He pulled on his tailor-made boots with the steel toe covers shinning in the moonlight, and its thin steel greaves sewn into the front and sides of the boots. He took out one of the strips from the side of each boot and inserted the now-clean ebony daggers into them; they fitted perfectly.
He strapped Tragenn’s scabbard harness to his back and stowed provisions into his pack.
Dirkem, already saddled from hours before, nickered as he approached.
It was as if he was looking at someone else leaving, and leaving was the best thing to do, destiny or otherwise. How long would it be before this Pyromancer’s curse finally killed someone he loved?
He mounted Dirkem and took one last look around the camp, his home.
They trotted out slowly and silently, avoiding the sentries, who were watching for intruders going into the camp, not out. He rode hard and fast towards the Tattoium Mountains.
In the early morning, Eleana woke, suddenly feeling Havoc’s empty side of the bed. She looked around the tent bleary eyed. She put her clothes on and could not overcome her feelings of dread.
She exited the tent and saw that Magnus was standing by the glass boulder, its surface glistening in the morning light; he had just returned from his night patrol.
Something was in his hand.
“Magnus?” asked Eleana.
“He’s gone,” he said; he looked up at her and he had tears in his eyes.
“Who?” However, she knew the answer.
Magnus showed her his hand. In it was the prince’s ponytail cut from Havoc’s hair. He dropped it onto the boulder. From that day forward, the molten stone would become known as the Pyromancer’s Rage.
Chapter 12
The Blight of Solitude
It had taken Havoc just three days to reach his destination. Dirkem’s muscles flexed and tightened as his hooves bit into the ground. The stallion was enjoying the exercise and his pace never slackened. Havoc felt a strange mix of feelings; mostly, it was exhilaration from the ride and a joy of being free from the past.
The pace slowed when they encountered Rogun patrols; he was easily able to avoid these and the routes that they took. He would stop for short breaks to rest Dirkem and drink from mountain streams. He only had a couple of short naps in those three days, but they were enough to keep his mind active.
On reaching the Tattoium Mountains, he backtracked and covered up his trail, then made a start to his new destination, the Banferry.
Because he did not wish discovery by his own people, or others, he had decided to take an unusual route. The Banferry was the only way over the Great River and into the Sky Mountains from the northeast. However, Vallkytes in their thousands guarded the route. Various manned posts checked and controlled the flow of passengers through it, especially from the west.
The Banferry was the last place his people would think to look for him. However, the trick was to get over without detection. He had decided to rely on the Rawn Arts and make himself as inconspicuous as possible. He supplied the ferrymen gold for the crossing for himself and Dirkem. They stood together on the flat wooden ferry as they crossed the wide, calm river. He chose the last crossing at night and covered himself in Eleana’s cloak. He had already fashioned a sheath for Tragenn earlier that year; the old black leather one was past its prime. This one was made of ash wood and lacquered with charcoal dust and bark resin, giving it a deep dark red, almost black, colour; it had small buckles top and bottom so he could strap the sword to his back. He wrapped Tragenn’s hilt in black gauze to cover the Orrinn and used it as a staff. Once on the other side, the guards thought he was a holy man and allowed him passage. Havoc laughed at how simple it was.
He purchased provisions at the Banferry village and headed into the mountains again; now he was on the other side of the Great River, which flowed lazily through the high hills on its journey to the Chunla Delta far to the north. He would journey south for a time and cross back over the river at a shallow ford to enter the Tattoium Ridge proper.
To the east, he could see the start of the vast Eternal Forest that seemed to stretch for miles in all directions. He had toyed with the idea of going into the forest, but its native people and their queen were hostile to strangers in their territory, and he desired the solitude, anyway. The mountains were sparsely populated and that suited him fine.
“You will not find him if he does not wish to be found,” said Old Toms.
The search party had been scouring the land for days with no sign of the prince.
“Where would he go?” asked the king to himself; he had been fretting all day and blamed himself for his son’s departure.
