Sword Bearer (Return of the Dragons)

by Jacobs, Teddy

  Kara was smiling. Her teeth were dazzlingly bright. I would have done anything to make her smile again, like that. She came up to me and hugged me.

  “We made it,” she said. “Can you believe it? I can’t believe it’s remained undiscovered all this time.”

  Her smell was intoxicating. I just wanted to melt into her. It was a relief when she let me go, smiling wickedly at me. She must have sensed what I was thinking. I hadn’t yet learned to shield my private thoughts.

  I stood there in a daze, staring at the second gate. It was covered with runes. They called out to us somehow, but their meaning was lost to me. Still they had to mean something important. I wanted to trace all the runes with my finger and make them glow, but I felt if I did that, something would happen.

  I wasn’t sure if it was something good or bad but it would be something big.

  On both sides of the gateway there was a high wall that seemed to rise up forever, and curve inward. I could feel the power that ran through it. The wall was covered with vegetation but my inner eye saw the glow of runes through the vines.

  Kara touched my shoulder. “Should we go in, do you think?”

  Kalle cleared his throat. “We need to find a place to rest, Princess. We need real food and clean water. Let’s explore this city and see what we can find.”

  I felt suddenly weary. Maybe Kara’s spell was wearing off. Maybe the energy ride had drained me. In any case, I needed to rest, to sit, to eat, to drink and to sleep. But something was nagging at me.

  “I think there’s something about this gate,” I said. “These symbols mean something, but I can’t figure it out.”

  Kalle examined it.

  “They are in an ancient tongue that we once knew, maybe, but that’s been lost. If we could hear these words, we might understand them with our sense memory. As it is, they mean nothing to me. Kara?”

  She shook her head. “I looked at them at the other gate, and didn’t understand them there, either.”

  Kalle took a step, towards the gate. “I will enter.”

  I shook my head.

  There was something very wrong.

  I couldn’t explain it. I just knew, deep inside that there was something very important I had to do first. The problem was, I was so tired I couldn’t think or even see straight. If I could only figure out what those symbols meant. They were a key somehow, to something. I knew that much.

  Kara nodded. “Then let us enter.”

  I was still shaking my head like an idiot, but they either didn’t notice, or they ignored me.

  Kalle walked through the gate.

  Except he never made it through.

  It was as if he was suddenly flipped around. He walked in, and then he walked out on the same side he had entered. He stood there, looking confused, staring at us.

  Suddenly the sun, that had felt hot on my neck, went away. I looked up, and saw dark clouds. There was thunder in the distance.

  I looked warily at the clouds, then at the gate, and the wall that surrounded it. Was there something different about the gate, now? Something slightly menacing, questioning?

  A streak of lightning lit up the sky and struck the ground. Close. Too close. Not even ten feet from where we stood.

  I was thrown from my feet and landed on the ground.

  I got up shakily. Rain poured down my face. I looked around.

  Kalle was getting up to his feet.

  But Kara.

  I gasped.

  She must have been closer to the blast, because she was still on the ground, and something about the way she lay there sent a tremor through me.

  I ran over to her, trying to shake the tiredness out of my head.

  There was another streak of lightning, not as close this time, but the thunder still came right away. If this kept up much longer, we would all lose our sight and hearing.

  I crouched down next to her. She just shook her head at me.

  I’ll be all right. I think you were right about the runes. Try to figure them out. We have to find shelter. If this lightning storm is a warning, we may survive. But if it’s an attack, we’re dead, unless you figure out how to get us through that gate.

  Talk about no pressure.

  Another lightning blast some ten feet away sent us tumbling through the air again. Blind and deaf, I crawled towards the gate, guided by my third eye.

  I reached out my hand. I could say I found the runes, but you might as well say the runes found me. I couldn’t see, but I could feel them. And as I ran my hand across the first one, it glowed in my inner eye.

  And I heard a sound.

  Like when the sword spoke to me, some kind of song. So I ran my hand along another rune.

  A second note joined the first.

  The music was frightening and intoxicating. I ran fingers along all the runes in reach, one after another, and they all began to glow.

  Their notes joined the song, and I could almost make sense of it. Almost. There was something still missing.

  I was too short, that was part of it. I couldn’t reach the top of the gate. The highest runes must have been eight feet off the ground, and I was only five and a half feet tall. Those ancients must have been pretty big.

  Suddenly I felt myself rising up, and then I realized I was being carried.

  Kalle had me by the knees.

  Quick, Anders. The lightning and thunder are gone, but the other runes are beginning to lose their glow. Do what you have to do.

  Sure, but what was that, exactly? I was losing my confidence and my focus. I listened to the song, and traced the remaining runes.

  All of the runes began to glow again, intensely. Hearing their song, I finally understood. If only I had paid more attention to music when I was little, and to the lessons with the lyre my father had insisted on. Or even learned the pianoforte, like my mother had wanted. But there was something in the blood that responded, all the same.

  I felt a stirring at my side.

  I reached down and grabbed the sword.

  Music flowed into me, and brought power with it, power of which I had little knowledge and less control. My body was a channel for blood magic far older than my great-grandfather...

