Legend of Ecta Mastrino Box Set 2

by BJ Hanlon

  “I think that is enough of bedtime stories. We need to be off early,” the old man said.

  Edin agreed. Though he didn’t know if he was to sleep and dream or stay awake and be exhausted. As he closed his eyes, he felt that it would be the former.

  The dreams came. In them, he was doing things he hadn’t in a long time. Not for more than a year. He was climbing trees in the forest. He was kicking up dead branches and leaf-covered soil. He was leaping logs and then he leapt into the Crys and started swimming. He was happy but determined. He was going somewhere. To the right of him, he saw Arianne. She was laughing and splashing the water and then they were out of the water and running again. It was more jumping and leaping and a frivolity that he hadn’t felt in a long time.

  Then, there was a light ahead and it was growing. It wasn’t a sunlight, it was different. A fire, a burning ball of yellow and purple and red. There was something ahead of him through the tree trunks and beyond the large leafy bushes.

  Then he blinked and had moved through them and he was out into a clearing. He skidded to a stop on top of some sort of stone. Above him perched on a stone pillar about twenty feet high was Arianne. Surrounding her glowing golden locks was the light. It glowed like a halo. It was magical, queenly.

  Then he wondered, how did she get up there? She was looking down at him but he couldn’t see the expression on her face.

  Edin was awoken by a rough shake and the dream faded. He blinked and saw Hotep above him. He looked tired and it was still dark out. Though Edin wasn’t sure that the sun would ever rise again.

  Not while Yio Volor was...

  Edin pictured him like a moon during an eclipse. A moon that never moved out of line with the sun. Life as he knew it, would die.

  What about the swamps of old? Would those wicked plants and dreadful beasts die without sun? Edin thought not.

  “Mister Edin, would you watch my family?”

  Edin tilted his head slightly. Then he understood, the man wanted him on watch. He trusted Edin enough with his family’s lives.

  “Yes,” whispered Edin. He pulled himself up and glanced over at Arianne. She wasn’t sweaty anymore and her eyes fluttered beneath the lids. Edin put his hand on her forehead.

  It was cool, not yet a normal temperature but close. Edin let out a deep sigh of relief and then bent down, kissed her forehead, and whispered, “I’m right here if you need me, princess.” As he stood, Hotep was looking at him. They were about the same height, but the man was thicker, bulkier. Henny size.

  All that farm work made a man into a beast of burden.

  He saw everyone was asleep. Papa and Nona together, the nephew between Melian and Duria. The world outside was black though he could make out a few trees rather near them. He heard nothing out of the ordinary and strapped on his sword. “Get some rest,” Edin whispered not looking at the big farmer. “You’re safe with me.”

  3

  Valer

  Arianne stirred in the night, she moaned the word water and Edin barely heard it, but when he did, he quickly rushed to her and poured drops into her mouth. It didn’t rouse her but she seemed on the verge of coming to.

  Edin guarded the family until they slowly began to rise with the dawn. A false dawn as there was little more light illuminating their campsite with the sunrise.

  It wasn’t much, just a soft tinge of white that made the world glow in the same hue as an eclipse. Yio is blocking the sun, Edin thought.

  They got moving slowly; Melian whispered incessantly to Hotep, apparently furious that he let Edin guard, but she wouldn’t say anything to Edin. He guessed it by the way she dragged her brother out of earshot and behind one of those shadowed trees a few yards away. Edin heard only, ‘idiot’ and ‘blotard.’ Apparently, the old term was really starting to make a comeback.

  Edin helped pack up the wagon. The two horses that pulled were eating from the field and were reluctant to get back on the road.

  Hotep and Papa finally got them hitched to the wagon.

  As they were about to leave, Edin bent over Arianne and checked her pulse. It was slow but a little stronger than the day before. Her breathing was fine and she’d begun to snore a little after the water, though he wouldn’t say that to her. In any case, she’d just deny.

  Edin imagined her saying, “I. Do. Not. Snore!” The words in a staccato tone, and she’d be enunciating every one.

  “Arianne?” he whispered. For a moment, he thought her eyes were about to open. But they didn’t. His heart sank and he lifted her up and set her in the back of the wagon on top of unknown sacks of supplies.

  Edin took up the rear behind Hotep and Melian. Mel was not excited about having a stranger behind her. Especially one armed, but she relented.

  Edin walked that day and they followed the road. There was a crossroads at one point with no signs to tell which way was Valer. The crossroads were actually an intersection of two and a half roads and none were completely squared. One road seemed to go east and west, the one they were on was a bit southwest and a smaller road went south. It was a lopsided star.

  “Mel?”

  “To the left,” she said and pointed at what Edin assumed was the southern road. Edin stopped at that. He wanted to go to Calerrat, a big city, easier to defend and safer for Arianne. That would mean he’d have to follow the road straight to the southwest.

  But then he looked at her again. Silent and in the cart. Her snoring stopped when Duria put a bag under her head and lifted it slightly.

  Without a word, he followed as they turned down the southern road toward the sea. Wind whipped at them in gusts. It wasn’t cold but it was penetrating. He felt nearly naked as it tore through his clothes like a rabbit through undergrowth.

