“In the dark days of Marugon’s return,” said Targath. “He hoped to cut through the Old Mire to reach Castle Bastion before Marugon. He lost his way, and I guided him from the swamp.” He shook his head. “It was a fool’s quest. And it sounds as if this Prophecy about Lithon was a fool’s quest as well.”
Arran shrugged. “Perhaps. But if anyone could have accomplished it, Sir Liam would have found the way. And Marugon heard the Prophecy as well. Would he have thought to seek Lithon on Earth?”
“No. I suppose not.” Targath gestured with his free hand. The other men faded into the swamp, leaving the old tribesman alone with Arran. “He was always audacious, never practical.” Arran raised an eyebrow. “I fought with him in the wars against the Black Council, when you were but a boy.”
“A squire,” said Arran, “I was a squire then.”
“One and the same,” said Targath. “He was always daring. Yet such was his ability and courage that he always won. If anyone could accomplish this fool’s quest, it was Sir Liam. If he did not perish on the Crimson Plain. Or amongst the perils of the Tower. Or by the horrors that must fill Earth. And now you, too, embark on your own fool’s quest.”
Arran shrugged. “I have no other choice. I tried to fight the soldiers and failed.”
“Marugon has won,” said Targath. “The High Kingdoms are rubble. Yet Marugon seems to have little interest in what he has conquered! His empire crumbles, from what we have seen. The winged devils and bands of soldiers are carving out little kingdoms of their own.” His eyes glinted. “You could join us. We can always use another skilled fighter. And there is more to the world than just the High Kingdoms and the Old Mire. Your fight is lost. Why not travel to some distant realm, find a good woman, and marry?”
Arran blinked. “A good woman.” Siduri flashed through his mind. “I could not.” Siduri had loved him, he saw that now. Yet he could not have loved her back. Guilt tugged at him. Suppose they had not gone to the cavern of the Ildramyn? Suppose they had struck out together for unknown lands? Might she still be alive?
But Khan-Mar-Dan would have found them, sooner or later.
Arran shook his head. “I cannot turn back. I may be damned, as Sir Liam thought. But if I turn back, then I know I am damned for all time, for I will have betrayed them all. My brother Luthar,” he touched the Sacred Blade slung over his shoulder, “Sir Liam, Siduri…”
Targath shook his head. “You Knights are madmen.”
Arran laughed. “We are at that.”
“Come,” said Targath. “I shall show you the way to Castle Bastion.”
“I can find my own way out of this stinking swamp,” said Arran. “And I’m not going to Castle Bastion.”
Targath raised bushy eyebrows. “My tribe and I live in this stinking swamp. I can show you the fastest way through. And you’ll want to go to Castle Bastion.”
“Why?” said Arran.
Targath made some sort of sign to ward off evil. “There are ghosts there.”
Arran frowned. “What?”
“Ghosts,” said Targath. “Some of the young men hunt to the west, searching for game. At night they see pale ghosts in the ruins of the castle, calling to them. One brave young man followed them, and the ghosts vanished as he approached. So I went to see them for myself.” A shiver went through his rugged face. “I saw the ghosts…a woman, a young man, and an old man wrapped in a ragged cloak. I dared not come any closer, and have not dared approach Castle Bastion since.”
Arran shuddered. “I want naught to do with spirits.” He had seen wraiths and specters during his journey with Sir Liam, haunting the ruins of the Forgotten Vales. Only the magic of their Sacred Blades had kept the wraiths away.
“A wise choice,” said Targath. “But I do not think these spirits are wicked. I think they are waiting.”
Arran frowned. “Waiting? For who?”
“For you,” said Targath.
Arran laughed. “Me? I have only been to Castle Bastion once before, and that was fifteen years past. I was but a boy. Why would they wait for me?”
“Because you are a man haunted by many ghosts,” said Targath. “Ghosts of memory. And they are not waiting for us. We of the tribes are not native to this land. You are a Knight of the Order of the Sacred Blade, a man of the High Kingdoms, and the first Knight to travel through these lands since Sir Liam. I think they are waiting for you.”
“Perhaps it is a trap,” said Arran, “some trick of Marugon’s black magic.”
