The Children of the White Lions: Volume 02 - Prophecy

by R. T. Kaelin

  “Stop twisting words!” exclaimed Zecus. “We are here because of me! Because of choices I made!”

  “We are here because of choices we have all made.”

  Zecus glowered at Khin.

  “You are her teacher, not mine. Spare me whatever lesson this is.”

  “This is no lesson,” said Khin. “This is fact. The sky is up. Water is wet. Fire is hot. And assigning cause to fate is madness.”

  Boah whispered softly, “He’s right, Zecus. Do not blame yourself for this.”

  Zecus did not have to listen to any more of this. Staring in the direction the bandits had run, he spotted the hulking silhouettes of the stone creatures lumbering towards the horizon. Screams still carried across the grasslands.

  “Do we need to worry about them coming back?”

  Keeping his gaze on Zecus, Khin said, “No.”

  “Good,” muttered Zecus, looking back to his father’s body. “I wish to bury him. Now.”

  Nodding, Khin replied, “I respect your custom. Do what you must.”

  Zecus looked up and scanned the area, truly seeing it for the first time. Without a doubt, they had arrived in the right place. The ruined cottage, the fields of vegetables, and the river sparkling in the moonlight all marked this as Helene and Sabine’s former home. He glanced at the field to the right of the house. From the tales Jak and Nikalys had shared with him, he knew the sisters’ parents were buried there, beneath the overgrown crops.

  Without a word, he bent down, lifted the Alsher patriarch in his arms, and trudged down the slope, heading toward the field on the right. It seemed a fitting place to bury his father. Sabine was a strong soul, Helene an amazingly resilient child. It only reasoned their parents were as worthy as their daughters.

  Despite the friendship shared with Joshmuel, Boah did not ask to come. Burials were for families of the deceased only. Boah would need to mourn in his own way.

  Walking between the still-burning campfires near the ruined house, Zecus moved into the field, stepping through weeds and un-harvested longpeppers that had fallen to the ground. A number of the yellowing plants still had peppers hanging from them, dry and shriveled. He laid his father gently to the ground and returned to the house.

  Finding two shovels along the back wall, he chose one, returned to the field, and began to dig. He focused on each shovelful of dirt, keeping the crushing sadness that hovered on the edge of his soul at bay by holding onto his fury. Anger was easier to handle than sorrow.

  Sweat dripped from his brow, falling into the soil. He stopped twice to peel off a layer of clothing. Once the hole was complete, he lowered his father’s body into the ground and sat beside the fresh-turned earth. Time seemed to either stop or rush past. Zecus could not tell. Nor did he care.

  He stared at the moons and stars, still shining in the night sky. The water in the Erona River continued to flow, the gentle Southlands wind continued to blow. Joshmuel Alsher, a good man, father, and husband, was dead and the world marched on, uncaring.

  A rogue tear escaped and ran down his cheek. He wiped it away quickly and bit down hard, trying his best to hold back his grief. Taking a deep breath, he exhaled, shuddering as he let the air out.

  In a voice thick with emotion, he said, “I am so sorry, Father.”

  Reaching down, he undid the cloth band around his father’s head and wrapped it around his right arm.

  “I swear to you that I will find our family. They will be safe.”

  He could not bring himself to cover his father with dirt, so he sat there in the quiet moonlight, breathing in the sweet, pungent aroma of the rotting longpeppers and musty, fresh-tilled earth. His anger faded away eventually, leaving him numb and empty. Not even the sorrow sought to fill the hole.

  After noticing that the eastern sky had lightened, turning a pre-dawn gray, Zecus let a long sigh seep from his lips. It was time. Standing, he turned to retrieve the shovel jammed into the loose earth, glanced up, and stopped abruptly.

  Kenders stood at the edge of the field, staring at him, her arms crossed over her chest. Sorrow filled her face, mixed with a heavy dose of guilt.

  From somewhere deep within Zecus, a surge of anger rushed forth, unbidden and furious. Perhaps Khin was right. Perhaps Kenders had earned herself a share of the blame. Zecus might be responsible for ultimately bringing Joshmuel to Storm Island, but Kenders brought him to this hillside.

