The Undying Champions (The Eternal War Book 1)

by Brennan C. Adams

  “Khel? He’s the only one to truly take the time to teach me, but even he says I’m not ready to learn some things. Why do you mention him specifically?” Raimie asked.

  Alouin’s eyes unfocused momentarily, and his fingers danced in the air.

  “Ah,” he said, turning surprised eyes on Raimie, “he’s made a friend. That’s… unusual.”

  “Do you and Kheled know one another?” Raimie asked.

  “You could say that,” Alouin chuckled. “Next time you see him, tell him I said to get his ass moving. He’s taking too long, and you’re more than ready.”

  “How do you know my friend?”

  Raimie wasn’t surprised that Kheled had secrets. Everyone did after all. But knowing a god, that seemed like something you’d tell a friend, and he was a little hurt Kheled hadn’t shared yet.

  “Hush, kid, I’m thinking,” Alouin said, holding up a finger while his other hand played with the air. “Damn. You’ve given me a conundrum this time. I suppose his blade could have slipped when he slit your throat, but that doesn’t fully coincide with your Teron’s personality and skill set. Could cause dissonance down the line, but the cost is low. I’ve so little left to give…”

  He looked up at the sky again, and his fingers stopped.

  “I may seem different the next time you meet me. If the past is any indication, I’ll be more erratic, less patient, most definitely irritable. You’ll probably think I’m insane for a time. I assure you that I am not.”

  He leaned over and placed a finger on Raimie’s forehead.

  “Please be patient with me. Remind me that there’s hope.”

  “Wait! You were going to explain-”

  Alouin nudged him back into the space between realities.

  * * *

  “Come on, Raimie,” someone said above him. “Don’t tell me I sank a ship and swam all this way for you to slip away on me.”

  The jostling of his shoulder resumed, and he groaned. He opened crusted over eyes, immediately raising a hand to block out the offendingly bright sun.

  “Oh, thank Alouin. I did get to you in time.”

  Raimie sluggishly sat up and put a hand to his neck. It was a bit sticky, but there was no evidence to suggest he’d ever been harmed.

  “We need to get out of here.”

  He oriented to where he lay. Sand shifted under him, and he winced at the scratch of rogue granules between his armor and his skin. A beach then. It was bordered to the left and right by rising cliffs against which the waves crashed violently. A jungle-like forest crowded the beach, extending up the cliffs like a line of fuzzy, green hair.

  Kheled stood over him, offering a hand.

  “What happened?” Raimie asked.

  He swam in a fog that refused to lift.

  “I died…”

  Kheled grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet, his eyes never ceasing to scan their surroundings.

  “There will be time for all of this once we’re safe,” he said.

  “No!” Raimie insisted, shaking his friend off. “This is important! I met with Alouin, and he knew you, Khel! He said to tell you to hurry up. That I’m ready. How do you know someone so powerful we mortals worship him as a god?”

  Kheled blinked at him calmly.

  “Are you finished?” he asked. “Because in case you’ve somehow missed it, we’re in Auden. This place is more dangerous than you can imagine, full of people at least as strong as Teron. Personally, I’d like to be surrounded by fellow warriors or at the very least armed before we have this conversation.

  Raimie pursed his lips. Kheled was right, loathe as he was to admit it.

  “But we will have it?” he asked.

  The healer rolled his eyes.

  “If you haven’t reconsidered by then,” he agreed. “Now follow me as quietly as you can.”

  They trudged through the sand to the eaves of the forest and climbed the punishingly steep rise of the cliffs. After moving along in the shadow of the trees for a while, Raimie felt secure enough to again question his friend.

  “Where are we going?” he asked in a whisper.

  “To an elevated position so we can spy the fleet,” Kheled murmured. “If we can determine their heading, we should be able to meet them when they land.”

  “Good plan,” Raimie whispered.

  Kheled shook his head at the breach of the silence and pushed on ever higher. The trees weren’t nearly as close to the cliff’s edge as it had seemed from the beach. A narrow band of grass and a wide shelf of stone stood between the cover of their limbs and an unblocked view of the sea.

