A Knight of the Sacred Blade (3 page)

Ally laughed. “Want to walk me to school?”

Bill sputtered. “Sure.” Ally knew he had a substantial crush on her. He had the good graces not to make an ass of himself, and he had never quite worked up the nerve to make a move. “How was your break?” 

Bill looked at the slushy sidewalk. “Good. I guess.” 

“Just good? You do anything?” said Ally.

Bill shrugged. “Well. Stuff. You know.”

“I don’t know,” said Ally. “What did you do? Come on, already.”

“We went to Florida,” said Bill.

Ally grinned at him. “Oh my God, you went to Florida, and it was just good?”

Bill flushed and gave her a nervous smile. “Well. It was pretty cool. We went to Disneyland. That was cool. Florida is freaky, Ally. There’s palm trees everywhere. And old people. Lots of old people. None of them know how to drive. Then we had to go to Boston.”

“Boston?” said Ally. “Why did you have to go to Boston?”

“Um…” Bill’s blush deepened. “Um…well…my mom wanted to visit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology…”

Ally grinned and looked right at him. “And?”

“And…well,” Bill’s ears turned a deep scarlet, “I sort of got accepted with a full scholarship…”

“Bill!” said Ally. “Congratulations! You should have told me. Or mentioned it on Facebook. Or something!”

Bill shrugged. “Well, uh, it didn’t come up.”

“You could win the lottery and we wouldn’t hear about it until you pulled up to school in a brand new Mercedes,” said Ally. 

“It’s not that big a deal,” said Bill. Ally gave him an incredulous look. “Okay, maybe it is. But I don’t really deserve it. I don’t know why they gave it to me…”

Ally laughed. “You deserve it. You were the one who was in advanced calculus freshman year. And who went to that nation science fair competition three years running and won last semester with that freaky model of planetary gravitation or whatever…”

“You should apply to MIT, too,” blurted Bill. “You’d get in, I know you would.”

Ally shook her head. “No I wouldn’t.” They started up the front stairs to the school. A group of seniors stood near the door, making of a show of smoking cigarettes and trying not to cough. 

“You would too,” said Bill. “You’re smarter than I am.”

“Not really,” said Ally. “My dad’s heart is set on me going to Constantina. Besides, he’s faculty, so I would get a big chunk of tuition remission…”

“Ally!” 

Someone plowed into Ally and hugged her. She spun around and stared into Mary Lucas’s round, grinning face.

“Mary!” said Ally, laughing. “Don’t do that! You almost gave me a heart attack.”

Mary hopped up and down, the rest of her body bouncing beneath her sweater and black slacks to the appreciative glances of passing sophmores. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just that, oh my God, I’m so excited to see you again …”

“It’s good to see you again, Mary. Okay? Okay! Stop bouncing, for God’s sake. You’re making my teeth rattle,” said Ally. Bill snickered. 

“Okay,” said Mary. “Okay. Like how was your break? Mine was pretty boring. I just sat around the house and watched TV. Oh, hi, Bill.”

Bill looked at the ground. “Hey.” Ally knew he had a crush on Mary as well. 

“Mine was pretty boring too,” said Ally. “I did the same thing.”

Mary giggled. “Yeah, right. You sat around and read a mountain of books, that’s what I think you did.” Bill made a little bow and held the door open for them. Ally smiled and followed Mary into the front hallway. The students stood by their lockers, talking in rapid voices, while the teachers waited at the doors to their classrooms and watched the crowd with a critical eye. “My parents were at work most of the time, and I couldn’t find a job, so…well…I guess I just sat around and watched daytime TV. Those people are whacko, you know?”

“Oh, yes,” said Ally. She opened her locker and dumped her books inside. “My dad says TV and the Internet will have made everyone brain dead by 2020.”

Mary laughed. “Oh, your dad’s pretty boring. I mean, he’s a college professor. What class do you have first? I’ve got American Government with Paulsen.” She rolled her eyes. “Like, total snore. What have you got?”

Ally shook her head. “Pre-Trig.” 

Mary looked disappointed. “Oh. Well, you’re smart, and you’ve got all the smart people classes. I get all the stupid people classes.”

Ally rolled her eyes. “I have that fifth period. Mary, for the last time, you’re not…”

“Mary! Come here!”

Ally turned. A huge teenage boy in a leather varsity jacket leaned against his locker. Both his face and body looked as if they had been sculpted from granite. He snapped his fingers and pointed. 

Mary tensed. “Nathan, I’m talking…”

Nathan smirked. “Here. Now.”

Mary sighed and walked to his side. Nathan hooked a huge arm around her waist and gave her a sloppy kiss. “We’ve got our first class together.”

Mary giggled and traced a finger along his jaw. “I know, baby.”

