Sovereign Stone

by David Wells

  Alexander shook his head. He searched for some way to convince the wyvern riders that he was telling the truth but realized it was futile. They were going to believe what they wanted to believe—and they were blocking his path. He thought of the soldiers pouring into his homeland and his resolve hardened.

  “We have to get past her. Lieutenant Wyatt, have your men nock arrows and be ready,” Alexander commanded. “Once she’s off the bridge, we’ll have to move fast.”

  Alexander drew the Thinblade.

  Jataan stepped up beside him. “What is your intention, Lord Reishi?”

  “I’m going to drive her off the bridge or kill her.”

  Jataan shook his head. “Such risk is unnecessary. Do you wish her dead or injured?”

  Alexander thought about it for a moment. If she was left alive, she could report what he’d said and the fact that he had the Sovereign Stone. That might serve as leverage when he went to get Isabel and Abigail.

  “Alive, but out of the way,” Alexander said.

  Jataan nodded and held out his hand to Boaberous. The giant slipped a javelin out of his oversized quiver and handed it to Jataan without a word. Alexander’s new protector stood with his back to the wall just beside the door, then rolled into the open space of the doorway and hurled the javelin with terrifying force, then rolled to the far side of the door behind the cover of the wall. The entire attack took less time than the blink of an eye.

  The rider screamed, and the sound of a wyvern beating its wings was accompanied by the swirl of air and dust from the downdraft. Jataan nodded to Boaberous, who darted out onto the bridge and ran with surprising speed to the far side. A javelin from high above missed him as he reached the cover of the far tower.

  They moved across in a tight group, scanning the sky. Rangers loosed arrows at anything that moved in an effort to put the wyvern riders on the defensive. Jataan stayed close to Alexander, scanning for danger. A wyvern came in for a tail-strike but veered off sharply when three Rangers sent arrows into its path. The wyverns nearby roared and were answered by others farther away. It was frightening to hear the predawn calm shattered by the fury of so many of the beasts.

  They moved up through the tower as quickly as they could and reached the level of the sky deck just as the sky started to lighten. The tower room was similar to the other. It had a wrap-around balcony, several smashed-out windows and two doors, one leading to the sky deck and another leading to the balcony.

  “The Gate Room is five levels up. Have you scouted the levels above?” Alexander asked Jataan.

  “No, Lord Reishi. Prince Phane said the Sovereign Stone would be on the sky deck, so we waited here.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Alexander saw a blast of magical energy like nothing he’d ever seen before; it came from below on the rangeland surrounding the Keep. It tore up through the tower where the demon was held in the magical circle, shattering part of the tower where the sky deck was attached. The entire Keep shuddered from the impact. A terrible cracking noise reverberated through the structure as the sky deck broke free of the other two towers and plummeted to the courtyard below.

  Alexander raced to a window. A man mounted on a horse was on the Gate platform. The Gate went from an open portal to a solid wall as the man took aim at an approaching wyvern rider. Another terrible blast of inky black magic shot forth from his extended hand, streaking toward the wyvern as it tried to roll out of the way. The black magic hit like a stream of liquid, splattering on impact. Everywhere it touched, the wyvern simply transformed into a heavy black smoke that sank toward the ground. Within moments, the wyvern and rider were reduced to nothing but a jumble of parts amidst a swirl of dark and unnatural smoke.

  “Phane,” Jataan P’Tal said.

  Chapter 54

  Alexander felt a thrill of fear. How could he hope to stand against such terrifying power? Phane was clearly beyond him. Before he could pull his mind back from the brink of fear, a Ranger cried out, pointing to the far tower—the one with the demon trapped inside.

  The magic circle had been broken. The beast with the mouth and dozens of tentacles pulled itself out through the doorway. The bulbous ends of its tentacles stuck to the stone where they made contact, leaving smoldering indentations.

  With one powerful thrust, it propelled itself away from the tower and sailed through the air toward Alexander. It hit the side of the tower far below and started climbing up the stone wall.

  Alexander could see Phane riding toward the Keep, fending off the attacks of the wyvern riders with dark magic that sent chills of terror up his spine. All the while, the tentacle demon climbed toward him. The situation had quickly gone from bad to worse.

  “To the Gate Room,” Alexander said, wheeling toward the staircase.

  Boaberous took the lead with his big war hammer at the ready.

  The next several levels were surprisingly intact, as if some ancient magic had preserved the contents against the effects of time. The first was a laboratory filled with all of the glassware, tools, and ingredients an alchemist might ever need. Alexander wished they could stop and explore, but there just wasn’t time. The next room was a library and study filled with shelves of ancient and arcane volumes. Alexander shook his head in frustration as they moved through the room and up the next staircase. The next two rooms were more libraries filled with ancient tomes, all intact.

