by Damien Lake
Colbey would kill them all. If he survived, next he would start killing the white-robed sorcerers who controlled the monstrous Taurs. He would bring down as many as he could before he finally fell. Their soldiers would drown in the ocean of blood he would unleash.
He felt the dark void within him roil in primeval pleasure as he finally…finally…planned their deaths.
Book 04
Contact
Interlude
A marvel of botanical design and planning, the palace gardeners had toiled ceaselessly to create a world completely separate from the harsh reality beyond its borders. Within the acres given to them, the horticulturists first appointed by a long dead king of Arronath designed new planes of existence, rewriting natural laws to suit their vision, defying such trifles as gravity and season within their domain.
Spectacular verdure in circular beds grew in every color, liberally distributed to form centerpieces for small clearings within the palace gardens. Bright yellow flower bells dipping on vines under a slight breeze made the beholder strain to hear absent silver clappers. Snap-blossoms pursed their petaled lips to offer their sweet kiss to the court ladies who sought a calm escape in a sylvan oasis. Massive roses spread their fragrant hearts to beguile with their perfume.
Trees in multitudinous variety surrounded numerous privacy clearings, delicately carved benches beside clear fishponds shaded beneath. So thick grew the trees that each small clearing was separated from civilization. One could walk the gavel pathways from one to the next, completely departing from the first within a few steps before entering an entirely different arboricultural realm less than two dozen later.
About the eastern gardens, vines had been teased to grow into incredibly detailed animal forms. These creatures of leaf and twig appeared to graze on the lawns among the wider flower beds. Trellises spread a living ceiling over platforms where the court would, at times, gather for outdoor recreation. Fountains of trained shrubbery flowed not with water but dangling orchids. Other floral creations stole the viewer’s breath with their graceful sweeps or towering appendages that could not possibly remain standing without toppling, yet did through the wiles of the caretakers.
The palace gardeners worked year round to keep the garden’s inhabitants healthy. Thirty-seven privacy clearings existed, each with unique flowers and shrubs and trees, all clustered in the western grounds like a miniature forest. Twenty-nine topiary animals needed attention lest new offshoots distort their crisp form. Thirteen floral structures required constant maintenance to prevent growth from overstressing the delicate frameworks concealed within. Three-hundred-seventy-three different flowers had been imported from across the entire Arronath continent as well as from Eileon to the west. Over a hundred shrub species and nearly as many different tree types coexisted together under strict supervision.
Along the gardens’ southernmost edge ran Half-Mile Hall, named so for its apparent length. It was actually a corridor. Its northern side had been built from spaced columns rather than solid wall, leaving the hallway open to the magnificent gardens. Gray speckled marble coated the columns, matching the rusticated granite of the opposite wall.
Through these columns stepped a man clad in earthen-brown robes of the finest quality. His angular face took in his surroundings while betraying nothing of his thoughts. People who met with him left wondering at his mind’s workings. None had yet read him.
All at court knew Councilor Xenos favored the gardens. He visited them most days, or at least on days when the courtiers noticed his presence. At times the councilor could go for over a week without being seen. Ordinarily this would have sparked much gossip. Few willingly mentioned him while discussing the latest scandals, though. A man who could not be read must be treated with caution in an arena where political alliances shifted on a daily basis.
Xenos entered the gardens. As had become his habit, he trod the pathways that led to the forested privacy niches of arboreal solitude, feeling the abundant life energy flowing through the rich vegetation and fertile soil. His right hand stole within his voluminous robe. Lightly, softly, a lover’s caress, he ran his fingers over the veined heart nestled within an inner pocket.
He’d carefully excised it the night before, cutting with the steady care of a lifetime chirurgeon. Her screams had echoed through the temple cavern as piercingly as the alarm tone could. Xenos had used his power to ensure her survival until the moment he reached his reformulated hand into her chest, through the dissected breast, past the splintered ends of her fractured ribs. His elongated fingernails, effective as steel knives, wrapped around the arterial veins pumping blood throughout her body.
