Kady's Vengeance

CHAPTER ONE

THE PRINCE MUST DIE

My Dear Malthus,
This bastard prince, Kynyr Maguire, that you mentioned in your last dispatch, must die. I grow impatient. You will receive no further supplies or units from me until you have eliminated the entire ruling family. It has been seven months since you infiltrated Clan Red Wolf's territory and yet there have been only two deaths in their family. You have until winter solstice. If the goal has not been accomplished by then, I will replace you.
Furthermore, I am no longer negotiating for you to send me the bitch and her cub, I am ordering you to.
Yours,
Lord Hoon.

"I have no intention of giving you my wife or my stepson."

Malthus Estrobian crumbled the letter up, snarling under his breath, and tossed it onto the fire in the hearth. He had not planned to become obsessed with Merissa to the point of marrying her – at least not at the time he wrote Hoon about her. Darmyk was the son of a sa'necari apostate, Isranon. Rumor had it that Isranon was the impossible mage known as Dawnreturning. Both the god-queen of Minnoras, Gylorean Galee, and Lord Hoon had placed bounties on Isranon's head. That prompted Malthus to write both of them about Darmyk to see who would make him the better offer for the boy. Galee wanted just the boy; Hoon wanted both the boy and his mother. Malthus regretted those letters.

Over the months that had passed since he sent them, he had learned that his brother Troyes, who disappeared in Red Wolf four years ago, had been killed by Darmyk's father in a quarrel over Merissa. There was not enough money in the world to buy the boy from him – when Malthus planned to chop the child up and send the pieces to Isranon.

Stalking to the window of his study, Malthus threw the heavy brown drapes open and stared out at the flurries of snow swirling across the stableyard. That light dusting would not impact upon Malthus' plans for the day, unlike a week ago. A large barn and stables swept out to the west side of the yard with more buildings concealed behind them with the grazing lands sprawled to the northwest beneath their white blankets. The simple practicality of water troughs and hitching posts in the courtyard contrasted sharply with elegance behind it.

Troubled and restless, Malthus began pacing back and forth between the window and his desk, thinking furiously. Lord Hoon was not someone whose desires could be safely ignored, and Malthus wondered what kind of devil's bargain he had entered into. Lord Hoon was a powerful Lemyari vampire of many aliases, of which Hoon was merely his favorite and best known. His true name, which he used only when he wished to intimidate, was Brandrahoon – which meant fire dragon in an old language. Had he known at the outset that he was dealing with Brandrahoon, Malthus might have turned the job down. On the one hand, Malthus was the most powerful sa'necari necromancer in existence. On the other, Brandrahoon was his equal and opposite number in the dark ranks. No one knew the full extent of Brandrahoon's power: the vampire preferred calculated deception and subterfuge to pyrotechnics. Malthus shared his reticence, seeing no point in the use of conspicuous force when dissembling and treachery would suffice.

Sa'necari were the only serious rivals within the ranks of darkness that the vampires like Lord Hoon had. They had stolen all of the matchless 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.

The rite of mortgiefan made them what they were, triggering the final transition from human to sa'necari. They took a life in a rite combining sex and death, sticking their victim repeatedly with their hellblades while sheathing themselves in their bodies, finally killing them at the moment of sexual climax, causing the victim's soul to shatter so that the sa'necari could suck pieces of it into themselves, enhancing their powers. The more lives they took in the rite, the more powerful and nearly unkillable they became. Even when slain, they had to be properly destroyed or they would rise undead, like vampires. Their eyes were the single most condemning evidence of their true nature. The first time they took mortgiefan their eyes changed to amaranthine lacking in iris, whites, and pupils.

Most concealed it with a minor glamour. Others went still further, imbuing the deception on an item of jewelry they wore so that the spell could not be defeated by the use of spellcord or detected by a Reader. The latter was the option that Malthus had chosen and the innocuous golden band on his right hand concealed his sa'necari nature beneath an effective guise of humanity.

Malthus' gaze wandered to a curious device lying on his desk. He lifted and held it where the glow from the lamp could best illuminate it. The glass tube had a plunger at one end and a hollow needle at the other. Various groups of healers had been attempting to create something similar for years, inspired by the way that a viper's hollow fangs injected venom into its victim. Malthus paused, trying to recall what Larena Wiggins had told him they called it and then it returned to him.

"Syringe. Devilishly simple thing."

She had stolen it for him at his urging. Things that could heal could also kill and killing was more to Malthus' liking than healing. He wondered at the strange markings on it 'cc' and 'ml' at different lines across it. That had to be some kind of measurement, but Malthus was uncertain how that related to using it.

He laid the syringe in a bed of wool within a small wooden casket, opened the drawer to his desk, and took out a golden chain with small globes strung on it like glass baubles. He studied the globes. Some were red, others amber, and a few were green. Malthus tapped a green one with a word of command and three crates appeared on his desktop.

Taking a leather-bound book from the crate, he opened it to consider his options. It was a catalog of poisons arranged according to the Romilay scale with one being the mildest and ten the most deadly. Starting with level four, many of the poisons mimicked the effects of known diseases in such a way that the average Reader would not detect them and be forced to diagnose the disease rather than the poison.