“I doubt that,” said Targath. “The winged devils avoid the ruins.” He smiled. “Spirits are perilous, true, but I think you should visit the ruins. You are on a fool’s quest, just as Sir Liam before you. What have you to lose?”
Arran looked at the ground. “Perhaps you’re right.”
###
“Here.” Targath pointed. The last traces of the swamp ended, rising up into rocky, wooded hills. “This is the edge of the Old Mire. An old road leads to Castle Bastion. It is almost overgrown now, but it is still passable.”
Arran turned and gripped Targath’s hand. “Thank you.” The old man had provided him with supplies. “I shall repay your generosity, if ever I am able.”
Targath sighed. “I do not think we shall meet again. I said as much to Sir Liam when we parted.”
“Perhaps.” Arran grinned. “But listen. Watch for me. If I survive, and if I return, I’ll come back one day, and we’ll share a drink, you hear?”
Targath laughed. “A fine idea! I shall watch for you, but I shall watch in vain, I think. I wish you good fortune, Arran Belphon, for you will need all the luck you can muster.” He faded into the swamp.
Arran set off for the road. He hoped to reach the ruins of Castle Bastion before nightfall.
###
Dark clouds heavy with the promise of rain masked the sky as Arran made his way through the hills. The thought did not trouble Arran. After his time in the Desert of Scorpions, he had come to appreciate damp weather. The wind picked up, forlorn moans coming from the trees. No wonder Targath’s tribe thought the ruins haunted.
At last Arran came to the crest of a hill and swept his gaze over a desolate valley.
“Gods,” he muttered. “It is a ruin.”
Castle Bastion sat atop a broad hill, its outer walls heaps of rubble, its inner walls marred with huge breaches. Craters pockmarked its surviving towers. It looked less like a castle and more a rubble heap. Arran remembered Castle Bastion as a mighty fortress, surrounded by productive and content peasants. Now it was nothing more than a crumbling wreck.
“Like the rest of the High Kingdoms,” said Arran. Still, perhaps he could take shelter for the night in the ruins.
He scaled the castle’s hill, climbed over the wreckage of the gate, and glanced around the courtyard. Stones, bits of rusted armor, and bleached bones lay scattered about. The doors to the keep lay in a broken heap across the steps, and half the stone arch had collapsed. Arran picked his way across the courtyard, scrambled up the rubble-strewn steps, and entered the keep.
Shafts of dusty light illuminated the corridor, and bones covered the floor. Bits of rags still clung to some. Arran knelt and picked up a strip of rag. It crumbled into dust, but it had been white linen at one time.
“The Wizards,” he said. Bullets lay everywhere among the bones, no doubt the bullets that had slain the Wizards. Arran considered leaving. There was nothing for him here but dust and bones. And if restless spirits did wander the ruins after dark, Arran doubted they would be friendly.
Yet he pressed on, taking care to keep from crushing bones beneath his heels.
He entered a large inner courtyard. A huge pile of broken rock in the center of the courtyard drew his eye. It looked like a cairn. He walked towards it and felt his Sacred Blade warm. He blinked in alarm and drew the sword. No light shone from the crimson blade, which means there was no black magic here. Yet the sword had responded to some power in the cairn.
Arran circled the pile. He felt something, some low b
uzz of power that made the hair on his arms stand up. A piece of brilliant white marble stood at the foot of the cairn, words carved onto its surface. Arran knelt and brushed the dust from the stone.
“Here lies Alastarius, Master of the White Council,” read Arran. “A great man, yet one who died in vain, for the world is lost and all is destroyed.”
Arran stared at the inscription for a long time. Wind whistled through the courtyard, blowing up swirls of dust.
Arran stood. “Find Alastarius on Earth.” He looked at the cairn.
It seems he had found Alastarius without even reaching Earth. Arran stood with his head lowered in thought, Siduri’s last words playing through his mind. Had they been the last words of a woman half-mad from pain, or something more? Alastarius had Prophesied his own return. He had said Lithon would bring him back. And Lithon was on Earth, assuming he had Sir Liam had survived the dangers of the Tower.