  When they reached the highest point, Kheled motioned him down, and the two crept to the edge. The fleet was nowhere in sight.

  “How long was I out?” Raimie asked with concern.

  “Not long,” Kheled answered quietly. “The current must have taken us further than I’d thought.”

  “And how exactly did I get from the ship’s hold into the sea?” Raimie asked.

  Kheled glared at him.

  “Are you trying to bring a band of Kiraak down on us?” he hissed before turning back to the ocean.

  He cupped his hands around his eyes in what must have been an attempt to block out the sun.

  Kiraak? Raimie had no idea what that was, but he assumed it was bad from how concerned his friend was about it.

  Kheled smacked his hands against the rock.

  “I’m not seeing anything even with eagle eyes,” he murmured. “We’ll have to keep moving and hope we catch sight of it soon.”

  They started back toward the safety of the forest.

  “In answer to your question,” Kheled murmured, “I transferred enough Ele energy from me to Teron to break him through the hull. Then I dragged you out and swam us both to the first beach I could reach.”

  He smirked at his friend, and Raimie snorted back a laugh. He found it deliciously hilarious that the first achievement he’d ever seen the healer proud of was destroying one of his ships.

  He heard a distinctive twang, and an arrow impaled Kheled’s shoulder. Shocked, Raimie could only stare at the shaft protruding from the healer until Kheled yanked him to the side.

  “Run!” his friend yelled, pushing him at the trees.

  Raimie ran. He expected sharp pain at any moment, but it never came. Still, the fear made him swift. After all, he couldn’t be sure how many times Alouin could bring him back.

  He made it to the cover of the trees and spun to wait for Kheled. The healer limped along as quickly as he could. Close to a dozen broken arrows littered the ground behind him, presumably snapped by the dagger Kheled clung to. Even with the skill required to avoid that many projectiles, he’d taken two in the side and another in his leg.

  Raimie gathered his courage, and sprinted back into danger to help his friend along.

  “No, Raimie!” Kheled shouted.

  He heard the distinctive twang again and knew an arrow was coming straight for him. Closing his eyes, he dodged as fast as he could, but without Ele to assist, he’d never be quick enough to avoid an arrow speeding from an unknown direction.

  A squelchy thunk filled his ears, but there was no accompanying pain. When he opened his eyes, Kheled’s pained gaze stared back. The healer groaned and fell face forward into the grass.

  Raimie dropped to his knees beside his friend, one trembling hand reaching for the arrow embedded deeply in the Eselan’s back.

  “No, no, no,” he whispered fiercely, staring in horror at his blood-soaked fingers.

  A hand reached up and shoved his head down just as something whistled through the air it had occupied moments before.

  “Still an enemy out there, Raimie,” Kheled gasped into the dirt.

  “What do I-?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” the healer snapped. “Get into the forest and run. Try to find help once you lose them.”

  Raimie drew from Daevetch and shoved an arm under his friend.

  “Listen to me!” Kheled excl
aimed urgently.

  “Shut UP!” Raimie grunted, easily lifting his tall friend over his shoulders.

  He sprinted back into the forest, zigzagging as he went. Once he’d thoroughly lost himself in the trees and when he felt he couldn’t run any longer, he lowered Kheled to the forest floor and collapsed beside him, rubbing trembling legs.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” the healer stated accusingly.

  “Done what?”

  “Come back for me. I can handle myself.”

  “What was I going to do, leave you behind?” Raimie asked with disbelief. “That wasn’t an option.”

  He stretched his aching legs out and scanned the trees.

  “Now what?” he mumbled up at the canopy of leaves sheltering them.

  “Now we pull these damn things out,” Kheled stated calmly.

  He grabbed the arrow shaft protruding from his thigh near where it met the skin and ripped it from his flesh. Hissing quietly, he took hold of one of the two in his side.

  “We?!” Raimie asked with surprise.

  “I can’t exactly reach the one in my back,” another hiss, “and even if I could, I wouldn’t have to angle necessary to extract it cleanly. So, get back there please.”

