by K. C. May
King Arek tried to stand, but his legs buckled beneath him. “I can’t. I haven’t the strength.” He looked up at Ronor, and in his eyes, the initial horror of his peril was replaced by a knowing acceptance. “Ronor, take the tablet. Run!”
Ronor tried to pull Arek to his feet. “Yes, my lord, but first you must get to the vortex. I will seal you inside the palace.”
“There’s no time, Ronor. You must keep the tablet safe.”
“No, my liege, I have sworn to protect you.”
“You have sworn to obey. Take the tablet and go. Now!” King Arek leaned against the table, his legs quivering.
The wide double doors in the great hall slammed open. The noise echoed ominously through the corridors.
“You’ll be trapped,” Ronor argued. “Trapped inside the palace with it.”
“GO!” King Arek shouted.
In one quick movement, Ronor ducked his head, wrapped an arm around King Arek’s thighs and hoisted the king over his shoulder. He would disobey his king and suffer the consequence of it later rather than leave him to die.
“Ronor, no,” King Arek said. “It’ll kill us both. You must get the tablet to safety.”
Ronor fumbled to lift the stone tablet with his other hand, and clutched it to his chest. The smell of sulfur wafted through the hall. He began to run down the corridor, but feared his heavy footsteps would give away their position. As quickly as he could manage, he started down the back staircase.
“King Arek,” a tritonal voice boomed behind him. “At last we meet.”
Ronor took the stairs two at a time. His own weight and that of King Arek on his shoulder threatened to break his ankles with every step. A wave of force hit him from behind. He flew forward. He and King Arek tumbled down the stairs. Ronor clutched the tablet protectively. When at last they came to a stop at the landing, Ronor crawled on his elbows to reach his king.
Blood trickled from King Arek’s nose and ears. His body was skewed awkwardly, his legs twisted beneath him. King Arek swallowed with a gurgling sound. “Run, Ronor,” he whispered.
For a second, Ronor considered trying to pick King Arek up once again. He looked into the brilliant blue eyes of the king, and he knew that this was farewell. All their years together and the powerful bond that had formed between them culminated in this final moment – with Ronor abandoning his king when he most needed protection.
The demon Ritol stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at them with glittering black eyes. It started down the steps.
Ronor took a small flat stone from his pocket, a rune of protection carved into its surface, and pressed it into King Arek’s hand. With the stone tablet clutched in his arms, Ronor rolled to his feet. The demon swiped at him, ripping two long furrows down his face and sending him spinning. He hit the wall and stumbled, caught himself and sprinted through the dining hall. Something crashed behind him. A door burst from its hinges and struck the opposite wall. He raced through the kitchen and out the back door, slammed it shut and rammed a bar through its two handles. The rune carved into its surface crackled as though a bolt of lightning had shot through it. From behind the door came a fearsome shriek that made the hairs on Ronor’s neck bristle. He darted across the inner courtyard and mounted his battle horse, then kicked wildly at the horse’s sides, spurring it to a gallop.
As he passed through the outer gate and over the rune he’d placed there, the gems embedded in the tablet lit up. A barrier formed around the entire palace grounds, sealing it. None would enter, none would leave, until the runes in the tablet were discharged and the gems returned to this gate. A shudder coursed through him.
He pulled the reins hard and spun his mount. Both horse and rider gasped for breath. “Let his death be quick,” Ronor whispered to the palace.
Ronor turned to the southeast and ran his horse nonstop to Saliria. There he changed horses at the lordover’s stable and continued west and then north to the cave where Queen Calewen and the men-at-arms awaited. The stronghold.
He considered how he would tell the queen of King Arek’s death. Queen Calewen was strong, intelligent and well-grounded. She knew their plan had risks and their options had been few. Yet, she was also a woman – and a wife who loved her husband. Ronor would be there for her. He would pledge his loyalty to her once again, and vow to help in every way he could to raise her child; to teach him about the runes, the gems, and his father’s magic. Where Ronor had failed to protect the king, he would succeed with Calewen and her child.
