by Travis Smith
“Oh?” Laura said. “Don’t see those lot out and about very often …”
The Stranger turned to see the guards. “Curious,” he said as they arrived. “Morning, my fellows, what’s got you two cutting such a haste?”
“Sir, you two should retire to the indoors. There is trouble brewing in the city,” one of the guards warned.
Before The Stranger could inquire further, a series of small explosions erupted from down in the city below. His gut rolled at the sound, for it was hauntingly familiar. He would not forget those tiny, contained gunshots that came from the strange weapon at the cabin outside of town where he’d once travelled with his brother. He looked over the palisade to see a crowd of people screaming and scattering in every direction. Another group of ravagers stormed through the crowds holding long-barreled weapons at their shoulders and cutting down the townsfolk. The two guards drew long, wooden muskets and aimed them over the palisade toward the uproar. One fired a large, clumsy musket ball into the crowd before kneeling behind cover to stuff the barrel with powder and another shot. As he did, hundreds of tiny bullets peppered along the palisades and the castle’s stony wall, sending showers of shattered rock raining atop the four.
Robert opened a nearby door and rushed onto the balcony, eyes wide. He froze in his tracks as his son and Laura were knelt in cover.
“What is this?” he demanded.
The men below were marching toward the towering stairs that led to the castle’s door.
“There’s trouble in the city!” The Stranger hollered back. “Get to the king’s quarters!”
7
Bernard entered the castle just before the sun was at its highest point in the midday sky. He took care not to encounter anyone else. He saw his brother and Laura out on the western balcony, so he took the long way around to avoid any windows. He paused momentarily at the Throne Room’s towering marble doors before moving on toward the king’s quarters.
“Enter,” King Vaga said when Bernard tapped sheepishly on the door.
He entered and did not bother closing the door behind him. He gazed toward the man without a word.
The king stood from his chair and approached. “Bernard,” he mused on the way. “What a pleasant surprise, seeing you here.”
Bernard scoffed. “It is still my home,” he said, voice hoarse, dry.
“Though by all measures it would seem you’ve chosen otherwise,” King Vaga said with a smile. “Have you come to seek my counsel?”
Bernard shook his head. “You would sooner rule me than counsel me,” he said. His eyes glistened.
For the first time, the king’s genial smile faltered at the darkness he saw inside. He reached out a hand and placed it on Bernard’s shoulder. “I have waited long for the moment that you would quest for my guidance …”
“I have waited long for this moment as well,” Bernard said, his voice barely audible. He reached behind his back and pulled a short blade from his waist. This, he thrust upward, just beneath King Vaga’s ribcage. The old man’s look of surprise was pathetic. “Your naivety betrays you,” Bernard said, “just as it compromised your leadership. This is your legacy. Your kingdom will stand as a monument to your failure to your people.”
As he stood and watched the man’s life fade from his face, a blinding white light shone along the corridor behind him. He turned and watched through the door.
8
Robert Vaga rushed into the castle’s main chamber. As he raced toward the king’s quarters, a blinding white light stopped him in his tracks. The Throne Room door’s marble was aglow with a beaming luminosity. It began at the tallest peak of the door and descended to the base. A thrumming sound of power accompanied the shine. Robert felt a parallel power surge through his veins, and when the light went out after just a moment, he knew the king was dead. That beam of light had granted him his kingship and, with it, the power to enter the Throne Room. He looked along the corridor toward the king’s quarters, and his breath hitched in his chest. His father was gone.
He glanced at his hands for a moment before rushing to the door and placing one against the marble. The colossal doors parted down the middle and slid open to reveal a room at which he’d been afforded the opportunity to marvel only once in his life. He spared not a moment to do such again. Instead, he raced to the near wall and seized the White Sword by the hilt.
9
“Give me a weapon!” The Stranger called over the cacophony to one of the two guards. His father had just disappeared inside with Laura and William close behind.
“Don’t have another, sir! Get yourselves inside and prepare for waylay!”
The Stranger glanced around with panicked eyes. He attempted to look over the palisade again, but the tiny bullets pelted the wall around him with deadly accuracy. At last, he broke away and raced toward the door where his father had entered.
Robert met him at the door, Laura, William, and Diana close behind.
“Get them to safety!” The Stranger yelled. “We have to fight.”
“We must go,” his father said.
The Stranger’s jaw dropped. He stared at his father, aghast.
“The road leads only one direction from here, son,” he said calmly. “Look around you.”
The Stranger turned back and looked at the two sentinels standing guard at the palisades on either side of the staircase. Screams echoed up from below, and bullets continued to shatter the castle’s stony façade. As he watched, one of the guards was cut down by a deadly shot from below. The Stranger turned away as the nobleman’s head was turned into a gory spray and he collapsed on the balcony.
“Where is the king?” he asked.
His father shook his head, and The Stranger knew. “I am not ready to be a leader,” Robert admitted.
The Stranger’s gaze was piercing. “Hypocrite,” he said through gritted teeth.
“It is my people or my family now,” Robert said. “I am not ready to be a leader,” he repeated.