  The second arrow in his side came out while Raimie shifted to face the arrow in question.

  “You shouldn’t have jumped in front of me like that,” he muttered. “I’m at least wearing some form of armor that might have stopped the arrow. You don’t have that, just your silly cloak.”

  “I couldn’t be sure what type of bow the enemy was using,” Kheled grunted as he yanked out the last arrow within reach. “If it was a long bow, the arrow would have punched through your leather armor like it was cloth.

  “It was a lucky shot anyway. I was hoping it would bounce off of Silverblade.”

  “You have my sword?!”

  “I paid good coin to have this made for you. I certainly wasn’t letting it sink with the ship,” Kheled replied.

  “But I thought you said we were unarmed?”

  “A single dagger and sword do not make one armed in Auden, merely… prepared,” Kheled said, exasperation tingeing his voice. “Would you quit stalling and get the arrow out of my back?”

  “Sorry!” Raimie mumbled.

  He copied Kheled’s previous examples to the letter, grasping the shaft near cloth and skin and tugging back forcefully.

  Blood followed the arrowhead in a jetting stream. It splashed over Raimie’s arms and knees, and he immediately covered his friend’s wound with his hands, frantically searching for something more absorbent to stop the bleeding.

  Kheled groaned and collapsed to lie still in the grass. The bleeding had slowed to a trickle, but in the time it had gushed from the healer, it had soaked Raimie’s arms to the elbow and coated his entire lap. It was so much blood, more than he’d ever seen, and he was frightened that his friend wouldn’t get up.

  White light illuminated the encroaching dusk, originating from the wound. The light covered the hole in the healer’s flesh, hiding it from sight, and Kheled gasped and shot up rapidly.

  “Thank you, Creation,” he muttered absently while rubbing his back.

  “Are you… all right?” Raimie asked.

  His eyes felt like saucers.

  “Hmm?” Kheled hummed. “Oh, yes, I’m fine. I’ll need another healer to fix me up when we find the fleet, but in the meantime, I can sustain myself with Ele.”

  “I thought you said that only worked for a limited time period!” Raimie exclaimed angrily.

  It was too much. He’d been attacked by some unknown assailant and thought his friend had died twice in the last hour all after waking up from his own death. His nerves were frazzled, and he was ready to snap.

  “It does,” Kheled acknowledged. “So let’s find our friends quickly, shall we?”

  He groaned as he climbed to his feet. Raimie glared at him in an attempt to convey the depths of his irritation and frustration.

  “So far I really dislike your homeland, Khel.”

  “It’s not so bad,” his friend assured him. “The land itself is quite beautiful. It’s the people that aren’t so nice.”

  Raimie surveyed the darkening forest. The unnatural stillness of the foliage made his skin prickle, and the gloom caused by the gathering dusk caused him to shiver.

  “I promise, you’ll like it in the light of day,” Kheled chuckled, leaning over to lend Raimie a hand.

  A throwing knife thumped into the tree behind him, and both men quickly scrambled behind the trunk.

  “Must have tracked us from the cliff’s edge,” Kheled panted. “It’s unlikely another patrol would be so close.”

  “It’s your turn to run. Give me Silverblade,” Raimie commanded.

  “But-”

  “You’re in no condition to fight!” Raimie snapped. “So start running. I’ll stay behind for a little while to serve as a distraction, and then I’ll run too.”

  Kheled withdrew Silverblade from beneath his cloak.

  “You want the scabbard? You’ll have to come get it. Good luck,” he said before he sprinted deeper into the trees.

  Raimie took a deep breath to calm his hyperventilation once his friend had disappeared. He gripped Silverblade tightly.

  You ready to serve sentinel again, Dim?

  “If that’s what you need from me,” the splinter quietly replied.

  His subdued manner caught Raimie off guard. No japes or jabs at his expense?

  Where’s the enemy? he asked.

  “To the left. Twenty yards and closing.”

  Bright, can you provide illumination?

