The Heretic's Song (The Song's Of Aarda Book 1)

by K Schultz

  “Dat I can, because Aert’s little’un spied on em, an followed em to dere lair. Soon as she told us, I came straight here, tuh tell yuh, cause it near skairt duh liver outta her. Breisha was get leather fer him from duh Tanner. She had just given him the leather, an bid him farewell when dose men took him.”

  Isil invited the man to sit, as he told them of Rehaak’s capture. The villager explained how the men carried Rehaak to a cave near the waterfall. When he finished his tale, they thanked him for his aid and sent him off, with food for his family.

  Isil packed gear and provisions in their packs, while Laakea put on his breastplate, fastening it with rope, instead of the leather straps Rehaak had gone to buy. Laakea and Isil started for the cavern where the men held Rehaak captive. A twinge of guilt reminded him that The Fellowship captured his friend while Rehaak sought those items for him.

  Once they were ready, they set off at a lope, following the directions the villager had given them. The sun was just above the treetops, when they set out. Laakea assumed they could reach the cavern before dark. It was a short trip to the falls.

  When Isil became winded, they slowed and rested along the trail. Men leapt from the shadows of the forest, and encircled them. A misshapen black shadow accompanied them. Laakea drew both swords, the Battlefury coursed through him again.

  “That must be a Nethera,” he thought, as he viewed the black shape that lurked behind their attackers.

  Laakea killed the first man, as the hideous shape closed in on him. He disemboweled a second man, before the Dark One sank its misshapen claws into his back. The Nethera’s touch paralyzed him and pulled at his soul like someone sucking and egg through a hole in its shell. His swords fell from his nerveless fingers. He must break free, or become an empty husk like the Miller’s son. The pain was intense, but he couldn’t scream. Colors faded from his vision, as Laakea mentally defended himself against the assault.

  As consciousness began slipping away, the creature spun him around so he faced it. It drew his life force up from the center of his being and out through his mouth. Laakea had lost sight of Isil and didn’t know if she still lived. This was his battle to fight alone. Laakea stared into the bottomless darkness of the Nethera’s soul. The Nethera assumed an easy conquest and anticipation filled it with joy and pride.

  Nothing prepared him for this. His father’s drills, Rehaak’s knowledge, and Isil’s wisdom were no help in this battle. If he lost this fight, there would be no others. Laakea refused to surrender. His spirit rallied, fought back and clung to consciousness, as he dangled from the edge of a spiritual precipice.

  Laakea summoned his anger and outrage at the injustice the Nethera caused by its existence. He wrapped a shield of anger around himself. This was a different battle than he ever fought, no contest of skill or prowess at arms. Neither was it a contest of will, although his will to live certainly held off the creature. Laakea sensed the Nethera’s frustration resulting from his unexpected and continued resistance. This was a spiritual battle. Laakea’s will and his anger, as strong as they were, could not hold this hate filled horror at bay forever.

  Laakea realized his spirit couldn’t defeat this malevolent being without help. In the same instant, he realized there were other resources available to him. He had not called on the Faithful One for aid. Rehaak and Isil had told him that The Creator responded, if those in need called upon Him. Laakea was in dire need. His shield of righteous anger buckled and warped as he formed his prayer.

  Laakea was not eloquent; he was desperate. His fear and panic formed a single word.

  “Help!” he prayed towards the place where he imagined his God, The Creator, lived. The thought traveled upwards like a shaft of light, a beacon of frantic need, streaking up from him into the bright and infinite sky. Calm and peace shrouded him, where before there was pain and terror. In a heartbeat his plea for help opened a conduit to the heavens. Laakea sensed power running back down that channel, a trickle in a streambed that grew to a raging torrent, as a dam broke.

  A shining pillar of power extended downward to him and grew to a blinding brightness. If he were seeing it with his physical sight, it would scorch his eyes into charred cinders.

  The energy surged brighter still and flowed into his anger. Laakea’s shield of rage thickened and flared brighter than the sun. It exploded outward and the melodic words that formed the explosion had the power to shatter mountains and kindle their covering forests into flame. The authority in those words humbled him. He recognized the golden voice, but it didn’t speak to reassure him. It spoke through him with a forceful towering anger that dwarfed his own.

