Blood of the King

by Bruce Blake

  The sound was quiet but, in the silence of the forest, it couldn’t be mistaken. A groan made by the throat of a man.

  Khirro looked over his shoulder. His companions followed too far behind to be seen or heard. He hesitated, unsure if he should investigate or wait for the others.

  What would a soldier do?

  Ghaul or Shyn would continue, he decided. He drew a deep breath, seeking courage in the air entering his lungs.

  The noise again, ahead and to the south. Louder this time.

  What if it’s a giant?

  The giants’ sounds had been similar to a man’s, but this... If not a man, Khirro couldn’t guess what would make the noise. But could there be men in the haunted land?

  Not friendly ones.

  Khirro drew the Mourning Sword and pulled the shield from his back. Fear tingled his limbs but the past weeks had taught him to accept it and move forward. Without fear there was no bravery, no courage. One didn’t dispel the other, they were inseparable, like fire and air.

  He crept forward, choosing his steps carefully. Another moan, closer. He adjusted his grip on the sword. Some nights Shyn practiced with him, helping improve his skills, but as he advanced, the sword held out in front of him, it felt like it didn't belong in his hands.

  Sounds behind him—his companions catching up. The moaning man must have heard because he spoke, removing all doubt as to the nature of the noise maker.

  “Wha...? What’s that? Dolum, did you hear something?” His voice was weak, tired. No one answered his question. “Who goes there?”

  Khirro filled his lungs and thought about waiting for the others, but if he did and it turned out to be a trap, they’d be trapped along with him. He’d known the time to prove himself a soldier would come, might as well be now. Bellowing his best war cry, hoping to both frighten his adversaries and alert his friends, Khirro sprang forward at a run. He only covered ten paces when he saw the voice’s source.

  Five men languished before him, each held immobile in the earth, one buried to his chin, the least to his waist. Khirro halted. Without doubt, two no longer lived: one’s entrails had been pulled out by something as the quickearth held him helpless; another stared skyward sightlessly, swollen tongue lolling, face purple. The eyes of the man sunk to his chin were closed, but Khirro didn’t know whether he lived or not.

  “Who’s there?”

  The man buried to his chest, one arm pinned at his side, struggled to look over his shoulder. All the men wore Erechanian armor.

  “What happened?” Khirro asked as he crept around the edge of the trees.

  “Quickearth. Thank the Gods you’re here. Most of my troop has perished, eaten by the very earth on which we walk.”

  “How many?”

  “Twenty.”

  Khirro stopped, stared at the man and his four companions. “‘But there are only—”

  “The others are gone. The ground devoured them like a beast.” A battle axe lay on the ground beside the man, blood dried on its edge. “There was no sign of the quickearth until we were upon it, then it sucked us down like a hungry animal.”

  Khirro crept to where the soldier could see him; the man’s eyes narrowed.

  “What are you doing here?” Khirro asked warily.

  “Find a branch and pull me out.”

  “But you—”

  “Hurry,” the man snapped. “When the earth is done with the others, it will take me, too.”

  Khirro hunted through the underbrush, careful to stand on stones and roots and not touch the bare earth. He found a sturdy looking branch and extended it toward the man, but it didn’t reach. As he pulled it back looking for a place to stand closer, he heard voices. His companions had arrived.

  “Don’t come any closer,” he said as Elyea came into view. She halted immediately, eyes fixed on the unusual scene before her. “It’s quickearth. Careful where you walk.”

  The others came through the trees behind Elyea. She stopped them where she stood and passed on Khirro’s warning.

  “What is going on here, Khirro?” Athryn asked, his flesh colored mask giving the illusion he had an elongated, drooping face.

  “These men are trapped in quickearth. I’m going to try and get them out.”

  “Use your head,” Shyn called. “Why would Erechanian soldiers be here if not to find you?”

  The branch Khirro reached out toward the bound man wavered in the open air between them. The man glanced over his shoulder, then back at Khirro. A line of sweat glistened on his brow.

  “Well?” Khirro asked holding the branch beyond the man’s reach.