He had employed a poison that misled the healers into thinking that Prince Kynyr had Black Mountain Fever, a disease spread by the bite of infected ticks found in the moist marshy regions of Waejontor. The disease had a ninety percent mortality rate.

The Assassins' Guild, the holy avengers of the nethergod Hadjys the Dark Judge, had involved themselves and had determined that Kynyr had been poisoned. That obviated the need to continue the pretense and Malthus no longer had Larena dose the prince with it. The time had come to administer something more lethal before the Guild found a way to cure him. The syringe had given Malthus an idea. Kynyr's death would satisfy Lord Hoon and buy Malthus more time to complete his assignment.

Malthus thumbed through the book, scanning the charts that applied to lycans. When it came to a knowledge of poison, Malthus had few peers. His name was not Estrobian, it was Tyrins. He was the bastard son of Sidera Tyrins and the late Waejontori Lord Feodras Iagaris. The Tyrins family were a branch of the Romilays, a large extended family of arcane toxicologists who specialized in creating poisons and antidotes – although most of their wealth came from creating toxins and very little came from curing them.

He came across a level eight that appealed to him, certain that he had it in stock. Malthus tapped the golden globe on his string and six cases of jars and bottles appeared on his desk. Going through them, he found a bottle of hedysmorte. Primarily an arrow poison, he judged that it would work well with this new invention. He could get more into Kynyr with it than he would have been able to by coating an arrowhead.

Malthus filled the syringe completely with the nacreous liquid and returned it to the little box. He had no idea how his poisons would work injected directly into the body like this, but he suspected it would be faster and more efficient. He pocketed the box, returned everything else to the carrying globes, and shoved them into the drawer.

Stepping into the corridor, Malthus glanced to see who was about at that early hour. The last time he had gone out this early had been the morning that he drowned Searlait Redhand, the Chieftain Claw Redhand's youngest sister. Malthus had lived in the manor since summer, having married Claw's daughter Merissa. That both gave him easy access to his targets, and forced him to be more circumspect since he had the eye of Claw's guardsmyn upon him.

The manor was built mostly of stone with wood layered over portions of the interior. Tapestries and paintings lined the walls. Malthus passed two servants as he returned to his bedchambers to grab a coat and a heavy cloak to put over it. His eyes trailed the delicate blonde Kissie until she disappeared around a corner.

Merissa sat staring out the window in the antechamber of their suite, a blanket wrapping her swollen belly. Malthus' twin sons were due in early spring. She had already been pregnant by him when they married. It had irritated him that Merissa waited until a month after the wedding to inform him of that fact.

He noted the tears running down her face and then the chilliness of the room. Merissa had allowed the fire in the hearth to go out again.

Malthus knelt at the fireplace, filled it with wood from the bin, and got a fire going. "You must stop doing this. You'll catch your death of cold."

"Would you care?" Merissa's voice sounded hollow and lifeless.

"Of course I would." Malthus snorted. He snatched a long doeskin coat, a heavy wool cloak, and a scarf from the closet.

Merissa watched him dressing. "You're going out?"

"I have unfinished business to take care of."

"Kynyr?" A sob caught in her throat.

"You're learning." Malthus tied his cloak on and crossed the room. He cupped her chin, his nails digging into her left cheek as he forced her to meet his eyes. "He'll be dead by nightfall."

"Please don't."

Covering her lips with his mouth, Malthus breathed a spell down her throat. "You won't be telling on me."

Merissa grimaced at a sharp pain in her head and blinked as if to clear her eyes. "Don't hurt me."

"Don't tempt me."

He had placed so many spells of coercion within her mind and body over the past few weeks that his wife would die rather than betray him. Her love for him had faded; however, arcane methods existed to restore it once he had destroyed her family.

Malthus left, walked down the corridor to its end and turned right. He passed the landing to the stairs he had shoved Claw down a month ago. It would have killed a human, but all that Malthus had achieved was to break Claw's spine and put the old bastard in a wheel-chair.

Reaching the servants' stairway, Malthus saw Darmyk's tiger-striped cat sitting on the landing, licking his paws. The cat gave Malthus an indifferent look and went back to ignoring him. His stepson called the cat Kerry. Although clearly a domestic cat, the creature was the size of a lynx, fifteen inches at the shoulder and weighed at least thirty-five pounds. Malthus kicked Kerry in the ribs. The blow caught the cat and lifted him into the air, sending him across the landing and into the wall. Kerry struck hard, but recovered quickly. Malthus sucked in a breath and backed away as Kerry, instead of fleeing as other cats would have, stalked hissing and spitting toward him, showing every intention of attacking.

The sa'necari reached for his knife, spooked by the uncanny beast.

Before matters could go any further, a small boy darted onto the landing, scooped Kerry into his arms, and draped the cat over his shoulder. Kerry's hissing changed into a purr, as Darmyk wrapped protective arms around him.

"I hate you," his stepson snarled at Malthus. "I hate you."

The boy spun about and ran off with his cat.

"You can both die," Malthus murmured, his lips tight. "I'll send you to your father in pieces."

He descended the stairs, and went out the side door into the garden. His breath made little puffs of mist in the frosty air. This put him at the north corner of the garden, and on a whim, he headed for the Redhand family graveyard.

GODWAR CENTRAL

Kady's Vengeance

CHAPTER ONE

THE PRINCE MUST DIE