Ruin Mist Chronicles Bundle

by Robert Stanek

  Chancellor Van’te was to remain behind and wait for word from King Andrew. Finalizing the plans was a meticulous process accomplished only after long, exasperating minutes. A few minuscule items were found, nothing more. Next they discussed the chain of command from Valam down to the lowest of the ranking soldiers. They had no idea where the enemy would be, and this they discussed also. Goodbyes were said, and since there was nothing more to say, the companions parted ways. After the ship captains had been contacted and everything was in place, Captain Cagan hoisted the signal flag. His ship was the first to raise sail and embark. In pairs, the others followed in two drawn-out columns.

  “A beautiful sight, I must say!” exclaimed Cagan, his love for the sea evident. The sight of ships on the horizon as far as he could see gave him a sense of elation.

  “Yes, indeed!” answered Seth and Valam.

  “I wonder how Evgej will fare with those two?” asked Seth.

  “Keeper Martin will probably drive him mad by the time the journey is over, and Father Jacob will probably turn him into a convert. He’ll be quoting whole sections from the Great Book,” replied Valam with a jovial tone.

  “Or bore him to death with their intellectual talks. I can see it now,” joked Seth.

  “Yes, that is probably what will happen. Poor fellow. I will miss him sorely.”

  “And I have lost my fencing partner,” returned Seth.

  “I don’t think so,” said a familiar voice from below.

  “You are going to get us in real trouble,” said Valam. “What will the men in the ranks think when they see you gone?”

  The three turned and stared as Evgej climbed the ladder to the upper deck. Water dripped from his hair down his face and his tunic and leathers were clearly soaked.

  “No trouble at all, I assure you. It was a simple solution really. You see—”

  “You are all wet,” said Seth as he looked at the water dripping from Evgej.

  “A minor issue in truth.”

  “How did you manage to sneak away from them?”

  “I didn’t sneak. They both decided it would be best for me to accompany you. They said I could keep you three in line.”

  “Oh, really?” exclaimed Valam.

  “Well, actually, it was because of—how did Father Jacob put it—oh, yes—I looked like a lost toddler when you departed. He said, ‘If you are going to reach the ship before it departs you had better hurry.’ I almost made it, too; however, I had to take a slight detour to get aboard. Lost my balance actually.”

  The four burst into raucous laughter.

  “Come with me below; I’ll get you some dry clothes,” said Cagan.

  With a final wave to the distant figure of Father Jacob, the two went below decks; Seth and Valam remained above. Valam had a broad smile on his lips; with the four of them together the journey would be anything but dull. Father Jacob watched the last of the first group depart, pairs of sails turning away, becoming smaller and smaller. He was rather eager to get underway, yet the changing of the tides was several hours away.

  “Do you think it was a good idea to send Captain Evgej with those three?” asked Chancellor Van’te jokingly.

  “I’m not so sure,” answered Keeper Martin.

  “All these men to fight away from their lands; most will never return. Is it all worth it?” asked Van’te. The question had been at the tip of his thoughts all day; he would not have asked it in the presence of the others. He knew Martin and Jacob would accept the question at face value and not dwell on it, so he had asked.

  “If you had seen the images from Seth’s home you would be convinced beyond any doubts. There will always be doubts in any endeavor, but in this the consequences far outweigh any doubts. I just wish we had heard from King Andrew beforehand, yet this was the date he himself set. I am anxious to know if the delegates have arrived from the Minor Kingdoms. Last night I sent a message to the council, but I am not sure if it was heard. My thoughts were in disarray with such a short time to prepare, and the distance is great. I may only hope.”

  “As do I. I have received no word from the priesthood. Still, I am confident we made the correct decision.”

  “Yes, Father Jacob, we were not given much choice in the matter. The situation has turned suddenly so serious. There is no doubt—we made the right choice.”

