Shard Knight (Echoes Across Time Book 1)

by Ballard, Matthew

  Bryson lunged forward, and Ronan sidestepped right.

  Ronan whirled clenching his hands together before dropping them like a hammer in the small of Bryson’s back.

  The shard knight collapsed face first into the arena floor his mouth filling with sand.

  Ronan stepped back and sent his foot flying into the soft flesh near Bryson’s rib cage. “That’s for the cheap shot at the palace you bastard.”

  Ronan’s kick lifted Bryson an inch off the ground before he crumpled into a pitiful heap. Bryson groaned as he rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself to his feet. He held his ribcage with his left hand and spit out a mouthful of sand.

  The crowd roared as Bryson circled Ronan shaking the sand loose from his face.

  Ronan took a step toward Bryson to draw the blond giant from his defensive posture.

  Bryson’s deceptive quickness caught Ronan off guard, and he punched grazing the tip of Ronan’s nose as he leaned backward.

  The momentum of his swing carried Bryson forward exposing himself to a counterattack.

  Ronan didn’t hesitate and kicked Bryson in his right kneecap which bore his weight.

  Bryson screamed and fell clutching his shattered knee.

  Ronan kicked Bryson connecting with his nose, and a red explosion erupted leaving his face ruined with spattered blood pouring into Bryson’s open mouth.

  A fresh wave of cheering erupted as the first droplets of blood rolled from Bryson’s chin spilling onto the arena sand.

  Bryson reeled from the blow and pushed himself up on his left leg dragging his right behind him.

  Ronan sent a roundhouse kick into Bryson’s face connecting with his eye. The force of impact sent Bryson twisting before he landed in a motionless heap.

  The crowd cheered approval sensing the end of the match and Ronan’s victory.

  Bryson’s muscular frame lay splayed on the sand with his arms and legs twisted at odd angles.

  The sharp pain in Ronan’s ribs faded as a wave of satisfaction settled over him.

  A faint yellow aura enveloped Bryson and disappeared settling into his skin. With a violent surge he sprang to his feet and whirled on Ronan.

  Ronan stepped backward as he braced himself for retaliation from the enraged shard knight.

  A deep cut over Bryson’s left eye oozed blood adding a mask of horror atop the disfiguring twisted mess of his broken nose. Faint yellow light hovered over his blood as it filtered through his eye and poured over his lips. A grin born of hatred, rage, and deep loathing writhed across what remained of Bryson’s face. “No more games Latimer. You’re done.” He spit a mouthful of blood onto the sand.

  Ronan’s chest tightened as cold fear twisted his stomach, but he suppressed any outward sign and stood his ground. He wouldn’t give Pride or Bryson the satisfaction.

  In a blur, Bryson covered the ten feet separating him and Ronan. With inhuman speed, he launched a blistering attack sending his right fist hammering into Ronan’s thigh shattering the bone beneath like a windowpane caught in a tornado.

  Sharp overwhelming pain unlike anything he’d ever experienced spread like fire through his leg. He screamed in agony as he dropped to the sand. His collapsed leg bent like a noodle at angles Elan never intended, and waves of pain threatened to send him into unconsciousness.

  The crowd gasped in collective horror as they witnessed the brutal assault on their beloved prince.

  Bryson stood over the fallen prince and let his blood drip onto Ronan’s wounded leg. “Let’s see how you like to have your face cut up” In a blur too fast to track, Bryson backhanded Ronan. Bryson had infused the flesh and bone of his hand giving it the strength of tempered steel.

  The blow caught Ronan under his eye snapping his bones and collapsing his right cheek and jaw.

  Ronan’s mouth hung open limp and lifeless as his shattered jaw no longer provided support. The metallic taste of hot blood poured into his mouth from deep cuts the largest of which stretched across his cheek from his mouth to his eye.

  A hundred and fifty thousand voices stopped as silence spread like death across the coliseum.

  Bryson stood over Ronan, raised his fists in triumph, and howled with the joy of victory, but the crowd stood frozen staring with cold murder lacing their eyes.