His spirits rose when they found fresh tracks, and then lost them again when they realised Havoc had sent then around in circles; even Old Toms was confused, gave wry chuckles, and shook his head from time to time, as his eyes scanned the tracks.
Lord Rett nudged Magnus, who was sitting on his horse looking gloomy beside the beautiful Eleana.
“He’s a clever one, your brother. He will be able to look after himself,” he said.
“I hope so,” said Magnus, and he reached over and took Eleana’s hand; she smiled at him.
“He is a damn fool to leave now, when he has reached a critical time in his training,” said Lord Ness as he paced the hilltop that they all ascended for a better view.
“Let us just hope that the training he has up until now is enough for him to control it,” said Lord Rett.
They left the hill after some time; Lord Ness was the last to go. He looked out over the snow-capped mountains into the distance. “May the gods go with you, young prince,” he said, with a deep, foreboding sigh.
The last month of winter was cold and desolate in the mountains. Havoc found shelter in caves or thick tree cover and hunted small game with snare or sword. He decided to make himself a bow. He cut down a young tree, and took out the supple rosewood heart and heated it over a fire so he could shape it better. He killed a mountain goat with long horns and used layers of horn and hardwood on the bow, sealing them in place with tree resin. He would then cut the tendons from various animals to use as bow cords, and down to trial and error in discovering the right type or cord he needed to use for long distance kills. In the end, he had an effective homemade bow; Old Toms’ teachings did not go to waste.
He made plenty of arrows from birch and raven feathers, and used bone or flint for the arrowheads, later he would use the Rawn Arts to draw metals for alloys to make steel heads. The furs and fleeces from his kills provided a makeshift quiver and warmth for him and Dirkem. The bow and arrow was not his preferred weapon, but he was still very good with it and his aim improved with each kill.
He continued moving on, not staying in one place for too long. He would meditate at night, always looking into the Orrinn on his sword hilt, and extinguish the energies from his Pyromantic powers. He was determined to govern these ‘surges’, a term he thought best described the release of the vast power that accompanied his volatile emotions.
He would also continue the techniques that Lord Ness had taught him. One day, he tried again to make a face in stone; this time, he thought small and took a piece of slate and concentrated on Eleana’s face. He linked the volatile emotions to his knowledge of the earth element and, once he made the connection, he unleashed a small surge into the slate; he could feel the molecules begin to change and reform. When he opened his eyes, Eleana smiled back at him, not in slate; however, he had unintentionally changed the material into gold, and he was surprised it had worked. He took her face up to the cave he was sleeping in that night and sealed it into the wall. He laughed at the thought of another traveller using this cave for rest and seeing a golden face as he entered. He stared at Eleana as he lay in his furs that night, and eventually fell asleep; it was the best sleep he had had in a long time.
Soon, a slow change came to the air in the mountains and a spring thaw flooded the rivers, which made fording the many mountain streams difficult for Dirkem.
Carpets of snowdrops saturated the land where they trotted along. Wild flowers in a multitude of colours were everywhere, and it hurt his eyes as much as the brilliant white snow did in winter. He washed in the shallow lake, splashing Dirkem as the stallion wallowed in up to his belly. The horse flicked backwater with his nose.
Havoc continued to train in the arts. He had not completed his training in the wind element yet, but he prided himself in understanding how it worked. He would summon the third element to bring him stones and branches to his hand; once he had mastered this at about four feet away, he tried again at a greater distance, but it was harder to control. He nearly managed to cut his fingers off with Tragenn on one attempt as the sword flew past him and imbedded into a boulder.
He would keep fit by leaving Dirkem to graze on the new spring shoots while he jogged up hillsides and jumped over rocky crevices and gorges using the wind element. He would go through the fast and fluid movements of sword styles every morning; his torso glistened with sweat as he did so.
