A Flutter In The Night (Kyrn's Legacy Book 1)

by Michael S. Gormley

  The blade chimed off with a loud clank, and Hairen’s arms shook violently from the force of the blow.

  The Black Knight turned back to Hairen, and, before the elf could shake his fear of the Black Knight, its square sword dug through his stomach.

  From the corner of his eye, Kyrn saw Brailen drop to his knees. His mouth was wide, his face filled with grief, but Kyrn couldn’t hear the screams pouring from the elf. He heard nothing but a grinding ringing in his ears, as the Black Knight walked towards Kyrn.

  There were still so many elves pushing and shoving their way through the front doors of King’s Justice. So many falling and trampling over one another. Only a few Castreeth guards remained, finishing off what remained of the goblins.

  Through the ringing in his head, Kyrn felt the numbness again course through his body, and he remained on his knees, unable to convince his legs to raise him up again. He looked at Brailen, seeing him fall to his stomach as a draelor burst through the crowd and tackled him. I’m not your true king, Kyrn thought.

  “Skoval!” Kyrn heard the voice cut through the ringing, through the numbness. And suddenly, all the chaos of the room poured back through his head. He looked to where the shout had come from to see Magmi standing upon the benches in the chamber. His cane raised high as he could muster, a small spark of flame burst from its tip and floated into the air. From the open door, just above the heads of the fleeing elves, swooped in a large, brown bird, nearly twice the size of the crows Kyrn chased from the farms in Grimmrich.

  The bird met with the falling flame, diving through it, and reddened entirely. The bird hadn’t necessarily caught fire, that Kyrn could see. But, in a sense, it seemed to become fire. The heated bird dove into the draelor upon Brailen’s back, spearing fully through its ribcage, coming out the other side brown and clean once more.

  The draelor twitched and fell off Brailen’s back, its claws sliding from his back, before it melted into an ooze of a hot, glowing red, with bits of its dark fur lining the liquid.

  “Good, Skoval,” Magmi said as the bird flew to him and landed upon his shoulder.

  Kyrn dropped his eyes to the ground before him when a disturbing clank, clank rattled at his knees. The pointed, metal boots of the Black Knight stood before him.

  He looked up defeatedly. Kyrn no longer felt afraid. He’d made it to the forest of Castreeth. Made it further even, into an unknown realm hiding the new Castreeth. He’d gotten to the elves, even if they’d known of the Dark One’s presence, as Northal had expected. Syonne had the Stone of Ezroch, and, greater still, she was freed from King Glahlan. So long as the elder Wylah, known to few as Magmi the Great, could get her to safety, Kyrn had done what he’d set out to. He looked up from his knees at the emptiness beneath the scarab helm and closed his eyes.

  Part Three

  Storms in the Westlands

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Keep Quiet

  The cramped cell that held Alathain was dank, perhaps the darkest of all the cells in Grimmrich City. There was, however, a window—very small in the corner. It couldn’t have been more than two feet by two feet, and the light let in from the bright moon hanging over the city streets above was nearly absent.

  Other than Alathain, there was only a small amount of wet hay—that he’d used as a bed for the two seemingly unending days he’d spent within the cell. Worse yet, the hay had been there from the prisoner before him, and Alathain had not seen even a roll of bread handed to him. Though, he couldn’t expect much more after an alleged assassination attempt on Lady Abellia.

  He knew that wasn’t truly the case, but the council members hadn’t. Not all of them. He could have easily slipped through with the young lady then and there, though, that wasn’t what the Dark Master wanted.

  Keeping appearances was what the lord had called it. Though, Alathain couldn’t see how much more use the man called Tymlan would be.

  “Where’s my prison break?” he asked himself aloud. His own voice startled him, for he’d heard no others in so long now. The Dark Lord assured him that it was in the plan for Lord Tymlan to release him. How else would he capture the young lady?

  He was guaranteed a rescue.

  That was a term Alathain had hated. Rescued. It was something he didn’t need whatsoever. He’d assumed, even if this must be the plan, that he could easily break from the cells of Grimmrich.

  The Dark Lord’s orders would stand.

