The Right of Blood - Chapter One

THE RIGHT OF BLOOD

TIRAMOUR CYCLE VOLUME ONE

NOVEL BY

JOSHUA KANE





1

         Death: Oft it comes silent, as a lamb; but at times as a roaring lion.  The true test of a Man, is how he faces the lion, for the lamb invokes no fear.



Covering all of Canada and the United States, the United Wizard Provinces is the single largest Wizard’s nation on the planet; although, like all other Wizard nations, it exists totally separate, and in total secrecy, from the non-magical nations of planet Earth.  Triant Province, with a magical population of about two hundred thousand, occupies the area roughly corresponding to all of Washington State, and the northern part of Idaho as well.  The witches and wizards—and their families—living within the provinces, mostly live side-by-side with Bards (those normal, everyday people who have no more knowledge of magic’s existence than they do of their own credit scores) in their great cities, and small towns.  However, there are some settlements, such as Bingham’s Basin which are entirely comprised of witches and wizards.  Such settlements, of course, are sheltered from discovery by the Bards.

         In a low, grassy valley, the small wizard’s settlement of Bingham’s Basin sprawled and meandered.  Surrounded by tall forests, and at the base of a small mountain, the valley in which the settlement stood required only minimal enchantments to keep the Bards totally unaware of its existence.  None of the buildings were tall; most only one or two levels.  The architecture—with the occasional exception—was almost entirely colonial in nature.  Here and there, one or two buildings were of a Victorian design, though not one building was of modern glass and steel.  The houses were painted in a variety of colors, just like on any Bard street, in any Bard town or city.  Bingham’s Basin curved around large grassy knolls, and rested in places on low, gently sloping hills.

         On a bright, and clear spring afternoon, on 11 April, 1999, Tristan Evans—who had turned eighteen that very morning—stepped across the threshold of number one thirty-seven, Brighton Lane: a light gray-blue, two-level Victorian with white trim.  His black robes billowed in a brief gust of spring wind; a laugh etching joyous gaiety on his sculpturesque face, under his cerulean eyes and neatly trimmed auburn hair.  Passing though the enclosed foyer, the front door closing behind him, he walked into a nightmare.

         The family room was a wreck.  The long sofa was smashed, padding erupting from aqua-colored upholstery.  The two matching chairs were similarly destroyed.  The rosewood end tables were overturned; his mother’s favored lotus plants resting crushed in the remains of their desecrated bowls, which had been shattered when the tables were overturned.  Numerous burn marks and cracks marred the polished oak-paneled walls.  The two large bookshelves that had once flanked the archway into the dining area now rested propped against each other, blocking all view into the other room.

         After taking a moment to register the destruction, Tristan pulled a wooden wand (fourteen inches, made of mahogany) from a pocket in his robe.  Holding the wand in his right hand, he carefully made his way across the debris strewn room.  On the left, just past the stairs to the upper level, the archway into the kitchen was unblocked.  He cautiously crept through it: wand held ready, expecting attack at any moment.

         The counters were their normal spotlessly clean selves.  If one only looked at counter-level—and ignored the damage in the family room—one would have had the impression that nothing was wrong.  On closer inspection, the apparent battle had spread even here.  Pots and pans, broken plates and bowls all littered the hardwood floor, and blood trailed past the butcher-block island toward the dining room.  Sliding past the Chiller—a large box, enchanted to maintain near freezing temperatures for food storage—Tristan was afforded his first look into the room where just that morning his mother had served a large breakfast of bacon, eggs, orange juice and waffles.

         The damage was as bad there as in the family room.

         The heavy oak table was smashed.  The glass in the sliding door, shattered; a spring breeze wafted in.  The large hutch that held his mother’s finest crystal and silver was little more than a pile of twigs, glass and crystal, with bits of silver shining through in the afternoon light.  The chairs, as heavy as the table, were overturned, resting in a spreading pool of red blood.

