17878265

by David

  “Yes,” Loric answered, without making the man ask him. “I will take the boy to squire if it becomes necessary--if Nimshar will not have him as his pupil.”

  Kelivoras showed relief. “Thank you, Sir Loric. You honor me more than I deserve. Please,”

  he continued, “make a list of provisions you’ll need to see you through Dimwood Forest. My wife and I will see to everything. We’ll prepare our son to join you as well.”

  ****

  The companions did not wait for morning to set off. Beledon was bleeding and there was

  only one way to save her from her lords. They had to complete Sir Palendar’s quest and select a nobleman worthy of bearing the blade that would make him king. That was ever in Loric’s mind as he and his companions loaded provisions onto Kelivoras’ boat, which only survived Kelvey’s fire because it was full of water during the blaze. If all went as planned, they would pass by Riverbluff during the night, so angry townsfolk would not recognize Kelvion and try to harm him.

  Kelvion said goodbye to his folks.

  “You understand why you need to go, don’t you?” asked Kelivoras.

  Kelvion calmly replied, “Because you and mother are afraid of me, like everyone else.” The boy patted his father on the shoulder and assured him, “I understand why you’re scared of me. I scare myself, sometimes.”

  Udelia confessed, “Sometimes your fits frighten us, Kelvey, but these good soldiers are going to try to find a nice man, who can make your spells stop. Someday you will not have to be afraid anymore, and neither will we.” She hugged the boy to her chest and said, “I love you very much.”

  “I love you too,” Kelvey said in tears.

  Kelivoras roughed up his son’s hair with his palm, pulled him close and said, “You can come home as soon as you are ready, Kelvey.”

  Kelvion nodded his understanding and moved to the boat. Loric could not help but notice the lad’s long face as Barag pushed the heavy-laden craft into the darkening waters of the Enchanted River. He quietly offered, “If we were not forced to leave people and places we love behind us, for whom or to where, would we long to return? In truth, the returning is our goal and our greatest joy. But we cannot have such a prize without a departure and a journey that will carry us away to strange places and new adventures.”

  Kelvion turned his pools of fire on Loric and asked, “Do you miss your home and family?”

  The pain of the question caused the knight to clutch at his breast, as if a dart had pierced his heart. He swallowed hard and shared, “I miss my father and mother--and the cottage too--but someday I will return to dear Taeglin.” That was a promise.

  All was quiet on the boat for some time after that. Loric let his eyes wander from one companion to another, starting with Kelvion. The boy must have been satisfied with the answer to his question. He curled into a tight ball, buried his face in the crook of his arm and went to sleep. Marblin was lying on his back beside Loric. The old guardsmen had already let enough saw-like snores out of his gaping mouth to cut down every tree in Riverwood. Warnyck, who sat in the back with a pole across his knees, had begun his silent nocturnal vigil in earnest. Barag was in front, helping the scout guide the vessel down the treacherous waterway, ever watchful for lights along the shore. Loric instructed his navigators to keep north. They were to awaken him once they reached the outskirts of Riverbluff.

  Knowing that capable men were in control of the craft, and still feeling spent due the river’s evil enchantment upon him, Loric turned onto his side. He closed his eyes, which were burning to the point of provoking tears. There he lay, listening to the water song as it echoed against stony hills all around him, while rushing currents swept the boat and its passengers downriver.

  The sun finally dropped below the horizon. Its last lingering light faded away. Like that orange ball, the Knight of Shimmermir and Taeglin also took his rest.

  ****

  Loric had dreams of a dragon pedestal. It held an ancient tome with a worn, charred cover and stains that looked like.... He shuddered and pushed the thought away. The worst of his nightmare included bones of men, which walked like living beings.

  ****

  Loric awoke with Warnyck holding him down. The scout let out a low growl, saying, “Wake

  up! Wake up, before everyone in Riverbluff hears us coming.” Loric fell silent and relaxed.

  “That must have been some nightmare,” Warnyck remarked.

  All Loric could do was shake off his dreadful chill and grunt, which meant, Yes.