  “Let my servant be!”

  The words blasted his attacker backward across the clearing, leaving Laakea and his assailant both stunned. The voice slammed the Nethera so hard that the ground beneath it cracked and shuddered. Laakea recovered before the Nethera, since he was the channel of the power and not the target of it. Color returned to his vision and strength returned to his limbs. Laakea recovered one of his swords from where it lay beside him, and advanced toward the demon that lay crumpled on the ground. Holy rage burned within him, as he raised his weapon.

  “You have overstepped your bounds Ak'eldemea. I know your name and your deeds. Your wickedness must end today,” he thundered in a voice that shook the creature like a leaf in the wind. Man and weapon both blazed bright with fury, as he raised his sword and plunged it into the center of the sinister being. Power flowed through Laakea and engulfed him in brilliant and terrible light. As the incandescent sword pierced the demon, its darkness subsided, turning lighter by degrees. The Aethera hissed, shrieked and writhed in anguish.

  “You are judged guilty and condemned,” he said. The demon dissolved into a light gray mist and vanished.

  With the death of the creature, the glow inside Laakea faded from white to red and then disappeared, leaving him weak and wobbly, as he sank to his knees. He felt a hand upon his shoulder. Isil looked at him, her eyes filled with awe. It took a long time before either of them spoke.

  “I suppose yuh have just answered duh question yuh once asked Rehaak,” Isil said with a wry grin.

  “What question?”

  “Duh one yuh asked him long ago, ‘bout if yuh might be able tuh kill dese things. I remembers him askin me if I knew summat about it.”

  “Ahh, that question,” Laakea murmured, as he slipped into unconsciousness, and fell forward onto the grass of the clearing.

  Isil knelt beside him, rolled him onto his back, and supported his head in her lap. She checked him over and watched, concerned for her young friend, but he was in the capable hands of her God. Instead, she offered a prayer of thanks to The Creator.

  When Isil saw Laakea’s breathing was regular again, and his heart beat slowly and steadily, she rose to retrieve their belongings and covered the boy with their blankets. Laakea was too large for her to move without aid, so she left him where he lay. It was hard to remember that he was still just a youngster. Laakea was over a full head taller than Rehaak and solid as a tree trunk from the surrounding forest.

  Once she made him comfortable, she left him lying there and gathered wood for a campfire. They had to stay where they were, until Laakea recovered.

  Isil was unsure why Laakea collapsed. Perhaps battle with the Nethera left him weak, but he only collapsed after he killed the thing. There was more to this than she understood, perhaps Rehaak could enlighten them.

  Isil’s mind raced in circles as she returned with deadfall gathered from the edge of the forest. It was obvious now that Rehaak’s captors knew she and Laakea were on their way to rescue him. They used Rehaak as bait to lure them into this ambush. Isil set up camp for the night and tried not to think of what they faced, when they reached the place where The Fellowship imprisoned Rehaak. Isil was so busy that she never noticed the eyes watching from among the trees, or the silent shapes slipping through the shadows.

  Chapter 44

  Laakea awakened. Although he w
as stiff from his battle last night and sore from sleeping on the cold earth, he felt fine otherwise. Steam rose from the pot that Isil tended beside a small campfire. Laakea got to his feet and stretched away the kinks in his muscles.

  “Good morning Isil.”

  “Good mornin tuh yuh as well lad,” she replied. “I suspected food would rouse yuh from yer beauty nap.”

  “I hope you made plenty, because for some reason, I’m ravenous.”

  “Yer always ravenous, fer any reason, from what I seen,” she shot back.

  “We’d best eat and be off as soon as possible. I fear we sprang a trap set for us by Rehaak’s captors yesterday. They used him as bait to lure us into the ambush, and they will kill him, since the trap failed,” Laakea told her

  “Yup I been thinkin duh same thing myself, lad.”

  “I’m sorry, Isil, I should have been more observant. If I had, we might have been able to avoid that bit of unpleasantness.”

  “Nah, look at it dis way, yesterday we whittled down dere numbers summat. Today we’ll have less problems, because of it.”