  They sat quietly contemplating their own thoughts; soon it was time to say their goodbyes also. They must depart now, for the tide had changed. The ships were fully boarded and now only one of the longboats remained. It waited at the shore, its four oarsmen weary from a day that had already been too long for them. Jacob didn’t much care for ships or travel by sea and as he stepped into the small boat, he crossed himself and said a prayer to the benevolent Father to watch over him and keep him safe throughout the journey, which he hastily amended with a prayer for all who departed this day. His thoughts were especially with Prince Valam.

  On Keeper Martin’s command, the signal flag was hoisted. Their ship, the lead ship, was the first to raise its sails, tighten its lines, weigh anchor and make the long arcing turn for clear open waters. At mid-day the sea was broken only by a delicate ripple, but as the giant vessels began to glide through its dark waters it swelled and churned, as if offering a slight resistance. As the lead turned its sails fully westward, the others were making their exodus from the shore in a staggered array.

  Chancellor Van’te watched the last pair grow to small specks on the horizon before he prepared to return home. The command tent was removed from the field, and now it was truly empty. Only one peddler stand remained.

  The benevolent chancellor felt that he was indebted to the old man, though for what he did not know. He dismounted, a slow feat for the aged chancellor, and approached the small bit of canvas that served as a meager shelter from the rains and winds for the peddler and his wares.

  “Good day to you, gent,” said Van’te.

  The peddler did not move. His head was slumped and his chin rested oddly on the top of his dirty coat. His hands were crossed, left over right and folded over his lap. Van’te noted the thick scent of mead from within the tent. At first, the chancellor thought the other was a drunkard, then he saw the many small oaken casks. His frown departed and the corners of his mouth lifted as he inhaled heavily of the sweet aroma.

  “Good day to you, sir!” called out Van’te.

  The peddler did not stir.

  “Good day to you, sir!” he called out again.

  The man was still as death, and for an instant, this notion crossed Van’te’s mind. This idea that the man was indeed dead would seem an appropriate explanation for his lagging behind. Dying in a barren field was a bitter end. Van’te’s sour countenance slowly crept back into place.

  “How much for the lot?” The chancellor asked.

  He lurched, expecting the old peddler to accept the offer eagerly. The chancellor signaled his attendant and turned back to his mount; gaining the saddle was as tedious a feat as departing it. He chased away offers of assistance; the day he could no longer take to saddle was the day he wished to pass like the old vendor, quietly and sadly where there would be no loved ones to see him go and feel the pain.

  The small party headed by the chancellor began the solemn ride back to the city. The guardsmen seemed as touched by the incident as the chancellor had been. He flicked the reins, signaling his mount to go. He looked back, a long hard stare, as the animal beneath him raced forward. He was halfway to the city when his conscience forced him to turn around. He raced back to that empty field, just as his attendant and two others were preparing to lower the peddler’s ragged tent.

  “Leave it,” he said, in a low voice.

  “Leave it?” questioned the attendant.

  “Leave it,” the chancellor replied, “find his book of records, if he has one, and bring it to me.”

  “But—”

  “That cache of mead smells of the finest sort in all the land and I would imagine that it is. What would y
ou say would be the worth of such a treasure?”

  “Nothing to a dead man.”

  “Return with a wagon, and bring me the record when you find it. Lay his bones to rest in this field only at peril of your own life.”

  The chancellor didn’t know why he said this; but as he did, he whipped his reins and urged his steed to a full gallop. He rode back toward Quashan’, uttering not a single word until he dispatched a messenger for the local keeper. Van’te had talked to him many times in the past few days; he grew to dislike the man more each time. Keeper Parren was a different man than Keeper Martin, extremely different. Still, he was the head keeper for their city, so he must be informed that the departure had taken place as set forth.

  Keeper Parren awoke suddenly, snapped from his dream by an urgent-sounding summons at his chamber door. It took him quite a while to gather his thoughts. For a moment, he had thought he was back at home in Imtal. Slowly a picture began to form in his mind, the dream. The message was made faint and unclear by the sound of incessant thrashing at his door.

