Blood Lies (Dark Brothers of the Light #9) (23 page)

Isranon pushed the paper over to Cordwainer.
"Can you think of anything more to add?"

"No," replied Cordwainer. "You've got
everything down that we discussed, including the dark arcanes,
which I hope we will not require."

"Weren't there more of those on the previous
list?" Isranon asked. He recognized that Randilyn's deft hand had
recopied it.

Cordwainer ran his fingers through his bushy
flame-colored hair. "My wife insisted on doing her own shopping,
rather than have them bulk purchased for the company. Amiri has no
problem with that. Lobelia is a master of the dark arcanes. She
studied in Shaurone at their top apothecary college. She's why we
have found so many cures for the creations of the Romilay clan in
Waejontor."

Anksha came in growling. "I can't find
Stygean. No one has seen him since early morning. Two people say
they saw him riding into the forest."

Isranon frowned. "Was he alone?"

Anksha nodded, flexing her claws in
irritation. She had become hugely swollen; the birth was only two
months away, yet she still moved easily as if the bulk of their
child did not inhibit her at all.

Lobelia, Cordwainer's wife rushed in,
fluttering her hands nervously. "Pardon, but we can't find
Chinisi."

"Stygean's got her," growled Anksha, ever
quick to put two and two together, especially when it came to
sa'necari. "He's back to his old tricks"

Nevin scowled, exchanging a glance with
Isranon and Anksha. "Stygean would never hurt her."

"The boy spends more time with Chinisi than
is seemly," Lobelia snapped. "He's lured her into the woods."

Isranon's heart sank. He had wanted to believe in
Stygean, yet now he had to face the possibility that the boy had
given himself over to the dark side of his sa'necari nature. He had
never been able to completely get past his doubts, the possibility
that the others were right about Stygean and Jingen being too old
to give up the teachings of their people. He prayed to Kalirion
silently that they were not going to find the girl dead and
violated, shattered in a rite of mortgiefan. It was an easier way
to power than the one he had been forcing the boy to walk; yet his
sharp ambivalence made him still hope that the temptation had not
overcome him. Isranon wondered how his own father had managed, and
the other Dark Brothers of the Light. They were all dead now,
murdered by the sa'necari, and he could not ask them. He hefted
Warrior and walked out of the room with Anksha beside him and Nevin
following close.

Anksha stalked along on the balls of her
feet, looking worriedly into his face. "You care for the boy?"

Isranon flinched, his eyes half-closing as
if in pain. "That's irrelevant. When we find them – if he's guilty
– then Anksha, he's yours." Then he turned away to hide the tears.
Why did you have to do this, Stygean? Why?

Nevin squeezed Isranon's shoulder. "I don't
think the boy would hurt her."

"He's sa'necari," Isranon replied, as if
that said it all.

Nevin turned to Anksha. "Come on, pet. We'll
set after them."

"What are you going to do about this?"
Cordwainer demanded, emerging behind him.

Isranon did not meet his eyes in an effort
to hide the wetness on his cheeks. "It's too dark for
us
to search. I will send the lycans to try and pick
up their trail. They should find something for us to follow by
morning."

Nevin and Anksha swept past as Grygg and
Dahnig bolted into the corridor in time to hear part of the
conversation. They had learned that Anksha was searching for
Stygean. Grygg immediately headed for Isranon. "He wouldn't hurt
her. He loves her."

"Grygg, I know he's your friend," Isranon
said. "But he is sa'necari. I know my people."
I want to believe
you, but I can't let go of my fear.

Grygg spat on the ground. "If I find out
that someone set him up, I'll kill them. We'll be out looking come
dawn, just like the rest of you."

Alassance pushed between Grygg and Dahnig,
gazing up into their faces, dread clutching at him, making his
heart pound like the reverberation of a kettle drum. "Come with me,
we need to check on something."

"Does it concern Stygean?" asked Grygg.

"It might. Come on." He started silently
praying that his net was still on the shelf. His pride at netting
Jingen faded into anger at himself for allowing his ego to
overwhelm his innate caution.

Alassance took them to his rooms and into
the closet where he pointed at the top shelf, "Pull down what's up
there so I don't have to climb."

Grygg, who was the tallest, felt all around
on the shelf and then rose on his tiptoes to look. "Nothing up
there."