  “I hope you are right, Isil, because I don’t know if I can survive another fight like that one. If there are more Nethera —” Laakea didn’t finish the sentence.

  Isil remained silent, shrugged and continued stirring the pot beside the fire.

  Isil and Laakea broke camp under the brightening sky and continued on their way. Laakea urged more caution than the previous day, so they slunk toward the falls. Once the roar of the falls reached them, they crouched low to avoid making silhouettes that sentries could identify. Laakea scanned ahead for guards, as they moved from one patch of cover to the next. The roaring water of the falls drowned out any noise, so he had to rely on sight alone to find the sentries.

  His keen eyes spotted movement near large rocks along the stream bank. After warning Isil about the sentries with a hand signal, and telling her to hold her position, he analyzed the sentries’ routine. Laakea wouldn’t rush headlong into another ambush.

  One of his father’s sayings echoed in his head, “The gods don’t abide repeated stupidity.” Laakea did not intend to push his luck again.

  “A wise man learns from his mistakes, if he manages to outlive them,” another of Aelfric’s aphorisms, sprang to mind.

  There were three guards hiding in cover, among the rocks. The watchmen had spread out in a semicircle, well in front of the cave mouth. The interior of the cavern was too dark for Laakea to see inside the opening. He couldn’t tell the passage’s length, or how many men it held in its depths.

  By dusk, the guards had changed three times. That meant over a dozen men inside the cave. The odds were terrible, unless he evened them.

  Once night fell, they crept toward the sentries. The guards lit a fire to ward off the chill, and four additional men from inside the cavern joined them at the flames. The firelight illuminated the sentries for Laakea and ruined the lookouts’ night vision. He smiled to Isil, as he pointed out their respective targets. They eliminated the two guards on the flanks first. Isil used a rope to choke her target, while Laakea slit the other man’s throat. Neither made a sound.

  Isil worked her way toward the last guard, while Laakea nocked an arrow and crept as close as he dared, to the four men gathered at the fire. He stuck four more arrows in the dirt so he could draw and release them quickly. Isil moved into position, and as soon as she throttled the last guard, she moved toward the fire acting as bait.

  Laakea cued Isil and she rustled the bush she hid behind. The men had been talking, but fell silent. Two of them motioned, picked up their weapons and advanced toward the shrub where Isil waited. As soon as they were over half way to Isil’s hiding place, Laakea targeted a man near the fire, and sent an arrow through his throat. The man standing beside him, barely realized what had happened, before death caught up with him too.

  The fellow stared at his chest, surprised to see two feet of wood ending in black crow feathers sprouting from his ribcage. He cried out before he collapsed. One man, heading in Isil’s direction, heard his cry above the sound of the water and turned to look.

  That act made him Laakea’s next victim. When he fell, the remaining man turned to investigate the disturbance. Isil dashed toward him swinging her staff, but before she got there, he too sported an arrow in his chest. Isil clubbed him for good measure as he fell.

  Laakea and Isil dragged the bodies into cover, while they watched for more men to emerge. It was nearing midnight, before they began a slow approach to the opening. Torches lit the inside of the cavern now. There were no additional men inside the entrance.

  Once they entered, they heard chanting, punctuated by screams.

  “That’ll mor’n likely be our friend Rehaak joinin in dat sing-along. It sounds like dere still be a whack o’ dem crazies though,” Isil growled in a low voice.

  “Let’s hope we whittled them down enough,” Laakea added with a grim smile.

  A few moments of following the sound through a narrow rock strewn passageway, led them to the altar chamber. Over two dozen men chanted and pranced in front of the altar to the rhythm of a drum-beat. Rehaak lay on the altar and bled from many wounds. A man in a black robe held a knife to Rehaak’s skin. When Isil saw Rehaak tied to the stone altar she moved as if to dive into the crowd. Laakea grasped her shoulder, and pulled her backward, forcing her to stand beside him.

  He removed the last of his arrows from his quiver.

  “Me first, greedy, you can have them when I’m done. Hold these arrows for me and put one in my hand each time I release,” Laakea said, not worrying about the men overhearing his words. The noise inside the chamber was so loud he almost had to shout, in order for Isil to hear him.

