A Sea of Skulls (Arts of Dark and Light Book 2) Read online

  A SEA OF SKULLS

  Arts of Dark and Light, Book Two

  Vox Day

  Copyright

  A Sea of Skulls

  Arts of Dark and Light, Book Two

  Vox Day

  Castalia House

  Kouvola, Finland

  www.castaliahouse.com

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental

  Copyright © 2016 by Vox Day

  All rights reserved

  Cover: Kirk DouPounce

  Version: 001

  Prologue

  Isabel de Bordeleau was a very unhappy young woman. She was upset with her parents, she was angry with His Royal Majesty the King, and she was downright furious at the lack of justice to be found in what had suddenly, and unexpectedly, turned out to be a deeply unfair world. How could it be, she asked herself, that a young woman had no right to decide for herself how she would live her life? Was she not a viscomte’s daughter? Did her blood not run as blue as any other noblewoman’s in Savondir? Was she not pretty? Was she not well-behaved? Did she not attend the Mass every Lord’s Day and dutifully listen to the priest drone on until midday in the unintelligible language of God?

  Her questions went unanswered. She frowned and looked down from the glass window of her bedroom at the grounds of her father’s estate below. It was early summer and the grass was green. The trees extended their branches invitingly as if begging to be climbed, and the sun was shining in a clear blue sky. It was the sort of day that only last week would have filled her heart with joie de vivre.

  But last week she was still unaware of how her life had been ruined two years ago. It had been a pleasant summer’s day not unlike today when she walked with her parents to the nearby village of Morel. There, in the village square, she had seen an old, bearded man, wearing royal blue robes, surrounded by all the children of the village. In his hand he held a small crystal ball, and, one by one, each child would warily approach him and place a hand upon the crystal as the old man held it out to them.

  Isabel didn’t understand what the object of the game was supposed to be, as nothing seemed to happen to either the children or the crystal when they touched it. A few of the children appeared to be relieved, most were indifferent, and one boy even looked disappointed. But the little ball just sat in the old man’s hand, as harmless as an ordinary pebble. If only she had known then how dangerous it was! If only someone had told her not to touch it!

  Her parents urged her forward. The boys and girls of the village, recognizing her, parted before her approach. The old man glanced at her without any sign of interest in his heavy-lidded eyes; he didn’t seem at all impressed that her father was the local lord. But the moment she touched the crystal in his hand, his eyes suddenly came to life and focused on her with an intensity that alarmed her.

  Unnerved, she withdrew her hand, and she was astonished to see that the crystal was now glowing, radiating a bright white light that shone from the old man’s hand like a miniature sun!

  She heard children around her gasp. Adults too. The old man was smiling at her as if he approved of what she’d done, but there was something possessive in his expression that frightened her. She retreated from him. Alarmed, she looked back at her parents and saw her mother appeared to be upset. Her father, on the other hand, was smiling at her and she relaxed as he clapped his hands proudly together, approving of whatever it was she’d done. She smiled back at him and returned triumphantly to his side, feeling very much like a swan that had been swimming amidst ducks.

  In truth, she was more akin to a rabbit caught unwittingly in a snare.

  Two years ago, she had known nothing of the old man or what brought him to the little village on the outskirts of the Forêt Sinistre. Now she knew the man was one of the King’s Own, a magicien who scoured the kingdom on His Royal Majesty’s behalf, traveling from town to town throughout the year. Such men visited every little village and hamlet across the realm in the hopes of discovering young men and women with a talent for magerie. She understood now that she was one of the gifted, which meant that she was also one of the cursed. The very gift which made her special also rendered her, by royal decree, the property of the King. She was to be slave, no, worse, she was to be a brood mare.

  Her father explained it to her. Magerie was the sole province of the crown. Not only its practice, but even its potential was kept firmly under royal control by l’Académie des Sage Arts. Boys with the talent became magiciens, and scholars, and battlemages, some, in time, would even become the mighty immortels of l’Académie, feared and respected throughout the lands of men. But girls like her would be taught nothing of the arts, indeed, she was barred from exercising her birthright in any way. Instead, she would be expected to breed with the young men at l’Académie as if she were nothing more than an animal of desirable stock. Not until she bore two children to a magicien would she be free to leave l’Académie and begin to live her own life, to the extent that was still possible.

  Unless, of course, she was able to convince her parents otherwise. She knew better than to appeal to her mother. Mother was from a well-respected merchant family and Isabel knew she would never dare anything controversial enough to cause local tongues to wag. But Father was a lord of the eastern march, a lesser one, perhaps, but out here on the borderlands, a mere viscomte wielded more power and influence than a duc in Lutèce. And surely neither the king nor the magiciens of l’Académie would care if one young woman from an insignificant border village was lost to their breeding program. The old man had never come back to Morel. Was it not possible that she had been forgotten by now?

