The Dread King: Book One of The Larken Chronicles

by R. L. Poston

  Suddenly he felt the Healers’ absence in his mind, as a new threat attacked him. His whole world shook from the attack, but this attack he could fight with his own kind of power. This attack was both physical and of the same kind that Jaris had used. Larken knew this type of power. He struck back at the force that sought to hold him mentally and at a body he felt grappling with him. The mental attack ceased abruptly, and the body flew away from him and was gone. Suddenly he was free and alone.

  Larken burned with power. His body throbbed with rage. But his rage began to subside as the absence of either a threat or a target robbed him of a focus. He felt the power fade as the need for it also faded. The rage within him vanished to that hidden area of his mind to which he could not follow. He was left alone with only a fading rage and a growing sense of confusion.

  Finally, Larken was able to open his eyes and focus on the external world. He found himself on his feet with both hands clenched. As he looked about him, Larken’s last bit of anger was washed away by confusion and fear. Commander Jaris was lying unconscious in the corner of the room. Gahen lay prone on the floor, feebly trying to move and push himself up. Dionne was doubled over in her chair, clutching her head. Leona lay unconscious beside her chair. Larken turned slowly to find Amanda standing behind him, staring at him with an expression of absolute horror.

  After several moments of silence, Larken asked, “What happened?”

  “Later,” said Amanda, shaking her head and stooping to minister to Leona. “Dionne, see to Gahen. No, wait. Go for help. Quickly.”

  Fortunately, Gahen and Leona recovered even before Dionne came back with more Healers. Commander Jaris, however, required the assistance of Healing to regain consciousness. Leona was confined to bed for the rest of the day. Amanda was unhurt but grim. She closeted herself with other members of the Healer leadership as soon as help arrived.

  Larken was led back to the barracks hall by two Warders who remained with him. Neither would speak to him about what had happened, but Larken could tell they were very wary of him. An unfamiliar Healer came to see if he was all right and to sit with him. Larken quickly surmised that the Healer had been instructed not to answer his questions. Each time he paced the barracks, the Healer and the Warders watched him carefully, as if he were a dangerous animal that might try to escape.

  Lunch was brought to him, and the Warders and Healer with him were replaced by others who were even less communicative. Larken gave up trying to talk with them and alternately paced the room and lay on his bunk. It didn’t matter if he was walking or prone. He knew beyond doubt that he had failed the test. Even beyond failing, he had proven that he was dangerous. He knew he would be silenced or executed, and he concurred with that supposed judgment. Just the memory of the rage that he had felt and the darkness that they had found within him caused him to be sick with guilt and shame.

  All his life Larken had suspected that he was the cause of his parents’ death. Now, his guilt went far beyond that suspicion. He now had proof that he had the power to kill and could only conclude that he had killed his parents, just as he had, in a fit of rage, almost killed again this morning. In the inner reaches of his mind dwelt a darkness that could not be allowed to exist alongside the power that he had shown. He only hoped that he would get a chance to talk to Melona before they executed him, or before they silenced him and made him an idiot. It was the possibility that he might not get to see Melona again that worried him most. If someone would just tell him that they would get to talk, he would quietly accept anything else that might happen.

  Finally, in the midafternoon, Amanda summoned him to her office in Healer Hall. When he arrived, he found that Commander Jaris, Melona, Taz, and a lean older man with silver hair and a beard were also present. All seemed tense and tired. Amanda, especially, looked exhausted.

  Melona rose to hug Larken, who had to stop himself from clinging to her for comfort. Amanda nodded her welcome, and Jaris closed the door behind them. He asked Larken to sit next to Melona. Then he introduced the older man as Henkri, the current leader, or first chair, of Shropanshire’s Council and, by that office, King Andreas’ chief advisor.

  After the introductions, Henkri began, “Larken, let me assure you that we are not going to do anything more drastic to you than give you special training and attention. You are not going to be silenced, killed, exiled, or anything else you might have imagined. What happened was a failure on the Healers’ part, not yours.”