  So I did the only thing I could. If you can’t play an instrument, you have only one choice. I opened my mouth and sang, a song that ran through my hand, through the hilt and pommel of the sword, back through my bloodline and beyond, far beyond.

  As I sang, the runes glowed brighter. I couldn’t quite understand what I was singing, what the notes meant. Everything was slippery, elusive. The gate was old, and it sang back to me. No one had passed through in over a thousand years, I understood that much.

  Then I was walking. I looked back. Kalle and Kara were standing up, and they followed me. The song still flowed from my mouth. Kara looked at me with what I was afraid was fear, but she followed me, and Kalle after her.

  There was a bright point in the middle of the gate, and that was where we had to walk. The gate was quite specific, it was not up to full capacity, we had to pass one by one, and even then it would be close.

  Three people would be admitted, no more.

  I stopped singing as I walked through the green light, but the song of the gate continued in me. I was in the gate, and then I was through. When I looked back again, there was Kara, and then Kalle, beside her, and the gate was silent.

  But it still hummed with energy, and once again, with menace.

  We would have to reactivate it to get through once again. Or find some other way out.

  Chapter VIII

  We stood on polished stone. Energy surrounded us. I could feel it flow up through the stone under my feet. The air itself crackled with it. With my inner eye I saw a rainbow of colored light, so much color that at first my vision was overwhelmed. My ears hummed with the song of the rock underneath and around us. My skin buzzed.

  For a moment, we did nothing but stand.

  Then we all sat down on the stone.

  The gro
und was covered with cut stone in geometric patterns. It felt warm and full of positive force.

  Kara smiled in wonder, touching her hand to the stones on which we sat. “These are energy stones. We Kriek have lost the magic of their creation, but we still use small fragments for all kinds of things. I have a small stone myself in my pouch, but it’s nothing compared to this. We’re surrounded by magical stone.”

  Kalle nodded. “This is the forgotten city, the Gammalstan. I cannot believe our luck. When the lightning began to thunder down upon us, I was sure all hope was lost.” He stopped and looked at me. “Who are you, Anders, really? Kara contacts you through a gateway, the keiler call you Herr, and now you open the gate into Gammalstan.”

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t know,” I said finally.

  Kalle nodded. “The answers are in your blood, perhaps, not in your head.”

  “Blood we hope not to have to shed.”

  A spear point made of dark carved wood moved into my field of vision.

  I heard Kara gasp.

  We looked up together, and around us. Dazzled by the magical brilliance, I hadn’t even bothered to look around with my two normal eyes.

  I followed the point of the spear up the shaft to its owner. A woman, a young woman — she looked little older than me — held the spear with confidence, and looked me straight in the eyes without blinking.

  I really wanted her to smile, but she didn’t.

  We were surrounded. They were all young, muscled, strong. They were all armed with spears, and the spears all pointed towards us. There must have been ten or twelve of them. Something told me the girl who had the spear pointing at my face was the leader.

  She seemed surer of herself than the rest of them, for one thing. And on her head she wore a simpler but more elegant bonnet than the others. I watched the girl-woman with attention. Her face was cool, motionless, her eyes steady. I looked at her with my third eye and saw... nothing.

  What was going on?

  Was she somehow blocking my vision? I thought I caught the smallest flicker of a smile.

  Don’t move, Anders, whatever you do. We need to go slowly, now.

  That was Kalle. And this time I was sure the girl smiled.

  “Yes, please don’t move. We need to establish a few things first.”

  Why do you speak with them, Jona? They may be here to trick us.

  I felt pretty sure that was a boy, a warrior around my age, just to my left. His thoughts felt strange, like he was thinking in another language. I turned my face slightly to face him. I felt very sure the his name was Woltan, but I did not know how I knew this. I decided to speak, all the same.

  I opened my mouth, but when I did, out flowed a language I couldn’t understand. It was musical, and flowed like the music of the gateway and the sword. But honestly, if you begged me to, I wouldn’t be able to repeat a word of it.

  Instead of thinking the words, I felt them as my mouth moved around them. The foreign words, velvety on my tongue, flowed out of my mouth. The language was strange and wonderful and made my whole body tense with energy.

  For my ears and my brain it was melodious nonsense. But through the filter of my blood I managed to understand a little. Woltan, we come from far away. We seek shelter from the keiler of the Dark Lord. If my heart speaks true, and my blood tells no lies, then we here are all kin, and there is no foe inside these gates of the Forgotten City, Gammalstan.

  There was a long pause. The air crackled with tension, and I felt my hairs stand up straight on my arms and legs.

  By some silent signal, the children-warriors pulled their spears back. Then they stepped back, and suddenly we were alone again, still seated on the ground.

  Had it all been some kind of hallucination? Some kind of strange dream?

  I looked at Kalle and Kara and was about to ask a question when I noticed they hadn’t moved a muscle since the spears had been withdrawn.

  “Kalle? Kara?”

  No response. I waved my hand in front of their eyes. They didn’t even blink.

  I stood up, and looked up at the clouds. They too seemed frozen. I looked around and saw, around a hundred feet away, a small building, and at the doorway, two figures. One of them beckoned.