  He was sure of one thing: something was very wrong in Imtal. He sat lost in a trance of remembrance, a trance that should have cleansed his mind and brought the message of the dream forth. The thoughts would not come, only a vague feeling that something was wrong, a picture of the palace at Imtal and a faint image of a man. He continued to follow his thoughts back through his sleep. The answer did not lie in his dreams.

  He jumped from his trance as the pounding returned to the door.

  “What is it?” he bellowed haughtily.

  “A message, Keeper, from Chancellor Van’te,” exclaimed the page, sounding urgent.

  “For this you wake me as if the very earth were crumbling beneath my feet! For this you raise a heavy fist again and again to my door!”

  The keeper didn’t much care for the chancellor either, as was evident in his tone.

  “Bring me the note, you oafish boy! Don’t just stand there peering within! Boy, come here!”

  The youngster inched forward warily.

  “Don’t just stand there; hand me the note, boy! The note—”

  Keeper Parren read the message, muttering to himself about the summons. He chased the boy away with a violent hand gesture, quickly dipping his face in the basin beside his bed and then dressing in the appropriate robes of his office. He didn’t race down the hall; instead, he walked at a moderate pace. Any other day he would have stopped off at the kitchens for a quick bite, but this day the strange dream gnawed at the corners of his thoughts.

  He found Chancellor Van’te in the study, not in his office, oddly gazing out an open window. The keeper quietly approached, waiting until Van’te turned from the window before he said a word. The two spoke brokenly for a moment, the chancellor muttering something about sleeping past the midday and the keeper mumbling about dotards. Keeper Parren was quick to discuss the dream that pervaded even his waking mind. The two discussed this for a time and it puzzled them both. There must be a reason the message was sent, but they could not tell what it was.

  “The man in the image—you couldn’t see him?” snapped the chancellor.

  “Just the outline of him superimposed over the castle. I assume it must be King Andrew.”

  “The king—that is odd,” said Chancellor Van’te, his voice suddenly becoming mild as chagrin set in.

  “I can think of only two reasons the Council of Keepers would send a message with such feelings: to have us stop the journey or to inform us of a happening of great import.”

  Keeper Parren decided to go into the dream-state again. Only this time, Chancellor Van’te would probe his thoughts as he recalled them with verbal cues—a trick he had learned from Martin and Jacob. He told Keeper Parren to delve back through his night’s dream one step at a time, and slowly inch forward. The images rolled into Parren’s mind at a rate that only his subconscious could perceive. Hours passed in minutes, or perhaps minutes passed in hours. Time held no bounds within his thoughts.

  Van’te found a detail the keeper had overlooked. The image of the castle was hazy, but certain things could be noted. The gates of the castle were closed, and the kingdom flag was not flying. The chancellor broke the link immediately; now he understood. Keeper Parren continued the trance, slowly recovering from it until his mind was free.

  Chancellor Van’te returned his stare to the open window and the small courtyard below it where the sun continued to shine and where it seemed that the entire world had been cleansed. Without a doubt, he understood the message, King Andrew was dead and the only heir to the throne of the Great Kingdom was gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Nijal and Vilmos had talked a lot since the former day captain of the Solntse City Garrison had joined their small band. The two found that they had a lot in common and shared a similar dream. They didn’t strive to be wealthy or important; they just wanted to have purpose in their lives.

  Vilmos explained much to Nijal, who always listened intently, about those of the mysterious company. The free man often felt he did not belong in such a group, a feeling that Vilmos shared with him since the departure of the wild magic, yet Vilmos assured him that if he did not belong he would not be here with them. And from those meager ties, their strange friendship grew.

  Vilmos continued his tutelage under Xith’s scrutinizing eye. Talk of the opposing forces had led to more in-depth discussions about the properties within those forces of positive and negative, sometimes viewed erroneously as good and evil—the four basic elements of fire, air, water, and earth. Since the boy had begun with fire, the simplest and the most powerful, and then gone on to air, a median power, Xith considered continuing on to the third element, water. However, he decided to hold off for a time and allow the young man more time for adjustment.

