“Then she will die,” Kaxen said, still holding them back.
“Look at her, she’s dying, Kaxen,” Aurelie said as tears began to fall down her face.
Kaxen held the dagger at Aurelie. “She tricked me. She made me think it was you, Aurelie; she wanted me to think you were a Krullen Thul. She was trying to make me kill you.”
“You are delusional,” Rennon said. “Let Asrion help her.”
“No,” Kaxen snapped back. “That is not Lady Shey. She tried to convince me it was Aurelie because she knew I would sense her now. She was trying to have me confined.”
“Look!” Asrion said, pointing at Lady Shey. She started changing, transforming into a hideous black creature.
“You see, she is a Krullen Thul, and she has been with us since Signal Hill. I thought it was Aurelie at first, but I realized it was Lady Shey trying to trick me.”
“You are scaring me, Kaxen,” Aurelie said, still holding on to Rennon.
“Aurelie,” Kaxen said, holding out his hand, but she did not budge from Rennon’s arms. He realized he had done something he would not be able to fix so easily. “I am truly sorry, Aurelie. I ask that you forgive me.” Aurelie said nothing.
Kaxen bowed his head in shame, and then he swallowed the lump in his throat and looked at Rennon. “I need to find Asterial and Gondrial. Will you and Asrion keep an eye on things here until I get back?” Rennon assessed him for a long moment as if he might object to Kaxen leaving, then Rennon nodded and Kaxen left the cabin.
It was not my fault, he thought to himself as he exited from the hallway onto the upper deck. I was tricked. Duped into thinking Aurelie was the enemy. Asterial will understand.
On deck, Kaxen found Asterial and Gondrial smoking their pipes and surveying the coast. Enowene stood nearby, taking in the sea air. Kaxen approached Asterial. “I need for you to come with me to Aurelie’s cabin.”
“Oh,” Asterial said.
Kaxen leaned in close to Asterial. “I just slew a Krullen Thul.”
Asterial coughed and blew smoke. He cocked his head at Gondrial, who nodded. Asterial motioned for Enowene to follow and they rushed down below, trying not to alert the crewmen around them.
Enowene hesitated, Kaxen noticed, before nodding and following after them. He briefly wondered why she paused but the thought quickly left him in favor of showing Asterial the Krullen Thul.
Kaxen watched as Asterial examined the Krullen Thul and spat a curse. “We should have sensed this, Gondrial. These Krullen Thul are being very clever to dupe us like this for so long.”
“Where have they taken Shey?” Enowene asked with a worried, frantic expression.
“My guess is to Brightonhold,” Asterial said. “This means the Enforcers are probably in league with Malanor. We may already be too late to save her.”
Gondrial leaned down to inspect the creature more closely. “Did it use some form of illusion?”
“Mind tricks, I would presume,” Asterial’s eyes narrowed while he thought. “In the old days, Krullen Thul can hold a shape for six or seven days at a time. If this Krullen Thul was extremely gifted, maybe fifteen. I’d wager they’d sent one of their best to fool us. You know, if Lady Shey was a plant to fool us and divert us from our true path, then why was the captain lying to us?”
“I follow you,” Enowene said. “The captain’s in on it. The real crew was trying to escape. There are twenty men aboard this vessel. I wonder how many they replaced? We are on a floating trap!”
“That makes sense, and if an illusion was involved, it’s a good bet one of them is probably a mindwielder.” Asterial said. “I doubt a Krullen Thul could create such an elaborate mind trick now that I think about it.” He gave Rennon an eerie stare. “If only we had our own mindwielder we could see through such illusions.”
Gondrial pulled the creature farther into the tiny cabin and closed the door. “There is something here,” Gondrial said, pulling a little green statuette from the Krullen Thul’s hand.
“My statuette,” Aurelie said. “She must have taken it from off the sea chest.”
“Lady Shey has been eyeing that statuette since we boarded from Symbor,” Enowene said. “I thought it was because she used to have one herself.”
“Let me see that,” Asterial said. Gondrial gave him the statuette.
“Ah yes, Morgoran and Toborne used to dabble in the making of these. They have something to do with essence, or the ability to store essence, but I never took much interest in them. I found them somewhat useless. Toborne and Morgoran eventually came to the same conclusion and abandoned them.”
