Rebels and Fools (The Renegade Chronicles Book 1)

by David Michael Williams

  There was a deafening crash, and the room began to shake. Small pieces of the ceiling began to rain down, and Colt watched helplessly as Cholk was thrown off his feet. A great fissure snaked across the floor near where the commander was standing, so Colt took a step back, hoping the floor wouldn’t fall out from under him.

  Then something large and solid struck the top of his helmet, and he dropped to the floor. For an instant, he thought that Klye Tristan was responsible for the concussive blow. But then he saw that large portions of the tower were breaking away. The ceiling was crashing down on them.

  Up ahead, T’slect watched the chaos with smug smile. Cholk, too, was lying on the ground, though what the goblin had done to stop the juggernaut, Colt didn’t know. He wanted to look around to see who of them, Knights and Renegades, were left to fight the shaman, but he couldn’t concentrate due to the pounding in his skull. He realized too late that he was about to black out.

  The last thing he heard was T’slect saying, “My secrets will remain safe since none of you are leaving here alive.”

  Passage XVII

  Gaelor Petton, his head reeling and his stomach queasy, released the midge’s arm and staggered away from the spell-caster. When his back made contact with a wall, he steadied himself against it, grateful to find something solid and stationary. Only then did the lieutenant realize his eyes were pressed tightly closed.

  He opened one eye tentatively, squinting against the intense brightness that had come out of nowhere to engulf him. But the white light was gone, and aside from the miasma of colors that danced behind his eyelids, his vision was fine. In fact, he could see the midge and rogue knight much more clearly than he had just a few minutes ago, for the subterranean darkness of the dungeon was gone.

  The dungeon itself was gone!

  Petton felt a fluttering in the pit of his stomach that had nothing to do with effects of Noel’s spell. For a moment, he feared that the midge had used his fell magic to take them to some Renegade stronghold. But then he recognized the hallway as Fort Faith’s.

  While he took some comfort in the fact that the midge had taken them to another part of Fort Faith, he couldn’t suppress a shudder at the notion that he had just traversed the corridors of magic.

  Pulling himself together, Petton took leave of the wall that had been supporting him and moved toward Dominic Horcalus, who appeared to be shaking off the effects of the spell as well. When the midge scampered past him, Petton paid him little heed. He would worry about that troublemaker after dispatching the rogue knight. Already, the Renegade was advancing Petton’s way, though, surprisingly, his sword was still sheathed.

  The lieutenant swung his broadsword in a wide arc, more to keep Horcalus at bay than to do any real damage. The Renegade stopped and looked at Petton, as though noticing him for the first time.

  “Raise your sword and fight me!” Petton ordered.

  Horcalus’s arms hung slack; his sword remained in its scabbard.

  “Are you a coward as well as a traitor? Have at you!”

  Petton thrust his broadsword at the rogue knight’s chest, hoping that would prod Horcalus into action. The man was forced to sidestep the blade, but he did not counterattack. His attention seemed divided between Petton and something behind him, though Petton dared not take his eyes off the traitor for the second it would take to turn around.

  Deciding that the Renegade was trying to trick him, Petton made another half-hearted slash with his sword.

  “Fight me!”

  He wanted to cut down the treacherous cur with every fiber of his being, but as much as he hated Dominic Horcalus and the disgrace he had brought down upon the Knighthood, he couldn’t sacrifice his own honor by killing a man who would not defend himself.

  Thoroughly disgusted, Petton walked right up to the Renegade and brought his broadsword level with Horcalus’s throat.

  Finally, Horcalus spoke.

  “As much as I yearn to teach you a lesson for uttering such slander against Chester Ragellan, I have no real quarrel with you, and I will never do battle with another Knight of Superius so long as I live.”

  “Even at the cost of your own life?”

  “Even so,” Horcalus said. “My only regret in death would be that the truth surrounding Sir Ragellan and myself would die with me.”

  “The truth,” Petton sneered. “What does a villain such as yourself know of truth?”

