Blood of the Four

  Dedication

  For my daughter Ellie, in her first year of university life. Be brilliant!

  —TL

  For my daughter, Lily, in her first year of high school. Find your joys and follow them.

  —CG

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Maps

  Book One 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Book Two 12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Also by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Maps

  Book One

  1

  In the darkness Phela heard a laugh, a sigh, and then a groan of passion, and shadows came alive with the hint of possibilities.

  She might have been a princess bound by tradition, and no longer a child, but Phela still had a desire for fun and a love of games that belied her age. Some of those games were played all across the island kingdom of Quandis. They were passed down from parent to child, rules malleable and changing from one generation to the next. They were a rite of passage, a learning process, and the means by which a youngster was introduced to the politics of interaction and the art of conflict.

  But young Phela had also contrived her own games, whose rules also shifted over time. And each time, her activities found new aims and new purpose. They all led to the same outcomes, though: manipulation of circumstance, the power of words, the molding of wills to her own desires. She often broke rules, but for a princess, such transgressions were generally overlooked.

  As time passed, she had abandoned most of her games, but one lingered, her interest never waning. Phela called it Whispering. It was the gathering of secrets, the harvesting of hidden truths and forbidden knowledge. Whispering required stealth, agility, and determination, and the ability to hold on to the knowledge she collected until its true value became clear to her. It had begun as a child’s game, but as an adult she had come to recognize what Whispering could gain her.

  She believed that one day her game would make her the most powerful royal ever.

  Phela’s Whispering took her through forgotten passages and into dark spaces no one else in the palace knew about or remembered. She found her way mostly by touch. Though she carried candles and flints, she rarely risked giving herself away. These places were hers, and she meant to keep them.

  Another sigh was followed by the steady creak of a wooden bed shifting beneath a couple making love. Phela felt nothing—no surprise, no sense of arousal. No shame that she was listening to her mother having sex. The queen’s chambers were well guarded and isolated deep in the heart of the vast royal palace, but Phela’s Whispering passages twisted around this heart like great veins.

  The blood they ran with was the knowledge of what she might discover.

  She edged forward. Her hands pressed through webs, and they tore with soft ripping sounds. Creatures scampered in the darkness, mostly away from her. A few came close, but they did not bother her. She was used to such things by now, and they seemed to know she too was a hunter—and respected that. Phela sensed their calm observation, watching her with eyes that could see in the dark. She wondered what they saw. Not a girl any longer. Not for some time.

  A woman who knows her own heart. Someone determined to find her own way.

  Her life and future were regulated and dictated by the fact that she had been born into royalty. She did not begrudge that entirely—she quite enjoyed the wealth and privilege that came with her position. Yet from an early age, Phela chafed at the idea of strictures and had been committed to finding and forging her own path. Exploring these forgotten byways through and beneath the palace had made her feel that she was commencing this journey. There were tunnels and sewers; crawl spaces and voids left between one period of construction and the next; basement areas and hollows beneath great, ancient foundations. She had found whole series of long-abandoned rooms known only to rats, wraiths, and other creatures of the dark . . . and now to her. This was her world, full of shadows and echoes, and it had become the only place where she truly felt free. She could exist here without question, shedding the protocols or traditions that might affect where she went next, and when. She could lay her plans and construct her schemes.

  Someone cried out. A woman’s voice, high and unguarded.

  The princess moved quickly, climbing a series of ancient wooden struts that took her up above the wide, arched ceiling of her mother’s private chambers. Phela’s feet were clad in thick stockings, and on her hands she wore soft leather gloves. The rest of her clothing was tight and smooth, with no buckles or belts to knock against wood or stone to give her away. Even her hair was twisted into a tight bun and knotted atop her head. She was built for surreptitious movement, and as her mother’s cries of pleasure came faster and higher, Phela flowed across the ceiling structure of her chambers.

  She was heading for a place she had been many times before.

  The cries were now joined by deeper grunts, the serenade of a man lost to pleasure. Linos Kallistrate was her mother’s lover. Once their involvement had been secret, but now many people knew of their trysts. It didn’t seem to matter. Linos was a nobleman—Baron of Clan Kallistrate—and his wife, Carina, seemed to accept the fact that her husband was fucking the queen. In truth, there was little else she could do. Who would dare speak against the lovers? Queen Lysandra was strong but harsh, and many noble families had witnessed the power she was willing to exert to gain what she desired.

  Desire, Phela thought as she heard her mother and her lover reaching their crescendo below her. She lay across the network of timber ceiling struts and peered through a crack in the old plaster beside one of the heavy arching beams. This desire was animal, and the sight of the sweating, naked bodies in the huge round bed below illustrated that better than any sounds or cries ever could. They writhed and thrashed, limbs entangled, slick skins slipping against each other. There were no words, only indeterminate sounds like those of creatures in the wild. Eventually these cries faded away into heavy breathing, and their bodies seemed to slump as if deflating. They spread across the bed, and Linos rolled from the queen and fell onto his back, arms and legs wide, staring up at the ceiling.

