Blood Betrayal Read online

  As the guard stumbled away to find as many other guards, priests or bureaucrats as he could to call them to the great hall beyond, Menak turned back to the young king and asked, “Majesty, what of your father?”

  Cor’El snorted briefly and rolled his eyes. “If he’s foolish enough to come here, I’ll end him, too.”

  King Rederick

  As the petrification spread up his body, Rederick knew fear the likes of which he had never known. In his life, he’d faced hundreds of bloodthirsty Northmen so whipped up into a fervor that they nearly foamed at the mouth, and he had faced thousands upon thousands of Nadav’s dead. Even defeated, pushed into Garod’s temple as he was when Cor had rescued him, he wasn’t afraid. It came from the arrogance of knowing that he had eventually won against every foe. It came from the realization that he could not save himself, just as he could not save his unborn child.

  One thought went through his mind as his strangled voice could no longer make a sound, just before his brains turned to stone with the rest of his body – what if Queen Erella had slain the babe that eventually became Lord Dahken Cor Pelson.

  Lord Dahken Cor Pelson

  The Dahken rode through the westernmost gate of Byrverus late in the afternoon, Lord Dahken Cor at the head of a brilliant display of black armored knights, and they saw plainly that all was not well in Byrverus. Some homes and shops were locked up tight with barred doors and shuttered windows, while others were left with doors ajar to sway slightly in the breeze. Many people hurriedly made their way for the gates, their belongings thrown across their backs, meanwhile others seemed to be frozen in place, lost in some all-consuming thoughts.

  And then there was the curious lack of Aquis’ soldiers in their usual places. The gate and nearby wall had only one gleaming form where there was usually at least a half dozen atop it, a lone man who let out a piercing whistle as Cor and his entourage approached. No guards flanked the gate inside or out, and once inside, Cor saw only the occasional armored Westerner running up or down a street or perhaps going from building to building. Someone deeper in the city picked up the gate watcher’s whistle and sent it along.

  Nervousness made Cor’s skin crawl, and he wanted to simply shake and shudder it off to rid himself of the sensation. The entire scene felt of general panic, of a disorganized need to take action with no real inkling of what action to take. Cor calmed a bit when a plate clad soldier came striding down the avenue directly for him, an insignia molded into the man’s hauberk identifying him as a guard captain. Cor walked his warhorse toward the man, mindful of the people around him. Once close, the captain saluted and raised the visor of his helm to reveal the gray eyes of a Westerner.

  Cor started, “What’s wrong?”

  “Lord Dahken Cor, you’re needed at the Crescent.”

  “What’s wrong?” Cor repeated.

  “I don’t…,” the man stumbled over his words for a moment, “The king is dead.”

  “What? How?”

  “As is Queen Mora and Lord Red,” the captain continued.

  “Damn it, man, how?!” Cor shouted.

  “Murdered, my lord.”

  “By whom?”

  The captain reached up and pulled his helm from his chain cowled head. He was an older soldier, with lines of worry around his mouth and on his brow and more at the edges of his eyes from squinting. His near black hair had long begun turning gray, though it still held some of its original color. His gray stubbled face turned down toward the road for a moment as he struggled with whatever truth he couldn’t find the courage to convey. Finally, he looked back up at Cor, squinting at the late afternoon sun that was beginning to move down in the sky just behind the Lord Dahken, making the man and his horse appear almost as some sort of black nightmare.

  “Your son, my lord.”

  Cor sat dumbfounded astride his horse, searching the captain’s face for any sign of duplicity, searching within himself for any possibility that the man’s words could be true. “Impossible,” he almost whispered.

  “It’s true, lord. There’s more you must know.”

  “What?” Cor asked, growing irritable at the bee like sound that had been in his ears for the last minute or so but he had only just recognized. It grew loud, a crescendo like a swarm of bees preparing to defend their hive from some great trespasser. Concentration suddenly became difficult when a song of blood and death sounded in his mind, Soulmourn and Ebonwing calling him to action. He clenched and unclenched his fists over and over, though he wasn’t aware of it until later.