“And you’re going to have lunch with me. With me and the guys, right?” said Nathan.

Mary looked over her shoulder at Ally. “But…but baby, I wanted to have lunch with Ally…”

“That ice queen?” Bill tensed. “You know you like…”

“Miss Lucas, Mr. Jameson.” Mr. Paulsen glared out his classroom door. He was paunchy and bold, and a gym whistle dangled from a lanyard around his neck and bounced against his polo shirt. “Let’s keep the public pawing to a minimum, shall we?”

Nathan stood up straighter and pushed Mary away. Her elbow banged against the locker door. “Yes, sir, Coach.” 

Mr. Paulsen smiled. “That’s a good lad. Miss Lucas, try to control yourself in the future, understand?” Mary nodded, white-faced. “Well, I’ll see you both in class shortly.” Mr. Paulsen disappeared into his classroom. 

“Jerk,” muttered Ally. 

“So you’ll have lunch with me, then,” said Nathan, pulling Mary back close. “It’ll make me happy.” An odd gleam came into his blue eyes. “You want to make me happy, right?”

Mary smiled. “I do.” 

Nathan smiled and put his arm over her shoulder. “Then let’s go sleep through class. Should be pretty easy. Paulsen and me, we’re tight.”

Mary leaned against him. “Okay, honey.” Mary shot an apologetic look over her shoulder at Ally, and then she vanished into Paulsen’s classroom behind Nathan. 

“What a dick,” said Bill.

“I was thinking of something stronger, but that works,” said Ally. She shoved her books into her backpack and slammed her locker shut. 

“And Paulsen. Did you see how he blamed her?” said Bill.

“Uh-huh,” said Ally. 

Bill sighed. “Why does Mary let him boss her around?”

“Because.” Ally stared into the wall, and another of her insights came to her. “Her father’s just like him. The man bosses Mary around and yells at her for everything. She’s been trained to be dominated.” Bill frowned. “What, already?”

“You got that creepy look again,” said Bill.

Ally rolled her eyes. “I do not get a creepy look.”

“You do to,” said Bill. “You, like, stare off into nothing. Then you start with the wise pronouncements.” 

“Whatever,” said Ally. Something tugged at her mind. Had someone told her something similar once? She pushed the thought away. “Let’s just go to class, okay?”

Bill nodded. “Okay.” 

###

At fifth period, Ally walked through the door to Mr. Paulsen’s classroom. Football players and cheerleaders filled the desks, many of them texting on their iPhones. Mr. Paulsen stood with two boys in basketball jerseys, talking and laughing. Ally didn’t see any of her friends. She sighed and dropped into one of the open desks. 

The bell rang, and Mr. Paulsen sent the boys in jerseys to their desks. “Settle down, people.” He grinned and held up his whistle. “The administration gets pissed when I use this to start class.” Laughter went through the room. “All right. Shut up and pay attention. Roll call! I call on you, you tell me your name and what sports you’re in this year.” 

Mr. Paulsen went through the class list. “And, last, and probably least,” the class snickered, “one…Ally Wester.” Ally’s lips thinned. 

“Here,” said Ally. 

Mr. Paulsen squinted at her. “So you must be the famous Ally Wester, then.” His eyes darted down the front of her torso and back to her face again. 

“The process of elimination would dictate it, yes,” said Ally. 

Mr. Paulsen snorted. “So. What sports are you in this year?”

“None,” said Ally.

Mr. Paulsen raised his iron-gray eyebrows. “None? Chess club doesn’t count, you know.”

“There was no money for it this year,” said Ally. “The basketball team has very nice new uniforms, though.”

Mr. Paulsen blinked. “So why aren’t you in any sports? They’re good for a healthy young woman such as yourself.”

“I’m busy,” said Ally. “I have a lot to do.”

Mr. Paulsen snorted. “Doing what? Watching TV and talking to your girlfriends on the phone? Going shopping?”

“Studying,” said Ally. “There’s not much a job market after high school for former quarterbacks.” 

“I don’t think you’d make a great quarterback,” said Mr. Paulsen. “A cheerleader, though…you’d make a good cheerleader. Why not show some school spirit and support your team?”

Ally shrugged. “Because it doesn’t matter to me one way or another how my team does.” 

Mr. Paulsen glared. “The textbooks are over on the counter.” He leveled a meaty finger. “Distribute them.” 

She had a feeling this class was not going to go well.

Ally got up and walked to the back of the room. She felt dozens of eyes on her, many of them mocking, but she ignored them and began distributing the textbooks. No matter.  This was just one class, and she would graduate in five months. If she kept her head down and didn’t make trouble, she could get through this easily enough.

Even if Paulsen was a jackass. 

