The Lion's Crypt (The Emberlyn Chronicles Book 2)

by Michael K. Rose

  Table of Contents

  The Lion’s Crypt

  Chapter One The North Wood

  Chapter Two The Test

  Chapter Three Gralock

  Chapter Four The Lay of the Land

  Chapter Five Lanioc’s Fate

  Chapter Six Death at Lake Dranith

  Chapter Seven Vahlik’s Failure

  Chapter Eight Devotion

  Chapter Nine Interrogation

  Chapter Ten Dournion

  Chapter Eleven Understanding

  Chapter Twelve Winter Solemnity

  Chapter Thirteen Snow Sprites

  Chapter Fourteen The Western Road

  Chapter Fifteen Gralock’s Orders

  Chapter Sixteen The Ruins of Eranion

  Chapter Seventeen The Silver Door

  Chapter Eighteen The Lion’s Crypt

  Chapter Nineteen The Sword Awakened

  Chapter Twenty Faric’s Discovery

  Chapter Twenty-One Artifacts of Power

  Chapter Twenty-Two Training

  Chapter Twenty-Three The Queen’s Favorite

  Chapter Twenty-Four The Snow Troll

  Chapter Twenty-Five Dominance

  Chapter Twenty-Six The Sword’s Desire

  Chapter Twenty-Seven The Army of Lanion

  Chapter Twenty-Eight Dourok’s Plans

  Chapter Twenty-Nine The Battle at Dournion

  Chapter Thirty The Breach

  Chapter Thirty-One Penny’s Vision

  Chapter Thirty-Two The King of Gronstave

  Chapter Thirty-Three The Parting

  Fiction by Michael K. Rose

  About the Author

  The Lion’s Crypt

  A Novel by

  Michael K. Rose

  Book II of The Emberlyn Chronicles

  Copyright © 2017 Michael K. Rose

  Cover Design by Alexia Purdy

  All rights reserved. Except for fair use as determined by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to any actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  First Digital Edition Published September 09, 2017

  Coming in December: The Lion’s Court, Book III of The Emberlyn Chronicles!

  Visit michaelkrose.com for more information.

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  Chapter One

  The North Wood

  Light, crystalline flakes drifted lazily down from the sky, dusting the shoulders of Faric’s cloak. The Lanosh scout ignored the chill as a few of them found their way down the back of his neck and began to melt; his gaze was intent on the wooded ridge up ahead, rapidly becoming obscured by the flurry. It was too warm for the snow to remain long on the ground, but it could hinder his vision while it was in the air.

  Another man, a few years Faric’s junior, came up beside him and also turned his attention toward the ridge. He wore a black traveling cloak like Faric’s, and his dark hair fell loosely over the shoulders of the cloak. His quick brown eyes narrowed. “Do you hear it, too, Cousin?” he asked.

  Faric grunted. “Just the faintest whisper of voices on the wind. It could be nothing, or it could be…. Arric, take two men left, around that clump of boulders. I’ll move toward those trees to the right of the ridge with the others.”

  Arric nodded and wordlessly began giving orders to the men behind them. They watched his hand movements for a moment before two of them broke off and followed him toward the rocks. The remaining two men came up beside Faric. He pulled an arrow from the quiver hanging at his belt, nocked it to his bowstring and waited for the others to do the same before they started walking.

  The snow began to fall more heavily, and the ridge disappeared from view. Faric did not need to see it to know where he was going; the tall, thick trees to the right were still visible, and he had memorized their shapes. He and the other two Lanosh scouts reached the trees, and there they paused. Again Faric heard a faint murmur of voices. There were many creatures in the Great Forest that could be mistaken for men, but caution was always the best course of action until the source of the sound could be discovered.

  Faric turned to the man at his right. “Morrick, remain here and watch our flanks,” he whispered. “Keep your bow at the ready.” He turned left. “Laeock, with me.”

  Faric glanced across the slope of the ridge, toward Arric’s position, but he could not see any sign of his cousin. He and the other two scouts had disappeared into the landscape. Keeping his head bowed, he began climbing the slope with Laeock behind him. For a third time, he heard voices. Despite the gentle crunch of the dead leaves beneath his boots, he was now certain the sound was coming from no creature. There were men up ahead, and this deep in the North Wood, there was little doubt about who they could be.

  His thoughts turned to his last conversation with his sister, Queen Anneli. She had used her magical abilities to speak with him remotely and had given him a brief report. There was a larger force of Lanosh to his west, but if Anneli’s information had been correct, there hadn’t been nearly enough time for them to travel to where he and his small band of scouts were on patrol. No, the people over the ridge could only be soldiers of Dourok. The appearance of the Ember Lion during the battle for Lanion had broken Dourok’s forces, and most of them had fled. The city’s defenders had been too near defeat to attempt to give chase, and a week had passed before Queen Anneli felt it was safe to send her patrols back out to ascertain the positions of any large gatherings of Dourosh. So far, Faric and his scouts had only encountered small bands of stragglers, but the larger force to the west had reportedly been seeing signs of a sizable army. What lay between the Lanosh army and Faric’s band, no one knew, but it was his job to find out.