Slowly he’d severed these with his fingers. He’d felt the raw surge of pure life energy gushing forth, produced in staggering quantity via the damage to her mortal shell and her sheer terror. Her heart secured firmly, her life his, he had patiently ripped it free to the exultant moans from his congregation.
Later, after her energies had been harvested, he’d prepared to dump her body over the altar’s edge into the black chasm whose depths were a mystery to all but the dead. Before doing so he noticed life energy traces clinging to the cooling meat of her heart. Truly she had been a rare specimen, producing energy in quantities unknown even to him. Or perhaps the explanation for such abundance lay simply in the seven month fetus bulging her abdomen.
If so, he might need to make it policy to keep female sacrifices alive long enough for impregnation.
He fondly stroked the energy traces loitering in her former life-core. Hardly enough to sense, not worth the bother of extracting; just enough to recall the glorious inrush.
Xenos withdrew his hand when he came to the edge of the trees. He paused, waiting. After several moments he smiled and finally called out.
“I sensed you early this morning. Come face me, if you’ve the courage.”
His narrow eyes studied the winding tree branches until movement betrayed the other within the shadows. Stepping into the dusky evening walked a man clad mostly in the deep red of a fine wine. The brightest red flashed not from his ruby-jeweled eyes, but his fiery hair, the same shade as the sun’s final face before twilight’s embrace.
“You appear and you face me, apprised of my presence,” said the Red Man. “Do you hold superior confidence that you might prevail in combat against an adversary the likes of myself?”
Xenos’ smiled broadened. “It was not I who fled our last encounter, nor do I skulk through shadows searching for weakness. I have long been prepared to face you. To end your interference.”
The Red Man raised one hand. His immense power gathered to form a nimbus around the tight red gentleman’s glove. “I know what I have come this day to face. Now you will come to be aware of what faces you.”
“You don’t know so much as you believe, eul’kkandr.”
Shock jolted the Red Man. His control broke. The nimbus faded from his hand. “How came you to be aware of such?”
Councilor Xenos shifted his head sideways an eighth, watching his pursuer, holding his silence.
“So you have nurtured it so far,” the Red Man decided while he returned the gaze. “It grows and awakens until it bestows knowledge beyond your own experience.”
“I called you out because I wish to know why your race meddles in the world beyond your boundaries.” Xenos turned his angular glare, filled with force, fully upon the Red Man. “Tell me what prompts your interest in the affairs of the outer world. I have searched the memories of the times before, and I find no conflicts that involved you or yours.”
“Memories you have searched…” The Red Man fortified his resolve, regaining mastery over his power. “You possess recollections of ages before your birth. Never did I imagine it could remake its carrier in such a brief time span. Hold you no regrets for the man you were?”
“The man I am,” Xenos countered. “God has granted me strength enough to serve him. And serve him I shall, as loyally as any ever have.”
The Red Man bow
ed his head an inch. “I see the man who once was is now no more. Your end holds importance beyond what even I predicted.”
He launched his attack at Xenos. A river of waves that were composed not from water, but undulating white-blue lightning. It crackled with sound enough to deafen, burst all it touched into splintered shards. Trees split. Benches exploded. Flowers burned to black ash.
Xenos deflected it with his palm, deformed and reconstituted anew in an instant. Electric fire rebounded from his vein-pulsing digits, his palm redirecting the lightning back to the source.
The Red Man dodged his own attack and launched a different assault at the same moment. This came as a spear, white hot, formed of molten energy. He hurled it at his foe while smoke clouded his nostrils. Flames feeding off blasted wood howled in his ears.
The councilor leapt. Aided by his fantastic power, he jumped upward on legs as monstrous as his newly shaped hands. Fifteen feet he soared, looking down on his enemy who missed seeing his jump due to the wafting smoke between them.
