Honor Crowned

by Michael G. Southwick

  Jorem stood and gripped his sword with both hands. He stepped to a table and swung his sword sideways, just above the table top. Glass shattered and metal clanged as everything on the table crashed to the floor. Two small flickers of light hung in the air above the table, souls freed from their prisons.

  Like a man possessed, Jorem launched himself from table to table, shelf to shelf. By the time he stopped, nothing would remain whole. When he finally ran out of targets, dozens of small flickering lights bobbed before him. Some were as bright as Zensa’s had been, others were mere flickers.

  “GO!” Jorem shouted. “Find your bodies if you can, find your future if you can’t.”

  In the blink of an eye, they were gone. Only the light coming in through the broken window illuminated the room. A dim glow from across the room caught Jorem’s eye. One last globe survived. An irrepressible anger filled Jorem.

  Tossing aside tables that stood in his way, Jorem strode to the globe. A thick layer of dust covered the globe. The dim light inside the globe was barely discernible. He slashed down at the globe. The blade met it with a sharp “ping”, rebounding from the globe so fast it nearly cut his ear off.

  The sharp blow from the sword knocked the dust from the object. There was no small light inside this globe. The entire orb glowed and pulsed. This was a true Forbidden, unbreakable. His sword had left not so much as a nick on its surface.

  “Echalain!” Zensa gasped, staring at the globe.

  Gingerly, Jorem lifted the glowing sphere from the base on which it rested. The glossy surface was cool to the tough. For as strong and durable as the globe was, it weighed very little. Cradling the globe in his arms he returned to Zensa’s side. She had managed to rise to a sitting position, but was still breathing heavily.

  When Jorem knelt beside the Dragon Mage, she reached out toward the sphere. Her delicate fingers were just about to touch the glass when she jerked back as if burned. Her eyes were wide with fear. Her hand trembled, though clutched to her chest.

  “It is he, the Dragon Echalain. He is aware, and he is angry.” Zensa’s words were a bare whisper. “We must set him free.”

  Jorem drew his sword again and was about to strike the globe again when Zensa shouted, “WAIT!” Her order resounded with both command and fear.

  “After so many years, his essence must be freed as close to his body as possible. Otherwise, he may never find it.”

  “So where is his body?” Jorem asked bluntly.

  Zensa’s shoulders slumped. “I do not know,” she nearly sobbed.

  Just then a door in the next room burst open with such force it was torn from its hinges. A short, wide figure filled the space where the door had been. Dressed in a cloak of midnight black so long it dragged on the floor, the figure raised both hands above its head.

  “What have you done?” the apparition screamed.

  Jorem set the globe down, sword still in hand, and spun to face the new threat. With a shrug, the black-robed being’s hood fell back. A slack jawed, hairless, pudgy face emerged from the dark hood. The man’s mouth was nearly as wide as his face. His eyes were opened wide and held little sanity.

  From the tingling sensation at the back of his neck, Jorem knew the man was a mage and that magic was coming into play. Casting about, Jorem searched for something to throw. A shard from one of the broken containers came to hand. Slinging the shard at the mage, Jorem watched in dismay as it smashed against an unseen barrier surrounding the mage.

  A bright ball appeared between the mage’s hands. Jorem could only watch as it came hurdling toward him. At the last moment, the flaming ball exploded right in front of his face. Some sort of barrier had prevented the flames from reaching him. A hand grasped him from behind and tossed him to the side.

  Zensa stood in his place. Disheveled and dirty, she still looked more dangerous than anything Jorem had ever seen. With her arms stretched wide, she glared at the mage in the other room.

  “Release my master!” she hissed.

  “Die, witch!” the mage screamed.

  A steady stream of the flaming balls shot across the rooms. Jorem watched as one after another, they smashed against Zensa’s shield. Each explosion forced her shield back. Sweat beaded on her brow as she fought against the onslaught. She was losing.

  A flicker of light caught Jorem’s attention. Unnoticed in a dark corner of the room sat a small round table. Had it not been for the stream of fire balls, he would never have seen it. Resting on the table was a crimson red power stone.

