“Was it really necessary to draw steel on your own guards?” he asked.
Kiri shrugged. “I don’t know how much time Gavin has, and I didn’t want him to die while they postured and dithered. Besides, how far away from drawing steel were you?”
Declan chose not to answer that question, and the Cavaliers in the hall glanced to one another, all wondering what steel Declan had to draw.
“How is he, Elayna?” Kiri asked as she watched her friend lean over Gavin.
“I can just barely feel his life-beat,” Elayna said. “It’s faint, very faint.”
“Whatever you need,” Kiri said, “name it.”
Elayna took a deep breath and released it as a slow sigh. “I fear he is beyond the hope of herbs and apothecaries. I shall pray.”
Elayna squared her shoulders and closed her eyes, concentrating on that connection to her ancestor she had felt all her life…the elven woman the world knew as Xanta. She slowly rubbed her hands together as she recited the words to the prayer that would call upon her faith and channel Xanta’s power for healing. Within a moment of completing the prayer, a healthy green glow the color of nature—vibrant and alive in the newness of Spring—surrounded her right hand. Elayna reached out and took Gavin’s hand in hers as she closed her eyes to concentrate on channeling as much of Grandmother’s power as She would allow.
But Elayna rocked back on her heels as a solid wall of shimmering golden power unfolded across her senses, cutting her off from channeling any power into Gavin. A voice spoke with such power and strength within her mind it rattled her consciousness like thunder rattles windows.
YOU SHALL NOT INTERFERE
Elayna released Gavin’s hand, allowing it to fall back to rest upon the mattress as she weaved to regain her balance.
“What happened?” Kiri asked. “What’s wrong?”
Elayna blinked her eyes and moved her head like she was trying to shake her thoughts clear. Finally, she looked up to meet Kiri’s gaze and said, “I can do nothing for him.”
“So, he’s beyond all hope then?” Kiri asked, her voice catching. “He’s dying?”
“No, child, that’s not what I meant. Grandmother and I are not allowed to intervene. I was blocked from channeling Her healing power into Gavin.”
“Blocked?” Braden asked. “Blocked by whom?”
“I don’t know,” Elayna said, but she suspected. Only another god could block a god’s influence, and only one god chose gold for a primary color.
Kiri looked for all the world like she was about to collapse in a torrent of tears, but suddenly, her expression hardened as her eyes shifted from wet with moisture to a glare. She pivoted on her heel and strode from the room, confused Cavaliers trailing in her wake.
Kiri approached her objective, and by now, her glare was such no one who met her dared say a word. She reached the doors to the palace’s shrine to Valthon and turned to the two Cavaliers who’d been with her since she rode through the palace gates.
“You will wait out here, no matter what you hear in there,” Kiri said, her voice the personification of death. “I’ll have the head of anyone who enters.”
Without waiting for a response, Kiri opened the doors, stepped inside, and slammed the doors closed. The guards heard the latches slam into place moments thereafter.
The shrine was devoid of life, except for her. Kiri scanned the room, her eyes finally settling on the statue at the front of the room. Windows on one wall allowed sunlight to light the room, and the remembrance candles burning beside the doors filled the shrine with the pleasant scent of lavender and citrus.
Kiri strode down the center aisle, her arms rigid at her side and her hands balled into fists. She stopped about ten feet from the altar, about fifteen feet from the pedestal upon which the statue stood, and her glare felt sufficient to reduce the statue to lava right there.
“You damned bastard,” Kiri said, spitting out the words through clenched teeth. “This is all your fault. I swear the day after I inherit the throne this shrine will be destroyed, even if I have to swing the hammer myself!”
For several moments, silence reigned.
“That’s a very strong oath, young lady,” a voice worn with age said from behind Kiri. “Be sure you mean it.”
Kiri looked over her shoulder and saw an old man sitting on the front pew. His snow-white hair was in wild disarray, and he wore a gray robe that was tattered and frayed around the hem at his ankles. Kiri recognized him in an instant, but this time, he exuded none of the grandfatherly rascal of her past encounters.
“You told me all I had to do to save my father and my people was to find a man named Gavin Cross,” Kiri said, turning fully to face the old man.
“So I did,” the old man said, “and are your people not saved? Ivarson’s siege is broken, whether he realizes it yet or not. The wizards sent by the Necromancer of Skullkeep to support him are blocked, and now, he has an uprising of former slaves on his hands. Not even Lornithar’s hosts could breach this city’s walls, Kiri; the force that remains out there is no match for the loyal elements of the Vushaari army, not to mention the Cavaliers. I fail to see the problem.”
Kiri couldn’t maintain the rage any longer. She seemed to collapse in upon herself as she staggered backward into the altar and slid down it to sit on the floor. Her grief was back full force now, and then some.
