The Seedbearing Prince: Part I

by DaVaun Sanders

  Where in peace's reach are the rest of the Aran guards? Terrified shouts floated back from the distant split, barely audible.

  “This way, in the plaza!” Dayn shouted. The echoing wind pulled his words away. “For the sand!”

  Lurec willed his lips to move. “Dayn, you must run.” Something sticky touched his face, and he could hardly raise himself from where he lay.

  Dayn gathered himself and sprang into a bound as Moridos charged. He caught Dayn by the ankle and slammed him viciously back to the ground.

  “Shardian!” Nassir shouted, but the second voidwalker allowed him no opening to help.

  “Fight back!” Moridos roared. Rage contorted his face. Dayn rolled pitifully on his side, struggling for air. “My brother did not lose his life to a groveling worm!”

  He kicked Dayn savagely. The boy slammed into the redstone cliff and slid into a heap at its base, motionless. The voidwalker’s fingers clawed the air in a tearing motion. Dayn gave a piteous wail. His head twisted back and forth as the voidwalker’s thrall engulfed him. Moridos spat in disgust and turned toward the Defender.

  Nassir fought as though no help would come. He twisted his torso, whipping his sword toward the first voidwalker’s head in a deadly downward arc. The voidwalker did not even flinch. With a loud clap, he caught the blade just inches from his face. He tore it from Nassir's grip with bloody hands.

  The Thar'Kuri grimaced over the weapon a moment, then sent it sailing. Lurec’s stomach sank as he watched the sword land in the commoners' amphitheater far above them.

  The voidwalker lunged again, quick as a viper, to tear out Nassir's throat. The Defender dodged, but a sickening pop filled the plaza. Nassir's left arm dropped uselessly in the voidwalker's grasp. The voidwalker flung him head first to crash into a redstone wall of the split. Sheath lit the air, and Nassir slumped to the ground in a limp heap of armor.

  “Moridos. Help me tear this Defender in half!”

  “No. This one first. The boy.”

  Impossibly, Nassir regained his feet. “We’re not so weak as you think, Thar'Kuri.” Blood stained his teeth.

  “You are shadows of men. Shadows of shadows.” The voidwalker faded within his own cloud of foul steam before a new gust blew it away. His eyes teemed with loathing as he spoke. “Your broken existence cries for a merciful end. Your every breath is a curse on our world, the true world.”

  Lurec's blood ran cold at the words.

  The voidwalker swiftly closed with Nassir, whose left arm hung uselessly at his side. There were no more attempts to throw him, the voidwalker simply meant to tear him limb from limb. Lurec looked on helplessly.

  “Run, Preceptor!” Nassir shouted, urgent and fatigued.

  The voidwalker laughed, an ugly grating sound.

  “Run!” The Defender rolled and twisted away from the voidwalker’s reach, doing everything possible to give Lurec time to escape. The brute caught hold of Nassir's ankle in the middle of a kick. He slammed the Defender into the ground so hard his sheath flashed, and the split walls echoed with the force of the impact. Nassir somehow recovered, and bounded free of the voidwalker’s grasp to crash several spans away toward the northern end of the plaza. He staggered back in a feeble attempt to pull the voidwalkers from the plaza.

  Scattered shouts echoed up the walls of the split. A handful of guards finally appeared, eyes wide at sight of the two Thar’Kuri, nightmares given flesh.

  “They are flesh and blood! Don’t let their tricks cloud your mind!” Lurec shouted. His thoughts were beginning to clear, although his head might as well be stuffed with mud.

  Moridos stared down the split, the wind blowing steam from his body in waves. One of the guards broke ranks and fled with a shout. The rest advanced, but their swords trembled in their hands. “Kill the Ringmen,” Moridos ordered. He turned to Dayn.

  The other voidwalker scowled down the split where Nassir had disappeared. “Coward.” He rounded on Lurec. “Time to break your back, little beetle.”

  Dayn finally regained his feet, just as Moridos’s shadow fell on him. The boy reached into his pocket and pulled out the orb. It glowed a brilliant red, bright enough to make the second voidwalker turn away from Lurec.

  “This is what protects him? What Raaluwos sent us for?”

