by Justin Sloan
“You stand by to heal me, and I don’t think we’ll have a problem.”
“Good!” He turned to the stairway and motioning for the others to follow. “Everyone, grab as much as you can carry, and hurry.”
He sensed the others looking around in confusion, but was certain they’d follow his plan. It was much too good for them not to, and would lead to as few deaths on both sides as possible. Hopefully none.
That was how he preferred it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rhona was as clueless as the others as they crouched behind the rocks of the ruins around the tower, waiting for the paladins to draw close. She gave her brother a questioning look, to which he held up a finger. After a moment, when they could barely hear the clatter of armor and hushed voices of the paladins, who had clearly begun approaching to catch their prey off guard, he nodded and crouch-walked over to her.
“Here’s the deal. We’re going to need your magic to create a veil over us and keep us from being seen. Think you can do that?”
It wasn’t like she had full control over her magic, and he knew that. She breathed deeply, feeling for the magic within as if touching it, caressing it, asking it nicely if it would be so kind as to do as she asked.
In the past she had relied on her subconscious to direct the magic to get her out of tough situations, but this time she was asking something very specific of it. She gazed into the darkness around her as she held out a hand, palm up, to ask the darkness to accept her. And it did.
Her quickened breath suddenly slowed and the nervous twitching in her right bicep stopped. It was like she could see the wind flowing in the darkness.
What the fuck had she just tapped into?
When she turned back to Alastar his eyes went wide, and she realized hers must have already gone black, but there was something else happening too—she knew it. When she looked down, it was like the tendrils of darkness were moving across her skin. She felt like she should have been terrified, but it was the most comforting sensation she had ever experienced.
She smiled at her brother. “Let’s do this.”
He bit his lip, as giddy as a child at his first pie cart at the market, and nodded. With a quick glance over the dilapidated stone wall before them, he said, “Now,” and then waited, watching her anxiously.
Carefully, as if to avoid scaring off the darkness, Rhona waved both hands in the direction of their group.
Though she didn’t see the change, she felt it.
“Are you…done?” Alastar asked.
She nodded. Then, to the astonishment of the rest of the group, he stood. He stood directly in the line of sight of the paladins, and Rhona stood with him.
The paladins continued sneaking, eyes darting around. One paused, eyes right on them, but all he said was, “By the Saint, it’s darker than a whore’s—”
“Quiet,” the paladin next to him snapped, also looking at them before his eyes moved back to the tower. “There! That’s how we enter. Move fast and end them fast, so we can be on our way.”
“The Holy Saint works in wondrous ways,” the first paladin whispered, and they motioned to their buddies. All five of them headed over to the doorway.
Alastar motioned for Rhona to stay put and keep the veil on them and then he turned and nodded to the rest, but held up a hand that Rhona interpreted to mean, “When I say go.”
The last of the paladins entered, disappearing from sight, and then Alastar moved. He positioned himself at the large slab of stone that had blocked the doorway upon their arrival and gestured for Lars to help him, and for the others to grab the other large stones lying around.
It suddenly dawned on Rhona what he was planning—he meant to trap them in the tower! A battle cry came from above, followed by sounds of confusion, and then it was go-time.
With a heave on her brother’s part, Rhona saw she was right. He and Lars leaped into action, pushing the stone into place as the others began to haul their stones over and pile them up against the doorway. Soon any hope of escape was blocked, and just in time, as men began to shout from within the tower.
The thud of a shield on stone sounded, but the door didn’t move. A moment later a paladin stuck his head out the window high above and shouted, “They’re down there! Go, now!”
But his companions weren’t able to leave. They were stuck; it was high enough that any jumpers might die, and would certainly break something.
Rhona beamed at her brother. He had done it!
“Move!” Alastar ordered, and led the retreat into the night.
The only sound aside from the paladins’ shouting was when Crete stopped, turned, and loosed an arrow. A grunt followed, and one of the paladins tumbled out of the window, landing with a clang and a crunch below.
“That wasn’t necessary,” Alastar shouted as he ran, grabbing the boy by the shoulder, and hauling him along.
“We’re in no rush now!” the boy protested, pulling himself free.
Alastar stopped, and the others gathered around to see how this would play out. He leaned in. “Let me explain something, boy. Before too long, they’ll realize that they can simply heal one of their own as he falls, thereby negating any consequences of falling. They’re still too flustered to consider it, but I’d bet they’ll figure it out. Do you want to be here when they do? I doubt they’ll be waiting around for you to pick off the other four, and I’d just as soon be off to find this sword, return home before an army of sorcerers arrives to overthrow my land, and be done with all this.”
The boy’s jaw moved as if he were debating what to say, but he finally nodded. “Understood.”
“Very well.” Alastar gave him a frustrated glare. He paused momentarily to look at Rhona, who saw that the dark tendrils were gone, and only then realized the exhaustion was starting to set in. His eyes glowed gold and she felt her energy returning, though in a different way; like it wasn’t her own energy, but somebody else’s. Then they were off again, the others following close behind.
