Ronan pulled free the vial and placed two drops of the brown liquid in each silver cup. Not taking any chances, he sprinkled the vial’s remaining mixture among the full plates of food. Taking one last peek around the kitchen, he tossed the empty vial into the hearth’s glowing embers.
Ronan hoisted the tray to his shoulder and steadied it with his hand. He made certain he had a firm grip. If he dropped the loaded tray, his and Rika’s hopes crashed with it.
Just past the water barrel, a set of stairs led upward. Ronan trudged across the kitchen and climbed toward his final destination on the third floor.
On the second floor landing a pair of shard knights watched his approach with only vague interest.
Under the heavy load, a few droplets of sweat clung to Ronan’s brow. “Good evening to you both. Chef ordered me to bring dinner for the knights on the third floor.”
“It’s best you run along boy. You don’t want to keep them waiting,” the knight said.
The shard knight appeared at least two years Ronan’s junior. Any humility the knights displayed under Tyrell’s command had seemingly vanished with him. “Yes sir. Thank you sir.” With his arm trembling, Ronan moved past the knights and climbed the stairs toward the third floor.
On the third floor landing, an empty hall stretched ten feet before ending in a split. Doors on either side of the spacious hallway stood closed.
As he worked his way along the short hallway, Ronan’s arm and shoulder throbbed under the continuous strain of the loaded tray. When he came to the intersection, a blur of motion sliced the air surrounding him, and a slight rush of air cooled his face.
“Stop. No one save the king himself gets past me.” The battle knight’s shard blade remained sheathed, and he showed not the slightest hint of concern at Ronan’s sudden presence.
“Of course sir. I meant no harm. Chef ordered me to bring your dinner.” He held his breath and waited.
“It’s about bloody time. I’m starving.” The guard wrenched the tray from Ronan appraising him with contempt. “What’re you looking at? Get out of my sight errand boy.”
“Yes sir.” He bowed low and started along the hallway. When he glanced over his shoulder, the knight had disappeared.
Rika told him the drug took a few minutes to work. He’d need to wait at least ten minutes before checking on the guards. He turned the door handle nearest him, stepped inside the room, and eased the door closed behind him.
A heavy maple desk dominated the room. It sat strewn with paper, ink, and several bulky books. Floor to ceiling shelves crammed with hundreds of books lined three walls. Hanging on the wall, a large map of Meranthia contained handwritten symbols and notes scrawled along the borders.
Someone, presumably Lord Randal, used this office for scholarly research. Ronan walked to the desk and noticed several maps of Meranthia and Freehold tucked under a heavy book. He moved aside the book entitled Ayralen Lore and Fables and sifted through the maps. They ranged in size, accuracy, and age. Each diagram contained handwritten notes scrawled along the borders or the map directly.
He picked up an ancient looking map of Freehold. Scribbles in an unfamiliar language littered the map’s edges with arrows and circles marking a location of importance.
As Ronan moved the map aside he froze.
An artist’s drawing of a ring lay atop the pile. The artist had beautifully captured every detail showing a golden band inlaid with silver and platinum swirls. The artist had painstakingly sketched layers of intricate vines weaving around the band.
The gold ring belonged to Ronan, and it rested on a silver chain nestled beneath his dress shirt and bare chest. He couldn’t understand why Lord Randal owned a picture of his family’s ring. It carried great personal significance for Ronan, but nothing more. He flipped the drawing and discovered a handwritten message scrawled along the bottom. It said, Location: Unknown.
Ronan slumped into the desk chair and stared at the drawing looking for additional clues. Without more information, he couldn’t draw any conclusions.
He leaned forward and rifled through the piled notes, maps, and books searching for answers. Ronan’s heart raced when he noticed the clock perched on the edge of the desk. He’d burned fifteen minutes in the office without realizing it.
Ronan leaped from the chair, untied the kitchen apron, and tossed it aside. He carefully folded the drawing and slipped it inside his breast pocket. As he opened the door, he held his breath and stepped into the open corridor.
