by Travis Smith
“Brought me food?” Greggy laughed excitedly. “Here t’ the house? What’s the occasion?”
“He’s more lively outside of the grim cells,” The Stranger mused.
Gregoire laughed uproariously at this. “Ye’ve always been like a brother t’ us, me an’ Ian, an’ we thank ya for the food.”
“I can’t take credit for this,” The Stranger replied. “Never showed much mastery at preparing food that isn’t fish.”
“Hee-hee-hee-hee!” Gregoire wheezed. “An’ we still love ya just the same.” He pulled The Stranger into a powerful embrace and pat him strongly on the back as The Stranger winced and offered a feeble hug in return.
The rest of the group laughed at this display. “He feels only love,” Ian repeated.
After the group finished eating, The Stranger approached John and Maria as they were tidying up their packs. “I wish to thank you all again,” he said, “for coming all this way just for me.”
“Making goodbyes so soon?” Maria asked.
The Stranger offered a contrite smile and a shrug. “My family …”
“Yes,” Maria agreed, “they still need you.”
John Tompkins clapped him on the back. “We’ll help ya find yer family.”
“I couldn’t ask—” The Stranger began.
“I know ya wouldn’t, but we’re here offerin’. It’s why we left paradise for this crusty desert!”
The Stranger stood speechless. He’d spent so long running from peril and captivity that he knew not how to begin to accept anyone’s genuine assistance. “Well, if you insist on coming along, then I’m in no position to impede you.”
“Well,” Maria began, “we do insist … but I think you should speak with that child before you make any hasty plans for flight.”
13
Patrick left the group after breakfast and wandered to a canyon nearby. The group had set up camp in a small thicket that had cropped up within the sweeping desert. The western horizon was sharply contoured and jagged with mesas and distant mountain ranges set against a clear blue sky. To the south, the sand and mud rolled in waves of brownish-green weeds toward the prison. A scorching summer sun would undoubtedly give it a liquid, flowing quality like a sea surface dirtied by whatever muck one would expect to be washing out of Fanxel prison. To the north, small canyons carved generations ago disrupted the flat desert surface and peppered the path toward the distant Klippa Mountains.
Patrick sat atop one of the small canyons and retrieved the stone from his pocket. It was the first time he was truly seeing it in the light of day. It emanated a blackness that was somehow darker than pitch. He mused offhandedly that its inky surface should well have stood out even in the stark darkness of the tunnels where he’d found it. It was no longer thrumming that seducing hum, but it possessed a powerful weight as he rolled it in his palm. He hummed as he slid his thumb around the symbol carved on its surface, eventually allowing his eyes to close.
“You can run, you can run, From the setting of the sun, But there is darkness on the both sides of the day.”
“That’s a lovely melody,” a voice spoke behind him.
Patrick started and shoved the stone back into his pocket before turning around. The Stranger was approaching him from the campsite behind.
“Thanks,” he said. “My mother sang it to me in another life, long ago …”
“My mother was a pragmatist,” The Stranger said.
Patrick raised an eyebrow.
“She was kind and wise and always logical,” The Stranger explained, “but she was never one for the arts.”
Patrick nodded in feigned understanding. “What happened to her?”
The Stranger swallowed hard. “She was killed … and my father …”
“By The Baron?” Patrick asked.
The Stranger turned to the boy, taken aback.
“Yes, I know who you are, Your Noble Magnificent,” he said, tongue in his cheek.
The Stranger winced and rolled his eyes, but he smiled in spite of himself. “Yes, The Baron, her own son.”
“The Baron is your brother?” Patrick nearly shrieked.
The Stranger nodded.
“Why ever would he do such a wicked thing?”
“He was conceived by a different father,” The Stranger said, “so he could never be rightful king.”
The pair sat in an uncomfortable silence for a time before either spoke again. “I wanted to say that I’m grateful you found us,” The Stranger said at last. “Though serendipitous it may have been, I’d thank you nonetheless.”
Patrick nodded. “I’m grateful to have found you all as well. Being alone in this world can grow quite unbearable.”
“Perhaps it can,” The Stranger agreed. “But as a point of that matter … I cannot waste another moment not in pursuit of my wife and my son.”
“Maria warned me you’d try and leave.”
The Stranger chuckled. “We have a history.”
“We’ll help you save your family.”
The Stranger nodded.
“But first you have to help me save mine—what family I’ve got.”
He made no reply, but Patrick could read it written all over his face. He was set on leaving.
“You’ll need all the help you can get,” Patrick continued, “and so, too, do I … I led them to this fate. I need to right what I’ve allowed, and I need their aid in saving someone else … I left her in a healer’s cabin on the other side of the mountains, and if we don’t go back for her, she’ll die … or worse.”
The Stranger merely nodded again. “I am sorry for your adversity,” he said with an absent tone.
“They’re right over that horizon,” Patrick said, “innocent, imprisoned, tortured, and starved … along with countless others who share the same fate. How can we stand by and do nothing?”
“I understand and appreciate your drive, son, but I have unwavering obligations of my own.”
