Paladin's Prize

by Gaelen Foley

  “Actually, I know of several potions that call for roc feathers. They’re very rare.”

  Jonty gestured that the sorcerer could have it.

  Wrynne suddenly gasped. “There it is!”

  They all looked over and saw the grotesquely oversized thistle clinging to the side of the huge bird’s nest.

  Wrynne stared at it, a chill shooting down her spine. She did not know if the others sensed it, too, but as mad as it sounded, she could immediately feel the malice emanating from the dried-out seed head, as before.

  All the more so now that she knew what it was.

  The dark base of each bulbous seed seemed to study them like the many beady eyes of Argue, the monster of legend, covered in eyeballs.

  The fire thistle’s otherworldly evil charged the air around them with tension. The group stopped and gazed back at it uneasily.

  “Is it just me or is that thing watching us?” Petra muttered.

  “Aye, and it hates us all, remember that,” Jonty said. “It would kill us if it could.”

  “Some more than others.” Novus glanced at Wrynne and then at the relatively innocent youths. Then he took out his wand and reminded them of their assignments while he strode ahead.

  “You lot,” he said with a gesture to the knights and squires, “keep your eyes open for those birds while I open the portal. And you two, mind you don’t touch that thing when the time comes to shove it through the portal, unless you want to end up evil.”

  Wrynne and Jonty nodded.

  As they walked closer to the nest where the firechoke was trapped, Wrynne shuddered with the sensation of pure hatred pouring out of the bizarre plant.

  Such a thing did not even seem possible…but wasn’t evil always like that? It always took good by surprise, because its motives and its ways were so alien to the way that good creatures thought and felt and acted.

  The things that came naturally to evil never even occurred to good, which was why it was always so shocking when the twisted works of evil came to light. It might as well have come from another world, another plane of existence, she mused, for evil was absolutely other. At least, it seemed that way to her.

  When they all stopped near the tree line, about ten feet away from the nest and the firechoke stuck there by its prickles, Wrynne looked around at her companions. The knights and squires got into position, standing sentry on the lookout for rocs.

  Jonty glanced at Wrynne, a trace of wry, graveyard humor in the twist of his mouth, while Novus stood nearby and closed his eyes. Taking a deep breath, the sorcerer lifted his hands, his wand in his right, and began his dark chants invoking the Lord of Shadows.

  Wrynne furrowed her brow, wondering if their plan was quite all right with Ilios. She hoped this wasn’t a mistake.

  Novus chanted on, his voice growing louder.

  When she glanced uneasily at the Firechoke again, she found she could not look away from its blind, malignant stare. She felt queasy being near the thing. It was as though the fleur du mal were pulling her in somehow, luring her under its influence…so it might destroy her.

  She almost felt sorry for Lord Eudo, being subjected to this unpleasant presence within him for the past year and a half.

  A ball of flame appeared in the air a few feet in front of Novus. He chanted louder and more powerfully, ugly words with harsh accents. The fiery orb widened and grew into a circle, and a hot wind blew around them. Novus’s black hair waved in the gale he had stirred up.

  “It’s working!” Jonty exclaimed over the chaos of the supernatural breeze.

  All of a sudden, an explosive ripping sound rent the air, and the circle of flame that hung before Novus tore open into a hole between dimensions.

  Wrynne was not prepared for what she saw beyond it—a glimpse into the underworld. She took a stumbling step backward, and thankfully, Jonty caught her before she fell on her backside.

  Terrible roars of beasts and the howls of the damned reached them distantly from beyond the portals shredded edges, deep in the heart of Hell.

  Wrynne cowered, irrationally fearful that she would be pulled into it. She wished with all her heart that Thaydor were there with his unfailing aura of goodness. Her Golden Knight. But he had never seemed more far away…

  At that moment, a piercing screech filled the skies above them.

  “Here comes supper!” Berold boomed, lifting his sword and shield. The other knights did likewise; the squires waited in position without flinching.

  Jonty glanced up worriedly as the shadow of a huge wingspan swirled over their entire company.

