A King's Caution (The Eternal War Book 2)

by Brennan C. Adams

  “You’re heavily armed and armored, but you’re not Conscripted or Kiraak. We don’t know what you are, so we don’t know the rules. Are we supposed to play run and hide?”

  “No! No, sweetie, you’re not…” Raimie sighed, gaze drifting to the dirt.

  “Then, what are the rules?” the girl asked, eyes flicking to her captive hand.

  Raimie’s lips tightened as he firmly held her gaze. “I want you and your friends to find somewhere safe, somewhere you can wait for a time. Stay out of sight until I return. I don’t want you caught in the fighting. Can you do that for me?”

  “So, we are playing run and hide,” the girl said.

  “Yes but this time, no one will hurt you,” Raimie confirmed. “I’ll ensure it.”

  Patting her hand, he rose. The girl stared at him with a wrinkled brow for a moment before darting off.

  Raimie turned in a slow circle, and Eledis followed, taking in the grime, the shacks which looked as if they’d fall apart with a breath of wind, and the people too terrified to leave the deathtraps.

  “These people need help, Khel,” the kid murmured to his newest friend.

  Keltheryl laid a hand on Raimie's shoulder. “Eliminate the danger first, and then, you can help.”

  “I know.”

  Creeping suspicion reared its head again as they moved closer to the city. Raimie didn’t easily make friends, especially none with whom he'd feel comfortable sharing his quiet despondency. Only one man had ever claimed such camaraderie with the kid, but… it couldn’t be, could it?

  He’d already once set his misgivings aside. When they twice pestered him, Eledis knew to listen.

  “Kheled!” he quietly called to the peppy, auburn-haired human before him, the one opposite of everything which defined the reserved Eselan he’d known.

  In response, Keltheryl half-turned before catching his mistake, but the slip was enough. Eledis’ eyes felt as though they might pop from his head. The Eselan and Raimie had pulled off the impossible, fooling him! They’d faked Kheled’s death! But that meant…

  Alouin, how powerful was he?! Adopting a human guise was no mean feat, and to maintain it for who knows how long took an exceptional kind of willpower as well as a deep magic reserve.

  Eledis’ steps slowed, and he allowed the two young men to pull ahead of him. He’d no desire to be anywhere near someone of such strength, especially when he’d blatantly celebrated the Eselan’s demise while in his presence.

  “What? That’s not-” Kelther- no, Kheled = murmured, and Eledis shrank at the now perceptibly familiar voice.

  “What is it?” Raimie asked.

  “Not sure yet,” Kheled = replied, “but I’m suddenly not so confident = advancing was a wise decision.”

  “Should we expect a fight soon, do you think?” Raimie asked.

  Kheled drew his weapons in response.

  Despite the Eselan’s misgivings, they arrived to Uduli’s wall without further incident, but what waited for them there brought the army to a grinding halt.

  The gate was flung wide, and wind whistled through the empty square beyond the portcullis, rustling through the ranks of the army which had come to break it down.

  * * *

  “What is this?” Eledis asked, and Keltheryl hummed irritably to himself.

  The others, old man included, probably saw the open gate as danger, a trap, everything which would send lightning crackling through their bodies and set their hair on end. He saw it for what it was: an invitation. Doldimar hadn’t employed this tactic in ages and only ever did so when Arivor clung to control.

  It was a statement, a taunt. We don’t need these armies, these playthings, in our war, especially when theirs are so small and insignificant in comparison. Come get me if you can, E. Let’s do this, man to man with none of the bullshit to clog and confuse our true purpose.

  Trouble was, Keltheryl couldn’t feel his old enemy (friend’s) presence within the wall, not definitively at least. This close, revulsion and antagonism should drag him down the streets like a magnet. Instead, it tickled the edge of his awareness, disappearing like a frustrating child playing a game of hide and seek, whenever he tried to latch on.

  “Khel?” Raimie asked, and Keltheryl realized his humming had risen in volume to that of a yell.

  “Sorry,” he coughed, “It’s just that…”

  Turning one way then the other, he grunted. “I can’t feel him,” he growled, baring his teeth. “Or I can, but not the way I normally do once we’re this close. It’s as if he jumps around the city, moving from one side to the other in an eyeblink…” Keltheryl smacked his forehead. “He’s shade melding. Of course he is, the bastard. Always compelled to make life interesting.”

