Curse Breaker: Sundered

by Melinda Kucsera

  The spirit glass was as long as her forearm with a narrow opening that flared out into a flat-bottomed bulb at the other end. Into that bottle, she slipped the soul then shut and replaced it in her bag.

  Nolo rubbed his face. “Are they all in there?” He pointed to the pouch bulging at her hip. It emitted a soft white glow despite the drawstring cinching it closed.

  “No, I usually pass them on to a psychopomp, but the Queen of All Trees isn’t answering my call. She’s never done that before.”

  “Can’t you ferry them yourself?”

  “Usually, I can, but nothing about this day is usual.”

  “So, you tried and what? You couldn’t pass?”

  “Not exactly. The Gray Between Life and Death—a place you know as the gateway between worlds—it’s changed somehow. When I touch it, it feels wrong. Something is out of whack there. I need to consult her about it before I crossover.”

  “Is it safe for you to carry around such precious cargo with the Adversary running loose?”

  Death patted her satchel. “Of course, it is. It’s not just them in there. Their guardian angels are with them, and they’ll stay with them until I deliver them safely across the boundary between this world and the next. Then they’re on their own.”

  Death had never been this chatty before. Might that be her way of delaying him? Damn him, it was working too. Every new tidbit she dropped raised more questions. But I must rise and go find Sarn. I need to know what happened to him.

  A lump formed in his throat at the thought of Sarn lying somewhere unconscious and paralyzed from the fall. Eighty feet was a long way to fall, and that was just a cautious estimate. But the Kid’s fallen further and limped away with barely a scratch. True, but then he had magic at his beck and call.

  “I can’t believe his magic’s gone,” Nolo said.

  “It’s not. It’s just blocked. He can get it back if he wants to, but that’s his decision to make.”

  All this talking wasn’t helping Sarn. Nolo grabbed ahold of the nearest statue—they really were everywhere—and pulled himself to his feet

  That was when all hell broke loose. Stones exploded upwards sending Death and debris flying. Many sucker-covered things shot through the hole. They charged after Death but slammed into a giant, translucent black skull that materialized in front of them. Its eyes blazed with indignation.

  “No, they are mine, you foolish creature,” said the Adversary as it opened its jaws to reveal hell itself.

  Spectral fire gushed from his mouth. When it struck those charging tentacles, they went limp and dropped through the hole. Banging confirmed their mates were alive and still punching through everything in their path. The floor shuddered as the tentacular horror removed some more of its supports, but it didn’t fall, not yet anyway, but it would if that creature kept at it.

  “The Adversary,” whispered the Marksman into their shared mind just in case Nolo hadn’t realized who had shown up. “Shoot him with Slain-in-the-Spirit while he's distracted.”

  Indeed, as the Marksman finished speaking, a white arrow made of light dropped into Nolo’s hand, but he couldn’t move. The Adversary had pinned him with that infernal stare, and his body refused to obey him. Slain-in-the-Spirit dropped from his hand and winked out. However, the bow remained. It stuck to his hand even when the Adversary’s foul magic made his fingers go limp.

  “Come to me, Gore.”

  A primal scream answered that call sending shivers up Nolo’s back. He didn’t want to be there when this ‘Gore’ creature arrived. His name alone spoke volumes about what his purpose was. But it’s my duty to be here. And Nolo had lost sight of Death.

  “Whoa, what happened here?” asked Ranispara as she shot out of a connecting corridor and skidded toward the edge of the giant hole Sarn had fallen through.

  Worst of all, Nolo couldn’t even call out to warn her. Any second now, the Adversary would turn and see her, or his minion would when Gore finally arrived. And Nolo could do nothing to help her.

  Good Guys Should Stick Together

  Another wave tried to knock Sarn down, but he’d been braced for it. So, he stayed upright thanks to his walking stick and the tiny bit of magic J.C.’s spirit friend had given him. It enhanced his strength just enough to counteract the dizziness, but that made all the difference. Ran clung to him like a barnacle, keeping them together.