When Rhona caught up to her brother, she held her swords in place to stop them from swinging as she ran, and smiled. “That was genius.”
He nodded. “It would’ve been, if not for that reckless boy. Nobody had to die.”
“They see them as hunters or murderers,” she explained. “Not as brothers, like you still seem to.”
He sniffed at that, clearly bothered by the thought, but didn’t deny it. She knew part of him could never let that go; the love for these men he had considered brothers so much of his life. But the simple truth of the matter was that the majority of them, the older ones at least, had partaken in the holy quests. They were, for all intents and purposes, murderers, and possibly evil.
Oddly enough, she found herself not too surprised by this notion. Maybe it was that she had never believed the holier-than-thou attitude, and felt that such people were frauds. If someone had faith, was it necessary to make others feel bad about not sharing it? Wasn’t the man or woman who humbly wore their faith on their sleeve without jamming it down another’s throat the stronger servant of said faith?
She thought back to her brother’s statement about how he would have chosen death over the paladins’ murdering ways. She wanted to believe him, and she thought she did, but she still wasn’t sure.
Was it possible the others were just so ingrained in the system that when the High Paladin gave them an order, they simply executed it without question? Did blindly following a command make someone evil?
She nodded to herself, confirming her belief that, aye, it did. Anyone who would kill indiscriminately, without cause, was evil in her mind.
When they had gone far enough to feel comfortable, they slowed to a walk. Everyone kept glancing at Rhona in awe, until finally Kim cleared her throat and started, “So, this magic?”
“Shadow magic,” Rhona explained. “That’s the best way I know how to describe it, anyway.”
“Is it evil?”
Rhona laughed. “As far as I know, it’s no
t. Not in the slightest.”
Kim nodded at that, seemingly satisfied. Andreas, however, was confused.
“How is it you can do this?” he asked. “I’m aware of storm calling, I’ve even heard rumors of magic of a different sort in the city of Arcadia. But…shadow magic?”
She shook her head. “I wish I knew.”
“The mystics we met,” Alastar explained, “theorized that it had to do with the energy around us. That it’s all part of something bigger, and, in theory, we can all do it.”
“Poppycock,” Kim shot back with a laugh. “If I could do magic, you can bet I wouldn’t have done the dishes by hand these last sixty-three years of my life.”
“I don’t think it works like that,” Rhona responded.
“It’s above all our heads,” Alastar added. “All I can tell you is, not long ago all I knew about were prayers and a Saint who answered miracles, and my sister didn’t know a lick of magic. Now look at us.”
“Everything we thought we knew,” Rhona agreed, looking up at the sky as big, billowing clouds rolled by, “it’s like that was some other world.”
“Welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives,” Lars grumbled with a humph. “That’s the old saying, right? Well, it might not be the first day, exactly, but I have a feeling it’s going to be a new life, or new world, for all of us going forward.”
“Those of us who survive the Lost Tombs,” Kim added gravely. She had paused at a clearing ahead, hands on her hips as she took in the view ahead.
Rhona gasped when she reached that point and saw what Kim had been looking at. Mounds covered the ground, and where there weren’t mounds, bodies lay scattered about. It wasn’t hard to grasp that the mounds of dirt were burials. Some of them had walls and doors, and she guessed these led into crypts and the like.
“The bodies not buried?” she asked.
Kim’s voice was somber when she replied, “Stragglers. Loners. Those without anyone to bury them. Those who had no one to care for, but managed to come here and die before starvation or disease took them. Most were from the Age of Madness, but many weren’t.”
A long silence followed in which Rhona assumed the others, like herself, were pondering death, the meaning of life, and what it would mean to lose those around her right now—her only loved ones in this world. Well, them, and Donnon and Kia. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to return and find out he was no more, and she was suddenly overcome with an intense urge to make it back as soon as possible.
She cleared her throat, and her brother got the message.
“And the Sword of Light?” Alastar asked.
“There.” Lars pointed past it all to a large mound that Rhona, when she looked closely, saw was actually a tomb with walls that sparkled in the moonlight.
“They didn’t exactly make it inconspicuous, huh?” she asked.
“Probably figured no one would be foolish enough to go after it,” Lars told her. “But that’s where it’s said to rest.”
“Said to rest?” Alastar asked. “But…”
“Oh, I believe it’s there,” Lars replied. “What you should be worried about, I would say, are the remnant and other problems waiting for us on the path to regaining it.”
“You’ve seen what we’re capable of,” Alastar said. “So how about we just throw worry out the window from now on, so we can hurry and get this shite over with?”
Lars laughed deeply and heartily. “I like the way you think, even if you are a Roner.”
“A what?”
“You know, Roneland. You come from Roneland, so…Roner.”
Rhona pursed her lips in thought. “I’m not sure I like that. Would I be a Rhoner? You know, Rhona from Roneland, or a double-Rhoner?”
“You lot have too much free time, I think,” Andreas remarked, walking past them and heading down into the valley of the Lost Tombs. “I want to get back to the ocean by sunrise, so would you all mind shutting up and moving along?”
