Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (52 page)

Catelyn inhaled sharply.
He knows I’m aware of the
artifact and its power?
she thought. Had Ortis told him? She
looked at Ortis again, and again, she saw the same intense stare,
followed by a sharp look down at his bound wrists.
“But alone, this is no more than a metal rod,” the Emperor
continued, and then let the crook fall to bounce against his thigh,
suspended by a coiled loop of leather around his waist. With one
hand, he shrugged out of his robes to reveal his bare chest. Catelyn
gasped when she saw what he had hidden beneath his clothes.
His chest was criss-crossed with a web of light scarring
from the line of his nipples down to his belly and up under his
arms. Although she had never seen her own scarring with her eyes,
she had lived with them long enough to be intimately familiar with
the distinctive geometric patterns left behind by bloodfire. The
Emperor’s entire upper body was covered in evidence of the
substance. She didn’t know if he had been tortured with it, or if
such marks had been self-inflicted.
“I told you once that we were of a kind, you and I,” the
Emperor said, spreading his arms wide, causing his robes to fall
away to his waist, and he stood proudly displaying his scars.
Catelyn could sense the surprise and the discomfort of the
Imperial soldiers around them, witnessing this sight. Uriel ignored
their reaction, and strode forward and approached Catelyn. She
shied back, but two Imperial soldiers still flanked her and
prevented her from getting more than a finger-width away.
The Emperor came to stand beside her, and she had to
crane her neck somewhat to look up at his face.
“Leave us,” he ordered the two men, and they instantly
obeyed. The Emperor leaned down and whispered in her ear.
“What do you smell?”
Catelyn was taken aback by the strangeness of this
question, in the middle of this tense situation. She gathered her
thoughts and then sniffed. She smelled sweat of course, and she
could detect the barest hint of a perfume on his clothing. But she
knew that wasn’t what he was asking, and so she delved deeper.
When she did so, the answer to her own question became clear.
She smelled the Emperor’s intensity, and it was powerful.
She finally smelled what he and Ortis had referred to as
his Will. It was, as she could tell now, not simply a combination of
his personality and charisma. It was actually physiological
excretions from his skin and body, which were present in his
sweat, in his breath, steaming off of his body. And she understood.
A latent ability she had seemed to possess had been
awakened by the bloodfire, magnified and amplified. He had done
this to himself for the same reason. To focus his Will, the same way
that it allowed her to focus her bubble. Others would be oblivious
to the effect that such radiating emissions would have on them,
but Catelyn saw it now, almost like an aura floating around his
body.
Uriel smiled when he saw that she understood.
“Good, good. Now we both know each other’s little secrets.
It really is too bad that you chose to oppose me. I could have
opened your eyes even further.”
And with that, he turned and strode a pace away again,
leaving Catelyn standing alone with no one near. In her mind, she
began to plot out escape routes, and distances away from the
nearest Imperial soldiers. She pulsed her bubble and she watched
as the Emperor flinched momentarily, and again Catelyn thought
his behavior strange.
Perhaps his insanity is asserting itself?
she wondered.
He marshaled his Will and gathered himself as he turned
to look back in her direction.
“Now, although we spoke little enough, I believe I’ve
answered your first question. Let us move on to the second.”
Catelyn felt chills run down her spine, and her body began
to tremble slightly from fear, and she tried to will herself to
breathe deeply and calm down, but she was mere whispers away
from her life ending, and the only control she had in this moment
was what question to ask next.
She thought it over in her mind, and realized that there
was something that she needed to know before the end, and so she
asked her question.
“How did you know we would be here? Did Ortis betray
us?” she asked, her anger rising at the last words.
Uriel smiled widely. He looked like a cold-blooded
predator about to devour its prey.
“But that is two questions, is it not?”
Catelyn panicked, realizing that indeed she had framed the
question as two separate questions, and silently kicked herself for
her own stupidity.
The Emperor laughed.
It was an inhuman, grating sound, and Catelyn felt the
urge to cover her ears.
“Fear not, my little dove. I will not punish you for such
enthusiasm. I grant you this boon, but no other. I will answer both,
but only count them as though they were one question.”