  Their stalemate was interrupted by voices drifting down the hall behind Petton. Muttering a curse—and half hoping Horcalus would try something—Petton looked over his shoulder and saw Noel helping Opal to her feet at the other end of the hallway.

  “What happened?” he heard the midge ask.

  “It was that damn Klye Tristan again,” Opal said. She gingerly touched her eye, which was underscored by a colorful contusion. “We have to—”

  Whatever Opal was going to say next never made it past her lips. Her sentence ended in a startled cry that made the hairs on Petton’s neck stand on end. The lieutenant’s body was more than half-turned away from Dominic Horcalus, but he hardly cared, for at that moment, he finally identified the exact place Noel had brought them.

  They were in the hallway that led to the war room, where Commander Crystalus had taken the prince for safekeeping.

  Only now, the corridor ended abruptly with pile of rubble.

  Petton left the rogue knight and ran over to Opal and the midge. “Miss Opal, what has happened? Where is the commander? Where is the prince?”

  Opal never took her eyes off the wreckage. “I…I don’t know. The Renegades followed me here and knocked me out. I presume they went inside the war room, but…”

  The woman trailed off, and the two of them stared at the mound of broken stone and mortar. The roof had caved in completely, cutting them off from what lay on the other side. There was no way of knowing how much damage the war room had sustained or if it even existed anymore.

  “Klye went in there? He and the others came this way?” Petton heard someone ask, and it took him a second to realize that Dominic Horcalus had followed him over to the war room’s collapsed threshold.

  “Klye and Colt are dead?” the midge whimpered.

  “What could have caused such destruction?” Petton wondered aloud. He tried to pull away a smaller chunk of the fallen ceiling. It took all of his strength to dislodge the stone, and the move caused the rest of the pile to shift in a most disconcerting manner.

  The lieutenant took a step back, abandoning the notion of removing the avalanche piecemeal, lest he bring down the remainder of the tower in the process. Feeling utterly helpless, Petton could not bring himself to think of Saerylton and the other Knights, buried alive.

  How could this have happened? he wondered. As far as he knew, nothing volatile had been stored in the war room, and nothing short of a siege engine could have caused such damage to the fort.

  “The Renegades must have done this,” he said at length, casting an accusatory glare at Horcalus. “Have you a catapult hidden outside the fortress? Or maybe you have more than one spell-caster in your party?”

  Horcalus shook his head. “I know as little of what has transpired as you do.”

  A tremor shook the western wing, nearly knocking them all off their feet.

  “I told you the prince knows magic,” Noel said as he straightened his hat. “Only it’s not magic. I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure Prince Eliot is responsible for this.”

  Horcalus gave the midge an exasperated look, a mirror image of Petton’s own expression. Then the rogue knight turned to Petton and Opal and said, “Something beyond our understanding is happening here, and if there is any chance that we might save our friends, I suggest we get right to it.”

  “Save our friends from whom? Each other?” Petton asked.

  “First things first,” Opal said. “We have to find out if anyone is alive in there.”

  “And how, pray tell, do you suggest we dig through this pile of solid stone?” P
etton immediately felt guilty for snapping at the woman, but she didn’t seem to take offense.

  “There’s only one way to get through it,” Opal said, crossing her arms decisively.

  “How?”

  The rogue knight groaned.

  “How?” Petton repeated, looking from Opal to Horcalus.

  “She means magic,” Horcalus said. “The midge’s magic.”

  “My name is Noel, not ‘the midge’! I don’t call any of you ‘the human,’ do I?”

  Now it was Petton’s turn to groan.

  “I do not like it any more than you do,” Horcalus told him, “but it is the only way.”

  Petton stared down at Noel, into those big, blue eyes. The midge had been a thorn in his side ever since the night he first cursed Fort Faith with his presence. From what Petton had witnessed, the midge’s magic did as much harm as good. And even the gentlest spell might bring the rest of the tower down atop them.

  And yet there were precious few options at the moment.

  “Very well,” he conceded.

  The midge’s face brightened. “You’re going to let me cast a spell?”

  “Just do it before I change my mind!” Petton barked.

