Lord of the White Hell Book One

Chapter Nineteen

Alizadeh kept one hand clamped on Kiram's shoulder as he hurried him back across the fairgrounds. He glanced to the sky often, watching the crows converge and fly apart.

"What's wrong?" Kiram asked but as he took in Alizadeh's grim countenance and remembered his words, he knew the answer-an old evil lingered here. "Ybu and Rafie didn't just come to see me, did you? You're here because of the curse."

Alizadeh gave Kiram a quick assessing look and then nodded.

"I'm so glad you came," Kiram told him. "They're in real trouble-"

"Not here," Alizadeh cut him off. "This is not a safe place to talk. Come quickly."

Apprehension gnawed at Kiram's sense of the normalcy of the fairgoers and merchants surrounding him. Suddenly they seemed to be staring too long at him and stepping aside too quickly. All around them children gaped at Alizadeh's long yellow hair and his strange clothes. Adults often made signs of the Cadeleonian church against their chests.

In Anacleto, Alizadeh would have grinned at them and returned the signs. He might have struck up a light conversation with one of the merchants and slowly charmed the people around him. But today he strode past them as if their discomfort wasn't worth noticing.

He led Kiram off the fairgrounds and across the harvested sunflower fields to a stooped traveler's inn at the edge of the city. A sign depicting a grinning black dog hung over the door. Two huge crows called down from the thatched roof. An old dog lay curled up near the wooden steps. Like most animals, the dog rushed to Alizadeh, full of excitement.

"Rafie is waiting for us, as are two of our Irabiim friends. You must be polite to them and don't let their appearances bother you. They're both Bahiim like me." Alizadeh stroked the dog's dusty hide.

"Of course," Kiram replied.

The room Alizadeh and Rafie had rented was directly under the ridge of the roof and so the heavy beams of the rafters slanted down on one wall, while the opposite wall abutted the stone of a central chimney. A single window illuminated a narrow bed where Kiram's uncle Rafie sat. Next to him a lanky Irabiim woman hunched, watching the window. Another more muscular Irabiim woman sat cross- legged on the floor toying with a string of brass prayer beads.

Both women wore their blonde hair long and twisted into thick matted locks. Their clothes resembled Alizadeh's, but the material was much brighter and covered with patches of dark red embroidery. The woman on the bed also wore a necklace that looked like it had been made from bird skulls. Both women gazed curiously at Kiram. Their pale green eyes looked almost luminous against the deep circles of kohl surrounding them.

Rafie said, "This is my nephew, Kiram." And Kiram knew from the women's sudden warm expressions that they had already heard quite a bit about him. "This is Nakiesh," Rafie indicated the woman sitting beside him, and then the woman on the floor, "and Liahn."

"It's an honor to meet you," Kiram said. Reflexively, he lifted his hands in friendly greeting. A slight pang shot through his left forearm as he moved.

"What's happened to your arm, Kiri?" Rafie crossed the tiny space to Kiram's side.

"He was injured in a duel, apparently," Alizadeh provided.

"A duel?" Rafie demanded. "How did you get into a duel?"

"It was just one of the competitions in the tournament. It wasn't anything serious, and a physician took care of it right away."

"A Cadeleonian physician," Rafie commented as he studied the stitches. "They still use black silk."

"I'm fine, honestly." After four months of speaking nothing but Cadeleonian, Kiram felt strange conversing entirely in Haldiim again. He heard a difference in the cadence of his own words, as if he had picked up a slight Cadeleonian accent.

"Do you have any other injuries?" Rafie's gaze suddenly fixed on the fine scar on his cheek.

"I'm a little bruised but nothing serious." Kiram pulled his arm out of Rafie's grip. "I won the duel." Kiram felt he needed to say as much so that they wouldn't assume he'd just taken a beating.

"Good for you! Come sit here, Kiram." Liahn patted the floorboards beside her. Kiram obeyed and Rafie returned to his seat on the bed. Alizadeh seated himself on the floor and leaned back against Rafie's leg.