  For a moment Phela felt that he was staring right at her, and she held her breath. Then he turned his head to stare at his queen.

  “You’re a beast,” Queen Lysandra said, her chest rising and falling with rapid breathing.

  “And that’s why you love me,” he replied.

  To Princess Phela he did resemble a beast. She wasn’t inexperienced with men—there were young noblemen living and working in the palace who could vouch for that—but Linos was something else. Hair covered his body, sprouting from his toes and legs, swathed across his stomach and chest, and his beard was full and dark. His hair was also long and usually braided, though when he was in her mother’s bed, he often seemed to delight in letting it free. Between his legs he also possessed something beastly. Even now, wet and waning, his cock was larger than any Phela had ever seen.

  “Do I love you, Linos?” Lysandra asked.

  “Madly, my queen,” he said. He reached across and clasped her thigh in one huge hand, squeezing as if to prove ownership.

  Phela willed her mother to sl
ap his hand away. It was an unspeakable liberty, and despite what she had just witnessed them doing, the simple act of him holding her leg like a chunk of meat offended Phela deeply.

  It seemed her mother did not think the same way.

  Phela perused their bodies for a moment more, then shifted position slightly so that she could survey the rest of her mother’s private chambers. She visited often enough, but viewing from this angle felt like seeing the place in all its brash, ostentatious honesty. When she was there in the queen’s presence, all her attention was on her mother. She was a strong woman, assured and confident, harsh when the situation required it, loving in her way. Yet even from her daughter she demanded total attention.

  Now, secreted away, Phela could look around.

  Linos’s clothing was deposited in an untidy pile near the heavy, closed door. His sheathed ceremonial sword stood propped against the wall. He must have entered the chambers and stripped off immediately, perhaps at his lover’s request. The queen’s clothing was neatly folded on a chair close to the large bed. Beside the bed, on a low table, was a carafe of wine with two fine crystal glasses, both still reflecting a deep ruby red from wine not yet drunk. Phela knew that her mother only touched wine in her most unguarded, private moments, and even then she only drank small quantities. She preferred to remain clearheaded.

  Also on the table was the paraphernalia of spiza—several small glass vials, a mixing globe, and the familiar crumbled remains of the drybread usually eaten with purified spiza. That was also a vice belonging solely to Linos. If her mother was cautious of wine, she hated spiza. It took you away and opened you up. It made you vulnerable.

  Phela knew all too well. She had tried it. Whispering in passages deep beneath the palace, she’d found a small room left over from construction works a thousand years ago. It was here that she’d hidden away to take spiza for the first time. One of the weaker blends used by many, it had still opened her mind and eased her down into a comfortable fugue. She had felt safe taking it there, alone and concealed from prying eyes. Yet, even so, she’d felt a rush of paranoia as the spiza faded from her system and senses, and the once-friendly darkness had seemed laden with threat. It was the one and only time she had fled her secret network of passageways and crawl spaces in fear.

  She still wasn’t sure whether the spiza had caused her to imagine the presences watching her or had allowed her to sense them.

  Linos rolled onto his side and stretched for a pinch of the drybread. He ensured some of the refined spiza was sprinkled on top, then relaxed back onto the bed.

  He didn’t eat it, though. Instead, he dropped the drybread and spiza onto his hairy, muscled stomach.

  Phela frowned. What is he waiting for? Wait . . . no, the queen would never—

  But the queen did. She leaned over Linos and ate the mixture, and even from high above, with the heavy plastered ceiling between them and only a narrow crack to view through, Phela heard the crunching as her mother swallowed it down, not only demeaning herself before him, but also ingesting enough spiza to open her mind and let it drift.

  Oh, Mother! she thought, but then she smiled through the shock. It was moments like this that made her Whispering so much more than a mere pastime. Such knowledge was the fuel to her future.

  She settled down to watch for a little while longer.

  * * *

  An hour later, with the queen and her lover sleeping wrapped in each other’s arms, Phela decided it was time to work her way back to her rooms.

  Just as she moved she heard her mother’s voice from below.

  “The Four will be mine.”

  Phela frowned in the darkness. Surely she’d misheard? Either that or her mother was dreaming. She edged to the ceiling crack again and stared down.

  The queen was seated, blanket drawn around her shoulders.

  “The Four are always yours,” Linos said. “You’re queen.”

  Lysandra laughed, voice tinged with bitter humor. “That’s a title. I have plenty. Do you want to hear some more?”

  Linos waved a lazy hand.

  “Figure of Nine,” Lysandra said. “That means I’m patron of the greatest dance school in Quandis. Lady of Fields, which apparently means I oversee the farming needs around the Northern Lakes. Queen of Strikes, Honorary Beneficent Leader of Larks, Commander of the Army, Navy, and City Guard.” She trailed off, hugging the blanket tighter. “Chief of the Silent.”