  With that thought, Alathain heard the creaking of a door in the distance. Even with its subtlety, he knew it was the door leading into the dungeon he sat within.

  He’d been blindfolded as he was brought to his cell, just regaining consciousness after being knocked over the head atop Baron’s Roost. Either his time had come to die, or to be released. Alathain was prepared either way. Anything at all beat the suffering of confinement, especially in the consistent seven years he’d spent traveling the world for the Dark Ones. He couldn’t bear the solitude of a tiresome cell.

  In the main room, outside of Alathain’s cell, sat a large wooden table, which normally held three or four rambunctious guards. Over the past few hours, however, the watch had been cut short. Alathain saw this as a good sign.

  Four to five feet from each corner of the table stood support beams holding the ceiling above, with two small torches each. The dim light was still not enough to fill the large room, but adequate for him to see the landing of the staircase.

  With the reverberating footsteps growing closer, he focused his vision to adjust in the light. Lord Tymlan appeared at the bottom, and Alathain scoffed, seeing him walk so casually, holding a book in hand. It was open, and Lord Tymlan’s eyes were fixed on the page.

  He approached the cell, not breaking his gaze from the book until he stood at the rusted bars. Lord Tymlan closed the book with a thump. He was alone. Entering the cells without city guard was against safety precautions, even more so for council members.

  “Tymlan,” Alathain scoffed. Not so much at his presence, but his lack thereof for the past two days.

  “Hello, Alathain,” he replied. Holding the book close to his chest, he smiled in at the prisoner. It was not a smile of pity, or of reassurance, but a smile of power. Tymlan had, for once, the upper hand—so he thought—and looked as if he wanted to make sure Alathain remained aware of that fact. “Are you comfortable?”

  Alathain retained eye contact, responding only with a blank stare. His body was sore from his lack of movement. He hadn’t his cloak or daggers, and the stubble upon his face had started to grow. These all angered him equally.

  “Alright, then,” Tymlan continued. “To the point.” He cleared his throat, sounding sickly. “Your Lord,” placing a strong emphasis on your, “has brought an exceedingly important matter to my attention.” He paused, long enough to imply he awaited a response.

  Alathain didn’t respond, although he was shocked at the man’s courage, knowing that Alathain himself had been the one to inform Lord Tymlan of the Dark Lord’s plans. He grew annoyed at the silence. “If you are not going to inform me of any new or lacking information, set me free and I’ll be on my way.”

  “Well, of course.” Tymlan smiled, though a sense of fear flushed through his body, seeing the anger rise in Alathain. He slowly removed a key from around his neck, tucked within his leather vest.

  Inside the cell, Tymlan walked cautiously to Alathain, not removing the fictitious smile from his clean-shaven face. As he unshackled the chain around the prisoner’s ankle, Alathain quickly had him pinned against the wall.

  Lord Tymlan reached to his side for his concealed dagger, but quickly realized Alathain had it already pressed against his neck.

  “I suspect you’ll not be walking me out?” Alathain laughed, now holding the smile Tymlan had so recently worn.

  “I can’t be seen with you,” Tymlan stuttered.

  “Where is my equipment?”

  “Hung upon the door,” he stammered. “The top of the stairs.”

  Alatha
in winked, nearly bursting with laughter as he watched the tears build in Tymlan’s eyes. “If I’m to ever see you again,” he whispered, “it will be only to sink this very dagger into your portly gut.”

  As Lord Tymlan winced, squeezing shut his eyes, he felt the cold steel release from his neck and clatter to the ground. When he opened them, Alathain was already gone.

  ***

  Lady Abellia had been moved quickly to the tower in which Elrich was lodged. Her belongings had been transferred slowly over the past two days, since her run in with the assassin in Baron’s Roost, so that her new location wouldn’t be known to anyone but the city guard.

  It was relieving, in a sense, that even the members of the council knew not where she stayed. Lord Tymlan wouldn’t come crashing upon her door, begging for her cooperation. He truly hadn’t wanted that anyways, only her conformity to his own decisions.