Kiram found it amazing that all five of them fit in the room. The smell of strong spices, the sight of familiar faces, and the cadence of the Haldiim tongue spoken so freely made Kiram acutely aware of how genuinely different his own people were from the Cadeleonians. In the past, he could only observe the Cadeleonians as being unusual, but now he could see unique characteristics of his own people. They stood and even sat in a particular loose manner and had an almost sleepy fluidity in their gestures and speech. Kiram wondered if that was how he looked to Javier and Nestor.

Liahn seemed to think he needed cheering up. She held up her right arm so that Kiram could see the long white line running from her elbow to her wrist.

"I took this scar from a Mirogoth shapechanger in the Blue Forest. I took an eye from him in exchange." She grinned at Kiram. Her gums seemed a little too red and her teeth looked a little too long.

"Your uncle stitched her back up," Nakiesh said from the bed. "And if I remember correctly he stitched what was left of the Mirogoth back together as well."

"The reward for bringing him in alive was bigger than the reward for his dead body,"Liahn informed Kiram with a wink.

Kiram stole a wondering glance between his uncle and Alizadeh. They certainly hadn't ever mentioned anything like that in the stories of their travels. Rafie looked a little pained.

"The last thing Kiram needs is to hear more tales of dangerous adventure. His mother is going to be horrified by this entire situation as is."

"He's safe enough now." Liahn shrugged. "At least as safe as anyone can be with the shadow of a curse in the air."

At the mention of a curse Rafie leaned forward just slightly and lightly touched Alizadeh's shoulder. Alizadeh offered him a reassuring smile.

Rafie asked, "Did you find it?"

"No, I hunted the entire city and the fairgrounds but I couldn't pin it down. I know that it's cast from the fortress on the hill, and spills down across this entire valley but its vessel seems unnaturally elusive." Alizadeh scowled in frustration. "Something is hiding it, shielding it from sight."

Kiram frowned, trying to follow the conversation. Were they talking about the Tornesal curse?

"I had no luck with the blood calling, either." Nakiesh held up her palm, which was bandaged. "I sent out our sister crows to look at the fortress more closely."

Kiram asked, "Are you talking about the Sagrada Academy?"

Alizadeh nodded impatiently, as though it was obvious. "Before it became the Sagrada Academy it was a fortress. Did you know that there used to be a Haldiim village just north of here?"

"No, I didn't." He couldn't imagine any Haldiim living this far north.

"The desecrated bodies of murdered Haldiim and Irabiim were hung from the walls of that fortress like banners of loyalty to King Nazario." Nakiesh ran a finger lightly over one of the bones hanging from her necklace. "Thousands of us died in that place. If you dig deep enough in the orchards you can still find bones."

"And ghosts," Liahn added. "Ghosts so wronged that their souls became a desolating curse."

"There's no need to frighten him," Rafie interrupted. He turned to Kiram. "That was all a long time ago. The furious ghosts who became the curse of the Old Rage were all put to rest by the Bahiim. They were locked away in the wood of the Ancients. And they are born into new lives with the passing of those old trees."

Rafie looked to Alizadeh for confirmation but Alizadeh's expression was troubled.

"Until I came here I would have thought so. But something is moving up on that hill."

"It feels like the Old Rage. But all we can see is its shadow," Nakiesh said softly.

"Wait, is this Old Rage curse the same curse that's destroying the Tornesals?" Kiram asked.

All eyes turned abruptly his way.

"What are you talking about?" Rafie asked.

"Well, there's a curse on the Tornesal bloodline. It's been hunting them down and killing them for eighteen years now, but it's been most active in the last three." Kiram looked between their faces for a sign of recognition. Rafie nodded slowly.

"A fellow physician from Rauma once mentioned some affliction that plagued the Tornesal dukes," Rafie said.

"Yfes, but people are always claiming curses have been placed on certain families," Alizadeh replied. "As a rule it's either plain bad luck or bad choices. Sometimes there's murder involved."

"Or social diseases," Rafie added. Alizadeh, Nakiesh and Liahn all nodded at this.

Alizadeh went on. "But genuine curses don't pursue any single individual or even a blood line. They spread from a physical locus like spilled ink. They destroy people and animals alike."

"Maybe it's not a curse, then, but there is something that's killing the Tornesals," Kiram said.

