Leoht (BloodRunes: Book 3) (6 page)

“The army will follow its orders to the
letter,” Nathair smiled grimly, his opinion of the technology
slightly tainted by his Katya’s hatred for it, not to mention his
own brush with the other side of it, but he had nevertheless
decided to employ the use of the bracers once he had figured out
how the army’s use of them had escaped his notice.

His advisor was aware of the use of the
bracers to control the men and his faced paled a bit. Probably
partially because of their existence itself, but no doubt also due
to how close he had come to having his own existence ended as a
result of them. Luckily for him, the man had come up with the
documents showing Nathair’s signature which allowed their use, but
Nathair still hadn’t been happy about it. He assumed he must have
been too consumed with other issues at the particular moment he
signed them to have not read them thoroughly enough. But he was
still piqued at this extremely important information being given to
him only on one document, and furthermore, on a footnote!

“I understand and agree that the army will
not be a problem,” his advisor agreed, “however, it is the rest of
the populace that disturbs me. If they accept you as the Sleeping
God and follow you we should have no issues, and who knows, we
could even have people defecting from Treymayne to worship you.
But, if they do not…” he paused, probably due to the rage that was
boiling up inside Nathair that he could feel making his face
hot.

“What do you mean ‘
if
’ they accept
me?” Nathair growled at him and fairly roared, “I am their
GOD!”

The man cowered and Nuko’s mind-voice popped
into his head.

-
You are not
.
-

Nathair ignored him, but the thought doused
his anger. There was no need to be squabbling over details. He took
a few deep breaths and forced a smile for the man.

“My apologies, you are correct. Not everyone
will be quite so willing to just believe what they hear. Perhaps a
few tours around my countryside will give them all enough of a
‘taste’ of my power to convince them of my authenticity.”

The man gulped. “That would be advisable,
Sire.”

Nathair dismissed him and sat down heavily.
His plans to invade Treymayne were being constantly derailed. Had
he known that his appearance as the reincarnation of the Sleeping
God would have been a set-back to his plans, he might have
rethought the timing of it. But, a flight or two around the country
would be entertaining at least as no doubt he’d have to make a show
of eating those who opposed him, and he could also use it to check
in on the progress of the troops. The fresh recruits had been
marching towards the border and should now be camped just shy of
actually crossing the river and invading.

And really, they had more important things to
deal with. Sending the army in now would be satisfying and would
eventually cement his control enough everywhere to use both
countries’ resources to find Nuko’s physical form. But, it would
take time, and time wasn’t something that they were sure they had a
whole lot of. They really needed to find out what the Three had
told the girls, and what they were doing about it. Having a war on
his hands would monopolize his time, and he needed it for their
project.

He also had Jezebel looking into finding more
books and possibly even finding clues to the location of Nuko’s
physical thinking that she could use this against him. Originally
the plan had been simply to have her find out as much information
as she could for him to use in the coming war, but since talking to
Nuko, Nathair had altered it somewhat. Her hatred and subsequent
ambition to exact revenge against those who she felt crossed her
could this time work to his advantage if she did jump on the fact
that finding his body could somehow hurt him. It was a bit of a
gamble to have her and Devon know this vulnerability, but Nathair
was confident that he had them both too thoroughly controlled to be
much of a threat. Besides which, it had taken him years to get past
the Order’s locks on the books. She wouldn’t be able to actually
read them herself anyway.

He had found the emblem that he had Devon
give her when his main goal was still in finding all of the ancient
texts that he could. While he now had bigger plans to deal with at
the moment, he had a thin sliver of hope that Devon would be
successful in steering Jezebel towards continuing this work for
him. He had the suspicion that the emblem somehow held the key to
where the Order had hidden books in Treymayne. There was the
distinct possibility that knowledge about Nuko’s form would be
found in one of those books.

The evening wore on until finally Nathair was
exhausted enough for sleep. He took a stone out from the drawer in
his bedside table and set it underneath his pillow. The focus stone
would help to direct his dreaming thoughts in the right direction.
Nuko’s plan involved making contact with Katya, with whom Nathair
already shared a connection. He had felt when they had first met
that night in the woods when she had freed him and began his
process towards becoming the god that he currently was that there
was something between them. For a while when his newfound powers
were still fresh, he’d been able to actually feel where she was,
but it had eventually faded. Nuko didn’t know if it was time or
distance that had done it, but he had said that there was a way to
rekindle the connection and through her they could find out what
the Three had told them.

The way that it was accomplished was through
sleep. A person’s mind was more vulnerable during slumber and Nuko
felt that in a dream Katya would be less suspicious of the
questions. You didn’t have to be careful of what you said in a
dream after all, it was all in your head. But in this case, it
would be in both of their heads. Once Nathair had found a way to
tap into her subconscious mind, he would steer her dreams in the
direction that he wanted.

So far, he had not been able to make contact.
The focus stone had succeeded in making it difficult to sleep
because of the lump it made under his head, but it had not, as of
yet, been able to get him any closer to learning Katya’s
secrets.

Since their ‘talk’ Nuko had been mostly
silent, other than inserting a comment here and there into
Nathair’s everyday life, and Nathair had been mostly able to ignore
that he was there. The god’s paranoia was beginning to fray
Nathair’s nerves, however, as the feeling that he was internally
biting his nails was prevalent every day. He itched to get out
there and DO something about it, but Nuko had felt confident that
this dream plan was their best approach. They did not know where
the girls currently were so going out looking for them would be a
pointless waste of energy.

Nathair thought that it was a shame that Nuko
couldn’t feel where his body was; if he was missing his physical
form he felt sure that he’d maintain a connection to it. He was
rather attached to his body. He smiled to himself as he drifted off
into sleep.

