She was in an unfamiliar town, and a crowd was assembled. A figure moved through the crowd in a flowing red robe that she somehow knew was made from the same red fabric Faud had just handed her. Her senses thrilled as she saw the figure through the crowd, but, try as she might, she could not catch more than a glimpse of him. She had a sense of incredible peace that seemed heightened whenever she managed to catch sight of that red robe.
Then, slowly, she became conscious of Faud’s voice in her ear, the fact that she was resting on her back on the cold stone, and of the stale air of the cave. The vision of the town and the wonderful figure faded.
“We call this ‘Kinslayer.’ It is an ancestral weapon used by Witchawn when we fight. You know us as witches, of course. I am Kendral Witchawn, last of the Witchawn line—since you killed my sister, and the blue devils killed my other sibling, that is. The wretch known as Faud died some time ago when we happened upon him and his family. His circumstances have proven to be an effective cover for me. It’s taken me surprisingly little time to get close to you.”
Faud had a firm grip on her neck, and was close to choking her, but Hemlock felt her senses and strength returning rapidly. She bided her time and listened, as she wondered about him and his change in tone.
Is he claiming to be a Witch?
“The Kinslayer is said to show the victim an alternate life, and render them helpless to resist or defend themselves. It is said to provide some glorious vision which robs the victim of the will to resist. My sister underestimated you. Clearly, if you have the power to slay one of us, then you must be one of us. She should have used the Kinslayer against you. But the fool left it in her ziggurat. After she was slain, I searched the ruins of her fortress, and I found it.”
Faud shifted position and sat in front of her, his forked tongue convincing Hemlock that his tale was more than the product of the delusions of a Tanna Varran warrior.
But I thought the witches could only possess women?
“I had no great love for my sister, but the Tanna Varrans hunt us now, and I will not crawl into some hole and wait to die. I will kill you and then I will kill Tored. Once I do that, the Tanna Varrans will have no true leaders. Then I will finally deliver our race from their annoying intransigence, and my people will unite behind their first King to drive the Tanna Varrans from our lands like the wretches that they are!”
Hemlock felt her full strength restored and at her command. With a rapid strike, she pummeled the unsuspecting Witch in the jaw, and he lost hold of her neck, landing hard against the rock wall some ten feet distant.
Hemlock stood and unsheathed her sabres, conscious of the Tanna Varran magic that flowed through them as a result of a recent enchantment by their shamans.
The Witch discarded the physique of Faud in a small explosion of flesh and blood, which left the cave floor slick with fluid for ten feet in every direction. The pale form of an impossibly noble man stood before her, possessing a beauty comparable to his sister.
“I see that the Kinslayer didn’t work. So you are not of our kind,” the witch stated flatly, his voice taking on an ethereal quality and a different pitch than when he had posed as Faud.
The Witch began to run swiftly, surprising Hemlock. He almost escaped from her view before Hemlock caught him with an inhuman burst of speed and hamstrung him with two swift blows from behind.
The Witch fell hard, rolled and struck at Hemlock with a ghostly blade that appeared from nowhere in his hand.
Hemlock parried, going on the defensive as the Witch pressed a violent and skillful volley of thrusts and slashes.
Noticing a tendency toward advancing too rapidly in her adversary, Hemlock drew him in with a step back and then stepped into his attack, catching him with a thrust from her sabre in the upper chest beside his sword arm.
He cried out and struck at her with his other arm in a balled fist, but Hemlock was able to duck most of the blow, and only suffered a glancing hit as she dropped low and disengaged.
The witch’s fine features were wavering, switching to an elderly and gaunt face and then switching back to a glorious picture of manhood in its prime.
He smiled suddenly, and dropped his sword, as his chest wound spewed a chalky white substance which dissipated before it reached the floor of the cavern.
“I can see that my gamble has cost me. End it swiftly for me then. Complete the slaughter of my people. Is that all you are, then—a vengeful killer? You just spoke of family and friendship. You seem to aspire to loftier ideals. But in the end, you’re a cold-blooded killer, like we all are.”