“You never told me I’d…I…that he’d become such a close friend! He has saved me and others so many times, and the one time he needs someone to save him, I can’t.”
The old man rose to his feet and walked over to sit by Kiri. He wrapped his left arm around her and pulled her close.
“I know, child,” he said, “but consider this. We’re not all-knowing, despite what the priests are determined to believe. But suppose that we were. Suppose that we knew everything that would happen to people, and then, suppose that we told you. What point would life have?”
Sobs wracked Kiri’s torso. “What am I supposed to do now?”
The old man shrugged. “What everyone does, Kiri; live your life. Don’t let grief consume you, and one day—perhaps soon, find happiness where you can.”
“He never even told me goodbye.”
“How could he?” the old man asked. “He knew he didn’t have the strength to walk away from you. Now, I’m sorry, but I have to go. A number of people are rather worried about you.”
“Did she have a dagger or a knife?” Roth asked, his voice a harsh growl.
Roth Thatcherson stood outside the sealed shrine of Valthon, and the object of his ire was the former lieutenant—now a sergeant—of Kiri’s personal guard.
The man glanced at the king standing over Roth’s shoulder and stammered incoherence.
Roth’s glare intensified, and he grabbed the soldier by his uniform tunic. “Did you even think to look?”
Before the man could respond in any way, the doors of the shrine swung open on their squeaky hinges. Roth, Terris, and the Cavaliers present—well, minus the former lieutenant—turned to look into the shrine.
Kiri sat on the far side of the shrine at the foot of the altar, her arms wrapped around her shins and pulling her knees to her chest while she cried. Terris’s hurried stride carried him to her in short order. Roth turned his attention back to the man he was assaulting and pushed him away.
“Get out of here,” he said. “We’ll talk later.”
Roth turned his attention to the sole remaining Cavalier from Kiri’s protective detail. “Go to the barracks, and send four of Her Highness’s personal detachment here. They can stand duty with His Majesty’s men and I.”
Roth turned to pull the doors closed once more, watching a father cradling his grieving daughter in his arms.
Chapter 40
In the days following Kiri’s visit to the Shrine of Valthon, she slipped further and further away, withdrawing into herself. She wasn’t truly catatonic, but neither did she seem all that interested in the world around her. No one—not e
ven her father or Lillian—could break through Kiri’s all-consuming grief, and as the passing days became weeks, she began losing weight, given her infrequent meals, and soon was little more than a shadow of her former self.
It was so surreal. Gavin was standing in a void. There was no sound, no smells. He was surrounded by nothingness, and yet he could see himself as well as if he were standing in the noon-time sun. The most unsettling yet was that it felt like he was standing on something solid. And then…Gavin was not alone.
Bellos stood in front of him. No poof of smoke, no fanfare, nothing…he was just there. He was about Gavin’s height with sandy-blond hair and deep blue eyes, and he seemed no more than a few years Gavin’s senior. He wore a Van Dyke beard, not unlike Gavin’s mentor, though this man’s goatee ended in a point. He wore gold robes, and a gold dragon-head amulet rested atop his sternum.
“Forgive me, Gavin, for making you wait so long,” Bellos said as he approached and extended his right hand.
Gavin accepted the man’s hand almost out of reflex, and as he shook hands, he asked, “Am I dead?”
The man smiled just a bit. “No, not yet. Oh, make no mistake; without intervention, your odds are not good. But I brought you here to make an offer.”
Gavin sighed and rubbed his face with his left hand. “If my suspicions are correct, what you offer is something I’m not sure I want.”
Bellos made an offering gesture with his left hand, and armchairs appeared beside them. “Let’s sit and discuss the matter. Perhaps, you see something I do not, and just maybe, I see something you do not.”
Valera stood in the corridor outside the Chamber of the Council, having just walked out on a particularly fierce argument between several of her fellow magisters. Her limited authority as Eldest of the Council, more a position of respect than any true authority, was no longer sufficient to keep the factions on the Council in line. She was just about to offer a prayer for guidance to Bellos when she heard a whoosh of fire above her head.
Valera frowned as she started to lift her gaze; the only things above her head were…the sconces. The elderly wizard gaped open-mouthed as the sconces mounted high on the walls erupted sequentially in golden flame and continued to burn as they had not for almost six hundred years.
Tears of joy filling her eyes, Valera spun around and looked at the gold hand-plate that rested just beside the door to the Chamber of the Council. No longer did it look dull and tarnished…oh, no. It now shone a bright, vibrant gold that sparkled and reflected the light. Once all the sconces within the Tower were burning a golden flame, the braziers evenly spaced around the College’s walls erupted with golden fire.