         It took Tristan a long second to realize that there was someone trapped under the wreckage of the table.  A slender arm, with long fingered hand, stuck out from beneath it; so pale it was barely visible against the light wood.  Dropping caution, he rushed over.  He attacked the wreckage manually, abstaining from magic in fear of hurting the person beneath.  Even so, it was only moments before Tristan had pulled enough of the table’s remnants off to the side revealing...

         …his mother’s body.

         Blood poured profusely from a wound in her side.  Reaching a trembling hand to her neck, Tristan felt desperately for a pulse.  Though Rachel Evans’ skin was ashen, it was still warm to the touch, a fleeting glimmer of hope blossomed in Tristan, to die a breath later…there was no pulse.  Rachel Evans was already dead.

         His stomach crashed through his shoes.  He’d been too late.  If he’d been home only two minutes earlier, he might have saved her.  Still, before the full weight of this had time to do more than shatter his world, a thump and a shout sounded above him.  A moment later, a second thump followed the first, then the sound of breaking glass.  The culprit was still in the house.

         Fighting back rising terror, and anger, Tristan grudgingly left his mother’s corpse.  The only thing he could do for the dead was seek justice.  To be honest with himself, he knew that deep down he wanted revenge, total and horrific retribution; but, he also knew that if he crossed that line, he’d be as much a monster as whoever had done these deeds.  It would not be a fitting legacy for his late mother.  No, justice would be the path.  If he worked quickly, he’d capture the culprit and hand the person over to the Guardians.

         Making his way back into the family room, Tristan headed for the stairs.  As he began to make his way up them, he started to hear more sounds.  Small crashes, muffled bangs; more small thuds, which he now recognized as heavy footfalls; and shouts, shouts uttered in two different voices.  They were, he realized, the sounds of battle—his father must have been home when the attack occurred; must still be in the house fighting the perpetrator of this destruction and death.

         Moving swiftly, he rocketed up the stairs, taking three risers at a time.  Reaching the upper hall, Tristan registered scorch marks and holes on and in the walls, and even charred carpeting.

         On his right, the door to his bedroom was smashed, and the room itself bore signs of magical combat.  His bed smashed, his desk burned to a crisp; and, one window shattered.  However, the sapphire-blue painted room was empty.  His father’s study, across the hall from Tristan’s room, was also wrecked, but also devoid of the combatants.  The guest room was untouched.

At the end of the hall, in line with the top of the stairs, the door to his parents’ room—while still whole—leaned crazily into the room on only its lower hinge.  Light generated by spells flashed red, green, purple, and white in the opening.  He could now hear clearly the incantations being used by both his father and the intruder.  Before he could draw closer, there was a shout…

         “Telum.”

         Tristan froze as there was first a flash of red light, then a scream of agony, and his father’s head and shoulders crashed to the floor, visible through the ruined doorway.  As the second’s shock wore off, Tristan noticed blood creeping toward his father’s shoulders from somewhere out of sight.

         Making to rush to his father’s aid, he realized that John Evans—having noticed his son—was staring hard at Tristan.  Tristan froze.  The look in John Evans’s eyes clearly ordered: “Don’t interfere.”

         With a brief wave of his wand, and—in as quite a voice as possible—a hastily murmured, “Occludo,” he faded into non-visibility.

Invisible, Tristan edged close, but was careful not to open the door further.  Creeping to the left, he tried to get a look at his parents’ assailant; but, the attacker was standing just out of the view provided by the leaning door.

         “Why?”

         Tristan was startled to hear how weak his father’s voice was.  Still, weak and pain-filled as it was, there was no fear in it.  Yet he knew that if he didn’t get in there and aid his father soon, John Evans would be as dead as Tristan’s mother.  Neither a fear for his safety, nor cowardice stayed his feet, however.  Invisible as he was, the element of surprise would be on his side.  Instead, it was the order in his father’s eyes; as firm as any Tristan had been given as a boy.  Even while knowing that his father did not want him to interfere, Tristan worried about being too late to save his father when, or if, John Evans would finally let him enter the room.  As fear for his father rushed through Tristan, his mind echoed his father’s question: “Why?”