He spat at her contemptuously.
Hemlock regarded him for a few moments. Then, reaching a decision, she walked toward him.
He closed his eyes and tilted his head downward, preparing for the coup-de-gras.
His eyes bolted open as Hemlock slipped the red cloth around his wrist.
“NO!” was the last thing he shouted before his eyes took on a distant look.
Hemlock left him there for several minutes, watching as his form fully assumed its natural, elderly appearance. But she became increasingly troubled by his sobbing and crying. Finally she took pity on him and removed the cloth.
Thinking to place the cloth into her belt pouch, she was surprised to feel it disintegrate in her hand.
She waited several moments for him to become aware of his surroundings.
When he was able to speak, he muttered with a mixture of awe and bitterness: “You are my liberator and my destroyer. You have done far worse than kill me, but by doing so you have given me a chance to save myself. I cannot bear this knowledge, though! How can I bear it?”
“What did you see?” she asked.
“It was a shining place…a Town. I was a young boy tending to the Master. My soul was pure. Some taint which now lies upon me was lifted, and I saw what I could have been. What I…should be. Oh, please! Slay me, for I cannot bear to live with this knowledge!”
“I’m letting you live. Go now, and leave the Tanna Varrans alone for the rest of your life.”
“What is my life now except for a final, sad refrain awaiting the end of this song, and the beginning of the next?”
With that, the Witch crawled off into the passage, and was never seen again.
Amazed by yet another violent turn in her fortunes, Hemlock composed herself and returned to the cavern where Renevos and the wizards were waiting. She feared that Tored and the others would doubt her tale, so she recovered the velvet lined box, so they might see some evidence of what had transpired.
Tored and all of the Tanna Varrans were startled by her tale.
“Faud was a witch? A male witch?” was asked of her over and over again.
Finally Tored ended the repetitive questioning. “Enough. Hemlock has been through a tremendous ordeal, and has delivered our people from the final Witch. We will rest here until she regains her strength.”
“No, Tored. I’m fine. We can travel again,” replied Hemlock.
Umra Vyle stepped forward solemnly. “Hemlock, I thank you on behalf of my people for this great act of heroism. Now my people can live securely in the knowledge that all of the Witch Lords have been slain.”
Tored had a look of distaste on his face. “Well spoken. We will rest for four hours. Hemlock, I will not be convinced otherwise, so please rest.”
Something about Umra Vyle attracted Hemlock’s attention. She saw a calculating look pass over his face before he spoke again. “Now the Kingdom of Tanna Varra can look toward its future.”
The Umra clan cheered, and Umra Vyle looked pointedly at Tored as he basked in the adulation of his clan. The older warrior frowned and looked away.
Tored and Taros Sundar sat with Hemlock as she passed the time. If anything, the fight with the Witch had made her anxious to move, but she didn’t want to argue with Tored, so she made the best of the time by chatting with the Tanna Varrans. She decided not to mention the specifics of the red fabric or anything about the vision she had
had when she touched it. As they talked, her mind started to wander, and she thought of Merit and the secret book that he was reading.
Maybe there will be something in the book about the red fabric—and the red-robed man. She felt a lightness of mood that she rarely experienced after a fight. It must be because I let him live.
Hemlock decided to change the subject.
“What’s Umra Vyle up to now? Something about his little speech back there bothered me,” she said.
“He was just being his usual pompous self, I think,” said Taros Sundar.
“He did seem emboldened to me,” said Tored.
“Why would he start throwing his weight around?” asked Hemlock.
After a moment, Tored’s brow furrowed. “He probably judges that his time to rule is now imminent with the demise of the final witch. Perhaps he is right.”
“Do not speak of that! Vyle must never be King!” said Taros Sundar.
“But who or what will stop him? The Elders seem to favor him, and you have no interest in competing with him,” replied Tored.