  As wave upon wave slammed into Sarn, his walking stick slipped out of the hollow he’d wedged its tip in, and he fell face-first into the water. As he followed Sarn down, Ran gripped his pants tight in his little fists, refusing to be parted.

  Sarn thanked Fate he’d tightened his belt earlier, and it held. Otherwise, Ran would have tugged his pants right off his lean hips.

  Blackness hovered at the edges of his vision as Sarn used up the spirit bird’s magic, but he couldn’t give into that now. Every step had been a battle against dizziness and nausea, and it had taken its toll. But Ran needed him conscious. Sarn rolled over and got his face out of the water, so he could breathe, and Ran too.

  Those tentacles were still stabbing at things far, far above. Another statue plunked down into the river, but it didn’t kick up much of a wave, unlike before.

  “Jersten, get up. We must get out of here,” Sarn said as soon as he could draw in enough air to speak, but he was wasting his breath.

  Jersten couldn’t help anyone right now, not while he clutched his knees and rocked. Fear had taken his mind. Just great.

  Sarn touched his pendant. It had always been his talisman, and he needed its protection now more than ever. It warmed his cold, numb fingers as he squeezed it and fed it the last dregs of the magic J.C.’s avian friend had given him to brighten its glow.

  Its light had banished many nightmares. He wished it could banish the one he was living now.

  Ran’s earlier comment haunted Sarn. ‘Good people should stick together.’ How right his son was. I wish my heroes were here, or Nolo or the rangers or anyone. I can’t beat this on my own. I was a fool to even try.

  “I’m so cold, Papa.”

  “I am too.”

  Ran shivered as he huddled against Sarn, and Sarn hugged the boy with one arm in a vain attempt to warm him. He was too dizzy and sick to try rising on his own without help, and Jersten was in no condition to help him, nor was there anyone else around except the monster.

  "Why is it just lying there?"

  “Why’s what lying where?”

  “That thing over there.” Ran pointed.

  Sarn squinted at the object in question and started when he realized how close it was.

  Because of the concussion, his eyes still couldn’t focus properly. So, everything had a hazy reflection drifting in and out of focus—even the extremely large lump lying diagonally across both the river and its bank. But that can’t be what it looks like.

  Ran took pity on Sarn and elaborated on what he was seeing: “it’s a big arm with big cup-things on it, but it’s not moving. Why isn’t it moving?”

  Sarn closed his right eye, and that left him seeing only one giant tentacle lying lifelessly in the river. Without his magic to confirm it, he could only guestimate its length to be several hundred feet long. The tentacle was as wide as his torso and tapered to a point at one end. The suckers covering it were as large as a human head, maybe even larger. It was hard to tell in the half-light of his pendant.

  "Is it dead or just sleeping? Do monsters sleep?"

  “They must. Every creature sleeps, but don’t touch it, okay? It might just be playing dead, and if it is, we don’t want to wake it."

  “No,” Ran said as he stared at the thing.

  His death-grip on his stuffed bear was already loosening as temptation to touch the downed creature fought for mastery. Curiosity finally won out though, and Ran stretched until he could toe the thing. When it didn’t react, he extended his arm, but Sarn captured his hand and kept it away from the brackish substance weeping out of a six-foot gash in the tentacle's sid
e. That crud was creeping closer with every breath.

  “I said not to touch it. It might hurt or sicken you if you do.”

  “Oh, that would be bad. I didn’t think of that. I just wanted to know what that stuff coming out of it is. Do you think it’s blood? Do monsters bleed?”

  “Yes, they must because we’re looking at its blood.”

  Sarn squeezed his son’s captured hand as another loud boom shook the ground and sent debris flying. Fragments of stone pelted his back in a stinging hail. He kept his head down and crushed Ran against his chest in a tight hug, so his long arms could shield the boy until the deadly shower subsided.

  A few pebbles struck the back of his head, and the world went momentarily black then everything swam back into view. Get up. Sarn ordered himself.