“Wet blankets aside,” said Mr. Paulsen, “I hope we can have a good time in this class. Let’s face it. American government’s a pretty boring topic, and you all have more important things to be doing.” He got another laugh. “At least those of you who aren’t in chess club, like Miss Wester.”

Ally handed over another textbook and looked at him. She ought to feel embarrassed, she knew. Even intimidated. But Paulsen was just a fat, middle-aged basketball coach, and Ally had seen things far scarier than him…

She frowned. What things? 

“Come on,” said Mr. Paulsen. “Hand this books out! Hustle!” He grinned. “If you had been in a sport, you would know what that word means.”

The class laughed.

And all at once Ally decided to make trouble.  

Ally finished and sat down with her book. She raised her hand. “Mr. Paulsen?”

He turned. “Yeah? What?”

Ally put her hand down. “Why is American government a boring and unimportant topic?” 

Mr. Paulsen laughed. “You think it’s fun?”

“No. But it’s probably important,” said Ally. 

Mr. Paulsen groaned and threw out his arms. “Oh, come on. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s have a poll. You have a choice. You can go to Friday night’s varsity basketball game, cheer on the team, and have a good time. Or you can sit at home and watch Congressional debates on C-SPAN or whatever. Okay, let’s vote. Game?” A forest of arms went up. Mr. Paulsen grinned at Ally. “It’s democracy. The people have spoken and all that.” 

“So it’s important to vote?” said Ally. 

Mr. Paulsen snorted. “It’s not like it matters, anyway. The politicians are all crooks. And let’s face it. Politics are boring.”

Ally shrugged. “I can see your point.”

Mr. Paulsen smiled. “Good.”

“It might cost you your job, though,” said Ally.

Mr. Paulsen. “What? That’s stupid.” He sneered. “That some sort of threat?” 

“No,” said Ally. “But it might disappear in the next budget cut.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” said Mr. Paulsen, his face knotting in a frown.

“The state legislature passed a twenty percent cut to the public education budget for the next fiscal year,” said Ally. “The governor will probably sign it.”

Mr. Paulsen’s mouth opened and closed. “Don’t spread rumors, Miss Wester. Where did you hear this?”

“Internet news yesterday,” said Ally. That, and Simon had complained about it at some length.

“I read the news on the Internet every day,” said Mr. Paulsen.

“I don’t think it was on ESPN.com,” said Ally. 

“Funny,” said Mr. Paulsen. A pulsing vein stood out on his forehead. “They’ll never cut the education budget. The union would make sure they lose the next election.”

“They seem pretty determined,” said Ally. 

Mr. Paulsen’s jaw worked. “It doesn’t matter. They wouldn’t cut me. The football program is too important.”

Ally shrugged. “I’ll bet a lot of deadwood will go.”

Paulsen stalked before her desk and glared down at her. “I am not deadwood, Miss Wester, and if you keep up with that I’ll send your arrogant ass to the principal’s office faster than you can blink. I have a wife and kids to feed. They wouldn’t fire me.”

Ally blinked and looked at his thick hands. He wore a University of Illinois football ring, but no wedding band. He had the red nose of a drinker. 

One of her insights, one of her strange premonitions, filled her mind.

She heard herself speak, as if someone else was talking. “Of course not. A man who threw away a football career because he got drunk, knocked up his girlfriend, and had to marry her…who would consider him deadwood?”

The classroom went dead silent. 

Mr. Paulsen’s face turned scarlet. For a brief moment Ally thought he would punch her. She must have hit the mark.

He raised a shaking hand and pointed at the door. “Principal’s office. Now, now, now!” 

Ally got up. “Sure.” She walked into the hall, feeling Mr. Paulsen’s furious glare burn into her back. 

Maybe she had made a little too much trouble.

Chapter 3 - The Desert of Scorpions

Year of the Councils 971

The sun burned hotter than the pyre of Antarese.

Arran took one step, and another, and another. Dust puffed around his boots. Drops of sweat trickled down his forehead and evaporated before they touched his eyebrows. He felt his skin burning, and peeling back from his face, but did not care. 

Wind-sculpted crags, jagged boulders, and sand stretched away as far as he could see. Arran stumbled, went to one knee, and got up again. A small lizard watched him for a while, and then scampered away. Arran coughed and kept walking. His eyes wandered over the rocks. He had heard rock dragons lived in the desert. Poisonous snakes crawled and writhed through the wastes. And there were the Scorpions, the secretive bands of nomads that gave the desert its name. 

When would something kill him?

Arran managed a weak laugh. If the Scorpions, snakes, and rock dragons failed, the sun would succeed. He only had enough water for another two days, and food for one meal. His throat already felt parched. He lifted his waterskin and drank. Some water fell from his lips and dribbled against the sand.