  When Wrynne looked into the late-morning sky, so bright and blue, it seemed filled with rocs, black as night, their red eyes glowing with fury at this intrusion.

  She hunkered down a little where she stood, though she knew Thaydor’s knights would protect her with their lives, if it came to it. She vowed that it would not and brought up her crossbow, ready to fire if any of those creatures came too close.

  “Novus, how are you holding up?” she called.

  He didn’t answer, deep in trance. Sweat beaded his face, though whether that was from the oven-like heat pouring out of the Infernal Plane or the surely superhuman effort of keeping the door between dimensions open, she could not say.

  Arms lifted, he was swaying while the chants tumbled from his lips.

  “Right,” Jonty said. “I’ll do this.” He grabbed a long, broken branch off the forest floor. One end fanned out into many smaller twigs. “This should serve as well as any garden rake.”

  He hefted it to make sure the wood was strong and wouldn’t break. The last thing they needed was for the firechoke to escape their hold and roll away. Satisfied, he stepped toward the nest.

  But then the first roc dived at the knights, signaling the whole flock to attack. Wrynne looked on in alarm. Her mind spun as she tried to grasp hold of a new plan.

  That’s it!

  “Jonty!” She lowered her crossbow and took the branch from him, instead. “Let me do this. Try your music! You said last time that you thought that it could calm them.”

  He started to protest, but when he turned and saw Sir Sagard’s hoped-for dinner fighting savagely to turn the tables on the would-be chef, the bard nodded. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.” He slipped his lute off his shoulder. “But please be careful.”

  “I’m a trained gardener, Jonty. I think I know how to use a rake,” she teased, trying to sound braver than she felt. “If you can lull those beasts into a trance, maybe we can all get out of here in one piece.”

  “Daresay I’ve played for tougher audiences.” Armed with nothing but a musical instrument, the brave red-haired bard stepped toward the flesh-eating birds and struck up a soft chord.

  Then he began to sing.

  Chapter 18

  Infernal

  Meanwhile, back in Pleiburg, Concourse Square had become a battleground. All around them, the heave and press of the seething crowd threatened to separate the dazed king from him.

  “Stay behind me, sire!” Thaydor yanked the hapless man closer by the front of his soiled nightshirt and then continued his mission of hacking and slashing a path through the forest of swinging blades and roaring warriors.

  The din of clashing metal and screaming civilians filled his ears. He parried a blow from the nearest Urm on the handle of his axe, then buried the blade in the brute’s chest. It had never been his favorite weapon, but his father had made sure he knew how to use one since the age of nine.

  “Thaydor!” the king shouted.

  “Don’t worry, sire! I’ll get you to safety.”

  “It’s not that. Wait!” King Baynard tugged urgently on the back of Thaydor’s black executioner’s coat and pointed. “Look!”

  “Your Majesty! Sir Thaydor!” a shrill voice screamed from behind them. “Oh, wait for me, please! Let me come with you! Get me out of here!”

  Panting and blood-flecked, Thaydor paused in his labors to steal a brief glimpse over his shoul
der. The king stretched out his hand and pulled a crying and terrified Sana toward him from amid the jostling sea of violence all around them.

  Thaydor narrowed his eyes and growled at the traitoress. “Get back!”

  “Oh, please, help me, I’m so frightened! Let me come with you, Thaydor! Don’t leave me here with these animals! You know what they’ll do to me!”

  “Stay away from the king,” Thaydor ordered her, taking a step in her direction. “Forget her, sire. The woman’s a snake. Her lies were what condemned you.”

  Sana cried harder, terrified tears running down her oh-so-pretty face. “I didn’t want to say those things! Lord Eudo made me do it! He threatened my family if I didn’t cooperate.”

  “You see?” Baynard insisted.

  “I don’t have time for this. Sana, leave him alone.”

  “But Thaydor! You are the Paladin of Ilios. Doesn’t your god command you to forgive—”

  “Look out!” He shoved the king’s head down forcefully and ducked as a huge Urmugoth swung a halberd at them, snarling.