  Blood ran like a fountain from Ronan’s right ear, and he could no longer hear any sound from that side of his head. He struggled in vain to drag his broken body away from Bryson. If Bryson struck now, his life would end. The damage he’d already received far exceeded any hope of repair through shard magic, and now Ronan functioned on survival instinct and adrenaline as the last threads of his life slipped away.

  Bryson stood in front of Ronan’s bleeding face and prepared for the final blow. His foot lingered for a kick to Ronan’s head and stopped.

  Merric Pride jumped from his seat surveying the coliseum with a look of raw panic in his eyes. He couldn’t control a mob comprised of thousands of enraged citizens. They’d smash him and every knight inside the arena to a bloody pulp. “Enough! Do no further harm to that criminal Knight Bryson. Step away or your life is forfeit.”

  Bryson’s face trembled with suppressed rage. He lowered his foot and backed away from Ronan turning an expression of warped fury on Pride.

  Pride motioned for a citadel guard and pointed toward the arena wall nearest him.

  The guard opened a door built into the coliseum wall just below the royal box.

  Pride pushed his way through the knights, dignitaries, and guardsmen seated in the box pulling Danielle behind him. He made his way onto the arena sand and walked toward Ronan dragging Danielle behind him.

  Lord Randal scurried through the door after him ordering several shard knights to follow the king and protect him.

  Danielle ripped free of Pride’s grip and sprinted across the sand toward her brother. She reached him first and knelt by him as tears streamed down her face. “Ronan. I’m so sorry they did this to you. He’s taken my magic too or I’d help you.” She crumpled in the sand and laid her head on his chest as her body convulsed with sobbing.

  Ronan stroked her golden hair as she wept. He’d lost the ability to speak with his jaw shattered, and the pain of moving it even an inch caused extreme pain, but her words triggered an idea. They’d taken her magic.

  Sir Alcott told them ‘to activate the heart one must be pure of blood and pure of body’. In Elan and Lora’s time pureness of blood wouldn’t have meant of mixed Ayralen and Meranthian blood despite Heilyn’s warning. When Lora’s spirit said they had pure blood, she meant that he and Danielle descended from Elan and Lora’s children.

  Lora’s spirit said they needed to remove the taint from their bodies. Understanding clicked in Ronan’s mind. Those already holding shard magic couldn’t restore the hearts. The shards somehow tainted them, but a descendant of Elan and Lora’s that held no shard magic could reactivate the magic inside the hearts. Pride might have descended from Elan and Lora, but he held shield magic and had no hope of activating the heart’s magic.

  Merric Pride allowed Danielle to console her brother as he lay dying on the arena floor. The king wouldn’t dare stop her and give the crowd further reason to revolt as they stood a hair’s breadth away from turning into a riotous mob.

  Pride signaled the knights around him to contain Bryson as he hovered over Ronan. He looked on the arena audience and raised his hands in a sign of reconciliation. A shield shaped like a cone extended around his mouth, and when he spoke, the words rang out. “My dear citizens, what you’ve witnessed today is an act of justice. This man conspired with Patron Tyrell in the murder of his own mother.”

  “You’re a liar Pride!” A single voice from the stands shattered the deafening silence.

  Pride ignored the accusation. “This traitor has made multiple attempts on my life which is itself an act of treason.”

  “You’re a butcher!” A second voice joined the first from the coliseum’s far side.

  Pride whirled
as if to find the voice’s owner as terror registered on his face. “No. No.” He shook his head as blood drained from his face. “I’m Elan’s disciple.”

  Danielle shifted placing Ronan’s head in her lap as she stroked his dark wavy hair.

  The shade of a smile twitched from Ronan’s sunken face. “Prove it Pride.” The words came out slurred, and flashes of fresh pain pounded in Ronan’s brain, but he knew Pride could understand him.

  Pride glanced at Ronan like a gnat on a windowpane. “Yes, perhaps that’s the way.” He reached into the folds of his robe and pulled free Elan’s Heart in his right hand and Lora’s Heart in his left. “Behold the hearts of magic. Both Elan’s and Lora’s.” The words echoed across the coliseum’s vast space. “Elan has provided all I need to activate the magic within his essence and destroy the magic that rules the Ayralen savages. One power will rule this land!”

  Ronan squeezed Danielle’s hand.