Arran kicked the cairn. “Damn you.” A chunk of stone fell free with a thump. “Damn you and your Prophecies. Sir Liam was willing to follow them to the death, and now so am I.” There was nothing else he could do. “I hope I do find you on Earth. Then I can curse you to your face. Nothing would give me greater pleasure.”
The shadows had grown long in the courtyard. Arran changed his mind about sheltering for the night in the ruins. Castle Bastion was a tomb. He had no desire to spend any more time in this place of ghosts and forgotten memories. The trees would serve as adequate shelter.
He climbed out of the other side of the ruins and set off for the forest.
###
Arran blinked awake.
Someone else was here.
Thick fingers of mist wound their way among the trunks, brushing him with cool, damp air. He lay still, his eyes roving through the darkness. He felt unseen eyes watching him. A strange sense of another presence filled him, yet for some reason he did not feel alarmed. The presence felt somehow familiar.
A white glow lit the mists. Arran stood up and reached for his weapons. The sense of familiarity grew. He stood and drew his Sacred Blade.
He saw a shape moving through the mists. Arran’s eyes widened. “Siduri!”
For just a moment he glimpsed Siduri in the white glow. She looked just as he remembered her, strong, full of confidence, a mocking glint in her eyes. She beckoned to him and then vanished into the mist. Arran stumbled down the hill after her, trying not to trip and fall on his sword. The Sacred Blade jerked in his hand, a thrum of power going through the steel. Tiny pinpricks of white light flared in the blade. For some reason he thought the light came from the blood soaked into the metal, rather than the weapon itself.
Siduri appeared in the swirling mist fifty feet away, white light glimmering around her. The sword jerked towards her, trembling in Arran’s grasp. She smiled and beckoned to him before vanishing once more.
“I’m a fool,” muttered Arran. “This has to be a dream.”
Yet he pressed on.
Siduri disappeared and reappeared, leading him on through the mists. The ruined walls of Castle Bastion came into sight once more, tendrils of mist crawling through the breaches. Siduri stood near the smashed gate, holding out her hand. Arran half-ran, half-stumbled up the path and over the rubble.
“This is maddening,” he muttered. He saw Siduri near the breach that led into the courtyard with Alastarius’s cairn, beckoning to him. Arran grimaced, got a better grip on his Sacred Blade, and followed her.
He walked into the courtyard. A faint white glow shone from the cairn, leaking out from the gaps between the stones. The white light coalesced, and Siduri stepped from the cairn. She wore the brown of the Scorpions and carried her black spear, yet some of the white light seemed to shine from within her.
Arran stared at her. “Siduri.”
Her lips tugged in a smile. “Arran Belphon of Carlisan.”
Arran shook his head. “This has to be a dream. You’re dead. I saw you die.”
Siduri laughed. “It is good that your eyes are not failing you.”
Arran blinked. “Just my mind, it seems.”
“Your mind is not failing you,” said Siduri. “I did die in the desert. And I am here.” She drifted towards him, gliding over the stones.
Arran’s jaw worked. “I am sorry. It is my fault you died. It is my fault Khan-Mar-Dan killed you…”
Siduri laughed. “Foolish man. Khan-Mar-Dan killed me. Not you.”
Arran shook his head. “He followed me. He would not have found you if not for me. You…you would not have died if it were not for me.”
Siduri’s green eyes seemed to glimmer with their own inner light. He remembered her standing over him as he lay crippled and dying in her clan’s Hold, the white magic flaring in her eyes as she worked a spell over him. “Yet I regret it not. I knew the hour of my death. My destiny was fulfilled. Alastarius’s charge to me was fulfilled.”
Arran scowled. “Alastarius.”
The white light shimmered. “It was duty that made me wait. Yet it was for love of you that I followed you into the desert, that I took you to the Ildramyn.”
“I know,” whispered Arran. “You saved me. You…sacrificed yourself for me.”
Siduri smiled. “I regret it not. And I have come back one more time, for love of you. You must let it go. My death was not your responsibility.”
“It…” Arran blinked something wet from his eyes.
