Honor Bound Trilogy Box Set

by Jon Kiln

  “You lied,” Solag cried with one clear voice. “You pulled me back from darkness only to use me to put a permanent shadow over the world. I will not go back into the darkness again.”

  Caffrey let go of his half and the Artifact closed together. Berengar held the entire piece as it merged into one uninterrupted circle. As he held it, the Eye wrapped around him and he felt his body come apart. Berengar, as one with the Eye, propelled up out of the battle overlooking the entire world and infinite worlds traveling out from it in every direction.

  He did not just see them, but felt them and every living thing on every one of them. He could touch them all or each individual as he chose. He could travel between them and move them to put any one of them in place. He saw worlds with thrones and crowns already in place for him without bloodshed. It was just as the vision of Faithcore had said it could be.

  He looked down and saw Solag and Caffrey lying charred and dead on the field below. They did not just look dead. He knew it for a fact because he could feel it. He looked out into other worlds where they still lived and he could kill them over again. He saw worlds where Solag fought as his General, conquering lands.

  He saw worlds where his wife still lived as his queen and his son still lived as his heir. He could pull those worlds to him and have them again. Touching every living thing, he could see that many others would be erased to bring those two back, but Berengar did not care once he knew they were whole and alive again.

  He looked behind himself and saw worlds where he lived quietly with his family while others ruled. They answered to Berengar for he could throw any king out of existence at a whim.

  Berengar squinted and looked deeper. In every world, he would one day die. His son or another then held the Eye and eventually darkness covered the land. Sometimes it happened later, but it always happened. Sometimes Berengar split the Eye into quarters as his ancestor Faithcore had done, but the battle over the Eye happened again in some future generation and darkness came once more. Some of the villains Berengar saw were darker than even Caffrey had been. He saw a world where he gave the Eye to King Ramael and darkness fell immediately. Berengar could not see the difference between Caffrey, Marlex, nor Ramael any longer.

  Berengar looked back down to the world below him. It was the one created without the Eye’s unnatural power. Those that died and lived had done so from the choices they had made or that were made by others.

  Berengar could not destroy the Eye any more than Faithcore had been able to. He could quarter it again, but the outcome was always the same.

  Captain Berengar realized that he had the power to move sideways between worlds and above them for as far into infinity as he cared to search, but maybe he did not have to go with the Eye as it traveled apart from time. Caffrey had told Berengar that he always had the option to let go.

  Berengar braced himself as well as he could without a body and he sent the Eye sideways at the same moment he let go. It tore away from him as if it were tearing him apart and Berengar screamed in pain with one voice.

  He had not considered his own survival and as he watched the Eye recede alone into eternity. He did not care.

  Still, he felt himself fall.

  He crashed back into his own body and his vocal chords picked up the scream his soul had begun above and apart from the world.

  He realized he was standing in the charred field over the bodies of his enemies. The warriors of King Ramael around Berengar picked up the cry and charged Caffrey’s confused forces. The enemy scattered, being no longer protected by the energy of the half Eye in Caffrey’s hands.

  As he stared on the fallen bodies of Solag and Caffrey, Berengar dropped to his knees and then fell to his face.

  Chapter 19: Facing the Consequences

  Nisero took hold of Berengar’s shoulders and pulled the Captain back up to his knees. Berengar saw the Elite Guard and the army of King Ramael drive into the breaking lines of Caffrey’s mercenaries and the soldiers from the east. With Solag and Caffrey fallen, their will to fight broke along with their formations. The forces of Ramael pressed and pursued east to overtake those that tried to flee.

  Berengar assumed there was a king farther east waiting to seek revenge still for the death of another prince. That reality was unchanged. If it was finessed right, peace could be struck as Caffrey was ultimately to blame, but Berengar did not have great hope that either king was inclined toward peace.

  Berengar looked for the knife that Solag had planted in Caffrey’s ribs as she was consumed and devoured by the energy of the Great Artifact trying to draw itself back together. He did not see it in Lord Caffrey’s wounded side, nor in Solag’s blackened hands. Perhaps it had not made it back into reality like Berengar had. A blade that decided the fate of all of time might be too important to stay in the real world. He thought it might also be buried inside Caffrey’s body from the intense bursts of energy. Either way, it had done its work.

  Berengar stared on the body of the woman that had murdered his son and wife and their entire village with them, and had also saved him and the entire world from the evil of Caffrey. Berengar was not sure how to think of her any longer. He thought about the possibilities he had passed up to have his wife and son back alive again. He did not know what to think of himself in passing on saving their lives once more.

  If he were given the power of the Eye again and forced to make the choice once more, he was not sure that he could turn that power down a second time. He searched for hope or strength within himself and could not seem to draw it up. When Berengar came back to face the King without the Eye any longer in the world, he did not have great hope at all.

  “Captain, are you okay? Where is the Great Artifact?”

  Berengar coughed and wiped blood from his mouth. He was not sure which reality the blood was from.

  “Lieutenant, return to the city with a small group and the bodies of Solag and Caffrey. There are two agents of the King on the road behind us as well. Conscript them to join you too. Have the bodies delivered to the palace with the message that I was injured, but I’m returning with the Great Artifact now. I did not trust anyone else to deliver it.”