  Larken felt his insides loosen as he exhaled fully for the first time since the morning’s disaster. Melona reached over their armrests to squeeze his hand and flash him a smile.

  “Second, let me assure you that no one was seriously hurt by that fiasco. But, before I go on, let me check on what you understand about this morning. Tell us what you think happened this morning.”

  “Yes, sir, I, uh, that is, sir, um, I guess not really sure. There was something in me that didn’t want to be probed and that made me angry. I don’t know what that was, except that it seemed dark. And then I felt some kind of power. I don’t know what it was, but I grabbed it and used it. And, I guess, there are a lot of other things I don’t understand.”

  “Let me try to answer some of that,” said Amanda. Getting a nod from the first chair, she continued, “Larken, we began by assaying your Talents, and you have several. I’ll get to that in a minute. We were amazed by your strength and versatility, but we weren’t alarmed. In fact, we were very pleased by what we found. We found you to be a kind, gentle soul, who is deeply troubled by your own harsh judgment of yourself, although you have no objective reason to judge yourself so.” Amanda paused to smile briefly at Larken. Then, gathering herself, she went on.

  “Then, as we were probing through your mind, and digging back into your childhood, we ran into a barrier. Now, first, barriers to memories are common in people’s minds. We all have them. Virtually no one escapes childhood without walling off some memories and experiences. It’s a normal part of development. We believe it allows you to forget things that are too painful to live with.

  “What we normally do when we encounter a barrier to memory is suggest to your mind that you want to see through the barrier or to move around it. That is generally effective at getting the person to breach the barrier. If we find unpleasant memories, and mostly that’s what we find, we can either Heal the memory or rebuild the barrier. Understand?”

  “Not really, what kind of barrier? It felt more like a dark place that didn’t want me in it.”

  “Well, it’s difficult to describe. Remember that everyone experiences thoughts, emotions, and memories a little bit differently. You felt it as a dark area that you couldn’t see into. Others might feel it as being afraid to explore some of their memories. Or, maybe, just as an inability to find some memories.”

  “I felt a darkness that my memories sort of disappeared into,” volunteered Larken.

  “That’s probably as good a description as any. We sensed it as a barrier. But, in any case, you were unable to get through this mental barrier. Unfortunately for us, we decided to give you some help. That’s a normal procedure in most cases, but we made two mistakes. Our big mistake was that we didn’t take seriously enough the warnings Gahen and Jaris gave us about the strength of your Talent. To put it bluntly, we’ve never dealt with your level of Talent before. You’re truly exceptional.

  “Our second mistake was to press on when you began to panic. Panic is a normal reaction to any attempt to uncover repressed memories. Normally, we give the candidate some emotional assurance which then allows us to break through the barriers quickly and begin the Healing process before the person feels more than a moment of fear. For us to withdraw in the face of fear would just reinforce the legitimacy of the fear and make it harder to break through the next time. Normally a person doesn’t have the strength to resist our probing or the power to do anything before we’ve completed our tasks. Again, to put it bluntly, we underestimated the strength of your mind and your Talen
t, and while we fumbled with the barrier that you erected, we gave you time to panic.

  “Then you did something that no one has ever heard of. You tapped our own Talents and used them to attack us. You actually used our Talents’ energies as your own. Leona, who led the examination, was skewered like an eel. The rest of us were too stunned even to react. Jaris sensed something was wrong and tried to shake you awake. He also used his Warding Talent to try to force you to withdraw. You threw him across the room using both your Talent and your physical strength. Jaris is pretty solid, but Talent can give you a lot of strength in an emergency. Gahen then tried to shake you awake, but you stunned him with Talent. Fortunately, you woke up and got yourself back in control. And that’s what happened.

  “In short,” said Amanda, “we completely mishandled the examination of the strongest Talent that we have ever seen. It is we Healers that take full responsibility for the fiasco.”