“My dear Asterial,” Enowene began, “your memory does not serve you. Toborne and Morgoran did find them useful, especially for storing the essence of another wielder.”
“Aye, I did forget.” He examined the statuette carefully. “Then this statuette could have more inside it than we care to know. We should destroy it. If Malanor wants it, then we don’t.”
Enowene took the statuette from Asterial. “We most certainly will not destroy it! This statuette may be sought after for a variety of reasons. It could contain the essence of someone Malanor fears just as easily.”
“Or it could be empty,” Gondrial added.
“So much the better,” Asterial said. “Now it is you who forgets, Enowene. As I remember the story, Toborne used a statuette such as this to contain the essence of the Silver Drake, which allowed him control over it. Malanor could have found an account of that incident, and now he plans to try it. There are not many of these statuettes left in the world is there?”
“Shey recently found a cache of them and destroyed them as far as I know,” Enowene said.
Gondrial stroked his goatee. “I am inclined to believe the statuette contains something Malanor fears.”
“Oh, and how did you arrive at that conclusion, Gondrial?” Asterial inquired.
“Why else would they take Lady Shey? She is one of only a handful of wielders who knows how to use it. Morgoran is useless, and Toborne is dead. It came into our possession rather suspiciously when Kaxen bought it in Cedar Falls.”
Enowene put the statuette in the small pack she carried. “For now, I will hold onto it. When we find the real Lady Shey, we will see what secrets it possesses, or we can see if Morgoran can stay coherent long enough to offer insight on it. I believe it would be a mistake to destroy it when we do not understand its significance.”
“I agree,” Gondrial said. Asterial agreed reluctantly.
Kaxen tried to look at Aurelie; she lowered her eyes so not to meet his. He pleaded to Asterial. “What about me? I mean, what is happening to me?”
Asterial put his hand on Kaxen’s shoulder. “It is not your fault, Kaxen. You are changing. I tried to tell you about this in Adrontear. Had we made it to Foreshome, I would have been able to instruct you better, but now, if what you saw is true, we have to land this ship at a more dangerous port and travel to the Sacred Land in haste.” Asterial reached for Aurelie and cupped her chin in his hand. “It was not his fault, child, he will surely never be the boy you once knew, but another attack on you such as this is unlikely to ever happen again. You may still trust him as you did in Brookhaven.”
A knock at the cabin door startled everyone in the room. Kaxen could feel his mind instinctively reaching out beyond the door to sense who was on the other side, but before he could find out who it was, Gondrial flung the door open ready to attack. It was Bren. Kaxen put his hand to his forehead. What am I doing? I am no wielder, he thought.
Bren surveyed the room, saw the creature’s body, and immediately drew his dragon fang. “Relax, it is dead,” Gondrial told him. Bren sheathed his sword.
“What is all this?” the broodlord asked.
“Lady Shey was a hideous, shapeshifting monster. We had to put her down,” Gondrial stated flatly.
“Gondrial!” Enowene snapped.
“What?” Gondrial said, sounding annoyed. “She was.”
Bren grumbled, “
How is it she escaped our notice?”
Asterial clasped his hands together. “We need to regroup.” Asterial looked out of the porthole to the coast. “We are not far from Arovan. We need to get this ship turned about.” Asterial scrutinized the broodlord, who was still not wearing his armor. “Bren, don your armor. The rest of you make ready as well. Gondrial and I will dispose of the Krullen Thul and return to smoking our pipes up on deck. We need not alert the captain of our discovery. In one hour, all of you will come up on deck. Gondrial and I will have a surprise ready for the deckhands. The Sea Goddess is going back to Arovan.”
Bren put his finger up to his mouth, motioning for everyone to quiet down. Slowly, he made his way to the door and jerked it open abruptly. Bren leaped into the hallway where he was met with a dirty, black sword. Avoiding the slicing motion of the sword, Bren cleft the black creature’s arm with his forearm, sending the gruesome blade to the deck with a clang. Bren took advantage of the vulnerable position of the Krullen Thul and jerked its neck with both hands, twisting it with an awful crack. The black creature fell to the deck in a heap. “No time to implement a plan, Master Elf,” Bren said to Asterial, “the fight is on!”
“How many Krullen Thul are there?” Enowene said to no one in particular.”
