The Elder Blood Chronicles Book 2 Blood Honor and Dreams Read online

  “You lying bastard, the only reason I slept with you was because I was drunk. If you hadn’t gotten me drunk first I never would have slummed it with the likes of you,” Cassia snarled, moving quickly to stand by her brother.

  “Oh bloody, bloody hell,” Valor mumbled again.

  “Oh Fortune, what is he doing?” Jala whispered, her jaw dropped slightly.

  “Really? It was the stable boy that told me you were easy. Well, and the kitchen boy and two guards, but it was the stable boy first,” Finn said, a note of disbelief in his voice. “I really never considered myself lower than a stable boy, but oh, well,” he added with a shrug and took a long drag from his cigarette.

  “You are lying!” Cassia screeched. The crowd had fallen silent around them, intent on the newest gossip.

  Chuckling, Finn shook his head at Cassia. “No, I’m not, and everyone here knows how brutally honest I am. Sorry Cassia, but when it comes to honesty my reputation is secure,” he said with another shrug.

  “The stable boy?” Nate said in disbelief, looking back at his sister. “Which one, the twelve-year-old or the older one with the limp?” he asked, his expression filled with disgust.

  “Limpy. The twelve year old is scared of her,” Finn said supplying the answer with a charming smile.

  “Is the fact that you were drunk, the reason you called me daddy, Cassia? That could explain why he was so irate when he walked in on us. I mean if he was expecting a good ride and I had his pony he would have, of course, been pissed. I’ve always wondered about that. And truly I feel inclined to point out that it was you that brought the bottle of wine to the training yards and I was the virgin in that particular arrangement,” Finn said, his voice trailing off in thought. Looking back up at her he smiled ruefully. “You know, given my first experience, it’s a wonder I didn’t become celibate after that.”

  “What?” Nate demanded, his voice cracking as he stared at his sister.

  “He is lying!” she wailed and spun on Finn. “You will pay for this Finn!” she screamed, tears beginning to fill her blue eyes.

  “Shouldn’t start fights you can’t win, Cassia,” Finn said mildly. He raised an eyebrow at her and smiled. “Drop a coin on me Cass. I’ll be happy to kill another Rivasan for you,” he urged, his, smile taking on a wicked edge.

  Barely containing herself, she threw a black coin to land at his feet. “Pick it up, Finn,” she dared him, her expression caught between horror and satisfaction.

  Calmly Finn bent and picked up the coin, tossing it in the air and catching it and looked at Cassia with a smile. “A few more marks than the typical Rivasan on this coin. Might actually be worth going to the arena for. Two days from now in the evening. I’m busy until then. I’ll be happy to kill your champion then, though. Drop Madren for now. You beating morons offend Jala.” He motioned idly toward the limp form and Cassia turned to look with a bit of shock on her face. It was apparent she had forgotten all about her former entertainment.

  “Let him go,” she snapped to the two men holding Madren up. Wordlessly they dropped him and he fell limply to the ground. Spinning on her heels, she pushed her way through the circle and stormed off toward the school, her brother close behind her and apparently full of questions she didn’t want to answer.

  Finn glanced at Jala and then Valor and watched the crowd disperse. His gaze fell on Nigel who was lingering with a doubtful look on his handsome face. Silently, Finn moved off to stand by Nigel and they began to talk too quiet for Jala to overhear.

  “What was that?” Jala asked Valor quietly.

  “That was him provoking a duel, though I don’t know why,” Valor replied with a shrug. “You always have to worry when he lights a cigarette, he only smokes when he thinks he is about to fight. It’s some Firym custom or something.” Shaking his head he shrugged. “I think they actually take a breath of flames, not sure. I’m not exactly up to date on Firym customs.” He frowned and looked down at Madren. “I think he is going to need healing,” he said after a moment’s examination.

  Moving closer Jala knelt down beside the fallen man and surveyed his wounds. Resting a hand gently on his chest she summoned a healing spell and watched Madren’s wounds begin to recede.

  His eyes flickered open and after a moment focused on her. “Thank you,” he mumbled.

  “Why didn’t you leave with Shade?” she asked quietly.