“Someone may stop him yet,” said Taros Sundar.
“Your meaning is not lost on me, but you seek to thwart his rise to the throne without providing a suitable alternative. You seek to undermine rather than to build your own base of power. The Elders will favor him because he projects power. You project artifice and guile. Consider my words. You must find your power and use it!” said Tored.
“I’m no politician, Tored. I’ve told you that. You speak of my methods with contempt, yet these are my strengths. I know this to be so. Is it a sin to employ one’s abilities and put them to their best and most noble use? I am not like you; I do not think like you,” said Taros Sundar.
“Taros Sundar, you must begin to think like I do if you wish to remain with this tribe. You have set yourself in opposition to Umra Vyle, but you confront him as a boy when he defies you as a man. Politics is a man’s art—not a boy’s. You must embrace your manhood!” said Tored.
“You see things through the lens of your experience. My lens is different—clearer, I think. The witches are finished. A new age is upon us, and I will play a role in finding the leader for this age. And it will not be Umra Vyle!” said Taros Sundar.
Hemlock saw Tored ball his hands into fists as the veins protruded over his massive biceps as they tensed up. Tored composed himself and turned to Hemlock. “I must excuse myself.” He rose and moved to the other side of the cavern, where he sat at some distance from the others.
When Hemlock turned back to Taros Sundar, the youth regarded Tored with one of his playful grins. This time Hemlock was not amused, however.
“You talk to Tored like he is some kind of relic from the old days. He’s the greatest hero of your race! You should treat him with some respect!” she said.
“I have a great respect for him. I credit him with our very survival in the face of the threat from the witches. He prevented the pacifism of Pan Taros from leaving us helpless in the face of that threat. And, of course, I have to give you great credit for slaying two of the witches yourself. You may be the greatest hero of our age—not Tored.”
“That’s ridiculous! I just happened to be in the right place to fight both of those witches. All right, maybe Tored would have needed some help with the strongest witch—but this one I just fought was far weaker. Tored could have taken him out. And don’t forget that he planned the entire battle of Tor Varnos and the ensuing campaign against the wizards.”
“True enough. As I said, I have a great respect for him, but it is time for new ideas and new leaders. I will use new weapons against Umra Vyle, and he will try to fight me with old ones. He cannot win. He’ll realize that eventually.”
“What about a duel?”
“If he challenges me, the Elders will regard him as an unsophisticated brute. We may have returned to our warrior roots of late, but the practice of dueling is still considered barbaric.”
“Tored thinks that Vyle would duel you. Are you sure that the Elders and the people would cast him aside if he dueled with you?”
“I’m certain of it. Many of the Elders are still cut from the same mold as Pan Taros. And now the witches are defeated. How could a return to our old and violent ways be a path forward for us now? We will be returning to our ancient lands soon. We must be ready to become civilized again.”
“If dueling is so distasteful then why is it still legal?”
“Because there hasn’t been one in so long that people don’t even think about it. Tored was raised in the old traditions. That’s the only reason he’s obsessed with duels.”
Hemlock sighed. She had no inclination to continue to argue, since she doubted that Taros Sundar would change his mind no matter what she said to him.
The remaining hours passed, and Tored soon called the group together to journey through the caves to their next point of egress to the surface, where they would begin their final flight to Tor Varnos.
The group walked through the twisting caverns in silence. Hemlock felt the tension between the Umra and Taros clans, and the silence seemed to magnify it.
She was relieved when they reached the surface again and took wing. As she soared with the Tanna Varrans and the wizards, she hoped that the peace that had returned to her was also influencing the Tanna Varrans.
Tor Varnos was in sight, and it only took an hour of flight before the group reached the town. They set down about a hundred yards outside of it. Apparently their approach had been spotted, for hasty preparations were underway for a welcoming celebration. Though she had seen a similar celebration once before, Hemlock marveled at the brightly colored banners that were being unfurled up and down the vertical length of the town’s wooden structure as a welcome to them.
