Mark of Fire (The Endarian Prophecy Book 1)

by Richard Phillips

  “You’ve got thirty minutes to tend to him before we have to move on,” Ty said, his tone uncharacteristically grave. “We’ve got to keep moving until evening to be sure we’ve lost them.”

  A worried look flitted across the Kanjari’s face as he glanced down at Arn. Then he wheeled the stallion around and headed back down the canyon to keep watch.

  John knelt beside Arn’s body, dread filling him as he carefully removed the bloody bandage. Arn’s face was a shiny gray, cool to the touch. As Kim washed the wound, John doused the bandages in the clear stream, searched the bank, and returned to the Endarian’s side with both hands full of a fragrant green moss. He worked quickly, packing the mixture into both the entry and exit wounds before tying off the wet bandages. John stood to see Ty riding up the canyon toward them. He glanced over at Kim, her eyes clouded with worry.

  “It’s too dangerous to move him farther,” she said to Ty as he pulled his horse to a stop. “If the bleeding starts again, he will die.”

  “If we stay here, he won’t be the only one to die. By now, those nomads will have realized we doubled back. They’ll fan out until they cross our trail, then they’ll be coming for us. I’m as worried as you two are, but think about it. If Arn could talk, he’d say to leave him.”

  “I won’t do it!” Kim hissed.

  “Of course not. But we have to keep moving until nightfall. The nomads can’t track after dark.”

  John glanced at Kim and then gently lifted Arn’s limp form up to Ty, watching as the barbarian cradled the assassin’s body in his arms with no more effort than if he were carrying a child. With a touch of Ty’s heel, he set the palomino into a gentle walk up the streambed. Kim and John mounted their horses and followed, John leading Ax behind them.

  Slivers of light glinted down through tree branches, giving way to gloomy shadows as the afternoon wore on. A waterfall forced them to leave the stream and scramble up the steep hillside to the south.

  John felt his horse slip on the shale, and in his struggle to stay atop the plunging animal, lost his grip on the lead rope. Rather than running away, Ax moved up closer to Ty’s stallion. Realizing that he would not have to lead Ax, John reached down and removed the rope from the black horse’s halter.

  The canyon flattened and widened over the next half a league. Pines covered the steep hills, but the valley floor was open and grassy. The sun sank into the west, taking with it the day’s warmth.

  Ty stopped at the edge of a grove of trees, kicked his leg over the stallion’s neck, and slid to the ground. Kneeling, he lay Arn down in the deep grass, close to the stream that cut a path through the valley’s center. As he let the limp form slip from his arms, John watched as Kim pushed Ty aside.

  “He still lives but barely,” Kim said as she examined him. “I need a wet cloth and ample darla root.”

  “What’s that?” Ty asked.

  “I know,” John said. “I’ll be right back.”

  The growing darkness along the stream bank left John thankful for his exceptional night vision as he frantically searched and pulled up a handful of the orange roots of darla vines. A memory resurfaced. His father, the master bowman George Staton, had taught him to shoot, while his gentle mother, Sheryl, had taught him the medicinal properties of plants.

  Ironically, Sheryl had failed to detect the poisonous fungus that had infested a batch of darla root she had used to make her family’s afternoon tea. John had returned from a hunt to find both his parents dead on the cottage floor.

  Refusing to succumb to memory, he returned to Kim just as she finished arranging green pine branches to form a star around Arn’s body.

  John and Ty moved to the edge of the clearing, leaving the Endarian woman alone to conduct her ritual. The moon rose above the eastern horizon, bathing the clearing in its glow. Kim knelt on the western side of Arn’s body so that the star enclosing him stood between her and the crescent moon. The faint trill of a song wafted from her lips as she lifted her head, extending her arms, palms upward, toward the source of light.

  The volume of her song increased, and with it, the moonglow. A beam crawled along the pine star, sending threads of light across the grass to Arn’s body. As Kim continued to sing, John trembled. The song carried a sadness unlike any he had ever felt. The words were foreign, yet surreal images of wounds being leached from the plants into the very earth that nurtured them danced unbidden through his mind, leaving behind the conviction that nothing would grow in this spot for ages to come.