  She looked in the silvered glass and saw a tall, pretty girl on the verge of womanhood, with brown eyes, sun-browned skin, and long, straight, brown hair, staring back at her. But the dress the young woman was wearing was too fine, too embroidered, and too womanly to be suitable for a young girl pleading her father’s favor. She slipped the dress off over her head and replaced it with a simple, virginal white dress that once reached her calves, but barely fell past her knees now. It made her look like a dryad, or an elfille, her father once said. The important thing was that it made her look more like a girl and less like a woman.

  Now, to find Father. She left her room and ran lightly down the wooden stairs to the ground level. She heard voices in the great reception chamber to the right of the stairs, but saw it was only a pair of young maids gossiping about one of the blacksmith’s assistants as they polished the silver. They fell silent upon Isabel’s entrance, but smiled and resumed their conversation when they saw it was only her. One of them thought she had seen the Seigneur de Bordeleau near the stables, so Isabel decided to look for him there first.

  The stables was to the left of the great house, past the rows of little cottages in which the married servants lived and the orchards that kept the household supplied with apples, pears, quinces, and other fruits. She ran easily over the long green grass, barefoot, and the familiar sensation of the stalks beneath her toes made her feel certain that her kindly father would never send his beloved daughter away from her family and her home, no matter how many kings and magiciens might demand it of him.

  She saw her younger brother, Perrin, running towar
ds her. He was four years younger than her; their older brother, Robinet, had been sent to the monastery at Corénaz to study numbers with the monks there, as befitted their father’s heir. Perrin was a sweet, happy little boy whose head barely came to her shoulders, but as he drew nearer, she thought he almost looked as if he was upset, or frightened.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Father yelled at me! He says I have to go to the house! He told me to run!”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. He was talking to Simon and two other men. I think something is wrong.”

  Isabel nodded. “Better do as he told you. Run along home and I’ll go see what it is.”

  To her surprise, he shook his head. “He said if I saw anyone, I should tell them to come with me.”

  “Oh, you’ll be fine. You know the way. Besides, you can hardly get lost from here.” She dismissed his protests. “Go, if father wants me to run home too, I’ll catch up with you.”

  He nodded obediently and ran off. She laughed, surprised, and more than a little curious, as to what their father might be about with Simon. She didn’t mind seeing him; the hunter was one of the more handsome young men in the village and sometimes she caught his eyes following her as she walked past. She broke into an easy jog, and before long, spotted the young man on horseback, riding away from her father in the company of two riders wearing leather armor and shields strapped to their backs. She frowned, disappointed that the young man had left before she had had the chance to greet him.

  “Isabel, is that you? You shouldn’t be here!”

  Her father was running towards her now and he was shouting at her. His face was red and angry, and the shock of his displeasure brought her to a halt.

  “Go back to the house right now! What are you doing out here?”

  He loomed over her and grabbed her arm roughly, jerking her around and half-dragging her back in the direction of the house. He wasn’t a big man, but he was taller and stronger than her, and he was squeezing her arm hard enough for it to hurt.

  “You must have seen Perrin. Didn’t he tell you to go back to the house?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Run back to the house and tell your mother to bar the doors. Le Chasseur says there is a raiding party of orcs about and they may be coming this way!”

  “But the king,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you–”

  “Damn the king!” he roared, shocking her, and he shoved her, so hard that she stumbled and nearly fell. “Run, Isabel, run to the devil-damned house!”

  She ran.

  Her eyes were blurry with tears as she ran back in the direction she had come, much faster this time. She didn’t know of whom she was more afraid, the dreadful goblins of whom she’d heard terrible tales since she was half Perrin’s age but never seen, or this red-faced, shouting stranger who looked like her father but certainly didn’t act like him. Her bare feet fairly flew over the grass, though whether she was running towards home or away from her father, she couldn’t possibly have said.

  As she ran past the cottages and came within sight of the house, she could hear her mother shouting at someone. Alarmed, but doubting that her mother would be likely to administer a tongue-lashing to orcs, she put on a last burst of speed and turned the corner to see her mother gesticulating angrily at the backs of two of the male cooks who were running away as fast as they could on the path towards the village road.

  “Isabel!” she cried when Isabel called out to her. “Oh, thank le bon Dieu! I didn’t know where you were! Those wretched cowards came to tell me they heard there were orcs lurking about the woods nearby, but they ran away to town instead of arming themselves! Can you imagine? Come inside, dear, everything will be fine. Did you see your father?”

  She nodded as Isabel told her that Father was out near the stables, and that he seemed to be aware there was a raiding party nearby. She wasn’t frightened anymore, not now that she understood why her father shouted at her. Perhaps the lily-livered cooks might run away, but her father was a knight with twenty men-at-arms sworn to him and she knew there wasn’t an orc on Selenoth that could hope to stand against a true Savondese knight, much less one who was both a viscomte and royal vassal.