"I'd bet soft gold that it's a greedy relative with a talent for poisons," Nakiesh replied.

Liahn nodded, looking amused.

"It's not poison," Kiram insisted. "Javier said that it's like some kind of insanity. First you hear screams that become louder and louder. Then you begin to have visions of being impaled that grow worse and worse until you stop eating and drinking. After that you die."

"Javier? The young man you introduced me to?" Alizadeh asked, his expression deeply knowing. "He didn't look like he was in the throes of a curse."

"He isn't now." Kiram felt his cheeks warm. "He was saved from it but his cousin Fedeles is dying."

Nakiesh cocked her head slightly as she gazed at Kiram. The motion struck Kiram as oddly bird-like. "Sounds like poison to me."

"There are poisons which would cause auditory hallucinations." Rafie absently curled a finger through a lock of Alizadeh's hair and then released it. Alizadeh leaned back against him. "Frostvine will do it and cause severe, cramping pain."

"But visions of being impaled?" Alizadeh glanced back to Kiram. "You're sure about that?"

Kiram nodded, remembering Javier's haunted expression as he spoke of iron pikes piercing his flesh.

"He said that he could feel the weight of his own body forcing spikes deeper into him. And it was the same for all of them. All of the Tornesals died believing they were being impaled."

"But no one else around them has died? No friends or lovers?" Liahn asked.

"No," Kiram responded. "No one else."

"Then it can't be a curse. Certainly not the Old Rage. It would take everyone. Everything."

"After Javier described it, I thought that someone might be using some curse to kill inheritors to the dukedom," Kiram said. "But I didn't know if that could be done. I wrote to you, Alizadeh, to ask about it but you were gone."

Kiram was about to explain about how the white hell had saved Javier when Nakiesh suddenly stood up and shoved the tiny window open. The noise from dozens of screaming crows poured in.

"Jays are driving our sisters back," she hissed.

Nakiesh took a step back and Kiram saw the black mass of a flock of crows veering across the sky, chased by a swath of brilliant blue jays. Mobs of jays clutched at the crows, tearing at their wings and pulling them down. Some plummeted to the ground. Others slammed into the stone wa l ls of nea rby buildings.

Nakiesh made a low hissing noise and then her entire body trembled. Her arms flew out wide, as if she had been struck. Every one of the crows blinked out of the sky. Simply gone. The jays circled and swept across the sky, calling to one another in piercing shrieks.

Nakiesh slammed the window closed then clutched the windowsill, bowing her head and gasping. Kiram thought she was going to be sick. Then he saw deep shadows rippling across her back. Kiram thought one of the shadows looked like a wing, another like a beak and a bird's skull. Then a yellow eye opened, staring at him. He jerked back and hit the edge of the bed.

An instant later dozens of black wings, curved beaks, and glossy bodies burst up. A storm of crows erupted from the shadows of her body as if they were scattering from the shelter of a tree. The beating of their wings filled the room and their black bodies seemed to darken the entire space. Then they settled, in perfect silence.

Some perched on the bed; others alighted on the floor near Nakiesh. Many of them were injured. One with a drooping wing crouched on Liahn's shoulder. Another, with a bloody gash above its eye settled next to Rafie's thigh.

There had to be nearly thirty crows in the room. Kiram stared wide eyed at the birds and then back to Nakiesh.

She sank down against the wall. Her dark skin was beaded with sweat and looked gray. She exhaled a deep relieved breath.

"What just happened?" Kiram asked quietly.

"Nakiesh brought her sisters in," Alizadeh whispered. Kiram realized that he'd asked the wrong question. He had seen what had happened. Thirty crows had flown out of Nakiesh's body. But how had it happened?

"It's not the Old Rage." Nakiesh didn't look at Kiram but instead she gazed intently at Liahn. "But something in its form. Something with a living intelligence but no passion. It was tearing apart our sisters, looking for us."

Liahn slipped past Kiram and knelt beside Nakiesh. She offered her a water skin and then pressed her head against Nakiesh's chest, as if listening to her heartbeat. After a moment Liahn lifted her head and smiled. "There's no trace of it on you now."

"What about the jays?" Nakiesh asked.