Xenos hurled a fiery blast that destroyed the ground. The tree line erupted in a volcanic explosion. Shrapnel from trees and stone cut the air in vicious guillotine brutality. A roar of wrenching earth flattened the garden blossoms as the concussive shock rocked Half-Mile Hall.
Councilor Xenos landed nimbly amidst a snowstorm of grass, leaves and flower petals, all charred, trailing smoke. The trees burned furiously. Movement from the side alarmed him. He knew the eul’kkandr could not have moved so quickly!
A different man materialized through the smoke. Not the eul’kkandr at all. Xenos could only take in the bizarre sword in the half eye-blink the stranger afforded him. With a powerful swing, the enormous sword whipped around to cut the councilor in half.
Xenos grabbed the blade in his reconstituted fingers. He expected to stop the sword cold to the stranger’s surprise. To his astonishment, the swordsman’s blade pushed back his hand, stronger than steel, impervious to a mere weapon. His hand struck his chest. The sword slammed into his torso, his hand a buffer protecting his life, striking with force enough to hurl him backward.
He was thrown in no gentle arc, but hurled back as a knife thrown at a gaming post. Thirty feet away he struck the ground hard and stopped rolling only when he clawed into the earth with his hands.
“Kkan’edom,” Xenos hissed, staring at the warrior who breathed harshly while he brought his sword around. The damned eul’kkandr had bonded himself. Xenos quickly regained his feet. His altered body had been protected against the worst damage.
Four men burst into their midst as the kkan’edom rushed forward. Palace guards who ran from their stations in a room off the corridor. They paused, examining in the scene. The kkan’edom did not hesitate. With a swing he smashed the nearest guard. A steel breastplate surrendered under the superior force. A bloody gout sprayed in a wide fan.
The other three stared in astonishment. Easily, the kkan’edom reversed his swing, connecting with the second guard’s stomach, who folded in half as a red torrent flooded through the armor’s cracks. Guards three and four whirled to run. From behind the swordsman spun on one foot, a movement that whipped the giant blade around on a tilted angle. It smashed into the back of number three, which sent his shattered body crashing into the last. Both tumbled to the ground.
Xenos used the moment to launch a burning scythe at the kkan’edom. It missed when the man sidestepped and retaliated as only one of his ilk could. The veins on the swordsman’s forehead bulged, sweat dripped into his eyes, his hands tightened on the massive sword hilt. He swung in an upward arc from below, the tip digging a shallow ditch through the dirt.
Along the track his sword described, a shock-wave of raw power raced down the blade, then in a furious line along the ground. Dirt and pebbles exploded away as the demonic furrow gored through the ground like an invisible hell-plow.
The councilor snarled and slammed his claws into the dirt as the ground-sheering lance reached him. His power clashed with the kkan’edom’s. He felt the terrible force ripping at his reconstituted flesh until he finally shattered the construct between his talons.
Before the kkan’edom could recover, Xenos leapt. He held a palmful of fire that he hurled at the swordsman’s face. Except another force reached to turn aside the burning flames. Out from the blazing tumult of the flower beds stepped the Red Man.
Eul’kkandr and kkan’edom stepped closer to each other, the Red Man quickly firing a brilliant sphere of luminescent power that outshone the sun. Xenos wanted no more of this. The kkan’edom changed the equation little as matters stood, but he had miscalculated this encounter. He summoned his formidable power and released it in an enlarged version of his first blast. His unleashed assault swallowed the sphere as it sped toward him.
The gardens exploded in fire and earthquakes. Nine privacy niches were instantly destroyed. Several others were set afire by the burning debris landing everywhere. Underfoot the palace grounds shook from the blast’s force. Choking smoke concealed Half-Mile Hall under a black, roiling fog.
Xenos peered into the smoke for several moments before turning his back on the devastation. The last guard, unsteady, struggled to his feet. Fear bubbled through his aura.