Distant noise drifted from the kitchen, but the hallway remained blessedly empty.
Ronan eased the door shut and hustled along the hallway turning at the intersection where he’d come face-to-face with the shard knight a quarter hour earlier.
Next to a door where the hallway ended, two knights sat slumped unconscious on opposite sides of the corridor.
Ronan jogged ahead and stepped over the sleeping knights careful not to touch them.
An icy shiver ran up his spine. If these men woke they’d ask questions after they sliced him open where he stood. He took a deep breath, and opened the door in front of him.
Behind a four-poster canopy bed, double doors stood open revealing a balcony overlooking the Lord’s District. In front of a lit hearth on the room’s right side, sat an ornate cherry coffee table surrounded by a pair of stuffed leather chairs. Seated in each chair, unconscious shard knights lay slumped at awkward positions. The knight furthest from Ronan bore a captain’s insignia.
Ronan’s pulse quickened as time condensed. His actions over the next five minutes would decide the course of his life. No matter the result, the Order wouldn’t relent until they had his head. Four disabled shard knights, one a captain, would result in his immediate execution.
Atop the coffee table, the tainted half-eaten dinner plates rested on the silver tray. On the other end, a heavy steel lock-box sat closed and no doubt locked.
Ronan ignored the lock-box. The Order used the trap laden box as a final defense against a shard thief. A poison-tipped dart waited on a coiled spring ready to kill the unlucky soul unfortunate enough to break the seal.
He squatted before the stricken captain and rifled through his pockets. Under his armor he wore the navy blue dress uniform of his rank. Tucked into his top breast pocket, Ronan’s hand touched a cool smooth stone.
He smiled. The shard leveled the playing field. Without its magic, he couldn’t defeat Pride. As he pulled it free, he looked into its luminescent core with awe.
Inside the translucent shard, swirls of shimmering yellow and white light flowed like dancers on a stage. Ronan held the sixth enhancement shard in his palm. Before the Shattering, this shard rested closer to Elan’s Heart than the shard he’d won five years earlier. The strange yellow light inside its core moved toward his touch as if straining for release.
Ronan’s vision flashed white, and his head snapped to the right. Needles of sharp pain erupted on the left side of his head and shot across his brain. He tumbled to the soft carpet coming face-to-face with the heavy boots of the unconscious captain.
“You bloody thief,” Bryson said.
Ronan’s skull throbbed as he rolled onto his stomach. He tightened his grip on the shard and found his hand held nothing. The shard had flown from his grip when Bryson kicked him.
Bryson kicked Ronan’s upper back.
Sharp pain rippled through Ronan’s back and forced air from his lungs. More pain streaked along his spine, and his mind locked in panic.
“You think I’d let you steal from me?” Bryson raged intent on murder.
Ronan rolled onto his back in time to see the sole of Bryson’s boot descend toward his nose. A moment before impact, he grabbed Bryson’s ankle and twisted.
Bryson grunted and toppled forward crashing into the coffee table like an oak beneath a lumberjack’s ax.
Pain arced along Ronan’s back when he pulled himself upright. His breathing came back in short painful pulls, and he scanned the carpet searching f
or the shard.
Gravy soaked Bryson’s navy blue uniform, and rivulets of grease streaked his spiked blond hair. Dishes shattered while he struggled to free himself from the broken and splintered coffee table.
The shard had rolled beneath the stuffed chair holding the slumped over unconscious shard healer.
As Bryson continued to struggle, Ronan crawled toward the glimmering shard.
Cold steel rang as a blade slithered from its scabbard, and a heavy chill rushed along Ronan’s spine raising the short hair on his neck. Ronan froze with his hand hovering over the shard.
Bryson’s heavy boots crunched on the shattered remains of the dinner plate. “Did you think you’d get away with stealing a shard? Who do you think you are? Look at me maggot!” Bryson said.
Ronan swiveled and stared into Bryson’s hate filled eyes.
Bryson’s eyes went wide with shock, and his mouth hung open as recognition bloomed. “You…It can’t be…,” he said. “Impossible.”
