Blood Pact

By Benjamin Wolcott

Haldune is living every father's nightmare: his son Carid has been kidnapped. The kidnappers don't want money; they want Haldune to sit down, shut up, and forget he ever saw anything.
The only problem is, Haldune can't forget. He knows what he knows, and he's got a demon in a bottle to prove it. Haldune must engage in a terrifying race against time to rescue Carid before the kidnappers decide the boy has outlived his usefulness.
Haldune once served as a steward for a mysterious order known as the Disciples, unaware that their seemingly benign scholarly pursuits masked an unholy dabbling in demonic magics. Then he discovered their latest creation: the Bloodshade, a slave-demon tied to a bottle.
The Bloodshade can make her master intangible, invisible, and can transfer his wounds to other people. Unfortunately, her powers require human blood as fuel. And worse: every so often, and she takes over her master's body for hours or even days before her strength fades again.
Dealing with demons is forbidden both by the Church and by the College (where students are trained in the sorcerous Art). When Haldune first learned what the Disciples were really up to, they took Carid to shut his mouth. So Haldune has taken a path they did not expect: he stole the Bloodshade's bottle and vanished.
The Disciples can't hold Carid over Haldune's head if they can't find him. But Haldune knows he can't free the boy on his own...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Benjamin Wolcott
• Release date: Jul 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465990402

Book preview

Blood Pact

By Ben Wolcott

Smashwords Edition

©2010 Ben Wolcott

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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***

Chapter 1

When Haldune woke not knowing where he was or how he had gotten there, panic seized him.

Her again—how long had she ridden him, and what had she done in his absence? Immediately he leaped out of bed and—

Ah! There was the bottle, on the nightstand, not an arm’s length away. Though its purplish glaze glinted in the morning light, it retained the look of a solidified shadow or shred of hanging smoke. Haldune expelled a breath and sat back on the bed.

Once his heart had slowed a little, he went through his things, which had been left in a heap on the rough planking at the foot of the bed. He owned little: two sets of clothing, a pocket knife, a coin purse. Haldune dumped the coins into his palm. She had spent just a little more than needed for a few meals and a night at this inn, if inn it was. The light leaking in through the shutters looked like dawn to him. He guessed no more than one day had passed.

Only a day. Still, he could not quite rest easy about the missing time. The Bloodshade was not one to waste precious hours lounging about and sipping ale.

On a morbid thought Haldune hefted the Bloodshade’s bottle. It was half-empty. At least he might comfort himself that she had not taken it upon herself to fill it for him.

Haldune dressed and splashed water over a thin layer of stubble. The room smelled stale, like the bottom of a barrel of moldy onions. He opened the shutters onto a familiar countryside, washed with the pale golden light of a winter morning. Wisps of mist still hung in the hollows of farmland, copse and road. In the yard below, a cat paused in its lazy amble to throw a yawn Haldune’s way.

On Haldune’s left he recognized Sunrise Road. Somewhere beyond that lay the river.

He gathered his things with trembling fingers. Already the fear was fading—was being replaced by the excitement of returning home. At last he would see the fruit of his year’s labor; after so much desperate, aimless wandering, after so many false starts and failed stratagems, he would return to the Canted City.

Haldune knelt before the window and the light washed over his face. He did not close his eyes or clasp his hands, but he prayed all the same.

Good day, Carid, he muttered through lips that barely moved. Be well. Be brave. I’m coming for you.

Haldune crept downstairs to the common room. Someone was clattering about in the kitchens; a man made a jest and a boy laughed in response and Haldune was so sick with longing that he almost sat down.

No time for that.

Assuming the Bloodshade had paid for his lodging, he silently lifted the latch and slipped outside, and found himself on a calm stretch of Sunrise Road. The sun had barely cleared the eastern hills on this chilly, cloudless morn, but if any others among the inn’s guests had risen, they were not outside.

He touched the bottle hanging at his waist for reassurance and set his face west.

***

Haldune kept a brisk pace, breath huffing in clouds before him. He was a weather-beaten, broad-shouldered man not far past thirty. His clothes were worn but not tattered; his features plain but not ugly; his manner amiable but easily forgotten.

