A Plague of Ruin: Book One: Son of Two Bloods

by Daniel Hylton

  “I understand,” Brenyn assured him. Then he turned and looked westward. “They moved away some time ago?”

  “Within the half-hour, as I told you,” the man replied. “They watched the east and then went west.”

  Brenyn nodded his thanks and moved toward where Noris was tied to the railing. “Then I can catch them up if I hurry,” he told himself quietly, but the man in the doorway heard him.

  “They watched the east – whence you came,” the man said in a voice saturated with awe. “You are the darking slayer, are you not? I-we’ve heard tales of you.”

  “I am,” Brenyn replied as he mounted up.

  “But there are three of them,” the man told him, and the tone of awe in his voice became abruptly mingled with anxiety. “Three red darkings. You must take care as you go, sir.”

  Brenyn nodded and turned Noris toward the west. “Soon,” he told the man, “there will be three less.”

  Eyes wide and mouth hanging open, the man watched him ride away before turning about and speaking in hushed tones to those still inside the market. “That was the darking slayer.”

  49.

  Brenyn hurried Noris into a canter and was soon out of the town and heading west through the farmland, scanning the road ahead for sight of the darkings. Even as he went, however, hoping to catch them, a warning bell jangled in the back of his mind.

  Could he face down and defeat three darking lords? Would his blood magic suffice to defeat three of those far more powerful creatures? Recalling the battle with the two upon the battlefield in the south of Merkland, he remembered the difference between the power of the darking’s weapon and the strength of the lord’s that accompanied him.

  As Brenyn recalled how great had been that difference, he hesitated and let Noris slow to a walk while he considered. Was he wise to confront three darking lords together, or, by doing so, was he behaving in an outrageously foolish manner?

  He recalled the words of the man in the market at Dermark who had stated that the three darking lords “watched the east ere they went to the west.”

  Allowing Noris to walk now, he once more scanned the road to the horizon and the fields and pastures to each side for as far as he could see.

  Did they mean to ambush him?

  Were they even now waiting for him somewhere up ahead?

  Thinking back, Brenyn remembered that the raven that had watched him slay the darking upon the road in Marsia to the east, had flown into the west after observing him. Was that strange bird a sentinel of sorts, and a messenger, in service to the darking lords? – or was the creature in service to someone even more mysterious – and more powerful?

  If so, then he was being watched by his enemies.

  And that thought gave him pause.

  For some time then, as coldness settled in his bones at these ruminations, Brenyn was content to allow Noris to walk while he scanned the western road for signs of the three lords. But then, after a while, he became ashamed of his caution, for it threatened to devolve into stark, debilitating fear.

  After all, he told himself, if he could not confront three lords together, then he might as well discover the truth of it now, for it was inevitable that they would come after him in force, now that he had declared war against their race. And if, indeed, they had a master somewhere in the world that guided their actions, then that wicked entity would eventually mass his forces against the man that had come into the world and threatened his supremacy.

  He may as well learn now the truth of his power, and of all that it was capable, Brenyn realized.

  He may as well discover whether he was indeed destined to be humanity’s avenger or if he were simply an anomaly that could be destroyed by a concentration of darkings.

  He urged Noris into a fast trot.

  If the darking lords intended an ambush, then they would be waiting for him somewhere up ahead. If not, he meant to chase them down. As the morning waned, therefore, he kept Noris to a quick but sustainable pace.

  An hour passed.

  The sun slipped through the very top of the sky and began its westward slide. Then, just as he crossed the stone bridge that arced over a small stream and the road angled southwest through a grove of ancient and massive oaks, he found the darkings, waiting in the roadway. Brenyn reined Noris to a halt and studied them.

  Sitting upon their dark mounts, side by side, perhaps fifty yards from where he halted, there were three darking lords, each of them looking eastward, gazing at Brenyn. Their horses were turned obliquely, blocking the entire pavement, each facing toward the northeast in such a way that every darking had clear access to the open roadway with the weapon held in its right hand.

  They were obviously waiting – for Brenyn.

  His heartbeat quickened and his breath came fast. In that moment, Brenyn entertained little doubt but that the three of them had come – or had been sent – to confront him and destroy him.

  The moment of raw discovery, then, was at hand. Would the power, bequeathed to his blood, a power he could not control and whose nature he could not begin to understand, suffice to destroy three darking lords working against him in unison? – or would he die, here, today, upon this lonely stretch of road?

  He drew in a deep, calming breath while he considered his next move. The darkings, apparently, were content – or had been instructed – to wait on him. Like statues they waited, motionless, meeting his gaze, the three pairs of black eyes glistening in the depths of the masking cloths. Overhead, the bright eye of the sun, rendered discreet by the presence of a high, thin overcast, looked down upon the scene about to play out upon the earth below. Despite the overcast sky, the day was warm, but the air was still; not even the slightest breath of breeze stirred among the grasses alongside the road or ruffled the crimson capes of the darkings.

