“It’s probably his mother,” Darron had mused, but he hadn’t cared then or now. Still, Jack and the woman had gone into the apartment he stood watching, so perhaps Darron was right. Zoran’s order to follow Jack had proven fruitful, but that came as no surprise, as his master was wiser than anyone he knew. Anna’s location at the hospital since returning to Earth had been known, but there had been little sign of the others, though the news confirmed that Ryan had been arrested and released. They hadn’t been able to locate him since, and Matt and Eric had also disappeared…
Until Darron’s spying on Jack had revealed all but Anna were at Jack’s apartment. Zoran would be pleased, once Darron informed him. The master had cast himself to England to visit some place called Stonehenge, the significance of which Darron did not know. But he had googled it when Zoran was otherwise preoccupied and noticed that pictures of it bore a resemblance to the infamous Quest Rings the Ellorian Champions had used. Since then, he’d been wondering if that’s what all of this was about. But he knew better than to ask. Zoran didn’t appreciate questions. Not for the first time, Darron wished he had the nerve to immobile his master and cast the Mind Trust spell on him. What extraordinary knowledge must be inside that man.
Like everyone, he had heard that the Ellorian Champions had returned, but that they never went home, unless this place was a new home after their long absence. He had never heard of Earth, nor seen anywhere anything like it. He wondered how Zoran knew of it, but it was clear his master had never been here before either. These four they were following didn’t seem like any sort of champions. They didn’t dress like them, or act like them. And the police were always after them, so they seemed more like fugitives than renowned heroes. Was that the problem? Had they been imprisoned on Earth all this time?
The bigger question was why Zoran cared about them at all. His master had seemed preoccupied since returning from Honyn with burn marks on him and a singed robe. It had taken an effort not to ask what had happened. He had never seen the master wounded before, however briefly. A healing potion had taken care of it. Surely these feeble Earth humans hadn’t been involved in that, or had they? Like everyone else here, they didn’t even seem to have magic, but then maybe it was just diminished. Zoran had said as much when cautioning him to never be seen using it on Earth, but the master seemed unaffected. Or maybe he was just so prodigiously strong that he could do things Darron could not. Not here anyway. Turning himself into that raven had been surprisingly challenging when it normally came easily, and yet Zoran could cast himself far away with little trouble. Perhaps the master held an enormous advantage over everyone else here. But then that was true, regardless of what planet they were on.
As he stood musing, trying and failing to not look conspicuous in his shorts, t-shirt, and Washington Nationals baseball hat, a pink, round, plastic disc some children had been throwing to each other landed near him. A little girl about eight-years-old ran toward him to get it but stopped short on seeing him turn to her. Darron smirked at her wariness. She was right to be afraid, but he stepped up his charade of civility. He stepped to the disc and bent to pick it up, the motion causing his hat to tip forward. He repositioned it with one hand while extending the disc to the girl, who did not try to take it. Instead, she was staring wide-eyed at him.
The girl excitedly noted, “Hey, you have pointed ears! Are you a Vulcan?”
Moving the hat must have made his ears emerge from under his hair, he realized. He didn’t know what a Vulcan was and wasn’t inclined to answer, anyway. Instead, he leaned forward, dropped the disc, and pulled the sunglasses away from his red eyes.
“Run away,” he snarled.
The girl screamed and took a step back so suddenly that she fell on her butt. For a moment, Darron wanted to laugh. But then a man yelled something and began approaching aggressively, followed by other men. Kids stopped what they were doing, and women began holding up their phones, pointing them at him. Making videos, he knew. Zoran would not be pleased. Darron sighed, stifling the desire to just kill everyone as a crowd began to form. One man in a Star Trek shirt lifted the crying girl to her feet as another stepped closer to Darron than was wise.
“Did you push her?” he demanded.
“No,” Darron answered, but then couldn’t help adding, “but I wish I had.”
“Well, why don’t you pick on someone your own size, asshole?”
“Are you volunteering yourself?”