  Nisero stood. “Yes, Captain, but where is it?”

  “It is gone,” Berengar said staring at the ground on his knees. “As it should be. While the message is being delivered, you need to go to Arianne and Drethallen. I’m not sure how closely they are being watched, but my hope is that the bodies arriving along with other reports will be enough of a distraction. Get out of the city. Go to Sault in Patron’s Hill and tell him we need my family hidden. If word comes of my demise or a search for my family, keep them safe wherever you have to go. Am I asking too great a thing, Nisero?”

  “Unto the ends of the world, if needed,” Nisero said. “I will be here for you as you have always been for me in my times of greatest need. Try to join us, if you can, sir.”

  “I will always try, but this may be the end of our adventures one way or the other.”

  Nisero gathered a small party and the bodies of their fallen enemies.

  Berengar waited a day and then rode alone back to the capital. Men on horses flanked him at the gate and accompanied him back toward the palace. Citizens cried hails from the streets as they passed, but Berengar remained silent.

  Belsh rode out into the street in front of the party. The man at Berengar’s side waved his fist at Belsh and said, “Move aside, boy.”

  “I have a message for you, Lieutenant Nisero,” Belsh said. “All is well and everyone got out safely.”

  Berengar gave a single nod.

  “I’m not Nisero,” the man next to Berengar said. “You have the wrong man. Move aside.”

  “My apologies.” Belsh rode quickly away.

  As Berengar stepped off his mount, another group of guards on foot surrounded him at the outer gate of the palace. They took his sword again and searched him for other weapons. Captain Berengar limped across the grounds and through the doors with the armed g
uards around him.

  None of them offered him support as he took the stairs. He braced one hand on the wall as they went and they ascended slowly.

  As they reached the passage leading to the King’s chambers, the doors burst open and King Ramael advanced on them at the head of the stairs. The guards parted for the King and Berengar stood in the center of the floor with nothing to lean on for support nor to brace himself.

  Ramael’s teeth were showing and veins stood out on his forehead as he glared up at Captain Berengar before him. Ramael reached out and clutched Berengar’s jaw underneath the chin. He lifted the captain’s face in a hand that shook from the painfully tight grip.

  “You lied to your King,” Ramael growled. “You disobeyed your King. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  “Caffrey and Solag are fallen. Their forces are dispersed. The threat to the south is gone. The army from east retreats before your forces. The threat of the Great Artifact is gone from this world too, sire. That is the only place where I have failed you.”

  Ramael drew a knife from his belt and brought it to Berengar’s exposed neck.

  “You are not royalty no matter what your thin bloodline to Faithcore may have you thinking,” King Ramael said. “I can slice you open here and watch you bleed out. It is my right as King and would be justified by your betrayal. Why did you lose the Eye?”

  Berengar gazed at the ceiling with the sharp edge against his skin shaking in the King’s grasp.

  “I did not understand its power,” Berengar said finally. “Caffrey and I were holding it at the same time when the pieces drew together. Our visions intertwined and it was too much to follow. Solag attacked with her own mind and intentions. As the battle raged between worlds, the Great Artifact moved sideways between worlds and was lost. Maybe I should have tried to hold onto it, but it was the heat of battle which is hard enough with one’s feet firmly within one world, my King.”

  “Is this you begging for your life, Captain?”

  “I serve at the pleasure of the King,” Berengar said. “And I submit my life to your judgment and mercy, your majesty.”

  Ramael released Berengar’s neck and lowered the knife. “You said you left your family to my mercy, but then you sent your Lieutenant to steal them away from under my nose. You do not believe that he can hide from me forever, if I choose for them to pay with their lives for your actions, do you?”

  “I do not wish for them to suffer for this, but you are the King.”

  “If I ordered you to bring them back, you would?” the King asked.

  “No,” Berengar replied, “but I am here now, if you need a target for your rage, sire.”

  Ramael threw down the knife and it bounced against the hard floor. He turned his back on the Captain. “You do not dictate terms to me. I should have never trusted you with my Corner of the Eye. I held its power in my hand and now it is gone because I trusted you. I will not make that mistake again. You and your sneaky Lieutenant are stripped of rank and removed from the Elite Guard. Your descendants are hereby forbidden to serve in the army of the King for five generations from any future sons, your grandson and onward to your great, great, great grandchildren by decree of the King this day. I should place you in the dungeons under the palace to rot away in darkness, but you are far too resourceful to trust that close. I would put you to death, but you seem resistant to it and others have tried. I will banish you, but I have not decided where or how far. Take this man from my presence never to return to it. Chain him down outside and keep him under guard until further orders.”

  They took hold of Berengar’s arms and moved him toward the stairs. Berengar watched over his shoulder. Ramael did not turn nor move from the spot until he was out of sight and seen no more.

  Chapter 20: Banishment

  Berengar lifted the snare loops off the stakes and hung the dead rabbits from them over his shoulder. They were not the largest he had caught, but they would do fine to feed him for the evening.