  Danielle lowered her ear to his beaten lips. “When he brings out your ring, focus on that alone.”

  “The ring? But what about the heart?”

  “They’re broken Danielle. They have been all along,” Ronan said in a whisper. “The rings will remove the taint.”

  Pride placed the hearts in the sand and reached into his white robe pulling forth a pair of golden rings. He held the rings high above him. “These rings belonged to Elan, and he gave them to me. They are the means by which He will send his will through me activating His magic in my name alone.”

  Ronan squeezed Danielle’s hand once more, and she lowered her ear to his mouth. “Do you still have it?”

  She pulled a ring from her index finger and placed it in his hand. “You were right. Devery’s copy turned out perfectly, but it won’t do him much good.” She placed the ring in Ronan’s palm.

  He smiled and wrapped his hand around the ring his mother gave him. Blackness crept in at the edge of his vision, and he knew he had mere moments before unconsciousness took him. “Now Danielle. Focus on your ring.”

  Danielle gazed on the ring stretched high above Pride’s head, and her breath caught as she gasped.

  Ronan opened his palm and concentrated on the heaviness of the ring touching his skin.

  Pride twitched as Danielle’s ring pulled free from his fingertips and levitated a foot over his head. “Behold the power of Elan!”

  A gasp rose from the crowd and soft murmured conversations replaced the icy hatred from a moment ago.

  A wide smile stretched across Merric Pride’s stunned face as he gazed in wonder at the floating ring.

  The ring nestled in Ronan’s palm rose floating skyward several feet over his prone body. As it moved higher, stark awareness dawned in his thoughts. The smells drifting on the late summer breeze grew sharper, the faces of those gathered inside the coliseum crystallized as individuals rather than a nameless mass of thousands. He watched the strands of Danielle’s golden hair float on the wind and saw the tear stains drying on her cheeks leaving behind tiny crystals of salt.

  Both rings stopped their ascent and froze suspended in air held by an invisible hand.

  “It’s as Elan wished. His power flows into me. I give you salvation!” Pride ignored the ring still resting in his right palm and focused his full attention on Danielle’s ring suspended just out of reach.

  Danielle’s mouth hung open, and her eyes glazed over as she sat on the arena sand hypnotized by her ring hovering above Pride’s head.

  The rings began a slow rotation looping in place end-over-end.

  Ronan’s conscious mind slid from his broken body and hovered unrestricted by physical limitation. Ronan looked down on his battered body lying motionless in the sand. His glazed over eyes carried the same expression of hypnotic intensity as his sister’s. The pain that had dominated his thoughts a moment earlier fled. He existed as pure thought floating on a summer breeze toward the ring spinning a few yards above his mangled flesh.

  Danielle’s eyes fluttered as the ring above Pride’s head drifted toward Lora’s Heart half buried in sand a few feet away.

  A stunned Merric Pride gave up trying to explain the unfolding events and watched with childlike awe as both rings drifted through empty air.

  Ronan’s mind intersected with the whirling ring, and he joined in union with another presence inside the ring.

  Ronan’s ring spun faster and tracked closer toward Elan’s Heart.

  Danielle’s ring hovered over Lora’s Heart spinning so fast it appeared as a solid golden sphere. Her ring emitted a faint aura of green light as it continued to spin faster.

  Pride staggered forward two steps, stretched his arms out wide, and raised his head toward the spinning rings, his face a contorted mask of jubilant awe.

  Ronan’s conscious mind floated above Elan’s Heart. The ring he’d joined morphed into some other entity he didn’t understand. He reached inward as he would to channel shard magic, and his mind jerked away as if touching a hot stove. The power within the spinning ring felt concentrated, alien, and pure.

  Ronan’s ring spun faster changing into a golden white ball glowing with a faint aura of white light. It spun faster building a field of white light that stretched outward growing in size and intensity.

  Danielle’s ring radiated an aura of forest green light that grew brighter and more intense as each moment passed. Shifting shades of green swirled and swam inside the aura as the golden sphere at its center spun ever faster.