Catelyn sighed in relief, even though she knew that such
pathetic generosity was nothing to celebrate. At least her life would
last a few whispers longer.
Uriel strode over to stand beside Ortis, and raised the
blade of the sickle to his throat. Catelyn felt her heart pound in her
chest. She knew that Ortis deserved death, and had even promised
to do the act herself, but right now, she still clung to an irrational
hope that he was going to save them. That this was all part of some
brilliant military strategy of his. And, she had to admit that deep
down, she didn’t want to see him die at the hands of this madman.
The realization of that was as confusing an emotion as she had
ever had.
But Catelyn knew part of her answer without even a word,
as Uriel was looking at Ortis with unabashed hatred. Rather than
address her, Uriel spoke directly to Ortis.
“Ortis...Ortis...how could you have chosen her over me?
After everything...” Catelyn could see the veins at the side of the
Emperor’s neck throb, and the blade slid across the exposed flesh
of Ortis’ throat and Catelyn felt her knees go weak when she saw a
line of blood begin to flow from the polished metal blade.
“Please!” she wailed, and the Emperor turned on her,
raging.
“PLEASE? This man betrayed me after a lifetime of
service. A LIFETIME! He deserves nothing more than to be
quartered and gelded right here in front of every one of these men
he once commanded. He deserves to have his insides strung from
the posts of my bed.”
Ortis remained silent as the blade slowly cut into his flesh,
unwilling to give the Emperor even a word of explanation.
The Emperor calmed himself and removed the curved
blade from Ortis’ throat and stepped away, turning from him to
look at Catelyn squarely.
“No, he did not betray you. You are the betrayer.”
Catelyn dropped to her knees at the accusation. His words
made no sense.
How could I have been the betrayer? I’ve done nothing!
she thought, her mind racing.
She looked to Silena, and Silena was now watching her, an
intense look of anger on her face.
“What does he mean?” she growled.
Catelyn looked at her, pleading.
“Silena, I swear, I don’t know!”
“If you’ve turned us in, if you let this happen to Erich for
your own freedom…” Silena got up from her knees and lunged for
Catelyn, but one of the Imperial soldiers stepped between them
and thrust the butt of his sword into her stomach, doubling her
over. The girls, who had stopped wailing and had been silently
waiting by Silena’s side until now, probably in shock, screamed
and raced over to where she lay slumped onto the ground. The
Imperials soldiers near them grabbed each of the girls by their hair
and held knives to each of their throats.
“STOP!” Catelyn yelled desperately.
She felt herself fading into hopelessness, and she was
overcome with sobbing. She collapsed forward, overtaken by the
knowledge that soon, much sooner than she had thought, all but
one of them would be dead. Only one of them would be spared,
and Catelyn was supposed to choose which one.
How on Ereas am I supposed to choose?
The low rumble of Uriel’s voice interrupted her thoughts,
and she raised her head, blinking away the tears from her eyes.
“As much as it amuses me to watch such pathetic displays
of emotion, I did agree to answer you honestly, and so it shall be,”
he said, and then raised the sickle in his hand, the tip of it still
glistening with Ortis’ blood.
“Just as with my family’s heirloom, this too is part of the
same powerful set of artifacts from ancient times. And like my
crook, by itself it is nothing more than a finely crafted bit of metal.
But for those who have...gifts, it is much, much more. But as with
your other question, words themselves will not suffice.”
With that, the Emperor closed his eyes tightly, and spread
his arms wide, the sickle held upright in his left hand.
“Now, look at something,” he commanded her.
Again, Catelyn was at first confused by the instruction. But
then Catelyn quickly realized that this was another demonstration.
And so she looked around her, and settled on, of all things, the
kneeling form of Duncan, dazed and bloody and two paces behind
where the Emperor now stood. She looked at his face, swollen and
caked in sweat, dirt and blood, and her heart went out to him. He,
like Sera and Elexia, was truly an innocent in all of this. He had
done nothing more than extend a kindness to her when she had
needed it. She didn’t even know how the Emperor had discovered
him, or their brief and tenuous connection in the first place.
“You’re watching the young man behind me, named
Duncan, and you’re wondering how I knew about him being...your
words here...kind to you.”