10
The Stranger led his family into the dark cellars where he’d met his friend Arthur not long before.
“Where are we going?” Diana demanded.
“Trust me,” The Stranger said. He seized a scrap of parchment and a quill from a desk in the castle’s main hall and stuffed them into his pocket. “Link hands, and do not hesitate!”
He led them into the darkness, one in front of the other, and navigated the branching halls from memory. William was screeching in his wife’s arms, but no one else made any sound or asked further questions. He turned left, and then right. He passed dead end turns and doorways that would not open. He dragged his hand along a long hall with strange symbols and ancient languages he’d admired at length in his youth. He turned another corner and passed his and Arthur’s usual meeting space. Here, he scrawled a message in the darkness and dropped it before moving on.
After several more disorienting turns, he stopped moving, and his family followed suit. He felt along the dark stony wall a bit before squeezing his palm into a fist and pounding at one of the stones. It took four or five tries before he was able to dislodge it. The large stone slid outward and revealed a small passageway through which his friend had crawled hundreds—maybe even thousands—of times to enter the castle’s cellars. He led his family through this hole and replaced the stone behind him.
His mother and father gazed around in wonder at where they found themselves. They were on the castle’s eastern side, concealed deep within the rocky coast.
“I am sorry,” The Stranger said sheepishly, for his parents were just discovering his youthful devilry.
“Look!” his father said. He pointed the White Sword southward at a nearby pier. It was lined with pirates’ ships with varying degrees of grandeur.
“He must be recruiting the pirates,” The Stranger growled.
“He?” Diana asked.
“Bernard, of course,” he replied. “Come on. We’ll steal one and sail south. ’Tis our only hope if we truly wis
h to escape!”
11
The scrap of parchment The Stranger left lay unseen in the peaceful darkness beneath the castle’s floors. Above, all manner of chaos unfolded in the days that followed as a less-peaceful darkness spread over Krake and then outward over all the lands.
The letter read:
There is an attack on the city. The king is slain. We are fleeing for safety. Stay safe, my friend.
Chapter 13:
End of Silence
1
F
ordar is divided obliquely by the expansive Klippa Mountains, which run from its northeast corner nearly to its southwestern coast. Peppered with canyons, caverns, and raging waterways, the mountain range is broken up by small expanses of desert. To the west of the mountains lay scattered forests and once-lush farmland in small towns such as Onton. To the south, the arid desert houses key coastal cities and the titanic crater inside which Fanxel prison lay. The northernmost tip of the mountains gives way to chilly tundra and rocky coast pointing northward to the icy wasteland of Iskar.
North of Fanxel prison, north of Maria Vilsen’s home town of Mitten, a river rages with the runoff of monsoon season’s torrents. As it winds through The Klippa Mountains, the turbulent river flushes through the narrow opening between two identical, towering rock faces, standing like sentinels. Beyond this, it begins to wind downhill, and its fury escalates as it flumes through the canyons. Eventually the rapids die down before terminating in a quiet estuary deep in the desert canyons.
A faint reddish hue materializes in the calm water. Gradually, brighter and brighter red trickles through. Before long, the quick-flowing water upstream of the estuary is pervaded with thick red blood as it pours downstream.
2
The Stranger made his way north through the deserts of Fordar. He had left his protector souls’ campsite the previous evening and ventured along the canyons in an effort to reduce his exposure. This time more than before, he was wrought with regret about abandoning the others. They’d travelled great distances to find him, and he could feel a growing connection, but none of that could erase the burning fact that his family still needed him.
It is my people or my family now …
He’d had ample time to reflect on his quest, and The Stranger could acknowledge his bull-headedness. He’d been a fool to light out from the old man’s island in a small skiff with the intention of sailing across the Great Sea. His head had cleared, and, though his determination remained, he knew he’d serve his family no better if he remained reckless and got himself killed.
A wintry chill had begun to permeate the northern desert air at times. Monsoon season was ending, and soon the air would grow dry and crisp with hibernal frost. The Stranger shuddered at the thought of braving the cold season on the icy wasteland of Iskar, but the charted land-bridge at Fordar’s northernmost tip would be the safest and surest route across the Great Sea back to Reprise.
He pulled his arms across his chest and bunched up his shirt to preserve some heat in his core when a voice spoke up behind him.
“How do? Need a coat, stranger?”
3
“Where’s that stone, ye nettlesome mule-spunk?” Resin growled in Patrick’s ear.
Patrick slumped beneath the weight of realization. Olivia’s father must have known about the stone when Patrick found those vials with the symbol in his house. How did he know Patrick had found it? He fought an urge to reach down and feel that it was still sewn into the waist of his pants.
“Get ’em up!” Resin yelled at his men. He hoisted the boy onto his knees by the back of his smock. “Still got yer boot-print on my nose,” he snarled. “I’m gon’ make an example o’ you.” He planted his heavy boot into Patrick’s nose, sending a fresh jet of blood out of both nostrils.
When Patrick’s eyes opened again, his head was swimming, and a dry loop of rope was pressed tightly against his neck, partially blocking his airflow. He realized he was leaned forward against the rope and tried to straighten himself up. As he drew in a sharp breath and blinked away the dull ache in his head, he struggled to comprehend his current situation.