  Faric approached the summit of the ridge and dropped to his stomach. He crawled the rest of the way up and froze as the encampment below came into view. He counted eleven shacks, each large enough for four men. They’d been made from tree branches that had been broken rather than cut, but despite their crudity, their presence meant that these Dourosh had been here for more than a few days. Game was plentiful in the area; it was a good place to stop and rest for a week or two, if that’s what these Dourosh were doing. But what were they doing in the area at all? If they’d fled the battle at Lanion, why had they come this way?

  He turned his attention from the shacks and scanned the rest of the camp. Directly below him, a Dourosh guard leaned against a fallen tree, apparently not taking his duties too seriously. As Laeock came up beside him, Faric pointed to the guard and made a few gestures with his hands, forming symbols all Lanosh scouts had to memorize. Laeock nodded. He understood his captain’s meaning: these Dourosh were without a leader. There was no chance they’d have been allowed to get this close if there’d been a chain of command in place; there would have been at least half a dozen roving guards around the camp.

  Faric weighed his options. This was another group of deserters, soldiers who’d fled the battle after the Ember Lion’s appearance and had yet to rejoin any bigger group of Dourosh. He’d encountered such bands before, but this was the largest yet. There could be more than forty of them—his patrol of six scouts would be no match.

  The Dourosh that he could see appeared ragged but at ease. Some were gathered around a fire, cooking strips of meat, while several others
were playing dice on the ground. The rest, he supposed, were in the shacks, but a few might be out hunting. The food currently being cooked didn’t look like it would satisfy more than seven or eight men.

  Through the curtain of snow, he studied the dark, twisted faces of the enemy soldiers. They were tired, their morale low. A surprise attack, even from only six men, might disperse them.

  Faric made up his mind and turned back to Laeock. Aside from reconnaissance, his duty was to disrupt the bands of Dourosh who’d fled after the battle and prevent them from joining up with the larger forces. The longer the enemy could be kept scattered, the longer his people would have to recover and prepare for the next engagement. While these Dourosh didn’t look like they were in any hurry to rejoin their comrades, a group of this size would eventually come to the attention of the Dourosh commanders and find its way back into the ranks.

  He made his intentions known to Laeock then brought his bow up in front of him. He knew that Arric and the others would join the battle as soon as the alarm was raised. He pulled back his bowstring and angled his weapon down toward the lounging guard. Laeock aimed his arrow at the group playing dice.

  Faric released the bowstring. The arrow sped down the slope, sailing just inches above the ground, and sprouted between the guard’s shoulder blades. Laeock’s arrow went through the neck of one of the gaming soldiers, delivering a fatal wound.

  A dozen deep voices roared as the Dourosh realized what was happening. They scrambled for their weapons, but Faric and Laeock felled four more of them before they could figure out where the attack was coming from.

  Faric saw an arrow fly toward the camp from his left, quickly followed by two others. Arric was in the fight. Morrick came up behind him a moment later. From their elevated position, the scouts dropped several more Dourosh before the rest of them came out of the shacks. A few were armed with bows, but they were not well trained in their use. Faric had no difficulty dodging the clumsily shot arrows, but he knew well enough to take out the bowmen first; the Dourosh armed with melee weapons still had a hard trudge up the ridge before they could get close enough to retaliate.

  When the charge did come, Faric did not take any chances; he let them get only halfway up before calling out the retreat. The six scouts scrambled down the other side of the ridge, easily outpacing their enemy. The Dourosh’s training did not focus on agility but on brute strength; when massed, this was to their advantage, but when in smaller bands like this one, it meant that they could not react quickly to fast-moving attackers.

  The scouts were far enough ahead that they were able to turn and send several more arrows at the onrushing Dourosh before they reached the bottom of the slope. This last volley broke the charge, and the Dourosh clumsily scrambled back up and over the ridge, taking two more casualties as they fled.

  Faric glanced over his men; none appeared to be injured. “Good,” he said, his eyes darting between his scouts, the ridge and the surrounding woods. “We move and don’t stop until nightfall. Those Dourosh will be on alert for the next few days, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they abandon their camp prematurely. We’ll try and track them if we end up back in this area, but right now it’ll be too risky to attempt another surprise attack.”

  Arric fell in beside Faric as they began marching away from the ridge. “What of the snow? It comes earlier here in the North Wood than it does back in Lanion, and it’ll soon begin to settle on the ground. Will we return home before travel becomes too difficult?”

  “That will be decided by the queen. In our last communication, she suggested we might join up with the army to the west and winter in their camp. But we have several weeks before that decision must be made.”

  “What else did she say to you? You were unusually quiet afterward.”

  “She plans to test the magical affinities of the Blackmoor siblings soon. She said that if what she believes is true, we may”—he lowered his voice—“we may take the battle to the Dourosh.”

  “How? Even with the reappearance of the Ember Lion, they still outnumber us. As soon as they regain their nerve, they will certainly march on Lanion again. Perhaps as early as the spring. If the Ember Lion fails to come to us a second time, I do not believe we could withstand another siege.”

  “The Blackmoors—Penny in particular—may be more powerful than even Anneli suspects. Or they could not. Anneli must wait for the test before she decides what to do.”