  She’d thought tirelessly over the last two nights about the assassin. Her first thoughts went quickly to the terrifying stories her father had told them in Grimmrich; the reason she and Elrich had been sent to Stalholm in the first place. There was, however, a rationale that swept over her about the levity of the situation. The return of the Dark Ones, she forced herself to laugh at the notion. Not for a young lady such as myself. She’d come to believe that one of the councilmen themselves had put the assassin up to his job.

  What better cover did they need? She’d been moved to Stalholm for protection, to be disappeared.

  Abellia rested her palms on the sill of her window, looking out onto the quiet streets below. The night was dark and the moon was shrouded by thick clouds. It was beautiful in a sense, a surreal sort of way. Like the scary bedtime stories her nurse would read her as a child. Stalholm seemed like a fairytale city—the kind in which princesses were locked in towers to keep safe from the wicked monsters of the night.

  Now, she only needed her savior.

  Dark shadows passed over the moon, darker even than the clouds before it. Until she realized they were not shadows over the clouds in the distance. Instead, they danced across the window before her very eyes.

  Before she’d had time to process, the shattering of the glass jolted her from her stoop, and Alathain’s hand quickly grasped the string of her cloak, tied loosely around her neck. She opened her mouth to scream, but his free hand cupped her mouth, muffling her shouts.

  Before she fainted, he pulled her through the window, and she saw the ground far below.

  “Keep quiet and move quickly,” Alathain said beneath his breath. He guided Abellia Fellenor through the alleys of Stalholm. He kept a close eye on her hood as they walked, making sure it stayed low enough to hide her face. He wasn’t overly concerned. Though Abellia Fellenor had been making herself a more common presence among her people of Stalholm the past few days, she still hadn’t earned their loyalty. She wouldn’t find many who’d die for her in these quarters of the city.

  ***

  Alathain grimaced at the thought of the council’s faces as he sat upon Abellia, his swords dug deep into the wooden floor at her side. “One of you walks towards me,” he’d told them, “instead of out that door, and I cut her throat.” They’d stood in silence, awestruck by his acrobatic performance, though, one by one, they exited the terrace of Baron’s Roost.

  Easy as that, he thought to himself, now. Kidnapping a lady. Moving her to a new tower seemed a proper approach, but little did the guard know—Alathain had already known before they had.

  ***

  As Alathain followed Abellia, carefully guiding her through the proper path of the alleyways, he watched the sky above. Past the rusting rooftops of the seaside city’s lower quarters, the moon was high and the fireworks continued overhead.

  “No use alerting the city folk,” Alathain mumbled to himself.

  Abellia cocked her head slightly, not quite looking back at him. “Surely they will.”

  He pressed his hand against her lower back, feeling the indent of her spine, and forced her along quicker. “They won’t, my Lady,” Alathain said with a smile. “It’d only prove much more challenging to find you with the hustle and bustle of rowdy townsmen.”

  Abellia didn’t respond. She knew it was true. Keeping her hands beneath the cloak Alathain had slipped over her head, she grasped her necklace, and it lit slightly. She turned back to make sure the man with the scarred face behind her hadn’t noticed, but she saw his eyes were fixed on the sky above.

  As they came to the end of an alley, she felt his grip tighten against the small of her back, clutching at her cloak. As she came to a halt, she felt a spark of cold course up her thigh.

  “Feel that?” Alathain whispered. When she nodded slowly, he continued. “So much as a single breath too loud and my sword slides across your femoral vein. Hmm?”

  She kept her face low and in the shadow of her hood. “Perhaps that’d stop you from getting what you want.” She winced, as the scarred man put more pressure onto the blade at her thigh, and she could feel a trickle of warm blood race towards her kneecaps.

  “For young Elrich’s sake, keep quiet,” Alathain hissed, letting the corner of his lip curl into a wicked smile.

  Abellia eyed him wildly, and she could not trace the faintest hope of a lie on his scarred face. She lowered her head and put her back to the brick wall as two guards crossed the bridge over the alleyway just ahead of her.

  “Well done,” Alathain said patronizingly, and he pushed her forwards.

  Abellia studied him, and when the bridge hid his face from the moonlight, she looked ahead. “Where is my brother?” she asked.

