by A. J. Cronin
The Quest of the Legend
Dark Legacy Book One
A.J.Cronin
Copyright © 2017 A.J.Cronin
All rights reserved.
-Table of Contents-
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Epilogue
Chapter One
Dark Fate
The Kingdom of Essain, shining jewel of the heart of man; one of few remaining remnants of good in a long decaying land. Some would call it more of a glorified city than a true kingdom, but long has it endured and many travails has it survived - that is until one moonlit night.
Deep in the halls of the ancient castle which stands at the head of the city, a man waits in the great throne room. The King, imposing in stature and demeanor, paces back and forth in the moonlight. His robes, white with a brown tunic, whip to and fro as he strides. His face reveals a countless and unrelenting stream of emotional conflicts brewing in his mind, waging battle, retreating and starting all over again. He stops for a moment and turns to look upon his throne. A slight smirk plays on his face, but it is a bleak one. Clearly, dark thoughts fill him and he knows it.
The King sighs and continues his lone vigil restlessly.
Aimless.
Worried.
A man waiting for Fate to make up her ever-changing mind.
After what might have been an eternity, the heavy sound of boots striking the stone floor echoes from the outer halls, coming steadily closer to the throne room. The King stops, again facing his throne, except this time to look at a pendant which hangs around his neck. He holds the pendant reverently, rubbing it with his thumb and smiling a bright smile though, unlike before, it is from a genuinely enjoyable memory. The sound of the boots have reached their crescendo, stopping just outside the throne room and, after a pause, a darkly dressed man enters slowly.
“Uncle!” the man says enthusiastically.
The King raises his head in acknowledgment, his back still turned to the man. He grips the pendant with resolve, grimacing before letting the pendant slip back under his collar and facing the one who has summoned him.
“Hector, my nephew. What is so important that we had to meet like this? Could this have not waited until morning?”
“Alas, Uncle, it could not. It is far too important to merely be lumped into the other affairs of the kingdom.”
The King raises an eyebrow to his nephew, annoyed by his presumptuousness.
“I do believe I am the judge of what is and is not important. I think you will do well to remember that.”
“Of course, Uncle. Forgive me,” Hector replies with false modesty, “but I believe what I have to say warrants it.”
The King has his doubts, but nevertheless motions for Hector to come closer. Hector smiles triumphantly.
“Well, you have my attention Hector. What is it?”
“An alliance, Uncle,” answers Hector as he holds out a rolled parchment sealed with black wax. “One that would benefit the kingdom in incalculable ways.”
The King takes the parchment and turns his back on his nephew. His eyes are drawn to the black wax seal. His face grows pale, as one who has seen a ghost while someone walks upon his grave as he learns some forbidden truth. He breaks the seal, opening the scrolled parchment. The handwriting on the parchment is exquisite and at the same time dark and spidery. A script not frequently used. The King’s eyes go dark, as one looking behind mortal sight. He begins walking out of the throne room, through the rear hall, out to the gardens in the center of the castle which, even in the dead of night, feels vibrant with life.
“Uncle?” Hector calls out, taken aback by the King’s apparent absentmindedness. He races after his uncle, and begins to speak, but the King raises his right hand with authority, interrupting him as though he sensed the coming argument from his nephew.
“Do not say a thing.”
Once in the garden’s center, the King stops. Hector stands mute behind his Uncle, awaiting a response.
“Uncle...” Hector begins sheepishly.
“Can you possibly comprehend what you are suggesting to me with this letter?”
“What I am suggesting is an alliance that will ensure Your Highness’ continued reign, and the safety of the kingdom’s people.”
“Are you merely stupid, or completely insane? An alliance such as the one you offer would wholly condemn those whom I am sworn to protect and rule.”
Hector’s eyes race, trying to find the words he needs.
“Uncle, you don’t fully comprehend -” Hector tries to explain, but the King angrily cuts him off with a dismissive gesture, culminating in the ripping to shreds of the offending letter.
“Save your tongue! I have faced the sort of men that reside in the south more than once on the field of battle. The very thought of an alliance is sickening! The only reason you are still even alive right now is out of respect for my brother,” the King declares in a half-roar as he looks hard into Hector’s eyes. Clearly he suspects his nephew of foul deeds. “This ‘meeting’ is over. I will hear no more of this.”
The King lets fall the torn letter, not daring to glance into Hector’s eyes as he begins walking back inside the castle. Hector looks as though he will burst out of anger and fear.
“Uncle, do not turn your back on me!” Hector yells, unable to suppress his rage.
Infuriated, the King wheels back around to his nephew and storms to within inches from him.
“You dare order me, child!?”
~-~~-~
In an upper room overlooking the gardens, a young woman with dark brown hair and ivory pale skin is awakened by the shouting. She walks over to her window to see the King and Hector on the verge of trading blows. The King’s eyes fill with wrath and he unsheathes a sword that had been hidden among his robes. The woman watches with apprehension.