  “I wasn’t there, but I heard what Penny Blackmoor did. She summoned the Ember Lion; she touched the Lion’s Crown. Surely her magical affinity must be even greater than the queen’s.”

  Faric frowned. “With magic, there could be any number of factors at play. The elders have even said that the lion’s appearance beside her may have been only coincidence, and that she may have no affinity at all.”

  “That seems unlikely.”

  “Anneli and I think so as well, but you know how some of our people view outsiders. Anneli said she will let me know how the test goes. Then we will know more.” Faric put his hand on Arric’s back. “Patience, Cousin. This is the first time in generations the Dourosh have been this close to defeat. We may yet break them for good.”

  Chapter Two

  The Test

  The tunnels beneath Lanion had been dug shortly after the abandonment of Eranion, the old capital, after Dourok had found a way to break the ward protecting it. His forces had overrun the city, and the surviving Lanosh had fled to the valley where Lanion now stood. At that time it had been a small farming community, and for a generation, both physical and magical energy had been expended excavating the rock beneath Lanion, creating the tunnels and providing building material. A layer of marble was discovered, and it was used to clad nearly every structure in the newly built city, making it grander than Eranion had ever been. Storerooms were dug in which food and supplies could be kept, the provisions the city would need to withstand an extended siege. The tunnels also led out to the Henroth Valley, hidden in the mountains to the southwest of Lanion.

  The first time Penny Blackmoor had been in the tunnels, she had not had time to explore. She and her companions from outside of the Great Forest were being led to safety in the Henroth Valley, away from the attacking Dourosh army. She’d seen glimpses of chambers and tunnels leading away from the route they’d taken but had no idea how extensive the complex was.

  Now, as Queen Anneli led her and Owen through the passages, lit only by the torch in Anneli’s hand, the expanse of the underground world became apparent to her. They took a path different from the one she’d taken when following Faric. This new route led them through several cavernous chambers, each as large as the great hall in Anneli’s palace and stacked high with barrels, crates and globular ceramic storage pots. Penny knew that the population of Lanion was about thirty thousand, and she estimated that the provisions of just one of the rooms would feed them for half a year or more. She almost asked Anneli how so much food was kept from spoiling, but she knew the answer would be the same as the one she’d received to so many other questions: magic.

  The large storage rooms gave way to smaller chambers, and these were filled with non-food supplies: wood for fires and construction, blankets, cooking pots, racks of weapons and armor. She couldn’t understand where it had all come from, but then she remembered that the Lanosh had been stockpiling for almost two millennia. One thing did bother her though, and she had to ask Anneli about it.

  She took a few quick steps so she could walk beside the queen. “I see so much metal,” she said. “Where did it all come from? Is the earth here that rich in it?”

  Anneli smiled. “I will explain that shortly.”

  The queen continued on; she knew the route by heart. But as the tunnel began to narrow, she slowed and continued on almost reverently. Penny sensed the change in the queen’s demeanor and took her brother’s hand in hers. The magical energy emanating from up ahead was unmistakable even to them, untrained as they were in its use.

  The queen st
opped at a curve and lowered the torch. With a wave of her hand, it fizzled out and began to smoke. She set it down in a rock-hewn alcove in front of her then turned to face the two siblings. A multicolored glow from beyond the curve bathed them in shifting light.

  “Around this bend,” she said, “is a large crystal. It is one of four magical vortices.” She looked at Penny. “The magic coming off of these vortices is so powerful that it restores the very rock itself. It regrows, like a cut fingernail, only very slowly. Every hundred years or so work crews have to re-square the chambers and tunnels we passed through, and the minerals in the removed stone are made into weapons and tools.”

  Penny put her hand on the wall. She could feel a slight roughness where the stone had begun to regrow. “You said there are four of these… vortices?”

  “Yes. There is also one below the fountain you saw in Ancion, which gives the water its healing properties.”

  “Why weren’t the wounded brought here after the battle, then?” Owen asked.

  Queen Anneli put out a hand and leaned on the wall beside her. Penny rushed forward to catch her in case she fell, but the queen waved her away.

  “I apologize. I overexposed myself to magic when I put on the Lion’s Crown. I am still susceptible to it, and the magical energy here is almost too much for me to bear.”

  “Should we wait?” Penny asked. “Until you’re stronger?”

  Anneli shook her head. “With winter coming, we should have some safety. The valley will be snowed in, and Dourok’s forces will not be able to reach us. Come the spring, however, we will need to be prepared for a new assault. If either of you are to be of any help, I must know the extent of your powers and begin to train you accordingly. Ideally that would take many years, but right now, even a few extra days may make a difference.”

  She looked at Owen. “To answer your question, each magical vortex has different properties. The vortex in the ground beneath the fountain is the Vortex of Healing.” She tilted her head toward the multicolored glow coming from around the bend. “This is the Vortex of Understanding. Each crystal amplifies all magic, but especially the magic to which it is attuned. Our healers could draw on the energy from up above, in the city, but raw exposure to this particular crystal would not have helped our wounded like it would have at the Vortex of Healing.”