“Theosus, we don’t know how to use our abilities. We were fueling a storm because we didn’t know how to do anything else. We are not strong.”
“Master Rennon, you said we!” Theosus exclaimed.
“Don’t mince words; you know what I mean. How are we supposed to fight?”
Theosus sat down opposite Rennon and looked him directly in the eyes. “There is a tome. It was given to man by Fawlsbane Vex to teach him the ways of magic. It has been lost for ages, but recently one of my fellow dragons came across information that places the tome in By’temog. It’s hidden there.”
“Not very well if your dragon friend found out about it. You really want to go chasing after a myth?”
“There is more. The tome is supposed to be guarded by General Sythril’s spirit and undead army.”
“Well, there goes that idea!”
“You are not afraid of some dead general’s ghost, are you?”
“Theosus, you are talking about fighting an undead army for a tome that may or may not exist in hopes that it will tell us how to mindwield. That is sheer folly, wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t know. I have fought undead before, and they were not so difficult. They do a lot of complaining. It gets irritating,” Theosus mused.
Rennon ignored Theosus’ comments. “We are what, a couple of hundred? How many undead are in this army?”
“I suppose we will need to do some scouting to find out exactly. I don’t think anyone really knows at this point.”
“This is out of the question, Theosus. We would never be able to get through the city, much less rescue a book guarded by a cursed ghost. I have some experience with this sort of thing. We had to fight undead at Signal Hill, and it was not as easy as you might think.”
Theosus did not seem to be deterred. “Why don’t I get a scouting party together and find out some more of the facts? In the meantime, our library here has a few books that mention mindwielding of old. They are not instructional by any means, but they might lend some insight.”
“I get the feeling that you will do as you will regardless of what I say. I am not your long lost leader. When we got here, I felt very much like a prisoner.” He sighed. “Go, get your scouting mission together, but know that I am not saying we will do this by any means.”
“I will go at once,” Theosus said, bowing and backing up toward the door. “Before I go, might I ask if you know the history of your own kingdom? Do you understand the War of the Oracle?”
“Yes, I know it. There was a huge battle that scarred the land, and there were so many essence users that they used up all the essence, making the area we call the Sacred Land a wasteland. The Defenders guard it so that we never forget what magic does to the land, and magic of all forms was banished and outlawed. Now, one thousand full seasons after the war, the magic is coming back to the Sacred Land and will be able to provide more essence than anyone can imagine,” Rennon stated matter-of-factly. “That’s why everyone is fighting over control of it now.”
Theosus shook his head. “It didn’t work; we did forget what happened.”
“I think I recounted it pretty well.”
“Let me enlighten you. According to your rendition, why don’t wielders get a large group together and scorch huge tracks of land and draw out all the essence? It would come back more powerful than before, right? Why don’t they do it all over the world and make essence double or even triple?”
“Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” Rennon said. “Why don’t they?”
“Because it takes hundreds, maybe thousands, of wielders to draw all of the essence from the land, and even then, once the land becomes devoid of essence, it creates an imbalance that must be filled.” His red eyes seemed to glow as he spoke. “So, the desolated land sucks all the essence from around it, and then that area takes essence from around it and so forth until it collapses in on itself and destroys everything—the entire world.”
He almost seemed angry now. “You see, the Sacred Land isn’t sacred just so we don’t forget what magic can do if left unchecked. The forgotten reason is it’s sacred because it is the graveyard of the four hundred mindwielders that sacrificed themselves to stop the devastation from consuming the world. Only the mindwielders had the magic to do this. They died and left no elder mindwielders to teach the children growing up how to use the power they were born with. It became known as the wild magic, and children born with it died here, where I brought them.” He turned and left before Rennon could respond.
There was silence for a long moment before Rennon talked to Deylia. “I never knew that. It seems so simple now.”
Deylia got up and went to Rennon. “You cured us. Theosus believes he fulfilled a promise he made to the people who died in the war and to these people. He promised to one day cure them or find a cure for them. You are a hero and a savior.”
“Aye, I cured them, but that does not a leader make. I don’t even know if the cure is a cure.” He squirmed in his chair. “I know Theosus has searched for someone like me for a long time, but I am definitely not a leader. Kaxen was always the one making the decisions for us. I miss him. I know we parted on rotten terms, but I do miss him.”
“I think you are a stronger man than you think you are. You are not suppressing your ability anymore. You are being more decisive.”
“I don’t have Sanmir’s concoction, for one,” he joked.
“I am sure Theosus would know how to mix it up for you.”
“I will leave it up to you to ask him.” Rennon chuckled. “Oh well, I suppose you are right, but I will tell you this: I am not going to a city full of undead after a book for anybody. I don’t care if we know every facet of our abilities. I have seen Spectres and such, and I don’t want to see them again.”
“Scared of a few ghosts, are you?” Deylia bantered.
“Aye, I am,” he said. “And you would be too if you were face-to-face with them.”
“What are they like?”
“Nasty, smelly creatures with rotting flesh falling from their bones, and they attack you while pleading for you to kill them. They even tell you how to kill them, like some unknown force is controlling them and making them kill against their will.”