“Yeah! What the hell is wrong with your eyes? You some kind of freak?”
Darron put the glassed back on. “By the laws of this country, if you attack me, I get to–”
The man slapped the glasses from his hand and a jolt of anger tore through Darron. “Not if I’m defending a little girl.”
The dark elf couldn’t really argue the specifics, having only learned so much, but he didn’t much care. It was obviously time to go. There would be no additional scrutiny of Jack’s apartment today. He was dying to teach this man a lesson and struggling to contain the power in him.
He asked, “Are you hoping to impress this girl so you can do what you want with her, or perhaps her mother?” It was a fair question. He’d seen humans do that very thing, and goblins, ogres, and even his own kind, but from the fury that appeared on the man’s face, he immediately knew that was not as neutral a question as he had intended it to be.
And then the man swung a fist.
“Kunia,” Darron said instinctively, magic power filling him stronger than he had done on Earth so far. And the man flew backwards ten feet, colliding with several other people, including little kids, before they landed in a heap together. Cries of pain, fear, shock, and anger suddenly surrounded him. Darron dropped all pretenses and warily glanced around, quickly seeing the very thing he now worried about. He spoke another word and the gun in a man’s hand burst into flames. No one else seemed to have another one as people backed away, but he had another problem. He cast a spell to emit an energy burst in all directions and heard the shattering of glass as the phones pointed at him overloaded and fried all footage of this encounter. Zoran would not be pleased any of this had happened, but at least Darron could destroy the evidence.
He strode farther onto the lawn as people scrambled to get out of his way. A line of trees beckoned and was the place from where he had emerged before. Now it offered escape as he left the mob. To his surprise, they followed, and he thought seriously about just killing all of them. Instead, he took off at a run, swallowing pride at the implication that they were a threat to him. They quickened their pace as well, but it would not matter. He disappeared into the trees, which was a thin line of them, and once out of sight spoke another word to turn himself into a raven that was already flying away. He circled above for a minute, watching everyone milling about in confusion as they tried to figure out where he had gone. One little boy seemed to know from the way he pointed at Darron, but maybe no one took him seriously.
Before long, the wizard landed on the balcony of a hotel room, changed back into a dark elf, and went inside. Fear of Zoran’s reaction dominated his thoughts. By now he’d learned that news of such events spread quickly here, far faster than on any other world, and so he turned on the TV and sat waiting. Within an hour, the first reports of it were broadcast, with people he recognized claiming that he had struck the little girl. Humans were cunning with lies to cover their own destructive behavior. It was true on every world he had visited. Then security camera footage from a nearby eatery contradicted that account as they broadcast it. Darron frowned. He hadn’t thought of that. The distance between him and the camera wasn’t enough to hide that three separate moments happened, each best explained by magic. Reports of similar incidents from around the world were growing common. Would that make this incident less noteworthy to people? Would Zoran agree with that?
Darron didn’t have long to find out. With a brief flicker of white light, his master appeared before him, the severed head of a dwarf dangling upside down from its beard in
one hand. The dark elf rose and bowed.
“I hope your trip was fruitful, master. More than for just a head.”
Zoran chuckled, the evil laugh pleasing Darron when it would have chilled any other. “This head confirms a door is open.”
The apprentice did not know the significance. “I have news.”
“Some of it I know,” replied Zoran, voice hard.
Darron knew better than to ever play dumb with this man, who always seemed to already know what he wanted to say. It was a wonder he ever used the Mind Trust spell at all. He hardly seemed to need it. “Yes, I attempted to destroy the gathered footage but–”
“You did not think of the security cameras.”
“Yes. Forgive me. There are fortunately many reports from around the world of similar moments and–”
“This may be considered one, yes. Why were you there? What have you learned?”
“The Stonehenge Four are dwelling with Jack and the middle-aged woman in Jack’s apartment. The girl is of course still with the healers.” He quickly related the success of his following Jack, hoping to bolster any punishment coming his way, but Zoran’s next words crushed his hopes.