In his mind he saw a vision of his mother,
looking uncharacteristically demure in a long white overcoat and he
frowned. The last time she had invaded his dreams it hadn’t turned
out pleasant in the least. Her form swirled into a whirlwind of
white and he sank deeper into sleep.

Nathair found himself swept up in the
tornado, sand whipping his face, and he was thrown roughly to the
ground.

He stood, and found himself in a desert. He
looked around and saw something in the distance. He squinted his
eyes against the harsh sunlight and raised a hand to shade
them.

Something was moving.

He walked towards it and stared at it,
willing his eyes to focus. Frustrated at his inability to do so, he
switched to dragon form. Swinging his now reptilian head back
around towards the speck in the distance he attempted to identify
it once more.

It was Katya! He had found her. He sprang
into the air and winged towards her gleefully. But she kept getting
farther and farther away, as if he was going the wrong direction!
He looked back over his shoulder and stopped dead in the air. He
hovered in shock. There she was behind him too. He looked forward
where she had been previously, but she was gone.

Nathair growled and in a mighty swish of air
changed his course. He never took his eyes off her, but still she
seemed to be getting farther away. He dove towards the ground and
transformed as his feet hit the sand, breaking into a run towards
her.

This time, the tiny speck grew larger until
even his human eyes could make out that it was her. He shouted her
name, and she looked up…and disappeared.

Nathair shot awake and smiled to himself. He
had done it! He had made contact with her. Next time would be that
much easier to find her, and then, they would find out everything
they needed to know.

*

Jezebel had spent quite a few hours debating
whether or not to share the news with Devon. In the end, she
decided on a compromise: She would tell him that she knew where
they were going now because she had a map, but she wouldn’t tell
him that it was because she’d been shown the image when the disk
had been exposed to fire, nor would she tell him exactly where they
were going until they arrived.

She gave him instructions to gather the
necessary supplies for the trek, and made a few additions herself.
When the disc had hit the fireplace, an image had formed in the air
around the flames which Jezebel recognized as being a map of
Gelendan and Treymayne. She had experimented with it for quite some
time and was extremely impressed with the complexity of it.

Instead of being a flat drawing like the
parchment maps she had seen, this one looked like miniature
mountains where the mountain range should be and the water in the
river almost looked like you could dip your finger into it. And, if
you pressed it at a certain spot, it would zoom in on the area, or
move around as you willed it. Even better, there were about twenty
or so glowing blue dots on it that when she had zoomed in far
enough she found were the locations of secret tombs, libraries, and
manors which each held one of the ancient books. She assumed that
the disc must have been some sort of safeguard of all of the
collective knowledge that the Order had and kept hidden by
dispersing among its members. Or perhaps, seeing as how she didn’t
see where the book she had gotten excerpts from was located, it was
only a small portion.

Her excitement grew. If these twenty books
only contained a portion of what was available, judging by the
amount that she’d gotten from a few copied sections…there was no
way that the two renegades or the King could escape her wrath.
Seeing as how they were already here, Jezebel had decided that they
should take a tour around the lovely Treymayne countryside and pick
up a few souvenirs. The nearest one seemed to be about a day’s ride
away and Devon was out getting them horses at this very moment. She
smiled to herself.

When they arrived at the location indicated
by her map, Jezebel dismounted and looked around. There seemed to
be nothing and she furrowed her brow in confusion. “Where…” she bit
her lower lip and paced around in a circle. “Devon, why don’t you
go see if you can ask someone where we are exactly.”

“We’re in a field in the middle of nowhere,
who am I going to ask?”

She scowled at him, “Just go look,” she
ordered. He shrugged and rode on ahead. As soon as he was
sufficiently out of range, Jezebel created fire on her palm and
laid the disc into it.

The map blazed to life and she enlarged the
image of the book they were supposed to be right on top of. She
looked around and tried to find a landmark to compare to the map.
Not an easy thing to do in the middle of a field. She found a large
tree on the opposite side which stuck up above the rest of the
trees and tried to find its counterpart on the map. When she did
so, she adjusted her vision to look towards where the area was
illuminated on the map and saw that Devon was riding straight
towards it.

“Excellent,” she muttered to herself,
extinguishing the flames. The map disappeared just in time for her
to see Devon’s horse lose its balance, tumbling to the ground and
rolling over Devon. She urged her own horse into a gallop and raced
towards him. When she got close enough, she dismounted and hurried
over to him, annoyed at the feelings of worry that overcame her.
It would simply be a harder mission to accomplish without him,
that’s all.
“Are you alright?” she asked, careful to keep a
neutral tone lest she betray the real concern she was trying
desperately to swallow whole.

He groaned and pushed himself to his feet,
making his way over to his horse which had already righted itself
and was favoring its front left leg. “I’m alright, seems that he
twisted an ankle on a hole in the ground.”

Jezebel’s concern was replaced with
excitement. “A hole?” she asked, immediately turning to the ground.
She walked carefully around in the grid pattern until she found the
area where the horse had likely stepped into. There was a patch of
earth which was slowly crumbling away, leaving large indents in the
otherwise flat field. She leaned down and brushed away the dirt
over one of the holes. Underneath were the remains of a human-made
structure. She cleared away the dirt excitedly until she suddenly
had a sharp pain in her finger and she looked down in horror to
realize that one of her nails had been bent backwards and had
broken off.

She shrieked in outrage and stepped back away
from the hole she had been digging -
with her bare hands! -
and looked down at the dirt caking her hands and forearms. She held
her hands out in front of her and called to Devon.

“Yes?” he asked from over her shoulder. She
had forgotten he was right there.