Rhona smirked and motioned for Alastar to go ahead, and he smiled back, taking up the position behind Andreas. It was time to get that sword.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Everywhere Alastar looked, he was reminded of death. Bodies, tombs, the grim expressions of his companions—it was all too much. He would have been annoyed if he hadn’t been so eager to kick butt and take care of this Roneland situation.
In his mind, it wasn’t a question of figuring it out or solving some great puzzle. It was a matter of saving his homeland and putting a stop to all the lies.
First step: get the damn sword.
Tombs rose around them, some tall as a building, some only large enough to hold several bodies. Sair Talem had seen better days, that was for damn sure.
“The rest of this island,” he heard Estair asking Kim, “it’s in better shape?”
To Alastar’s relief, Kim confirmed that it was.
“There are parts of the island that are nothing but green fields,” she continued. “Areas untouched by the devastation of the Age of Madness.”
“If that’s so, why in the world would you all be out this way?” Alastar asked.
The sparkle in Kim’s eyes vanished, and she nodded toward Crete. “We were looking for his family, any sign of them.”
“And when you’re the only one alive on the island that you know about,” Andreas added, “but then find others? You go where the majority decides to go. Better to be killed as a group than to die alone.”
Alastar held Estair’s hand and gave it a kiss, then sent his sister a reassuring smile before looking up to see that they had reached the tomb.
“Tell you what,” he said. “When this is over, no more depressing shite comes out of our mouths, right? I want a promise on that.”
The others mumbled their agreement, then waited as Lars approached the rickety old doors. He told the rest of his team to hold off and stand guard, while he and Kim took Alastar’s group in.
“Why exactly is the sword in here again?” Alastar asked.
“It’s in the tomb of the man it once belonged to,” Lars replied. “You’re about to meet your famed Saint Rodrick. Well, his rotting skeleton, anyway.”
“If we have to fight any skeletons in here, no one gets to make fun of me for pissing myself,” Stone stated, rubbing his bald head for good luck as he had often done before training exercises back at the castle.
“Deal,” Alastar agreed as he stepped into the tomb.
He wasn’t going to hold back on the magic this time, so let his eyes glow gold and the light flood out before him. The stench was repulsive, like rotten wood mixed with putrid fruits and vomit, all magnified a hundred-fold.
But they pushed on.
Voluntarily entering a tomb in the middle of an island known for its ghost stories and curses was enough to send a shiver up his spine, but he didn’t have time to be scared. He took Estair by the arm, kept Rhona at his side, and let Lars lead the way. They walked on a dirt floor that led down into a small room with shelves full of skeletons; he now knew where the stench came from.
“It’s here?” he asked, gasping for breath and trying to bury his nose in his shirt.
Lars shook his head, holding his nose now too, and motioned to the back wall. Here he pulled aside a dirty cloth that looked exactly like the rest of the walls, revealing a bit of a tunnel just past one of the shelves of skeletons, narrow enough only for those in good shape. Luckily, all of them were.
Alastar followed the older man, pressing his back to the wall and moving along the corridor sideways until he found himself in a narrow room just large enough for the four of them.
He turned back and told Rhona to let the others know they could head back up or stay with the skeletons. They chose to head back.
“We know why the sword’s here,” Alastar said. “But you still haven’t told us why you know the sword is here.”
Lars smiled, motioning to the only thing in the room, a long, narrow, box. A poor man’s grave.
He kneeled down, letting the question linger, and removed the lid. Here was another skeleton, but when he pulled on the board at the back panel of the box, it opened to reveal a space from which he drew a sword covered in a cloth.
When he removed the cloth and held it up, sideways so that Alastar could get a good look, there was no doubt from the images he had seen at the castle of the Order of Rodrick that this was either the sword of light or a very good replica. The blade was long, the hilt gilded and encrusted with jewels.
“I know, for the simple reason that the man charged with its keeping passed the secret on to me.” Lars held out the sword for Alastar to take. “He was Crete’s father, one of several charged with preventing the sword from falling into the hands of the paladins. We told you a story before about the real reason the paladins and Rodrick came here. We believe it to be true. However, I believe that is only half the equation. I believe that the paladins’ search for the sword is indeed real, and that the High Paladin must not have it.”
“Then why are you giving it to me?” Alastar asked, hands already on the hilt and flat of the blade in acceptance.
“Because I know that if we stay here in Sair Talem, we will die. I want to return to my land, to Kaldfell, and I trust that you are different, that you will make the right choice when the time comes.”
Alastar nodded. “I will.” He accepted the sword as Lars released it.
It was heavier than he had expected, and the hilt felt odd in his hand. But there was something else about it that bothered him. It didn’t feel powerful in any way; certainly not magical.
“How does it work?” Alastar asked.
Lars frowned. “I figured one of your kind would know.”
Alastar ran his hand across the gems, considering them. “We can imbue our magic—or blessings, depending on what you believe—into these stones. But that’s the same with every sword.”