“It was not your fault,” said Siduri. “And if you cannot set aside the guilt, then I lay this charge on you…”
“Find Alastarius on Earth,” said Arran. He pointed. “I found Alastarius here, in the courtyard of Castle Bastion. Dead.”
“It is by the power of his tomb that I have been summoned here,” said Siduri. “His body lies here. Yet his spirit does not, nor does his power. Your destiny lies before you, Arran Belphon of Carlisan, and your fate is in your hands. Find Alastarius on Earth. There you will find your answers. There you will find what you seek.”
Arran nodded. “I will go to Earth.”
“You dipped your sword in my blood,” said Siduri. She gestured. “And some bullets and a grenade.”
“I did,” said Arran. He had seen the power her blood had infused into his Sacred Blade He had hoped it would do the same to the bullets and the grenade.
If it did, any winged demons he fought would face quite a surprise.
“The power I wielded lingers in the blood,” said Siduri. “The power of the white magic. Remember me when you look on your sword blade.”
“I shall,” said Arran. “Always.”
Siduri smiled. “I know. One other waits for you here, Arran Belphon. Another whose death weighs heavily on you. You must speak to him.”
“Who?” said Arran. He had seen so many men die.
Siduri shimmered. “I can speak no more. It is time for me to depart. Farewell, my love, until we meet again. For we shall in time.” She leaned forward and kissed him. For just an instant he felt her lips, warm and soft, against his, and then her spirit vanished into the white mist.
The soft glow coming from Alastarius’s cairn brightened. The wind picked up, whipping the mist into swirling tatters. Arran had the sense of something approaching from a vast distance. A form swathed in a cloak of gray mist stepped from the cairn. The gray mist faded away, revealing an armored figure shining with a pale white light, clad in the full plate armor of a Knight of the Sacred Blade. Arran had not seen such armor for ten years.
The sight struck him like a thunderbolt.
He fell to one knee, unable to take his eyes from the figure. “It…no…this cannot be.”
The armored man smiled. “Yet I am here.”
“Luthar,” said Arran, shaking.
“I am,” said Arran’s dead brother. Luthar looked much as Arran remembered him, strong and handsome and confident, his moustache and hair oiled and gleaming like brushed gold. An empty scabbard hung from his belt.
“Luthar,” whispered Arran, tears streaming down his fa
ce. “How can this be? What is happening? Will all the ghosts that weigh on my mind rise up to haunt me?”
“Some of Master Alastarius’s power yet lingers in this cairn,” said Luthar. “That power and your need was enough to call me here.”
“Luthar,” said Arran. “I am sorry.”
“Why do you beg my forgiveness?” said Luthar.
“I could not save you,” said Arran. “I could not protect you.”
Luthar laughed. “It was I who always protected you, little brother. Do you not remember? When we were boys, the boar hunt in the Border Woods?”
Arran smiled, salty tears brushing his lips. “I do remember. The boar would have gored me. But you were there. You killed it. Father…was so proud.” He shook his head. “It seems a thousand years ago.”
Pain crossed Luthar’s face. “Brother. You have endured so much since then.”
“It…has been hard.” Arran looked at the ground. “I wish you were here, more than anything.”
“But I am dead, brother,” whispered Luthar. “Mourn not too much for my death.” He banged his breastplate with an armored fist. “For I died as a Knight of the Sacred Blade, in defense of Carlisan. I died as I lived, as a Knight, and I could not have asked for more.”
“I tried to save you,” said Arran, looking at his brother’s face. “But I could not. I…I killed the bastard who shot you, I cut him down.” It seemed so long ago. “I don’t even remember what the man looked like. But I killed him.”
“It was my death that made you as you are now,” said Luthar.
Arran snarled. “I made myself as I am now!” He gripped the handles of his guns. “I took up the hell-forged guns of Earth, I damned myself! You had naught to do with it.”
“You did not damn yourself, Arran,” said Luthar. “The guns are weapons, nothing more, nothing less. They are no different from a sword, a spear, a crossbow, a knife, or a thousand other weapons.”
“Sir Liam said…”
“You did what Liam Mastere could not,” said Luthar. “You took up the guns and fought Marugon’s soldiers on their own terms. He could not.”
A Knight of the Sacred Blade Page 26
