Blood of Innocents (Book Two of the Sorcery Ascendant Sequence) (3 page)

His words came to Caldan slowly, and he moved lethargically, as if hampered.

Caldan ignored him. There wasn’t anything to say. Either they died, or he did. A shiver ran through him. His
trinket
ring grew heavy. “I’m sorry,” he said.

His sword flashed, a line of glowing sorcery in the night. He leapt forward, blade moving in a blur of shining violence. Cut, from shoulder to hip. Step. Slice upward. Pivot. He attacked with blinding speed, the sword featherlight in his hands. The soldiers barely reacted, as if they moved through honey. Lunge. Spin and cut. A final stroke.

Caldan stood still, scarlet sword raised above his head. Around him lay five bodies, blood soaking into the dirt. A bead of sweat ran from his right temple down his cheek.

Across the room, Amerdan sniggered. “Five,” he said softly.

“Shit,” exclaimed Bees.

Caldan turned to find them all looking at him. Bells was watching him thoughtfully, while Elpidia stared in horror at the blood. His strength left in a rush, and the sword became heavy again. He lowered the blade, chest heaving. Bile rose in his throat, and his vision swam alarmingly. He sunk to his knees and breathed deeply.

After a few moments, the nausea passed. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up at Amerdan.

“You had no choice,” the shopkeeper said. “This is for the best.”

Caldan lowered his eyes and stared at the blood splattered around the room. The soldiers hadn’t had a chance when the fever was upon him, and again he’d used raw destructive sorcery to kill. His hands shook, and he choked back sobs, overcome by the horror of what he’d done… the guilt and disgust that he’d enjoyed the feeling of power.

Amerdan patted him on the head. “We’ll drag them outside and leave at first light. In the morning, we should be far away from here.”

Caldan levered himself to his feet, shrugging off Amerdan’s hand. He wiped his sword clean on one of the soldiers’ cloaks, avoiding looking at the others. Sheathing the
trinket
blade, he stepped toward the door then paused.

“There’s one still alive in another building. I’ll bring him here. Maybe we can learn if there are others coming after us.”

When Caldan returned to the house where he’d left the young soldier, there was no sign of him. He’d come to and ran. Obviously he’d seen what remained of his companions when they’d dumped the other soldiers’ bodies outside. Caldan sighed and decided not to give chase. There’d been enough killing for one day. And all the blood was on his hands. Maybe he’d regret it later, but for now, he’d had his fill of killing.

Chapter Two

Caldan tore a loaf of bread into chunks and dipped them into the pot of watery stew simmering over a low fire, careful to keep his distance from the flames. Fire always brought back disturbing memories of his family’s death.

That the bread was stale and the stew virtually tasteless didn’t bother him as he crouched over the pot, hastily shoveling in a late evening meal. He was bone tired. They all were. They’d spent the last few days making as much distance from Anasoma as they could, only stopping at night for short rests. Caldan only managed an hour or two of sleep each time. His thoughts kept returning to the soldiers he’d killed, and guilt gnawed at him.

A stray gust of wind blew smoke into his eyes, and he squeezed them shut. He spooned stew into a wooden bowl and carried it to the hunched figure of Miranda sitting against a tree. He began feeding spoonfuls of stew to her, taking care to blow on each one to make sure it wouldn’t burn her mouth. He gently scraped away any dribbles as she chewed and swallowed methodically, her eyes never leaving the fire. When the bowl was half-empty, she closed her mouth and refused to let him feed her another spoonful. Caldan sighed, wiped her lips with a cloth, and walked over to the pot, returning the uneaten stew.

Bells sat on the other side of the fire from Miranda. Her hands and feet were bound with rope, which was also looped around the trunk of the tree behind her. Caldan glanced briefly in her direction before leaving both bowl and spoon on the ground.

“Don’t I get any?” asked Bells with a tinge of amusement. “I haven’t had anything to eat since this morning.”

Caldan clenched his jaw. “Someone else will feed you later.”

Bells chuckled. “But you do it so well, so… gently.”

Caldan closed his eyes for a few seconds and drew in a deep breath. He still wanted to beat a cure for Miranda out of her. But information obtained by force couldn’t be trusted. He realized he hated Bells with an intensity that startled him. She was also responsible for Simmon’s death, and all the others he’d lost in Anasoma. With deliberate steps, he walked to their belongings—barely a few small packs and a couple of sacks.