“Everything is relative, Enowene, assume that they all are,” Gondrial said.
Aurelie scrambled for any piece of armor she could strap on quickly and followed Bren and Asterial into the hall. Gondrial rushed to the end of the hallway to make sure the Krullen Thul acted alone. Bren reached his cabin and quickly suited up in whatever piece of armor he could put on with haste, which included his two swords.
“Hold the fang this way,” he showed Aurelie, “and the claw as such.” He turned both blades with the curvature upward and moved her fingers closer to the hilt. “Block sword blows with the claw and thrust and slice with the fang.”
“That much I gathered,” Aurelie said. Bren smiled at her uneasily.
Asterial stood with an expression of urgency. “If you too are done, we must move to the end of the hallway.” As the three passed the cabin with Kaxen and Rennon, Asterial looked in and motioned for them to follow sharply.
Kaxen strapped on Dranmalin and pulled the blade from its new scabbard. It appeared to be glowing a slight yellowish gold, enough to light a dim room. His fingers tingled where they touched the sword hilt and Kaxen thought for a moment that he felt it make his whole arm tingle. He wondered why, and then he remembered Bren’s eyes during the last battle. He thought to the sword. “Join me,” he said. He felt the tingle over his entire body.
Rennon strapped on what he could of the Dolant Tor armor he found at Signal Hill and tucked his daggers just under the breastplate. Kaxen noticed Rennon was sweating profusely. “Are you all right, Rennon?”
“I am just a bit nervous. Sanmir taught me to use daggers, but I never thought I would be in a fight like this. On a ship at sea, that is.” He looked Kaxen in the face and fell backward. He took out his daggers and pointed them at Kaxen. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”
“Relax, nothing is wrong.” He could see the darkest corners of the ship’s cabin. “It has something to do with my sword.”
“Magic! Are you crazy?”
“I am feeling apprehensive, but I’m not crazy.”
“Come on, you two,” Asterial commanded with urgency from the hallway.
The two boys left the cabin and met with Asrion, who was wearing his golden armor of the clerics of Loracia. Rennon immediately put distance between him and Kaxen. Bren and Aurelie appeared in the hallway, and the four walked to the door leading out to the deck where Asterial and Gondrial waited. Bren stopped and signaled Asterial, who nodded back.
“Oh, Captain Felladan, a word with you please,” Kaxen heard Asterial say. A few moments later, Kaxen heard a commotion and then a sailor shout that someone had killed the captain. Sailors dropped what they were doing and ran to the stern.
“Go, go!” Bren said, raising his dragon fang and dragon claw.
Kaxen rushed out to meet with a stout sailor, who had managed to pull a sword out of the deck armory. Kaxen swung Dranmalin with all his might, and the sword sang crisply as it sailed through the air, slicing the sailor’s sword into two pieces. He slashed again and the sailor fell. Kaxen wheeled around to another sailor and cleaved him in two from waist and torso, amazed at the ease of wielding the golden-hued sword. In the corner of his eye, he saw Rennon deftly throw his daggers to strike down a running sailor. The daggers flew in a circle and returned to Rennon’s waiting hands. “He is using magic too!” Kaxen muttered to himself. “And I bet he doesn’t even realize it.”
All at once, the ship’s bell began ringing. Edifor was shouting, “Stop! Stop the fighting! Look at the captain.” Where the captain’s dead body had lain was now a Krullen Thul carcass. “We have been deceived.” Edifor took out a short knife blade and slit his arm. Red blood trickled out. He went to the nearest sailor and did the same. “Men, draw blood. The betrayers shall be revealed,” he said. Two men screeched at Edifor’s words and leaped overboard.
“Seize them,” Asterial shouted.
“Do no such thing, men!” Edifor took the captain’s hat from the deck and put it on his head. He glanced at Asterial with his hideous, toothless grin. “They are my crew now,” he said. “We are in your debt, wielder. Those Shadow Lurkers are done for.” He motioned to the crew. “Get back to work, or I’ll throw the lot of you over with the Shadow Lurkers.” The men returned to work but each kept an eye on what was going on. “I reckon we will put into port as soon as we can. As a paying passenger, I will return your money, but we don’t want the kind of trouble you bring.”
“Come about then and take us to the port of Old Symbor,” Asterial suggested.
