Adept (The Essence Gate War, Book 1) - By Michael Arnquist Page 0,110
the sibilant sounds, she had all but forgotten the presence of the reptilian warrior.
“So I was,” Bellimar admitted. “I was struck down at the height of my power, even as I was on the verge of plunging the world into an age of shadow such as it had never before seen. I was struck down by a gathering of forces from beyond that dwarfed even my own strength.”
“So the tales were true?” Amric asked, incredulous. “The gods themselves intervened in the mortal arena?”
The old man barked a bitter laugh. “First, tell me your definition of a god. What are the gods, anyway, except beings above us in power, capable of demanding obeisance and inflicting their will upon lesser creatures such as ourselves? By that standard, yes, it was most certainly the gods who struck me down. Whatever you call these beings, they appeared to me as men and women of great power, and were not content to defeat or even destroy me. Instead, they changed me in ways I still do not understand, and then cast me out into the world, even as they dispersed the dark forces I had assembled around me.”
“I do not understand,” Halthak said. “What did you become after your fall? What are you now?”
Bellimar swung his gaze to the Half-Ork. “In many ways, I am what I was before, an affront to nature by my very existence,” he said. “I am an ancient vampire.”
Halthak started back from the man as if struck.
“Whatever is the matter, healer?” Bellimar asked, baring his teeth in a blood-chilling smile. “Are you thinking, perhaps, of all those nights I feigned sleep whilst listening to the languid pulse within your senseless, slumbering form only a few tantalizing feet away? Ah, but listen to your heart race now!”
In what Thalya would have deemed a physical impossibility, the Half-Ork whitened even further.
“Enough, Bellimar!” Amric said, slicing his hand through the air in a curt motion. “Leave him be.”
Bellimar swung his gaze over to the man.
“And you, warrior,” he hissed. “Your pulse remains strong and steady, scarcely rising under threat of violence even though I can smell your fear. A testament to the steel of your nerves, no doubt, but is your composure misplaced? Aura or no, I suspect your blood carries hidden power.”
Amric met the vampire’s fevered stare, unmoving, unrelenting. “If you were merely some blood-mad fiend,” he said, “you have had ample opportunity to strike. Instead you saved us in Stronghold, and you gave me your word you were our ally.”
Thalya snorted, but Amric ignored her and pressed on. “What game are you playing at, Bellimar?”
The old man met his iron gaze for a long moment, and then sagged back, looking suddenly aged and weary once more.
“I am no longer certain,” he said at last in a low, brooding tone. “At first it was the drive for knowledge. I sought to end this new curse, to understand how I had been changed, to unravel the riddle of what they had done to me so that I could return to my former glory. I realized the obvious from the beginning, that I had somehow been stripped of my sorcerous powers; they eluded my will even though I retained the full extent of my arcane knowledge itself.
“The more subtle aspects of my transformation soon began to settle upon me, however. I still required the blood and life force of living creatures as sustenance, and the infernal craving was with me always, but I could no longer bear to take sentient life as I had so casually done before. In fact, I felt nausea, revulsion and pain whenever I contemplated doing harm to another creature. And so I was consigned to feeding on game and lesser creatures like some depraved scavenger, and even that only in the extremes of my hunger, when necessary to sustain my very existence. Perhaps in exchange, I could once more endure the light of the sun and other things considered anathema to my kind. I felt their searing kiss on my flesh, and yet somehow I was not destroyed. I had been thrust into some half existence, and thus it has been for all these centuries, as I pay penance for my sins.”
“Are you living or dead, then?” Syth asked in a hushed voice.
“What does it mean to be living?” Bellimar replied with a shrug. “I have free will, and so by that definition––”
“No more word games,” Amric interrupted. “Answer the question or be gone from here.”