  As he stared, Kenders lifted a hand to her face and wiped her cheek. She was crying.

  Much of his anger evaporated in an instant, although he sensed a bit remained. A tiny seed of resentment seemed determined to take root. Sighing, he raised a hand and motioned for her to come closer.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she began to walk through the crops, her eyes locked on his, searching his face. She stopped a few paces from him, her hands clasped before her.

  “Boah said I should leave you alone, so I—” She cut off as her gaze flicked to the hole. Taking a sharp, stunned breath, she lifted a hand to her mouth. Her widened eyes glistened, brimming with fresh tears. “Oh, Zecus. I’m so sorry. This is my fault. It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t come—”

  In a quiet but firm tone, Zecus murmured, “Stop.”

  Kenders started as if he had screamed the word rather than whispered it. She looked as if she wanted to run away and never look back. Part of him wished she would.

  Instead, he opened his arms wide.

  “Come here.”

  Relief flooded Kenders’ face as she took the few remaining steps closer to him. He wrapped his arms around her and held tightly as she began to sob. He relented and allowed his tears to fall as well.

  Chapter 30: Vision

  Everywhere Tobias looked, gray-skinned oligurts lumbered past, their tusk-filled faces lit by torches’ glow. Tobias dashed about the crowd, dodging the plodding steps of the giants even though it was unnecessary. Within his visions, he could pass through solid objects as if they were not there, although moving through living things gave him the shivers. It seemed wrong, somehow.

  The ability to step through things was not the only oddity in his visions. He found that his eyesight was extraordinarily sharp, every sound crisp and clear. Yet while those two senses were heightened, the world was absent any odor. He could smell nothing.

  However, the most unusual aspect of his visions was the condition of his right leg. Crippled since he was a young tomble, in this place it was whole and unbent. As far as Tobias was concerned, it was the only redeeming aspect of Nelnora’s gift.

  As he danced about the vast crowd of oligurts, Tobias searched for the reason he was here. Through the years, he had come to believe every vision important, even though he frequently was unable to discern why. The maddening uncertainty was the primary reason his hatred of the visions had emerged. That and being powerless to stop what he witnessed.

  After the scourging of the Carinius coast, he had decided he never wanted to experience another vision again. If they could not help him stop such a tragedy, he did not understand the point in having them.

  During the Demonic War and the years following, he had discovered that close proximity to the other White Lions fueled the visions. So he fled the duchies, hoping to halt his ‘gift.’ The visions slowed in frequency, yet never completely stopped. The ones he did have were potent, powerful events. To this day, one in particular continued to haunt him.

  Tobias had been enjoying a nice meal in a mountain village in Cartu one evening when he suddenly found himself standing on a red, wooden bridge. From afar, he watched as a saeljul used the Strands to suffocate an entire village. People fell to the ground, their eyes bulging. The saeljul walked past them all, uncaring, to stand before a stone pedestal at the center of town. The ijul opened the black box atop the stone and withdrew a small, silver stone. It disgusted Tobias that one would kill so many over a simple gemstone. It still grated him.

  This vision, like many from his past, was proving to be both enlightening and frustrating at th
e same time.

  He had closed his eyes just before he had passed through the port—a habit of his—and re-opened them a moment later in near complete blackness. He panicked for a moment, thinking that Kenders’ Weave had gone awry and taken him to an unintended location. A heartbeat later, however, he realized that he was standing and no longer in Traveler’s saddle.

  As he spun around, trying to shake the disorientation, he noticed his right leg was whole.

  He took a deep breath. No odor.

  A quick series of distant flashes briefly illuminated his surroundings. He stood in the middle of a long dirt road with tall, wind-blown, rustling grass on both sides. Hunched balls of dark bushes dotted the prairie as far as he could see. The soft, thudding rumble of far-off thunder tumbled over the plains. Storm clouds covered the night sky, hiding the moons and enshrouding the landscape in near-blackness.

  Another lightning flash lit up the wilderness. Moments later, the thunder reached his ears, rising and falling as it rumbled past, going on for longer than it should. It took Tobias only a heartbeat or two to realize that the constant thudding was not thunder. An army was on the march.

