Home > White Serpent, Black Dragon (Eve of Redemption #2)(6)

White Serpent, Black Dragon (Eve of Redemption #2)(6)
Author: Joe Jackson

Kari and Erik had suggested sending a defense force to keep watch over the Temple after they’d returned from Tsalbrin. The Order’s council, made up of clerics, was familiar with Salvation’s Dawn and the myths and stories surrounding the Temple. They conferred with Grakin and Kyrie, and an entire regiment of the ducal army was sent to the Isle of Morikk to safeguard the Temple. The Order further assigned a rotating schedule of pairs of demonhunters to stand watch with the soldiers. Thus far there had been no disturbances at the Temple and no sightings of Emma or any other underworld demons, but the mallasti’s absence only made Kari more suspicious.

What muddied the waters now was the fact that Bosimar had gambled with peoples’ lives by setting a syrinthian free. The snake-people were servants of Sekassus and known enemies to the people of Citaria. Bosimar setting one free—a priestess, no less—meant he’d exposed the world to another invasion akin to the one during the Third Demon War, a battle that had resulted in a good portion of Terrassia being incinerated. Kari wondered why Bosimar didn’t just force Ciceria to take him to her people. If he had, Kari was sure he could’ve taken an ample force to exterminate them if it was trouble they were about—which she was sure had to be the case.

Kari picked up the journal and walked upstairs to her son’s room. She smiled at his curled up, sleeping form, and she absently pushed the reading chair back into its correct place before she sat down in it. The house creaked once more and she glanced around, but then she opened the journal and continued reading.

 

 

2

 

 

First Blood

 

 

“Something about this just doesn’t make sense,” Aeligos said, waving Bosimar’s journal around for emphasis. Aeligos, who could almost pass for Grakin’s twin, was the younger of the Tesconis family’s middle children, nearly three years Grakin’s junior.

“What do you mean?” Kari inquired.

He sighed, flipped back a few pages in the journal, and pointed out several lines as he reread them. “If this is supposed to be a record of everything related to this Ciceria woman, Bosimar was either addled or he was hiding something. There are just too many holes in his records, and they lack any sort of flow or continuity. What do you figure, he had maybe a hundred or more hunters working for him at any given time?”

“Far more than that.”

“Yet he sent some random group of mercenaries to investigate demon activity of the sort that would be of concern to the Beast? And then, when they found something, he turned around and sent them to investigate the theft of Turik Jalar’s armor and axe? That doesn’t make any sense; any good tactician would’ve had eyes on Ciceria the moment she left his custody. From what’s written in this journal, she walked away from their meeting knowing far more about him and the Order than he knew about her or her people. That’s a mistake I have a hard time believing the Avatar of Vengeance would’ve committed under those circumstances. I don’t believe it when he says he was trying to make her feel he took her at her word; she must have told him something that he left out of this journal, and he may have…”

Aeligos paused for a minute, and Kari waited patiently for him to continue his train of thought. Kyrie Kyleah sat at the head of the table, patted Kari’s hand, and smiled. Kyrie was absolutely gorgeous, a stunning example of how serilian-rir genes could enhance beauty and sexual allure. She had a dazzling combination of blonde hair and green eyes—apparently where her son Typhonix got his coloration from—and one of the warmest personalities Kari could ever remember encountering. Kari couldn’t quite grasp everything that had gone on in the woman’s past to make her walk away from her mate and children, but in the years she had come to know Kyrie, Kari was confident it was not a choice the woman had made lightly. Her children, some of whom had gone decades without seeing her, held no grudges against their mother—even Typhonix, who had long felt betrayed by the absence of the woman from his life. That, too, spoke volumes to Kari about what had caused Kyrie to walk away.

“Tell her,” Kyrie said to her son.

Aeligos turned his gaze back to Kari. “I think he might’ve been working with them.”

Kari was taken aback; to utter such a thing on the campus of the Order might’ve resulted in Aeligos being thrown headlong into the mud outside its gates. “Aeligos,” Kari said with a shake of her head, “Jason was the Avatar of Vengeance, there’s no way he would’ve been working with demons. Zalkar would’ve stripped him of his rank and power.”

The rogue slid the journal back across the table toward her. “I don’t mean he was helping them, Kari. Just that he may have been working with them toward some common goal. That’s my best guess,” he said, holding his hands up defensively. It was clear he didn’t want to insult Kari or her Order, but he was confident in his conclusion. “I’ll reread the journal tomorrow and see if I come to the same conclusions, but at first glance it looks like he was keeping just enough records to satisfy the Order while he hid a lot of the truth from his charges.”

“But again, Zalkar would’ve stripped him of the rank,” Kari countered.

“Not if he was satisfied with Jason’s line of thinking,” Aeligos replied with a shrug.

Kari put her face in her hand and leaned on her elbow, and Kyrie gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze. “I can tell you from experience, sometimes the politics of a very black and white situation can blanket everything in shades of grey,” the priestess said. “Kaelariel has at times walked a dark path that led his Koryonite counterparts to question his motivations, but in the end, their trust in his integrity was justified. You must consider that as Avatar, Jason may have felt the imminence of the Apocalypse weighing upon his decisions as well. It’s possible he let Ciceria go because he was afraid of starting a war with the syrinthians or even an underworld lord if his suspicions proved false. I have to believe that such logic would have satisfied even the Unyielding under those circumstances.”

Aeligos nodded. “Good point. I would’ve gone about things differently, Kari, but bear in mind I’m only working with what Jason recorded here. As I said, I think he was hiding something, so until we know what that was, it’s hard to judge his course of action. I hope I’m wrong, but I’ll tell you this much: You’re not going to get the entire story from his journals. If I were you, I’d track down Tormaar or one of his companions. It’ll probably be hard to get a hold of Jori-an again unless Karmi’s Sword comes into port, but those people will be the only ones that can tell you what Bosimar left out.”

Kari nodded and forced a slight smile back onto her features, considering the weight of what she’d just heard. “That’s a good idea,” she said. “I suppose we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions until we know what really happened. My instincts are to trust Jason, and the fact that the Order hasn’t heard anything about the snake-people or any disturbances in the mountains kinda re… reinforces that.”

“They didn’t mention anything of the sort when I was in training,” Typhonix added from behind her. He was seated in the lounging area in one of its deep rocking chairs with a thick history book open in his lap. Despite his appearance and reputation as little more than a brute, Typhonix, the youngest of the siblings, was brilliant—as all of the Tesconis children seemed to be—and he took an interest in history, politics, and economics. It was a strange hobby for a sometimes-ill-tempered man who always seemed ready to pummel someone, but one that Kari appreciated, especially in a brother-in-law who once hated her. Ty shrugged when Kari turned to look at him, and he added, “Then again, they spent most of the time talking about you.”

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