  “I don’t know who you are.” The man shook his head too enthusiastically. “Please, just get me out.”

  “He’s a liar, Khirro,” Ghaul said. “Leave him for the birds.” He looked at Shyn, snorting a laugh in his direction.

  Khirro’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Tell me why you’re here and I’ll help you.”

  The man’s face drooped. He looked at his comrade buried to his neck, then to the man whose entrails were spilled on the ground.

  “Therrador sent us to find the man who assassinated king Braymon. But I don’t care about that now. I want to live. I’d gladly turn a blind eye, even on an assassin, if only you’ll help me. I’d—”

  The arrow pierced his throat, cutting his plea short with a fine spattering of blood spraying across the ground. The loamy soil gobbled it up as the soldier slumped forward like a rag doll. Khirro looked past him at Ghaul holding his bow at arm’s length, the string empty. He lowered it and their eyes met; Khirro said nothing.

  “They were looking for us.” Ghaul shrugged. “I guess they found us.”

  He nocked arrows for each of the others, regardless of whether alive or dead. Khirro averted his eyes when the arrows penetrated throats or eyes or temple. He knew this was a warrior’s way of being humane, but he still didn’t want to watch, nor did he protest as he might have. He knew what Ghaul would say.

  “They would have killed us if they came upon us,” Elyea said coming to his side. “Besides, the earth would not have let them go. Now they won’t suffer.”

  “Roots find no purchase in quickearth,” Athryn said taking the lead and skirting around the clearing cluttered with dead men. “If we stick to the trees, we should be all right.”

  As a farmer, Khirro spent his life working with the earth beneath his feet, learned about different soil types, their unique properties and what crops each would support. He’d heard tales of animals, people, even entire towns swallowed by quickearth, but he discounted them in the same closed-minded way he disbelieved his mother’s bedtime stories. If this trek did nothing else, it made him a believer.

  “So Therrador has taken control of the throne.” Shyn stepped over the trunk of a fallen birch. “And doesn’t want you to succeed.”

  Khirro shook his head. “With the Shaman and the others dead, no one knows I carry the blood of the king.”

  Ghaul laughed. “They may not know it’s you, but they know someone has it. And there’s no doubt they’re not coming to help. The one-eyed man was no common thief, he’d seen many battles, taken many lives.”

  “And now Erechanian soldiers looking for an assassin.” Elyea added. “Someone knows we have the king’s blood.”

  “And doesn’t want Braymon to come back,” Shyn finished for her.

  Khirro looked at his feet as he walked. He didn’t like what they said but couldn’t argue their accusations. In the haunted land, enough things stood against him already, he didn’t need his own country attempting to thwart him, as well.

  “But why?”

  “The power of a crown can do strange things to a man’s mind,” Athryn said from ahead of them.

  “You think Therrador...?”

  Khirro couldn’t believe it. The stories of Braymon’s rise to power all told of Therrador’s role in securing him the crown. Why would he not want his friend back?

  “Don’t be dim, Khirro,” Ghaul snor
ted. “Of course, Therrador. And likely a few generals, some politicians, the Vendarians, the Kanosee. A list the length of my arm wouldn’t be enough to name all the people who’d benefit from Braymon’s death. It’s the same list of people who want you dead. I’m surprised there aren’t more pursuing us.”

  A bramble caught Khirro’s tunic—one more thing trying to keep him from his goal. It made sense others would harbor ambition for the throne, but Therrador? Braymon became king not long after Khirro’s birth and always seemed a good and fair ruler, protecting and providing for the people of his kingdom. Wasn’t that what mattered?

  Around him, the others continued speaking of political plots, but he paid little attention. The conversation ended quickly and they fell back into silence, Shyn taking point. Elyea walked beside Khirro, holding his arm. She smiled and he tried to do the same, but it felt false on his lips. Ghaul made a sarcastic-toned comment from behind, but Khirro didn’t hear what he said and didn’t ask him to repeat it.

