Children of Wrath

"Who are those people?" Josiah asked.

"Most of them are nibari," Laurelyanne explained, reaching for his wrist to Read him.

Josiah suspected the answer, suspected it was something that he did not wish to know, and yet he had to ask. "What's that?"

"Genetic-altered human cattle. The sa'necari and other hemovores have bred docility and dependance into them, while resistance and independence have been bred out. They have to be bled frequently or they become ill. Those with the skull brands, you can see there are a few of them if you get closer, are the depnane — full meal humans, or sylvans marked for complete consumption and death and reserved for the rites, like mortgiefan — usually slaves purchased at market, captives from the occupied zone, or nibari that have displeased their owners. Aejys is trying to get them to identify their masters."

"Will they?" His knowledge of the sa'necari, hemovore necromancers with the powers and appetites of the undead, was limited to what it required to destroy them on the battlefield.

"No. Mostly the Readers and mages are culling them out from among the prisoners. You brought the medicine?" Laurelyanne asked, frowning slightly at what she Read and that made Josiah uncomfortable.

"Yes." Josiah had not told Aejys that he was dying, and had no intention of doing so. He did not want her pity. He wanted her love.

"You need to take some of it immediately."

Josiah pulled the bottle from his saddlebags along with a jigger glass, measured it to the mark Laurelyanne had drawn earlier and drank it. His body warmed. He replaced both, pulled the bags off, slung them across his shoulder, and turned.

"You'll take over now?" Laelyn asked.

"Yes, get on with your duties, Captain." Laurelyanne dismissed her with a wave.

The healers did not want Josiah wandering around alone, since they feared he might collapse and not be found in time. They believed it was only his wounds coupled with the effects of his prolonged alcoholism that was killing him. Laurelyanne knew different. He had used his damaged, twisted magic to cast a dangerous spell to save Aejys in full knowledge that the casting would probably kill him. And the lingering effects of it was.

Laelyn gave the mages a bow, departing.

Laurelyanne led Josiah into the keep through the foyer and into the Great Hall, a sweep of her arm banishing a group of rangers from a couch near the front. She stretched Josiah out on it, claimed a large piece of half shredded drapery and folded it as a pillow that she placed under his head. Then she pulled a chair close and sat beside him. She Read him again, wishing he had remained in bed back at camp. It was a trade, being near Aejys was good for his spirits, but taxed his strength badly.

Soldiers dragged two sa'necari into the middle of the floor. Their wrists had been spellcorded and the cords sealed with silver runes of Aroana by one of the bradae, the fighting priests, so that they could not be removed by anyone — except an Aroanan priest — without killing the sa'necari. Josiah shivered at the sight of the cords; most mages dreaded the sight of those bands woven of enchantary fibers, puce, ebony, cerulean, and gold, which could seal a mage from all access to his magic. Some mages were condemned to wear them for life — no mage would speak to them, no mage shops or apothecaries would sell to them, no libraries would allow them to enter. Josiah rubbed his own wrists uncomfortably and then stared down at them. He could almost feel them tightening around him, imprisoning his powers — ripping away what little he had regained. He shuddered. Josh had been subject to visions and presentiments, but never Josiah. The merging of his incarnations had been less than perfect. Was this a vision of the future? Would he be corded one day? He folded his arms across his chest, hiding his wrists beneath his arms.

The vision tried to force its way out.

Josiah could feel the cords tighten around his wrists, the fangs entering his throat as a blade slid into his ribs, and the savage pressure against his buttocks of the most barbarous violation imaginable: mortgiefan.

For a moment he wanted to scream. Then he thrust it out of his mind. Josiah was stronger than Josh had been. This would not come to pass. It was just seeing the cords and the sa'necari, knowing their rites.

He forced himself to look at them. Wearing the cords, the sa'necari could not conceal the single most condemning evidence of their true nature: their eyes. The first time they took mortgiefan their eyes changed to amaranthine, lacking in iris, whites, and pupils.

Sa'necari, necromancers, had stolen all of the powers and abilities of the undead that they could take or control, assuming them through their rites, mastering and perfecting them in addition to their native arcane talents. This had been gained at a price, for they also had the needs and cravings of the undead, the unnatural appetites for blood. After generations of sa�necari being created in the rites, their very genes had altered until more and more of their descendants began to be born sa�necari with those appetites and powers manifesting in puberty. Their rites of blood, rape, and death had become merely the means for increasing their powers through the shattering of souls.

That much Josiah knew about them, but there was so much that he did not and keenly felt the holes in his knowledge.

These two sa'necari were male, their faces bruised and beaten, their robes torn. The soldiers had to support them to keep them standing. Josiah had never seen sa'necari so terribly reduced and battered. One of them had a long string of burn scars on his face, as if he had been dabbed with the end of a hot poker in a deliberate manner. The Sharani had tortured them.

Josiah understood the need of this with his mind, but his stomach tightened with a rebellious rush of bile to his throat. He remembered the single act of torture he had participated in back in Vorgensburg: Talons had systematically butchered a sa'necari, who had nearly killed Aejys, while Josiah watched. Somehow that seemed different because it had been personal. He suddenly wished Aejys would simply grant them a clean death and then burn the bodies — not the living.

Hoon's banners had been ripped from the walls and for the first time in five hundred years Rowan blue hung above the throne in the great hall of Castle Errilyn and the last scion of the lineage of Rowan sat there in judgment. Aejys regarded the sa'necari harshly with Spiritdancer lying unsheathed across her knees.

"Have they told us anything about where Mephistis and Hoon have fled to?" Aejys demanded.

Josiah wanted to know the answer to that as fervently as she did. They would be back, he was certain of it. Mephistis had been her traitorous sister Margren's lover and co-conspirator, equal in responsibility for the deaths of Aejys' family and the attacks on Aejys' and her properties, as well as an attempted coup against the Sharani realm. Hoon was Mephistis' ally. She had sworn to see all of them in hell — they both had.

"Nothing, my liege," Soren answered. "Sa'necari are notoriously hard to break." Soren Deontaramei, a spry woman who had stopped counting her birthdays after she passed one hundred, served as Aejystrys Rowan's general. She was Laelyn's ma'aram.

Aejys' voice was chill as a blade of ice. "I will find Hoon and Mephistis eventually. Burn them."

It continued in that wise until there were no stakes left to fill and then Aejys rose, walking to the couch where she had spotted Josiah. She dropped to her haunches, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him. "I love you."

"You know, daughter," Laurelyanne interrupted when they parted. Her son Brendorn had been Aejys' first ba'halaef, husband. An assassin sent by Margren and Mephistis murdered him nearly a year ago. "The nibari are your people, the descendants of those who served the brother of your ancestor."

GODWAR CENTRAL

Children of Wrath