  They went on for hours not stopping for food and the light was so dim that they could barely see more than twenty yards on either side. Then they went through a small hamlet, four buildings that Edin could see that were boarded up with no sign of any human anywhere.

  There was also no damage done. “Abandoned,” he whispered.

  He briefly thought about seeing if there were any supplies in the houses but the family did not even pause to look at them.

  There was little talk throughout the day, only small whispers between the cart riders and the siblings.

  With the dark, there was only so much he could look at. Soon, the road began to rise. It hadn’t been straight for quite some time and now it was going up a slight embankment that caused Edin’s calves to burn.

  An hour or two into it, the little light from the sky began to dim. “Ahead, I see a building,” Papa cried out.

  It took another twenty or thirty steps for Edin to see it also. Off to the right of the road, he saw a cobbled together stone structure.

  “Let us check, Papa,” Melian said as she and Hotep raced forward with Edin just behind. He was a few steps back when they stopped at the long flat entrance of a single-story building. To the left though was a stone tower.

  Melian started to step inside the dark building when Hotep stopped her. “Can you see in there?” he asked.

  Edin could barely make it out, but he guessed she shook her head. From his point-of-view it was black. He stepped off to the left and began walking further down the side of the stone building. The tower stood ominously and silent and Edin knew what it was there for.

  This was an outpost for a small garrison of troops. Maybe they were close enough to the Resholt border that it was needed.

  Then Hotep said in a wary voice, “I think we move on.”

  Edin peered in the window.

  “I’d like to have a roof over my head,” said Melian.

  “Well you won’t get one here,” Edin said and the two turned to him. “There’s no roof here, at least.” It didn’t look to have been burnt or destroyed either.

  He began to circle the building looking for a thick branch or two to make a torch. Behind, he heard their footsteps following him.

  On what he guessed was the souther
n side, he found trees. A small copse or the edge of a forest he wasn’t sure.

  He moved from the road off toward the west as he searched the ground beneath the canopy. Edin reached out and started moving by feel until he was able to find a dead tree limb that seemed to be the right size. Then he gathered up kindling and was ready to start a fire.

  Melian asked, “What are you doing?” It nearly made him jump as she snuck up on him quietly.

  “Anyone have a sparkstone?” Edin asked rising and heading toward them as they were basked in very little light.

  “Yes,” Hotep said.

  Edin stopped before him, the man was black and completely shadowed with the whites of his eyes being the only proof he was a man and not a dematian.

  “Give it to me,” he said.

  A moment later he felt it and after a few tries, he had a fire and a torch; though it wouldn’t burn for long without something to keep the flames from consuming the wood.

  He could keep it from burning with the tosoria talent, and he could also raise the rocks that had collapsed with the terestio and then they’d have a roof…

  But not in front of these people. These mundanes.

  “What’s going on over there?” Nona called out a bit too loud for Edin’s taste.

  “I’m going in,” Edin whispered. “You two stay here.”

  “I’m coming,” Melian said.

  Edin looked at her and saw her jaw was set and her eyes were focused on him. They said, I’m in charge here.

  “Fine,” Edin drew his sword and headed toward the door. He looked behind him at Melian who had her bow out and an arrow nocked. Edin stepped inside and saw a first entry room. Stone walls and floor. The ceiling had crumbled away and rotted wood lay in heaps on the ground and in the corners. It wasn’t ancient but it wasn’t new. The place must’ve been abandoned in the last fifty to a hundred years.

  But why?

  They continued moving into the building. At its backside, there was a long room that looked like a barracks. It probably could’ve fit ten cots and footlockers.

  Through the room they found a small kitchen with a dismantled stove, glass jars that’d been shattered, and broken kindling. They continued on through a larger, possible meeting room until they reached the base of the tower. It was maybe twenty feet across and the stairs rose around the perimeter but there were no floors above and no ceiling.

  Edin looked at Melian. “It has walls.”

  She stared at him then dropped the arrow and slid it back into the quiver. “We camp here tonight.”

  “I think that is a good idea.”

  She glared at him for a moment and then said in a harsh, angry tone, “Who are you two? What are you running from?”

  Edin stared at her. She wasn’t as intimidating as she wanted to be though he could see in her eyes the piercing stare of a hunter.

  The dematians, he thought about saying, but he knew there was nowhere to run. Not with their god rising.

  “I’m going to Calerrat,” Edin said. “I need her to be safe.”

  “She’s your lover?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what will you do? Will you rejoin the Dunbilston army?”

  Edin said nothing for a while. It seemed like forever as he stared into those brown, hawk eyes. He knew there was a single job for him. One preordained. One that he was apparently born to do and it scared him to death. The job he was running from.

  “I’m not sure.”

  She seemed to be trying to read him, to tell if he was lying. “Do you really know Sinndilo?”

  “I dined with he and Sandon months ago. Before Sandon died.” Literally right before.

  Melian turned. “All is clear,” she called out and Edin cringed.

  “Try and keep a little quieter. We don’t know who is out there.”

  “If there is someone, do you think they can’t see that fire?”