  Moridos stopped at the light, his lips curling in a snarl. “Nothing protects him. He’s just a boy, with a worthless old―”

  The Seed flashed in Dayn’s hand. He held it up to Moridos. The voidwalker lurched, and looked down at his chest. Cracks formed along the surface of his black armor, like brittle parchment curling before a candle’s flame. He screamed as steam hissed out of the fissures spreading across his chest.

  “Dayn, no!” Somehow Lurec knew this was all terribly wrong.

  “Moridos!” The second voidwalker ran forward to help, even as Moridos staggered back from the Seed’s light. He stopped in his tracks as his own armor began to fracture.

  The sound of thrumming boots echoed up the split―Nassir must have rallied the guards. Lurec shouted out, urging them to hurry. “This way! Murder in the plaza!”

  A shadow flickered over the face of the setting sun. From the corner of his eye, Lurec saw Nassir swooping down, his sword retrieved from the stands above. At the last instant, the voidwalker looked up to see the Defender, death falling from the sky, sword raised high for a critical strike.

  “Enter oblivion!” Nassir shouted, driving his blade down. The sword plunged through the flesh of the voidwalker’s exposed gullet, straight into his abdomen.

  In one motion Nassir released the hilt of his sword and slammed his boot in the voidwalker's torso. The hulking brute sputtered and collapsed, still clutching at the sickmetal blade driven through his jaw. Hot steam billowed from the horrific wound, and the pale skin bubbled and hissed wherever it touched the noxious metal.

  Lurec’s world went white with pain. He realized the mournful howl echoing from the canyon walls issued from his own throat. He writhed on the ground, clutching his head. A thousand slivers of agony drove through his skull, so sharp he could not draw breath. His mental defenses were useless.

  Suddenly the sensation vanished. Somehow Lurec willed his hands to uncover his ears and feel over his body. He expected to find cuts, or perhaps burn marks. Nothing.

  The Defender stood over him, extending a hand. Lurec numbly rose to his feet. “What happened to us?” The Echowind Split lay unchanged.

  Dayn wept softly where he lay, the Seed held tightly in his hand.

  Nassir sank to one knee next to Lurec, cradling his damaged arm. His chest heaved raggedly. “The death scream of a voidwalker is no easy thing to forget,” he said. His voice was exhausted but steady. “The foul energy contorted within them doesn’t leave willingly.”

  “You’ve saved our lives,” Lurec said. “I’m indebted to you.”

  “I would do the same for any Ringman, as would you.” Nassir nodded to where Dayn lay. “But the farmboy is who saved us. I didn’t know the Seed was a weapon.”

  “It’s not, or at least I have never heard of such.”

  A cloud of death cloaked the voidwalker's corpse. As the echoing wind faded, it cleared away the noxious fumes until none remained. The armor that turned aside Nassir’s monstrous sword had shattered like Aran glass after a brush with the Seed’s power. Lurec knew he should feel lucky to be alive, but a sense of dread ruled him. He forced himself to find calm once more. “This is an unprecedented opportunity for study. I must have you―”

  Nassir raised an eyebrow and Lurec hesitated, choosing different words. “We should speak with Shir-Hun at once, before the High reach his ear. They will seek to hide this blunder from the Belt. After their plotting against Suralose, the worlds may turn against Ara.”

  Nassir nodded. “Whatever knowledge you gain will be invaluable, Preceptor. People likely felt this deathscream a hundred spans away. Show us how to defeat them without succumbing to it. I’ve seen the death of just one Thar’Kuri warrior
wipe out a whole force squadron of Defenders. Thar’Kuri fare poorly in the torrent, but his parting shot left our force helpless to even grasp their talons. Stunned as they were, the torrent ground them all to dust.” The Defender closed his eyes for a moment, lost in thought. “We would fare even worse on the ground. The World Belt is not prepared to face them in greater numbers, which will soon come.”

  Lurec had never considered battlefield strategies, but his mind worked over the scenarios. Nassir made sense about a great many things he did not care to admit. “It seems some are more sensitive than others.”

  Dayn lay still. His eyes were closed, and he was pulled into himself, as though to protect the Seed. He did not look injured, but Lurec suspected the voidwalker's wounds lay far deeper than his own comprehension.

