The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (15 page)

As she turned to go, the man in the white shirt slapped her backside hard enough that it stung.

"No harm done, lass. The view more than makes up for the poor service." He and his companion then enjoyed a good, lecherous laugh at her expense.

I'm going to make him pay for that,
she thought.
Even if he really is a tax man.

Colin started to get up out of his seat, probably in some foolish attempt to defend her honor. She shook her head
no
and he relented.

Disappointed in her eavesdropping skills, she slid the empty tray through the porthole and turned to see Colin glaring at the white-shirted man.
 

"She's a pretty one," she heard the other man say.

"Anderis would love a pet like that," said her mark.

 
I was right
, she thought, struggling to contain the anger boiling up within her.
These two are more of Anderis's pets
.

"I told you not to mention him," hushed his companion. A moment later the two returned to the banal discussion of tax policy in the kingdom.

Clenching her fists, she exited the galley, hoping Colin would know enough not to follow her. She walked past the stairs and descended to the lower levels that housed the passenger cabins and cargo. Being in the belly of the ship just reminded her of when she had been a prisoner aboard Anderis's ship, and of one of the many times she had had a chance to kill him and had failed.

Suddenly exhausted, her chest tight, she lay down on the cot in her compartment and coughed, planning her next move.

By the time Colin knocked on the door to her compartment, she was half asleep.

"What?" she growled, opening the door.

"The tax men aren't tax men, are they?" Colin asked, entering the room uninvited.
 

"No," she said, closing the door and sinking onto her cot. "And they're going to lead me straight to Anderis."

Chapter Ten

"Is there a way out of here?" Urus asked.

Lu grinned. "I'm a sigilord, remember? Masters of space-time. There's always a way out."

She nudged the sleeping silver fox in her lap, gently rousing her from her nap. Mist shook her fur back into place, then stalked off into the shadows. Lu spread her arms wide and turned her palms up. In response, the sigils she had etched into the floor, walls, and ceiling all sprang to life, glowing a brilliant green.
 

Power drifted toward him from the symbols as the sigilcraft used to etch them into the stone wafted over him like heat from a nearby stove.

"This is amazing," Urus whispered. "What do they all do?"

"I'll teach you how to make each one, but right now we've got to get to the portal room and escape."

"Won't they be expecting us? The Emys portal seems like an obvious place to ambush us," Urus said.

"Yes, but since we're masters of space-time and they're not, we should be able to get there before they can set a trap."

"Hopefully," Urus added.

Lu crawled over the floor, scanning her collection of sigils. "Ah, here it is!"

She gripped Urus's wrist and slapped her other hand against a sigil in the floor. Urus recognized it immediately. It looked just like the
open
symbol he had seen on the stone obelisk beneath Kest. That day seemed so far in the past, almost like it was from another lifetime.

The world faded to black, then light reappeared instantly. They were still in the short chamber, surrounded by luminous, verdant sigils.

"What happened?" Urus asked.

"They've warded the portal room," she said. "Using
sigilord
artifacts, too. We can't use a sigil to get in."

"So now what?"
 

"Looks like we're going to have to do things the old-fashioned way…mostly," Luse said with a grin. "I'm going to draw a sigil and I want you to copy it. I'm no good at shield sigils, and I'll bet your blue sigils will be much more powerful than mine."

"I'll try," Urus said, trying to sound confident. "But I don't know what I'm doing."
 

Lu began etching. Wisps of green smoke drifted from her fingertips and came to rest, hovering in mid-air. First she drew what looked like a teardrop, then four lines radiating out from it. Finally, she topped the sigil with an arc that looked like a roof over the teardrop.

"This is a light shield. If I etch a line from the top around us and back to the other side, it will complete the sigil and we'll become invisible. The light bends around us so people look at us and see what's behind, missing us entirely. My light shield only lasts a few minutes and it's too small for both of us. Hopefully yours is better."

Lu dismissed the sigil with a wave of her hand and the glowing icon reverted to smoke, then disappeared.
 

"Won't the arbiters sense my sigil?" Urus asked.

Lu nodded. "Probably, but they still won't know where it came from. Give it a try. I can hear picks hacking at the stone above—they'll be through the floor soon. But no pressure. Just relax."

Urus took a deep breath, willing himself calm. He let the power flow from his fingertips, reveling in the heat and even the dull ache that accompanied the release. He drew the teardrop shape, then the lines radiating out, and finished with the angled cap.
 

"Now grab the tip of one side of the shield cap, spin it all around us and connect it to the other side," Lu instructed.

Urus did so, surprised that he could manipulate a sigil that hung in the air. It actually responded to his touch, having a texture that resembled solid smoke, if such a thing could be possible. He tugged at the top of the sigil, stretching it like a baker twisting dough, and spun in a wide circle. The blue line seemed to anticipate what he wanted and sped ahead of his finger, connecting to the other side of the sigil's top.

The air around them swirled and was sucked away like the water from a receding tide, then returned in a rush a moment later. Urus had expected more fanfare, maybe some bright lights or something sparkling.
 

"Did it work? It doesn't look like anything happened," he said.

Lu stared back at him, wide-eyed. "Oh, it worked, all right. I bet we could hide a house inside this shield!"

Vertigo attacked him from all sides and the room spun, his vision blurring. He slumped against the wall, propping himself up with his shoulder.

"That should pass," Luse said. "Sigilcraft takes a toll on the wielder."

Urus stood upright and tried to shake off the remainder of the queasiness. "What now?"

"Now we need to get close enough to the tower without bouncing off their ward," Luse said. She again reached for a doorway sigil, grabbed Urus's hand, and pressed her palm to the symbol. Green light seared his vision, then vanished.