"I want to see." Alassance nudged Grygg, who
lifted him up: his net was gone. He swore a blue streak so profane
that it made the older boys blush to hear it.

Grygg returned Alassance to the floor. "What
was up there?"

"Something I was not supposed to have. It
helped me escape Charas."

"What?" Dahnig's eyes were large.

"A net with spellcord braided through it.
Whenever a sa'necari or their ilk caught up to me, I netted them
and then cut their throats. Jingen knew about it, but Stygean
didn't."

"Jingen set him up." It became Grygg's turn
to swear and his best attempts were pale in comparison to
Alassance's.

"Only way to prove it is to find Stygean and
Chinisi."

"Can you do life scans?" asked Dahnig.

"No, but Zorrance can. If he'll agree to it,
we can start searching tonight."

"Lead on, Alassance." Grygg gestured at the
corridor and they followed him.

* * * *

Chinisi woke, cloaked her body in magic, and crept
to the edge of their shelter to see that the snow had stopped and
the day had dawned clear. Then she returned to Stygean. Her
movements had not awakened him, so she touched Stygean's cheek,
which brought no response.

"Stygean?" Worry cut through her like a slender
blade. She shook him, remembering his insistence that he was going
to die. "Stygean!"

His head moved limply with her shakings. Fear
emerged as a series of gasping breaths that caught in her lungs,
chest and throat. Chinisi put her ear to his chest and listened to
his heart. When she did not hear it she nearly came apart,
mastering herself with an effort as her self-control threatened to
split into shards and fall through her fingers. Chinisi tried
again, straining her ears, and steadied when she found the small
irregular, struggling beat of it. Chinisi sniffled for a few
minutes, then pulled herself together. She kissed Stygean, and
dressed, leaving her cloak with him. She would use magic to stay
warm, but that meant she would also need to find something to eat
soon. Magic burned energy as fast as physical exercise.

As she walked back into the glade, something caught
her eye down among some sloping rocks, and she found Stygean's
sword and his knives, where Jingen had tossed them. She buckled
them on, but the belt was too large for her and sagged around her
hips. So she pulled the belt as tight and twisted the end around
the center to get it cinched enough not to slide down her slender
waist.

Chinisi stared at the sun for a moment to
gauge where they were in relation to the manor and began to walk,
periodically marking the trees with Stygean's belt knife. Whenever
she found a clear spot, she set rocks out in ranger code like she
had learned from Travis.

She walked until noon before turning
back.

* * * *

Jingen carried an armload of firewood to add
to the wood bins in the nibari section of the manor. He laid the
firewood on top of the pile. Despite the alarm over Stygean and
Chinisi's disappearance and the search for them, chores still
needed to be done. Nainee had begun to cook several large kettles
of spiced rice and sausages in the big hearth. There were currently
too many staying in the manor house for the kitchen staff alone to
deal with all the cooking required, so the nibari fixed their own
meals here. Jingen inhaled the tasty scent rising from the kettles
and drew his belt knife. "May I?"

Nainee nodded. "Yes, but just one. You can
eat your fill at serving time, since you get to eat at Edvarde's
table and we don't."

Jingen stabbed a sausage and stood blowing
on the end to cool it before biting into it. "What will they do
when they find them?" Jingen asked, nibbling at the sausage.

Nainee looked up. "Stygean will be given to
Anksha."

Jingen would have liked to have seen that.
He imagined the screams Anksha would have gotten from Stygean.
Jingen would have liked to listen to Stygean screaming. He had
gotten very few screams from Stygean before his rival lapsed
unconscious. 'They make more noise when they're fresh,' his father
used to say. But Jingen was certain that Chinisi and Stygean would
not be found alive; which meant they would never know who had
killed Stygean.

He walked away, making an O of his mouth and
teasing his lips with the sausage in a sexually suggestive manner
before biting the other end off. With all of the uproar over
Stygean and Chinisi being missing, attention had been focused away
from the nibari sections of the manor and Jingen had taken full
advantage of that. He had enjoyed Farris and her son last night,
who was two years older than her daughter. Liuthan had been a
careful breeder, giving his nibari a year between the time they
gave birth and the time he bred them again. Perhaps tonight, he
would add the five-year-old girl into the mix, the one that Stygean
had been so protective of. It was rumored that Liuthan had gotten
that girl on Farris.