Once night had fallen, Ronor and the horse picked their way slowly through the dark forest. In the soft glow of his sputtering torchlight, he saw the markers that told him he was almost there, but he heard no voices, saw no flickering torchlight. They’re safe inside, protected by the barrier spell, he told himself. He climbed wearily from his horse. In the pale light of his torch, he made out the lumpy form of a body. The Rune Tablet fell to the ground with a muffled thud. “No,” he whispered, breaking into a run. Three men-at-arms and the royal mage lay still outside the cave entrance.
Inside, drenched with blood, nearly two dozen armsmen were strewn across the floor, twisted, their mouths and eyes wide in eternal agony. “No,” he said again. “NO!” Looking around, frantic, he caught sight of Queen Calewen, her neck a mass of torn and bloody tissue. A cry of despair erupted from his throat, and he went to her, falling to his knees and dropping the torch to the rocky cave floor. “My Queen,” he howled. His voice echoed off the walls of the cave. Bending low, he pressed his lips against her cold forehead and wept. “I’m sorry, my liege,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.” The king, the queen – both dead. The heir…
He shuffled sideways on his knees and laid his hand flat against the curve of her belly, hoping to feel the child move. Please, he thought. All was still. With his dagger, he cut a slit in the front of Calewen’s blood-soaked gown to reveal the smooth skin of her stomach. He leaned down and pressed his ear against her, listening. The only sounds were those of his own labored breath and the moans coming unbidden from his throat. Even had she been close to her time, Calewen had been dead too long for Ronor to save the baby.
Ronor staggered from the cave. He groped for the mountain wall to steady himself while his stomach lurched. He bent over and vomited again and again, wrenching his gut until he heaved nothing but air.
“Gavin!” Daia sounded alarmed. Her hand was on his shoulder, shaking him. “Say something, damn it.”
Gavin pulled his gaze into focus, realizing he’d been staring into Daia’s eyes. He looked around the table, blinking. All eyes were on him. His heart pounded, his skin felt clammy. He began to shiver.
“Are you all right?” Edan asked.
Bile rose in Gavin’s throat. He reached for a glass of water and guzzled it down. What the hell had just happened? He’d had a vision -- a vision of events as seen through the eyes of a man nearly two hundred years in his grave.
Her throat. By the gods! The queen’s throat – ripped apart by a demon just as Talisha’s had been slit by a devil. No. This couldn’t be. Ronor’s face -– slashed. King Arek -– left to die by the claws of a fiend exactly as Gavin’s father...
Gavin pushed away from the table, shot to his feet, and spun, searching for a way out of this madness. He started toward the door.
“It is Farthan proverb living true,” Risan said quietly. “‘Promise made to king shall transcend death.’”
Gavin stopped and turned. Transcend death? Then it struck him like a slap from the gods; Ronor’s vow would haunt him for eternity until it was fulfilled.
Swear it on your immortal soul!
Gavin’s stomach lurched and he stumbled back to the table, collapsing into a chair. “By the seven realms,” he whispered. How many lives had been sacrificed because of Ronor Kinshield’s unwillingness to keep the promise he’d made to the king? Ronor’s failing had become Gavin’s failing. The vow would not go unanswered. As Ronor’s descendant, it was up to him. It was the only way to break the cy
cle so that Gavin’s nephews, sons or grandsons wouldn’t have to suffer what he was facing now. His own words to the pendant thief came back to him. “I have to be the strong one,” he said. “It has to end. Now. With me.”
“End?” Daia asked. “It can’t just end. What about the legend? What about the King’s Blood-stone?”
“Ronor Kinshield made a mistake and I’m the only one who can put it right.”
Chapter 63
They rode by pairs east to the mountains, then south through the VigilantForest toward the Rune Cave. Brawna rode atop Domach’s horse with Edan beside her. Daia and Gavin followed, and Risan and Dwaeth took up the rear. A Hermit Thrush serenaded them as they rode, the vibrancy of its song matching the anticipation that raced through Daia’s veins. This is it, she thought. The day we get our new king. She turned to regard the man riding beside her.