  I began to walk towards them. As I grew closer, I recognized Woltan and Jona. Woltan continued to wave me onward.

  The building too seemed to pull at me, but there was a struggle inside me.

  Part of me wanted to resist, part of me wanted to rush forward. It felt right, somehow, to advance towards whatever awaited me. But what if it was all a trick, all a trap?

  Part of me felt I was meant to walk these stones, to meet this people, and that in some way I could not understand, they were my people too, just like Kara and Kalle. Part of me felt I should have stayed in the castle, kept on training to be a diplomat, like my father.

  But I hadn’t. I was here.

  I opened my mouth, calling out to them. But instead of words, out of my mouth came more song.

  It wasn’t my voice that sang, but instead the voice of my blood, of my people, of my ancestors. Though I didn’t know the words in my mind, I knew them in my blood, and this is what my blood sang:

  Once a blood prince left his keep,

  went away over seas calm and deep,

  met his true love in lands afar,

  and never returned to Gammalstan.

  There he started a blood line,

  that runs along until this day,

  one day when we cannot say,

  he shall return and with him kin,

  for his blood shall be of three lines,

  he shall be Kriek, old city and mer,

  and with his sword wielded true,

  the old bloodlines will be remade new.

  The stones underfoot started to glow as the words flowed from my mouth. The closer I came to the building the brighter they glowed, and I with them. I was a human lantern — Woltan and Jona shielded their eyes with their hands. With each step I was heavier and hotter. My body was turning into molten lead. It was not painful, but it was no longer pleasant.

  Woltan opened his mouth then; I was not far away now, and could have reached him in a moment, if it weren’t for this heaviness that made every step seem to take forever.

  Time will stop, when he comes,

  The testing of him will be done,

  His feet, so fleet, will feel like lead,

  And to walk the walk toward his kin,

  Will take his last ounce of strength;

  When he is done, his kin will weep,

  Tears, of joy or sadness, which,

  we cannot see, but true tears,

  for a blood prince kin of kin,

  that they never hoped to see.

  The last steps seemed to take an eternity.

  But what was the meaning of the word eternity, when time had stopped? I moved slowly, then more slowly still.

  But what did the word slow mean, when time didn’t move? Around me, no one moved at all, as I struggled through my last steps. At last I reached them, and faced the two warriors, my kin if the blood song was true.

  I stood there eye to eye with Woltan and Jona.

  Woltan smiled. It was written that he who will reunite the bloodlines will carry a blade of power; the hilt and pommel will be silver, the blade, wood. Here in Gammalstan a new blade will be forged.

  Jona nodded. We have kept the pieces of the broken blades of the kings of old: King Karlson of the Kriek, King Ludwig of Gammalstan, and King Luciano of the merpeople. They are incomplete, and together make up just a little more than one sword.

  Woltan continued. We shall smelt them together to make one true blade. The ancients used a steel which we can no longer create, but we still have the forge, and the smithy. We will make the steel flow again. Reform the blade, purify it with hammer and forge, and then the prince of the three bloodlines will have his sword.

  There was a pause, which seemed to last forever. My face started to
itch. Now was not a good time to scratch.

  But again, time had stopped, hadn’t it?

  All that I was going through had seemed to last an eternity, but wasn’t it all shorter than the blink of an eye?

  Back behind me, Kalle and Kara were frozen. The air around them did not move; the silence was total.

  Do you have the sword, Anders son of Andrea? Are you the Prince of the three Blood Lines, here united?

  I didn’t say anything. It turned out I didn’t need to. The sky turned suddenly dark, and I felt a change in the air.

  I drew my blade, and suddenly the air moved again around me, and the wooden blade went up high. I held it by the silver hilt that glowed in my hand. The hilt grew hotter from moment to moment.

  The glow from the blade lit up the sky and the pavement beneath me. Even the air seemed to buzz with energy and light and song.

  I couldn’t hold back any longer.

  The sword sang out in my hand. The vibrations shook my arm, moved through my body and down my leg to the ground, to the pavestones that vibrated beneath my feet.

  I’m a boy with a sword, it sang for me. Was I their prince? Let the blood tell me.

  Then it was over, and suddenly dark ground rushed up to meet my face.

  Chapter IX

  I woke up in a bed. The mattress was hard and firm, made of some kind of woven fibers. I felt exhausted but safe and, almost, at home. I looked around: there was no one else in the room. The room was warm, but comfortable. Next to my bed, there was a jug, and a glass.

  I realized suddenly how incredibly thirsty I was. I wondered when I last had a glass of water. I filled the glass, and drank. It wasn’t water, but juice of some unfamiliar fruit — very sweet, but maybe slightly fermented.

  I wondered if I was going to get drunk. That was all I needed. I did enough crazy things sober.

  I emptied the cup, and filled it again. I drank the second cup.

  The moon shone through the window, and there were torches outside too. I looked around the room, and felt very relaxed. Maybe the juice was alcoholic. Or had I been drugged? I felt somehow safe. My lids felt very heavy, and I lay back down.