“I can kill you now and leave your family to die.” Letrias pulled Kesla to his feet. “Or you can lead us to Xavion and the prince of Prunesia, and your family will live. My new master has left the choice entirely in your hands.”
Kesla chose to continue on his path, vowing that, when all was set right, he would hide his family and find and murder Letrias. A couple of days later, he and the other traitors spotted the prince. Leading them into a cave, Brian brought them face to face with the mighty but wounded captain Xavion. They had met the wizard dragon Valorian in battle and lost. As Kesla fell upon the young man and the old, his heart seemed to die within him. Everything he believed in was epitomized in Xavion, yet everything he loved would die if the prince did not.
He thrust the prince through and wept over the still body. A roar filled the heavens. Looking up, he saw his former master, the great white dragon, coming in all his fury. In the dragon’s wake the clouds divided like water.
For the first time ever, Kesla felt afraid of the powerful creature. It landed with such force on the stony battlefield that the ground split.
Albino raked his razor claws down Hestor’s front, spilling his organs onto the ground. As Clavius started to flee, he roared, then caught the man in his jaws and snapped him in two. Next he wheeled to strike Letrias.
The wizard pupil vainly cast bolts of lighting from his hands that passed through the dragon’s body. Albino pulled back its head, spraying such vehement flames that the dirt turned to glass.
Without warning, the Art’en wizard Hermenuedis fell from the sky with a screech and landed betwixt his pupil and Albino, sparing Letrias incineration. The orb in his hand grew in size and absorbed Albino’s flames until it became as large as a boulder.
“Be gone, cursed artifact!” Albino roared. He stretched out his claws toward the orb and flexed them but did not touch it. The orb burst into a billion fragments.
Kesla stumbled back. He dropped his crystalline sword and stared at its blade, now stained with innocent blood. His tears burned on his cheeks.
He glimpsed Letrias standing behind the Art’en. His face paled ghastly white as the dragon swung its tail around, cracking it into the Art’en. “Hermenuedis,” the dragon rumbled, “you have carried your wickedness to its final day!”
“No, Albino, thisss day isss mine!” the wizard screeched.
Suddenly, a large black dragon shot from the heavens aggressively toward Albino. With teeth bared, he attacked, but he passed through the white dragon as if through air. Albino grasped him with his claws and flung him down the slope. The black dragon’s body furrowed a canyon in the ground as it skidded to a stop. Kesla recognized the beast as the wizard dragon Valorian he had seen on several battlefields. The creature was a foe of power beyond that of the average sorcerer.
Kesla did not wait to watch more of the conflict. He raced south as fast as he could toward Al’un Dai and his family. When he at last arrived, he found that he had not been fast enough. The Art’en wizard, wounded from his encounter with Albino, had taken refuge in the temple fortress, but the dragon had followed. Fire gushed from its mouth, and it called lightning from the sky. It broke the temple walls and cornered the Art’en, at last, in one of the great halls.
Rushing past the raging beast, Kesla stumbled through the rubble, becoming increasingly desperate as he searched in vain for his wife and children. As he leapt a pile of rubble he spotted an opening in one of the tower walls. The dragon’s tail swept rubble over his head and he ducked, glancing across the courtyard. The tail crushed Hermenuedis into another tower.
The wizard stood again, the battle renewed as he fought for his survival. Kesla barely saw or heard all that happened around him. In the gaping hole left by Albino’s attack in the tower wall, he saw the bloodied bodies of his wife and children trapped beneath fallen debris.
“No!” he screamed as he raced to them and frantically pulled away the stones lying on top of them. But the great white dragon continued to pour out its wrath on the wizard.
Kesla pulled his beloved family from the ruins and lay their bodies on the floor of an untouched tower, hoping to keep them safe. At that moment the dragon crashed through the wall, his claws ripping Hermenuedis’s wings from his back while his teeth cut the Art’en’s skull. The wizard’s screams reached a pitch far more disturbing than anything Kesla had heard yet.