  They were walking towards the house, her mother’s arm around her, when they heard a fearful shout and Daniel the gardener came sprinting around the side of the building away from the stables. He was an older man, with short, stumpy legs and a fat belly, and he was easily run down by the pair of great green monsters that were at his heels. Their appearance struck her as unreal; they seemed to have appeared straight out of a nightmare worse than any she’d ever dreamed. Their shape was a puppeteer’s exaggeration of a man’s, with powerful, bulging shoulders and long, vein-corded arms. The monsters had no sooner caught up to Daniel than the first one leaped upon him from behind, bringing him down to the ground before the second one smashed in the poor man’s head with repeated blows from the large spiked club it was carrying.

  Her mother screamed. Isabel stood frozen, too astonished to be afraid, her eyes locked upon the terrible red ruin of the back of the gardener’s head. She looked up and stared at the brutish orcs, taking in the tusks that jutted up from their thick lower jaws, the dark green skin which was covered by a few rags of some dirty material so faded and worn she couldn’t tell if it was cloth or leather. Their faces were wide, and looked to her like a demonic cross between a pig, a bat, and a dog, and while there were sparks of intelligence in their cruel yellow eyes, she saw no sign of either mercy or humanity in them.

  And if they weren’t much taller than her, they were about three times wider, with muscles that bulged like living armor beneath the paint and smeared tattoos that adorned their skin. Five more appeared as the first two, having dispatched poor Daniel, began to advance towards Isabel, with broad smiles on their grotesque faces.

  “Get behind me,” her mother whispered, interposing herself between Isabel and the monsters, and finally Isabel found herself able to move again. “It’s going to be all right. Don’t run.”

  They’re not dogs, Mother, Isabel wanted to say, but she was far too terrified to speak. The lead orc waggled his club suggestively and the gardener’s blood sprinkled the grass as he took a step towards them. Then he stopped and an expression that might have been fear filled his bestial face. That step was his last, as the pounding of horse hooves erupted without warning behind her. She saw something big and brown flash past the corner of her eye just before her father’s lance spitted the orc right under his chin. The monster’s blood was dark green, not red, Isabel observed, as it sprayed from his throat. Three of Father’s men were right behind him, all of them mounted, and the four warriors cut down the half-naked orcs as easily as the monsters themselves had murdered the helpless gardener.

  “To the house, now!” her mother shouted and pulled at her arm.

  Isabel turned and ran with her. Behind her, she heard her father shouting his battle cry and it was echoed by his men. “Je suis prêt!” she heard them shout as they drove the orcs back, away from the house. Just hearing his deep voice restored her courage. “Je suis prêt!”

  As soon as they were inside, her mother slammed the door behind them. “Where is Perrin?” No sooner had a chambermaid produced her frightened little brother than her mother was ordering all the doors to be barred and the shutters on the ground floor windows closed and latched.

  Isabel was quickly ushered into the kitchen, where a makeshift barrier had been assembled from a heavy table and some chairs. Seven of the household staff were gathered there, all of them armed with a weapon, however humble. The five women were mostly armed with kitchen knives, an elderly valet held an iron poker from the fireplace, and the one remaining cook was wielding a large, razor-sharp butcher knife. After the windows were secured, her mother and the two maids helping her returned to the kitchen, clambered over the barrier, and then secured weapons for themselves.

  Isabel saw her mother select a little hatchet normally used in preparing
the meat; she wanted to ask for a knife or even a rolling pin, but something in her mother’s face dissuaded her. Instead, she went and put her arms around a wide-eyed Perrin, who was doing his best not to weep.

  “Father is outside!” he whispered to her in a voice full of fear.

  “Shhhh,” she comforted him. “Be brave like him. Father is with his men. He’s a knight in vassal to the king himself. He will kill them all!”

  Perrin relaxed a little, trusting in her words. She wished she could believe them too. She listened for the familiar sound of Father’s voice, but with all the others talking around her in the kitchen, she couldn’t hear anything outside. Her mother was nervously fingering a rosary in one hand while holding the hatchet in the other. Her lips were moving, but Isabel couldn’t tell if she was praying, reciting the rosary, or talking to herself.

  Then there was a loud thudding sound that seemed to come from somewhere near the rear of the house. Everyone froze and fell silent. She felt Perrin go rigid in her arms.

  “Doublet, go and see what that is,” her mother ordered the valet. The old man was visibly afraid, so much so that his hands were shaking, but he obeyed nevertheless, climbing awkwardly over the barrier with the help of the cook. They all waited, motionless, listening for a sign that the dreadful creatures were gone, hoping to hear the sound of her father calling to tell them that he’d driven the creatures away.

  Then there came another thud, followed by the unmistakable sound of breaking glass. Isabel screamed, and she wasn’t the only one to do so. They heard Doublet’s voice shouting curses, interrupted by a crashing sound, after which the pounding of heavy feet running through the house was all they could hear. Then a horrible green face appeared at the top of the barrier; it vanished right away, but from the blood-curdling cries that followed Isabel knew it was alerting its fellows to their presence. She glanced around and saw a cupboard just big enough to hold Perrin.