  Pride continued to spread his arms wide as he stood beneath the bright swirling auras of white and green light. “By Elan’s light, He speaks to me now and calls me forward to claim His power.” Pride yelled the words to the stunned coliseum audience as they stood in unison watching with silent fascination.

  The shard knights surrounding Pride dropped to a knee and bowed their heads in the holy presence.

  Bryson wiped the blood and sand from his face and knelt with the other knights in reverence to Elan’s power.

  Blood drained from Lord Randal’s face and fear marked his expression as his hands trembled before the unleashed power. He tiptoed backward from the spectacle before a heavy hand grabbed his wrist, and he jumped startled at the contact.

  Knight Jeremy stood on the arena sand with Rika next to him as his grip locked around Lord Randal’s wrist. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Lord Randal’s eyes widened as he tried to wrench free of the knight’s grasp. “I won’t be a part of this.” A shield sprang up around Lord Randal, and he screeched in horror pounding without effect on the detention shield imprisoning him.

  The aura surrounding Ronan thickened and divided into swirling patterns of yellow, white, and blue. Elan’s Heart shuddered, and the aura surrounding the spinning ring grew larger and engulfed Elan’s Heart still lying in the sand.

  Lora’s Heart glowed with bright green light at its core before the ring’s aura surrounded it. A shaft of green light opened between the spinning golden sphere and Lora’s Heart.

  A shaft of white light opened between Ronan’s spinning ring and Elan’s Heart. A third shaft of light appeared connecting Danielle and Ronan’s rings. The light’s beam ran from shades of green to flickering shades of yellow, white, and blue.

  “I give you life!” Wide-eyed, Pride yelled with a manic smile twisted across his face oblivious to his surroundings. “I feel the power take hold within me flowing like a mighty river!”

  Elan’s Heart danced with pinpoints of light as the surface disintegrated traveling upward through the white beam of light.

  Ronan’s mind raced with a new understanding of healing, shields, and battle magic as information flowed into his mind through the ring’s cleansing aura.

  Lora’s Heart underwent an identical transformation as its core crumbled bit by bit flowing upward through the bright green beam of light.

  At each aura’s center, a new heart appeared growing thicker with identical swirling lights as their predecessors. Unlike the old hearts, the new ones pulsed light outw
ard in waves through the thickening aura surrounding them.

  The final pieces of Elan’s Heart flowed upward through the conduit leaving behind a single golden ring lying atop the arena sand.

  Ronan’s mind joined with the newly formed heart filling his mind and spirit with the power and knowledge it contained.

  The auras surrounding the twin hearts thickened and condensed into separate orbs radiating colors unique to Elan and Lora.

  Ronan’s conscious mind disconnected from the sphere floating above the arena floor. A moment later, he blinked and stared out at the blue Meranthian sky.

  Enormous birds of prey by the score blotted the afternoon sun casting long shadows over the arena sand. Falcons, hawks, and giant eagles circled above each carrying a rider covered in a tangle of living armor.

  The largest predator, a martial eagle with a twenty-foot wingspan, glided high above Ronan and Danielle before perching on the arena’s stone rim. Bird and rider by the dozen settled on the coliseum’s rim forming a long circular line stretching around the entire stadium. The eagle’s yellow and black eyes locked a murderous gaze on Merric Pride’s pasty white body as it perched waiting.

  Danielle gasped as she locked her gaze on the martial eagle looming overhead. “Papa!”

  With his mind back inside his broken bleeding body dying on the arena sand, pain blossomed fresh, raw, and intense. Through blurred vision Ronan’s eyes flickered toward Connal Deveaux’s hulking silhouetted form perched in front of the afternoon sun. A slight smile touched his lips as adrenaline coursed through his veins.

  Ignoring the circling guardians and wardens, Merric Pride took a tentative step toward the repaired sphere containing Elan’s magic. “I take this magic into my body by the right given me by Elan, the creator Himself!” Pride closed his eyes and touched the thick glass-like surface of the sphere.

  Raw energy crackled racing along Pride’s extended arm. Blue light flowed over and around his body as a look of extreme pain twisted his face. His eyes widened and bulged as his face spasmed. Pride’s thin dry lips flapped, and white frothy spittle seeped from his mouth. His body seized as the power of the sphere electrified him.