Gingerly, she tiptoed forward along the tunnel, edging closer to the exit, daring only the shallowest of breaths that would barely signal life to the sensitive wolfhounds. Muscles locked, she steeled herself to make a run for it. One of the hounds growled. She gripped the sack tightly, waited until it fell silent again, and then bolted. Fear clawing through her, she tore out of the tunnel, and made a beeline for the forest. The wolfhounds flew after her, straining on their chains, their jaws narrowly missing her shoulder as they lunged. She ran blindly for the cover of the trees, her eyes scanning the foliage for the Protectors who had been patrolling the area earlier. She could see no trace of them—no sign of Erdhan or Jubel either.
She glanced in the direction of the copse—the horses were gone! A sickening taste of bile crept up from her stomach. Had the Protectors discovered Jubel and Erdhan hiding nearby and forced them to lead them to the other Keepers? Orlla gritted her teeth. They might be in danger, fighting for their lives in the rune circle.
Sweat prickled along the back of her neck. She turned and began ploughing through the forest, retracing the steps she had taken earlier with Jubel and Erdhan. Her worst fears were confirmed when the clang of swords and the sound of blows falling thick and heavy reached her ears. She quickened her pace, darting under branches that tore at her cheeks as she fled, clutching the sack with her precious cargo to her chest. When she reached the entrance to the rune circle she slowed to a halt, heaving for breath as she took in the scene.
Keepers and Protectors were battling it out, the full-throated cries of a struggle to the death filling the air. Her breath balked in her throat when she spotted her father in the fray, parrying the sword of a Protector. The Keepers weren’t outnumbered, but the Protectors were the better swordsmen, executing an impressive array of cuts and swings, and quickly gaining the upper hand. She had to do something to help before the Protectors struck a fatal blow.
She had no weapon, other than her rune-making skills, but even she could not build shields around all the Keepers in time to save them. Glancing down at the sack in her hand, she felt a strange pull toward the Opal of Light. She didn’t dare take it out and risk blinding the Keepers along with the Protectors. Perhaps she could draw on its power to fortify veiling runes around the Keepers. Without second-guessing her instincts, she reached into the sack and placed her right hand on the stone. Closing her eyes, she began constructing a combination of veiling and protection runes around the Keepers, swaying back on her heels as a tremendous force shot up her arms and shuddered through her body.
When she opened her eyes again, the Protectors were looking around in confusion, slashing and jabbing their swords haphazardly, their free hands groping at the space around them. Orlla’s lips curled up at the corners. The Keepers were invisible to them now, easily able to sidestep the thrust of the Protectors’ swords as they circled one another. Several Protectors cried out in fear, doubling with pain as the Keepers’ unseen swords found purchase. Orlla grinned at Jubel who was staring at her with a look of dawning comprehension.
Her smile froze on her face when a Protector stumbled toward her holding Erdhan in a headlock with a dagger to his throat.
Chapter 29
“Call them off or he dies!” the Protector snarled, tightening his burly forearm around Erdhan’s neck.
Orlla raised a trembling hand to placate the man. “Sheath your weapon! I will do as you ask.”
“Jubel!” she shouted. “Have the Keepers withdraw at once!”
Jubel jerked her head in Orlla’s direction, stopping mid-stride when she glimpsed Erdhan with a knife to his throat. “Fall back!” she yelled to the Keepers.
The Protectors spun toward her voice, blades poised to strike, as if expecting some kind of ambush from their invisible foes.
Instead, the Keepers slunk away from them like shadows, joining Jubel at the edge of the rune circle.
“The Keepers have withdrawn,” Orlla said in a steady tone. “Now, let him go.”
The Protector shoved Erdhan to his knees, yanking his head back. “Surrender the Opal of Light to us first!”
Erdhan gurgled. “Don’t … listen …”
Orlla saw the plea in his eyes, urging her to fight on for Samten and Franz. She stood motionless while she weighed her options. The fate of three kingdoms lay with the dragon stone she held in her hand. Could she give it all up to spare the life of one man? Or was there a way to fight for it all? The runes she had placed over the Keepers were still in place—could she use that to her advantage? There was only one way to find out. Her decision made, she quickly began weaving a rune to safeguard herself.