“So this incident happened across the street from the people we are hoping to ambush.”
Darron went cold. Before he could reply, Zoran asked for the address. The elf gave it. Then one hand gripped his shoulder and words of magic he recognized paralyzed his mind. Horror. Desperation. Anger. Futility. Resignation. There was no besting the master wizard whose familiar words caused an expected burning sensation to rise from within. Darron had cast the spell before, never really imagining he would one day learn what it felt like.
“You have left enough evidence.”
These were the last words Darron heard before he turned to black ash.
Chapter 13 – A Tale of Three Kings
As the priest left, Anna watched him go and still felt unsure what to think. She hadn’t really expected solid answers, and yet she was still disappointed that she was no closer to knowing how to reach out to God and get an answer. Each of the priest’s replies about interacting with God had suggested that he had never actually done it. Never had a prayer answered. Never heard a voice in his head. Saw a vision. Had his faith confirmed. He certainly hadn’t been a vessel for God’s power to flow through to heal the wounded.
And that was what she really wanted to know. How did God choose someone? Had he ever? She had wanted to ask if any stories about that were true, but suspected she wouldn’t get a straight answer, just something about having faith. Or seeing that this guy believed it. That just reminded her why she had always been so cynical about religion. If it was real, you didn’t tell people to just believe like it wasn’t. Faith in something that had no proof was not the ultimate test of whether you were worthy. It just sounded manipulative.
She sighed, not wanting to rehash all the reasons for her atheism. She had accepted the gods on other worlds were real. She had heard reports of people healing others on Earth. And of course, Eriana had just healed her. An energy she knew to be the touch of a god had coursed through her. There could be no denying that He was real, but what concerned her now was what was true and what was not. Because it seemed like until that first quest from Stonehenge, it was all baloney. Why was God suddenly back? And how did Eriana reach out to him? She wanted to ask but would have to wait.
She had met with a different priest before, the first time Jack had fetched one. She had hoped for better answers from this, but no luck. Healing herself was certainly on her mind, but she needed to get out of here so she could heal her friends and undo what she had done to them. The fate of Heather, who had died, hung on her mind because she seriously doubted ever having the power to raise someone from the dead. She was no Aeron, the Lord of Fear necromancer. It seemed that even he could not raise his dead wife in satisfactory condition. Despite all the extraordinary things that had turned out to be real, even that one was pure bullshit. Raise the dead and they were still dead. Unless they were Jesus Christ? That was something to think about. But if he had been real, he still wasn’t like the rest of people, being half god.
Her mind drifted often to her girlfriends and what had become of them. The grief loomed o large that she sometimes didn’t feel it, but the drugs might have contributed to that. She should have known better than to drive—the source of her guilt. And she imagined her friends thought the same. Blaming questions likely awaited her when they met again, for those still alive. Would they even agree to see her? She felt a renewed interest in learning to heal so she could undo as much as she could, and this thought helped motivate her to not fall apart in tears. She had a solution, if she could only achieve it.
As she lay there pondering, a tingling in her belly made her catch her breath in anticipation. Never had she felt excited by a possible summoning, as they filled her with dread. But if everyone was right, a Quest Ring was about to fully heal her. As the room disappeared around her, the now familiar of vortex of swirling light and sound replacing it, she began to smile.
Ryan, Matt, and Eric were now before her in their usual positions. And she was facing them, standing in a hospital gown. She looked down and saw her bare feet. She was never really sure what she felt beneath them while being summoned, but she felt something solid. And that was all that mattered because she hadn’t felt her feet in days. She wiggled her toes, the gown suddenly vanishing. With a yelp, she covered herself and started laughing that she could, and a moment later the now familiar robe of Eriana, the Lady Hope, draped from her shoulders, down to her white-booted feet. She looked at the others, similarly attired in their adventuring gear of golden armor, black leather, and a dark robe. All smiling eyes were on her as the commotion stopped. She was so taken with her miraculous healing that she forgot to immediately scan for danger. Anna was quietly giggling, tears springing to her eyes and one hand reaching absently for the nearest of them, which was Eric, because he had stepped closer.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes!” she whispered, more because her voice was choked with emotion than because she was trying to be quiet.
