The Bloodstained God (Book 2) (9 page)

Sara Bruff sat in the midst of a city of books and allowed her gaze to wander. She had seen books before. There was the rent book that the men from the tannery had brought round. Her father had
owned several, and she had been read stories from them, but she had never imagined that there could be so many books in the world, or at least not so many different ones.

She glanced down at Saul, her son. He was a good boy, never making a fuss. The child was not yet old enough to speak, but he watched the world with placid eyes, and he did not cling or scream. She had thought that he was touched, perhaps, in the beginning. She had seen such people – dull and vacant eyes, minds that understood nothing, but Saul was not such a one. She was certain of it now. His gaze was intelligent, he laughed when she tickled him, his grip was firm and sure.

And now this. With Saul dead, dear Saul who had never been unkind, who had worked all too hard to give her a good life. She had thought that life destroyed. She had begged him not to volunteer, but he had insisted, saying that he could not live in the peace paid for by other men’s blood. Saul had been a good man.

And now this. Picked off the street by a lord because Saul, brave Saul, had apparently not died entirely in vain. He had saved the life of this young faced lord, and the lord in his turn had given her new hope.

She did not know what the future held. Perhaps she would have been better off going to Shillana’s house. Her sister would have treated her little better than a servant, but she would have been safe, and Saul, too. She would have been fed, and had a bed to sleep on, and she would have understood the world around her far more than she understood this place and all its intrigues. Now, however, she was a librarian, whatever that might be, the warder of these books at least, perhaps more. She was to have an apartment, the one that the Steward had trespassed in and so angered the lord. She wondered if the rest of the household would treat her well, or resent that she lived so well among them.

She was determined not be become a mistress, a private whore. She had seen the way that he had looked at her, his glance travelling her body, but there was something else there, too. The lord of Latter Fetch had goodness and steel in him, and she had gambled on what she had seen. There was the boy, too; Tilian Henn. The boy burned with loyalty, with pride, with that exceptional, idealistic naivety that could not be distrusted. It was the boy as much as anything that had persuaded her to trust the lord.

She picked up a book. It was fat and heavy and she had to use two hands to lift it off the shelf. It was bound in cream and red leather, as soft as Saul’s skin. She opened it and it creaked a little, its scent filling her face. It was full of words. Its value was probably greater than everything she owned, not excluding the fine clothes that the lord and Henn had bought her. She flicked through the pages back to the first.

A Speculative History of the Mage Lords, Their Wars, Their Customs, and The Great Conflagration That Brought Them Low.

She wondered that there should be so many words in a mere title. She knew that there were men who did nothing but study and write, scholars, but she had never held or even seen such a book. She stroked the page with a finger. It was smooth as silk, thin as thread, and had taken on a faint buttery colour against which the words looked like flies, ranks of impertinent flies asking to be swatted away.

But Sara did not even know who or what the Mage Lords were. Here was knowledge, albeit knowledge of a past long dead, or a place so far away that she did not know it.

She glanced at Saul. He was still sleeping, eyes tight closed, face quite composed. She began to read.

There were some words that she did not know, but she was able to guess their meaning well enough. The scholar who had written this seemed to repeat everything he wrote at least twice using different words, as though emphasising every sentence, and so lost the emphasis he sought. How brazen of her to criticize so wise a man! She read page after page, and learned that the mage lords were indeed a figment of the past, and a past so distant that it was placed before Avilian, before the beast realms of plain and forest, even before many of the gods themselves.

Despite the turgid prose she enjoyed reading the book, enjoyed it for the story that it carried so poorly. The Mage Lords, godlike men who had ruled all the world, wielded great magic in their time, more so than Duranders, of whom she had heard, and more even than the gods. They fought wars against each other, made and broke alliances, raised vast armies of terrible men called Farheim, armed them with magical weapons and sent them one against the other. After one final great war there were just twelve mages left, the strongest twelve, and all the others had perished.

She wished that there were more heroes in the tale, but the mage lords all seemed as cruel and greedy as each other. There was no justice, no fairness in their lands. She thought of all the men like Saul who must have died, all the family men with wives and children, and she hated those long dead lords just a little, though they were too distant and unreal for her to hate them very much. They were like villains in the stories her father had read to her, only really true while the words of the story were spoken.

She looked up again, and saw that the light outside the windows was beginning to fade. She checked on Saul again, but the boy continued to sleep. She rose and moved quietly around the room, looking for candles, but could find none. Her eye was caught by the bell rope. Pull it and someone would come, he had said. She was hungry, too, and had not eaten since they had arrived at the house.

She wondered about the man in the stable yard; the one who had been bleeding. Henn had told her that he was an assassin, that the lord had been wounded by an arrow, but the lord had not seemed much affected by the wound. She supposed that one became used to such things in battle, or perhaps the wound was not so great.

She did not want to use the bell rope, but the alternative was to leave the library and wander around the darkening corridors of the great house. She could not even remember the way to the kitchens, and she did not know where she was supposed to sleep this night, if the apartment was hers yet or if she must wait a night until it was so. She could sleep here, she supposed, among the books. There were rugs on the floor, and Saul seemed happy enough. But she was hungry, so after some hesitation she pulled on the rope, a tentative pull, but it was enough. She heard a faint noise, a tinkling, bell-like sound, from a distant part of the house. She stared at the door and waited.