The Protector traced the tip of his dagger menacingly across Erdhan’s throat, drawing a scarlet thread. “The stone for his life. What is your decision?”
Orlla inclined her head in a submissive posture to the Protector. “Remove the dagger from his neck and you shall have the stone.”
He slackened his grip only slightly, his eyes glinting mistrust. The other Protectors moved in around him, swords at the ready, eyes roving restlessly as they tried in vain to locate the invisible Keepers.
Orlla focused her concentration on the stone. She had no choice but to trust the runes would last long enough for what she had in mind. Without their protection, she would be putting all of the Keepers’ lives at risk, including her father’s.
Her eyes flicked briefly to Erdhan and she blinked once, twice, deliberately, hoping he grasped the message to close his eyes.
Slowly, she drew the glowing Opal of Light from the sack and held it out in front of her in the palm of her hand as though presenting it to the Protector. All at once, a brilliant flash of light shot out from the orb, lighting up the entire sky above them. Instantly, the Protectors fell to the ground, some moaning and shielding their eyes, others stunned and motionless.
For a heartbeat, Orlla stood stock-still, half-expecting to be slain by lightning, or swallowed up in a ball of fire for usurping the dragon stone’s power, but when nothing happened she moved into action. “Mount up!” she hollered to the Keepers. After making sure her father was among them, she reached for Erdhan, pulling him along after her as she dashed to the dell where the horses were hobbled.
“Everything’s a blur,” Erdhan shouted.
“Just keep moving,” Orlla yelled back. “I’ll guide you.”
Disquieted by the battle, the horses snorted and pawed at the ground as the Keepers clambered up on their backs. Orlla scrambled for the reins of a Protector’s abandoned battle charger. She thrust the sack with the dragon stone inside a saddlebag and then reached down to pull Erdhan up behind her. She didn’t trust him to ride alone with his sight impaired, and there was no time now to perform a healing rune.
The Keepers exited the rune circle, their mounts plunging forward as they galloped south from the fertile plains toward Grisalt Wharf. For the most part, they stuck to the cover of the trees, sending rabbits hurtling headlong into burrows, and scaring nesting birds into wing-whipping frenzies. Orlla felt her blood rushing through her as the battle charger beneath her surged forward when the forest opened up, its powerful muscles covering the ground with ease, ears flattened and nostrils flared. No sounds of pursuit threatened their bid for freedom, but Orlla was only too aware that the port might be heavily guarded if the Protector’s body had been discovered in the water.
“How are your eyes?” Orlla called to Erdhan.
“Hard to say when you commandeered a battle charger that gallops at such a speed. Everything is a blur at present.”
“I will ask Jubel to examine you when we stop. She will know what healing runes to apply. Try to keep your eyes shut until then.”
The Keepers slowed to a halt as they approached the old stone bridge that led down to Grisalt Wharf. Jubel pulled on her horse’s reins and turned to face the rest of the party. “The bridge appears to be unguarded. It could be a good sign, or it could be a trap. Probably best if we let the horses roam free and go on foot from here.”
Orlla glanced across at her father. If their plan succeeded, he would be reunited with his son, Samten, by tomorrow. If it failed, he would lose both of his children in one fell swoop. A couple of days ago, it would scarcely have mattered. Now, he would know the pain more deeply, the pain of remembering the family he had forgotten, only to watch them die.
“Something is amiss with Erdhan’s sight,” Orlla called to Jubel, as she dismounted from the battle charger and reached into the saddlebag for the sack containing the dragon stone. “He closed his eyes in the rune circle, but the bolt of light half-blinded him nonetheless.”