Finding a hatch with a stairs beneath it in the tower floor, he took the bodies of his family into the dark sublevels of the temple and buried them with a broken heart in the alcoves of a large, stone chamber.
In the midst of his despair a beautiful woman inhabiting the temple’s sublevels came to him. She consoled him, soothed him. And in his loneliness he turned to her and lost himself to her. Even when he learned that she was the mistress of the dreaded Art’en wizard, he did not leave her. She taught him some of her master’s dark arts. In particular she brewed a potion for him to drink, which left him with eternal youth. Eternal, that is, as long as the world, or he, lived.
“When my daughters brought word that Kesla had slain himself on the sword of his captain, that is, on your sword”—the dragon sighed—“I wept in secret. For had not I been to blame for the death of his family? Was it not I that was so bent on slaying my enemy I neglected the innocent?
“To my shame, I am to blame for his fall as much as he. And if I could do it all over again, I would have driven Hermenuedis to humiliation and not have scattered his followers to the four winds. Now his evil spreads across Subterran more surely than it did before. For Letrias with Auron evaded capture that day and hid from me, so that for many years I knew nothing of their whereabouts.
“Only Dantress’s child and the sword that I have given to Ilfedo can cleanse the stain of that day from my conscience.”
Specter shook his head. “Forgive me, master. My words were spoken out of ignorance and nothing more.”
The dragon blew gentle clouds of smoke from his nostrils, filling the hollow, then its white-scaled sides shimmered and it became invisible. “A child approaches this hollow,” the dragon explained, “You would do well to follow my example, Specter.”
Specter chuckled softly. He waited until the head of a young boy appeared at the hollow’s rim, let the youth spot him for only an instant, then caused his robe to shimmer with light, rendering him as invisible as the dragon. “There are more people in this region than there were before Dantress’s pregnancy,” he said, watching the boy looking with mouth agape at the spot where Specter had been.
“Yes.” Albino blew a greater cloud of smoke into the air, veiling his face. “The Hemmed Land is about to change. Its people were leaderless, but now they are taking respectful notice of the young woodsman that saved the coastal people from the Sea Serpents, and they have heard that he cleansed this wilderness of the man-hungry bears. More settlers will come; it is inevitable.”
The dragon’s pink eyes stared blankly, as if seeing something beyond the man’s range of vision. “The Sea Serpents have again invaded, this time in greater numbers.”
“Master, let me deal with them,” Specter said.
“No, I did not give that task to you and, though you are strong, my friend, I cannot risk losing you in that battle. It is up to Ilfedo and my daughters who remain to deal with those creatures.”
“But if you would not send me for fear of losing me, why send them?”
“Because, my friend,” the dragon rumbled gently, “though you are strong, Ilfedo is stronger. And though you have the gift of invisibility, Ilfedo has the gift of the sword of living fire, with which yours cannot compare. No, you must remain in these forests and watch over my offspring.”
Lifting his head to gaze at the trees surrounding the hollow, Albino said, “The boy is gone.
“Here, take these and keep them safe until they can be given into the hands of my offspring.” The dragon opened the palm of his other clawed hand. Therein lay the rusted sword of Xavion and the blade boomerang Dantress had retrieved
from the fields around Al’un Dai.
Specter took the weapons into his arms with near reverence. “I will do as you ask.”
Both he and the dragon dropped the shrouds of invisibility and regarded each other with sober resolution.
“Ilfedo will soon leave his home to seek out the Sea Serpents.” The dragon snapped out his leathery wings, sending a wave of air across the woodland clearing. “He will soon know the extent of the power of the sword I gave him. At least, that is, the extent of its power when wielded by him.
“I wish you the full blessings of God.” And with that the dragon crouched, digging his claws into the ground, and launched himself into the distant western sky.
Stepping noiselessly between the trees, Specter stood in the hillside clearing. The early morning sunlight settled over a group of about forty people. Their soiled apparel and disheveled hair, and the assorted bags and other items lying about them as they slept, seemed to indicate they had made a sudden and hasty trip through the wilderness.
Children curled under blankets with the men and the women. Their breathing seemed ragged, uneasy.