  He gripped the staff and tried to push up, but he only made it to his knees before waves of dizziness knocked him back down. Sarn landed on his rump and fought down the urge to vomit as the promise he’d made to Jersten grabbed hold of him again and pinned him to the ground.

  "Papa?"

  "You have to get help. I can't get out of here on my own."

  As much as Sarn hated to be parted from his son, it was the only way to ensure the boy’s survival. A loud crack from above only underscored that.

  “No, I won't leave you.”

  “You have to. I can't make it on my own.” Sarn pushed his son away even though every instinct screamed at him to gather the boy close to his heart. “You’ll need light. Take this with you.”

  Sarn yanked on the cord his pendant hung on, but it shrank down until it choked him when he tried to pull it over his head. Sarn let go of it, and it flopped back down over his heart. A second later, Ran crashed into his chest.

  “No, you can't make me. I stay with you always.”

  Sarn hugged his son tight. “What did I ever do to deserve you?” he asked into the top of his son's head.

  “You made me. I wouldn’t be here if not for you. Thank you for that because I like being alive. It’s fun most days just not today, but tomorrow will be better,” Ran said because he hadn’t said enough stunning things today.

  “What are you talking about?”

  It was strange hearing Beku’s words roll out of his son’s mouth in a completely different context. ‘You made him. You deal with him,’ she used to say when she was angry at him. Apparently, Ran had overheard that, but those damning words had taken on a new and unexpected meaning for him.

  Ran shrugged off his question. “It’s true.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  Except Sarn hadn’t known that’s what he was doing at the time. He’d only been fifteen and had never given babies or where they came from a thought. They just weren’t part of his everyday reality until Ran was born.

  Ran leaned into Sarn, and he rubbed his son’s back. “What would my heroes do?”

  They would send his son away. But Ran wouldn't go, and those booms were growing closer. Debris pelted Sarn again as something hit the ground and shattered behind and to his left. He squeezed his eyes closed and shielded Ran with his body. He was so cold, he couldn’t feel his legs anymore nor the slice one of those flying shards took out of it.

  What would my heroes do? I could try to invoke the question again, but that won’t break the promise’s hold on me even if I knew how to trigger it. And that damned promise had welded his butt to the cold stones under him.

  The bells of Mount Eredren started tolling the twenty-fourth hour, ending one day and beginning another. The ground shook again, but Ran just yawned and curled up on his lap, too tired to care anymore about monsters or falling rocks. The boy needed so much more than a nap.

  Sarn rubbed his thumb along the facets of his crystal pendant as cold water rolled under his legs, and his thoughts circled back to his heroes—the Guardians of Shayari as they always did in times of stress.

  What would my heroes do if they were hurt and didn’t have the right tools to do anything useful?

  Sarn let go of his pendant and did the only thing he could. He cradled his son in his arms. Ran blinked sleepy eyes at him and snuggled into his embrace, Bear in hand. As Ran sucked his dirty thumb, his breathing evened out as sleep took him off to a better place.

  I wish I could whisk us off to a better place. If I was one of those legendary Guardians I could, but I’m not. What would my heroes do?

  Sarn tilted his head back and stared up into the hole in the ceiling at the light still glowing fitfully out of reach so very far above. What would my heroes do?

  As that question repeated in his heart and mind, a snatch of an old song drifted back to him:

  “O Guardian most dear, hold those loved and lost near. Shield those who live from fear. Always be with us here, O Guardian most dear,” he sang softly with the tolling of the bells, thinking only of his son, curled up tight in his arms while the mountain seemed to fall down around them.

  “What are you singing, Papa? I like it.”

  “It’s a petition for help. Legends claim, if your need was great, and your cause was just, and you called the Guardians like I just did with your whole heart and mind—they would come.”

  They would come. Sarn wished they would come, but they’d been dead for a very long time.

  “Sing it again,” Ran said around a yawn.

  Sarn did and Ran echoed him. But the words changed in his heart to something befitting their situation:

  O, Guardian most dear I’m sundered and near to tears. My magic’s barred by fear, and all I hold dear’s in peril until I clear this question—but I persevere. I climb like a mountaineer to you, whom I revere. O, Guardian most dear. Please help us.