  The glow illuminating Arn’s prone form lost its softness, draping him in shining transparent armor. Then the song stopped, and the glow faded, first from the pine branches, then from the grass within, and, finally, from Arn himself.

  Kim’s head bowed forward, and the sound of her sobbing pulled John to her side, his throat constricting to the point that he could barely speak.

  “Is he . . .?”

  “He will live,” Kim said, rising to her feet. Then, without explanation, she turned and walked away into the darkness.

  “Look at the ground!” John said, staring in disbelief.

  “I don’t see a damned thing,” Ty said, his face hosting no levity.

  “Every blade of grass within the star is dead. So are the branches. I felt them die.”

  Stepping into the star, John felt the once-healthy grass crunch beneath his feet, transferring a sense of wrongness up his legs and into his spirit. How must the Endarian have felt?

  Kneeling beside Arn, John placed a hand on his face. His fever had broken. Arn’s breathing sounded normal, and a strong heartbeat pulsed through his neck. Ty joined John beside their wounded companion.

  After his own quick examination, Ty lifted his face.

  “By the gods,” Ty said. “Looks like our princess is an Endarian life-shifter.”

  As John’s eyes looked at the dead and withered plants, he knew it to be true. And, as he again thought of his mother, the confirmation of magic he had always believed to be a fable unsettled him.

  14

  Central Banjee River

  YOR 413, Early Spring

  Arn awoke with a start, reaching for the empty sheath at his side. “My knife?”

  “Don’t worry,” John said. “When we broke out of that cage, the first thing we did was track down our weapons and packs. Yours was lying in the dirt right where it ate the nomad. I pushed it into this pouch with a stick. I’ll let you take it out.”

  Arn reached for the bag, although a sharp burst of pain in his side made him wince. Returning Slaken to its sheath, he sank back, exhausted. “Pursuit?”

  “Ty scouted our back trail. We lost them.”

  Arn nodded, closed his eyes, and let sleep claim him once again. He slept that day and the next, but managed to eat and move about on the third. Darkness found him leaning back against a fallen tree near their small campfire.

  Kimber’s healing magic had lent speed to nature’s healing, but he was extremely sore and weak. When Arn asked her to tell him about the Endarian spell, she hesitated but then sat down on the ground across from him, her legs folded beneath her.

  “To begin with,” Kim said, “we Endarians practice two schools of magic, life-shifting and time-shaping, each of which draws its energies from nature. My specialty is in the field of life-shifting magic.

  “Both forms of Endarian magic require that balance be maintained. Those who have mastered the art of time-shaping can create a time-mist, speeding up or slowing down time. In the simplest case, the shaper creates a block of mist where time is slowed. The difference is then funneled into another mist, where time is quickened.”

  “Your people can actually do this?” Arn asked.

  “Those who have mastered the discipline can work wonders,” she said, “but few achieve such expertise.”

  “What about life-shifting? How did you heal me?”

  “You can think of it as life-stealing, as some of our enemies have named it. For me to heal an injured person, animal, or plant, I
must sicken or kill other living things to balance the life-energy I have directed into the stricken. As I funnel the life energy from one entity to another, I feel the pain of that which I kill, just as I feel the relief of the one I save.”

  She pursed her lips, and Arn knew that she was reliving the memory of what she had done for him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, the words spilling from his mouth of their own accord. “It must be hard.”

  Blinking, she lifted her eyes to meet his. “Stealing life from one thing to give it to another always is. It is why few Endarians choose this discipline. It is why those who call us life-stealers are not wrong.”

  With that, she rose and walked into the dark.

  Throughout the night, Arn lay awake, thinking. He had now recovered to the point that he felt he would be able to ride. Rolling over, he rose painfully to his feet and walked through the trees toward the small promontory where John stood watch. The lookout occupied a small knoll that rose in the center of the valley with decent visibility in all directions. He found John sitting atop a rock outcropping, gazing over the moonlit valley.