One day, he tried to link a Pyromantic surge to the wind element, something he had not attempted before and was a bit unsure of how to proceed, but he concentrated on his teachings and tried to move some pine trees in the distance. He only wanted to make them sway and lose the last of their winter snow, but, when he unleashed the surge, a huge current of wind ripped the trees right out of the ground and sent them and a small avalanche down the hillside. He was so shocked that he just stared down the mountain until everything settled and realised just how powerful a Pyromancer could be.
People were rare in these highlands. He did see farmers and their sons moving cattle and goats to their spring pastures, but mostly it was free of humans.
One incident of those days became a famous story told to visitors by the mountain people who live in the villages at the foot of the hills. A twelve-year-old boy called Marat climbed high to bring down goats from a rocky cliff top; he had nearly finished his task when he fell and managed to cling on to some loose outcrops of granite. A long fall awaited him and certain death, when a black-gloved hand reached down from above and pulled him up. The stranger placed him on his feet and the boy looked at his rescuer. He saw a black-cloaked man with a beautiful sword strapped to his back. The boy could not see his face because of the darkness inside the hood.
“Go now and be safe,” said the man, and the boy ran down the mountain as fast as the goats in his charge, and spread the story of the black ghost of the mountains.
Other people had said they had seen this black-cloaked man, but Havoc had left the area soon after the boy’s rescue.
It was a wet summer and the winter furs soon rotted. However, the prince continued to hunt and replace them. He was aware that his seventeenth birthday had been and gone, and he thought often of his family and friends, who he missed. He felt a pang of regret that he would miss the birth of Magnus’ and Eleana’s baby, and he prayed to the gods for a safe birth and a healthy child.
The child was, indeed, healthy, and the gods saw fit to give the doting parents a son. Grandfather Vanduke never put him down, but drew the line at changing the baby. Vara saw to that and many other chores. She was fast becoming the camp’s medical expert, already a gifted healer with her knowledge of herb and root mixing that she gained from her mother; she also cared for the camp’s young, who affectionately called her Mama Vara.
Vara was at her happiest with the children; she had a firm but kind nature with them and they all behaved around her; she used this nature with the king, who liked the woman’s company, and his booming laugh always reminded Vara of Hagan. She nagged Vanduke constantly about his drinking and he agreed that she should help him. She mixed up a vile-smelling concoction of potent plant extract, and she and Lord Rett forced the king to drink it.
“How long before it takes effect?” Lord Rett asked his cousin with a concerned look, because the king’s face had gone slightly red.
“Oh... not long,” she said.
It was a comical moment for all who witnessed it. Both Lord Rett and Vara fled from the king’s tent five minutes later when he started vomiting violently and defecating everywhere. All through the rest of that month he cursed at Vara, telling her never to come near him again as his sickness continued. Of course, she looked after him, fed him, and wiped the sweat off his brow; not even his Rawn powers could make him better. When the effects of Vara’s brew wore off, he found that he could not drink alcohol again, or the sickness would come back.
A sober Vanduke, a rejuvenated king, took the newborn into his arms and smiled for the first time in months. The king had not felt so happy in days. The child had a shock of black-brown hair and his father’s green eyes, which was a Cromme trait.
Magnus called him Havoc Valient Cromme, to everyone’s delight.
The wind pushed the dark clouds away from the full moon and its bright dust rings. Its light shone on the silver Orrinn on Tragenn’s hilt. Havoc concentrated on the opaque surface and willed it to share its secrets.
He had travelled for a number of days now to try to put some distance between himself and the people of the prairies around the lower goat paths. He had now stopped in a quiet stretch of a serene glade and fished for brown trout in the bubbling brook near his camp.
Tomorrow, he would cross the stream and stick to the mountains on the other side. The summer night was warm and dry; river flies floated on the warm currents of air by the waters banks. Otters squeaked on the far side and played in the currents. All was calm and still on the river surface. A light breeze wafted through the trees close to Havoc’s camp and made a low whooshing noise as it flicked through the leaves and branches.
Havoc had stoked the fire one last time before bed; he stared into the flame now and wondered about the fire element. He had no training in the use and control of fire, but knew the techniques to follow and had thought about doing it for some time now.