  “See to him,” Nassir said, rising to his feet. He waved over the Aran guards who were moving numbly through the plaza, checking the fallen. They could barely bring their eyes to rest on the Ringmen, or the dead voidwalker. Their faces, haggard and defeated, told him more than enough.

  The Defender’s right, Lurec thought as he knelt to touch the Seedbearer, We’re not ready.

  “I wish he’d dispatched the other one. Moridos. A blood debt drives him. He won’t stop until his thirst is sated.”

  Lurec turned his back hastily while the Defender set about freeing his sword. Nassir spoke calmly over the wet, gurgling noises. “We must speak about the Seed. It must be...reconsidered, now.”

  Dayn did not move. The Seed pulsed regularly in his hand, offering no assurances of its true nature.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Shir-Hun's Study

  The voidwalker's thrall literally unhinges the mind of his foes. The victim will suffer delusions pulled from memory or imagination, yet experience them as real. For those who are weak of mind or heart, the encounter will be fatal, instantly or years afterward.

  -field notes from the Preceptor Lurec

  A cool breeze rippled fitfully through the windows of the Highest Shir-Hun's private study. The voidwalker's stare haunted Dayn, burned into his vision like a child who had allowed his gaze to linger too long on the sun. He turned away from the window and back to his opulent surroundings, but his eyes slid away from where the Ringmen conferred with the Highest.

  “There’s no need to apologize,” Lurec was saying. He stood at the head of the carved stone table in the middle of the room. “These circumstances were not of your doing.”

  Once order returned, the Ringmen had met privately with Shir-Hun for hours. Dayn had joined them just moments ago, but now wished to be anywhere but Shir-Hun’s study. He could not dwell long on the voidwalker encounter without breaking into new fits of shaking and sweating. Lurec and Nassir never asked him to speak, though they glanced his way frequently. Dayn clenched his hands into fists to stop them from trembling, but that only seemed to worry the Ringmen more.

  “My grandfather served the Ring for many years,” Shir-Hun said quietly. “As a child he would sit me on his knee, and scare me with stories of darklurkers. I hoped never to see one in all my days.”

  “Any world could be just as easily deceived,” Nassir said. His wounded arm hung in a sling, bandaged from shoulder to wrist. He took a measured breath before continuing. “Or...even the Ring. Ara is the first to root them out.”

  “A pitiful solace in that.” The Highest's brow furrowed in distaste. “The High urge me to bury this whole matter. I alone oppose their consensus, but I am bound by our laws. I am of little use to you now, Ringmen. They intend to claim the whole thing was a panic, as if a thousand witnesses could be talked into believing they saw some apparition, or a demon from a children's fable.”

  Nassir spoke softly. “What need for demons, with men such as these?”

  “Thar'Kuri are not men, Defender!” The Highest visibly composed himself. The Ringmen stood in stunned silence at Shir-Hun’s shout. “Not anymore. They gave up the right to be called men when they abandoned us before the Breach.”

  Dayn swallowed bile and forced himself to join the three men. If they can bear the stench, so will I. He moved stiffly, his ribs ached as though he had been run over by a wagon.

  The study’s table held the voidwalker’s monstrous corpse. Nassir's sword had torn the throat wide, exposing pale green innards from the ruined palate to the breastbone. More pieces of the ruined armor along the voidwalker’s front had been carefully removed and laid next to it on the table, exposing a ruinous mass of twisted muscle and guts. One of the pale hands had been carefully severed at the wrist. Strangely, no flies drew near the remains despite the reek.

  “Of course, the Ring cannot interfere with the High,” Lurec said. He had replaced his gray overcoat with a heavy rubber apron, similar to what a blacksmith might wear at the forge. Green streaks covered the material, but the Preceptor did not seem to care.

  Shir-Hun's face grew even stonier as he stared at the corpse. “Tied to your oaths, Preceptor, when swift action is needed more than ever?”

  Lurec exchanged a wordless glance with Nassir. “If we lose the principles that guide us, all the worlds of the Belt will join Thar'Kur in darkness. I would ask you to preserve this...specimen, as a personal favor to me. Whether the High reveal the voidwalkers to Ara or not, this body will provide us with centuries of knowledge.”