He looked different to her now than he did when they met just a week ago. While he was still unshaven with an unruly mop of dark hair, gap-toothed and his face disfigured by a pair of jagged scars, those features were less offensive now. They defined Gavin Kinshield. They defined the king.
“Will you need help getting the answer?” she asked.
He turned to her, his eyes rimmed with dark circles and crinkled with weariness. “No.”
He sat straight in the saddle high atop his huge horse, looking as much a king as a king should look. A breeze ruffled his hair.
Putting a king on the throne was only the first step. Gavin would need to marry. The sooner he took a wife and begot an heir, the better. Daia imagined the crowds of women who would start throwing themselves at him, hoping to be chosen as his bride and queen -- the same women who would have screamed for the lordover’s men-at-arms at the mere insinuation of his affections were it not for the Rune Stones in his possession. And what of Gavin? Did he have the sense to choose wisely, when his choices would include Thendylath’s most beautiful women? Under normal circumstances, Daia would have imagined him with the sort of wench who frequently gave herself up to men in exchange for a few ales.
Perhaps that was unfair. Judging from the way his voice had wavered, the tale he’d told her of losing his wife and child had come from deep within his heart. The short glimpses at his soul that he’d allowed her had shown the depth of feeling of which he was capable. No, she was in no position to judge him.
He cast a glance at her as they rode. “What?”
Daia supposed he must be well aware of his need to marry. That he was attracted to her she had no doubt. By Yrys. What if he set his eye upon her? She gulped and turned her head away from him. No, he wouldn’t. Her place was at his side, not as his wife but as his guard. She chewed the inside of her cheek. Surely he would agree with her. He’d asked for her pledge, and she’d given it gladly as a soldier and subject of his kingdom. He knew how she felt. Didn’t he? Nonetheless, she would watch for signs of an impending proposal. In the event they found themselves alone together, she would find a way to gently guide him from that path should he start to venture down it.
They arrived at the cave in the late afternoon. Daia searched the woods for signs of movement, listened for the rustle of footsteps across the forest floor. Although she neither saw nor heard signs of human presence, the lack of chipmunks and squirrels gave her pause. Brodas’s army of Viragon Sisters was here. Somewhere.
Brawna pointed up at the top of the hill that rose opposite the cave entrance. “That’s where we hid.”
Quietly, everyone dismounted and tethered their horses. If Viragon Sisters waited nearby, surely they were alert to the party’s presence, but they would remain hidden until Gavin came out. Until after the final rune was solved.
The mood was somber with an undercurrent of excitement as they all looked to Gavin and followed him into the cave.
For the last time, Gavin shuffled up to the rock shelf, each step heavier than the last. He’d spent his entire life avoiding this very moment, and all he’d done was postpone the inevitable at the cost of his father’s, wife’s and daughter’s lives. No more people would suffer for his failures. The time had come.
The tablet looked bare. Only one gem remained in the center of the spiral shape formed by the runes and the holes that once held the other Rune Stones. With a deep breath, Gavin flexed his hands on the jagged edges of the stone tablet. He already knew the name of this final rune. He’d known it all his life. The image of his daughter’s face flashed in his mind as he whispered, “Caevyan.”
All at once, the King’s Blood-stone seemed to shatter. Millions of shards of brilliant red and green twinkled like stars in a pitch black sky. He stumbled, then fell forward into the rain of glass.
A sound escaped his throat, a hissed HUUMPH as though the wind had been knocked from his lungs by a mighty blow. Awareness of everything around him faded. No sounds reached his ears, no sight spanned before him save that of the King’s Blood-stone. Falling, falling, into the red brilliance he fell, his arms flailing wildly to catch himself.
When he was sure he would fall forever into the endless depths of the King’s Blood-stone, its brilliance exploded, knocking him backward. He somersaulted through a vast space, seemingly empty yet alive with images, sounds, smells, textures. Images of things he’d never seen, yet oddly familiar raced through his mind like a swarm of bees flying to a bouquet. He felt the essence, the power of King Arek, draining from the stone and into his mind, his body, his soul.