“Don’t call me son. You’re the king now, whether you want to be or not, and those are your people locked in that prison. You have an unwavering obligation to them, too.”
The Stranger placed a hand on the boy’s back, as kindly as he could, but said nothing. He knew better than to challenge a young boy’s passion.
“We are already here,” Patrick continued. “Help us free them—lead us—and then the might of all your people will be fully behind your quest.”
“I ask nothing of you,” The Stranger replied. “I have been impeded and imprisoned since the day I washed ashore on that cursed island. Any part of me that would have been king was killed that day. That man is gone, so I know not what makes you think—”
“I think that you’ll stay,” Patrick said at last. “I think that you will stay because you’ve been impeded and imprisoned. I sit before you not to delay you further or to hold you against your will, but to implore you to make the right choice. I think that you’ll stay because, for the first time, someone is asking you to.”
14
Patrick returned to the campsite alone. “I see no value to waiting around,” he announced. “I think we should do this first thing tomorrow.”
“Beg pardon?” Ian asked. “What thing are we doing?” He was seated in the nearby dirt, sketching out his symbols and strange writing.
“We’re going back into the prison,” Patrick said.
Ian considered this for a moment and turned back to his drawings without a word.
“Our plan was simple,” Maria explained. “We’d march John in as a prisoner, Robert and I acting as two bounty seekers in search of a fair trade. Once inside, we were to take survey and draw our weapons on the unsuspecting guards when we found The Stranger. We were counting on our preparedness over theirs. If there’s any word to describe these cretins, it’s ragtag.”
“I aim to level the prison and free everyone inside it,” Patrick continued, “but, foremost, I need to find my friends who were taken. You need not help us—”
“Of c
ourse we will help you,” Ian said without turning back around.
“You will?”
“Of course!” Gregoire shouted with unencumbered delight.
“Yes,” Ian agreed, turning back to face the others now. “What else would we do? We owe you, anyway.” He offered a nervous chortle.
Patrick shook his head. “I suppose you’d both go on with your lives.”
Ian pondered this briefly. “What life?” he responded simply.
“Where did he go?” John Tompkins chimed in, standing apart from the group and looking over toward the canyon where The Stranger had gone to speak with Patrick.
“He isn’t coming,” Patrick said, observing John’s crestfallen demeanor. He looked like a child whose father had reneged on teaching him to fish. “Did you really believe he would?”
John shrugged.
“You are welcome to follow him,” Patrick reiterated. “I appreciate your aid, but you owe me no debts.”
John looked at Maria, his expression dejected. “No,” he sighed, “our paths will cross again when there is a need.”
“The sooner we do this, the sooner we may pursue him toward Reprise. Now, does anyone know how to weave?”
15
Patrick sat atop the canyon with the setting sun. He’d filled in the others on his minor adjustments to Maria’s plan, and the group had spent a day working on the details and weaving a large mat out of thin branches and weeds. They would rest again tonight and spend half a day walking to the prison, starting at sunup.
He took the black stone out of his pocket and kneaded it in his palms while watching the sun. He understood little of what Ian had said about the symbol. It did bring death, that much was certain, and he knew not the significance of an artifact that had likely been buried generations ago in a mass tomb beneath the desert, but he had felt its power. It had drawn him to it for a reason, and he was more determined than ever to uncover the truth about what happened in Onton …
As he worried over the stone, eager eyes looked on from the shadows of the nearby canyon. Skuttler’s lips clicked in the quiet desert dusk as his dry tongue protruded to probe the corner of his mouth. He clutched the high-powered weapon that His Humble Highness The Baron had given him and prepared to rush the boy, but something striking caught his eye as he looked over the ridge which concealed him. The stone. It bore a familiar symbol on its surface.
I’ve seen that before, he thought. In the cell of the very man he was hunting down.
Perhaps he would wait to rush the boy … Perhaps he would wait and see what the boy would do …
16
The next morning, Patrick was up eager before the dawn. He sat in quiet wait for his charitable companions to rise and begin their journey to the prison. In the dark, he quietly stole away to some nearby brush and found a thorny branch with long, sharp needles protruding from their boughs. He broke off one and plopped down, drawing his legs up in a seated position. He tugged at the bottom of his pants until he loosened the coarse fabric and ripped a small bit of the tattered cloth. From there, he licked his fingertips and kneaded at the base of the pant until he was able to isolate a thread. This he worked carefully at separating from its weave. Before long he had unraveled an arm’s length of string, which he pinched and tore off from the pant leg.
He tied one end to the needle and removed his pants altogether to turn them inside out. Near the waist, he began to sew the patch of torn fabric to the inside of the pants. The seam was tight and tidy. When he’d almost sewn on the whole patch, he withdrew the stone from its pocket and admired by touch one last time before stowing it in the new pocket he’d created. With a heavy sigh, he continued sewing around the open side of the patch, fully enclosing the stone within. Things were likely to get perilous today, and he knew he couldn’t risk losing the stone.
No sooner had Patrick finished sewing on the patch than he heard Maria stirring at the camp nearby.