“My Lords,” began Ryan in his knightly voice, addressing the summoners, “thank you so much for inviting us. We are honored to be here. We would appreciate just a moment to confer among ourselves before giving you our full attention.”
“Certainly, Lord Korrin,” said someone.
Then her friends were all before her, asking how she felt and hardly letting her answer. That they were so genuinely concerned touched her and she felt grateful for them, suddenly realizing how desperately she had missed them when she most needed them, trapped in a hospital. Trapped in her own body. She threw her arms around each, not caring who was watching, though a quick glance past them showed a wide castle hall, the Quest Ring around them off to one side in an alcove. Scores of nobles, guards, and attendants waited, but the place was nearly empty, as if no one had expected them to appear, or few people were caught up in the possibility. Maybe there wasn’t much riding on their success. That would be a welcome change.
She assured her friends that she felt fine, could feel her entire body. Indeed, as always happened when summoned, she felt fantastic, the thrill inside her adding to the sense of physical well-being. She finally insisted they get on with the quest business and everyone turned back to their summoners.
A lean middle-aged man came forward, putting one hand on the shoulder of the wizard who appeared to have summoned them, gently pushing him aside. Calm brown eyes shone with unexcited politeness, his thin lips curled in a smile that brought no life to his gaunt cheeks. Feathered brown hair covered his ears and touched the upturned collar of a cloak of purple and gold hanging to his waist. A boar had been emblazoned on it. A brown tunic covered his torso, tan, tight leggings disappearing into darker shoes. That this was a seasoned politician seemed clear.
“Ellorian Champions,” he began in a smooth voice, “I am Prime Minister Othor of Kingdom Thiat, on the w
orld of Eridos. We are pleased to host you. If you will follow me, some introductions are required.”
“Thank you,” replied Ryan.
As Anna walked out of the alcove with her friends, and into the two-story throne room, she sensed their overall mood was the best it had been so far at the start of a quest. Normally, being snatched from Earth upset them. She made a note of her own grin so she could at least fake it the next time. This is what it feels like to be thrilled with a quest. She doubted she would ever be so happy to start one again. The others seemed similarly affected, and their jovial mood may have inspired the men and women they passed as they followed Othor. Most bowed or made similar displays of respect, and she surmised that the boar silhouette several wore was the symbol of Thiat. Polished tile floors had inlays of fanciful beasts beneath their feet, while tapestries and giant, gilded mirrors hung from the walls, two unlit chandeliers evenly spaced. Enough light came in from the windows to not light them.
Ahead were several steps leading to a pair of golden thrones, one empty, the other occupied by a lounging, overweight, bored looking man in his fifties, with multiple jowls that were visible through his scruffy gray beard. A tall, gold, jewel-encrusted crown sat atop his round, balding head. A long purple cloak covered most of his wide body, gold fasteners keeping it closed. The King of Thiat sat frowning at them, watery-blue eyes unimpressed. The idea of summoning them clearly hadn’t been his. Could they count on his support? It didn’t seem like it. The two dozen others who had assembled remained standing like the champions, for no seats were here as they stopped before the steps, Anna wondering how many of them were royalty. Most were men.
“King Varrun,” Prime Minister Othor began, “may I present the Ellorian Champions, Lord Korrin of Andor, Soliander of Aranor, Andier of Roir, and of course the Lady Eriana of Coreth.”
“So, where have you been?” the king demanded, surprising Anna. At least he could be honest, and that was something. King Varrun waved a hand toward one group of standing nobles. “We could have done this years ago and gotten this lot out from underfoot.”
The Light Bringer: An Epic Fantasy Adventure Novel (The Dragon Gate Series Book 2) Page 25
