Blood Hope

CHAPTER ONE

TOO MANY QUESTIONS

The winds of late autumn tasted of frost and a promise of early snows as it set the last fading leaves dancing upon the stalwart maples and stout oaks. The Army of the Renunciate had skirted the edges of the shattered city of Zol to turn northeast and journey deep into the demon-haunted forest of Terramere. That night they shivered in their tents, camped for the night, spread across the muddy roadside.

The towns and villages they had passed along their line of march had either been abandoned for several years or occupied by the stubborn remnants of their previous populations. Demons and dark creatures had emerged to besiege the latter; and their beleaguered survivors now went north with the Army.

Four years ago, the Sacred King of Rowanhart marched home from Charas. She crossed the Hillora River and persuaded the people to go north with her. All the priests of the Nine Elder Gods of Light had spoken of omens and signs portending disaster if the people failed to follow her to safety. Now, those stalwart souls who had refused to flee found themselves besieged by monsters and demons, the advance guard of the Hellgod-Queen of Minnoras. Time and again, the Army of the Renunciate had halted their march to aid those folk.

The mass exodus worked to the advantage and disadvantages of the army. Fewer eyes saw them pass; however supplies were harder to come by. The roads were rougher and inclement weather slowed their progress to a crawl.

A flag flew on a pole outside a dark blue tent. An ebony bar sinister split the banner, with the blue gryphon clutching a willow branch in the upper left of Nans Gryphonheart, and the Renunciate's symbols of a solar disc framed in flames on the lower right; all upon a hunter green field.

The Renunciate, Lord Isranon Dawnreturning, sat at the long trestle table in the command tent, which was one of the few pieces of large furniture the army had brought with them, besides his big bed that lay to the far side of it behind a curtain partition. The table, like the rest of the furnishings the army had brought with it, could be taken down and stored flat in the back of a wagon.

Built more like a blacksmith than a mage, Isranon was of average height – five eight. His sturdy frame had once carried more muscle than he currently had. Arcane wounds, from an assault that left him for dead nearly two years ago, had stolen much of his physical strength and were stealing his life an inch at a time, despite everything that both gods and myn could do for him. His black hair, pulled into a tail at his neck, was a mass of loose curls and wavy strands. The sunburst-cradled-in-flame godmark of Kalirion shimmered on his brow, partially hidden by a lock of dark hair that had come loose and fallen across his forehead.

Sunlight entering through the open flap did little to illumine the dim interior. The sleeping area had been curtained off more heavily since Isranon's increased appetites showed no signs of lessening. For the first time since early adolescence, it seemed like he could not get enough of either blood or sex and it troubled him as much as it did the others. For years he had prided himself for having those aspects of his sa'necari heritage under firm control; now it seemed that they controlled him.

"Kalirion, liege-god to my heart, soul, and faith…" Isranon rubbed his hands over his face as he struggled to frame a prayer. "What kind of monster have I become? Am I doomed to be what I was born? Where lies the strength to reject my nature?"

Sa'necari-born, the vile appetites of his race filled him with self-hatred. They were necromancers who 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. Their gifts had been gained at a price, for they also had the needs and cravings of the undead; the unnatural hunger for blood and souls. 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 talents manifesting in puberty. Their rites of blood, rape, and death had become merely the means for increasing their arcane potency through the shattering of souls.

One small band of sa'necari-born rejected the rites, living lives of strict and unremitting pacifism: the Dark Brothers of the Light. Deemed heretics, the sa'necari massacred them except for one frightened twelve-year-old boy who took refuge among the lycans of Clan Red Wolf, the largest and most powerful of the hereditary chiefdoms of the wolfweres.

Reaching down to a long narrow pouch that hung from his belt, he caressed it, and his thoughts turned to the flute inside. His dead father had told him that so long as he could play the flute and enjoy it he would never be truly evil. Fact as well as philosophy had been blended into his father's statement. The more lives the sa'necari took in the rites, the more painful the music of a flute became to them.

The flute that his father had given him had once belonged to their revered ancestor, Isranon Dawnhand. Two years ago, one of Isranon's sa'necari attackers had broken that flute to prevent Isranon from using its power to stop them. The flute resting in the case at his side had been a gift from his first liege-god, Dynanna God of Cussedness and Perversity.

Yet Isranon had been afraid to touch it for weeks. He felt unclean.

GODWAR CENTRAL

Blood Hope

CHAPTER ONE

TOO MANY QUESTIONS