  Brenyn studied the three darking lords for several moments and then dismounted and led Noris off the road to the right and to the verge of the oak grove. Keeping his focus on the darkings, he tied the reins around the horn of the saddle, letting them hang slack so that the horse could go free and be able to eat and drink should Brenyn not survive the next hour.

  He started to untie the shield from behind the saddle but then re-considered and left it in place. Experience had convinced him that the power that had saved him, time and again, arose from somewhere within him, in his blood and his bones, and not from the weaponry crafted by his mother. After considering further, and steeling himself for raw discovery, Brenyn unslung the sword and scabbard from off his back and leaned it against the trunk of the tree. Whatever occurred within the next few minutes, the time had come to learn the true extent of his power.

  It surprised him to realize that he did not now wish to die, as once he had. The loss of Emi had once brought him to the point of plunging a dagger into his own heart. Only the need for revenge against those that had taken her had stayed his hand.

  Now, though her loss yet rendered his life diminished, and his heart dead and cold, there were other reasons for him to live – Johan, Prince Taumus, Garren, and Gatison – men who, if given the chance to rule without interference from the evil race of darkings, would improve the lives of many.

  He checked Noris once more, to make certain that the horse could move unhindered should his master not live beyond the next few minutes, and then, unarmed except for the dagger stuck in his belt, he moved back out onto the ancient stone pavement and faced the darkings grouped together upon the roadway.

  They yet sat their mounts, motionless, side by side, blocking the road, their cylindrical weapons raised. He had expected, when he set his weaponry aside, that they might have rushed him, even charged at him all together, but they had not acted.

  Moving to the very center of the roadway, and drawing in another deep breath to steel himself, Brenyn began to walk toward the trio of darkings. He felt naked and exposed without the shield – yet every time he had faced the power of a darking’s weapon, the magic within him had only come to life once that b
lack discharge had surged around the edges of the shield and found his flesh.

  The magic, then, was not in weapons of steel, but in him.

  Walking slowly and deliberately, tamping down the rise of persistent fear, willing himself forward, Brenyn slowly approached to within perhaps thirty paces of the three enemies that awaited him upon the empty roadway.

  Then, he stopped and watched them for a long moment.

  The black eyes gleamed in the slits of the masks.

  Brenyn breathed deep and spoke.

  “Which of you,” he demanded, “has journeyed to the land of Vicundium and there taken a human woman?”

  Silence.

  None of the darkings answered, or even moved.

  He studied them closer. He had no idea of the hierarchy of the creatures. Which of the three was in command, he wondered? With nothing to use for a reference, he decided to act as if the one in the center was likely the eldest, or the highest-ranking.

  Meeting the glinting black gaze of the middle darking lord, Brenyn raised his voice. “Which of you has journeyed to the land of Vicundium and taken from there a human woman? Answer me.”

  Once more, his demand was met with utter silence.

  Inside Brenyn, fear dissolved away, and anger rose to take its place. “Do you not possess the power of speech?” He taunted. He spread his hands wide as his anger drove the last vestiges of caution from him. “Do you fear to answer me – one lone man?”

  “We do not fear you, human,” the darking on Brenyn’s left, upon the right of the group, responded in its soft, thin, raspy voice. “You have slain others of our kind. How? – we know not, but today you will die.”

  At that, Brenyn braced for their onslaught, but the darkings did not employ their weapons.

  He watched them, frowning. Why did they not attack him? – were they waiting for him to come closer?

  He began to move toward them, step by deliberate step.

  “Someone will die here today,” he told the darking that had spoken. “It will not be me.”

  And in his heart, he hoped that he spoke the truth.

  Step by step, he moved closer.

  Twenty-five paces away, and then twenty.

  Still, they did not launch an assault.

  Brenyn halted and studied them, puzzled by their inaction. It was in that moment that he sensed yet another tingling along his nerve endings. This thrumming, deep and persistent, came from somewhere to the side and was entirely separate from that which emanated from the three darkings to his front. The waves of magic that beat against him from the three lords made it difficult for him to sense the source of this second sinister presence.

  He turned his head slowly, first to one side and then to the other, studying the depths of the oak groves that grew upon either side of the road, searching for the source of the emanation.

  And then he saw the raven.

  Huge and glistening black, the bird sat high up in a massive oak perhaps fifty paces off the roadway to the north, with its head turned, watching Brenyn with one flinty eye. And it was the same raven, he was certain, that had flown away when he had slain the darking in the east of Marsia. A sentinel, then, or a messenger – or something more – it had apparently come here to observe.

  Brenyn watched the raven for several moments and then he turned back, steeled himself, and moved toward the darking lords.

  Fifteen paces.

  Ten.

  Brenyn halted once more. He was close enough now that he could clearly see the expressions in each of those pairs of gleaming eyes that looked back at him.

  He could see no fear in any of those black orbs.

  There was only malevolence there.

  And contempt.

  And hatred.

  It was the hatred that aroused morbid curiosity.