There were times, at the start of his journey, when he noticed Dirkem would always stay close to him on the colder nights to share body heat; he never thought much of it until he realised that he was never very cold himself. Before sleep, he would clear some snow and put down pine branches for a bed. In the morning, he discovered that the snow melted around him in a two-foot radius. He put this down to an effect of the Pyromantic energy connecting with the dreams he was haunted by. However, as he continued to study and meditate on the surges, he sensed that the warm air surrounding him formed part of the elemental power and not anything to do with the Pyromantic energies. He instinctively knew it was the fire element and remembered the day Lord Ness had produced the fireball. The Ri he had taken the heat from the air, perhaps this was the answer.
He decided to give it a go to see if he was right; he looked into the Orrinn to help him find a trance state, and closed his eyes. He reached out his mind to the warm air surrounding him, then he summoned it to move into the palm of his hand as one tiny globe of heat that he hoped would ignite into flame.
Sweat beaded on his forehead. No matter how much he pushed, the flame would not appear. Nevertheless, it was his first attempt and he had just managed to get the heat down to a certain point and no further; frustrated, he gave up.
He was so annoyed with himself that the Pyromantic energy associated to that emotion appeared as a hot white flame on his thumb. He blew it out quickly.
“Well, I can make flame, Dirkem, but not in the way I want to,” he said.
The black stallion shook his mane and scraped the ground with his foreleg.
“Yes, I know, practice makes perfect.”
Lord Ness blessed Havoc Valient in a well-organised ceremony dedicated to the god, Tri-nut, god of spring, new life and all plants. He was the main god of the Roguns, and all the people from the Sky Mountains near and far came with gifts for the baby, and paid homage to the god.
A week later, Magnus and Eleana were married.
The crowd cheered as Ness Ri said the final vows and tied bracelets of silver-covered vine on th
eir wrists.
At the ceremony, Lord Rett shocked Magnus, and everyone else, when he gave him the Red Ring, a ruby with the Red Duke’s coat of arms. This symbolised that Magnus was now the Red Duke’s heir.
The smiling, but blushing bride was carried by the girls to the bridal bedchamber, where they stripped her naked under cover of the tent flaps and lay her in bed.
The men accosted the equally blushing Magnus outside of the tent, stripped him of his clothes, and threw him on top of a laughing Eleana.
Chapter 13
Mirryn
The low sun cast a golden glow along the vista of mountain peaks, sending long shadows into the hidden valleys of the Tattoium. The warmth was leaving this high place as night descended, but Havoc did not feel cold; he sat on his blankets and furs and looked out towards the spectacular view.
He was feeling homesick more and more these days. He wondered how his family and friends were coping. He thought of the last time he had seen his father and felt a strong sense of embarrassment and stupidity for his actions on that day; he hoped that his father would forgive him.
He pictured Magnus and Eleana in his mind and wished them much happiness.
Lord Ness was always with him, though; his voice’s dulcet tones resounded in his mind always, as he carried out his training.
However, the worst feelings were of his mother and her abduction and incarceration in the Vallkyte capital. He knew she still lived; he could feel it. His uncle would not waste resources in taking her just to have her executed. Havoc tried not to contemplate his uncle’s real intentions towards his mother; it hurt too much.
His thoughts turned to his Uncle Kasan. How was he able to destroy the Sonoran kingdom and send the Roguns, the most powerful tribe in the land, into exile? He had to admit his uncle was a brilliant strategic and tactical genius. Granted, he had Mad-daimen as an ally, so when in the war did they form an alliance? The Vallkyte people were less in number than the Roguns, hence the need for Kasan to augment his armies. How was this kept a secret from his father’s spies and, of course, the Ri Order? His uncle must have had help in other quarters to pull this off. Surely, there must be more to all this than Kasan’s obvious needs to dominate the island.
The Rawn Chronicles Book One: The Orrinn and the Blacksword: Unabridged (The Rawn Chronicles Series 1) Page 15