  “Of course,” Linos muttered. His voice carried through the queen’s chamber and up to its high ceiling. In the stillness, nothing existed but their words.

  “The Four draw me,” Lysandra said. “I’ve been there, you know. Down. Farther down than any royal before me, drowning in the shadows that have haunted the depths since before the Four created the world and cast the Pent Angel out. I’ve been . . . deep.”

  Linos was fully alert now, eyes wide at this dangerous talk. Phela considered warning her mother. A shout, a thump against wood, something to startle her out of her hazy, unguarded speech.

  Something to stop this heresy.

  Because the queen was not allowed to touch the magic of the Four. Though the royal bloodline was the bloodline of the Four, their magic was not meant for any mortal soul other than select priests of the High Order who had spent many years preparing. Even then, they only inhaled the dregs of that ancient magic.

  And none of them went down to where the Four were alleged to lie.

  “Mother, what have you done?” Phela said in a whisper too quiet even to disturb the dust inches from her lips.

  “Tell me,” Linos Kallistrate breathed, and in those words he revealed his true self. If he had loved Lysandra, he would have been begging her to stop.

  “It’s been too long,” Lysandra said, her voice low and even, almost hypnotic. “Too many years Quandis has suffered its wars and conflicts, revolutions and strife, and all the while magic lies dormant in forgotten caverns, in the lost chambers of the fallen First City. If they truly loved us, wouldn’t the Four share the magic they wielded when they forged this land? It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times. I’m sure my father asked it as well, and the kings and queens before us. But asking the question goes no way toward answering it, whatever the priests of the High Order tell us. Honoring magic’s existence and yet not seeking its touch is like . . . knowing the air is here, but not inhaling. Suffocating. Letting yourself die when all you need to do is open your mouth and breathe.”

  Lysandra was rocking now, moving side to side as the spiza surged through her veins and her mind opened up, gushing forth its thoughts into this otherwise silent room. Phela desperately wanted her mother to cease, because Linos could not be trusted.

  But she also wanted her to reveal everything.

  “And I’m going to breathe,” Lysandra continued. “The High Order knows that magic is rich and full down there, they’ve known for generations. That old bastard Per Ristolo, he’s over two centuries old, and magic has done that to him. I’ve been down there, Linos. Not as deep as I will go, given time, because as yet my body and mind can’t take the rawness of the magic. But slowly I’ll go deeper until . . . until I can . . . And then I’ll truly be a royal of the bloodline of the Four. I’ll bear the magic they once used to mold this land. The heat of the fire, the solidity of the earth, the strength of the wind, the power in the water. Imagine all that in your veins, Linos.”

  Phela glanced at Linos again and the change in him shocked her. He was scared. Not just disturbed by what his lover was revealing to him, but properly afraid. As if he’d only now realized how dangerous this talk really was.

  “My queen . . .” he said, reaching and touching her shoulder.

  She shrugged him off. “I feel . . . tired . . .”

  “You should sleep,” he said. “It was a mistake to give you so much spiza.”

  “I don’t make mistakes!” she said, but she let him pull her down so that she was curled against his side, the blanket tucked around her so that Phela could
only see her mother’s long golden hair splayed across the pillows.

  Linos lay back, still naked, staring up at the ceiling and frowning deeply.

  Now he’ll see me, Phela thought, and that twining of past and future excited her. But he did not see her. He was focused on something much further away than these royal chambers.

  She grinned in the darkness. The pompous prick had believed he knew the queen so well—her intimacies, her body, her sexual preferences, all laid out for his use. Now, he’d discovered far more than he could have ever wished.

  He knew her true secrets, of activities so forbidden that even a queen might face trial and punishment.

  And he was now part of them.

  There were islands on the Ring where it was rumored scores of High Order priests lived out their lives, banished because their initial contact with magic had driven them insane. There were many unbelievers who thought magic to be a myth, tales left over from older, less enlightened times. Yet anyone other than those of the High Order who dared pursue magic was executed. On the main island of Quandis, throughout the islands of the Ring, and even in the Outer Territories, the pursuit of magic and the worship of the Pent Angel were the only two crimes still punishable by death.

  In all the history her tutors had ever taught her, all the journals and edicts she’d read in the Archives of the Crown, Phela could not think of a single instance when a royal had attempted to gather magic for themselves.

  As she lay in her secret place, she sensed a new history unfolding around her.

  * * *

  A Bajuman dreams . . .

  Blane’s mother dresses him from head to foot in rough, itchy material. She sings as she does so, an old lullaby in a language he doesn’t understand, and he smiles as the words flow from her mouth. His mother has a beautiful voice, and sometimes she sits by the side of the road leading from the port of Suskmouth to the capital city of Lartha and sings for their supper. More often than not she comes home with a few coins. Enough for some bread, fruit, and nuts, at least. Sometimes she returns with nothing. On those occasions she and her two children go hungry, and the past few days have been like that.