Catelyn gasped, her jaw falling open in shock.
The Emperor opened his eyes with a smug smile on his
face, as the Imperial soldiers nearest to the group began to whisper
among themselves, clearly astonished by the Emperor’s apparent
clairvoyance. Silena was struggling to get up, and missed what had
happened, and when Catelyn looked to Ortis, she saw a look of fear
on his face that made her quail.
Catelyn could think of nothing more to say and so she
breathlessly whispered, “How?”
The Emperor simply held out the sickle.
“This is part of it,” he explained. “Whoever created these
artifacts made them as part of a set. There are other artifacts that
yet lay undiscovered, and these two I only barely understand. But I
have been studying them nonstop since the sickle was delivered
unto me, and what I do know is that they resonate together.
There’s some sort of shared connection between them, but there is
also a connection between these, and those like you and I,” and he
moved his free hand over his chest, showing his scars.
“I first noticed the effect with, of all things, a song. A song
which haunted me for days off and on, and which apparently only I
could hear. I thought perhaps I was descending into madness, but
in fact I finally learned that it was you. I heard you humming while
you were examining the figures on the handle. While you were
working at that, I was hearing you, through the connection
between your artifact and mine.”
Catelyn felt her world shattering. Had Uriel been witness
to everything she had done since acquiring the artifact? He seemed
to guess her line of reasoning, for he answered.
“No, before I laid my hands on this amazing piece, all I
had were snippets of thoughts, the humming being the strongest.
But then, when I finally grasped this item in my hand, it began to
speak to me, and I could sense your world as you did. It seems the
sickle has bonded to you somehow.”
Catelyn fell deeper into despair, to think that this monster
was somehow inside her head, had somehow become a voyeur into
her life.
“But it was incomplete. I was amazed by how much the
bloodfire had changed you, had altered your perceptions, but I was
surprised that it had also harmed you, and taken your eyesight.
The scarring is a normal side effect, but my father’s physician, the
one who applied my own doses of bloodfire as a child, had assured
me that it was used in ancient times to heal, not hurt. I gave you
another dose from his own supply, and waited.”
Catelyn understood now. He had hoped to restore her
eyesight, not as a gift to her, but as a way to spy on her movements
and watch her life play out through the connection that they
seemed to share. All because she had touched the artifact. And
then she realized that they must have been allowed to escape, as it
wouldn’t have made a difference with the Emperor being able to
watch her every move. He could use her anytime he wished.
I wish I had never heard of that damn artifact,
she
thought bitterly.
But it didn’t matter now. Everything was over.
Ortis coughed and she looked up at him, everything
appearing clouded through the tears in her eyes. He was still
holding his arms out, the muscles in his arms straining with effort,
and Catelyn wondered what he was doing. He looked down at his
hands, and she looked too, but she couldn’t understand. Then,
Ortis closed his eyes.
Catelyn finally understood his meaning, and closed her
eyes and reached out with her bubble. She blocked out everything
else and tightened her bubble to the small area around Ortis and
his bound hands. She could hear his heart thumping strong in his
chest, and she could tell he was moderating his breath, keeping
himself from being completely calm. He was primed for
movement; for combat. But why?
She turned her senses to focus on his manacled wrists and
she could hear the subtlest squealing as Ortis pulled the chains
tight with most of his strength. She could make out a slight
amplitude change on the chain where it connected to the iron
strapped around Ortis’ left wrist and her pulse quickened. A weak
point! That was what Ortis was trying to communicate to her.
She opened her eyes and let her bubble drop completely.
Before her, she saw the Emperor come out of the bubble as
well. He had been watching, but would he be able to interpret what
he had sensed through her? He shivered, and sighed.
“Oh, that was exquisite!” he exclaimed. “It truly is a gift
you have.”
The Emperor took a few breaths to compose himself, and
Catelyn watched him closely, looking for signs that the connection
he had would be enough to clue him in to what she had seen. But
she hoped that his reaction meant that he was still learning how to
cope with all of the extra sensory information he was receiving
through her senses, aided by the sickle. It had taken her sojourns
to learn to read the signs and interpret her heightened senses, and
he had only been exposed to them for spans, at most.