17
The half-day’s southerly walk was a quiet and somber one. Ian and Gregoire had stayed back to remain in position for their roles in Patrick’s plan. John, Maria, and Robert walked behind Patrick with very little in the way of spirited conversation.
“Don’t fret,” Patrick said as they approached the great crater in which Fanxel lay. He extended his hands to them behind his back. “This will work.”
John looped a giveaway knot around the boy’s wrists loosely with a long rope. It appeared authentic enough, but with just a small pull, the cuffs would slide right off.
“We believe in you,” John said without conviction.
The four began their descent toward Fanxel’s entrance.
“Don’ let those hands slip,” Robert warned him gruffly. “If we hav’ t’ kick ye ’round a bit to sell the ruse, ye won’t wan’ that knot t’ come loose in front o’ them guards.”
As they approached the large guard towers adjacent to the outer barracks, an odd sense overcame Patrick. The air wasn’t right, and there was an eerie quiet around the prison grounds. The last time he was here, he had seen bustling guards and heard chaos outside of The Stranger’s cell. Now, the place looked nigh empty. No one walked the courtyards, and many of the cell doors stood open. The two far cells on the end lay in a heap of charred clay bricks—certainly the source of the explosion they had all felt from underground.
“No,” Patrick muttered, “this isn’t right.”
Before he could turn around, a group of men stepped out from behind the nearby guard tower. “Hey!” Maria called as one grabbed her hair in his fist and pressed the tip of his gun to her neck. John and Robert, too, were snatched from behind and forced to their knees with guns at their heads, their wooden bows slung uselessly over their shoulders.
A gruff set of hands forced Patrick forward from behind. He stumbled onto his stomach and instantly pulled his hands forward, freeing them from their faux bonds. He winced as the tip of a gun pressed painfully into the small of his back and the weight of a grown man descended atop him.
“Where’s that stone, ye nettlesome mule-spunk?” a familiar voice growled directly into his ear.
Chapter 10:
EXPLOSIVE
“W
1
hy are we forgotten?” Corina Delgor sobbed, clutching her youngest daughter to her chest. The child lay limp, seemingly unbothered by her mother’s wails.
Her husband, Rictere Delgor, lay an ineffectual hand upon her back, his head bowed in solemn silence. Their daughter’s health had been failing for quite a while now, and the town healer had determined that it was most likely to be an inborn allergy to wheat, which was the main commodity and food source in the plains north of the Klippa Mountains.
“Why can no one help her?” Corina pleaded.
“He can soothe her,” Rictere replied, “but there are not enough resources to sustain the diet that she needs. Not here. And I haven’t the skills to trade for such frequent imports.”
“Why are we forgotten?” she repeated. “The populace lives like kings and princes in the shadow of the White Kingdom in Krake. Spare they not a thought to our plights across the sea?”
“They know only the lives they’ve been afforded. Perhaps it is time we uproot and—”
“Uproot and what?” Corina demanded. “Abandon our livelihoods and loved ones here? Ignore the suffering we’ve seen, so that we may be like the rest of them in Reprise?”
Rictere shrugged. “If it could mean saving her life, would—”
“Do not use our daughter’s life to bargain with me,” she snapped, tears evaporating away beneath a rising, hot rage. “I will not abandon my values to save one life, not even my own. There are more nations than merely Reprise, and there are more solutions than merely fleeing our way of life.”
Rictere embraced the passionate woman and rubbed the back of her head in a calming gesture. After her temper settled, she resumed her soft weeping into his shoulder.
“There are talks from men in town,” he said softly. “Whispers. I
may have a solution that lay on the other side of the deserts in Lexen.”
2
“This is never gonna work,” Jake growled at Brandon. “I ain’t playin’ around fer you t’ get me killed jus’ like Philip.”
“That is bullshit, and you know it, Jake,” Brandon said. The words tore at the thin scab that overlay his guilt.
“Count me out,” he grumbled before rolling over on the cot and facing the cell’s wall.
“Jake …” Brandon pled. “This can never work without you. We’re in this together.”
“Ya dragged me ’round after you long enough, riskin’ everything t’ save that boy in Onton, t’ get yer stupid girl back.”
Brandon stood and seized Jake by the shoulder. “Jake!”
Jake turned before Brandon could move to roll him over. He stood from the cot and shoved Brandon backward onto his bottom.
“Don’ think yer gonna lay a hand on me while I’m restin’!” he bellowed.
“Wot’s this ’ere then?” a gleeful voice tittered from outside the cell.
Brandon looked outside to see Skuttler. His rotting teeth exposed in a foul grin of malicious ecstasy.
“We got us a fight, boys!” Skuttler hollered to the nearby guards. “Two young, ripe uns, too!”
The guards were outside the cell and opening the gate before either boy could offer a word in explanation.
“I won’t fight,” Brandon said to Jake as one of the guards seized under his arms and hoisted him out of the cell.
“Then ye’ll die, boy,” another guard taunted. His hot breath stung Brandon’s nostrils as he sneered directly in his face.
The two were dragged into the courtyard as other guards rushed from out of the barracks and tossed stacks of coins down in front of those who would serve as bookies.