* * * *

Nevin and Anksha had ranged far ahead of the
others long before dawn, mounted on horseback while two lycans ran
before them. They had found each of Chinisi's rock markers, stopped
long enough to gauge when they had been left and then went on.

When they reached the little glade, the lead
lycan sniffed at the pegs where Chinisi had been bound and then at
Stygean's blood staining the snow and soil. Nevin dismounted and
joined his kinsman there. He ran his fingers through the wet
snow-mixed blood and sniffed them.

Nevin's face screwed up in distaste and the
beginnings of anger. "It looks like a rite was performed here."

Anksha's nostrils flared and she sucked in
the air before dropping from her mount to sniff further. Her eyes
fell upon the tree with its sheltered boughs added like walls.

"Nevin." She pointed at the shelter.

The older wolf nodded and followed her.

Zorrance burst into the clearing at the head
of the four boys and threw himself from his horse, screaming,
"Don't hurt him! He's dying."

Nevin straightened. "What the bloody hell
are you talking about?"

"We've been tracking Stygean all night by
life scan. Blundering around, running into obstacles and having to
backtrack. All the time I've felt his life force fading."

"Jingen stole my net of spellcord," said
Alassance. "He must have used it on Stygean and Chinisi."

Anksha stalked across the clearing, so
focused upon her prey that she had closed out their voices.
Sniffling greeted her ears as she reached for the branches. The
sniffling turned to sobbing and then hiccupping before becoming
sniffling again. Anksha cocked her head, listening briefly before
parting the branches to stick her head in. Her eyes glowed red in
the dim interior of Chinisi's shelter. Stygean lay to one side of
the trunk, unmoving, and Chinisi sat near him with one of his hands
pressed to her cheek as she cried.

Anksha's hair haloed as her power rose. She
squirmed in on her side, her belly catching a bit in the branches,
and grabbed Stygean, dragging him from beneath the blankets. Anksha
hesitated at the way his nude body hung limp in her hands. She
shook her reaction off and flashed her fangs at him. "Mine."

Her musk intensified as she prepared to take
him and still she got no reaction.

Chinisi spun about as Stygean's hand left
hers. She snatched Stygean from Anksha's grasp, throwing herself
atop him and trying to cover him completely with her body. "No!"
She screamed. "Nooooo!"

Anksha's hair settled about her shoulders
again, and she blinked, cocking her head in a quizzical fashion at
Chinisi's unexpected reaction. "Why not? Isranon says he's
mine."

Chinisi struggled to find words: Anksha
frightened her. Lifting only her head lest Anksha try for Stygean
again, she said, "He tried to save me. He's wounded."

Anksha blinked. "Save you? He stole
you."

Fire entered Chinisi's eyes as she recovered
from the fright Anksha had given her. She sat back, holding Stygean
firmly pressed to her chest, grabbed a cloak and wrapped him again.
"No, he didn't. Jingen did."

"Jingen," Anksha hissed. She had never
trusted that one.

Nevin pushed through in his transitional
form, and Chinisi’s eyes went wide as she choked back a scream at
the sight of his snouted, hairy head. Nevin glanced from Stygean's
still body to Anksha. "Is it done?"

Anksha shook her head. "Jingen did this. Not
me."

Nevin turned his gaze to Chinisi. "What
happened?"

"We told you." Alassance crawled under the
shelter beside Nevin, lifted a corner of the cloaks, took a single
look at Stygean's wounds and dropped it shrieking, "Bloody fucking
dick in a pig's craw."

"Shut it and let her tell it," growled
Nevin.

Chinisi wiped her tears on the back of her
sleeve. "Jingen sent Stygean and I both letters. Mine said it was
from Stygean, asking me to ride with him. I arrived and Jingen was
waiting for me. He threw a spellcord net over me, knocked me out
with a spell, and carried me off. When I came to, I was laying tied
between the pegs over there." She pointed. "Jingen told me that he
intended to kill Stygean and violate both my mind and my body. Then
even I would believe that Stygean had done it…." Chinisi's voice
tightened. "But I got loose while he was ambushing Stygean."