  A moment of silence fell on the room at this confession. Only Henkri did not look embarrassed. He was watching Larken closely, but still seemed annoyed by the situation.

  “I’m still confused,” said Larken. “I can understand that I used your Talents, but why was I so angry? I’ve never been that angry before.”

  “Actually,” answered Amanda, “it’s pretty common for someone to get angry when threatened with the destruction of an emotional defense mechanism. That’s what we believe your mental barrier or block is, your area of darkness as you sense it. It’s an emotional barrier built by fear. We believe you built that block to protect you from memories that were too frightening to remember. You probably erected the barrier when you were very young and couldn’t deal with the memories. Most people do. Now, you would probably be surprised how small and weak the memories are, because you have grown and can probably cope with them with no problem.”

  “But, if I could deal with them,” asked Larken, “why do I still have the barrier?”

  “Because your unconscious mind can’t understand that the memories can’t hurt you now. Your subconscious only remembers the fear you felt when you were very young. In a very real sense, it is reacting to that level of fear and your perception of the experiences when you were young, not the actual memories themselves. Remember that the block is really an emotional block. It isn’t affected by logic. Do you understand?”

  “Not really,” answered Larken. “But it still feels like the anger came from someone else. If the memories are not that frightening anymore, why can’t I remember them?”

  “Look at it this way,” said Amanda. “Suppose you came across a really scary bug when you were two years old. You decided that it was so scary and so dangerous that you had to hide it away so that it wouldn’t be around to scare you. So, you put it in a box. Then, so that you wouldn’t be scared by even the memory, you purposely forgot what you put in the box. You just remembered that something dangerous and scary was in the box and that you shouldn’t open it. Now the scary bug turns out to be a wood beetle, something that you see often as an adult, but you’re still keeping the box locked up because you can’t remember what’s in it, only that it’s scary and dangerous. That’s what happens a lot in people’s minds. They lock away memories that are scary and dangerous to them as children, but then the barriers continue to block the memories long after they have grown to the point that they could deal with them as adults.”

  “OK,” said Larken as he considered this. “But what about that stream of energy? Is that what your Talents were?”

  Amanda look puzzled. “What stream of energy?”

  “There was a stream of energy. It was what I drew from. It wasn’t inside me, but it wasn’t outside of me either.”

  Amanda hesitated. After exchanging a glance with Taz, who shrugged, she said, “I don’t know, Larken. You definitely used our Talents against us. Maybe that’s what our Talents looked like to you. We’ll have to investigate this later.”

  “What about my Talents?” asked Larken. “You said that I had several Talents.”

  “Let me answer that, Larken,” said Henkri, taking charge of the conversation. “Evidently you have the Talent of Warding, but we already knew that. You also have the Talent of sensing others’ Talents. That’s common enough in Healers, but rare among Warders. Amanda says that it is not active yet but can be trained. And there’s at least two other, possibly more, latent Talents that the Healers can’t identify. We’ll have to work on those since the Healers weren’t able to determine what they were.

  “Most surprising,” continued Henkri, “you appear to have the Talent of augmenting your physical endurance and your strength beyond what is normal. Talent does give one extra strength, but both Jaris and Gahen swear that you physically threw Jaris across the room. That’s a level of strength from Talent that we’ve never seen before, but apparently, you have it. We’ll have to do a lot of work on that, too. Plus, you can use others’ Talents to increase your own. Larken, you may be the most Talented person we’ve ever seen.”

  Larken was stunned. “But that’s crazy. I didn’t even know that I had Talent.”

  “Maybe you didn’t have Talent before,” said Henkri, “but you do now.”

  Larken was silent for several long moments. No one interrupted him, understanding that he needed time to deal with a new image of himself. Finally, Larken asked, “What is going to happen to me?”