         Why had John Evans, most likely mortally wounded, forbidden his son, with the element of surprise, from interfering?  Why would someone attack them?  Who was this murderer?  Why…why…why?  All sorts of whys echoed and chased each other through Tristan’s mind in rapid succession; dozens of questions in only seconds.

         “Simply because she ordered it,” the unseen attacker said: his voice was cruel, shallow and rasping.

         “O-ordered it?” John coughed.

         “She will brook no rivals,” the voice continued, “and with Arvan dead…only you stand in her way.  You, and your son.”

         Small rivers of blood spread from John Evans’s mouth.  His breathing shallow, and blood gurgled in his throat.  “Her way?” he gasped.  “I n-never wanted it.  She c-ould have ha-d it.”

         The attacker roared, bellowed: “You know the law!”  Then, calmer, he added: “She cannot clam it as long as you live, Iahn.”

         Tristan blinked.  What was this about?  What object was this person looking for that she had to send someone to kill his family?  Who was Arvan; and why had the killer called his father Iahn?

         “Feban, I’ve k-nown you all my life.  We grew up to-gether….”

         “Grew up together?” the voice spat.  “Grew up?  You got out Iahn, you left.  You fled here, too cowardly to take your place.  Do you think this easy for me?  Do you think I wanted to be the one to hunt you down?”

         There was a pause, total silence other than the gurgling sound of labored breathing.  “Feban…”

         “Shut up!” the man called Feban roared.  “Shut up…shut up…shut up!”  Feban breathed hard, it seemed he was trying to compose himself; then: “Did you and Mahiohri actually think for a minute that this day wouldn’t come?”

         “Feban,” John Evans croaked, “What has happened too you?”

         Derisive laughter echoed, rebounding off the walls.  “To me, Iahn?  You happened.  You could have ended everything.  You could have solved it all.  All you had to do was kill him.  Kill him and take his place.  That was the plan, Iahn.  But no, you and Mahiohri were too noble, too honorable.  And you left.  You left it all behind, all the suffering; the entire nightmare.  The Covenant is broken, Iahn; shattered, leaderless.  He saw to that, and I had to do what I could to survive.  So I joined her, and now Lain is dead and she is ready to take his place.”

         “So you’ve become the very monsters we fought, Feban?”

         “Yes!” Feban shouted.  “Because of your cowardice, because of you, I became what we hated, and I hated you for it.”  He paused.  “But, enough about old times Iahn, your time is over; and Mahiohri’s soon as well.  Where is the boy?  Where is your son?”

         Unable to hold himself back any longer, Tristan stepped forward to the door, raising his wand.  “I’m here,” he said, kicking the door open to get a clear view.

         Feban was a thin man; his nearly black robes clung to his frame with sweat from recent battle.  His face was a mass of scar tissue on the right side, his eye barely visible beneath almost completely closed lids.

         These features were all Tristan’s mind had time to register, for as soon as the door was out of the way and he could see his quarry, he drew up his wand hand and shouted, “Telum.”

         Three small red orbs flung from the tip of the wand and shot toward Feban, who, surprised by the suddenness of the attack, barely had time to dodge — though im-perfectly.  One of the orbs clipped him on his left shoulder, searing away the cloth of his robes, leaving behind bloodied and burned flesh beneath.  The others slammed into the floor and wall behind him as he dove to the side.

         “Lacero,” Feban shouted, but with Tristan still invisible he had only the location of the young man’s spell to guide his aim.  The jagged yellow light that came from his wand shot through empty space, cleaving a chest of drawers in two.

         Spinning, Feban cursed, flinging spells about wildly trying to catch Tristan in one of them.  Jets of yellow, red, green and colors in between shattered, burned, cut, and dis-integrated objects around the room, but continually missed their mark.

         Tristan dodged, and ducked each spell, looking for an opportunity to hit Feban.  Aware that his father’s time was running short, Tristan flung himself around the bed, aimed his wand quickly and shouted, “Ligo.”