Kiram looked back out the window and for a moment he thought that the jays had gone, but then he noticed flashes of their bright plumage on the roofs of nearby buildings and in tree branches.

"They're waiting and watching," Alizadeh said.

"They won't stay long." Nakiesh closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall. "They'll feel drawn back to the fortress soon. They're being kept as guards and spies there."

"Did our sisters find anything before the jays attacked?" Liahn asked.

"The wards binding the Old Rage are intact. They've been nicked at here and there but not damaged. As for the jays, their master is definitely a man and a Cadeleonian, I think. A very ugly soul and very arrogant."

"So, Kiram might be right," Rafie said. "This man is using the Old Rage for his own purpose."

"It would seem so." Nakiesh nodded. "I felt a deep hunger for power in his presence. He would have liked to devour our sisters if he could have. But we were not his primary interest. He is focused on exploiting the shadow of the curse towards someone within the fortress."

"A Cadeleonian murdering Cadeleonians." Liahn tilted her head slightly and glanced to Alizadeh. Kiram was still so stunned by what he had witnessed that he almost missed the amusement in Liahn's expression. "Not even using a real curse. Is this really a Bahiim concern?"

"If the Old Rage is awakened it will be," Alizadeh replied.

"But that doesn't seem to be happening." Liahn looked to Nakiesh and Nakiesh nodded. "The wards haven't been disturbed. They've remained the same now for years. Whoever he is, he knows better than to awaken the Old Rage. He's just casting its shadow at his enemies."

"What do you mean when you say a man is casting the shadow of a curse?" Kiram asked. The crow on Liahn's shoulder blinked at him.

"A curse like the Old Rage is immense and so malevolent that even sealed away it radiates a presence," Alizadeh replied. "It lies across its surroundings the way a shadow covers the land. We Bahiim can see the shadow even when the object casting it is hidden from us."

"To control or stop a curse you must stand in its shadow," Liahn said. "But no one can step into the curse itself. That is certain death."

Alizadeh nodded. "This man on the hill couldn't hope to be able to structure a curse as vast as the Old Rage but he can feed his own power into its shadow. The resulting creation will move like the Old Rage. It will come in nightmares and whispers first, then settle. It will even destroy like the Old Rage but it doesn't have any of the Old Rage's power. That he has to provide. Do you understand?"

Kiram thought about it for a moment.

"Do you mean that he's using the shadow of the Old Rage like a mold? He's casting his own curse in its shape?"

"Yes, that's basically it." Alizadeh nodded.

"So, how do we stop him?" Kiram asked.

There was an odd quiet. Kiram was suddenly aware that all the crows seemed to be regarding him, just as Nakiesh was, with a look of pity.

"At the moment it's a question of whether we're required to stop him, not how we will do it," Liahn said. "What one Cadeleonian does to another isn't our concern and getting involved has never served us in the past."

"But he's killing Fedeles and he wants to kill Javier!" Kiram couldn't help but raise his voice. "They're my friends!"

"Calm down, Kiri." Rafie's tone was harder than Kiram had ever remembered it sounding. "This isn't a decision to be made lightly. It's not a matter of who anyone likes or doesn't like. It's dangerous for the Bahiim to make their presences felt here in the northern counties. And no one has invited them to intercede."

"Javier would-"

"Of course he would. But your friend Javier is not who would need to extend the invitation. It would have to be the royal bishop of the Cadeleonian Church," Rafie said firmly. "The Bahiim can legally intercede in Cadeleonian affairs only if they are given the blessing of the royal bishop."

"I imagine that the royal bishop has more than one reason to withhold his blessing," Liahn commented. "Not only would it make his church look powerless, it would defeat his own machinations, wouldn't it?"

"What do you mean?" Kiram demanded.

"He is the end point of all Cadeleonian inheritance," Liahn said. "If a noble family is wiped out, then their lands and titles are ceded to the divine rule of the church. The royal bishop, Prince Nugalo, stands to inherit the dukedom. Why would he ask us to stop that from happening?"

Kiram felt a sudden cold dread and he remembered Prince Sevanyo warning Javier that he didn't want Rauma to fall into his brother's hands. He had meant the royal bishop.