  “So… what do we do?” Raimie whispered, glancing behind them at the unsettled soldiers.

  “Can you shade meld yet?” Keltheryl asked. “I’m not well versed in a Daevetch primeancer’s progression.”

  “I’ve never thought to try. Can’t you-?”

  Raimie’s hand shot forth, grabbed at the air, and jerked back. Keltheryl blankly tilted his head, and his friend huffed.

  “The thing you did in the forest. With Teron.”

  “Oh! Right!” Keltheryl chuckled. “I wish I could simply pull him from the shadows, but I’d need to be near his point of ingress to do so. I don’t think I’m likely to stumble onto one, do you?”

  “In that case, I suppose I can try to shade meld. Dim can teach me how. When I find Doldimar, I can pull him…” He paused as if listening.

  “Well?” Keltheryl asked after a moment.

  “Dim says that’s a supremely stupid idea. If I tried to dive into the ‘atomic level of reality,’” Raimie’s face scrunched with confusion, “I’d lose my way almost immediately. I don’t possess the necessary drive yet, apparently.”

  Damn.

  “I don’t know how to force him from the shadows, and he’s sure to know I’m here by now. Any minute and I won't feel his presence anymore,” Keltheryl stated. “Looks like I dragged you to Uduli for no reason.”

  “Not true!” Raimie exclaimed with a grin. “Are we seeing different pictures here? Gate wide open, lack of resistance, very little Kiraak, if any, in the city? It’s obviously a trap, but even still, I can’t help but think Doldimar’s handed Uduli to us on a silver platter.”

  Oh, gods. Raimie couldn’t know the subtleties and long-term plans the Champion of Daevetch had in store. This, the lack of fight for the city, was much too painless, and Keltheryl had never seen it before. His every instinct screamed to retreat. Uduli wouldn’t be worth whatever price Doldimar eventually exacted for it.

  He threw his head back, drinking in the wisp-covered blue sky. It was too bad. Today would have made a fantastic final day for this cycle.

  “Raimie-” Keltheryl started, ready to argue for a retreat.

  “What are you two babbling about up here?” Eledis broke in before he could get the words out. “Have you come to a decision?”

  “About?” Raimie asked.

  “Whether we’re taking this city or not.”

  “Raimie-” Keltheryl tried to interject.

  “We’ll move forward. Spread out, and if anyone encounters unexpected resistance, fall back,” Raimie called the orders to Oswin who nodded.

  Oh, well. Keltheryl couldn't voice his doubts now that Raimie had made his decision. An ordinary man such as he didn’t question the King, no matter that they were friends. Keltheryl hoped the cost for his friend’s choice wasn’t too high.

  “Khel, you and I have somewhere to be,” Raimie interrupted his thoughts.

  “We do?”

  “I only feel one, concrete Daevetch tangle in the city,” his friend explained. “I figure if Doldimar plans to contest our capture of Uduli, it’ll be there.”

  Keltheryl could kiss the kid. With hope proffered to him, he fell upon it, hungrily devouring it whole. Closing his eyes, he breathed in the city’s awful stench, felt the sun on his skin.
Perhaps today would be a good day with which to end this cycle.

  “Wait, you can feel Daevetch knots? From this far away?” Keltheryl asked, eyes snapping open as he ran after his friend.

  “Sure, if I’m looking for them. That’s how I know the Kiraak have abandoned the city,” Raimie chirped, “unless they’re in the dense cluster I feel. In which case, we’re screwed. Why? Can’t you feel them?”

  “Raimie. I’m Champion of Ele. What do you think?”

  “Sorry!” Raimie exclaimed, raising his hands. “You seemed surprised is all.”

  “That’s because most primeancers can’t feel primal energy unless it’s in their immediate vicinity.”

  “Yeah, well. You know how much I enjoy breaking the mold, Khel,” Raimie smirked. “Should we talk about any of this right now?” He glanced at the soldiers tramping in their wake. “Aren't you supposed to be a non-primeancer at the moment? Your disguise?”