Ronan had to keep Bryson talking. While inching his hand backward, he maintained eye contact with Bryson. “Did you think I would die so easily?” The pulsing shard called him just a few inches away.
Bryson’s expression twisted into a mask of rage and frustration. “I shouldn’t have listened to the old man. He begged me to let you live in that arena. I would have gutted you like a fish.”
Ronan’s eyes flickered toward the blade in Bryson’s white knuckled grip. He wriggled his fingers beneath the chair but felt only empty carpet. “He wants you dead Bryson. You know that right? You know too many secrets.” The lie felt good leaving his mouth.
“I don’t believe you. You’re a lying bag of vomit, and I’m going to enjoy killing you.”
The shard touched Ronan’s fingertips, and he closed his eyes and opened his mind.
Bryon lunged at the shard booting it ten feet away. Bitter hatred filled a short laugh. “You think I didn’t see you Latimer?” He shook his head. “You really are as stupid as you look.” Bryson stepped forward and towered over Ronan. “It ends here.”
With his face twisted with hate, Bryson lifted his blade overhead.
The memory of Bryson raising his blade amid a sea of blood thirsty Meranthians blurred with the deranged stranger standing over him now. Ronan knew this time he’d find his target.
“I’m going to enjoy taking your girlfriend tonight. She’ll scream my name and beg for more.” His arm rocked downward as a flash of heavy silver descended from behind smashing into his spiked blond hair.
Bryson’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he dropped the sword. His knees buckled, and he crumpled to the carpet in a limp heap.
Rika stood over his unconscious body holding the silver tray Chef had given Ronan. “Are you okay?”
Ronan forced himself to his feet. His head throbbed, and it hurt to breathe. “Never better. How did you get past the guards?”
“Bryson insisted that I come to his room and see his shard.”
“That’s a good line. Why didn’t I think of it?”
She rolled her eyes. “How long since they took the drug?”
“About twenty minutes ago,” Ronan said.
“We have thirty minutes tops, but I don’t know how the drug interacts with a shard knight’s blood. They could wake anytime.” Rika said.
“The shard’s here Rika.” He scooped the yellow shard from the thick carpet, and held it between his fingertips.
Her mouth opened, and she stared at it wide-eyed. “It looks like an Ayralen shard, but the colors are different. Use it Ronan. Hurry.”
A wave of nervous excitement fluttered through his body. “Drum-roll please.”
She smiled. “Stop playing games.”
“Okay. Okay. Here goes nothing.” The shard glowed resting in his palm with its light dazzling the bedroom’s limited space. Yellow and white light shifted moving toward the places where his skin contacted the shard as if willing a connection.
Ronan focused on the light memorizing its movements and motions. His mind pulled on the translucent form, or maybe it pulled on his. Only Elan understood its secrets, and he never told anyone.
The shard’s glassy form dissolved leaving its sharp edges blurred becoming indistinguishable from the yellow light surrounding it.
A tickling sensation spread over his fingers and palms, and an invisible force pried open his mind. Arcane knowledge flowed from the shard allowing an inherent understanding of energy flows and how to use them. New wells of energy sprang forth inside him, and he understood how to tap that source just as he understood how to breathe.
The energy moved outside its containment, dissolved, and light swirled around his hands moving up his arms.
Calm spread over his thoughts as the shard imbued its gift. The world made sense in a way it hadn’t a few minutes earlier. The shard’s energy deadened the wounds inflicted only minutes before and granted him new strength. For the first time, he felt whole.
The light encapsulated him in dazzling yellows and whites. The energy moved faster and grew brighter racing in rings until his entire body blazed with light.
Power surged within him. Every cell in his body reshaped and reformed, sculpting something a dozen times stronger.
The light outside him sank inward and took residence inside his body. He couldn’t see it, but he felt power awaken inside his body and could call it at his will.
Rika’s mouth hung open. “Ronan, are you okay?”
“Yes. I’m fine, but we’ve got to go. Guards are coming up the stairs,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“You have to whisper. I hear them on the second floor. If I can hear them, they can hear me. It’s time to go.” He lowered his voice as he spoke.