  “Are they really so different from us?” Dayn finally brought himself to speak. Even in death, the voidwalker terrified him. Over fifty guards now manned the outer walls of Shir-Hun's study, but Dayn felt trapped inside rather than protected.

  “Use your eyes, Shardian,” Nassir said roughly. “You cannot afford to be so innocent. This Moridos now knows what you carry can hurt Thar’Kur. They’ll send more than just scouts. Probably a bondleader that will tear Olende apart to find you.”

  The Highest walked over to the lone window and stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the darkened landscape. This section of the palace faced the open desert, unlike other wings which conjoined with Olende's warren of splits.

  “We will be of little aid in stopping them, if it came to that,” Shir-Hun said. “My captains tells me our men were worthless when the voidwalker touched their minds. Some of them died. Others are no longer fit to be guards.”

  “Highest, this is as good a place to make a stand as any,” Nassir ventured. “With the Seed at their backs, the Aran Guard will be encouraged.”

  “Perhaps. But I fear this is a dark path we ponder.” He glanced at Dayn, eyebrows raised in consideration. “In all of my studies, I can recall nothing of the Seedbearer mentioned as a...warmonger.”

  “Nor I,” Lurec put in. “The Seed restores balance and fosters life. Not death.”

  “Such days have fallen to us,” Nassir said grimly. “What good is our ancestors’ past glory, if there are no descendants left to remember it?”

  Shir-Hun and Lurec offered no ready reply. Dayn took the opening to ask a question of his own. “How did he disappear in the shadow?”

  “I’ve only speculation,” Lurec confessed. Frustration shadowed his blue eyes. At the Highest’s request, he had studied the corpse hours ago in this very room. Shir-Hun's books and personal effects were everywhere, he would never be rid of the stench. Perhaps that's what the Highest wanted. He picked up the voidwalker’s severed hand and frowned over it. An incision splayed open the palm. Strands of coiled black metal in angular patterns were intertwined within the fibers of muscle. “You saw his gestures, how he used them to strengthen his thrall? I suspect some device, and this is my evidence. Their abilities are utterly different than anything the World Belt knows. It is based on metal instead of crystal and water, but the poison wrought on their bodies would—”

  The voidwalker’s severed hand twitched, and Lurec dropped it with a yelp. Shir-Hun gasped as the exposed slivers began to hum, emitting black ripples in the air. A hole into nothingness opened in the palm, gradually expanding to swallow the fingers.

  “Stand back!” Nassir yanked Da
yn roughly behind him. The hand winked out of existence with an electric sensation that Dayn sensed more than saw, a feeling that made his bones itch.

  “Tu’um’s shadow, I wish I knew how that happened,” Lurec muttered. He looked apologetically at Nassir, but a wolfish grin appeared on the Defender’s face.

  “Another hand still remains. Well done, Preceptor. What else have you learned?”

  “The only thing I know for certain is that they are bred to move in the void between worlds. Consider this material.” Lurec rapped on the shiny black armor. The surface brought to mind the rough pulp of a wasp's nest. It might have been smooth as polished obsidian once, but now sported numerous chips and pockmarks among the organic folds. “Quite nearly a carapace, made of hardening resin. I suspect it grows like fingernails or hair with us.”

  “Only it’s hard enough to turn steel,” Nassir added.

  “Like...a beetle?” Dayn asked. “Or a turtle?”

  “A shellfish, maybe,” Lurec replied. He pointed out the elbows, hips and knees. The voidwalker's armor formed curved ridges at those points. “It looks to be secreted at the bones. I would imagine removing it to be incredibly painful. You see the cracks. More reason for them to fear the Seed, after the plaza. The real differences are internal, though.”

  “What could be worse than this crusted hide?” Nassir muttered.

  The Preceptor prodded gingerly among the reeking innards, absorbed in pure study. Dayn fought down the sickness rising in his stomach. I need to learn as much as I can about it.

  “Everything we know about life in the Halls of Understanding dictates that the tissue of this thing is in essence, dead.” Nassir and the Highest both shot the Preceptor a dubious look. “Before his run in with your sword. Some of the organs are gelled together, and the bone and muscle form a type of―”