  “Whence have you come?” He asked. “Why do you trouble the earth? Why do you despise my people?”

  Silence fell once more, then;

  “Humans have no value,” the darking on the left answered, “but to provide pleasure.”

  Brenyn frowned with confusion at this. “Pleasure? How do my people provide pleasure?”

  The darking made a quiet staccato sound, one that Brenyn had heard before – as if it found humor in his question.

  “By suffering,” it replied. “By dying.”

  At that, fury erupted within Brenyn. All hesitation left him when he heard the endless misery of humanity, wrought by fiends such as these, tendered as a pitiless jest.

  “And who will find pleasure in your deaths?” He spat out.

  Then, he answered his own question. “I will.”

  He moved forward.

  From the heights of the distant oak, the raven called out.

  Instantly, black vapor, as swift and precipitous as lightning, shot forth from each of the weapons in the hands of the darking lords and struck him hard.

  It was like the weight of a mountain, crashing into him.

  Brenyn was impelled backward, stumbling, falling.

  The light of the sun, high in the sky above, was snuffed out.

  The world went utterly dark.

  Sight failed.

  His breath left him.

  His lungs fought for air and found none.

  It was as if he had been flung on the instant into the airless outer darkness that stretches between the stars – or that he had been cast into the bottomless pits of hell and crushed beneath the mass of the earth itself. Horror came upon him as he struggled to breathe and could not.

  In the terror of that moment his brain entertained but one lucid thought; This is how I die.

  All sense of standing upon the earth left him. He knew not where he was, only that he was falling, falling, falling without end, without breath and without sight.

  Without life.

  50.

  How long that moment lasted that Brenyn expected death, he knew not, for in the darkness and horror of despair wrought by the darkings’ attack, he seemed to plummet for an eternity - not only from off the earth, but out of time itself.

  And then, into that terrible eternal night, an equally terrible and intensely brilliant light burst forth.

  Surging like a bolt of lightning from the blackest cloud of the greatest storm roiling in the depths of the darkest night, it erupted inside him and exploded outward.

  Whence this light came, whatever its matrix, he knew not, only that it emanated suddenly from within him.

  He gasped and blessed air rushed into him.

  His lungs filled to bursting.

  The horror of the crushing darkness was driven back before the terrible brightness of the white-hot light that burst from the very center of his being.

  The sense of falling left him.

  Now, he seemed to be floating.

  And yet, he could see nothing, for where the darkness had obscured all, now the brightness overwhelmed everything. Brenyn peered about him in the dazzling brightness and flung out his arms to feel for something solid, but still could find no sense of where he was. Bright silence seemed to fill the universe.

  Had he died, he wondered?

  Was this the state of existence after life had ceased?

  The brightness continued to expand. How he knew that it expanded, he knew not, yet was certain that it did, and it expanded out from him until it seemed to fill everything that was or had ever been, pervading all of creation.

  And yet, for all its stunning illumination, it revealed nothing to his searching eyes. Perhaps, Brenyn thought, the light’s brilliant intensity had made him blind.

  And then, after a time, while he searched about him in vain, and the brightness continued to expand, shadows began to appear here and there in that terrible luminosity. Above him, the light began to dim and to fade to a pale shade of blue. Off to his right, yet another shadow appeared in the light and darkened, and became the gray shape of a tree that gradually took on a hue of green.

  Beneath his feet, the shadow of a path appeared, gra
y and tan, as of stone.

  Nay, not a path, a road.

  The surface of a broad highway.

  And he stood upon it; he could feel its solidity now through the soles of his boots.

  The sense of being upon the earth returned to him then.

  He was not falling, perhaps had never fallen, for he stood upright upon the ancient stone of the road – the same road where a moment before, or perhaps an hour before, he had confronted a trio of darking lords.

  Remembering them, Brenyn peered to his front, through the fading brightness that gradually dimmed and allowed the forms of the earth around him to come back into being and into his sight.

  The darkings that had been seated upon their horses were gone. Nothing stood upright to his front, neither horse nor darking, but there were three large shapes lying upon the roadway where they had been.

  Cautiously, while the brightness continued to dim and the world around him gradually returned to normal, he eased forward, studying the dark shapes that lay motionless upon the road.

  The terrible light faded away through the oak grove and out across the grasslands.

  And as it faded, Brenyn’s sight returned to normal.

  The shapes upon the road were those of three horses, and they were prone, unmoving, lifeless.

  The darking lords were gone, vanished, as if they had never been.

  Like every other darking his power had slain, these had also utterly disappeared, leaving no trace of their existence.

  The horses were dead. Ghastly wounds, black and ragged, as if they had been blasted by some macabre force, deformed each of the bodies. Brenyn was stunned by the horrific damage that was done to them, even as he pitied the creatures, for they had been innocent. He looked around, studying the area intently, but could find no evidence of what had happened to the darkings.

  All signs that they had ever existed were gone. There were no weapons, no tall, square-brimmed hats, no crimson cloaks, no bodies.