  A brisk wind rose among the tree tops, rustling branches, spilling loose needles and cones down through the limbs. It was the first sound they’d heard from the forest in days, a sound some might identify with peacefulness, but peace never made its way here. Instead, it was ominous, eerie—as though the trees whispered to each other in a language only they understood.

  What do they say? Who are they talking to?

  Khirro thought it safer if he never found out.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The lake itself looked as it had in the other dreams. He sat in the same place, on the same rock, yet something seemed different. He surveyed his surroundings and found them unfamiliar, like someone had picked up the lake and moved it to a different location.

  The time and weather also differed. A full moon shone sporadically through clouds smudged across the sky; wind whipped the lake into waves, slapping them against his rock, throwing spray onto his naked skin. The cool air snaked around him, crawling between his arms and body as he hugged himself against the chill.

  He stepped off the rock onto pebbly ground, the gravel beach pressing uncomfortably into his bare feet. The moon emerged from behind a streak of cloud, its reflection choppy and misshapen on the roiling lake; its light outlined a building on the far shore. Khirro squinted at the single barrel tower perched on a rocky hill. No torches burned in windows, no banner flew above. The moon went behind another band of gray cloud and the structure disappeared.

  A sound from the forest at his back startled Khirro. He looked around expecting the white tyger to appear from the dense foliage. Nothing. Leaves quivered in the wind and another noise followed: a low, guttural sound not human or animal, but somewhere in between. Nothing making that noise could be anything but evil, dangerous.

  Khirro ran.

  He stayed close to the shoreline, but the forest grew right to the water’s edge in places. Branches and brambles whipped his face and chest, scratched his arms and legs as he plunged through them. He ran across rocky beaches, stubbing his toes, nearly turning his ankle. It was not the kind of running he’d experienced in other dreams—the feeling of moving quickly but going nowhere. This time he ran with considerable speed, covered a great distance.

  Ahead, a wide gully appeared, too wide for the waking Khirro to clear, but he wasn’t the waking Khirro. His feet hit the edge of the crevice, loam squeezing between his toes as they dug into cool, soft earth, and he leaped into the air.

  And he flew.

  He didn’t fly as Shyn did, with wings and feathers, talons and beak. Instead the wind carried him up and up and up. The gully fell away, fading to a line on the earth as he rose above the trees. Higher and higher he went until he brushed the clouds. From here he saw the size of the lake, the tower only a dot sitting beside it. Far off to his left, a bank of fog marked the shoreline of Lakesh while the rest of the land lay in darkness, nothing to see but tree tops below him. Cold air made goose flesh prickle on his arms and legs and chest.

  He gazed around in wonderment floating above the world until a pinprick of light buried deep down in the forest caught his attention, and he knew it was the campfire his physical self slept beside. He estimated the fire about three days travel from the lake.

  The clouds parted and the moon shone down, illuminating the land. Even Lakesh looked beautiful when seen this way. Khirro moved his arms, attempting to steer his course, to see more. Two days march behind the campfire, trees trembled and shook, moved by more than the wind. He tried to direct himself toward the disturbance, but was sucked downward and away instead. Wind buffeted his body as the ground rushed up at him. An instant later, he lay on the mossy ground staring up at the tower stretching toward the cloud-scudded sky.

  Khirro pushed himself to his feet brushing dirt and bits of moss from his thighs. The moon shone on the tower’s gray stone, its rough surface unblemished by doors or windows. He circled the tower, bare feet padding spongy ground, and stared in awe at the rough-hewn sides of the massive keep. No lines of mortar showed between bricks, as though the entire structure had been chipped from one enormous block of granite. As he rounded to the far side, Khirro stopped. A huge black bulk sat on the ground near the tower. He crept closer until he made out the shape of massive wings folded against a sleek body.

  A dragon.

  He watched, waited. It didn’t move.

  Curiosity pressed him forward one tentative step at a time. By the time he approached close enough to lay his hand on the dragon’s forefoot, he knew it was a statue carved from the same stone as the tower: gray flecked with something shining in the moonlight.