Jubel jumped down from her horse and strode over to Erdhan. She tilted his head back, pulled up his eyelids and inspected his pupils from all angles. “He has absorbed some of the light. It will require a complicated healing rune and a somewhat unpleasant salve to correct his vision, and even at that I can make no promise that his eyesight will be fully restored.” She frowned apologetically. “As of yet, we have little knowledge of the full extent of the Opal of Light’s power.”
Erdhan rubbed a hand across his brow. “Do what you have to. Without my eyesight, I am useless.”
“Wait here,” Jubel said. “I will gather some herbs for the salve that needs to be applied before I work the healing rune.”
She exchanged a few words with the other Keepers and then set off through the woodland. Several of the Keepers moved off in different directions to take up perimeter positions from which they could observe anyone approaching.
Orlla’s father made his way over to her and laid a hand on her arm. “In case I have forgotten by tomorrow, I want you to know how incredibly proud I am of you for what you did back there.”
Orlla smiled at him. “And I of you, father. If you hadn’t ridden to Tansk to find me, I would have been hanging from the gallows by now.”
He shook his head. “The dragon stone selected you to carry its light to the kingdoms of the earth. It would have found another way to protect you if I had not been able to.” He allowed a thoughtful pause before adding, “Maybe it was the Opal of Light that brought me out of oblivion to help you.”
Orlla stared down at the sack, bathed in a peculiar tawny hue that came from the dragon stone within. Jubel was right that no one knew the full extent of its power, but she did know that once it left these shores, eternal youth was no longer a given. Her father, like many others—including King Ferghell himself—would pass from this life to the next within a short space of time. Orlla ran a hand over her troubled brow. Who would rule Efyllsseum in the event of the king’s demise?
Before long, Jubel reappeared with a fistful of herbs. Orlla watched as Jubel proceeded to mash the herbs into a pulp on a flat rock nearby before rubbing the poultice liberally over Erdhan’s eyes. “Try not to rub your eyelids if they become itchy,” Jubel warned him. “The healing rune I am about to fashion will only take effect if the poultice thoroughly covers them.”
Erdhan nodded. “I’m ready.”
Jubel signaled to a couple of the other Keepers to join her. They interlinked arms and began chanting an ancient healing rune unfamiliar to Orlla.
After a bit, Erdhan grimaced, shifting from one foot to the other.
“Are you all right?” Orlla asked.
“The itching is intense,” he complained.
Ignoring the exchange, Jubel and the other Keepers continued weaving the rune, voices murmuring in unison.
Erdhan groaned and raised a hand to his face.
Jubel grabbed his wrist before he could stick a finger in the poultice. “Bind him!” she commanded before resuming the rune.
One of the other Keepers whipped out a scarlet cord and secured Erdhan’s arms at his sides while two more held him still.
“Stay strong, Erdhan. Not much longer,” Orlla soothed, even though she had no idea how long this complicated healing rune would actually take, or how much more of this tortuous itching Erdhan would be forced to endure.
He cried out in frustration as the rune progressed, pleading with the Keepers at intervals to call it off.
Orlla watched helplessly as he flinched and arched his back.
“Wash it off!” he shrieked. “I beg of you!”
Just when Orlla thought she couldn’t bear to watch him suffer another minute, Jubel clapped her hands together loudly and then rubbed her thumbs over Erdhan’s eyes, wiping some of the gunk from them. “Bring me a rag and a waterskin,” she said.
One of the Keepers fetched the items and Jubel proceeded to clean away all traces of the poultice from Erdhan’s eyelids and face. “Now, open your eyes and tell me what you see.”
Erdhan blinked, tentatively at first, and then more firmly. “The haze is gone! I can see plainly again.” He pulled his brows together in a frown. “I can see … better than before. How is that possible?”
Orlla, along with Jubel and the other Keepers, stared in shock at Erdhan. His blue eyes glittered like frost sparkling in the sunlight. When he fastened his gaze on Orlla, she let out an audible gasp. The piercing blueness in his eyes was stronger than she remembered it—so bright that her own eyes began to water.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, cocking an amused brow at them. “Am I missing an eyeball or something?”
Orlla threw Jubel a questioning look.