  Alexander made a note to himself that, given a chance, he would return with some wizards to retrieve the knowledge stored there. They moved up the staircase to the Gate Room. Boaberous tried the door, but it was locked. He hit it with his shoulder, but it didn’t budge.

  Alexander slipped past the Rangers in the stairwell.

  “Stand aside,” he said.

  When he placed his hand on the door, there was a faint shimmer in the colors of the ancient magical portal and it opened smoothly and silently. The room had no windows and only the staircases leading up and down for exits. On the far wall, opposite the staircases, was a large black slab of stone about thirty feet wide at the base and twenty feet tall at its arched top. Traced along the edge was a double line seven inches apart that marked the outline of the Gate. Between the two lines etched into the smooth black stone were countless ancient symbols, runes, and glyphs. In the center of the room was a pedestal facing the Gate.

  Alexander motioned for everyone to enter the room, then closed the door and dropped the bar in place. He saw the shimmer of color across its surface and took that to mean that the room was once again sealed with a magical shield.

  He went to the pedestal with Jack at his side and Jataan two steps behind and to his left. It was also made of black stone and stood three feet high. The surface was angled slightly so the edge closest to the Gate was higher than the edge nearest Alexander. Engraved in the surface was a map of the Seven Isles. A rectangle was etched into the stone just above the map. Below the map were two squares of equal size; the left bore the image of a sword and the right was struck through with an X.

  The islands of Karth and Ruatha were glowing pale blue, while the islands of Zuhl and Fellenden were glowing pale yellow. Alexander stared at it for a moment, trying to process what he was seeing, then he touched the square with the X and all of the islands abruptly stopped glowing.

  With a frown, he touched the outline of the Isle of Ruatha. The surface of the stone slab before him shimmered, and suddenly they were looking into the early dawn on the plains of Ruatha. There was a terrible battle taking place. Countless soldiers were marching away from the Gate as if they were part of a column that had just come through it.

  One soldier noticed them and called out. Dozens of soldiers turned and looked back through the Ruathan gate at Alexander. As they started to mount a charge, Alexander touched the bar above the map and the Gate abruptly turned to stone again.

  Ruatha was under siege. Alexander only hoped he’d stopped the flow of soldiers in time to give his father a fighting chance against the invaders. He had hoped he would be
able to use the Reishi Gate to return home and escape the wyvern riders, Phane, and the tentacle demon, but that was clearly a bad idea with so many enemy soldiers surrounding the Ruathan Gate.

  Next he touched the island of Fellenden. The outlines of the Reishi Isle and the island of Fellenden began to glow pale blue, and the Gate shimmered to reveal a different army stretched out on the rolling grasslands of Fellenden. There were thousands of big, hardy-looking men armed with an incredible array of gruesome-looking weapons.

  “Zuhl,” Jataan said. “Lord Zuhl is a mortal enemy of the Reishi. He blames the Reishi for all of the hardships his people endure. He is every bit as much your enemy as Phane.”

  One soldier with emblems of rank on his shoulders was standing off to the side of the Gate, watching to see if it would open again. When he saw Alexander, he called out to the other soldiers and charged through the Gate to attack. Before any of the other soldiers could follow him through, Alexander touched the bar above the map and the Gate returned to black stone. In the same moment, Jataan P’Tal threw a knife at the charging soldier. It struck him in the chest just left of center and buried to the crossbar. The man toppled forward and crashed to the ground.

  “Darkness comes, My Love,” Chloe said silently in his mind.

  “It would seem our troubles are multiplying again,” Jack observed.

  As if to punctuate his remark, there was a thud on the door. Then another. Alexander looked back and saw a little piece of the magically protected door burn through and the tentacle of the demon start to push into the room through the hole. A moment later, a second hole started to form.

  Alexander’s mind raced. He didn’t want to fight that demon. It had dozens of tentacles, each dripping with stone-eating acid, and he knew he could only cut off one or two before the thing would be on him.

  He thought of Isabel and Abigail. More than anything, he wanted to go to the fortress island and free them—but he couldn’t do that if he was dead. With a deep breath and an act of will, he touched the Isle of Ithilian on the map and the Gate opened again. This time the dawn revealed nothing but a wild grassy plain empty for miles beyond the magical portal.

  “Everyone through the Gate, quickly,” Alexander said as the tentacle demon reached inside the room through the first hole in the door and began thrashing about wildly in a blind effort to snare its prey. Alexander and Jataan were the last ones through the Gate just before the door gave way. The demon entered the Gate Room with alarming speed.