Easily forgotten. He hoped so, at least. He had never been a crowd favorite but he was known in the City. For his purposes, he need avoid recognition for only an hour or so; not as easy as it might have been considering the manner of his flight a year ago. If even one person saw him and carried word back to the Disciples—or if he should chance to meet his wife in town—

No point worrying about that until it happens.

He made good time. He passed the mouth of the Ainesburg road, which could have taken him south over green farmlands, then along the borders of the wide, dark Tanglewood, then through the fortified city of Ainesburg, and onward through farther regions unfamiliar to Haldune. Just beyond this junction, at a place called the Neck, the land hunched its shoulders, forcing Sunrise Road into a rocky narrow where trees leaned precariously from above and shadows lay deep among the jumbled stones. Poor though he was, Haldune felt ill at ease passing through the Neck alone; he wondered, as he had each time business called him east from the city, whose eyes might be watching from the shadows and what he meant to them.

He found himself quickening his pace. The cold bit deeper here; he felt as if a dark mist had rolled across his vision. A raven croaked in the tangled shadows and Haldune suppressed the urge to throw a stone to drive the bird off. Silly, all of it—he saw no one.

He passed safely through the gulley. Sunrise Road turned a corner and the hunched stones fell away, and there, spread out before him, was the Canted City. Had it been only a year since Haldune last walked those tilted streets, blithely ignored the menace of those leaning buildings? It seemed a lifetime.

The Canted City: a smear of greys and browns and yellows between the blue of the Drak River and the green of the fields and orchards; a hive of activity hanging on the thin branch called Sunrise Road as it entered the City and called Martyr’s Road when it left; a landmark for travelers by boat, boot, and beast.

Long ago, it was said, the very earth under the City had shaken and lifted, like a great platter tipping its contents into the river. . . and then hesitated in the act. Waiting—waiting—waiting a little longer. . . . Some buildings had crumbled and some streets had buckled, but most remained. The tilt was not so great as all that, after all, although here and there one encountered a leaning home whose angle made one faintly nervous.

New construction stood straight, and new streets ran flat. The result was a strange mixture of the common and the surreal, and one could never predict just what might confront him at the turn of a corner or the crest of a hill. A shephered might drive his flock over or around half a dozen clifflets each day. A fisherman rowing home on the slow-moving river might look down and see, near the bank, a scattered ruin which had once formed some cottage’s north wall. A messenger passing through the West Quarter might happen suddenly upon the Maw—a dank, yawning cave into the Canted City’s belly. A strange city, thought Haldune. A city with secrets. But also, he thought: home.

Haldune left the Neck behind for the lighter forest and farmlands, and as the Canted City disappeared and reappeared through the leafless trees, he saw the place with fresh eyes. The City itself looked a crazy mismatch to him, as if designed by drunkards, or had somehow become drunk itself. The Piermaster’s tower, for instance, looked perpetually about to tumble into the river. And just beyond Sunrise gate, on the near side of the city, one building had leaned all the way over the street and into its neighbor. The were known as the Lovers, and when Haldune had left, brave people were still living in the upper floor of the Leaning Lover.

North of the City flowed the Drak River, wide and slow here after racing down from the hills farther east. Trade came up from Layton and the Upper Docks and points even more distant, but save for deliveries to the Vizier’s palace upriver, the greatest barges disgorged their goods at the City, where the river was still easily navigable.

Outside the City farms lay scattered here and there. One of them—among the smallest—was Haldune’s own. He had never been especially productive, with his small orchard of pears and cherries, and his few straggling rows of turnips, cabbages and carrots; but then, what with his stewarding, he’d never had to be.

Haldune’s land belonged to Sohriel, lord of the Canted City. Sohriel and Southgate monastery split every inch of soil for miles around.

Southgate monastery. The reminder dented Haldune’s mood. He would have dearly loved to see the abbot Rodri again. But Rodri would not understand about Carid. He would send word to Haldune’s wife. Rumors would spread. Haldune must be careful to stay clear of the monks and monastery both.

Haldune’s feet caught up with his eyes when he joined the line at the Sunrise gate. He noted with interest that since his departure the gaps in the crumbling walls had been filled with new masonry, rescuing the city gates from their previous state of mere decoration.

Two men watched the gate: city militia wearing the predictable device of a tilted tower. One of them was new to Haldune but the other he remembered from before: Artus, man’s name was. A bluff yet slow-witted fellow.