  Having no idea how long the vision would last, Tobias faced the oncoming army and hurried down the road. Additional flashes of lightning revealed nothing useful about his surroundings. Everywhere he looked, all he saw was grass, bushes, and clumps of short trees. After a time, Tobias spotted specks of light on the horizon that he recognized as torch flames, stretching as far as he could see in both directions.

  Eventually, he was able to make out the shifting shapes of bodies trudging toward him, illuminated by torchlight. Razorfiends, oligurts, mongrels, and demon-men moved slowly, methodically through the darkness. Tobias stopped his advance, letting the Sudashians move past him while trying to gauge their numbers. He did not try very long, however. There were simply too many of them. It was like trying to count the grains of sand on a beach.

  Oligurts stomped past first, heavy metal-hooked clubs or tall, thick bows slung over their shoulders, talking amongst themselves in their language and leaving Tobias wishing he shared Broedi’s knowledge of the oligurt tongue. To him, it sounded like one long series of grunts.

  The razorfiends came next, slinking through the grass. Tobias had encountered the small, bladed creatures before, but never so many at once. Unlike the oligurts, they carried no weapons. Razorfiends did not need them. The quills along their arms and legs were sharper than sword blades.

  The mongrels he spotted were unarmed as well, which, like the fiends, meant nothing. Their powerful jaws could rip a man to shreds.

  The creatures that garnered the bulk of Tobias’ attention, however, were the demon-men. The Nine Hells’ spawn he saw here were nothing like the ones from the Demonic War. Those monsters had been mindless, raging brutes, dangerous and deadly, but unpredictable. More than once, Tobias had seen them turn on one another during battle.

  These demon-men were different. They were calm and in control, an aura of unquestioned command surrounding them. The Sudashians who followed did so with complete obedience.

  With each passing moment, the dread inside Tobias’ gut swelled. This army was not only massive, but it was organized and focused. A lethal combination.

  Now, as the last lines of mongrels moved past him, Tobias watched the army march away, frowning. He still had not learned anything useful other than ‘the army is enormous and dangerous.’ Deciding to track the army, hoping to discover something else, he sighed and began to walk after them, scurrying to keep up. He had only taken a dozen steps when he noticed the little bit of color gracing the nighttime prairie began to fade.

  “No…”

  Halting in place, he lifted his hand and stared at it. As expected, he could see straight through it.

  “Hells!”

  Glancing down, he saw the ground under his foot. His entire body was translucent.

  The vision was ending.

  Spinning around, he searched frantically for some landmark to tell him where he—and the Sudashian army—might be, but all he could see was dirt, grass, and rocks.

  “Blast it, Nelnora! Not yet! I need to know where I am!”

  The world faded to black.

  * * *

  The fresh scent of green filled Tobias’ nose. Upon opening his eyes, he found a clear, early-dawn sky overhead. Tall stalks of grass framed his view, wafting back and forth, teased by a light breeze.

  He remained motionless, listening carefully to his surroundings, straining to catch anything that might give a clue to where he was. The whistling of the wind was all he heard at first. A horse let out a bored snort of air. It was as if he had awakened from a nice nap in the pastures of Alewold.

  Turning his head to the right, he spotted Khin standing nearby, his gaze fixed on something some distance away.

  “Did it work?”

  Khin swiveled his bald head, peered down, and spoke in his slow, drawn-out manner.

  “We are where she intended to take us.”

  Tobias was both stunned and impressed. He had had his doubts. Even Eliza could not have done what her daughter had.

  He pushed himself up, into a sitting position, grimacing in pain throughout the maneuver. The ribs on his left side were sore.

  “Did I fall off my horse?”

  “We believe so,” answered Khin.

  Tobias winced, testing his range of movement. Nothing seemed broken. Ketus had been with him, it seemed.