         Feban yelled in mid-turn as his legs snapped together as though bound.  His momentum continued to carry him in his turn, over balancing him and causing him to fall.

         Prepared to strike again, Tristan was startled when Feban disappeared before hit-ting the floor.  He froze.  Is he invisible? He thought.  In seconds though, his mind reasoned out that Feban couldn’t have turned invisible; the man hadn’t uttered a spell, his mouth hadn’t formed an intelligible word as he had fallen; and there had been no sound of the wizard landing on the floor.  No, he’d gone…somehow he’d left.

         “He sh-adow-wal-ked.”

         The voice was weak, accompanied by a wet cough; it brought Tristan’s mind back around.  Dropping his invisibility, he rushed to his father’s side.

         The sight of his father’s dying form was appalling.  All three orbs from Feban’s missile spell had pierced John’s body.  Tristan surveyed the wounds; upper right chest, left lung, and liver.  Blackened blood poured from John’s side, while still crimson blood poured from his chest, lung, and mouth.

         From his brief examination of the wounds, Tristan knew it was too late, his father was beyond healing.  Dropping his wand, the young man tried to hold back the grief that was threatening to overwhelm him.  “I can’t save you,” he said, his tone strained.

         John coughed more blood, smiling weakly at his son.  “Y-you fought well, Tris-tan.  I’m proud of you.”  Tristan saw the look of deep pride in his father’s eyes as the dying man continued, “Your grandmother is in danger now, go to her, save her and your questions will be answered….” John coughed and wheezed.  “I know you have many now…but go.”

         Tristan nodded weakly and picked up his wand.  His father’s eyes were beginning to gloss over.  He would go, but he would give John a last happy thought before death took him.  “Dad, they accepted me; the Bright Shields.  I’m to join them soon.”

         John smiled weakly.  “Your m-mother would have b-been proud.  We loved….”

         Tristan kept his gaze steady on his father’s face as death took John Evans.  The wizard looked oddly at peace, despite the grievous injuries he’d sustained and the destruction around him.

         Turning, Tristan was about to cast the spell to open a portal when something caught his eye.  There, in the shadows where Feban had been; something wasn’t right about it.  As he observed it, it seemed to be a slowly fading imprint of the falling villain’s form…like the afterimage of a bright light imbedded on the retina.  It was the spot from which Feban had shadow-walked, as his father had said.

He didn’t know how he knew, but he suddenly understood what it was and what to do.  Standing, Tristan moved over to the spot.  He could fell the magic that had been worked there; understood innately how the magic worked; knew where it led, too: Chatterbrook.  He knew that he could duplicate it.

         Answers, his father had promised, awaited him if he saved his grandmother.  Answers awaited him on the other side of this odd magic.  Resolve strengthened him.  He would not lose another family member today; and he would have answers.  Striding for-ward, Tristan stepped into the shadow where Feban had been, and pulled the magic around him; leaving behind the house in which he’d grown up, and the parents that now lay dead in its walls.



Tristan stepped out of the shadow of a large birch tree on the edge of a town square.  Around him colonial era shops butted against prohibition era homes.  Across from him, one shop in particular drew his interest.  It was a grey, brick shop, a sign hanging from a pole mounted to the front of the building held the image of three wands resting at an angle, bottom right to top left.  Above the image, the words, Evans’ Wands, were etched and lined in blue paint.

         His shadow-walk had taken him seventy miles southwest of Bingham’s Basin, directly to the center of Chatterbrook.  It would have taken him two portals, whose range was limited to about fifty miles, to reach this place.

However, he didn’t have time to admire the unknown range of shadow-walking.  In the setting light of the sun, with the sound of the surf beating against the Pacific Coast, Tristan saw that the door into the shop was rent in twain.  Sounds of battle, and flashes of light flared from behind the glass windows of the shop front.

         Looking around, Tristan noticed that witches and wizards were being drawn from their homes and the surrounding shops by the noise.  Running across the street, he barked at the onlookers, “Summon the Guardians.”