  “You sure you ought to be out climbing around on the rocks?” John asked.

  “I suppose not. But none of us seem to do what we ought to.”

  “You know, I’ve been thinking that if we head north, paralleling the desert, that we’re going to run into a town built along that river,” John said. “Surely we will be able to hire a guide.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” said Arn.

  “When we rescued our packs, we got back that small fortune of yours and a lot of the sultan’s jewels and coins as well. We took as much as we could grab before starting that little stampede.”

  “The biggest problem we’ll have will be keeping Kim safe,” Arn said. “Maybe only Ty and I should ride into town while you look after Kim out in the hills.”

  “That makes sense, but we can’t let her start feeling like she’s a burden or she’ll leave,” John said.

  “We’ve got plenty of time to come up with a good reason for the two of you to wait outside of town.”

  For the next hour, Arn sat beside John on the rocks, talking and watching the dimly lit valley. When he found weariness stealing his body, he bid his friend good night and made his way back to camp. Wrapping himself in his blanket, he settled down on the ground and fell into a deep sleep.

  The search for a town with guides who could lead them across the desert progressed with mind-numbing slowness, leaving Kim brimming with frustration. Arn forced himself to hike for as long as he could each day, and steadily, his strength improved. The necessity of hunting for food slowed their northward progress through the mountains, and the search that they had hoped would take weeks became months. Summer waned, and the colors of fall worked their way into the high-country foliage.

  John had grown comfortable enough with Kim to tease her occasionally. Arn noticed that Kim had gradually adopted some of the informal language that her human companions used. And the casual touches that lingered on John’s arm came with increasing regularity.

  As for Ty, Arn could see that the barbarian was in rare form. There was a big new world spread out before him, just waiting to be explored. He had the horse of his dreams, his ax, and good friends to abuse with his wit.

  Ty was the first to catch a glimpse of the city, several weeks after their flight from the nomad camp. The Kanjari had been riding well out to the front but now returned at a gallop, sliding to a halt in front of the others.

  “Looks like we’ve found more of a town than we were bargaining for,” Ty said.

  “Let’s take a look,” said Arn.

  Ty wheeled the stallion around with a nudge of his knee and plunged forward along the narrow trail. The others followed at a somewhat slower pace. As they topped the ridge, Arn saw that Ty had not exaggerated.

  The walled metropolis lay a half-day’s ride ahead and stretched away on both sides of the Banjee River. It was bigger than any city Arn had ever seen, dwarfing Tal’s capital. The thick outer wall featured a massive iron gate lowered across the mouth of the tunnel leading inside.

  “I don’t get it,” said Arn. “I should have heard of a city of this size. We’re within a few weeks’ travel of Tal’s northwestern border.”

  “Maybe the Borderland Range cut the city off from the east, forcing all the trade routes away from Tal,” Ty said.

  “That can’t be it,” said Arn.

  “Well, believe it or not,” said Ty, “there it sits.”

  A low moan of dismay to Arn’s left reminded him that Kim hadn’t spoken since they had topped the ridge. The Endarian’s eyes had taken on a smokiness, as if she stared through the mists of time of which she’d spoken to Arn. Her lips parted, but she remained silent. Then she blinked and turned to face them.

  “What we are seeing cannot be real.”

  “Why?” asked Arn. “What is that place?”

  Kim turned to gaze out over the scene once more, spending more moments in silence before responding. “That is Lagoth. Four hundred years ago, during the Rift War, an army of Endarians and humans destroyed this city and killed its master, a despotic wielder named Kragan. The spells that killed Kragan and consumed Lagoth also created the Mogev Desert. The power of that casting split the world.”

  “Nonsense,” Ty said. “If the world had split, we wouldn’t be standing here looking at the not-destroyed city.”

  John shot the Kanjari a sharp glance, and Kim continued. “What you say is both true and false.”