“They’ll send more after me,” Bells called to his back. “And you won’t deal with them so easily this time.”

Caldan took the
trinket
sword from the pile and strode from the camp, looking for Elpidia.

The physiker sat atop a small rise, watching the sun descend toward the horizon. She didn’t stir as he approached. The rash on the side of her neck had worsened, and inflamed red lines ran through it where she had scratched.

He sat beside her, sword across his thighs.

Elpidia shifted her weight, then spoke. “She isn’t getting any better, is she? I mean…” She waved a hand in the air. “After a few days, I expected some improvement but…”

Caldan shook his head. “I thought the tremors would subside, but they haven’t. She still can’t feed herself, and her speech hasn’t improved since yesterday, so… I guess she needs more time.”

“With the medicines I gave her not working,” Elpidia said, “I don’t know what else to do. If we were in Anasoma or one of the cities, I’d recommend we take her to someone more knowledgeable than me.” She eyed Caldan. “Is there a chance we’ll make it to somewhere large enough to have a physiker soon?”

“Maybe. If we have to. I don’t know the layout of the empire west of Anasoma, but both Amerdan and Bees say they know where most of the towns and cities are. Though, the further west we travel, the less sure they will be.” Caldan watched as Elpidia scratched her neck then her shoulder before he went on. “It’s not a physical sickness; it’s her mind. I think they… damaged something when they tried to control her. No physiker can fix that. I don’t know if anyone can. The best I can think of is waiting to see if she recovers on her own.”

Elpidia looked at him. “Some physikers study illnesses of the mind; they’d have a better idea of what to do. I’m not used to waiting to see if someone gets better. I find the more I do for a patient, the better off they usually are. Usually. Not everything is curable. If I was trying to heal someone whose mind had been damaged by sorcery, then it stands to reason that someone versed in such sorcery would be a logical place to start.”

“No,” Caldan said. “I’m not letting her near Miranda to work sorcery on her again.”

At his tone, Elpidia held up her hands to placate him. “That’s not what I was suggesting. She has the knowledge, and you have no small skill with sorcery. Perhaps if you questioned her…”

“No,” Caldan repeated, shaking his head. “We can’t trust her, and I wouldn’t be able to spot a trap if she tried to set one for me. I just don’t know enough, and it would be too easy for her to hurt us.”

“You couldn’t try anything yourself?”

“I have no idea at the moment how coercive sorcery works, though certainly it differs a lot from any
crafting
I know. From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t need a physical object for it to work, which I would have thought impossible.”

“How do you know?”

“Pardon?”

“I mean, how do you know it isn’t exactly the same as
crafting
? Both Bells and her partner had many crafted objects on them; maybe one allowed them to use coercive sorcery.”

“I… I guess. I don’t know.” Caldan cursed under his breath, drawing a sharp look from Elpidia. “Um… sorry.”

Elpidia tilted her head, acknowledging his apology.

He continued. “There’s too much I don’t know.”

“Well, you have a source of information, if you’re willing to risk it.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Good.”

“Is there anything you need?” Caldan asked, eyeing her rash. “For your… sickness?”

Elpidia turned her face away from him. “You know what I need. But without a place to experiment and a suitable laboratory, it’s useless to me anyway. What I also need most of all is time. Sitting around in the middle of nowhere chafes at me. I can feel time slipping away.”

Caldan shifted his shoulders at her words and ran a hand along the sword’s scabbard. It was serviceable, unadorned leather, completely unlike the blade it hid.

Choices and priorities ran around his mind; he couldn’t settle on one, and over the last few nights, in the brief times he’d had to sleep, he hadn’t been able to rest because of it. Elpidia was desperate, and desperate people did desperate things. He could only trust the physiker to do what was best for herself.

He needed to get word to the Protectors outside Anasoma. Did they even know about the invasion and the use of forbidden sorcery by the Indryallans? And more than that, he had to return Simmon’s sword to them. But both destructive and coercive sorcery were prohibited. Though, the Protectors used destructive sorcery themselves when they needed to; he had seen it. Both Simmon and Jazintha had done so. He felt a stab of grief and closed his eyes at the thought of the two masters, both dead now, Jazintha by Simmon’s hand, and Simmon presumably by his own. Caldan clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white.