  A noise off to his left in the forest drew his attention. Berengar crouched down and held the trunk of the tree next to him as he listened. He had no more battles left to fight, but old habits stuck with him. There were still people left in the world that intended him harm and he wasn’t putting it past the King to wake up one morning and decide he wanted Berengar’s eyes for taking the power of the Eye away from him.

  The noises through the woods moved away and appeared to be ordinary animal population. That did not mean that some assassin did not lie in wait for Berengar to put his guard back down again. Still, he needed to cook his rabbits.

  Berengar stood again and made his way between the trees. He heard voices ahead, but did not duck down again.

  Berengar emerged between two buildings and turned west once he reached the well. A few men saluted him and Berengar waved back. The town seemed busier than he remembered from years ago. This new version of the place with the new people was faster paced. Everyone acted like they were in a hurry. Sometimes Berengar thought that most of them feared if they slowed down even just a little, that it would all turn to mist and to vapor around them like a path that was too thin for them to hold onto.

  He also thought that maybe the town was always this busy, and that he was away for so long through his years as a warrior that he simply did not remember things the way they truly were.

  He reached the house on the lot out near the western edge of Patron’s Hill. He stood at the end of the cobbled walk. These were the same walking stones that had marked the path since he had been small. Berengar had merely pulled the weeds and scraped away the dirt that had covered them in the neglected years between his wife’s and son’s deaths and the repatriation of the town.

  The house was new. It was not as big as the one burned down by Solag, but that house had not been as big when it was first built either. That had been more house than he needed in the end anyway. The chimney was the original one from the previous house as well.

  Berengar took the path finally and stopped short of the door. He raised his fist to knock, but then stopped himself. He still thought of this as someone else’s house.

  He took a deep breath and pushed the door open as he entered.

  Nisero was seated at the table with Drethallen on his knee. Nisero had some book open in front of them with pictures under words. Berengar saw a dragon on the page that was open. Berengar thought that they should teach the boy real animals first before moving on to creatures of legend. Berengar did not know much about teaching children to read and Nisero’s family was full of teachers, so Berengar let it go.

  Arianne hoisted a pot off the fire onto the edge of the hearth by a hook. She looked up at her father and frowned. “Is the stew good enough, or do you wish to skin and roast those rabbits tonight?”

  Berengar lifted the animals off his shoulder by their cords and looped them over a hook on the wall next to the door. “They will keep a day. I’ll skin them after we eat and stretch the fur out. We can roast them tomorrow.”

  Nisero closed the book and set it aside. Drethallen was already taking long blinks upon Nisero’s knee. He might be asleep before dinner was over.

  Arianne ladled out four bowls of stew and then sat down herself. Berengar took his seat beside her, across from Nisero still holding the boy as he ate. After a few bites of his own stew, Nisero put the spoon in the boy’s hand. Drethallen took one small sip of the broth before returning the spoon to his bowl.

  “You need to eat,” Arianne said.

  “My mouth is sleepy,” Drethallen pouted.

  Nisero stood up with the boy in his arms. “I can put him to bed.”

  “He needs to eat or he’ll be starved in the morning and under my feet,” she said.

  “Maybe if we just let him sit a while, he’ll get hungry,” Nisero tried.

  The boy’s head drooped.

  Berengar chuckled. “He’ll probably be face down in the stew.”

  “I can put him to bed,” Nisero said again.


  Arianne stood and walked around the table. She kissed Nisero on the mouth as she lifted the boy from his arms. “You eat,” she said. “You’ve both had a long day. Also, Dreth will talk you into another story and we’ll never see you again.”

  As Arianne carried the boy up the stairs, Nisero returned his attention to the stew. Berengar took the boy’s bowl and scraped the contents into his own.

  “Any word from the capital?” Berengar asked.

  Nisero cut his eyes at the stairs and back to Berengar. Nisero spoke in hushed tones. “Nothing of importance. Captain Stoleck is still friendly toward us and sends messages through Belsh when he can. It seems the King is occupied with the push to the east. The war has almost reached the enemy capital and he has designs upon a united kingdom under his crown. We seem to be out of his sight and therefore fully off his mind. Perhaps in banishing you to your own home town, he was coming as close to forgiveness as he is capable. The matter may be closed in his eyes. As long as he stays occupied, maybe it will stay that way too.”

  “Good,” Berengar said, but not convinced. “I fear he will find that occupying a hostile empire is far more complicated than ruling a kingdom. It could remind him that we denied him the powers of the Great Artifact.”

  “To be fair, you denied him the Great Artifact. I just followed orders.”

  Berengar grunted and then said, “Yes, you followed my orders to steal away my family from the King. Then, you married into my family. The King called you my sneaky Lieutenant. I’m afraid he lumps you in with me on this one.”

  Nisero smiled and took another bite of stew. “Just think, I could have been captain one day had I not kept following along on wild adventures with you.”

  “And I’d be hidden in the northern hills had you not come to me with a mystery to solve and kingdom to save after I was retired the first time.”

  “Arianne has always been dubious of the influence you and I have on one another,” Nisero said. “If I had not gotten you, Marlex would be king and Caffrey would have helped him get the rest of the Eye.”