  Three men fell to his arrows before anyone noticed. Two more before anyone reacted. The next one died with his warning shout still in his throat. The chanting and drumming stopped. Two more fell, as the men in the chamber realized their peril and began their charge.

  Laakea threw down his bow. He drew Justice and Truth from his belt. The narrow rocky opening of the passageway limited their attackers’ mobility. Isil and Laakea fell back slowly under pressure from their attackers, and made the assassins pay for every inch of ground. Four more fell to Laakea’s swords and three to Isil’s staff, before she hooked her heel on a rock and fell on her backside.

  Laakea saw her fall and moved to protect her. He fought, using all the skills Aelfric drilled into him, but the berserker rage that overcame him at other times, did not empower him tonight. Laakea knew that without it, he could never withstand the onslaught of these crazed minions of the Dark Ones. The preceding night’s battle had drained him too much.

  He rallied the strength he had left and shouted, “Creator, help us!”

  Laakea pushed them back with a flurry of blows long enough for Isil to rise, but she limped. She had twisted her ankle in the fall.

  “Creator, help us,” he bellowed again and this time Isil joined him in shouting.

  Their shouts accomplished nothing, except to enrage their attackers to new heights of bloodlust. They shrieked incoherent syllables and pressed Laakea even harder. Isil did what she could as she hobbled backwards, toward the cave entrance.

  Laakea felled two more men before a hard blow struck him in the midsection. His breastplate stopped the weapon from disemboweling him, but it knocked the wind out of him. He struggled to breathe, as he withdrew with Isil.

  Isil stood on her good leg and fended off blows, until he caught his breath. Laakea’s arms and hands were getting tired and blood was making the rawhide grips of his swords too slippery to hold. As he blocked a blow from an opponent, he lost his grip on one of them. It flew out of his hand while he felled another with his remaining weapon.

  Laakea knew he had a short time until they overwhelmed him and got to Isil. They could never hold out long enough to reach the cavern entrance.

  At least the battle had halted the activity at the altar, because the screaming had stopp
ed. Either that or Rehaak was dead.

  Chapter 45

  Another three days of stumbling along the boulder strewn watercourse, brought the three Sokai out of the canyon. They strode onto a flat rocky plain, dotted by scrub brush and covered in short spiky yellow grass.

  Simea and his companions now understood how the ancient nursery songs were meant to focus their concentration and enable them to connect with The Creator in specific ways. They practiced each evening. With each practice session, they got stronger and able to do more. Kyonna suggested it was like manual labor, the harder you worked the stronger you got. Aibhera returned to Abalon that morning to fill water bottles from the lake at the center of the caldera and steal some supplies from a storehouse.

  While Simea and Kyonna waited on the plain for Aibhera to return, they sang as many of the ancient songs as they could remember, with varied and sometimes unexpected results. Once Aibhera returned, they continued trudging through the dry scrubby growth of the plain, consulting Eideron’s map as they went. They soon realized the map was useless. A thousand years of wind and rain had obliterated the landmarks mentioned on the map. The world had changed, since the Sokai abandoned their brothers and slipped unnoticed into Abalon.

  Walking on the plain’s hard flat surface was easier than stumbling through the canyon. The setting sun, their only guide, still rose in the East and set in the West. It lit the Western sky with an orange glow. At least that much remained unchanged. Uncertainty about everything else wore on them as much as the physical challenges they faced earlier. Apprehension increased, and dark doubts assailed them.

  Aibhera felt responsible for Eideron’s death because she succumbed to the influence of the Dark Ones. Shame weighed more than the pack on her back. To atone for her failure, she carried the largest load of provisions and pushed herself harder each day.

  Aibhera heard Kyonna and Simea whispering, “It’s all her fault. She’s the one who killed Eideron. We can’t trust her.” When she turned to face them, Simea lagged far behind her and Kyonna. They couldn’t have whispered to each other. The moment she turned forward the whispering began again. “She’s evil. She will kill us all.” Aibhera wheeled around and shouted, “Stop saying that.”