“How horrible!”
“It is. Wait a moment. I wonder.” Rennon became thoughtful. “I wonder if something is controlling them against their will. I don’t think they would fight if that control was suddenly gone.”
“See, you are thinking like a leader already.”
Rennon beamed at Deylia and gave her a big kiss. He recoiled from her horrified expression. “Sorry for that.”
Her face softened into a smile. “It was the excitement.”
He grabbed hold of her hand. “Come on. Let’s go find Theosus before he sends out that scouting party.”
Chapter 19
The rising morning sun took away some of the sting of the cold morning, but Trendan still pulled his cloak tightly. Despite the sun’s warmth, the morning was still cold enough to make him shiver. Trendan made his way steadily back toward Brightonhold Keep, careful to cover his tracks. Fayne would certainly try to track him. He wondered if he should have waited for the poison to do its job before leaving. He would have had to face Fayne, but at least he would have known if he had succeeded. He dismissed the thought. That poison was strong enough to kill a horse; no one could have survived it. He doubled his efforts to ward off the cold.
Trendan reached the ruins of Brightonhold Keep about midday. The Enforcers’ former stronghold already had weeds growing around its perimeter. A few Enforcers tried to keep the order alive for a time, but without the numbers they previously enjoyed, the task proved to be impossible, and the keep was now destined for ruin. Trendan surmised that the order was probably doomed from the beginning and would eventually cease to exist entirely, even in the remote parts of the known world. He also presumed that some other, similar organization would rise up to take its place.
He searched around the fa�
�ade of the keep, looking for signs of which direction Kaxen’s party might have gone. It had rained sometime in the last week, and the rainwater had washed away almost all trackable marks. He was about to give up when something peculiar caught his eye—a shattered stone. He poked around at the stone, turning it over and noticing that it was charred black in places. He picked up several pieces and sniffed them. They had an acrid burnt smell that reminded him of how singed hair smelled. He caught sight of footprints leading away from the shattered stone. He got down on his knees and examined the print now mere inches from his face. Although he could not be sure, the prints looked very close to the print of the boot Kaxen wore. A faded crisscross in the upper left of one boot print convinced him. Kaxen had stepped on some broken glass in the kitchen at Brookhaven once, but he never had the sole repaired, and the now faded pattern imprinted the soft ground from the rains before. Mysteriously, the footprints were single. What is Kaxen doing walking off by himself? Trendan wondered. He decided to follow the trail.
Trendan estimated that he was approximately one and a half to two days behind Kaxen. He moved quickly, fearing all the while that Fayne might be following. In fact, he was sure she would try, but he expected that she would take the time to bury her mother before heading out after him. She was good, too good; she rivaled his own tracking skills. If she really wanted to track him and catch up with him, she would find a way.
Even though the Sacred Land was in the process of rejuvenation, there were still immense tracks of land where the sparse trees, long since dead, and barren landscape offered little in the way of protection from the harsh cold of winter. The season was still young. The snows had not yet fallen, but the west wind hollowed on occasion. The north wind blew bitter cold, and neither wind was ever a pleasant breeze.
Trendan trekked across the Sacred Land, carefully choosing his path. There were no game animals or plants to sustain life, so he had to rely entirely on his meager provisions. By now, Trendan realized that Kaxen was traveling to Signal Hill. He remembered the way from a scouting expedition when he trained as a youth, but he still had to consult his map. He had found evidence twice of where Kaxen might have made camp, and he kept to the crisscrossed boot print as his guide.
It was midmorning on the fourth day of tracking when Trendan caught the scent of something burning in the wind. He could see no smoke, but the smell was unmistakable. By late afternoon, he could see the smoke rising in great black billows on the horizon. The evening sun hung heavily in the sky when Trendan reached what he presumed used to be Signal Hill. Bits of rocks covered by a slag of molten metal marked the village entrance. He could only see one man alive, digging among the charred remains.
“You there,” Trendan called out. “What happened here?”
The man took one look at Trendan and bolted behind some of the rubble and was gone. Trendan knew that Kaxen had helped save the village and that it was being rebuilt. He couldn’t imagine Kaxen would have anything to do with destroying it. He combed the village until the sun went down but saw no other living soul. At last, he found a building with a roof still intact and three standing walls. It faced a direction defensible with his bow, so he decided to make camp there for the night and continue to search in the morning.
Trendan awoke the next morning to an arrow pointed at his head. Dressed all in black leather adorned with silk stood Fayne. Her bold, emerald green eyes were transfixed on Trendan’s face. Even though she appeared incredibly angry, Trendan thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The moment hung awkwardly in the air for several long moments.
“Fayne, I—”
“Don’t you say a word!” she commanded.
“But I—”
She pulled back harder on the bow string, and Trendan closed his mouth.
Several more moments passed.
“Are you going to shoot me with that arrow?” Trendan asked.
“Are you impatient to die? Would you like me to hurry this along?”
Trendan sighed. “Not particularly, no.”
“Why, Trendan? Mother had not posed a threat to you.”