Ilfedo’s house stood behind them on the hill, silent and lifeless except for two white birds. Specter saw the sunlight glint off the birds’ silver beaks, and he sullenly directed his attention to the northwest corner of the clearing where six figures emerged from the forest, one of them with not one sword but two hanging at his side.
The woodsman and five identically dressed women stopped at the clearing’s border, looking upon the sleeping group. Ilfedo, cradling his child in his arms, took a step toward his sleeping visitors. Another group appeared on the opposite side of the clearing, and Specter recognized a few of them.
Ganning walked with a decided limp as he skirted the sleeping individuals. Fast on his heels strode Honer. He was a taller fellow with sandy-blond hair and very broad shoulders. Behind him marched Ombre, a gray fur coat on his back. The head of the dead wolf hung limp over his back like a hood.
Two women accompanied them, one following Honer. The other lingered at the eastern boundary of the clearing, her eyes darting from one prone individual to the next. At last, she too skirted the group and followed Eva.
Specter closed the distance between himself and Ilfedo so that he could better hear what transpired. As he approached, he got his first peek at the dragon’s offspring asleep in her father’s arms. Peaceful and beautiful she looked. Wrapped in a soft white sheet, Oganna slept with her mouth open.
The air that morning was warm and gentle.
“Ombre, Honer, Ganning.” Ilfedo accepted a hug from each of his friends and then smiled through his tears as Honer’s wife stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Eva.”
“Is this …?” Honer’s wife looked at the infant with tender blue eyes. Her blond hair fell over her eyes and she brushed it back over her ears with her fingers. “Is she yours, Ilfedo?”
Choking on tears, Ilfedo nodded, kissed the infant’s forehead and then held her out to the woman. Eva accepted the bundle as if it were gold. “She’s beautiful!”
For a little while Ilfedo’s friends and their wives fawned over the child, then Ombre stood aside and raised his eyebrows. “Ahem, Ilfedo?” He swept his arm toward the five sisters standing like living statues half-a-dozen yards away. “You haven’t introduced us.”
“Of course.” Ilfedo wiped his face with his sleeve, smearing dirt through his tears. “Please,” he said to Caritha, “do come closer.”
One by one he introduced the sisters of his deceased bride, giving each a warm smile. At once their faces relaxed. His friends and their wives introduced themselves in kind and welcomed the sisters into their circle.
“You will have to join us for tea sometime,” Eva said, rocking the baby in her arms.
“Thank you for your kind invitation.” Caritha inclined her head for a moment toward Eva. “But we are here for the child, to raise her and protect her.”
“Protect her?” Eva said. “Protect her from what?”
Specter caught Ombre watching Caritha throughout the conversation.
Aroused by the chatter, the people encamped in Ilfedo’s clearing stood and ran toward him. The five sisters moved into position between Ilfedo, Eva, and the people, their purple skirts swishing over the grass as if they floated. Reaching down into their skirts they parted a hidden fold in each of their garments and drew out their rusted short swords.
The people stumbled over each other as they came to a sudden stop in front of the sisters. Ilfedo raised his hand and shouted, “Lower your weapons and let these people speak.”
Laura stabbed her sword into its sheath and folded her skirt to hide it. Evela and Levena relaxed, sheathing their weapons, while Rose’el frowned, then shrugged her shoulders and followed suit. Caritha started to do likewise. She pulled the fold of her skirt aside, revealing the sheath, but a rugged woodsman leaned close to see and she angled her blade toward him.
Ilfedo shifted his gaze to only her. “I command you to do this if you wish to remain with me.”
She retreated a few steps, hiding her rusted blade in the folds of her skirt.
“We are refugees from the coast,” the group’s spokesman said, fiddling with his soiled brown beard. “The Sea Serpents are back. Nowhere in the Hemmed Land is safe now. Nowhere! They’re killing everyone they find, and we can do nothing to stop them.
“Please.” He and the rest of those assembled dropped to their knees. “We have heard that you are a great hunter and that you slew the serpents who came before. Please! Come to our aid. Kill these creatures, and we will give you anything you ask!”