“The intensity will fade in time,” she said with a flicker of a frown.
“Your eyes are like burning blue lanterns,” Orlla explained. “They are hard to look at for any length of time.”
Erdhan winked. “That’s what all the girls tell me.”
Orlla frowned in frustration. “This is hardly the time for jesting. Your eyes have … changed. There’s a bright light inside them. The Opal of Light’s power has affected them.”
“The brightness will wear off soon,” Jubel said abruptly. She motioned to the other Keepers. “It’s time for us to leave the island.”
After gathering their belongings from the saddlebags, they set the horses free to roam. Orlla carefully slung the sack containing the Opal of Light over one shoulder.
Led by Jubel, they covered the last few furlongs to Grisalt Wharf on foot, sending one Keeper ahead to scout their path and make sure no Protectors lay in wait to ambush them on their way to the port.
The dock finally came into view, silent and still, like a dark finger pointing ominously out into the inky water. A sleeping hulk of shadowy buildings nestled together along the main street overlooking the water. None of the townsfolk were up and about yet. There was no obvious presence of Protectors in the vicinity, and no whinnying horses to give away some secret regiment crouching in the boathouses.
Magnulf exchanged an astute look with Jubel. “Eerily silent. I expected to encounter at least a few Protectors.”
Jubel flicked her eyes over the wharf again, searching for anything she might have missed. “Maybe they haven’t discovered the Protector’s body yet.”
“They’re here,” Magnulf said, a hard edge to his voice. “I can sense them.”
“I wager they will wait for us to reach the dock and launch a surprise attack,” Teldus said.
Jubel narrowed her eyes. “Then we’ll flush them out first. We’ll go house-to-house until we find them.”
“Let me go,” Erdhan said. “It’s the least I can do to thank you for restoring my eyesight. Besides, I can see better than any of you in the dark now.”
Jubel gave a curt nod. “Very well. Scout out the wharf and let us know where they’re holed up.”
Orlla paced the entire time Erdhan was gone, her insides churning with fear despite her firsthand knowledge of his stealth skills. When he returned at last, she let out a long, relieved breath.
“They’re not here,” Erdhan said. “I searched every building, barn and outhouse. The occupants are asleep in their beds. No trace of Protectors or their horses anywhere.
Jubel pressed her lips tightly together. “Then it seems we have beaten them here. The Opal of light is destined for the mainland tonight
after all.” She waved them forward. “To the dock!”
A murmur of approval rippled among the Keepers. They spread out, moving silently through the shadows down to the wharf. Using hand gestures to communicate, they untied the mooring ropes of one of the larger boats, raised the sails and climbed aboard. No one spoke as they maneuvered the boat out on the open water and the shoreline gradually faded from sight.
The dragon stone in Orlla’s lap grew heavier as the weightlessness rune began to wear off, reminding her of the enormity of the task they were about to undertake. She couldn’t help wondering if the High Dragon King approved of her actions, or if he even cared. He had given up on the dragons after all their fighting with one another centuries ago—maybe he no longer looked with interest on human affairs either.
“Ahoy!” a ghostly voice called to them through the darkness. “Unfurl your sail and prepare to be boarded!”
The Keepers exchanged wide-eyed looks, hands moving in unison to the hilts of their swords. Jubel rose halfway out of her seat, peering out over the water as she drew a dagger from her scabbard.
Moments later, flickering torches appeared as a sleek ship with a sigil of crossed swords on the hull glided alongside them.
Chapter 30
A flash of heat raged through Orlla’s core. She couldn’t tell if it was her blood rushing from her head in a panicked wave, or the power of the dragon stone awakening in her lap, or some strange mixture of both. She stared across the water at the formidable ship, transfixed by the steely eyed glare of the figure staring back at her. A Protector held aloft a pitch-soaked torch bound in rags, clearly illuminating the face of King Ferghell, flanked on either side by a wall of Protectors aiming crossbows at the Keepers’ boat.
Opal of Light: An epic dragon fantasy (The Keeper Chronicles Book 1) Page 25