  She extended her hand, sweeping it across the distant vista to the west and north. “The desolate land you see before you has only been thus for a short time by Endarian standards. As I said, a group of mighty wielders, some human, some Endarian, cast the most powerful spell in memory in the final hours of the battle that raged here. That casting obliterated Kragan and the horrific city-state he ruled. Neither he nor Lagoth’s ruins have ever been seen again.”

  “Until now,” said John.

  “This changes everything,” she said. “I must return to Endar Pass and warn my mother that Lagoth still exists. And if it exists, then it is quite likely that its master yet lives as well.”

  “Wait just a minute,” said Arn. “Why hasn’t anyone ever reported seeing the city? If we can stumble upon it, why has no one else?”

  “The elders did not lie. More than four hundred years ago, two great armies spread out across a grassy plain to the west of that city. Hundreds of thousands of Endarians and men faced off against an array of deep-spawned creatures—vorgs, mulgos, and worse.

  “Amid the slaughter on that battlefield, wielders of great power contested, and they unleashed the horrible casting that ended the rising terror of Kragan. Nothing within hundreds of leagues would survive the spell they unleashed. The greatest time-shapers in all of Endarian history sacrificed themselves and the warriors who fought alongside them.”

  Tears streaked Kim’s cheeks, glittering in the sunlight. “It cost Endar almost half our population, all killed by their own time-shapers.”

  The magnitude of the revelation staggered Arn.

  Ty leaned in closer, his attention now fully occupied. “What about the splitting of the world?”

  “Enormous seas lie far to the east and west of Tal,” said Kim. “Seas that stretch beyond the horizon, seas that took sailing ships many weeks to cross. Sailing ships used to cross the water, bringing people and goods to and from faraway lands.

  “They were the lands that spawned Kragan, and from the mysteries of those lands, the wielder drew most of his arcane powers. The elders created a wreath of time-slowing mist off the continent’s shores and funneled all the excess time into the area around Lagoth, aging it thousands of years in moments. Since that day no ships have passed through the mists.”

  Arn rubbed his chin with his right hand. “You didn’t answer my question. Why hasn’t anyone stumbled across this city in the last four hundred years? Didn’t your elders send scouts to confirm it
s destruction?”

  “Certainly,” said Kim. “Most of those never returned. The few who did reported not being able to find their way to the spot where the city supposedly lay, such were the changes in the land.

  “Eventually, the elders stopped trying to find its remains. They assumed that the destructive nature of the magic had obliterated Lagoth, killing any who ventured too near the location of the city’s ruins.”

  Ty stepped up onto a boulder to look out to the northwest. “Well, those ruins look to be in pretty good shape to me.”

  Kim nodded. “But to answer Arn’s question about why the elders resorted to such desperate means to kill Kragan, I will have to defer to the elders themselves. You will meet some of them when we get to Endar Pass. That discussion centers upon an ancient prophecy that I am not at liberty to discuss here.”

  Ty stared at the princess.

  “I am sad to be bound by laws that you do not understand, laws that keep me from giving you the knowledge that you want and need. But I cannot.”

  Ty looked into Kim’s eyes, and the heat drained from his face. “I guess I can live with that. I don’t have to like it, though.”

  “I agree with Kim,” Arn said. “Getting word of this place back to Endar is of paramount importance.”

  “What about Tal?” asked John.

  “To the deep with Tal,” Arn said. “The king and his damned wielder can look after those people. Since we’re here, and since no one else has apparently seen this city and lived to tell about it, I think I need to go down and take a look.”

  “I don’t think that’s wise,” said Kim.

  “Princess, I acknowledge that there is great risk. If I have not returned in three days, then the rest of you head for Endar Pass. I’ll follow if I can. If not, it won’t make any difference.”

  “It makes a difference to me,” said Kim.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll keep him safe,” said Ty.

  “You’re not going,” said Arn.

  “Either with you or by myself after you leave, I’m going. And there’s nothing in all the lands that can stop me.”