  Above, those tentacles kept pounding away at whatever had caught their attention and dropped whatever didn’t. Jersten kept right on rocking and muttering mad things about a hole and people turning to ash when they fell into its white-hot glow. Blood ran in rivulets down his pale face from the numerous cuts left by flying debris.

  “Jersten?”

  It was futile, but Sarn had to make one last ditch effort to bring the man around, but like all the others, it came to nothing. A light flared drawing Sarn’s attention down to his pendant. Ran was cuddled up against it.

  “Make it glow brighter, Papa.”

  “I wish I could, but I used up all the magic the spirit bird gave me, and I have none left.”

  Before his magic-less state could depress Sarn, his pendant did as his son asked—it glowed brighter. So bright in fact, Ran had to shield his eyes with Bear’s fuzzy body. Sarn laid Ran across his lap and freed one arm to cup that intense white light in his hands, so it wouldn’t attract the creature’s notice. That light was shooting white spears into his eyes and making his head hot.

  But Sarn was clumsy from fatigue so his hand slipped, and the crystal pricked his finger. Blood welled from the cut and fell onto the pendant igniting something inside it. A blinding flash obliterated the gloom obscuring the river, and as Sarn squinted into it, a sun-drenched field of valor replaced the cave. It stretched to the horizon just as it always had in his dreams.

  And upon that field of gold, a rider appeared. His steed reared up then charged toward them. Glories streamed behind that shining warrior, and Sarn’s breath caught at the sight. His heart pounded in sync with the muffled hoof beats carrying his hero closer and closer and closer—but never close enough to touch. He always woke up before that happened because the Guardians were gone.

  You can’t join a dead order, not when you have a son, a debt to pay and a magic you can barely control. But he could dream, and that's what he was doing now—dreaming his heroes were coming to rescue them.

  So, when the radiant warrior he’d wanted to be since childhood didn’t stop or fade away but kept closing in, Sarn sat up straighter because it couldn’t be. I’m seeing things. This is part of the concussion. I’m hallucinating this.

  But part of Sarn knew he wasn’t. He was too cold. Dear Fates, his teeth were chattering, and his head
still pounded. He could feel his son’s warm body snugged in tight against his left arm while the fingers of his right hand stroked the hot planes of his pendant.

  “Who are they?” Ran asked, but Sarn just shook his head because this couldn't be real.

  That shining warrior halted and in his gauntleted hands, he held the only dream Sarn had ever had. Behind that hero of old, armed and armored apparitions marched with their glowing swords held high. Their blades were crystals, and his pendant was throbbing in time to their marching steps.

  “Papa, you didn't answer my question. Who are they?”

  “The Guardians of Shayari,” Sarn said, hardly daring to believe it.

  Had they come to help? Or is this just a hallucination? Sarn still wasn’t sure, not even when those glowing warriors stepped out of that light and ringed them like an honor guard. They wore ancient armor like the ones he'd seen in the paintings of his heroes. Relief flooded Sarn. He wasn’t alone anymore.

  Pain stabbed hundreds of needles into his head. Sarn winced and tried to breathe through the pain, and the darkening veil falling over his vision.

  Not now, please, not now. Don’t you dare knock me out. But his body had taken all the abuse it could. His muscles felt like they were liquefying, and he was sinking into a black hole of unconsciousness.

  “Papa! You’re shaking. Why are you shaking?” Ran’s scared voice seemed to come from miles away.

  I don’t feel right. Sarn had meant to say, but he was falling away from his body and couldn’t be sure those words had made it past his chattering teeth. That black veil covered everything, and it was dragging Sarn away. I’m so sorry, Son. You deserve so much better than me.

  “Nonsense. You’re exactly what he needs. You just need back-up,” said a man Sarn didn’t recognize as a pale hand thrust through that veil. It was strong and calloused, and it demanded he grasp it.

  Lest there be any confusion on that point, the stranger spoke again. “Take my hand and the help you need.”