  Unluckily for the Urm, the blade bit into the wooden edge of the platform and got stuck for a moment. In the fleeting heartbeat while the beast tried to yank it out, Thaydor countered. Sweeping upward, he dispatched the Urm with a backhanded chop of his axe. Then he reached once more for the king and pulled him up again.

  “Let’s go.”

  Baynard looked up at him with a strange, frozen astonishment in his wide, staring eyes.

  “Sir?”

  The king staggered forward and suddenly crumpled into Thaydor’s arms.

  As he fell, Thaydor found Sana standing behind him with a cold smile of satisfaction curving her lips.

  Then he spied the knife hilt sticking out of the man’s back.

  The air left his lungs in a whoosh. “What have you done?” he whispered.

  “Go to hell, Thaydor. I’ve been waiting to do that for weeks. You try sleeping with him. Repulsive old goat.” Sana glanced over her shoulder to where Lord Eudo was making his escape surrounded by a ring of Urm bodyguards. “You think we’d let him live after we’ve gone to all this trouble? Sorry, but we couldn’t leave that little task unfinished. Aw, have I upset you, Paladin? What are you going to do, strike down a poor, defenseless female?”

  As she started backing away, moving toward Lord Eudo, she produced another dagger to ward him off.

  The king groaned. Thaydor hesitated, glaring at her in fury, but he quickly decided the king was his priority. I’ll get him to Wrynne, he thought. She can heal him. There’s still hope.

  Ignoring Sana, he put his arm around the wounded king’s waist to hold him up. He could hear her laughing behind him, jeering at him.

  “Oh, such chivalry! You were too scared to bed me, and now you’re even too good to kill me? Righteous fool!”

  “Thaydor!” a deep voice rang out in warning from somewhere nearby.

  He turned just in time to see Sana draw back her arm to hurl a second dagger at him. But instead of throwing it, she dropped the weapon and suddenly started screaming. A grimace of pain contorted her face. She flailed her arms in wild terror, trying to reach the expertly thrown knife in her back.

  As she collapsed to the ground, only to be trampled in the fray, Thaydor saw Reynulf’s sardonic nod to him, as if to say, You’re welcome.

  Thaydor arched a brow. Hmm, perhaps there was an advantage now and then in having friends with looser notions of chivalry than his.

  And less exacting scruples about how to win a fight.

  Thaydor did not think he could ever kill a woman, but Reynulf’s shrug reminded him that Sana had set the Urms on Reynulf in the palace. With that, the red knight turned away to battle another Urm.

  With a grim twist of his lips, Thaydor held the king up, then forged on through the crowd, seeking the nearest safe haven.

  * * *

  “Keep playing, Jonty! It’s working! Well, at least on some of them,” Wrynne amended.

  Several rocs had surrounded the bard, lured by his music.

  While the knights and squires battled the rest of the vicious flock attacking their party, Wrynne marveled at her friend’s steel-nerved concentration. Jonty played his lyre and sang to the birds that gathered around him, standing nearly as high as his shoulders. The power of his beautiful music lulled those nearest him to stop their attack and listen intently.

  Some hopped closer. Others cocked their heads. Wrynne was terrified on her friend’s behalf. If his music failed or even faltered, he would probably be torn to shreds before the knights could even reach him.

  Meanwhile, Novus was still chanting in his trance, using his will or his magic or whatever wizards used to hold the portal to the Infernal Plane open. The hot wind coming up from that volcanic landscape blew his hair and robes, as black as the glossy feathers of the rocs. Sweat poured down his face.

  From beyond the portal, the screams of souls in torment, the roars of the demons, and the crackling lake of fire were things no faithful follower of Ilios should ever have to witness, but here she was. She didn’t know how much longer Novus could last.

  Let’s get this over with.

  Using the long, rake-like branch Jonty had found, she got to work, gingerly prying the hideous seed head of the fire thistle away from the giant nest where it had been stuck for who knew how long.

  Heart pounding, her every move was cautious as she got the treacherous thing onto her makeshift rake and then held it in place there with her staff. She could not risk letting a breeze catch it away.

  She wondered absently how Thaydor was doing in the square.