If the Protectors used destructive sorcery to combat rogue sorcerers, did they also use coercive sorcery? Or was that a line they dared not cross? Would he damn himself in their eyes if he tried to learn it, even to save someone else?

He shook his head. There was too much he didn’t know. But he couldn’t give up on Miranda. He wanted… no, needed to do whatever he could to restore her sanity. No matter the cost.

He glanced at Elpidia waiting patiently at his side then back to their meager camp. Bees and the shopkeeper Amerdan were returning from scavenging firewood. Smoke drifted up from the fire as they placed a few branches on the coals and the rest in a pile.

Too many troubles, when only a short time ago all he had to worry about was learning as much
crafting
as he could and where to take Miranda out for dinner. His hand moved to touch the ring on his finger, his
trinket
, then to the bone ring around his neck. How things had changed in a few short months.

The sun dipped over the horizon, another day of running and fear over. That’s all they had been doing since escaping Anasoma: running, looking over their shoulders, pushing themselves to a punishing pace in order to get as much distance between them and the city as possible. Caldan reasoned, with Bells missing and Keys dead, along with the six soldiers he’d killed, someone wouldn’t be far behind. Disgust at what he’d had to do, and what he was becoming, filled him.

He scrubbed his fingers over his itchy scalp then massaged his stiff neck. His head ached again, as it had at the end of every day.

“Stressed? Too much weighing on you?” Elpidia asked. “Now you know how I feel.”

Caldan blew out a heavy breath and rubbed his eyes. This wasn’t the first time she had tried to make him feel guilty. But her needling was one problem he could at least take care of easily, despite his original misgivings. “Let’s get this over with, then.”

“What?”

“Get whatever vials and needles you need.”

“Oh!” Elpidia’s eyes widened, and she stood. “Thank you! I…” She wrung her hands, tearing up. “I just need a chance, some hope.”

He nodded at her. “If it helps, then it’s the least I can do.” And it would be one less problem weighing on him if he could stop Elpidia skulking around and eyeing him with hunger.

She hurried off and rummaged through her possessions at the camp, returning with two small vials, a scrap of cloth, and a large hollow needle. She squatted and motioned for him to pull up his sleeve, which he did, revealing raw red skin on his left forearm and wrist. His crafted wristband was with his possessions back at the camp. Damaged during the fight with Bells and Keys, he wasn’t sure its structure retained enough strength to survive being used. Until they stopped running and he had enough time to conduct some tests, it couldn’t be relied on. It was yet another issue plaguing him. And he still hadn’t had time to examine the crafted items they took from Bells, either.

Elpidia tutted at the sight of his wrist. “Still not healed yet. It’s taking longer than I thought, but it was a bad burn. I’ve healed
crafting
injuries before, but most sorcerers know when their
crafting
s are going to fail and take precautions.”

“I wasn’t exactly in a position to do much about it. I was lucky to survive, as it was.”

“How is your other wound, where Miranda… where she…” Elpidia faltered.

Caldan touched a hand to his side, where a bandage lay underneath his shirt. “It’s healing. Better than the burn, for some reason.”

“I can take the stitches out later, if you like. That’s if… I assume I will need to soon.”

“Probably. Tomorrow, then, in the morning.”

Elpidia wiped the needle with a colorless liquid from one of the vials; the other was empty. “I can give you a little more ointment for it, but I don’t have many supplies.” She located a vein close to his elbow and placed the tip of the needle against his skin. “Where is the closest city from here?”

“According to Bees, about—ouch! You could have warned me.”

“Don’t be a baby.”

Caldan grunted and watched as drops of his blood splashed into the empty vial. Soon it was full, and Elpidia drew out her needle. She applied pressure to his puncture wound with her thumb. She filled the remaining space with a clear liquid then stoppered the vial, clutching it tightly in her other hand.

“I take it that’s all you need?” There was something disturbing about Elpidia’s eagerness for his blood to experiment with.

“Should be, though I might need more. Depends on what I find. Out here… I can’t do much. We need to get to a big town or a city. There, I can—”