  He received no answer, and no light shot forth. A cold lance ripped through his guts.

  “Where’s Bright?” he asked Dim, forgetting to simply think the question in his dread.

  The black splinter’s jaw clenched.

  “The self-righteous jerk is gone and won’t be coming back. It’s just you and me now,” he answered stiffly. “Enemy on the opposite side of the tree. Preparing to come around and strike.”

  Raimie raised Silverblade and caught the first blow at his neck easily enough. The small, lithe attacker sprang back, its features hidden both by the dark of dusk and the cloth wrapped around its head.

  His enemy didn’t give him much time to recover, diving back in with a series of quick strikes. Raimie blocked or dodged them all with Dim’s help, but there was a vast gulf between seeing each jab coming and relying on his splinter’s instructions. Add to that the unstable forest footing, and he was soon flat on his back.

  He rolled away from another chop at his neck and took off into the trees.

  Damn it, Bright!

  He tripped and fell again, and the light, running footsteps caught up. Pressure on his lower back kept him from rising.

  I don’t know where you went, you LAZY ASS, but I need you RIGHT godsdamn NOW!

  A dim glow bathed the forest.

  “I exist?” Bright coughed.

  He didn’t have time to check on the splinter. As soon as he felt his source to Ele once more, Raimie gathered a sip of its energy so he could fling the enemy off of him.

  Hands grabbed his wrists and pinned them between legs and his own thighs, effectively keeping him from expelling the energy without harming himself. Cold steel pressed against the back of his neck.

  “Who are you? How are you doing that?” a distinctly feminine voice asked.

  “Doing what?” Raimie asked the dirt.

  His response sounded muffled even to his own ears. The point of metal jabbing into his neck dug deeper, drawing blood.

  “Don’t play games with me, Kiraak,” the voice scornfully snapped. “I’m not in the mood. If you answer nicely, I’ll do my best to separate your head from your shoulders cleanly. If not, who knows? I can see little pieces of you scattered in the bushes and trees.”

  “I’m not a Kiraak, whatever that is!” Raimie protested. “My friend and I have been separated fr
om our companions. We were trying to find them when you attacked us!”

  “You two certainly act like Kiraak, skulking about. I know I shot your friend through the heart, and yet he lives. That’s something only a Kiraak can do.”

  “That’s not…!” Raimie sighed with frustration. “Look, we employ magic, all right? It keeps injuries at bay, but it’s only temporary. If I don’t find him a healer soon, the magic will run out, and Kheled will die.”

  The sword against the back of his neck fell away, and the grip holding his hands to his legs loosened. Raimie ripped one arm free and blasted his captor off of him. He jumped to his feet and readied Silverblade for whatever might come next.

  Bright had disappeared again, but the canopy was thin overhead, allowing moonlight to shine through. The enemy moved out of the shadow of the trees and into the light. She sheathed her blade.

  “Let’s say I believe you,” she said. “Where would your friend go next?”

  “Why should I tell you?” Raimie countered, refusing to lower his own weapon. “For all I know, you’re one of these Kiraak that everyone keeps mentioning.”

  The woman laughed.

  “I’m not a Kiraak. If I was, you’d be dead. As for a reason to find your friend with me, let’s say I know a healer who may help, provided you’re exactly what you say you are.”

  “Or you could have made that up so I save you the trouble of finding him yourself,” Raimie argued. “I can’t know that you won’t kill us both once we find him.”

  The woman shrugged.

  “You’ll have to take that chance.”

  What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t trust this woman who’d tried to kill him scant moments before, but if she was telling the truth, he had to bring her along. The Zrelnach had healers in their ranks that might be able to fix Kheled, but he and his friend would never find them in time, especially without the sun overhead to aid in the search.

  “I don’t know where he’s going,” Raimie said resignedly, “but I know the last place I saw him and the direction he took.”

  “That’s better than nothing,” the woman replied. “I can track him from there. It was easy enough to track the two of you here.”

  “You are the one that attacked us at the cliff edge!” Raimie exclaimed, hefting his blade.