“That is no port. I’ll not sail my ship there, no how,” Edifor said.
Asterial glared at him. “I don’t suppose double your passage rate would persuade you?”
“You have it on you?”
Asterial unfastened his coin pouch and paid the captain. “And captain, Krullen Thul can swim, and they can fly when those men change back. You just let two abominations escape.”
He shrugged. “What can you do? Helm,” he barked, “Come about, we sail to the Sacred Land.”
Chapter 14
The Sea Goddess sailed smoothly toward the Sacred Land, and the weather held up nicely. One sunny afternoon, Kaxen finally cornered Aurelie when she came up on deck for some fresh air. She had stayed in her cabin with Enowene since the fight on deck.
“Aurelie,” he began. She did not look at him, but he spoke anyway. “I just wanted to say how sorry I am that I mistook you for shadow.”
Aurelie turned to him with fire in her eyes. “You know, Kaxen, I realize you were not yourself when you attacked me, but what angers me the most is that you doubted what I was willing to do to have you. I would have done anything you asked of me because I thought I knew who you were, but I am not so sure now.”
“I am still me, Aurelie.”
“Are you? I am not so sure you even know who you are. The Kaxen I knew feared wielders, he could not sniff out shadow, and he would never attack me. I don’t know who you are now.”
“Aurelie, please, I am still Kaxen. The Kaxen you fell in love with.”
Aurelie turned away and rubbed her neck. Asrion had taken away the pain, but the feeling of what Kaxen had done was still there. “I just need a little time to think, Kaxen, will you grant me that?”
Kaxen took a deep breath. “I will grant you whatever time you need.”
Aurelie walked away without looking back and disappeared into the hold.
Drakkius watched the skies as they darkened above the southern tip of the Sacred Land. Night had come; soon he would know. Not long after the stars began to shine, two winged figures appeared in the distance above. They circled around Drakkius and landed, folding their leathery wings around their lithe bodies like a cloak.
“Report,” Drakkius commanded.
“We regret to tell you the plan failed. We only made away with our lives.” The first Krullen Thul said.
“Is the one known as Shey still among them”
“No, my liege, that Krullen Thul was the first to fall.”
“Do they still believe Malanor is the evil they fight at least?”
“We did not give you away, my liege. As far as they are concerned it is he who tasks them.”
“Good, at least we have that. The both of you go to the city of Gothenwyre, on the northern borders of Scarovia, to my castle and keep there in the mountain. Arrange for Lady Shey to escape. There is no reason to hold her now.” He leaned in, “Be careful you stay clear of her. If she sees you, she will not hesitate to use essence to end you. See that she gets away clean. I don’t want her harmed; she has an important role to play now.”
“We will see to it, master.” The Krullen Thul assured him as they both unwrapped their wings from around their bodies and took flight.
Drakkius took a long clay pipe out from under his cloak. The stem appeared to be a scaled leg and the bowl was a red dragon’s skull. He waved his hand over it and the already packed pipe lit with a spark of light. He puffed on it while staring into the night sky.
Chapter 15
Kaxen felt a twinge of excitement as The Sea Goddess sailed into the ancient bay of Old Symbor. He had always wanted to see what the old city looked like before its people were forced to move to its present location closer to Brookhaven. Old Symbor was now a part of the Sacred Land; where there were once green fields, there was now a sea of dead browns and yellows. Where majestic trees once flourished, there was now shadowy specters. No crops would grow and no animals could graze. The Sacred Land was a dead land.
The sun was still low in the east when Kaxen got his first full glimpse of the ancient docks; decay and overgrown vegetation made them look more like part of the landscape than the once vibrant trading hub of Symboria. Old Symbor lay in ruins from the docks to as far as he could see on land, with dilapidated buildings, bushy shrubs, and dead trees choking the once vibrant streets. Captain Edifor helmed The Sea Goddess into one of only a handful of still-maintained docks and moored the ship. Kaxen was surprised to see an old man hobble out from one of the hardier structures to greet the approaching ship. The old man walked with a cane, and a small, scruffy dog with black and white hair followed close behind him, barking in warning. The man wore an eye patch over his left eye and a dusty tunic over breeches that made Kaxen wonder if he remained dormant until a ship sailed into his port. His white hair and beard were long and unkempt, and he had a scowl on his wrinkled face.
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