Ilfedo wiped his face with his hand and pulled the man to a standing position. Resting his hands on the bearded man’s shoulders, he turned to Honer’s wife and looked at his child. “Will you watch over her until I return?”
“Of course,” Eva replied.
Caritha spun toward Ilfedo. “What? No, Ilfedo! We will watch over her—”
He shook his head. “I need you to come with me. I can’t do this alone.”
She looked stunned. Nevertheless, with a slight bow, she promised her help.
“Rose’el, Evela, Levena, and Laura … you’re with me as well,” he said.
Evela smiled a bright little smile that made Specter feel warmed from the inside out. Rose’el harrumphed and crossed her arms. Laura said, “Yes, Ilfedo.” And Levena curtsied.
“Good.” Ilfedo took off his extra sword, the one that had been a gift from his parents, and ran his fingers over its pommel. “Then we will head to the coast… Don’t worry,” he said to Evela as she looked at the ground, “I won’t let any of you come to harm.” He opened the door to his home and leaned his extra sword against the inside wall. Closing the door, he glanced over the expectant faces of the coastal people and at his faithful friends who stood by.
“What about us?” Ombre frowned, then nodded at Honer and Ganning. “You are going to just leave us behind on this one? I thought we were your closest friends.”
“And so you are.” Ilfedo looked at the eastern sky, breathed in deeply. “The serpents are intelligent beasts. If they have already invaded the coast, then it is likely they have penetrated the forests as well. It will take some doing to scout the entire region, but if you three work together and organize the locals into search parties, we should be able to make sure none of those belly crawlers is left behind.
“What do you think, Honer, Ganning?”
The men nodded. “If you think that needs doing. We’ll see to it.”
Within an hour everyone had prepped for departure. Ilfedo set out first, leading the five sisters east. Later, Ombre headed northeast, while Honer and Ganning banded together and went southeast. The refugees remained, per Ilfedo’s instruction, encamped in his yard for the time being.
Specter followed Honer’s wife south through the woods until she led him to a large cabin. Three young children greeted her at the door, oohing and ahhing over Oganna. Eva instructed them not
to touch the baby and entered the house, closing the door behind her.
Contenting himself with standing by a rectangular window by the door, Specter watched through the glass as the woman sat in front of the fireplace in a rocking chair.
One of the children, a little boy, ran outside. He cut across the lawn in energetic bounds with a pail swinging from his hand. A wooden shelter with three sides, and a sort of stable attached to it, had been built a little distance from the cabin. Specter smiled at the sounds of goats crying, especially when a young lad exclaimed, “Hold still, Bella! Do you want the baby to starve? There … I didn’t think so.” He raced out of the stable and back into the cabin, the bucket partly filled with milk.
Leaning on his scythe’s handle, Specter listened to Oganna’s cries. Honer’s wife, Eva, started to hum, and the child quieted. He smiled again. The child was in good hands.
RISE OF THE LORD WARRIOR
An oak tree’s leaf bowed toward the forest floor, gravity tugging at the pearlescent bead of cold moisture forming on its green tip. Miniscule droplets on the leaf’s surface merged with one another, gathering into a single rivulet that fed the already precarious bead until its weight surrendered to nature’s force.
Rays of Yimshi’s sunlight split as it descended through the calm air, dappling colors over its translucent surface. The sunlight winked through the tree branches, appearing, fading, following the droplet as it fell, until it struck a metal blade, honed sharp. The droplet’s molecules ripped apart, a few flying into the air.
Ombre looked at the long, straight blade of his sword. His gaze lingered for a few moments on the point where the dewdrop landed. But his real focus was elsewhere. His ears were attuned to the silence in the forest. He’d encountered a trapper, and together they had fought and slain a Sea Serpent. Now they were scouring the trees for any more that might have ventured this far inland. No chipmunks, no squirrels, no rabbits, no birds. He scanned the closely spaced trees for anything amiss.
Offspring (The Sword of the Dragon) Page 3