  Created long ago, power stones were used by mages to augment their powers. If what he’d been told was true, even a feeble mage would have great power if he had the use of one of these stones. A faint glimmer from within the stone was enough to tell Jorem this stone was in use.

  The greatest weakness of power stones was their fragility. Even the warmth of a person’s hand could cause them to fracture. Jorem swung his sword at the stone. Before his sword was even close, it was deflected by another invisible barrier. Jorem struck again to no effect. The mage had put some sort of shield around the stone. A glance at Zensa showed her backed against the wall. He had to do something and it had to be soon.

  There was no way he could get through the doorway and reach the mage before being struck down. The orb was indestructible and even if he could break it, the dragon’s soul would never get back to its body. That left the power stone. Was there a way to get past the barrier? Or, perhaps around it?

  A quick probe with his sword under the table met no resistance. The stone was shielded, the table was not. “By simple things do mages fall,” Jorem recalled reading somewhere. A swift kick snapped one of the table legs. The table tilted and fell, almost in slow motion.

  As the edge of the table struck the stone floor, the power stone seemed to leap from its cradle. It spun through the air until it met with the invisible barrier shield. In the blink of an eye, the stone dissolved into thousands of sparkling, crimson shards.

  A strangled scream came from the other room. The steady stream of fireballs slowed to one at a time. Zensa pealed herself away from the wall and pushed her shield forward. The globe, the Forbidden, rolled across the floor and bumped into Jorem’s boot. He sheathed his sword and knelt to retrieve the globe.

  Before standing, he looked into the glowing light within the globe. All that had been around him vanished from sight. Zensa, the stone walls, the dark mage, all vanished. Sunlight streamed all around. He stood in a small clearing, with mountain peaks all around. A small grove of trees lined one side of the clearing. A myriad of boulders clogged the uphill end of the clearing with a vague trail leading to the downhill end.

  Bones were scattered about the clearing. Most of the bones were partially covered in the grass. One set of bones lay in a bare patch of ground. Tufts of yellowish fur still stuck to parts of the skeleton. The skull, with its jaws bristling teeth, glared at the world in defiance.

  Jorem knew this place. He had been here before. In fact, he’d very nearly died here. Across the clearing, opposite the trees and carved into the hillside, stood the gaping maw of a cave. The lair of the shimmerik, or was it more than that? Perhaps the shimmerik had been placed there to guard something.

  The scene flashed and was gone. A fireball exploded to Jorem’s side, illuminating the scene before him. Zensa looked like a rag doll left out in the rain. Her long black hair was plastered to her head with sweat. A fireball appeared on the palm of her hand. With a flick of her fingers, it flew past Jorem and through the doorway. Light flashed from the other room as Zensa’s fireball struck something.

  “You must go,” she hissed at him. “I can hold him for a time, but eventually I will run out of energy. He draws power from the Forbidden. I cannot defeat him.”

  “I know where he is,” Jorem said urgently. “I know where the dragon’s body is hidden.”

  Another fireball exploded against Zensa’s shield. She didn’t question his statement. Instead, she nodded and threw two more fireballs. �
��Is it far?” she asked without losing her concentration.

  “It would take a moon cycle to get there on foot, maybe longer,” Jorem replied.

  She waited until after the dark mage’s next fireball struck before risking a glance at Jorem. “Do you still carry the amulet I gave you?” she asked.

  Jorem pulled the leather tie from around his neck. Holding it out to Zensa, the sword shaped crystal flickered in the dim light coming in through the broken window. Without taking her eyes off the dark mage, she snatched the amulet out of the air.

  Even as another fireball struck, she pressed her thumb onto the point of the amulet. A dark stain slowly enveloped the crystal. She did not flinch in pain. By the movement of her lips, Jorem knew that she was saying something, but he could hear no words.

  Zensa turned her head toward Jorem. Fixing her gaze on him, she squeezed the amulet. He heard the crack as the crystal fractured. With all of the magic going on around him, the back of his neck felt like an entire colony of ants were crawling on it. When the crystal snapped, it felt like all of the ants chose that moment to see what he tasted like.