  “Come to the Crescent, my lord, for I don’t know all the details.”

  Ignoring the unseen will urging him to slay this man for his frustrating inability or unwillingness to divulge more, Cor kicked his horse forward, now suddenly heedless of the people in the streets. He brought the horse to a gallop almost instantly, as the steed was as professional as any soldier and recognized the call for action. Westerners scurried and yelped out of his way, and his Dahken struggled to keep up, either because some of them were still children, or little more than, and not yet completely comfortable on horseback. Or perhaps their horses were simply not the animal that was their Lord Dahken’s.

  He neither knew how long it took him to reach the Crescent, nor did Cor care, with his mind so distracted by a desire to simply wreak havoc upon any enemy he could find. Finally, he reached the large intersection and fountained plaza that bordered the western entrance, the very plaza in which his son had nearly slaughtered his Dahken the previous day’s morning. He swore he even still saw their blood sprayed and scattered across the plaza and contaminating the waters of the copper fountain, although he knew it not to be true for surely it had all been clean away by now. He slowed his horse to a trot and then brought it to a stop just before several men who stood outside the doorway, and he nearly jumped from his horse as he heard his Dahken finally catching up with him.

  “What is this?” Cor demanded of Brenden Joelson, two more guard captains and a young priest whom he did not know.

  “Lord Dahken, it’s -,” the venerable Brenden started, but he was cut off by the priest.

  “Your son has slain King Rederick, Queen Mora and their unborn child!” he cried.

  He must have been a number of years younger than Cor himself, though one might think it was the other way around as slowly as Dahken seem to age. Unlike most Westerners and even most of Garod’s priests, this man kept both his head and narrow face shaven completely clean. A sharply pointed nose stuck out from beneath intense brown eyes. Cor felt an intense need to connect his mailed fist with the priest’s nose.

  “It can’t be true,” Cor half whispered.

  “I’m afraid it is,” Brenden said with a hand held up to stave off the priest’s response. “Inside is a palace guard who actually saw the entire affair.”

  “Why would he do this?” Cor asked. “Where’s Thyss?”

  Brenden paused a moment before answering, and when he did, it was slow and deliberate with his eyes locked with Cor’s, “He called everyone, anyone to the palace of any import at all. Thyss and the Loszian lord, Menak, were with him. He declared himself Emperor of the West and Thyss his Empress.”

  “What?” Cor gasped, appalled. “Where are they now?”

  “Somewhere in the palace,” Brenden replied, and Cor had a sense that he man held something back.

  “That is not all,” the priest sneered.

  “Who are you?” Cor asked dazedly.

  “This is Collen,” Brenden responded quickly.

  “I am upon the King’s Council, if such a thing exists,” Collen said.

  “I don’t understand. Greyson sits Rederick’s Council,” replied Cor.

  “Not since your son killed him, too. There is no King, no Council and no one to call a Convocation. As your son made his grand announcement, we priests stood against him. Over a hundred of us, as well as two hundred of the king’s guard, fought him in the grand hall where he sat upon Rederick’s throne,” explained Collen
, and tears began to roll down his face from the corners of his eyes. “Only a few of us survived.”

  Cor stared at Collen as he told the story, then he looked to Brenden whose eyes showed somber agreement. The guard captains had been silent, but their very presence seemed to confirm what was being said. He bowed his head, his eyes finding the paving stones below his feet before he closed them attempting to calm himself, make any sense of what they claimed. After a few deep breaths, he opened his eyes and stormed toward the doorway leading into the Crescent.

  “Lord Dahken, where are you going?” Keth called after him, and Cor hadn’t even realized his old friend had been standing just behind him the entire time.

  Cor stopped and turned to say, “To the palace. To find Thyss. To end this.”

  He began to turn again when Keth, approaching, said, “Are you not forgetting something?”