~-~~-~
“You would draw a blade upon your own blood, Uncle?” Hector asks sarcastically.
“You ceased to be my blood when you murdered my brother, child.”
Hector lets loose a sinister laugh.
“You think yourself wise? If you knew the true nature of how my beloved ‘father’ died, why is it you could not foresee what is about to happen?”
The King realizes that Hector is no longer looking at him, but at something behind him. The King’s eyes soften. His sword arm falters, falling limply at his side.
“Yes, I did know. I just prayed that I was wrong.”
“You pathetic old fool.”
A cloaked man stands with a strange looking blade in his hand. His eyes are of the sort of attractive evil that could render entire kingdoms into his will, and full of the knowledge and wisdom of the unseen world. His skin is unnaturally pale, yet immaculate. His face is like that of the dead, preserved for all eternity in its youthful beauty.
“Necromancer,” the King utters as he faces him.
The Necromancer smiles widely, but darkly.
“Ah, so you remember me? How delightfully quaint,” he says venomously.
The King sighs, knowing he has been defeated. He looks up and, out of the corner of his ey
e, sees the beautiful young woman in the window. The King smiles and laughs slightly to himself.
“What could possibly be funny at a time like this?” Hector demands, annoyed, glancing at his uncle as if he has gone insane. But, the Necromancer looks concerned, as though there was some variable he did not think of. “No matter. It ends for you tonight, Uncle. This kingdom will be mine now,” concludes Hector as he unsheathes a small blade.
Suddenly the King looks up at the woman in the window and yells, “Go! Leave this place and find Him!”
The Necromancer swiftly plunges his blade into the King’s stomach as he looks to where the King was looking. The woman cries out in horror as she locks eyes with the Necromancer.
“The Princess!” the Necromancer shouts, “Go get her, you fool!”
Hector does not take kindly to being called a fool, but quickly follows orders, running back into the throne room.
Now alone with the King, the Necromancer pulls his blade from him and pushes the once great man to the ground, laughing slow and maniacally.
“Oh, what a poor, diluted buffoon, is he not? But, your nephew does make a good servant... when he does not have his little fantasies about betraying me that is.” The Necromancer muses as he kneels down and looks the King deeply in the eyes. “You know who I am, who I serve, and what I plan to do, is that not correct, Your Highness?”
The King, with his last thread of life, speaks thus:
“He will stop you. By doing this, you have sealed your fate.”
The Necromancer kneels even lower and grins evilly.
“Have I now? I would rather think that it is his fate which I have sealed...”
~-~~-~
The Princess, meanwhile, runs through the dankly lit halls of the upper castle whilst her cousin, Hector, gives chase with sword in hand. The Princess eventually runs into a dead end, with only a window in front and Hector behind. She turns and faces him defiantly.
“Out of places to run cousin?” asks Hector with a sneer.
“You always were too slow to catch me,” the Princess begins as she looks over her shoulder out the window, “and too stupid to realize when I have led you astray.”
Hector fumes and readies his sword for a killing blow when the Princess suddenly leaps out the window. He runs to the window to see that she has mounted her horse and is quickly galloping away. The Princess glances back to see her cousin scowling in anger. She casts him an evil eye before returning her attention to what lays ahead.
~-~~-~
The first thing in the Princess’ mind, heart and soul is to put as much distance between her and her father’s assassins as possible. She quickly passes like a shadow into the forest which encompasses Essain like a halo, the forest where she as a child explored day in and day out which, even in the dead of night, she can navigate without even the slightest mistake. However, for all her skill, she is no match for the quickly creeping fatigue. She was, after all, only just getting back to sleep after waking from a nightmare she no longer remembers when she heard the shouts of her father and cousin.
Fear drives her, but the fatigue is almost equally as strong.
Through her mental fight to stay awake, she realizes that she has unconsciously been making her way to the home of Edna, wise woman and adviser to her father. The Princess pushes through her drowsed vision and sees Edna outside her small, though expertly built house, standing at her door as if she had been awaiting the Princess’ arrival all along.
The Princess brings her horse to a stop and dismounts. She weakly shambles toward Edna and then breaks down in tears, falling into Edna’s grasp. Edna attempts some measure of consolation, leading the Princess inside and to a bed already made up for her.
~-~~-~
The Princess sleeps, she dreams, until her dreams cloud and images of the previous night transform it into yet another nightmare in a long chain of them. The recollections of her father being run through, and then the pale face and evil eyes of the Necromancer as he smiles a snake’s smile. The Princess awakes with a shock, finding herself in an unfamiliar bed. She looks around and sees Edna working over a small pot. The smell of porridge fills the small house. Edna turns to see that the Princess is awake and flashes her a caring smile.
“I was wondering when you would awake. The smell of my cooking always had that effect. I still remember little Lisa, barely able to look over the table, waiting impatiently for the ‘bestest porridge in the world,’ as you used to call it,” Edna muses and sighs. “Things were so much different then.”