Within the time it took for the returning travelers to walk fifty yards, most of the town had moved out onto the balconies to cheer them. Hemlock noted that the town Elders had assembled on the prominent balcony that ringed the lower part of the town, from which a broad ramp was carefully lowered toward the approaching group.
Hemlock, who had been walking with the wizards, moved to the front of the group to walk beside Tored, hoping to ask him about the plans for moving on to the next phase of their adventure into the cursed vale.
But when Tored noticed her, he immediately began to speak. "The Vyle clan is insisting that Umra Vyle should be presented as the hero of the expedition for driving off the rainbow wildcat," stated Tored evenly.
"What?" Hemlock’s eyes squinted in disbelief.
"Taros Sundar tells me that you told him a different version of the events with the Cat."
"Well, yeah! Umra Vyle was running away like a coward! I can't believe that he'd allow himself to be nominated like this."
"Taros Sundar has agreed that Umra Vyle should be nominated."
"What? Why?"
"He says that Vyle was probably nominated against his wishes, but has no alternative but to accept the nomination of his clan for sake of honor. He probably claimed to have slain the Cat himself when explaining it to his clan."
"That does make sense, but I'm surprised that Taros Sundar—of all people—would agree to bestow this honor on Vyle. It makes me sick!"
"And it disgusts me as well; but for the sake of avoiding further confrontation, I have agreed to it. I am encouraged that Taros Sundar sees the wisdom in this. Perhaps your talk with him has changed his perspective after all."
"Perhaps," said Hemlock skeptically. He sure didn’t seem that convinced to me! “Tored! I think Taros Sundar may be planning something.”
But Tored was already walking briskly to the front of the group and addressing the Elders: “People of Tor Varnos! We greet you on our return from the distant City!”
He was greeted by an enthusiastic ringing of bells and sounding of horns from the adoring people.
“Sadly, we have had a hard journey. Three members of our band were slain by a strange beast that ambushed us.”
The crowd hushe
d at this remark, and there were wails of anguish as some onlookers realized that their kin were not among the returned.
“I present a man to you as hero of the expedition. He battled the beast…bravely and…overcame it. I present to you: Umra Vyle!”
Umra Vyle stepped forward. Hemlock saw he had perceived Tored’s less than enthusiastic announcement of the honor. Soon smiling and waving, Umra Vyle prepared to launch into the air and land on the ramp, so that he would be the first to return to the town, which was a position of honor.
But as he burst into the air with a flourish of unnecessary thrust, he was suddenly engulfed in a cloud of blue, chalky powder. He rose twenty feet into the air, became disoriented, coughed violently, and fell flailing to the earth—which he struck hard.
There were many gasps from the townspeople, and the members of the Vyle clan rushed forward, to aid their leader.
Hemlock looked at Tored, and his confused stare toward Umra Vyle told her all that she needed to know about the surprising character of the unfolding situation.
Hemlock heard someone nearby exclaim, “Someone has powdered his wings!”
Further explanation emerged in the form of the sound of a man laughing hysterically beside her. It was Taros Sundar. He was pointing and laughing. The members of his tribe beside him soon joined him, although Hemlock detected a nervous tension in their laughter. Soon pockets of laughter burst out from the assembled townsfolk, while others booed loudly.
Umra Vyle was up, and in a flash, he was running toward Taros Sundar, wielding his spear. His clansmen formed up beside him.
Taros Sundar’s smile drained from his face as he and his clansmen moved into battle stances to accept the charge from the Umra clan. Hemlock was unsure whether to intervene or not, but Tored quickly stepped between the two clans.
“Stop in the name of the Steward of the King!” he screamed, his own spear raised in one muscled arm.
Umra Vyle stopped short; his clan followed his lead.
Umra Vyle, now held in check by Tored’s authority, erupted, "I will duel Taros Sundar! The old law makes it my right! He has insulted my honor! None can gainsay this!"
Hemlock And The Dead God's Legacy (Book 2) Page 9