It was not long before the door opened and a maid put her head inside. Seeing Sara there she stepped inside and executed a sort of bow, keeping her eyes on the floor. The maid waited for her to speak. She was not sure what to say, or how to say it.

“Can I have some food?” she blurted. “And candles, or a lamp?”

The maid looked uncertain. “What food, my lady?” she asked.

Choice. She wasn’t used to choice. Usually there was only one thing to eat. You ate what you had and hoped there would be something else tomorrow.

“Cheese?” she asked. “And bread. What do you have?”

“There’s ham,” the maid said. “And fruit, and a good Afaeli sausage. That’s cold. The cook can make what you want, though. A stew? There’s some beef…” she fell silent, as though worried she had said too much.

Sara saw that the girl was afraid of her. She was suddenly somebody of consequence, and she had not guessed it. But of course in the eyes of these people it must be so. She had arrived with the lord, she had been assigned the apartment in which to live, and in the small hierarchy of the estate that put her above the steward, which was ridiculous. She was nobody.

Yet she was. By chance and luck she was somebody, here and now. She did not know, could not say why or for how long. She smiled at the maid.

“Thank you, but something cold would be very welcome. Is the sausage really good?”

The young girl smiled back, a little smile. “It’s not grand or anything,” she said. “Not as sweet as the ham, but spicy.”

“Well, perhaps a couple of small slices,” she said. “And a slice of ham and some bread.”

“Would my lady like some fruit? Wine?” That was bolder. The maid was more confident now that her head had not been snapped at, and her lady seemed kind.

“Oh, fruit would be very good, but just water will do, if it’s sweet.”

“I’ll fetch it for you at once, and I’ll bring some lamps that you may continue with your work.” With another bow, brisker this time, the maid was gone. Sara realised that she had not asked the girl her name, and that was rude of her. She made it a rule; she must always ask the name of anyone she spoke to, and she must remember them all. It was odd, because she had always know the name of everyone she dealt with, and now she was among strangers, even those whose names she knew. Everything was strange here. Back in the tannery cottage among all the other tannery people, tanners and dyers and chemical men and their wives, she had been comfortable and Saul had been well liked, and so had she. Now everything was in the wind, a grand throw of dice in the face of adversity, but Sara was not afraid. She was uncertain, she was struggling, but it was all quite exciting.

The maid was back sooner than she expected, and Sara was still gazing into space, thinking on the changes in her life when the girl pushed the door open with a broad tray weighed down by a large plate, a jug and a glass. Three lamps, already lit, hung from her fingers beneath the tray. She put it on the corner of the table and carefully put the lamps down.

“There you are, my lady,” she said. Sara studied the tray. There was more food on it than she had ever eaten before. The ham was thick and pink, and three rounds of mottled Afaeli sausage, almost as big as the slices of bread they cosied up to, lay beside an apple, a pear, and a bunch of red grapes. A small, round cheese finished the platter. She and Saul had often eaten half so much between them.

“Thank you,” she said. “Will you tell me your name?”

There was a moment of doubt on the girl’s face again, but she bobbed her head again. “Lira, my lady,” she said.

“Thank you, Lira. If I ring again will you come, and not another?”

“As you wish, my lady.” Lira blushed and smiled at the same time, bobbed her head yet again and retreated hastily from the room. Sara smiled to herself. She liked the girl. She was probably brighter than her tasks called for, or so Sara judged. If she was to live like this she would need an ally, someone to take her side, and she thought that Lira might be that.

She moved the tray so that it was next to the book she had been reading, and arranged the lamps so that they shed their light over its pages, and with another glance at Saul she began to eat. Work, the girl had called it. Could this really be work? She turned over one of the buttery pages and began to read again, one hand reaching out from time to time to the food. The maid had brought a sharp little knife and when she needed to she put the book aside and cut pieces off the ham and sausage. It was good food, better than she was used to. The ham was very sweet, and the sausage very spicy, and she wondered if this was what lords and ladies ate all the time. It was a wonder they were not all quite fat.

She could not imagine what was happening in the rest of the house. She had not seen anyone apart from Lira since Henn has sent her back to the library and told her to stay there, but she didn’t mind. It was warm enough, she had Saul with her, plenty of food, and the book was entertaining her better than she had hoped.

The Mage lords, the god mages, the twelve of them, were determined to vie for control of the entire world, it seemed. The greatest of them all, the one that they all feared, was called Cobranus, also named the lord of pain. He gathered around him those that feared him most: the weak, the wicked, the very worst. With Cobranus they were the seven, and with him they plotted to destroy the five. They created a spell, a magic so terrible that one of the seven, the Mage Ilianus, ended himself rather than take part in its casting.

Yet still the spell was cast, and nine creatures were created. They were demons so powerful that the mages who had created them failed utterly to control them, and were destroyed by their own creation. The creatures, called dragons, spread out across the world and killed all they found wherever they went. They could not be pierced by sword or lance, passed through fire unharmed, and had the strength of five hundred men, or so it was said. They were large, winged lizards, clever as the wisest man, remorseless as time, and they did what they had been made to do.