  Loric shifted his eyes over his companions. They were in the same places they had been when he had gone to sleep. Everyone, except Warnyck, who was still hovering over his leader and was now, Loric noticed for the first time, staring at him in wide-eyed curiosity.

  “Kings and queens!” Warnyck whispered in exclamation. He sat there expressionless,

  dumbfounded. That continued for a terribly long duration.

  When Warnyck’s behavior lasted an intolerable length of time, Loric shook him and asked,

  “What is wrong with you? Why are you looking at me that way?”

  “I might ask the same of you, Loric,” answered Warnyck. He went on uncertainly, sharing,

  “Your eyes have changed.”

  “How so?” Loric asked. He had slept the burning sensation away, and his vision was the sharpest it had been since his plunge into the Enchanted River. Doubt stripped him naked.

  Warnyck uneasily answered, “They.... well.... they are burning. They are burning with fire....

  like the boy’s.”

  “So it begins,” Loric said evenly. He was relieved to know, but anxious for changes to come. I see my world as a dragon would see it, he realized, grasping after advantages to his curse.

  Warnyck nodded.

  “My vision is clear tonight,” Loric shared.

  “How clear?” Warnyck questioned.

  “I see everything.”

  “I could use night sight,” Warnyck decided.

  “You know what I had to do to become as I am, friend scout.”

  Warnyck drew a deep breath, sighed as though expelling his last living breath and

  murmured, “Now that you bring it up, my vision is perfect the way it is.”

  Loric snickered. “I thought you would say that.”

  Warnyck pointed southward. Loric tracked the invisible path of his friend’s extended digit to heights above the riverbank. There were few lamps aglow at that late hour, but the steady lighting bore no resemblance to flickering campfires. There could be no mistake. That was Riverbluff. Once they glided into the shadows to the east, they could rest easy for a time.

  “Stay as low as possible,” Loric advised Warnyck in a hushed voice. He felt foolish as soon as he spoke, because Warnyck already lay hidden behind the hull.

  Barag hunched down as much as his hulking form would allow him to do, silently waiting for the current to pull the little craft out of the light and into the canopy of darkness beyond Riverbluff. Three wakeful travelers regretted that they could not stop to wet their mouths in those taverns above them, but they had no other alternative than to bypass the promise of foamy tankards. People within those low earthen walls feared Kelvion. The companions could not put the boy at risk, even for a drink.

  Loric helped ease the pain of sacrifice when he offered to take his turn at watch. Warnyck gladly accepted. The knight nudged Marblin with the toe of his boot, causing him to choke on his snores. When the old Moonwatcher finally gained control over his cough, Loric motioned for him to take Barag’s place, whereupon the bulky soldier slumped down in the boat and fell asleep.

  “Great Donigan!” the Moonwatcher proclaimed. “You have eyes like the boy,” he gasped, his own irises darting nervously as he shied away from his friend.

  Loric swallowed his reply and nodded. He did not want to talk about it. Marblin would get used to the change in the time of his choosing.

  Hours staggered by at a sluggish rate, with only noises
of water creatures to keep Loric and Marblin company. They came upon a particularly rocky section of the course, where the river became hazardous to boat and passengers. The men directing the craft devoted their collective focus to poling through danger.

  Loric was the first to see heavy cloud cover in the predawn sky. He stabbed his finger upward and called, “We must find suitable ground for a landing and seek out what shelter we may.”

  The Moonwatcher was quick to agree, “Yes. If that storm comes upon us while we’re

  navigating between these bloody rocks, we are certain to die clinging to the driftwood we once called a boat.”

  Marblin tilted his head northward, indicating that he had spotted the natural docking ground they desired. Loric added his strength to his friend’s efforts to make the larboard turn, until their vessel ran onto the soft muddy bank. Even as the craft came to a stop, rain began falling.

  Warnyck stirred as soon as the first splash hit him. As raindrops fattened and descended at increased rates, the scout gained insight as to what had awakened him and why they had made their unscheduled landing. Warnyck shook Barag awake and moved to assist his companions, who were already trying to tug the boat onto the squishy shore.