  Zensa said not a word. Her attention back on the dark mage, she resumed the exchange of fireballs. Jorem felt somewhere between helpless and useless. He knew he had some sort of natural ability that kept magic from affecting him, but he wasn’t sure what a magical fireball would do to him. Standing in front of one didn’t sound like a good way to find out.

  Chapter XXVI

  There he stood, globe in hand, watching two mages vie for supremacy. Back and forth the battle went. Zensa looked better than she had before the power stone had shattered, but she was a far cry from her normal, poised, self-assured, confident self. Occasionally, Jorem glimpsed the Dark Mage, but not enough to assess the mage’s condition.

  A loud crash behind him caused Jorem to spin around. His sword was drawn in an instant. If it was another mage, he’d have to be fast, and very lucky. What he encountered was nothing like he’d ever seen before.

  The remains of the broken window now lay scattered on the floor with the rest of the refuse from Jorem’s rampage. Where the window had been now stood a creature he would have been hard-pressed to imagine in one of his nightmares. It was blacker than the darkest night, with large wings tucked close to its sides like a midnight cloak.

  It reminded him of a night-flier, only he’d never seen one of those larger than the palm of his hand. Instead of the pug nose of a night-flier, this creature had a long snout much like a desert lizard. When it moved, its skin rippled like drifting sand. Jorem realized it was not skin at all, but countless tiny scales covering the creature’s entire body.

  Jorem sidestepped to place himself between Zensa and this new threat. It made no move to attack, but it certainly didn’t look friendly. Flashes of light from the battle behind him reflected off the creature’s hide. Black eyes protruded from hairless lids. Not once did it blink, but stood staring directly at Jorem.

  “It’s a Vorh!” Zensa shouted. “Mount it and go! Concentrate on where you want to be and hold tight!”

  Although Jorem knew it was never a good idea to argue with Zensa, he couldn’t see how this thing would be able to carry him. It was barely a head taller than he himself was, not to mention it looked more apt to eat him than carry him.

  “GO!” Zensa yelled. “Take the Forbidden and GO!”

  With one last glance back at Zensa, Jorem sheathed his sword and stepped toward the Vorh. A slight “pft” sound and the Vorh’s front became its back. Jorem wasn’t sure how it had done that and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Its back was more bone than anything. It reminded Jorem of the exposed ribs of a long dead carcass.

  Gripping the orb tightly under one arm, Jorem stepped up onto the window sill. Very carefully, he slid over onto the back of the Vorh. It wasn’t in the least bit comfortable, but there were plenty of knobby handholds and seams into which to wedge his arms, legs and feet. Once in place, he braced himself for whatever was about to happen.

  As Zensa had instructed, he closed his eyes and concentrated on the image of the clearing. Every tiny detail he could remember or think of, he did. It would do no good to end up in the wrong clearing so he focused on each item—the trees, the cave, the rocks and the bones. Jorem was beginning to think he was doing something wrong when his arms tried to separate themselves from his body.

  The jolt wasn’t so much from the Vorh leaping from the window as it was from the creature going from a standstill to full flight in the blink of an eye. Where his arrival to the room had been like being picked up and thrown, this departure was like grabbing onto a speeding wagon as it passed by. The feel of magic dissipated quickly. The howl of the wind in his ears grew to a high-pitched wail.

  Even with his eyes closed tight, tears streamed down his face. Unable to resist, Jorem cracked his eyes open the tiniest bit. The sky looked normal, other than the clouds racing from horizon to horizon. The ground, or what should have been the ground, was a complete blur.

  There was nothing like a steady beat to the Vorh’s movements. Up and down they went, with no warning. Within a short time, Jorem was forced to squeeze his eyes shut again and concentrate solely on not losing the contents of his stomach.

  There was no way to tell how fast they were traveling, nor where they might be. Jorem’s fingers were going numb and he was beginning to worry about his grip on the Vorh when suddenly he felt himself crushed into the creature’s back. Apparently stopping was much the same as starting. A quick peek confirmed that they had arrived.