         As several scrambled to relay the request, he dashed through the broken shop door.  The main room was as much a mess as the sitting room of his home had been.  Shelves that once held stacks of slender boxes lay toppled; the boxes littered the floor in varied conditions of disrepair and ruin, the wands once protected inside broken more often than not.  Scars and burns of spells on the floors and walls spoke of the ferocity of the battle raging further back in the shop.

         Wand held ready, Tristan advanced through the shop, moving back toward the office and workshop area.  Ahead a wizard in black stumbled backward out of a door, a vicious snarl etched on his features.  While he was obviously not Feban, he seemed no less determined to inflict harm.  The wizard brought his wand down in a slash, shouting, “Lacero.”  Jagged yellow light arced from the wand, cracking something that sounded like wood and glass in the room beyond.

         “Ligo totallum.”

         Tristan’s spell caught the wizard by surprise, and his wand fell from his hands as his legs snapped together, his wrists held as if in handcuffs.  Even as the wizard toppled over, Tristan kicked the dropped wand away.  Quickly pointing his wand once again at the wizard, he muttered, “Dormio.” The prone wizard’s eyes closed and he dropped into a deep sleep.  With the threat incapacitated, Tristan edged cautiously around the door-frame into the ruined workshop.

         The detritus of both wandmaking and battle lay everywhere, though no bodies lay anywhere in sight.  A door stood ajar to the left of Tristan as he entered; eerily similar to the upstairs hallway he’d stood in only minutes before.  Having been here uncounted times, he knew that door, and one further along the hall he’d just left, led into the private living area behind the main shop.  Equally similar were the sounds of battle raging beyond.  Both voices, which were shouting incantations, were familiar to Tristan; he easily recognized his grandmother’s alto tones, and the deep, rasping sounds of the mysterious Feban.

         The hatred that had risen in him as his father died, returned in full.  It threatened to boil over, and drove caution from Tristan’s mind.  Wand held ready, he rushed the door; shouldering it open.

         On the other side, his grandmother and the assassin faced off.  Spells flew around the living space; shattering curios and furniture, burning plants, wallpaper and tapestries.  The effect was quite like tumbling into a tornado, with all it’s lightning and debris.

         Absorbed in their struggle, neither had noticed Tristan’s sudden arrival.  As Feban raised his wand to strike once more, Tristan screamed his own spell, “Lacero!”

         Feban screamed as the unexpected, jagged line of yellow energy flashed from Tristan’s wand, cutting across his wand arm’s shoulder and throwing him backward in a spray of blood.

         Marjory wheeled, wand ready, to see Tristan already advancing on the downed assailant; rage filling his eyes.  “Tristan,” said the startled Marjory.  “What are you doing here?”

         Breathing heavily, Tristan did not respond.  Instead, he continued to advance on his fallen foe.  Feban lay bleeding profusely from his shoulder, his wand held feebly in seemingly nerveless fingers.  His scarred face was ashen.  Tristan kicked Feban’s wand away.

         Feban was now defenseless, and Tristan knew he should restrain him, stop the bleeding, and wait for the Guardians to arrive and take the assailants into custody.  As he looked down on the man who had killed his parents, however, the rage and hatred finally boiled over.  Defenseless prisoner, or not, Tristan was suddenly seized by a deep desire to kill the wizard on the floor in front of him.

         It was a desire to avenge, Tristan knew; but, beyond that he knew it wasn’t a righteous desire.  It wasn’t like in the books—a noble need to bring justice to the deceased.  No, there was nothing righteous or noble about what Tristan was feeling.  He wanted to not only kill Feban, but to cause him as much agony as possible in the process.

         “Tristan,” said Marjory again, more urgently.  She had come up beside him.

         In still heaving breaths, Tristan finally answered.  “Dead!  They’re dead.”  He was surprised that his voice was stead, though there was some strain in it; a hint at the grief still roiling beneath all the hate and rage.