  Kelvion was by Loric’s side, rubbing his fiery eyes into wakefulness. The knight kindly patted his shoulder and directed him to stand next to a boulder, away from the river. Loric and Marblin decided to flip the boat and prop one end of it atop that enormous rock. Then they began anchoring the craft to the ground to use it for shelter. Warnyck and Barag liked the idea so much that they threw themselves into the effort.

  When they completed their objective, Loric noticed that Kelvion was not where he was

  supposed to be. “Kelvey?” he called. “Has anyone seen Kelvion?” Shaking heads and grunts were his collective, No, as others in his party ducked under the roof of the shelter they had made.

  “The last I saw of him, he was right beside you,” Marblin acknowledged.

  “Kelvion!” Loric shouted, his alarm growing. “Kelvion, where are you?”

  There was no answer. Loric’s companions began to stirring when they realized Kelvion’s disappearance was reason for concern. As Warnyck clambered out from under the boat, Loric spotted something the keen-eyed scout had failed to detect. In the corner, where the boulder met the cliff and the ground, there was a narrow opening in the stone. The crevice was too small for a man, but for a small boy it would have been only a tight fit.

  Loric brushed past the scout, dropped to all fours and crawled closer to the hole. In his anxious pursuit of the missing six-year-old, he looked past scratchy markings leading into darkness. He peered into the crack, hoping to find a sign of Kelvion.

  Loric found that the narrow crawl space before him opened into a capacious cavern, but he saw nothing of the boy he was looking for. He slowly panned his gaze along the walls of the chamber within. There was flitting movement off to his right. Loric fixed his eyes upon that point. There was no additional stirring, so he dismissed it as workings of his imagination.

  “What do you see?” Warnyck asked him.

  “Little, you can be sure,” Marblin muttered. He began to fish in his pack for flints and a torch, adding, “Not without light, leastways.”

  “I see quite well,” Loric assured his friends, “but I do not see our boy, Kelvion. We must dig our way in.”

  The companions used everything from weapons to helmets to widen the hole. Marblin

  snapped off the tip of his blade, but aside from that, excavation was successful. Soon, even Barag’s bulk fit the hollow.

  Loric discovered that it was no ordinary cave. Rather, it was a lair. Objects clattering beneath his feet were bones. Loric made no mention of his grim discovery, only warning his friends in a low whisper, “We must stick together, avoid use of lights and refrain from yelling after the boy.”

  “Why?” demanded Marblin, who continued his hunt for tiny flints to produce the precious spark he desired most of all things.

  Loric ignored the question, choosing instead to draw his sword with a soft, scratchy ring.

  Warnyck and Barag drew their blades without need for further explanation, so he said only,

  “Follow me.” Marblin tentatively bared steel and followed them.

  The natural rock chamber in which they were standing formed a near-perfect circle,

  throughout scattered with jutting outcroppings capable of obscuring side passages from view.

  Loric led them toward the nearest such formation, his eyes ever scanning the walls and ceiling of the secret lair. Another shadowy scurrying above him confirmed his suspicions that even now some creature or creatures were lurking there.

  Loric made no sign, but Warnyck’s sharp intake of breath informed him that the scout also sensed danger to his party. Loric felt assured that Kelvion had come into this chamber. He could only hope that the boy was hiding somewhere, frightened and alone in the dark, stony hollow.

  The knight pressed on, urgency demanding bolder and hastier movements, which he eagerly provided for the sake of the boy he had lost.

  Four adventurers passed the first jutting pillar of rock, but no passage opened unto them.

  Loric beckoned his friends to keep up as he slunk toward the next protruding column, but then he remembered they could not see him, so he gave his biceps a hard double pat. He felt a cool draft.

  Then he spotted the low tunnel from whence it came. It opened about calf high to his left. Using his sword tip as a guide, Loric dropped to his knees and peered into the crawl space.