“Wh-What the h-h-hells was…”
His words were abruptly cut off when Xenos pierced his throat with razor fingernails. He crushed the man’s windpipe before tossing the body aside to rest with the others.
New noises could be heard. Shouts rising from the corridor, no doubt originating from alarmed guards stationed further away. Councilor Xenos raised his malformed hand to his face. He scored deep wounds across his forehead and down the right side. Before the blood could drip, his hands, legs, and body rippled. Flesh undulated before settling back into the form of an ordinary man.
Xenos dropped to the scorched ground several feet closer to the corridor than the dead guards and waited. Soon enough, shocked men swarmed the gardens.
“By all that is sacred…”
“Sweet gods, what happened here?”
“Jerome! Ah, no! He’s dead!”
“Someone check the rest of the bodies!”
Hands probed Xenos. He elicited a weak groan.
“Hey! This one’s alive! Help me with him!”
“It’s the councilor.” New hands gently patted his cheeks. “Councilor Xenos, sir? Can you hear me?”
He opened his eyes, finding a guard captain gazing at him in concern. “Yes. I hear you.”
“Councilor, sir, can you tell me what happened?”
“Assassins! Assassins from the far lands, sent to kill the king!” The guards gasped, wide-eyed. “And these brave souls,” Xenos gestured at the four dead guards. “I owe them my life. They came between myself and them, taking a magical blast meant for me! Thank the gods their second attack exploded in their own faces!”
“Sir, is the king still in danger?” Without waiting for the councilor’s reply, the guard captain ordered half his men to run to the king’s side.
“That I don’t know, captain. But what I do know is this.” Xenos stepped away from his supporting grasp, looking furious as he scanned the eastern skies. “General Adrian has abysmally failed in his mission to subdue the far lands. Measures must be taken to rectify this.”
Full of patriotic indignation, Xenos strode away from the stunned palace guards.
Chapter 23
As soon as Seneschal Locke departed to order Hilliard’s quarters prepared for an injured man, the future baron addressed his guards. “I imagine this is our moment of parting.” He wobbled on his feet.
“You should be sitting down,” Landon chided. He gently pushed against Hilliard’s good shoulder until the young man eased onto a yellow-cushioned chair in the hallway. “Your full recovery is still a distance off. Don’t overstrain your body.”
“Yeah,” Kerwin added from the other side. “A month of road riding hardly qualifies as bed rest.”
Hilliard sighed deeply, a habit he had adopted
during the journey back to Spirratta. The first two days of travel had been hardest on him, leaving him near delirium by the second nightfall. By then they had journeyed far enough from the city to feel safer. They stopped at a small town to allow Hilliard time to recover. His condition worsened alarmingly. Marik had run down the local herbman for help, and after three days their charge improved to where he could resume the journey.
Despite the slower pace they set, their return trip lasted only two days longer than their initial ride to Thoenar. Without the hoards clogging the roads from thousands of people making a pilgrimage to the capitol for the tournament, they rode a smoother pace.
“I will have time enough now,” Hilliard returned Kerwin’s remark. “In fact with most of the other fosterlings still at the tournament, the daily routine will be peaceful.”
“For the next fortnight, perhaps,” Dietrik countered. “Most of your mates must already be halfway home. The last event was eightdays ago.”
Hilliard shrugged, a motion that made him wince momentarily when his bandages tightened. “One will remain in Thoenar, by the king’s side. I wish I knew who claimed the victory.”
Marik winced as well in sympathy. “I’m sure we’ll hear sooner or later. We would know already if we hadn’t failed so badly.”
“I am still alive, am I not? You have served your duty to my father.”
“Not the way he paid us for. You won’t get another shot at the position of Arm for three years.” Marik bowed his head to apologize. “I know how much it meant to you.”
“Man plans; the gods laugh,” Hilliard responded. “Yes, I am disappointed, but the fault is hardly yours. Though I might have won through the jousting, I doubt I would have prevailed with the sword.”