“We can’t go back down there. They’ll kill us,” she said voice lowered.
“We aren’t using the stairs. We’re going out that way.” He pointed toward the balcony.
Her face turned ashen. “You can’t be serious. That’s a thirty foot drop.”
He took a tentative step forward and slammed into the wooden door frame a dozen feet away. The wood under his shoulder splintered, but he felt no pain. “I’ve got to learn to control this power.”
Rika crossed the bedroom and stepped onto the third-story balcony.
Ronan focused on slowing his walk, and this time he managed a normal cadence joining Rika on the balcony.
Outside, the night breeze brought with it sharp new scents. The river wreaked of rotting seaweed and dead fish, while the tannery’s acidic lime odor mingled with the aroma of fresh bread baking at The Queen’s Heart.
His stomach growled. “Climb on Rika. Let’s go.” He bent forward and motioned toward his lower back.
“Are you crazy? You almost ran into a wall a second ago. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Of course I don’t know what I’m doing, but in about two seconds we’re going to have every shard knight in Freehold after us. Quit arguing and hop on.”
She climbed on him and wrapped her legs tight around his waist. “Am I hurting you?”
“No. You’re light as a feather. Hold on.”
She pressed into his body curling her arms around his chest. “Go, but don’t you dare drop me.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got you.” He reached behind him and tightened his grip on her legs and leaped off the terrace crossing ten feet of open-air before landing on a lower rooftop. She felt good pressed into him, and he held her steady as they flew through the air.
The sensation of flying sent his heart soaring, and pure freedom flowed through his blood. The jump felt effortless. Ronan jumped from rooftop to rooftop working his way back across the Lord’s District following the smell of freshly baked bread.
***
Light spilled from The Queen’s Heart’s frosted windowpanes. Genuine laughter, warm conversation, and upbeat fiddle music mingled with the aroma of fresh bread and lamb stew wafting from Mistress McClaren’s kitchen. The locals
loved the inn for its specialty ale and home cooked meals, and nobles never stepped foot inside the Laborer’s District which made the inn an ideal meeting place.
The smell of fresh bread and honest laughter eased the nervous tension Ronan amassed from the raid on House Randal. For the first time, he felt confident with his path, and the missing puzzle pieces snapped into place. He strode to the entrance and held the door open wide for Rika. “After you M’Lady.” He bowed and swept his arm inward as Rika stepped past him.
Rika laughed. “Why thank you kind sir.” She walked through the door into the Queen’s Heart.
Costa Cullen’s fiddle music roared, and the crowd clapped in unison. A red-haired harried serving girl dodged patrons as they sang along to the bawdy song Freehold Loves a Lady. In one hand she hoisted a tray laden with steaming plates of lamb stew, and, in the other, she held two pewter mugs brimming with Master McClaren’s finest.
The serving girl’s mouth broadened into a wide smile. “Hello love,” Fiona said. “Wherever you can find a spot.”
“Thanks Fiona. We’ll do that,” Ronan said.
“Am I invisible?” Rika said. “I swear every time we come in here she pretends I don’t exist.”
Ronan pointed to a cozy booth across the crowded room. “Over there’s a table.”
Long leering looks preceded catcalls as Rika strode through the crowded inn still wearing her ball gown. Drunken patrons gave her enough room to squeeze past but no more.
He followed in her wake trying to control his new power, but the blaring music and boisterous singing sounded twice their normal volume.
The crowd parted, and a well-worn booth sized for two appeared.
“I should’ve changed before we came in here.” Rika slid into the booth.
Ronan’s head throbbed from the shard heightened noise booming around him. He had to regulate the sound before he lost his mind. He focused on the crowd’s roar turning it into a steady buzz and tapped the massive reservoir of power simmering inside him.
Silence, instant and maddening, surrounded him, but the action around him didn’t. People sang, laughed, and talked. The fiddler played his music, but he heard nothing.
Shard Knight (Echoes Across Time Book 1) Page 8