  “I couldn’t. I haven’t learned what I need to know yet,” he mumbled and tried to sit up.

  “What is so important for you to learn that it’s worth this, Madren,” Jala asked, leaning back on her heels to watch him. She didn’t think he was fully healed yet but he seemed to be well enough to sit up.

  “How to lift the curse on my land,” he whispered.

  “Goswin?” Jala asked, and then remembered he had known his way to the Tolanteer because he was from Goswin. “I’ll help you with that, Madren, I need the curse gone there, too,” she offered, trying to reassure him.

  With a gasp, Madren wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her chest. “Oh Jala, I knew you cared,” he said, his voice heavily muffled by the fact that he was burrowing his face between her breasts. Frantically, she pushed him back, trying to dislodge him and glanced up quickly at a snarl behind her. Marrow stood nearby, glowering and Finn was quickly approaching with an expression of fury. She wasn’t exactly sure which of them the snarl had come from.

  “Valor, stop him while I get Madren off of me,” she pleaded motioning at Finn.

  “Mmm, no,” Valor replied with a smile and stepped back to allow Finn to storm past and wrench Madren to his feet.

  “That is my wife, you little bastard, and you will not touch her. If it were up to me Cassia’s thugs would still be beating you to a bloody pulp.” He shook Madren roughly as he spoke and then held him up to force him to meet his eyes. Madren let out a whimper and Jala stood slowly, her eyes locked on Finn, silently warning him that she was not happy. “I’m going to let you go now and you are quickly going to get out of my sight. If I blink and you are still here I’m going to make Cassia’s attentions seem pleasant. Are we clear?”

  “Clear, very clear,” Madren squeaked and Finn dropped him with a look of disgust. His feet had no sooner touched the ground then he was running.

  “So horribly pathetic. Do you think he was always that weak?” Valor asked, his voice thick with disgust.

  “From what I hear, it’s the only reason he survived the fall of Goswin,” Finn replied and glanced at Jala.

  She bent slowly and brushed the grass from the front of her gown. “He doesn’t mean anything by it Finn. He is like a child with no manners. There was no need to threaten him like that. He is terrified of you.”

  “He should be terrified. I’d be happy to teach him some manners more effectively than Shade did,” Finn grumbled.

  Meeting his eyes, she raised an eyebrow. “Speaking of manners, care to explain why you forced a duel out of Cassia?” she asked with no trace of anger, just simple curiosity. Saving Madren was one thing, getting in a fight with Finn over him was quite another. She would defend him if needed, but she wouldn’t push the topic where Finn was concerned. It was far better to simply turn the subject of conversation.

  “My wife didn’t leave me much choice in that. Had she listened and simply walked on by, it wouldn’t have been necessary, but no, she had to help the pervert,” Finn replied with a smirk.

  “How does me helping Madren mean you have to duel?” she asked incredulously.

  “Because my reputation was close to ruined before you interfered. If I would have simply sat back and done nothing it would have been gone completely. The only choice I had was to humiliate her and then win the duel that resulted. No one is going to hire a duelist that won’t even defend his own wife,” Finn explained patiently.

  “What?” Jala asked her expression dumbfounded.

  “I depend on the people in that crowd for work. Those are the sort of people that hire duelists. Jala,
do you expect to rebuild with no money? If I have no reputation then I’m not working. If I’m not working we are poor,” Finn clarified.

  “I thought we would just use magic to do it,” she admitted meekly.

  “Magic can be dispelled, Jala. It has to be done with coins and true labor,” Finn explained and gave her another smile. Glancing over his shoulder he watched Nigel approach and nodded to the man with respect.

  Nigel stopped a few feet away from them and looked her over from head to toe and then nodded slowly at Finn. “I agree to your terms, I will spread the word for you. I look forward to this fight. It should prove very interesting,” he said and bowed his head slightly to Jala and then Valor. “Good day, Milady, Valor.” His voice held a thick accent that she didn’t recognize and she remained silent, watching him leave, and then looked back to Finn.

  “What was that?” she asked motioning toward Nigel.

  “What?” Finn asked innocently and turned to look in the direction she pointed. “Ahh, that was Nigel. He is a decent friend of mine. A merchant here in Sanctuary actually, very wealthy,” he explained.