  If he had been caught in his disguise as the executioner.

  If he was still alive.

  She shoved away a chilling reminder of the oracle’s warning not to let herself be separated from him, then concentrated impatiently on her task. It was too unnerving to wonder if something had happened to her beloved.

  At the moment, she had enough problems of her own.

  “I’m bringing it now,” she told Novus, though she wasn’t sure he heard her in his trance.

  As she started carrying it toward the portal, she could feel how much the fire thistle hated her. It seemed to watch her with all its countless seed eyes, and with whatever otherworldly evil it possessed, she could feel it whispering in her mind:

  Human, weak and puny, you are worthless. You are nothing without me. I can give you power. I can make you mighty. Give yourself over to me, and you shall be a goddess in your own right.

  Wrynne gulped, inching toward the portal with it. Gracious, she had always talked to the plants in her garden, but none had ever talked back.

  Walking slowly and ever so carefully with it clamped between the branch and her staff, she froze and drew in her breath when, from the corner of her eye, she saw one of the rocs lift Jeremy off the ground in its talons.

  The lad screamed.

  “Jeremy!” his friends shouted, but none could go to his aid, each already embattled with other members of the flock.

  Jeremy kicked his legs as the roc flapped higher into the air, its talons grasping him under his armpits. “Help me!”

  Berold dispatched his feathered opponent and ran to him, jumping to try to grab the squire’s ankle and pull him back down, but, despite the knight’s impressive stature, the bird flew out of range. It climbed toward the treetops, clearly intent on hurling its prey from a height sufficient to kill the boy.

  Wrynne choked as the thing succeeded before her eyes.

  Kai and Petra screamed their friend’s name as Jeremy plummeted to earth.

  When he hit the grass, he did not move again. Berold stayed planted over the boy’s body as the roc returned to feast on its now unconscious prey.

  The second the monstrous bird flew into range of his sword, the big, bearded knight let out a roar and struck its head off with one mighty blow. An arc of blood spurted from its neck, and its body flapped around a moment longer, like that of a chicken meant for the stew
pot.

  Concentrate, Wrynne told herself, shaken to the marrow. If the boy was still alive, she could heal his broken bones. Just get rid of this thing.

  She pushed on. As she carried the fire thistle toward the portal, she noticed Novus beginning to slouch with the exertion of his task. The sorcerer looked exhausted, and the bard was now surrounded by sinister, overly curious birds.

  “Somebody, please kill these things,” Jonty sang out louder, in a taut but still pleasant tone, coolly strumming away. “My audience is about to eat me.”

  “Sagard!” Wrynne shouted.

  “On it!” the chef-knight yelled back, hacking off a roc’s wing and then its beak, with which it had tried to tear out his innards. “Keep singing, bard! I’m on my way!” Sagard yelled as he started running toward him.

  Jonty played for his life.

  Whack!

  “Dinner!” Sagard said cheerfully as he struck the head off the nearest roc that tried to stop him.

  Humphrey was helping Petra fend off two large, nasty ones. Kai stabbed his feathered foe through the heart with a ferocious war cry, then stalked to help Sagard rescue Jonty.

  “Maybe barbecued?” the lad jested with taut, forced graveyard humor as he joined the older man, using humor to steady his own nerves.

  “We could try that,” Sagard agreed.

  Whack!

  Bone-chilling screeches.

  “Or maybe in a soup. Lots of parsley.”

  Jonty laughed at their mad banter as he strummed his lyre and made up a song on the spot just for the rocs. “You hideous fiends, I hope you all die, hey, nonny-nonny…”

  Wrynne shook her head. She would never understand men. How they could joke around at a time like this?

  A bead of sweat ran down her face. Just a few more steps to the portal. “Hang on, Novus. I’m almost there.”

  Unfortunately, the rocs finally figured out that the music was somehow causing them to die.

  She heard a jangle of lyre strings breaking and a garbled shout.

  She looked over in horror as her friend fell. “Jonty!”

  Ashen-faced, he clutched a wide talon slash across his abdomen. Kai killed the roc that had just nearly disemboweled him, but it was too late.