Soon thereafter, the street lamps throughout the city that had been dormant for over half a millennium erupted with golden fire, startling every citizen who saw them and re-kindling a hope that many had long ago dismissed as folly. Finally, the braziers atop the guard towers that were spaced around the city’s massive walls erupted as well. All the sconces and braziers of the city having finally lit, the final golden flame erupted above the Tower of the Council itself. With the spires of the Tower formed so much like the fingers and thumb of a person’s hand, a new generation finally saw the complement to that design: a massive orb of golden fire that dwarfed the puny flame burning atop the harbor’s lighthouse.
Terris sat on a stone bench at the edge of his great-grandmother’s garden. The sun had just set. He still remembered how much he enjoyed helping his wife, Rionne, tend the garden, even though he wasn’t much use for growing things, and it was here that he came to seek solace when he could find it nowhere else.
“I’m losing her, Rionne,” the king said as he gazed at the small pond in the garden’s center, “and I don’t know what to do. It’s worse than after you died. She stopped eating yesterday. I can’t bear to see her like this. I want to make it better, but I don’t know how.”
The gravel crunched behind him, and Terris looked over his shoulder. Roth approached with Lillian at his side.
“How is she?” Terris asked.
Lillian sighed and lowered her head. “I tried, Your Majesty, but she still won’t eat. She drank a little bit, but not a lot.”
Terris inhaled to speak, but before he could, bright light drew his attention. He turned and looked up at the tower that served as the royal residence. Golden radiance almost brighter than the sun shone from a corner room on the fourth floor, but before anyone could speak, a column of fire that did not burn nor radiate heat erupted from the flagstones in front of him. The column deposited a man-shaped figure in a purple robe with gold runes on the sleeve-cuffs and cowl of the robe’s hood. The robe’s hood was pulled up over the figure’s head, and deep, impenetrable shadow hid the figure’s face, a pair of eyes the color of flame all that could be seen.
Lillian gasped as she recognized the new arrival.
“I am Nathrac,” the figure said, his voice so deep everyone present felt it resonate against their bones, “Chief of the Citadel Guard and commander of the garrison at Tel Mivar. You three bear witness: the Archmagister is named.”
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Author’s Note
7 February 2019
First and foremost, thank you for reading…both the novel and these notes! I hope you enjoyed Into Vushaar!
Please, consider leaving a review where you acquired this novel. Reviews are crucial to independent authors (like myself and many, many others). I appreciate all reviews…good, bad, or indifferent.
If you’re so inclined, here are the best ways to contact me:
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Of course, you can also send me an email: [email protected].
If you’re still reading this, thanks for the dedication…or perhaps the curiosity. :) As I said above, I hope you enjoyed reading Into Vushaar. Thank you.
Typos
Typos and little slips in grammar are the bane of any author. Unfortunately, they are almost impossible to eradicate completely. I can show you many traditionally published books—twenty years old and more—that have a ‘whoopsie’ here and there.
That being said, if you find a typo or something that seems to be an error in grammar, please do not hesitate to contact me at [email protected].
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Acknowledgments
There’s an old saying: it takes a village to raise a child. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it certainly seems true where publishing a novel is concerned. You would not be reading this were it not for contributions from several people.
This work would not be what it is without the editing efforts of Keri Karandrakis.
Did you like the cover? The background image was created by Jakub Skop (https://www.behance.net/JakubSkop).
A special THANK YOU goes out to Lori Carrender who spotted a glaring problem in Chapter 39 (a duplicated section). Thank you, Lori!
Without my grandparents, Bob & Janice Miller, I honestly don’t know where I’d be today; my grandfather taught me to read and love reading, and my grandmother taught me to develop
and exercise my imagination. This novel (not to mention my life in general) certainly would not have happened without my parents, Vernon & Judy Kerns.
Additional Acknowledgments
I’ve been working on this Fantasy story since the vicinity of 2000, and during that time, many people have provided feedback, thoughts, inspiration, or education in varying amounts. I greatly appreciate their time and contribution, and if you think your name should be on this list but don’t see it, I truly apologize for the oversight. If you’re curious, the list is alphabetical by last name.
Shanalyse Barnett
Naomi Haines
Jon Hartmann
The Novels of Robert M. Kerns
Histories of Drakmoor
Awakening (3 April 2018)
Into Vushaar (12 February 2019)
Archmagister (1 October 2019)
Home Sweet Home (Forthcoming)
The Fall of Skullkeep (Forthcoming)
Cole & Srexxilan
It Ain’t Over… (2 July 2019)
…Till It’s Over! (6 August 2019)
Haven Ascendant (Forthcoming)
The Fires of Aurelius (Forthcoming)
Solar Eclipsed (Forthcoming)
So…Who’s the Author?
Robert M. Kerns (or Rob if you ever meet him in person) is a geek, and he claims that label proudly. Most of his geekiness revolves around Information Technology (IT), having over fifteen years in the industry; within IT, he especially prefers Servers and Networks, and he often makes the claim that his residence has a better data infrastructure than some businesses.
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