  Air was a power that the young apprentice was already very familiar with, a power that he had often played with though he had not known it at the time, so this was where the shaman concentrated his efforts. He found that Vilmos easily understood the realm of air once he put it into a readily understandable context. Since levitation was a skill that relied on the realm of air and a skill that Vilmos had often tried though he had not known how to control it, Xith chose this skill to begin with.

  As with the previous lessons, Xith only wished to impart to Vilmos one basic skill, a stepping-stone that would prove the basis for all other dealings with this property. Levitation was simply re-applying the powers he had touched on in the lesson with the rocks, a lesson that Vilmos uneasily recalled.

  The journey to the city of Solntse had taken them days out of the way, but this was also a mixed blessing. Although the trek was lengthened by several days, they would not have to endure the tireless extremes of the high desert whose temperatures would roast them during the day and freeze them at night.

  Amir rode beside his Little One; occasionally he attempted to carry on a conversation with her but mostly he seemed to be talking to himself. He didn’t mind, though. He could bathe in the beauty she radiated forever. He hoped eventually to find out her secrets and be able to alleviate some of her burden. Xith and Noman rode side by side though seldom a word passed between them. They were content to ride quietly, watch the countryside pass, and concentrate on the dangers that lay ahead.

  Something troubled Noman deeply, yet each time he tried to grasp the thought it slipped from him. Xith and Ayrian had similar feelings, the sense that something was amiss; yet as surely as they tried to discern what it was, it slipped away from their thoughts.

  This night they made camp a short distance from the main road. While they were well into the heart of the Great Kingdom there was little fear of incidents; nonetheless, they took precautions. They would each take turns at guard during the night. Vilmos was the unlucky one who was chosen to perform the first watch.

  Vilmos didn’t complain, though, because he knew they would each eventually get their turn. The long, dark night proved thankfully uneventful; Xith, who had taken the last wa
tch, woke them just before dawn. A light breakfast was eaten and preparations to start on their way were made as the sun appeared on the horizon.

  Nijal wiped his tired eyes and nudged Vilmos, who was slumped over seated upright.

  “Wake up!” he implored.

  Vilmos opened bleary eyes, astonished to find his hand half raised to mouth. He mumbled through a quick apology, cut short as a warning flashed out to all. Stand still, warned the voice in their minds. Noman hurriedly crafted an illusion to hide their presence from the unseen danger. No one dared to move, their eyes set on a place behind them on the trail. Shadows shifted across the land as partially seen clouds passed through the half-shrouded sky.

  Under this canopy of darkness, an extremely large group of men clad in dark high-hooded cloaks approached on horseback, hoping to use even the last few moments of darkness to conceal their passage. Slowly, following Noman’s signal, Xith and the others moved to their horses, moving away from the trail.

  As they watched, the dark group stopped and made camp off the trail only a short distance away. The light of morning grew and the strangers seemed to disappear with its arrival, leaving no signs of themselves or their camp.

  Noman signaled the party to move again; and they moved away from the mysterious group, pausing only to look back briefly, riding hard until the sun blazed fully overhead, only then stopping to discuss what they had seen. Nijal was more puzzled than worried and Vilmos’ expression of confusion only added to the free man’s befuddlement. He had seen groups of highwaymen before though never one so large.

  “We must stay ahead of them. We have a long, hard journey to undertake. It lies ahead of us; there is nothing behind us now and there can be no turning back,” spoke Noman, looking to their newest companion, “yet at least we now know who the enemy are.”

  “Enemy?” gasped Nijal and Vilmos in unison.

  “Ayrian!” bellowed Xith.

  “Yes, I’ll go,” replied Ayrian, dismounting. He tethered his mount to Xith’s saddle horn in simple, quick fashion and departed with two long pumpings of his great wings.