“Edna, my father...”
“I know, Lisa. I know,” Edna reassures Lisa as she ladles some porridge into a bowl and sets it on the small dining table next to the fireplace. “Come, eat and we will talk.”
Lisa pushes the covers off, rising from bed slowly, making her way to the dining table. She sits down and looks at the bowl of porridge, the hot steam rising to her face which for a moment helps her forget everything. Lisa looks up at Edna; a small woman with stark white hair, except that her face does not betray her age. She could very well pass for being a young woman if she were so inclined to. However, her mannerisms made her very much like an old grandmother. The paradox had always bewildered Lisa, but Edna has always been and always will be true of heart and completely trustworthy. Edna prepares a bowl for herself, sitting at the table, across from Lisa.
“Well, eat up. You do not want it to get cold, do you?”
“But, what about...?”
“Even if they, Hector and his little ally, knew you were here, they would not dare to try and enter. You are completely safe. As it is, I have already sent a diversion. Now eat!”
Lisa watches as Edna devours her bowl of porridge and feels her own stomach growl. She had ignored it until now, but she was indeed quite famished. Her worry fades in light of Edna’s insistence, so she begins to eat ravenously. Edna realizes that she had forgotten something, promptly shuffling over to a small pantry and reappearing with two small glasses and a pitcher of milk covered over with frost. She fills the two glasses, offering one to Lisa, who drinks and is given a slight shock by how cold the milk is. She looks at Edna in surprise.
“Trade secret, little lady,” Edna says with a wink.
But these sorts of surprises from Edna the Princess has grown used to over the years and they continue their meal quietly. Not that the meal takes long. Even after returning for seconds, and in Edna’s case thirds, it is perhaps, Lisa thinks to herself, too brief. Once finished, Edna clears the table.
“Now, about your father,” Edna begins while still putting the dishes in the sink, “tell me what you saw and do not spare any detail, as hard as it may be to speak of them.”
Lisa sits thinking for a moment, not trying to remember, but to prepare herself to retell the events which have seared themselves into her memory, never to be removed, forever to be an ice cold scar on her heart.
“Father was arguing with Hector. I could not hear exactly about what, but father grew angry and turned his sword on him.”
“Your father is not quick to anger,” Edna says as she sits down.
“No, he was not...”
“Yes. Was,” Edna corrects herself as she looks into Lisa’s eyes.
A moment of silence passes.
“It was then that I noticed him,” Lisa begins coldly, “the cloaked man who killed father.”
Edna winces as though a sharp pain has cut through her.
“The cloaked man. Did you see his face?” she asks reluctantly.
Lisa looks far beyond Edna as she remembers when her and the Necromancer locked eyes.
“He smiled as he looked up at me. With his blade in my father he smiled...”
Edna closes her eyes and raises her head, deep in thought.
“That man is no normal man. He has no land, yet carries much power in the south. He is known only as The Necromancer. He is evil incarnate.”
“What reason would he have to kill my father?”
“Think hard.
Hector was involved. He was always a little ‘off’ as you know.”
“As well as jealous. He believed his father was supposed to be the rightful King, but when he learned that uncle had conceded the throne to father, Hector grew contemptuous and...” Lisa trails off.
Edna smirks.
“Hector’s father died rather recently, did he not? And last night, Hector and his ally murdered your father.”
“Hector struck a deal with this ‘Necromancer’ to help him remove all obstacles and take over father’s kingdom?”
“Your kingdom, Lisa,” Edna corrects with a swift glance.
“Yes. I suppose so. Which means I am the only one in Hector’s way of fulfilling this plot.”
Edna leans toward Lisa as if about to whisper a secret.
“Think hard... was there nothing else that happened, Your Highness?”
“Father had said to go find ‘Him,’ just before the Necromancer attacked,” Lisa recounts with a glint in her eyes.
Edna thinks for a moment, then her face reveals revelation.
“Oh! The Black Knight! It’s been a long time since there has been news of him. Even longer since he was seen.”
“Nonetheless, I have to find him. He is the only one that can help me,” except even as Lisa says this, her eyes fill with defeat, “but I have no idea where to start looking for him.”
Edna stands up and walks over to a bookcase full of old tomes and volumes.
“Luckily for you, I at the very least have an idea of which direction to go. Ah! Here we are.”
Edna removes a massive, and very old looking, black leather bound book. She walks it over to the table, dropping the book with a thud, spewing dust over Lisa. Edna retakes her seat and throws the book open. The book is filled with page after page of maps, alongside hand written text. Edna finally finds the page she is looking for.
“What do these maps show?” asks Lisa. “I cannot read the writing.”
“This book was made long ago. It is a... well, census guide of sorts, I suppose, of all the lands that were at one time part of a much older, much larger kingdom.”
“How does that help us find the Black Knight?”