  “There’s no time, Keth.”

  “I agree, but not the way you think, Cor,” Keth replied.

  Cor stopped short at the sound of his name passing Keth’s lips, for he wasn’t sure he had ever heard it happen before. The man was a stalwart friend and a strong warrior to have at Cor’s side, but despite years of companionship, Keth had always called him Lord Dahken. Cor cocked his head to one side, but he couldn’t divine Keth’s meaning. This was such a simple matter.

  Seeing the pause, Keth pushed forward, “You cannot hope to defeat him.”

  Cor’s eyes flashed and his nostrils flared angrily. “I can handle myself against even gods. My own son cannot harm me, and he will not. He’s my son.”

  “He’s slain so many already,” argued Keth.

  “If it comes to that, I will do what I must.”

  “Will you? Can you? It is easy to say, but I question even your resolve when faced with destroying your one and only son.”

  Cor paused, confronted with it, the task suddenly seemed harder to contemplate than he had thought. After a moment, he sighed and replied softly, “If I must, I will.”

  “And what if you lose?” Keth immediately asked, his tone so calm, so matter of fact that Cor already knew his pragmatic friend had calculated the entire conversation.

  Cor’s eyes dropped to stare at the feet of the assembled men, and when he raised them again, he calmly replied, “I have never lost.”

  “But what if you do?” Keth pressed. “You have no right to take that chance. Look at your Dahken, look all around you at the city of Byrverus. You did this, you helped create this. It is your…”

  “It is my responsibility to protect it,” Cor finished his friend’s sentence. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs caused by Soulmourn and Ebonwing’s bloodlust, to rid himself of the song in his mind and the buzzing in his ears that threatened to drown out all reason. Cor stepped back towards the men and put his hands on his friend’s steel shoulders. “I hate you sometimes.”

  Keth smiled in reply, “I know. I accept it.”

  “Lord Dahken,” said one of the captains from behind him, “you should know that Emperor Cor’El commanded that I bring you to him as soon as you returned.”

  Cor dropped his hands to rest them on his sword belt as he turned and said, “So here I am. Do you intend to follow your emperor’s commands?”

  “Of course not, Lord Dahken, but I thought it best to follow along lest I forfeit my own life.”

  “Wise, but what’s the point of telling me this?”

  “I think,” Keth spoke up, causing Cor to twist backwards to face him, “the point is that some people in the city may not be loyal to you. They may want to… ingratiate themselves to the new emperor.”

  “In which case, word is already headed to my son that I am in the city, so we haven’t much time,” Cor reasoned. He closed his eyes for just a moment, and a plan of action formed. “Keth, get the rest of the Dahken, and get them out of the city as quickly as you can. Take them to Fort Haldon. You need to move; they leave everything behind that they do not need. Once there, they can decide if they want to stay with us or go their own way, maybe return to their families.”

  Protest showed plainly in Keth’s eyes, but Cor did not allow him to voice it. “I’ll catch up to you soon enough. You may only have minutes. Go,” he said, to which Keth only nodded before turning to speak a few words to the Dahken behind him before he and Hun charged into the Crescent.

  “Now,” Cor continued, but he paused as something else occurred to him, “Where is Lurana?”

  “In my care,” sounded a wavering, grating voice from above.

  Cor looked upwards to find a tiny head peeking out of an open window on the Crescent’s second story. He hadn’t seen Ja’Na in years, and he didn’t completely realize the ancient scholar was still alive, for ancient the Tigolean absolutely was. He had gone bald at some point recently, nothing left of his fine hair except a few white wisps. His yellow face carried dozens of creases from the years, but he still sported a white goatee which he had apparently grown out and started to braid. Ja’Na’s head disappeared from view, and within moment, the man himself appeared in the plaza carrying Lurana with one arm, an act speaking of strength and agility one would not expect from a man who must be ninety years old.

