Blood Arcane

"I want to see the children," Lord Isranon Dawnreturning told Anksha, striding through the great hall and heading for the wing the children had been placed in with the nibari and some others to watch them. The diamond sheathed butt of his staff, Warrior, clicked on the tiled floors in rhythm to his stride. The staff tended to draw people's eyes away from him when they first met, being as incredible as the mon was common.

Warrior was six feet of hard rock maple, its butt sheathed in nine inches of diamond that had been magically grown onto it and incised with Kalirioni runes. The entire length of it was intricately runed amid vines and leaves in jeweled inlays. The upper body, head, and wings of a pegasus topped it, so solidly done in heavy burnished kenda'ryl that it could be used to strike with. It was both a master's and a warrior's staff.

Isranon, on the other hand, was rather plain. He was built more like a blacksmith than a mage with powerful arms, broad shoulders, and a deep chest. His short robes were unadorned black over matching pants. He wore his curly black hair tied back at the base of his neck. While his face still retained the beauty of youth, which was slowly maturing into a rugged comeliness, his haunted eyes, brown to the edge of black, looked far older than his twenty-one years. There was nothing about him to suggest the fact that he was the only mage-paladin to the sun-god, and thus one of the most powerful mages in existence — except when the curls around his forehead shifted, revealing the flame flanked sunburst of his godmark.

"With us leaving in a week or so, I should get to know them. Especially the two who already have their fangs."

"Jingen and Stygean." Anksha ran a hand across her belly. She had taken to checking herself several times a day trying to notice the first tiny swellings of the life within her. Anksha carried Isranon's child in a miracle of magic and love that transcended the huge genetic gap between their species. As the last of her kind, Anksha had never expected to have a child of her own until now. "Nothing's happening." Her usually tightly curled tail drooped.

Isranon laughed. "It's been what? A month?" He squeezed her shoulders, then dragged his fingers through her thick black mane to get out the leaves and twigs that she seemed to be forever accumulating. "I don't know what the gestation for demon-eaters is; however, I doubt there will be anything to see for at least two or three months."

Anksha sighed and her large fangs appeared. "That long?" Another sigh. "I know he's in there — now I know where to look and how." A third sigh.

"Have you thought about a name yet, my Anksha?"

Anksha shivered with delight at his use of the possessive. "Timadi. And he is going to be a boy. I checked him real good. Amiri agrees."

"Timadi is a good name. I don't want any more Isranon, son of Isranon's in this lineage. I want my sons to have a fresh start, without the baggage of the lineage."

Speaking of the lineage made him remember the tale in all its variations, 'once there were three brothers, Brandrahoon the vampire, Isranon called Dawnhand, speaker to spirits, and Waejonan the Accursed, first of sa'necari… The two brothers murdered Dawnhand, and forced his descendants to practice the rites of the sa'necari by holding their families hostage.' Dawnhand was Isranon's ancestor and namesake. Isranon had been born sa'necari, yet he had never participated in the rites, rejecting them to become a renunciate and heretic.

Anksha nodded. They had reached the end of the north wing and went into the chamber that Nainee, a nibari, was using as a schoolroom.

They found Nainee reading aloud to the children, who sat at long tables around her with pens, paper, and inkbottles. She stopped reading, closed her book, and flicked back a strand of cornsilk hair before smiling at the newcomers. Instantly, Stygean's head went down and half-turned so that he could look at them from the corner of his eye.

"Class, say 'hello' to Lord Dawnreturning and Anksha," Nainee told them. "You are now part of his company."

"Slaves to his bitch," Stygean muttered under his breath.

All the other children smiled and said hello, Stygean moved his lips only.

Isranon went from child to child, Reading and examining them with his powers. He needed to see how close some of them were to transitioning into sa'necari. He reached Jingen and the boy gave him a bright smile.

"Read me if you wish," Jingen told him, extending his wrist. "I was blooded a year ago, but never participated in the rites. My parents believed I was too young."

Isranon disregarded Jingen's attempt at pleasantries, giving him a severe look. "I'm told you fed on another boy in the dungeons."

A look of utter contrition came over Jingen's face. "I was starving."

"That's no excuse. The boy was badly hurt."

"Forgive me. I had never gone so long without before. I swear it will never happen again. I've been very good since Anksha let me out and began to teach us."

Isranon Read him and nodded. He had had no other negative accounts of Jingen's behavior. The boy was cooperating fully. His age mate, Stygean on the other hand was a constant source of aggravation.

When he reached Stygean the boy tried to shield his core and mask the hatred he felt. Isranon sent a sharp white lance of power through that core and shattered the surface shield as if it were made of thin ice. Stygean paled and his eyes bleared at the painful shock of reaction.

"You don't do that with me," Isranon said, seeing that this one was ripe for the rites and hungry for them. He prayed to his liege-god Kalirion that he could find the strength to turn this boy from the darkness. Otherwise he would be forced to stand aside and allow Anksha to either break or kill Stygean.

The nibari children sitting on the opposite side of the room snickered. Stygean glared. The nibari were meat and should never have been allowed in the same classroom as the sa'necari children. Their genetically altered kind had been bred for docility over thousands of years to satisfy the sa'necari and their rivals in power, the vampires. Yet these nibari children showed him no respect. Stygean might be a slave, but he was still born to be their master, just as they had been born to be his meat.

"Lower your shields the rest of the way, or I will open them myself, and it will be an unpleasant experience for both of us," Isranon told him.

Stygean's lower lip edged from beneath his upper. "Unpleasant for me, you mean."

The nibari children snickered again, but the sa'necari children were focusing intensely on Stygean.

"Quiet!" Nainee told the nibari children. "Enough of that."

They went swiftly silent.

All attention again riveted on Stygean and Isranon.

"I have nothing to hide," Stygean said. "I am proud of what I am."

"Then lower your shields to me completely," Isranon said.

Stygean's breathing emerged in shuddering gasps as he fought panic. He opened his shields to Isranon's probing.

"More," Isranon said. "All the way."

"I've never opened them all the way since I learned to raise them," Stygean protested.

Isranon nodded, enveloped Stygean's shields, and crushed them down to the innermost core. Stygean let out a cry of pain and anguish at the intrusion of Isranon's power, tears ran down his face, and he covered his eyes with his arms. Stygean sobbed as if he had been raped, although Isranon left his most intimate areas untouched. When Isranon had satisfied himself concerning the boy, he withdrew from him, and walked out.

What Isranon had seen disturbed him. Stygean was dangerous. In the beginning, during the age of Waejonan, the sa'necari had all been made through the rites. Over the generations, their genes altered and their children began to be born sa'necari with the appetites and abilities arriving at puberty along with their fangs. Many continued to be made through the rites to serve as sword fodder and to fill the lower castes. These children, however, were all upper caste — the need for blood would come upon them all as it had for Isranon. He wondered if he had the strength to turn them, to prevent them from becoming monsters.

It had been ten years since the massacre of the Dark Brothers of the Light, the sa'necari heretics who did not believe in taking a life in the rites, out of appetite, or for pleasure. Only he and his sister, Yoleema, had escaped the wholesale slaughter of their people. Isranon had been twelve and his sister fifteen, yet it was he who had gotten them both to safety. Nearly three years later, his sister was murdered. Isranon squashed the thought. He had not spoken her name to anyone in five years. Even thinking her name made his stomach squirm.

Considering how young he had been when he found himself without teachers, Isranon felt deep doubts about his ability to train these children in the ways of the Dark Brothers.

GODWAR CENTRAL

Blood Arcane