  “Oswin knows Keltheryl is Kheled. Eledis figured it out as we approached Uduli. Oswin’s most likely informed the other members of the Hand despite orders to the contrary, a fact which DOES NOT MAKE ME HAPPY,” Keltheryl yelled to the spymaster. “The rest of the squad is too far back to overhear specifics.”

  Raimie’s head whipped to look behind them. “How did you-?”

  “The unique sounds of their footfalls,” Keltheryl said in deadpan so Raimie knew he jested.

  The joke was a much easier explanation than the truth. After months together, he'd communed long enough with these men and women to distinguish between their unique Ele sparks, those slivers every human and Esela carried entwined within. Oswin’s bore strong flavors of Loyalty and Innovation while the rest of the Hand wildly ranged. Little claimed Courage, Ring-Resilience, Pointer-Love, and Thumb-Law. Keltheryl couldn’t hope to differentiate between the dozens of soldiers who followed the Hand, but at the very least, each of them strongly resonated with Devotion, a flavor each of Raimie’s soldiers maintained.

  And Raimie, the one to walk beside him. Of the many men Keltheryl had known in his long life, his friend was the most diverse in terms of Ele. The boy held so many of Ele’s aspects it hurt to reach out and sense them, and the one to most intensely blaze switched on a daily basis. Where once this conundrum might have puzzled Keltheryl to distraction, now he accepted it as part of the overall mystery which was his friend. The Ele jumble who matched his stride might never be steady, but if Keltheryl could name the multitude of Raimie’s aspects as one, he would call it Comfort.

  He smiled. Ele might be in the process of abandoning him, but he’d a few tricks still hidden up his sleeve. He wasn’t completely helpless yet.

  While striding up the mountain, Keltheryl noted the fine craftsmanship of the city’s homes, the smooth cobblestones which paved not only the streets but the alleys, and the gas lamps on every corner. This cycle had reached an inordinately high level of technology before Doldimar had arrived to lay it low.

  He also noted furtive glances through curtained windows and the jerk of doors closed. Some humans survived within the wall as well as without.

  When they encountered the first of the bodies, the tiny flicker of hope he’d nursed since the gate snuffed out. Compared to past cycles, the death toll this time hadn’t been high, and in honesty, it stayed quite low even when adding today’s count, but the rest of the group grew increasingly distressed with each corpse they found. The dead’s final resting places were in the most random of locations: one lying on a porch as if in peaceful repose, one in itty-bitty pieces strewn across a yard, one propped against a stake driven into the middle of the road. In all states of decomposition, some looked alive, the flush of blood reddening their cheeks, while others were bloated and gray with flies circling them. They even found sets of picked clean bones.

  “What is this?” Raimie breathed.

  The question was probably rhetorical, but Keltheryl answered anyway. “Kiraak and other beings influenced by Daevetch can’t go long without killing. It’s a wonder you haven’t given in to the need.”

  Raimie rounded on him. “I would never do this,” he growled.

  “I know,” Keltheryl said with a nod. “I never said I couldn’t believe you hadn’t, only that your resistance was a wonder. You’d never end a life to appease Daevetch. You'd rather die yourself.”

  Raimie silently regarded him for a painfully long period. He turned on his heels, casting off Keltheryl’s comments.

  “Not long now.”

  They turned a corner, and the palace claimed the group’s focus. Now that building, that was an impressive piece of engineering. Composed entirely of obsidian glass, one would think it unstable, ready to crumble at the slightest movement of the earth, but every surface had been coated with a clear, hard, resin-like material which strengthened its typical fragility. Even though it was constructed in the fashion common to this and some few past cycles with buttresses and corbels aplenty, the black material made it alien in this city of gray stone and white plaster. Its five spires greedily reaching for the sky didn't help its sense of otherness. If these humans only knew who’d originally constructed their architectural masterpiece…

  Raimie didn’t pause at the wondrous sight, so wrapped in his dogged pursuit of Daevetch it passed beneath his notice. The group was forced into a trot to keep up with him as he marched through the short wall which surrounded the palace.

  “He’s headed for the gardens,” Eledis panted beside Keltheryl. “At least, that’s what my research tells me."