“She was a spy and a traitor. I had to do it, out of duty.”
“You are half right. I am a spy, but I was never a traitor.” Kimala’s voice came from beyond the wall. She entered the dilapidated room. “But you never gave me the chance to prove it, did you?”
“How can you possibly be alive?” Trendan gasped.
She eyed Trendan for a moment, contemplating. “All right, I will tell you.” She sat on the end of a broken rock wall. “When Fayne was a little girl, I was working in my garden and was bitten by a snake. Only, this snake was put there by Toborne. I was married to a man that opposed him, and he wanted to destroy that man’s family for leverage or Fawlsbane knows what for. The snake venom was made to corrupt me and turn me into whatever Toborne suggested. I was given to Malanor, his apprentice, and forced to turn against my family. It worked for a while until I was ordered to kill Asterial’s family. Enowene caught me before I could follow though, and with the help of Erinthill and Brynna, cured me and restored my free will. I vowed to destroy Toborne and Malanor for what they did to me and my family. I have been working as a spy for Enowene and Lady Shey ever since.” She smiled wickedly. “The venom of the snake had one happy side effect. I took on the properties of that snake forever. Its bite made me immune to all known poisons.”
“Who were you married to?”
“That, my dear boy, is another story. The rest of this story will have to wait for safer times to be revealed. I would be happy to tell you if I could, but there are others I must protect—more of my family than whom you see here.”
“You realize that you have done nothing to convince me. How do I know you speak the truth?”
Fayne let the tension out of her bow. “Believe it for me.”
Trendan softened, but he still could not forget that Fayne had given him cause to doubt her. If he had not gone looking for her that evening, he might have never found out that she was carrying on a secret conversation, or that she was Kimala’s daughter. He looked into Kimala’s eyes. Something was still not right. He could feel a coldness there. He could follow Fayne’s wishes and keep Kimala close with caution. He decided that he did not entirely believe Kimala’s story, but he would go along with Fayne as if he did, for now. He would keep a sharp eye on the traitor and, if the time came, use something stronger than poison. This time, he would wait to see the results for himself.
“All right, I will believe it for you, Fayne.” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Did you two see anyone out there among the rubble who could tell us what happened here?” He wanted to change the subject as soon as possible.
“Not a soul,” Kimala answered.
“Do you think your friend did this?”
“It’s possible, I suppose, but I have never known Kaxen to be destructive like this. The only fact I know for certain is that he came this way.”
“There isn’t much around Signal Hill,” Kimala stated. “There are only two possibilities—North to Lux Enor and Malanor’s army or east to Symbor, the Vale of Morgoran, or Brookhaven.”
Trendan thought for a moment. “If I had to guess, I would say he went to Brookhaven or the Vale of Morgoran. We should go east.”
“If he did destroy this village, I say he went north to Lux Enor,” Kimala said. “There is a small village not far from here on the edge of the Borderland Forest, which lies between the Sacred Land and the fields of Enoria. Tippen’s Landing, I believe it’s called. We might find our answers there.”
“No, we head east,” Trendan insisted. He collected his pack and his provisions and walked out into Signal Hill. The embers of the buildings around him had begun to die out. Something nagged at his mind while he surveyed the landscape, and he turned to the girls, who were already directly behind him.
“I have changed my mind. We head north. I don’t want to believe Kaxen did this, but I know he was here. If he did do this, h
e would not go home. If we go north, we might be able to pick up his trail before getting too far out of Signal Hill, before going too far out of our way.”
It took most of the day to reach the village of Tippen’s Landing. Trendan let Fayne do most of the tracking so he could keep an eye on Kimala. His alliance with Fayne and Kimala remained an uneasy one, but he felt that it was better to have Kimala in front of him, in view, than skulking behind him somewhere in the shadows. Trendan figured they would stay the night in Tippen’s Landing but was surprised when Kimala led them to the outskirts of the village.
“I don’t understand. I thought you wanted to take care of business in the village,” Trendan commented to Kimala.
“I never said that,” she retorted. “I only said we needed to get here.” She let out a heavy sigh as if she was irritated that she must stop and explain. “If it will stop all the fool questioning, there is an ancient site hidden near here. The wielders of old used to use these places of power to travel long distances.”
“Like a dragon stone?” Trendan asked.
“Aye.” She looked at him with malice. “Not everyone is best friends with the dragons of Draegodor. It is a rare thing for the more common folk, even wielders, to carry around a Lora Daine.” She looked around for a moment. “This way.” She headed off the path in a new direction. “The portals of Migarath were mostly destroyed, but a few remain. In the old days, there were several portals scattered throughout the lands. The ones that remain are now largely forgotten.”
“Do they allow you to travel anywhere?” Fayne asked.
“Unfortunately not. They only let you travel between portals. That means we are limited to only the portals that remain.” Her mouth curled in a wicked grin. “There is one other advantage. If the portal has been used recently, we can see where the user traveled.”
“You think Kaxen somehow used the portal? That’s preposterous. How would he even know it existed?” Trendan scoffed.
On the Wings of Dragons: Path of the Wielders 3 Page 20