  “I think she meant, ‘what did he mean by I accept your terms?’” Valor corrected with a smirk.

  “Oh that, just a little matter of a bet we made. He seems to think I’ll lose the duel,” Finn said with a shrug as if in dismissal.

  Valor raised an eyebrow and exchanged glances with Jala. “Why would he think that, Finn? Nigel usually bets on you and you are considered the best sword in the city,” Valor prompted.

  Rubbing his jaw, Finn pursed his lips and let out a breath. “Remember when Nigel stopped me at the edge of the crowd?” he asked. They both nodded and Finn nodded once. “Well, he wanted to warn me to stay out of it. Apparently Cassia spent a good deal of money to hire a new duelist,” he explained.

  “Who did she hire?” Valor asked cautiously.

  “Kithkanon,” Finn replied with a smile.

  “What?” Valor demanded, his voice rising to a near yell. He stared at Finn in horror and began shaking his head slightly. “Why would you do that? Why would you provoke that fight? Have you gone fucking insane, Finn?”

  “Who is Kithkanon?” Jala asked, cutting into Valor’s tirade.

  “Just like that, Val, I want you to throw a fit just like that later tonight at the bar. Let everyone believe you think I’m going to lose,” Finn said, happily pointing a finger at Valor whose face was rapidly draining of color.

  “I do think you are going to lose, Finn. Kithkanon is a seven-hundred-year-old mercenary. They don’t live that long because they can’t use a sword,” Valor cried and threw his hands up still shaking his head.

  “You are going to fight a seven-hundred-year-old mercenary?” Jala gasped, staring at Finn in disbelief.

  Finn glanced between the two of them and flashed a charming smile. “And we are going to bet my life savings on the fight,” he said.

  “What?” Jala and Valor both spoke at the same time and froze to stare at Finn in disbelief.

  “I will win. I always win. You both know that. We are going to spend the next two days making everyone believe I’m going to lose, though, and then we are going to bet everything on the fight,” he explained. He watched them both, smiling happily until the silence stretched uncomfortably. The smile slowly faded and he frowned slightly. “It will work,” he assured them.

  “Do you know why we are going to see my brother, Finn?” Valor asked finally in a voice filled with resignation.

  “Not a clue, Val. You said it was a surprise,” Finn replied, unbothered by the change of topic.

  “I reached majority last year but I never collected the funds. I’m about to ask my brother for what I’m due in the form of lumber, food, and supplies to repair Merro,” Valor explained with a sigh.

  “Well, I hope we have both learned a valuable lesson about surprises. Had I known that, I probably wouldn’t have chosen the path I did. Too late for regrets, though,” Finn said dryly.

  “I’m regretting this entire day. It’s not too late,” Jala said weakly, her gaze fixed on Finn. If she had listened to him and not interfered he wouldn’t be in the position he now was. If he died during the duel there would be no one to blame but herself. She watched him and felt a lump of dread settle into her stomach.

  Valor stared up at the passing clouds for a moment and then gave a long weary sigh. Reaching across to Finn he plucked the flask from his pocket and took a healthy swallow. Returning his gaze at last at Finn, he raised a slender silver eyebrow. “So she called you daddy?” he asked, sounding faintly amused.

  Finn shook his head slowly and reclaimed his flask. “No, I lied about everything but her sleeping with me and her father catching us. That’s the benefit to having a reputation for telling the truth. When you do lie, everyone believes you.”

  Chapter 2

  Gaelyn

  Wind whipped through his clothes as Shade moved to a lower ledge of the roof. As far as he could tell there were no streets in the city that were safe. Absently, he brushed a lock of hair from his face and cursed as a talon grazed his skin. You have claws he reminded himself for what seemed like the hundredth time. Though the Fionaveir had given him a week to get used to the Blight form, he still wasn’t. He wasn’t sure if he ever would be. Mastering the camouflage talent and remembering he had talons seemed to be the most difficult part of it so far. It had been the only way they had determined that he could locate Charm inside this city without being killed. They had guessed that Eldagar had fallen completely and from what he could see they had guessed right. The city had a sweet rancid smell to it filled with rot and old blood. Had he been in his normal form it would have sickened him. The instincts of this form relished the smell however, and it was mental revulsion he felt, not physical.