  A wide valley gaped below the narrow path awaiting Loric and his companions. Loric

  squeezed his way through first. He forgot shadowy forms skittering in the heights, as the enormity of the chamber came clear to him. A city ruin was nestled in steep cliffs across the chasm from his party. A swift stream flowed far below the abandoned city, likely feeding the Enchanted River. A friendly nudge from Warnyck reminded Loric that his companions needed room to join him on the ledge, but glowing points of two fiery eyes further down the walkway set his mind back on his true purpose for entering the cave.

  As Loric made his way toward Kelvion, the boy shouted, “Loric! I’m glad you’re here. Isn’t this place something?” He paused, as if uncertain, before he added in a scarce whisper, “But it’s kind of scary too.”

  Loric was about to respond that the lost city was amazing, and add that Kelvion should come along with him, when Marblin slipped down. His blade clattered to the stone floor with a resounding clang. The sound echoed from the ceiling high above to the very bowels of the lair, in depths lost to measures of time and distance. High-pitched chirps and beatings of leathery wings were telling signs that they had disturbed innumerable bats resting in those jagged heights above them.

  Loric raced to Kelvion with the intention of pulling him to the ground, so he could shield him from frenzied flights of distressed bats. As he tugged the shrieking boy earthward, he made a quick glance toward the ceiling. Then he noticed other inhabitants of the cavern. Loric nudged Kelvion into a crawl. He stooped over the lad as he moved, keeping his sword and shield poised to ward off incoming monsters.

  Those little beasts were unlike anything Loric and his friends had seen before, although Warnyck and company did not see them at all. Initially, they hovered down on unwary bats.

  Loric saw how enthusiastically they hunted. He feared they were going to descend on his party in their zealous feast. He had good reason to anticipate such an ill turn. Those creatures were like wavering discs, some two feet in diameter and a handbreadth in thickness. They had leathery hides of gray and undersides bristling with thick collections of thorny teeth. By legend, the creatures were Floating Shadows, but to the son of Palendar and his fellow wayfarers they were simply an unwelcome menace.

  Loric watched Floating Shadows assail helpless bats in wonder and amazement, for their dance was hypnotic to behold. Those creatures dropped onto their prey, and their outer circumferences
continued their strange wavering motions while the rest of their bodily masses stretched about those doomed bats to ensnare them. Those leathery prisons then worked up and down until those helpless victims were devoured, at which time they flapped back to their original shapes, discarding bones and cartilage. Then those beastly predators fluttered down to enwrap the next available targets in their paths.

  Kelvion curled into a ball and started crying. Loric forgot how much that was to complicate his party’s present dilemma, until the power of Kelvion’s fit manifested itself as a minor earthquake. Amidst all other chaos surrounding the companions in that moment, the cavern started rumbling. Stalactites and large sections of limestone fell from high above.

  Warnyck, Marblin and Barag were too busy dodging bats to realize that a greater evil was about to assail them; and the quaking ground only served as an additional distraction to them.

  Loric hung between a shout to exit the cavern and a call for light. Floating Shadows came into the chamber from the hole at their backs. They had to stand and fight.

  “Behind you!” Loric cried, as he swung the Sword of Logant in a wide-sweeping upward

  arc. The blade clove the creature above him in two, but three smaller Shadows jumped from its back. “Marblin, strike your light!” he called. Then he ran through one of the young, beat back another with his shield and dodged the last. As the torch flickered and his eyes came into focus, Loric saw Warnyck set himself to take a swing at the Floating Shadow nearest him. Loric grabbed Kelvion and dove away from a plummeting chunk of limestone, as he warned his

  friends, “Beware! They carry offspring on their backs.”

  Warnyck slashed across the monster and made an immediate backslash as miniature

  Shadows sprang from the parent creature’s back. His second stroke swept through two of the younglings, while he dodged a third. The fourth latched onto the scout’s back. He cried out, struggling to stop the monster from succeeding in its attack against his leather jerkin and the skin beneath.

  Just as the pumping body of the Floating Shadow repositioned itself for a better taste of its victim, Barag provided thudding relief from the feeding wretch with a backhanded wallop. Upon relieving the scout’s distress, the bulky warrior resumed focus on the creature confronting him, skillfully skewered it and flung it into the valley.