         Taking hold of Tristan’s wand arm, Marjory looked into his hate filled eyes; her face deeply concerned.  “Who is dead?”

         Snarling, Tristan jerked his arm from his grandmother’s grasp and advanced once more upon Feban.  “My parents.  HE KILLED THEM!” roared Tristan.  “Dead.  Gone.  MURDERED!”

         Marjory cringed as Tristan bellowed, but he didn’t notice; didn’t see his grand-mother’s world dim just as much as his had.  He didn’t even realize he was shouting.  He was only aware of his desire to destroy Feban, in the most painful and slow manner he could think of.

         Despite the loss of her son, and daughter-in-law, Marjory could not fail to notice the desire burning in Tristan; openly hostile and shouting as he was.  Grabbing his arm again, holding tightly, she cried urgently, “Tristan...TRISTAN!  You can’t bring them back.  Killing him won’t help.”

         “I don’t care!” he snarled.  “Besides, I don’t want to kill him.  I’m going to destroy him.”

         Though his rage was building, Marjory’s grip was sure, and Tristan couldn’t shake her.  “Tristan,” she said, her voice filled with urgent terror.  “Listen to me!  If you do this, you will only destroy yourself; yourself and everything you stand for.”

         Wheeling on her so unexpectedly, Marjory’s grip failed, and his wand arm came free.  His features distorted by the hatred flowing through him, Tristan shouted into his grandmother’s frightened face: “I DON’T CARE!  HE DESERVES IT!”

         If he’d been himself, Tristan would have seen in his grandmother’s eyes, the thoughts racing through Marjory’s mind as she sought the right words to save him from himself.  “What about your parents?” ask Marjory in a quite, terrified voice.  “Would they want you to do this?”  She paused, then added, “You will desecrate their memory.”

         Tristan stared at Marjory, a retort dying on his lips.  Her words about his parents struck a note deep in a part of him he had just worked so hard to bury.  His conscience began once more to shout at him, repeating the arguments his grandmother had been making.  Slowly the rage left his face, and his hatred lessened drastically, as grief began to break through.

         As Tristan’s wand dropped from his numbed fingers, Marjory turned to restrain Feban; but he was not there.  The wizard had taken advantage of the argument, and seizing his wand, shadow-walked once more.

         Tristan was surprised to find him self suddenly seated on the floor, tears streaming in his eyes as he sobbed; both in grief over the death and destruction, and in horror at what he’d nearly done.

         “Tristan,” Marjory’s voice came dully through his fogged mind.  “When he attacked your parents; did he say where he’d come from?  Why he’d attacked?”

         In his troubled state, Tristan failed to recognize the strained and urgent tone in his grandmother’s voice; nor did he notice that she moved from his line of sight, or that her wand was still drawn.  Instead, he stated simply, “It doesn’t matter.”  Sobbing, he was dimly aware of shouts and noise from the rooms beyond.

         “It matters, Tristan,” insisted Marjory.  “Did he?”

         “He said something about a woman needing dad out of the way,” Tristan mumbled, the shouts coming closer. "Said someone named Arvan was dead, and made it sound as if someone else was also.”

         “Anything else?  Anything?”

         Tristan weakly lifted his head.  “He kept calling dad ‘Iahn’.  He kept insisting that Iahn and Mahiohri were responsible for something….”  His voice trailed off for a moment, as a thought clicked home in his mind.  “You’re Mahiohri.”

         “I was afraid of that,” said Marjory, an odd note in her voice.

         “Why?” asked Tristan, suddenly aware that she was out of sight.  Turning around, he found himself staring at the tip of his grandmother’s raised wand.

         “I’m sorry Tristan.  It’s the only way,” said Marjory, regret thick now in her voice.  “You’ll be better off in the end.”

         He had only a moment’s notice, enough to begin a question.  But the question, “What are you doing?” never fully left his mouth, as Marjory muttered, “Alieno.”  A pale purple light filled Tristan’s vision, and then, there was only darkness.