  Jorem carefully unwound himself from the Vorh and dropped to the ground. No sooner had his feet touched down, than the Vorh was gone. Still dazed, Jorem stood blinking at his surroundings. The clearing was just as the vision had shown him. Even the desiccated remains of the shimmerik were as he had seen.

  Taking a step toward the cave, Jorem stumbled and fell. He hadn’t realized how chilled his body had gotten in the short time he’d been on the Vorh. Getting back to his feet, he concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, while his body slowly warmed up.

  Entering the cave, he felt the temperature drop. The farther in he went, the cooler it got. The light from the cave entrance faded with each step. Soon, the only light was that being emitted by the globe he carried. Oddly, the light from the globe increased the farther into the cave he went.

  A large pillar-like formation blocked most of the path into a high, vaulted cavern. Jorem negotiated his way over a jumble of boulders at the base of the pillar. He pulled the globe out from under his arm and held it out to illuminate the cavern. The pillar he was squeezing around rose up and molded itself into a large mass filling most of the space.

  Jorem swallowed a lump that had formed in his throat. Looking closely at the pillar, he could see that the rough, rock-like surface was actually a myriad of interlocking scales. The pile of rocks he was standing on was actually the foot of a dragon. It was obvious now that he knew what he was looking at. The foot was large enough to wrap around a fair-sized horse. The claws protruding from the end of each digit were large enough and sharp enough to rend said horse to pieces.

  Delicately, Jorem stepped off the dragon’s foot. He had expected something big—this was a dragon, after all. But this was more than just big; it was enormous. Even though he could only see a small portion, the dragon was obviously as large as several houses put together. Now all he had to do was figure out how to get the thing in the globe out of the tiny orb and into the body of the massive creature.

  Setting the globe down, Jorem drew his sword. He tried striking it with the blade as he had before, with similar results. Pounding on the sphere with the hilt did nothing. When he tried stabbing it with the point, his sword glanced off and nearly skewered his foot. Setting down his sword, he picked up the globe and smashed it against a rock. He even tried striking the dragon with the globe. Nothing seemed to have any affect.

  For as cool as the cavern was, Jorem was sweating profusely. Sitting dow
n for a moment, he wracked his mind for some way to break open the globe. He could build a fire and heat the thing up. If that didn’t work, he’d heard dowsing hot glass with water would cause it to fracture. The water pouch tied to his waist was only half full, but it might be worth a try.

  Picking up his sword from where he’d left it, he deftly slid the blade into the scabbard strapped to his back. The body heat he had generated with his efforts quickly dissipated into the cool moist air in the cavern. His body felt cool again, except for his back, which was still quite warm. Reaching behind his neck to lift the shirt from his skin, Jorem’s hand brushed the hilt of one of his hidden blades. It was warm.

  This blade was different from any of the others. Gifted to him by a rider of the Folk, the dagger was unique. Although the hilt and blade were plain in appearance, the dagger was somehow sensitive to the coming of the Folk. “Are they coming?” Jorem wondered. He didn’t think so. They seldom paid much heed to the happenings of this world.

  So, why would the blade be getting warm?

  “Unless…,” Jorem thought. “Unless it’s not the Folk the blade reacts to, but their magic—old magic.”

  Setting the globe down so that it rested atop the dragon’s foot, Jorem knelt down beside the glowing sphere. Taking the dagger in a two-handed grip, he carefully moved the point down toward the globe. The closer the blade got to the globe, the warmer it got. The warmth was not uncomfortable, but definitely noticeable.

  The tip of the dagger began to glow until it matched the light emanating from the globe. When the tip of the dagger touched the globe, the blade turned white hot. The hilt remained merely warm to the touch, but Jorem could feel the heat from that small spot at the tip of the blade washing over him. It was like standing next to a raging fire, yet it was just a tiny spot, no bigger than the end of his finger.

  Small fissures began spreading across the surface of the globe. To Jorem’s dismay, those same fissures crept up the length of the blade. Gradually the light diminished until only the light within the globe remained. A tension in the air—one Jorem hadn’t even realized was there—withdrew like the cutting of a bow string. The blade of the dagger and the globe crumbled to dust.