  “We were enjoying each other’s company over a writing lesson when I heard of the unpleasantness,” Ja’Na explained. “I took her from the palace immediately. I thought nowhere would be safer than with Lord Dahken Cor Pelson, assuming you have no intentions of doing something rash.”

  “I want Mama,” Lurana whined sullenly, and she turned to wrap her arms around Ja’Na’s neck, resting her chin on his shoulder.

  He lightly placed a comforting hand on her back and whispered, “I know, dear child.”

  A deep sadness suddenly came into Cor’s heart, and for perhaps the first time in his life, he felt the sudden need to simply break down and cry for this innocent child who wanted only her mother but would never have her again. Tears welled up into his eyes, and he looked away for just a moment to clear them. As he steeled himself, the anguish turned to something else.

  “Do not do anything rash, Lord Dahken,” Ja’Na reminded. “He is more powerful than you know, and he has no morals to prevent him from using his power. I have seen it. You will find a way one day, but today is not that day.”

  Cor nodded at the advice he’d already received twice in only a few minutes and said, “Keth is inside getting the rest of the Dahken together. They ride for Fort Haldon. Go with him and take Lurana with you.”

  Lurana began to wail, but the Tigolean merely slid his hand from her back to the shock of brown hair on her head and whispered into her ear, “Hush, child.” Normally he would bow slightly in the manner of his people, but with the burden of the girl, he merely nodded and turned to find Dahken Keth.

  “What would you have of us?” Collen asked, the venom heard earlier in his voice now gone.

  “Bravery.”

  “What must we do?” questioned Brenden solemnly.

  “Three of you must spread the word throughout the city, do everything you can to urge the people to leave as safely as possible.”

  Collen, “Where should they go?”

  “Anywhere but here.”

  Brenden, “What of the fourth of us?”

  “There’s a task to be done, and I will not decide which of you does it. It’ll put you back in the path of my son, so the four of you must choose. I need you to go back to the palace, find Cor’El and inform him that I am down by the docks chartering a vessel that will take my Dahken to Akor by way of the Byrver.”

  Thyss

  When Thyss came to, she found herself on one of the most comfortable beds on which she had ever lain, one so comfortable as to rival even her own. Her fingertips felt the silk sheets underneath her, and her head had sunk deeply into a down pillow. A canopy of blue, the royal blue of the King of Aquis, swayed in a light breeze above her. She realized that the back of someone’s fingers tenderly caressed her face. She pushed herself into a sitting position, not as quickly as sh
e would have liked for all of the bed’s plushness, just as her son pulled his gray hand away from her.

  “I’m glad you’re awake,” Cor’El said.

  “What have you done?” she asked, the surroundings, the suite shared by Rederick and Mora making it clear that she had not in fact dreamt the nightmare of a short time ago.

  “I’ve taken what is mine, what is yours. It’s our first step of ruling this world, and many more, together,” Cor’El answered, and he leaned forward with closed eyes to kiss her.

  “Get away from me!” she screeched, and she brought her right fist hard across the left side of his jaw. He fell back off the bed, likely more from surprise than the force of it, and Thyss leapt from the other side of the poster bed to head for the door.

  “Stop!” Cor’El shouted from behind her, and suddenly she could not move yet again. In a mere moment, his breath caressed her ear, and his lips were upon the nape of her neck in almost the exact same place his father’s were earlier that morning.

  “Get away from me,” she commanded, suppressing a retch as his body pressed up against hers from behind.

  He stopped his kiss to wrap his arms around her waist and say, “Mother, I love you as I’ve loved no other. I know it’s hard right now because of what I’ve done, but I know you and your joy of power and strength. You’ll understand, and I know you’ll love me as I love you.”

  “I’ll destroy you, you vile sack of-,” she stopped as an unseen force choked off her words, and she could barely breathe.

  Cor’El released his embrace about her and came around to face her. “That’s enough now, mother,” he chided as a parent might a child. “Quiet now, and let me show you how much I love you.”