As dim sconce-fueled torchlight illuminated their surroundings, Urus found himself standing next to Lu at the end of a shadowy corridor.

Without saying a word, Lu ran to the end of the hallway and peeked around the corner. Urus followed, also checking out their surroundings. A patrol of two guards marched away from them.

"We'll wait here until they go past the armory," Lu said, turning to face Urus. "We can get to the portal tower from there. This might take a few minutes."

"Aren't we invisible?" Urus asked.

"Yes," Lu said with a smile. "But they can still hear your big boots clopping on the stone. Better to be extra cautious."

Urus frowned down at his feet. He stood there, watching the backs of the guards slowly make their way down the adjoining hallway. None of this seemed real. He was standing with an actual, living sigilord inside a bubble that bent light and made them invisible.
This is amazing!
He thought of something that had been bugging him for quite some time. Images of Draegon, Cailix, and Anderis filled his mind.
Blood mages
.

"I have another question about sigilcraft," Urus whispered, or at least he hoped it was a whisper.

Lu cocked her head to the side but said nothing.

"When Draegon had me prisoner, he worked me like a puppet; he was going to use me to destroy the fifth vertex, but he didn't kill me. I've seen blood mages use sigilord blood before, and it was a terrible sight. If sigilord blood is that powerful to a blood mage, then why didn't the blood mages just carry around buckets of the stuff during the Fulcrum War? Why did they kill all the sigilords instead of keeping them alive to use their blood?"

"Have you heard of the corruption?" Lu asked.

Urus shook his head.

"Blood mages need to use fresh blood for their magic. The longer blood has been outside the body it came from, the more the blood mage risks getting the corruption. It's like a blood disease, but magical. I've seen it do everything from make them sick to kill them outright. Either way, the end result is a death that is neither quick nor painless."

"Sigilord blood can give them the corruption too?" Urus asked.

"Oh yes, and then some," Lu said. "Using old sigilord blood not only carries the corruption, but it's like working with old or poorly mixed black powder. Random—usually terrible—things happen when a blood mage uses old sigilord blood. They learned that lesson the hard way during some of the earliest battles of the war. Entire legions of blood mages blew themselves to bits using sigilord blood they'd drawn from dead victims."

"That's terrible," Urus said.

"Only the most powerful blood mages could keep the corruption at bay, but most of them avoided the risk of old blood and just bled out dozens of our kind as part of their opening battle strategies, as though we were nothing more than the pitch to be lit on torches."

"So that's why Draegon tried to control me and keep me alive. My blood wouldn't have done him any good if I was dead."

Lu nodded. "That's right. The corruption's a terrible way to die, but I don't feel sorry for any of the bastards who met their maker that way. Every last one of those blood mages all got what they deserved. It's a shame that the arbiters can't suffer the same horrible, slow death, and some day you'll have to tell me how you managed to overcome Draegon's hold. No one has ever done that before."

She glanced down the hallway. "Okay, little bull. We should be able to get into the armory now without those guards hearing us."

Together they crept along the corridor with its gleaming marble floor, ornately carved columns, and lavishly decorated tapestries and paintings. The arbiters had certainly gone out of their way to make a show of things.

"It should be just…about…here," Lu said, coming to a stop at a spot in the hallway with no doors on either side.

"Are you sure?" Urus asked. "It's just a solid wall."

Lu grinned and winked. "You're not thinking like a sigilord. Why does a master of space and time need something so pedestrian as a
door
?"

She began to etch a sigil into the wall, a glowing virescent doorway inside two concentric circles. "When I touch the travel sigil, I can feel where the wall stops and the empty space of the room on the other side begins. I use that feeling so I don't materialize inside solid stone."

"Does that happen a lot? Getting stuck inside walls, that is?" Urus asked, suddenly not looking forward to another sigilcraft-powered trip through walls.

"Stuck?" Lu said, stifling a laugh. "If you materialize in a wall, that's it…you're dead, and the wall's going to start to smell really bad. Ready?"

"No," Urus replied without hesitation, his mind filled with the horrific image of half of his dead body emerging from a solid wall.

"If you want to learn sigilcraft, you're going to have to get used to the basics. The travel sigil is the first thing they used to teach young sigilords," Lu said, her expression growing dark. "Back when there were young sigilords or teachers to teach them."

Luse finished etching the travel sigil, clasped Urus's wrist again, and pressed her hand against the illuminated stone. This time Urus knew what to expect. He timed a slow blink so his eyes were closed as they shifted through space.
 

When he opened his eyes, they stood at the back of a vast armory. Racks of weapons and armor spread out in all directions. Four stories of lofts looked down upon a central area displaying artifacts as proudly as a museum. More elaborate racks of alien-looking equipment occupied the lofts on higher levels. Lanterns hung from wall sconces, while an enormous crystal chandelier reflected white lantern light onto the main floor.

"When you arrived, did they take your weapons?" Luse asked.

Urus nodded. "My sword. It's…special."

Luse's eyes crinkled nearly closed, her mouth open in a huge grin. "You have an avatar knight? That's great!"

"A what?"

"Avatar knight," Luse said. "Back during the Fulcrum War, we used to imbue raw sigilcraft into radix weapons. Even though they can't etch sigils, they could summon the knights bound to the weapon."

Hugo!
Urus thought.
He's an avatar knight
.
But I don't remember
imbuing
anything
.

"How are we going to find one sword in all this?" Urus asked, still awestruck at the sheer size of the place. The Kestians would kill for a cache of weapons like this. The thought soured Urus's mood, bringing back the memory of seeing the fiery sphere plummet from the heavens, summoned by the blood mages to crash into the part of Ehmshahr the Kestians called home, a place that was likely nothing more than ash now.