  Reaching a hand into his pocket he gripped the trinket the Fionaveir had given him to locate the missing rogue. The stone pulsed in his hand and grew warmer as he turned toward the southern part of the city. With caution bordering on paranoia, he headed toward the south where the legendary fortress loomed dark against the skyline. As far as safe houses went, the Blights couldn’t have chosen a better one. Eldagar was infamous for its walls and defenses.

  His plan was a simple one: locate Charm, break the Spell Hawk out of the storing gem in his pocket and get out of this city without another glance back. It sounded simple at any rate. He had thought, with the use of the trinket, finding Charm would be easy. So far, he had been looking for two days and it was proving quite the opposite of easy. If the Fionaveir were testing him with this assignment, they had chosen a difficult test.

  Movement on the street below caught his eye and he froze in place, watching two of the creatures infesting the city pass by. From this distance they looked normal. He could have seen them in Sanctuary and not given them a second glance. That was perhaps the most frightening thing about the creatures. At least with Kali’s other creations you knew what death looked like. A Bendazzi could hardly be mistaken for a house cat. The Blights however simply looked like everyone else, true wolves in sheep’s clothing. The creatures were silent as they passed. Most of them that he had seen so far had been. He was beginning to believe they used mental communication with each other. It was that, or they simply didn’t communicate, or it was pheromones perhaps. He had heard of creatures using scent to communicate, though it didn’t seem an effective way to him.

  With a silent sigh of relief, he watched them continue down the street without glancing back at him. Cautiously, he began moving again. He felt a tug from the stone in his hand and changed his direction accordingly. This had been his problem for the past two days. Charm never seemed to rest. He always moved before Shade could close in and it was turning into an endless game of hide and seek. Unfortunately, from what the Fionaveir had told him of Charm, the rogue definitely had the upper hand at hiding.

  He really only had two options that he could see. Either abandon caution and move swiftly or try to anticipate where Charm would
move next and cut him off. Neither option was a good one. The city was crawling with Blights. Abandoning caution would likely get him killed, and anticipating Charm’s movements, from what he had seen so far, would be like guessing where a rain drop would fall. Muffling another curse, Shade scanned the horizon and tried to make a guess. At worst, he would be following a greater distance. At best, he would finally catch up with the rogue. From the direction the stone pulled him, Charm was either moving directly toward the fortress or into the noble district. Shade nearly groaned at the thought of trying to locate a master of stealth among the labyrinth of gardens in the noble district. The thought of trying to find him in an impregnable fortress filled with monsters was even less appealing, though. He idly tossed the idea of shifting to a bird around in his mind but dismissed it quickly. From what he had seen of the city, the Blights killed animals as freely as they did humans. He had yet to even see a rat in the city, which meant the scavenger work on the bodies in the city below had been done by the Blights themselves.

  Shifting his feet slightly, he turned his gaze from the noble’s grand houses to the fortress and back again. Had he been Charm, the fortress was the last place he would want to be. Hell, for that matter, Eldagar was the last place he wanted to be. He hadn’t realized there was a threat, let alone a threat of this magnitude, before joining the Fionaveir. From what they had told him of the Blights, it was the whole of Sanctuary in danger.

  “OK, then,” he whispered and pulled a gold coin from his pocket. “Let’s see if your god really listens, Jala,” He spoke out of habit. He knew better, but going from living in Sanctuary to being utterly alone in a city filled with hostile creatures was a harsh change. Right now he needed to hear another voice, even if it was his own. “Crowns, I go to the Fortress; phoenix, I go to the noble’s.” He mouthed the words more than spoke them, not letting a hint of noise carry on the wind. Flipping his hand quickly he let the coin rise a few inches and caught it flipping it back onto his other hand. He held it in place on the back of his hand, not wanting to know the results. Swallowing deeply, he slowly slid his hand back and stared down at the revealed crown. Well, either Charm is heading toward the fortress or Fortune wants me dead, he decided and slipped the coin back into his pocket.