Leaving the line would only attract undue attention. Haldune took a breath and let his face hang slack. Traffic was moving briskly. His turn came soon.

Gate fee, said Artus. He looked bored.

Haldune handed him the coin.

Goods? asked the other.

Just this bottle, said Haldune.

Let’s have it, said Artus. Haldune gave it to him with reluctance. Somewhere I seen your look before, said Artus as he gave the bottle a cursory glance. I know you?

No, said Haldune. You don’t.

What’s your name?

Dagen. I, uh, did come through here a few months back, lied Haldune. Maybe we spoke then.

Maybe. Artus returned the bottle. It was pretty, but not worth taxing. Go on through.

Haldune knew he was really in the Canted City at last when he felt the slant of the ground under his feet. One’s first hours on the City’s streets were much as he imagined the first few hours aboard a seagoing vessel; one stepped and found slope where he had expected level ground, and then level ground once more just as he was growing used to slope. It he were not careful, the wayfarer found himself unconsciously veering north, downslope. The City’s canny merchants had long since learned, in consequence, to erect their stalls in the Riverside quarter, where their prey would come to them.

Thence, too, strode Haldune, but not directly. He had to skirt the market-square—too public. Then he had to make an even wider loop to the east to avoid Jerrad’s wine-shop, where the Disciples had sent him regularly for their favorite vintages. Which might put him too close for comfort to the home of Mirruth the fur trader—and he and Haldune had put away a not inconsiderable amount of Jerrad’s wine themselves. . . .

In the end Haldune traced a path through the Sunrise and Riverside quarters that would have puzzled a rat. He almost got lost himself once or twice, dusting off old memories of which streets played false and which might be too crowded for safety’s sake.

Another memory to dust off: the damp, slightly rotten smell of some parts of the Riverside quarter, as if someone had dredged up a heavy load of river muck and left it to dry in the crevices and on the undersides of the cobbles. Haldune used to like the smell; today it turned his stomach. The washer women’s chatter was high and shrill, and the shouts and curses of the laborers as they unloaded their cargo seemed hasty and fearful, as if they had fallen behind schedule.

Among other things, the tradesmen of the Riverside quarter lined their purses by making whatever spare rooms they might have available to lodgers. One such, the house of a certain potter, leaned—literally—against the stonework of the City’s north wall, as if too tired to support itself. Unlike the Sunrise wall, the Riverside wall remained in an advanced state of decay. Only isolated piles of rubble separated the Riverside quarter from the docks; Sohriel’s walling frenzy must not have made a full circuit of the City. Haldune’s lips twitched into a smile. Sometimes a familiar scene, no matter how pathetic, was as refreshing as a draught of clear water.

A separate stairway led to the potter’s upper rooms, which Haldune remembered were reserved exclusively for lodgers. He knocked at the ground floor and a boy of ten or eleven years appeared at the door. Just a few years older than Carid. . . . But yearning, too, was a luxury, and he thrust it down again.

Good afternoon, he said to the boy. You have an important lodger. I need to speak with him.

You mean the. . . the Ascended? said the boy with reverence. Important, aye. My father says it’s the first time since I was born one of their kind come into the City.

Why do you suppose he came? said Haldune on impulse. It might be useful, after all, to know how many secrets were still his to reveal. Did he say?

Not while I was near. I wanted to see him work an enchantment but he was as plain as you and me—except sometimes by his looks I thought he wanted to put a bad word on the crowds outside. I never seen so many people in our street!

Haldune was not surprised. Tell him Haldune is waiting.

The boy looked skeptical. He didn’t say nothing about a Haldune.

We have an arrangement. He’ll see me.

He won’t either. He’s gone.

Gone? said Haldune. On an errand?

Gone, master. For good. He left yesterday morning.

That’s impossible, said Haldune. If he were returning to Arcanum we would have passed each other on the road, and. . . . He had been about to say, I would have seen him, but quite apart from never having met the man, Haldune had seen nothing while he was in the Bloodshade’s grip.

I’ll get Father, said the boy. He—

No need, said Haldune. Just tell me where the Ascended went.

I wasn’t here when he left, master. Father could tell you—

Thank you, said Haldune. No need.

Haldune turned away with clenched fists. Tirin,