  Noel flashed him a smile that did nothing to quell Petton’s anxiousness. Then Noel rolled up his voluptuous sleeves, touched the tip of his staff to the rubble, and said, “All right, everybody, stand back!”

  * * *

  Klye saw the purplish beams of light collide with the black-skinned dwarf. After that, the entire room began to shake. Klye deftly avoided one chunk of plummeting stone, only to feel another strike his shoulder. He rolled with the force of the blow, but, thankfully, the rock had only just grazed him.

  Before he could regain his balance, however, his foot got caught in a crack in the floor, and he fell down, hitting the ground hard.

  That fall might have saved his life for the goblin shaman had launched another violet bolt at him. The magical missile sailed harmlessly over Klye’s head, but the sudden cry from behind told him the spell had hit somebody else. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Lilac crumple to the floor.

  In that same glance, he took in the rest of the scene. Not far from Lilac lay Othello, his leg pinned beneath the caved-in wall. Of the Renegades, Othello was the only one still moving. Lilac was either dead or out cold, as was Plake, who had been unconscious since before the discovery of the imposter prince. The one Knight who had been on his feet at the beginning of T’slect’s onslaught was now completely buried beneath a small mountain of debris.

  Pulling himself to his feet, Klye looked over to where he had last seen Fort Faith’s commander, hoping to find at least one ally in his battle against the goblin prince. But the Knight was still, the huge dent in his helm a testament to what had felled him. Though Sir Crystalus had been his enemy a few minutes ago, Klye was greatly relieved to see the young commander’s chest rise and fall.

  Ignoring the pain from countless scrapes and cuts, Klye ran at the goblin prince with all the speed he could muster. Knife in hand, he quickly cleared the distance. His only hope was to get to T’slect before he had time to cast another spell. Maybe the monster was out of spells…

  Maybe not.

  The moment he saw the purple swirls gather around the shaman’s hands, he dove to the left. Had he been half a second slower, he would have caught the blast full in the chest. As it was, the searing, violet blaze clipped his right shoulder, sending him spinning to the floor.

  The pain was almost more than he could bear. The sensation that coursed through his shoulder was as chill as death itself. Blinking back tears, Klye tried to stand and, at the same time, use his blistered left hand to retrieve his knife, which had fallen from his now-numb right hand.

  T’slect was on him before he could react, pulling him up. The goblin had discarded his saber—probably to free both hands for spell-casting—and was now content to use his balled fists. Klye accepted a punch to the face and the stomach. He could no longer feel the right side of his body, and it was all he could do to retain his hold on the knife with his left hand.

  Using his last ounce of strength, Klye plunged the knife forward, aiming for the shaman’s neck. It never got close. T’slect’s hand caught his wrist and wrung the weapon from Klye’s throbbing hand.

  The goblin brought his face—the borrowed visage of Eliot Borrom—close to Klye’s and said, “I am going to enjoy killing you.”

  Although the shaman’s lips were pressed together in a tight-lipped grin, Klye heard an almost inhuman scream pierce the air. T’slect’s touch seemed to melt Klye’s flesh. The agony was like nothing Klye had ever experienced before, and as the corrosive sensation spread down his arm, he heard the disembodied howl grow louder and louder.

  But then, all of the sudden, the pain was gone. It was as though his arm had been dipped in a cool salve. A strange tingling buzzed throughout his entire body, but it wasn’t a pain. Part of his beleaguered brain wondered why the shaman had let up, but mostly he was unspeakably elated to be free of the crippling pain. Even the screaming had stopped.

  “Klye!”

  The shaman’s mouth hadn’t moved, so Klye was left to wonder who had called out his name. A thick fog saturated his mind, disconnecting his thoughts and rendering concentration impossible. He was tired of thinking, weary of plotting and planning. He was just plain tired, and his eyes must have closed then, for T’slect’s false face was replaced by a black emptiness.

  “Klye!”

  He was more than a little annoyed by the voice, which sounded like Othello’s. The archer hardly ever spoke, so why was he shouting? Why now, when Klye was trying to sleep? It had to be something important, though he couldn’t imagine what could be so important that Othello felt the need to interrupt his glorious nap?