"If this has been going on for eighteen years, as you say Kiram, then the royal bishop has had more than enough time to place a request before a Bahiim council." Rafie gave Kiram a sympathetic look as if Javier were already dead.

"The man on the hill is probably the royal bishop's agent," Liahn said. "Do they keep priests up in that academy?"

Kiram nodded. The sick chill clenching his stomach intensified.

"There's a chapel and a holy father. He administers muerate poison to Javier as penance." Kiram's voice trembled as he spoke. It was so obvious. Holy Father Habalan actively poisoned Javier. He bled him and kept him from accessing the healing strength of the white hell. And Javier submitted himself to the ministrations because he trusted his church.

"He gave muerate poison to a student and no one in the academy objected?" Rafie asked.

"It's what they all expect," Kiram replied. "Javier inherited the white hell from his ancestor Calixto. Everyone expects him to endure harsh penances because he's damned."

"Cadeleonians and their hells," Nakiesh muttered. She pulled her knees up to her chest. Liahn removed her own heavy wrap and placed it over Nakiesh's shoulders. For a few moments they were all quiet. A few of the crows preened their wings.

"We should return to the wagons soon. I'll tell the Circle of the Crooked Pine what we've discovered," Liahn said. Then she looked at Kiram. "But they aren't going to intercede in Cadeleonian business. I already know that. I'm sorry, boy. But that's how things are."

Kiram couldn't meet her pale green gaze. Instead he cast his eyes down at the worn floorboards.

"I'll report to the Circle of the Willow Grove and the Circle of the Red Oak in Anacleto," Alizadeh said. "They might offer their assistance to the royal bishop. There isn't much more they could do."

Kiram nodded. He couldn't stop thinking of that moment when he had found Javier on the chapel grounds, lying there like he was dead.

He couldn't give Javier up. No matter how foolish it might be to intercede in Cadeleonian business he would intercede. He would do something. He had to.

He'd promised Fedeles as much, hadn't he?

After Liahn and Nakiesh and their sister crows had gone, Rafie turned back to study Kiram.

"Don't you get any strange ideas, Kiri. Alizadeh and I are taking you back to Anacleto with us. It's not safe for you here."

"What? No!"

"Yes," Rafie said flatly.

"You can't just take me out of the academy!" Kiram scrambled for any reason. "Mother's already paid my full tuition-"

"We both know she'd give up your tuition a hundred times over to keep you from harm."

"But I'm in the midst of the autumn tournament. I've made commitments. I have to serve as squire to my upperclassman and I have another day of duels." Kiram knew he was babbling but the thought of just being whisked away from Javier and Nestor and the academy was too terrible.

"You're not going to be taking part in anything if you get killed." His uncle pinned him with a hard glare. "This isn't a game, Kiram."

"You think I don't know that?" Kiram snapped back. "I've seen Javier lying in a pool of his own blood because of what the holy father is doing to him. My friend Fedeles is being tortured to the point of madness! I know this is serious-"

"We won't be leaving until the Irabiim are done with their business here," Alizadeh broke in with a calm that silenced both Kiram and his uncle. "That should allow Kiram time to see out the end of the autumn tournament and say his goodbyes."

Rafie glared at Alizadeh but Alizadeh simply cocked his head and offered him a crooked smile. "You'll know where he is this way and watching him compete will give us an excuse to get closer to the residents of Sagrada Academy and see if we can't discover a little more about this shadow curse."

Kiram saw the muscles of Rafie's jaw clench on an angry retort, and he nearly offered Alizadeh an argument as well. So much anger and frustration churned up inside him that he could hardly think, but he at least recognized that Alizadeh's proposal was an improvement over the immediate departure that Rafie wanted.

Outside the window the city bells rang out. Half past five.

"I have to go and report to Master Ignacio if I'm going to remain in the tournament." Kiram didn't meet Rafie's eyes. He simply bowed his head and waited.

"All right," Rafie said at last. "But you come back here when you're done."

He nodded his assent and took his leave.

As Kiram closed the door he saw Alizadeh shake his head at Rafie, his expression somehow both amused and deeply sad.