  “An understandable question,” replied Amanda. “May I, First Chair Henkri? First of all, nothing bad. We’re going to train you and teach you how to control your Talent. In fact, the control of your Talent will be our number one objective. It will take precedence over anything else. We don’t want you to hurt others or, more likely, yourself with it. So, we’re going to train you quickly and thoroughly with our best trainers. You’ll be a class of one and will get a lot of attention.

  “Furthermore, we want to work with you to recover those memories that you’ve repressed—the ones beyond that barrier in your mind. We aren’t going to try to breach that barrier again, but we do believe that it’s important to help you get at least comfortable with the idea that the memories are still there. Larken, we believe that you have sealed off that portion of your memory because of the way your parents died.” Seeing Larken scowl, Amanda waved him silent. “We’ve talked with Melona and understand that you blame yourself for their deaths. Given that belief, we’re confident that you have created the barrier because you’re blaming yourself for their deaths. We’re going to try to help you overcome your guilt because we believe if you overcome that, even if the barrier doesn’t disappear, you’ll be more at peace with yourself.”

  “How will you do that?” asked Larken.

  “Well, we’re definitely not going to repeat this morning’s experience.” Amanda grimaced. “Instead, several times each week we want you to talk to Leona—nothing more than talk. Leona has a special knack, beyond her Healing Talent, of helping others talk out their problems. We think it might help you at least accept your past, if not remember it. At some later date, we might try a gentler Healing after Leona has prepared the way. OK?”

  Seeing Larken’s hesitant nod, Jaris continued for Amanda. “Also, Larken, we can’t just train you in the normal sense. We normally Bond someone soon after we start training. For a Warder, the ability to handle Talent can only be taught after Bonding has created an increased level of Talent for the Warder to draw on. However, we all agree that your Bonding to Blade will have to wait until we are more comfortable with your control of your Talents. The fault is not yours; we just don’t know how to help you with the level of Talent that might result from your Bonding, so we’re going to go slow. Remember, Bonding increases the level of Talent many times, and one of the most dangerous times for a Warder or Healer is right after Bonding, even if they are fully trained. Without training, a Bonded Warder could hurt others or, more likely, himself because he now has more power than he’s ever had before and might not be able to control it properly. We’ve got to go slow with you because of the strength
of your Talent. Plus, you seem to have enough Talent already for us to work with.”

  Jaris seemed to brace himself and then continued, “There’s an additional part that neither you nor we are going to enjoy: we’re going to insist that you be accompanied during your waking hours by one of our best Healers and Warders. There’s always a danger to the untrained as they discover their Talents. In your case, the danger is more fully appreciated.”

  “I understand,” said Larken. “And I am sorry for what happened.”

  “Pfft, lad,” said Henkri. “If someone turned a wild boar loose in a pottery shop, we wouldn’t blame the boar for the mess, and neither do we blame you. If you want to blame someone,” he added, glancing at Amanda, “blame the people who turned the boar loose. In fact, the Healers, especially Amanda, were your strongest allies in our discussions. They insist that you are a gentle soul that would never intentionally harm someone.”

  “That’s true,” added Melona.

  “Well, if we’re agreed”—Jaris paused for confirming nods from all—“it’s been a long day, and I suggest we adjourn to dinner and bed. Healer Taz and Melona have asked the privilege, Larken, of joining me in escorting you to dinner,” he said, taking the sting out of formally initiating Larken’s supervision.

  * * * * *

  The next morning began early for Larken. He was awakened by Gahen, and he found Taz waiting outside the barracks to escort him to a quick but hearty breakfast. After breakfast, Gahen began the physical part of his Warder training. Larken had always believed that his smithy work kept him in good shape. Also, he had a natural talent for running and had always been able to run long distances without losing his wind. However, after an hour of calisthenics followed by a five-mile run, Larken had given up any idea that he was in shape for the army. Gahen had matched him exercise by exercise and stride for stride and had hardly begun to sweat. Larken, however, was ready for long break. Instead, he spent another hour practicing lunges and parries with a heavy wooden sword, which seemed to grow heavier by the minute until he could barely lift it.