  He felt himself sinking. Inexplicably, he was a child again, and he saw with incredible clarity the orphanage that had been his home for the first years of his life. The scene was quickly replaced by one of himself—a little older now, though still quite young—running the streets of some city alongside two other thieves. When that memory ended, he was fighting a one-eyed creature with hundreds of flailing tendrils. He hacked at the creature with a sword that appeared to be made of pink coral. Beside him, Noel flung spell after spell at the gruesome monster.

  I am dreaming, he thought. I am dreaming of the dream where I saved a world that wasn’t this world. A dream within a dream…

  Then he saw himself creeping up on a cell bathed in complete darkness. He approached the bars to find two men inside—two falsely accused Knights of Superius. The three of them ran down the halls of the Citadel Dungeon. Then they were in a little tavern. There was tall forester sitting by himself. There was a fight, and Othello…

  T’slect cried out. Klye opened his eyes. He wanted to scold the shaman for waking him, but he hadn’t the strength. He was too weak even to catch himself as he dropped to the floor. Staring up at T’slect, he saw that the goblin wasn’t paying him any attention. He was too busy groping at the green-feathered arrow protruding from his hip.

  Klye closed his eyes once more, eager to return to the dream. When he heard a resounding boom and felt the floor shake beneath him, he dismissed it as part of the phantasmagoria that was his life’s tale—even though there had been no explosion the first time he, Ragellan, Horcalus, and Othello stumbled upon Plake’s uncle’s ranch.

  * * *

  Horcalus was the first to squeeze through the hole Noel had blasted through the stone barricade. It was a tight fit, with hot, jagged rock poking into his flesh, but he was too preoccupied with worry for his friends to pay any heed to his own discomfort.

  When he finally extricated himself from the tight tunnel, a scene of devastation met his eyes. He could only gape at the ruined war room, his mind scrambling to come up with an explanation. By the time Noel and then Opal wormed their way into the room, Horcalus was already running over to Othello.

  The archer’s leg was buried be
neath a pile of stone, but, to Horcalus’s astonishment, Othello was in the process of fitting an arrow in the string of his longbow. When the archer saw Horcalus approaching, he waved the knight away.

  “Go to Klye,” Othello said.

  Horcalus gave Othello a grave nod and started over to where Klye lay sprawled on the floor. Beyond the Renegade Leader stood a regal-looking man who could be none other than Prince Eliot Borrom.

  “Stay back!” the prince hissed, waving a saber out before him.

  Eliot was leaning against a desk. One of Othello’s arrows protruded from his upper thigh. Horcalus ignored the prince. He had no quarrel with Eliot Borrom. He had to get to Klye. Ignoring the prince’s order, Horcalus came forward, stopping only when he reached the fallen Renegade Leader.

  “Lieutenant,” Horcalus heard Eliot call. “Thank the gods you are here. These Renegades nearly proved the end of me. Kill them at once!”

  In spite of himself, Horcalus glanced back at the hole Noel had made. Only half of Petton had breached the war room. Although the lieutenant had been forced to remove the majority of his armor, he was still having a devil of a time pulling himself through the magically made passage.

  “Don’t listen to him, Petton,” Noel pleaded. The midge and Opal were standing over one of the fallen Knights, but upon hearing the prince’s order, the midge started marching toward Eliot Borrom. “I know you’re evil! You talk to monsters in mirrors, and if you’ve killed Klye or Colt, I’m going to kill you myself.”

  The Crown Prince of Superius glowered down at the midge, but beneath his indignation, Horcalus saw genuine worry.

  At the mention of his wounded comrade, Horcalus returned to the task at hand. He brought his fingers up to Klye’s throat, and when he found a pulse—weak but steady—he nearly let out a cry of joy. With a prayer of thanks to the Warriorlord, he gently laid Klye’s head back down on the floor and rose to his feet.

  “Calm down, Noel,” he said. “Klye is alive. Do not act hastily.”