Patrick and his three companions were lined up side-by-side beneath one of the guard’s towers. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and their necks were bound in loose nooses that were strung up from the platform above. They each were balancing atop small blocks of wood large enough to support only one foot at a time.
As Patrick glanced over at the others, he saw John Tompkins beside him. The man was slouched forward with his legs bent. His eyes were closed, his face bulging and red as the thick rope tightened dangerously within his bushy beard.
“John!” Patrick rasped.
John groaned weakly.
“Your legs. You have to stand up.”
John struggled minutely but could not get any words out. Patrick saw his foot slip off the wooden block and flail beneath him. After a few gut-wrenching moments, he managed to get his other leg on the block and stand back upright, hitching in a deep and shaky breath.
Patrick himself was standing on his right leg, and his calf muscle was alight with burning pain as it struggled to support and balance his entire body.
Resin’s voice boomed out across the prison courtyard, where numerous guards looked on in satisfied malice. Frightened eyes blinked at the doomed quartet from behind the cell bars. “I’m not savvy to the leadership style of yer last boss, but things are gon’ be different aroun’ ’ere from here out!” He waved his heavy machine gun at the watchful crowd before turning to face his four captives. “Where’s that stone?” he repeated, approaching Maria. She balanced atop her block of wood, hands bound behind her back, and made no reply. After prodding her with the tip of a large knife, Resin turned to Robert Forlo, who was tied up beside her. “You?” he growled. Robert gazed back at him with stoic indifference. Resin smiled, glad to find out what would make the burly man squirm, before moving on to John.
“We don’ know nothin’ ’bout no stone,” John said. His voice was hoarse and muffled from the rope pushing upward beneath his chin.
Resin put his knife away and reached over John’s head with one meaty arm. He seized the rope around his neck and lifted upward, putting more pressure on John’s neck. He looked at Patrick with grave seriousness. “Yer turn, boy, an’ don’ let me catch ye lyin’ to me.”
Patrick swallowed hard and kept his eyes on John’s strained face. Fight it, he thought. Don’t slip now.
Resin turned to his men behind him, still holding John’s noose tight above his head. He nodded toward one of the cells. The man drew his pistol and pointed it directly through the cell bars.
“No! Please!” someone shouted from inside the cell.
“I’ll kill yer friends,” Resin promised. “I’ll kill strangers. I’ll kill anyone but you ’til ye tell me where ’at stone is, ’cause I know ye got it hid somewhere.”
“Please don’ shoot me!” the man shrieked from his cell.
“Fuck you,” Patrick rasped.
The guard held his pistol outstretched toward the cell. Inside, the man had backed himself against the clay wall and was dancing left to right, his hands outstretched in front of his face in a futile gesture. The guard’s arm swayed left and right, following his every move.
“Please!” he sobbed.
Resin’s eyed were locked onto Patrick’s own. They did not wince or blink at the sound of the nearby gunshot as it erupted in the guard’s hand and silenced the prisoner inside. He tightened his grip on John’s noose and hoisted it higher over the man’s head.
John let out an incomprehensible, raspy protest.
“Monster …” Maria growled.
“The stone,” Resin demanded. He used his free hand to shimmy the machine gun off his shoulder and aim it at Maria without looking in her direction. “Give it to me, an’ I might let these ones live.”
In that moment another voice resonated across the prison. “Well, ain’t this a dreadful display indeed.�
� The word dreadful drawled out lazily like a sleeping cat splayed in the doorway of a butcher’s shop.
Resin turned to see a well-groomed man in eccentric clothing. He was walking with a limp toward the four captives through the prison yard, leaning atop a heavy cane with each step.
“No way to leave an impression,” he continued, “threatenin’ gestures an’ all. Such a hostile spectacle t’ imprint on all these treasured minds!”
Resin let go of John’s noose—the man took an immediate and grateful breath and sputtered—and turned to face the newcomer.
“Name’s Maldeive, before ya get all demandin’ on me, but you c’n call me—” he paused for dramatic effect, “The Untouchable!”
Resin sneered and raised his gun to aim it at Maldeive. “One more step ’n’ I’ll show ye jus’ how touchable ye are.”
Maldeive’s slow and deliberate pace did not falter. He wore a carefree smirk on his boyish, shaven face. “Who wants to live in fear o’ bein’ strung up from the towers like these poor boys—and madam?” He winked toward Maria and flashed a charming smile. “What kinda leader promises only punishment?”
“Ye’d better back up,” Resin snarled. He gripped the gun in both hands now and leveled it with Maldeive’s head.
“Don’t livin’ sound better than dyin’ to you all?” Maldeive turned back to face the guards, ignoring Resin’s gun pointed at his head. “Is there any man here who wants to die at all?”
“You must!” Resin growled, his teeth gritted painfully at this disconcerting interruption.
Maldeive turned back, still smiling, arms spread wide. He gripped his cane in one hand missing the fourth finger, and the tiny skull atop it smiled at Resin as well. “Anybody here wanna live forever?”