A voice spoke in his mind: Ronor Kinshield.
Gavin knew this voice, a voice he hadn’t heard in many lifetimes, a voice that wrenched his heart by its absence from his life. “I’m not Ronor, my liege,” he replied. He imagined himself going to one knee, his head bent in reverence.
You have his spirit and his blood. Three times re-embodied, you have rejected my call. This ribbon must be burned.
“You mean, this is my destiny?”
Not destiny, choice. It was the vow you took. You must finish the task, Ronor. You have an advantage now that I did not have. You can defeat the evil.
“Ravenkind?” Gavin asked.
The element you call Brodas Ravenkind is embodied as you are and, therefore, mortal. You must vanquish that which is without a soul. Two hundred years it has waited. Take the key to the gate, enter the palace of the demon and summon it back to its own world. Seal the rift between the realms and end the constant onslaught of beyonders into your own. This task only you can do. You are Wayfarer now.
“Shouldn’t I kill it?”
Ritol cannot be killed, Ronor. Traveling with you is a spring from which you can draw your greatest strength. Use her to find your way home, use the runes to stay alive. Waste no more time.
The drifting feeling began to slow, and he rocked forward, slowly settling back to the present. Back to the cave where the Rune Tablet lay, where his friends gathered and watched him with wonderment. He felt himself melt back into his physical body, still standing by the grace of a strong hand clutching his shoulder. The hand of Daia Saberheart.
“Gavin, are you all right?” someone asked. A voice he knew, a voice he trusted. Edan’s voice.
He bent over, then fell to his knees and hands, weary yet emotionally energized. Questions he’d held in his heart all his life had finally been answered. At last, he understood.
The green and red-speckled stone fell from the rune tablet and clinked on the hard rock floor of the cave, bouncing once to land directly under Gavin’s eyes. Several gasps broke the silence in the cave. He hesitated, then reached for it, picked it up. The King’s Blood-stone.
“No,” he whispered, feeling a power within him lurch once more. He staggered to his feet and ran, stumbling, from the cave. The sunlight was a thousand daggers in his eyes. He stopped, clutching the gem in one hand and reaching blindly for the mountain wall with the other. His stomach lurched again, again. He bent over, spilling the enormity of his task onto the ground and leaving a sickening taste in his mouth. Again it came, wrenching his gut until he could only chok
e and gag. He wiped his mouth, now terribly dry, with the back of his hand.
Then someone uncorked a flask and shoved it into Gavin’s hand. He drank deeply and long until the flask was dry. He shook it above his open mouth to get the last few drops. A hand patted his back, voices hummed in his ear. Dozens of footsteps approached, crinkling the leaves on the forest floor behind him. He turned, squinted his burning eyes. Forming a wall around the cave entrance were women warriors, at least two dozen of them, all armed, drawn and ready to attack.
Risan, Brawna and Daia drew their swords. Edan had an arrow nocked before their swords were clear of their scabbards. The boy, Dwaeth, scurried behind Risan and clutched his right hand.
“Daia,” said a haggard-looking blonde with an authoritative air. “And Brawna. What a surprise to find you still alive. And how convenient that you’re here together.”
“Lilalian,” Daia said, “what has become of you that you would sacrifice the guild and the honor of these battlers? To murder Aminda for your own gain?”
“It’s the necklaces,” Brawna said. “Ravenkind controlled them with the necklaces somehow.”
“And I control them still,” Brodas called out as he rode up on a white horse. Dark crimson stained the side of his tunic under his ribcage, but he appeared otherwise none the worse for it. Cirang accompanied him, her sword drawn. When he pressed his horse through the parting swordswomen, she did as well and stopped her mount beside him. “I claim the King’s Blood-stone,“ Brodas said from atop his horse. ”Give it to me, and I’ll command my warriors to spare your lives.”
Gavin drew from his pocket the ring he’d removed from Brodas’s severed finger. It must have been the gem, binding their will to his. He focused on it and concentrated. A spell was embedded within the gem -- that much he sensed -- but the harder he tried to see it, to smash it with his will, the more illusory it became.