  Once he was through the Gate, Alexander quickly found the map of the Seven Isles etched into the stone of this Gate. The only difference was the addition of an engraving of the glyph of the House of Reishi exactly the same size as the raised glyph on the butt of the Thinblade. He touched the rectangle above the map, and with a shimmer, the open Gate solidified into a slab of black stone. A single section of demon tentacle lay smoldering on the platform.

  “Don’t touch it,” Lucky said to the two Rangers approaching it. “Use your spears to toss it into the grass.

  They did as he said. When the points of their spears melted away before their eyes, they tossed them into the grass as well. Then they both looked behind the Gate and gasped.

  “Trouble,” the first Ranger said.

  Alexander went to them and saw an army encamped not a hundred feet behind the Gate. It looked like they had been there for a long time. They had a fortified position surrounded by a berm lined with sharpened wooden stakes. There were wooden towers with catapults lining the edge facing the Gate and a trench filled with oil-soaked straw surrounding the entire thing. It was big enough to house a legion or more.

  Alexander scanned the countryside looking for any tactical advantage but saw none. They were in a vast rangeland that stretched out in rolling fields for as far as the eye could see, and a column of cavalry was thundering from the encampment toward them. He looked at the map on the Gate and thought about trying another island but none made any sense. Karth and Zuhl had armies that were moving through the Gates just a few minutes ago. Andalia was probably poised to move through the Gate as well. Ruatha and Fellenden weren’t good options. Phane was on the Reishi Isle. That left Tyr.

  He turned to Jataan, “Would we be safe on Tyr?”

  Jataan thought for a moment before shaking his head. “Phane was on Tyr when you secured the Sovereign Stone. He was no doubt watching and knows the Protectorate will no longer serve him, so I suspect he has set something dark loose on the Reishi Protectorate’s island, which is where the Gate is located.”

  “Let’s hope the stories about the House of Ithilian are true,” Alexander said, walking out onto the center of the platform and facing away from the Gate. “Form up on me,” he commanded. “Disappear, Little One,” he thought to Chloe. “I don’t want them to know you exist until it’s safe.”

  Chloe buzzed into a ball of light and vanished. The Rangers arrayed themselves on either side of Alexander with Jataan on his left, Jack on his right, and Boaberous at his back. Lucky remained with Anatoly behind the formation. Alexander concealed the Sovereign Stone beneath his armor and covered his sword with his cloak. He thought about Isabel while he watched the company of heavy cavalry approach.

  The horsemen rode with skill and discipline. They maintained formation and wheeled into position for a charge but stopped fifty feet short and held. Alexander appraised their colors. They were mostly honorable men. He began to feel a bit more optimistic. He had enemies enough. It would be a welcome change to find a friend.

  Two men dismounted and approached on foot with open hands. Alexander watched them come. One was dressed in a breastplate emblazoned with the crest of the House of Ithilian. He was a fair-haired man in his middle twenties with strong facial features, a sturdy build, and grey eyes. The other was older and softer-looking, with long white hair and dark brown eyes. He was a wizard, but Alexander couldn’t discern his calling, only that he was a mage. They stopped ten feet from him.

  “I am Conner Ithilian, Commander of the Gate Legions of Ithilian and son of King Abel,” the younger man said as he appraised Alexander and his companions. “Who are you? What is your purpose here and how is it that you have come through the Reishi Gate?”

  Alexander took a moment to look at their colors more closely. The younger man wasn’t afraid, but he was nervous. The wizard had clearly cast a few spells prior to their approach and he was looking at Alexander with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension.

  “I am Alexander Reishi, Seventh Sovereign of the Seven Isles,” he said as he withdrew the Stone from beneath his armor and let it fall against his chest. The blood-red, teardrop ruby glowed gently with the ancient power of the Reishi Sovereigns.

  “I’ve come to offer Ithilian an alliance.”

  Here Ends Sovereign Stone

  Sovereign of the Seven Isles: Book Two

  www.SovereignOfTheSevenIsles.com

  The Story Continues…

  Mindbender

  Sovereign of the Seven Isles: Book Three

  ***

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you enjoyed reading Sovereign Stone as much as I enjoyed writing it. I’m always trying to improve my stories, and ultimately, you are the best judge of my work, so I’d like to humbly ask for your help. Please click the link below and write a short review. Your honest feedback will help me do a better job in the future and will also help others decide if they would like to read my stories.

  Thank you,

  David A. Wells

  Click Here to Write a Review of Sovereign Stone

  Table of Contents

  Start

 

 

 
); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share