  Spotting his walking stick in the grass beside him, he grabbed the white lion knob, braced the point in the dirt, and stood upright to get a better look at his surroundings. He and Khin stood on a grassy slope, alone, save for four of their horses calmly grazing. A ruined stone house rested at the bottom of the hill, flanked by several overgrown crop fields. A wide, expansive river was beyond the house, snaking from the western horizon and disappearing into the southeastern one. Zecus was in one of the fields, shoveling dirt. Kenders stood nearby, arms crossed, watching him. Tobias twisted around, looking for Joshmuel or Boah.

  “Where are the others?”

  “One took two horses to the river to water them.” Nodding to the field with Zecus and Kenders, he added, “The other is being buried by his son.”

  Tobias’s head snapped up.

  “What did you say?”

  “Joshmuel is dead,” replied Khin evenly. “He fell from his horse and broke his neck.”

  Tobias stared at Khin for a few moments, blinking in stunned quiet before muttering, “Truly?”

  Khin nodded silently.

  Peering down at the field, Tobias whispered, “Gods…” He had only known Joshmuel for a short time, and not all that well, but he had liked the longleg. Looking back to Khin, he asked, “What happened?”

  Absent any sort of emotion, Khin related everything that occurred after Tobias had entered the port. When the aicenai was done—the recounting did not take long—Tobias glanced about at the ruined farm, shaking his head. This was another reason he had hid from the White Lions for all these years. Tragedy hounded them.

  “How is Zecus?”

  “He is struggling,” said Khin, his gaze fixed on the field below. “He is very angry.”

  “At who?”

  “Himself,” murmured Khin. “Us. The Gods.” He nodded at the field. “Her.”

  Tobias drew in a long, deep breath and exhaled.

  “This is not fair.”

  “Fate does not care about what is fair and what is not.”

  “True,” admitted Tobias. “But I do. And this…this is not fair.”

  Khin was quiet for a long moment before he responded, his voice barely rising above the rustling of the prairie grass.

  “No. It is not.”

  The pair stood in silence, watching Zecus shovel from afar.

  After a time, Khin turned to him and asked, “Was your vision useful?”

  “Somewhat.”

  “Will you share what you saw with me?”

  Tobia
s sighed and nodded, muttering, “Of course.”

  He then proceeded to tell Khin everything about his visit to the dark plain, relaying every detail he could recall. When he was done, he eyed the aicenai and said, “I wonder if I should return to the enclave and tell them.”

  “What would you tell them? That a large army of Sudashians marches? That is not new information.”

  Frowning, Tobias grunted, “No, it is not.”

  “And if you do return,” continued Khin. “The baroness may insist you stay now that you have seen the army. She will want instant notice if you do again.” He turned to peer down at Tobias. “Do you wish to remain at the enclave?”

  “And what?” asked Tobias “Wait around for everyone to come back?” He shook his head. “No, I’ll only return if a vision is more useful than this one was.” Nodding to the fields below, he said, “Besides, I can’t go now. I have a feeling he’s going to want to get as far away from here as he can.”

  Zecus and Kenders had exited the field and were now striding past the wooden cart before the house. The young man had a determined, cold look to him. On the far side of the cottage, Boah was trudging through the grass, returning from the river with the horses.

  Eyeing the approaching three, Tobias muttered, “I think it best if we get moving. Quickly.”

  Nodding his agreement, Khin stepped past Tobias and walked to where his black steed stood, grazing.

  Tobias stayed where he was for a moment, watching Zecus march up the hill, Kenders trailing him, and wondered what words of condolence he could offer. Nothing he could say would help dull the pain and anger. Sighing, Tobias reached up and rubbed his eyes.

  “I hate this blasted war already.”

  Chapter 31: Prey

  20th of the Turn of Luraana, 4999

  Most years, Winter was a time for rejoicing in the Borderlands.

  Clouds would come and rain would fall, soaking the brown, dusty countryside and giving it life. Wildflowers sprouted up, dotting the plains and hills with reds, oranges, deep blues and purples, and whites brighter than a lone cloud on a Summer day. For one long and glorious turn, Borderlanders had a nearly unlimited supply of fresh and clean water to drink rather than the brackish muck that bubbled from deep underground wells. A brief growing season was even possible as souls across the duchy planted and harvested hardy, quick-growing grain.