  He shifted. She was probably right but he wasn’t going to admit it to her. This woman was more obstinate than Arianne, more abrasive than the roughest of coral. Edin walked past her and out into the darkest of nights he’d ever seen.

  But still, he knew they’d grow darker. Much darker.

  They’d taken up a small section in the turret and Edin was walking the perimeter. He’d laid Arianne down and though she showed signs of improvement, had yet to wake.

  Soon, he hoped. But he couldn’t be sure.

  The entire building was about a hundred and eighty paces. Seventy the long way, parallel to the road and twenty on the sides. It was hard to see much more than ten feet ahead so he stopped and listened at random intervals. As he came back, he noticed that the horses were calm so that helped ease his worries.

  He guessed it was midnight, maybe later when there were sounds, then he saw lights. They were off in the distance and below. There were cracks like lightning, flashes of something far away.

  Then he realized that it was the way they’d come from.

  The lights enveloped his attention. The colors so vivid and real. Blues and yellows, both somehow deep and also soft. They danced across the ground like someone was writing words in a stylized script.

  There were far off cracks, like that of thunder as well, but it was too quiet and the lightning was too close to the ground to be real.

  “What is it?” A voice came from behind. It was Melian. Her footsteps crunched the gravel road and she stopped next to him.

  Edin didn’t look at her. He was transfixed on the shapes and the crashing. It seemed to be in only one place. Maybe a single square mile, not that he could tell distances now. Not up here and in the dark. So he just stared.

  Was it moving? What was causing it? He stared long and hard and he barely heard Melian’s voice next to him.

  “She’s awake.” The huntress whispered.

  It was quiet and at first the words didn’t even make it to his conscious brain. It was like an itch that you automatically scratch.

  Then they did. Slowly, he turned toward Melian who was still looking down at the fire show. He quickly began to run. He took only two steps and stumbled over something. His knee slammed into the ground hard, his palm scraped on the dirt road.

  None of that mattered. He leapt back up and ran into the building. To the base of the tower with the small but cozy fire at the center. The roofless center acted like a chimney.

  Edin ran into the area and saw Nona sitting next to Arianne. She was holding Arianne up and helping her drink. When he entered, Arianne’s eyes were closed. She looked like she was drinking an cold ale on the warmest of days and truly enjoying every delicious and refreshing gulp.

  Then, her eyes slowly opened and they met. Edin took a few long strides and dropped to his knees before her. The banged up one cried but he didn’t care.

  Nona lowered the water and Edin flung his arms around Arianne. He pulled back and kissed her, feeling her chapped lips, the breath of air between them, the way she responded, and then she pulled away.

  “Your breath stinks,” she said, then she smiled. Her gray-green eyes sparkled in the light and he saw the color, the intensity had truly come back. But there was something else in those eyes. Something else in that smile. A small hint of sadness, of worry, or maybe something entirely different.

  What it was, Edin didn’t know.

  “Is there any leftover stew?” Edin asked glancing toward Nona.

  “A bit,” she answered and moved toward the pot that was a foot or so from the fire. It was the same as the day before, vegetables with a little rabbit meat. It was food, sustenance, and he was not about to complain. Nona brought it over to them. She dished it into a bowl and started to hand it to Arianne.

  Edin reached out to take it, “Let me.”

  “You do not need to feed me like a child,” Arianne said lifting her hand to take it.

  Edin heard the footsteps and saw Melian in the doorway. He felt himself turning red, blushing at the rebuke.

  Then Arianne put a hand on his. “But thank you,
” she said, and started to eat.

  After the late-night nibble, neither Arianne nor Edin were tired.

  He helped her up and they walked out into the night and sat on a small stone bench that had been built into the side of the stone fort.

  Edin pictured old soldiers sitting here for a pipe smoke at night and looking up at the stars and wondering when they’d see their homes again. He wrapped his arm and a blanket around her and she rested her head on his shoulder.

  “It is so dark,” she said, and Edin remembered the lights. He looked in that direction and saw they were gone. Whatever they were, he was glad they’d disappeared. They didn’t look natural.

  Out here, despite the darkness, the air at least still felt fresh. Edin told her about what happened after she passed out in the fields. She had also forgotten much of their fleeing from the river’s edge. They were quiet then and Edin cared little about his watch and the family at that point.

  Arianne was awake. That mattered most.

  There was movement in the darkness. Shuffling in the woods and the surrounding forest. Stone structures stood around him. Tall ones with weird carvings inside.

  Edin did not even care one bit about those now. No, not now. He slowly was turning Mirage in one hand and a quarterstaff in the other. Edin spun both as he slowly turned.

  He saw things, many dark shapes so quick that they were almost thin black lines of barely noticeable movement.

  His eyes darted from one to another.

  It was as if twenty rabbits or squirrels were zipping through the undergrowth, stopping and then running again. All in a way to drive him insane.

  There were the sounds though, and the smell that made him shrivel his nose and nearly gag. Tree branches snapped and rustled and there were hissing sounds. Snakelike, but not. The smell was of the rot of the dead. A very old dead. It overpowered all senses and made his throat tickle and itch.

  In the light, a very dim moonlight, or maybe it was sunlight, Edin couldn’t be sure, he saw something scamper between two trees.