
sword?”

Katya took it from him and peered at the
inscription. “Well, it’s certainly marked like the one from the
vision. But I don’t know how we would test its authenticity, or for
that matter what the significance of it appearing would be if it
was indeed the same.”

“Did Leoht have any special properties?”

Katya looked thoughtful, “I think there were
vague references to it having unique abilities, but what those
abilities were wasn’t specified.”

“And why did it send her with a sword anyway
when we were only trying to get her to wake up? Not to mention that
line about the darkness and light.”

“There is obviously more going on here than
just them, whoever ‘they’ are, helping her regain her
consciousness. Any ideas? Think they’re really the voices of the
Three?”

Gryffon had forgotten that Katya was unaware
of the events of the past few months. “I don’t know how much you’ve
heard, but there certainly is a lot going on.” He filled her in on
the events that had transpired, ending with their conclusion that
there were bloodbeasts being brought back as evidenced by Jezebel’s
pack of hellhounds and the impending threat of war. “As far as
believing that those stones were really the Three talking to us, I
don’t know what to tell you. I suppose it makes a certain amount of
sense…”

“There’s far more bloodbeasts than just one
noble playing with her little toys, and judging by the number of
men and beasts that have been put together already, I’d guess that
someone plans on invading pretty soon.” Katya supplied, and she
filled him in on the army of slaves she had apparently come
across.

Gryffon was stunned. “You had this
information all along and you didn’t say anything to anyone? We
could have warned the Ieldran while we were in Endlyfta.”

“It’s not my problem,” Katya snapped at him,
“and you didn’t ask.”

“It’s everyone’s problem!” Gryffon was angry
now and aware that his voice was reaching levels that could disturb
Layna’s sleep, but Katya just glared back at him. He took a deep
breath and exhaled it quickly, releasing his hands from the fists
they had balled themselves into in a swift motion. “Alright, I am
asking now. Do you have more information about this subject?”

Katya continued to glare at him and he
wondered if she would bother responding. After a moment’s
hesitation, however, she did. “I know that they’re being controlled
by use of a magic bracer, one that can limit or even completely
block the use of magic, force you to obey commands, and even
manipulate your thoughts. I don’t know who controls these bracers.”
She looked disgusted, as if even talking about it left a bad taste
in her mouth. He was again hit by the thought that there was more
to this woman than she was letting on. “I also know that it can be
removed if the subject is helped by an outside source. Inside, they
don’t even know the extent that they are being controlled.” She
explained more about the process of removing the bracer, though
several times she referred to it as a ‘collar’ and the amount of
emotion in her voice when she talked about it spoke volumes in and
of itself.

“Thank you.” He said simply when she was
finished. The information could prove to be invaluable if they were
able to get it to the right people in time. It would undoubtedly
save many lives. He forced himself not to think about how much
better it would have been if she had shared it with them a few
weeks ago…

Katya cut into his musing. “The Oracle sent
us to the source of the river where we retrieved the sword Leoht
which was used to kill the Dark King, whose bloodbeasts are
returning, and the people are turning to a false god who some
people believe is the same evil the Dark King claimed to be. Are we
repeating history?”

Gryffon glanced down at Layna. “Maybe she’ll
have some answers for us when she wakes up.”

“Maybe,” said Katya, but she didn’t sound
very hopeful. Gryffon supposed it would be rather wishful thinking
to assume that someone who had been in a coma would be able to
answer any questions about what was happening. But Layna had said
that there was something important she was supposed to remember.
Stranger things certainly had been happening to them.

*

Nuko had been spending his time trying to
piece together the last few thousand years by sifting through the
host’s memories and thought he had figured out at least vaguely
what had happened to him. When the Elders had become angry with
him, he had the foresight to create a Bloodstone, similar to the
essences that the three factions would leave behind in the Kiani
Stones, but much more powerful than their puny little rocks. As he
had feared, they had conspired to entrap him in a prison, thinking
that some time in isolation would make him change his ways.
Ha!

His own memories of that time were very hazy,
but he was not fully isolated because of the Bloodstone which
allowed him limited access to the outside world. Without a being to
host his essence, he was unable to do too much with just the stone.
Therefore, he had to spend a fair amount of effort belittling
himself with manipulating the humans, guiding the evolution of
their species to better benefit him. Until they became strong
enough to handle the tiny fraction of his power that was contained
in the Bloodstone, they were useless to him.

The Bloodstone had been found recently
though, in the last couple hundred years, and he had found to his
delight that they had succeeded in evolving enough that he had been
able to attempt communication and had even succeeded in learning a
bit about the world again. He could only scratch the surface, but
even this was more than he’d been allowed in his prison and Nuko
had been elated. Though Nuko had not been able to actually fully
wake from the sleep of his prison, he had been able to instill more
definite commands within the human and magically enhanced the man
even in his half-aware state. Then he marked him so that those with
his bloodline would be drawn to one another and propagate hopefully
even stronger offspring until such time as the Bloodstone called to
one who would be able to properly host him.

Unfortunately, it appeared that some of his
urgings hadn’t been interpreted quite the way that he had meant
them and the man convinced himself that he was a god.
Not unlike
what this new host is doing….
The result had been what the
humans called the Massacre which ultimately caused the man to be
killed and Nuko to be forced back into his prison slumber.

The fact that he had been sleeping at all
disturbed him. Though it was his first time creating a Bloodstone,
he had understood that he would be aware the whole time, if not
able to manipulate events until such time as he was able to procure
a host. He postulated that perhaps his peers had found out about
the stone and put some sort of enchantment on him which caused his
essence to slumber whilst his body was imprisoned, but if they knew
about the stone he would have expected a harsher reaction.
Therefore, he concluded that someone else was helping the humans.
It would be in his best interest to find out who, or what.

After the Massacre, the humans also had
erected a barrier between where they now had two separate
countries, Gelendan and Treymayne, which had effectively cut him
off from realizing that the essences of his peers were still here
until very recently. Because of this isolation, he had no way of
knowing what degree of interference they still had upon this world.
Without this information, the disturbing news that the women his
host was so obsessed with were traveling towards the essences of
his peers made him nervous to wait any longer to find his body.

Though the Bloodstone had allowed him access
to the outside world, it also left his body that much more
vulnerable, and he didn’t know how they would react to finding out
he’d been interfering with their precious humans again when he was
supposed to be in isolation. Or, conversely, if they already knew,
what they were doing with the humans to stop him.