  “No need to worry about him,” he responded, keeping his eyes on the path ahead of them. “I’m sure he’s asleep in his bunk. Least, he should be.” He smiled at her as they stopped beneath the bridge. “That’s not to say there’s not someone watching him until we’ve left.”

  “Left?”

  Abellia followed his stare, as Alathain looked out ahead of them. They seemed to be standing in some sort of sewage ditch that flowed out from the lower quarters of Stalholm, underneath the bridge above them, and into the Grey Sea in the distance. Where the ditch met the water, Abellia watched the waves crash against the shore. The crests of the waves dazzled with the moonlight above, pulling and tugging at the heart of the ocean. Though Grimmrich, too, sat on the edge of the Grey Sea, she’d never been so close to the open waters. A noble girl like herself would never be allowed dockside. And she was not like Elrich and Kyrn—mischievous. Now, however, she wished she were.

  Alathain rested his back against the inside wall of the bridge and slid down upon the ground. He pulled a dagger from his belt and picked at his nails.

  “What are you doing?” Abellia asked.

  “Waiting,” he said, not looking up at her. “You may want to have a seat. We could be here some time.”

  She did sit, but because her legs were tired from their hurrying through the city. She wasn’t willingly obeying the scarred man. “What do you want from me?” she asked him.

  “I don’t want anything from you,” he said. “I’d like for you to cooperate. Ease my job a bit. But it isn’t me you need worry about. Not if you keep quiet.” He spoke that last word, quiet, in such a hushed voice that it gave Abellia shivers.

  She turned her head back to the Grey Sea and lost herself in its waves.

  ***

  After what felt like hours, Abellia stood from her place beneath the bridge. Her back ached from the stone bridge, and she could smell nothing other than the rank waters of the sewage. “I’ve had enough!” she shouted. “Do with me what you will and be done with it!”

  Alathain, his hands behind his head, opened his eyes. He smiled at her.

  Abellia studied the scars across his face as the light from the moon caught them just right. One dashed across his left eye and, when he blinked, she could see that there was a thin pink line on his eyelid, too. Another had been well-placed on the right side of his face, at an opposite angle, starting at hi
s top lip and running down to his chin.

  “I thought you were to remain quiet,” came a deep voice, though it was not Alathain’s.

  Abellia turned to where they had come under the bridge. Cloaked in black, his hood draped across his back, stood Lord Tymlan.

  Abellia bounced from her spot beneath the bridge, running to the lord with extended hands. “Lord Tymlan!” she shouted. Before she could wrap her arms around his neck, she felt a forceful hand rush squarely across her face. She fell sideways to her knees and hung her head low to the filthy, wet ground.

  Lord Tymlan knelt beside her, grabbed her loose-plaited hair, and yanked her head back, straining her neck. His gaze bore into hers, and he said, “What part of keep quiet seems to escape you, Lady Abellia Fellenor, daughter of Ulzrich Fellenor, princess to Grimmrich.” He let loose her hair with a sharp flick of his wrist, sending her head back to the ground.

  “This is where we part ways,” Lord Tymlan said smugly, rising.

  “Don’t be too sad,” Alathain said, and he helped Abellia from the ground. He kept his hand upon her back while he spoke to Lord Tymlan. “Perhaps I’ll be back before long.”

  “I pray you won’t,” Lord Tymlan said. He turned his back on Abellia and her scarred captor. “Your passage has been secured. I recommend you leave my city before sunup.”

  Alathain turned Abellia gently, leading her under the bridge and towards the docks.

  ***

  Lady Abellia walked just ahead of Alathain and their new shipmaster now. He was a charismatically disheveled man. He called himself Blundy. The man, just shorter than Alathain and even her, wore his hair loose and scraggly, his brown curls falling just past his shoulders. Strangely enough, considering her upbringing, Abellia felt that she and Alathain were out of place with the shipmaster. She considered that she would have felt that way in any condition. But, as she walked with the tattered cloak draping her dress in a torn, holey fashion, she felt a lower class, even than the strange man Blundy. She wondered if this was how her people felt when she passed by—inept.