  “He won’t find gardens there anymore.” Thumb manically cackled behind them.

  The spy was right, which didn’t surprise Keltheryl in the least. Doldimar hated beauty. It was a blatant reminder of everything he’d lost, and he destroyed it wherever it was possible to do so, much as he had here.

  At one time, the palace gardens had rested atop the solitary mountain on which Uduli had been raised. Its renowned flower beds and hedges had culminated in a wall of windows, a bay which extended over the cliff edge and into open air.

  The gardens had been blasted away. Trees, flowers, grass, dirt; all had been scoured until only sterile stone remained. In their place was a pit, an ugly monument dedicated to the glory of violence and death. A semi-circular chunk had been bitten from the mountainside, and benches were carved into its walls save for a pair of portcullises, one to either side. Trap doors littered the path to the pit, entrances to the cages which contained the condemned participants of the fights.

  All fairly standard for an arena except for the fact that it was sheared in two, half exposed to a long drop down the cliffside. A rather efficient way to dispose of bodies in a place where they were so quickly generated. Keltheryl hated to see what mess rotted at the mountain’s base.

  A second oddity distinguished this arena from countless others Keltheryl had visited. From a distance, it was a giant blob rising from the arena’s floor, but as they approached, he recognized it as the source of the Daevetch knot. The oddity was too amorphous to be Kiraak, too large to be a single mass of dark energy. Protrusions rose from its surface, and were those…?

  “We’re close enough, don’t you think?” Keltheryl asked his friend, his mouth dry.

  “What?” Raimie flipped to face him, grinning as he walked backward. “Afraid of a little Daevetch?”

  “No, I simply…” Keltheryl sighed. He couldn’t shield his friend. “At least leave the soldiers here. They couldn’t help in a battle between primeancers.” And we shouldn’t subject them to this.

  “Not a bad idea. Have them form a perimeter, would you, Oswin?” Raimie asked.

  “Yes, sir.” The spymaster saluted.

  “I hope you’re not thinking of leaving us behind,” the female member of the Hand retorted.

  “I couldn’t stop you if you decided to follow,” Raimie said, rolling his eyes, and then he frowned. “Did anyone see where Eledis went?”

  Shrugs and negatives rose all around.

  “Your grandfather can’t run
into much trouble while alone,” Keltheryl said. “He’s quite capable of defending himself. We should keep moving.” And get this over with.

  “Fine by me!” Raimie chirped.

  He turned around, and his pace slowed. “What is that?”

  Keltheryl and the Hand had successfully distracted the kid to the arena’s edge, but their efforts resulted in an exceptionally clear view of the mound when he turned. Utterly heedless of danger, Raimie raced down the stands, leaping from seat to seat in his haste to reach the bottom.

  Keltheryl followed much more slowly, reluctant to get a closer look. He forced himself to gaze upon Doldimar’s work, however, because in some small way, he was responsible for every atrocity his enemy (friend) wreaked upon the world. His experiment had brought this curse upon the two of them, and the torment of living as Daevetch’s Champion was what eventually led Arivor to madness every cycle.

  The smell hit him first. He’d noticed a faint unpleasantness when they’d entered the palace grounds, but without the arena walls to contain it, the stench of putrefaction hit him in the face like a lover spurned.

  Comprehension came next. He’d known the lump would hold bodies, but his brain refused to believe what had been done to them. To his eye, the mound appeared to be a perfectly shaped red and white cube, an abstract sculpture on the arena’s flat floor. Dark flashes flickered across its surfaces, and Keltheryl pieced together that the white sphere floating in the cube’s corner carried the remnants of eye sockets and teeth. The picture shifted sickeningly in his head.

  Someone had smashed who knew how many men and women into paste and bound the resulting mass of meat into a neat, little Daevetch package. Behind Keltheryl, someone lost their lunch.

  Wait, had he thought it little? Blinking tired eyes, Keltheryl reassessed his sense of scale.

  Raimie had turned to stone before the cube, staring sans a single blink at the sand before it. If Keltheryl measured against his friend, the cube was roughly two and a half times as tall and wide, the equivalent of a large house. How many bodies had it taken to fill the monstrosity?