  The dragon’s head was bigger than a horse’s and stood yards above Khirro’s head. He stooped to look at the curved talons grasping the earth, the scales covering feet and legs. The detail of the carving astounded him as he brushed his fingertips across it feeling each curve and dent. Every ridge in place, the work of a master carver who refused to bend to the whim of the rock.

  A vibration shook the statue and Khirro pulled his hand away. It quivered again, accompanied by a rumbling growl. Startled, Khirro stumbled away from the dragon, falling to the loamy ground. He stared up at the head expecting it to turn glowing red eyes on him, but it didn’t move. He heard the growl again, this time realizing it came from behind him. Rolling onto his belly, he reached for the sword that wasn’t there.

  The white tyger padded silently across the mossy ground, its tail swishing insistently as it paced back and forth.

  “You,” Khirro said, voice louder than intended. The tyger said nothing, only continued its restless pacing. Khirro climbed to his feet feeling vaguely self-conscious about his nakedness. He looked from the tyger to the tower and back. “Is this the keep of the Necromancer?”

  The tyger ceased pacing and fixed him in the gaze of its golden eyes.

  “Yes,” it said. “Your journey draws toward its goal.”

  Had he been awake, such a statement might have brought fear and foreboding but, in the dream, elation spread through him. Soon Braymon would be restored and the world would go back to the way it should be with no one hunting them and Lakesh a distant memory. Braymon would probably show his appreciation by releasing him from service, he’d heard of such things being done. The rightful king could do whatever he wanted—grant him land and a farm of his own, maybe. Khirro smiled broadly at the thought, but the tyger’s intense glare chased it from his face.

  “This is cause for celebration.” Khirro nodded, looking for confirmation, but the tyger gave him nothing. “Only a few more days and the danger will be done.”

  “Do not fool yourself, Khirro. When you reach Darestat’s lair, your perils have only begun.”

  Khirro’s face slackened, the fear and foreboding he’d expect of his physical self creeping into the dream. “What do you mean?”

  “Only the seeker can face the guardian.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the only way to gain entrance.”

  Khirro’s brow furrowed. “Stop speak
ing in riddles, beast. Say what you mean.”

  The white tyger turned away and loped around the curve of the tower. Khirro took two steps after the great cat, then stopped. A warm wind brushed his back, stirring the hair on his arms and legs and the back of his neck. Goose flesh hardened on his chest. He didn’t want to look.

  A stronger breeze flowed around him, and warmer. Khirro’s muscles knotted as he turned slowly, holding his breath, suddenly glad this was only a dream. When he’d been flying, he wished it real so he could feel what Shyn felt soaring above the trees, but now, as the warm wind blew again, he longed for wakefulness but couldn’t make it happen.

  He faced the source of the warm wind.

  The dragon reared on its hind legs, muscles bunched, smoke spilling from its nostrils like a blacksmith’s chimney. Its gray scales rippled as it moved, clacking together like waves receding from a rocky beach. Gray wings spread and retracted, its eyes shone red with glowing menace. The urge to flee grabbed Khirro but, unlike his flight along the lakeshore, this time the dream ruled, rooting him to the spot. The monster threw back its head and roared at the sky. Khirro covered his ears, shut his eyes, and willed the dream to end. When he opened them, the beast still stood before him.

  Khirro’s mouth moved—to plead for mercy, or ask forgiveness—he didn’t know what might have come out if he found words. Instead, breath wheezed through his constricted windpipe. The dragon opened its maw revealing three rows of pointed teeth, a forked tongue, and blackness lit be a tiny spark.

  Then the flames came.

  They unfolded toward him like a banner unfurling in the wind. Time slowed. Khirro watched the flames—red and yellow and orange and white—as they twisted and curled, a living thing advancing upon him. The swirling conflagration hid the dragon and heat touched Khirro’s face. In an instant the inferno would engulf him, ending his life.

  This is the guardian.

  And then he woke.

  His eyes opened to flames. Startled and afraid, he cried out, scrambling against moist dirt to get away, but something pressed against his back kept him there. Elyea sat up and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.