He didn’t care. 

Arran trudged on until nightfall. Exhaustion pulled at his limbs, and his vision blurred. He staggered into the shadow of a large boulder, curled up, and fell asleep.

###

The next day he saw a black speck circling in the blue sky.

Arran shielded his eyes with a trembling hand. He watched as another speck joined it. Together they vanished away to the west. His sunburned face twisted into a painful frown. The specks didn’t look like the buzzards that had followed him for the last day. 

Suppose the two winged demons followed had followed him? He had hurt them, true, but winged demons could regenerate even serious wounds in a few days. 

Arran let out a croaking laugh. Let the wretched demon princes follow him! Let them take his sand-blasted corpse back to Marugon. Or let the jackals and the buzzards pick at his bones. It didn’t matter. 

He scrubbed grit from his eyes and kept going.

###

His throat burned.

Arran threw aside his empty waterskin and trudged on. Jagged bluffs rose all around him, broken stones crunching under his boots. The cliffs and the stones baked with the intense heat. He would have sweated, but he had not had anything to drink for the last six hours. His skin felt like a sheath of flame, and pain flared up and down his legs. A trio of buzzards circled overhead, sometimes landing to watch him with their beady eyes.

Soon he would die. The thought brought dull relief to his fevered mind. 

His legs gave out, and he fell against a boulder with a thump. Its shadow covered him, and he sighed in relief. At least he was out of the sun. 

He sat in the boulder’s shadow and looked over the landscape. A low gully stretched away into the distance, and more boulders and wind-sculpted cliffs loomed overhead. A buzzard landed and waddled towards Arran. He growled, drew a gun, and shot it. 

“Wait until I’m dead,” said Arran, shoving the gun back into its holster. 

His vision blurred and his pulse pounded in his ears, like the sound of the war drums as Marugon’s soldiers slaughtered the men of Antarese.

He heard a woman screaming in fury.

For an instant Arran thought the heat had driven him mad, that he was again hearing the screams in Carlisan, in Antarese. But the woman’s cries of rage grew louder, and he heard a deep, rumbling voice.

He recognized that voice. It belonged to Prince Baal-Mar-Dan.

Arran lurched to his feet, his vision swimming, his head reeling. He drew his Sacred Blade and crept towards the nearby gully, trying to keep his footfalls silent. 

He spotted Baal-Mar-Dan standing at the bottom of the shallow gully.

“You should be honored, woman.” The winged demon stood with his back to Arran. His clawed hand clasped a slender woman around the neck. She wore strange dust-colored clothing, and a black spear with a grease-stained head lay at her feet. “Royal blood flows in my veins. You shall bear my son.”

The woman smirked, dark hair with silver streaks falling over her face. “I know better. You will not.”

Baal-Mar-Dan snarled. “Do not mock me.” Arran’s parched lips thinned. Perhaps he could take one of Goth-Mar-Dan’s vile spawn with him in death. He drew his Glock and took aim. The woman looked up, and her green eyes widened as she saw Arran. 

“You will…what are you looking at?” Baal-Mar-Dan turned.

Arran fired, and his bullets reduced the left half of Baal-Mar-Dan’s face to ruin. The winged demon screamed, black blood splashing across his armored chest. The woman squirmed and darted free. 

“You!” roared Baal-Mar-Dan. The winged demon drew his scimitar and took to the air. Arran dropped his gun and took his Sacred Blade in both hands. He parried the first blow, dodged the second, and took the third on his chest. The scimitar ripped a gash down Arran’s side, and he gasped in pain and stumbled back. Baal-Mar-Dan’s free hand slammed into Arran’s stomach, and sent him tumbling down the side of the gulley. Something shattered in his knee and sent a blast of pain up his leg. 

Arran managed to kneel on his good knee, his Sacred Blade trembling in his hand.

Baal-Mar-Dan laughed. “You are weak, fallen Knight. Perhaps I shall take you to Marugon alive.”

Arran coughed. “Never.” Blood soaked into his torn clothes.

Baal-Mar-Dan jumped from the edge of the gully. Arran tried to parry, but his exhausted muscles moved with agonizing slowness. Baal-Mar-Dan snatched him by the throat and flew into the air, Arran’s feet dangling. 

The winged demon’s scimitar plunged into Arran’s gut. 

He screamed as pain exploded through him, blood welling up in his throat.

Baal-Mar-Dan flung him away, and Arran landed at the edge of the gully. He could not stand, could not even kneel, and felt his life’s blood seeping through the wound in his belly. 

Baal-Mar-Dan’s laughter rang out. “Perhaps I shall not take you to Marugon. I will feast on you instead.”

“Damn you,” whispered Arran. 

Then Baal-Mar-Dan’s mocking laughter dissolved into a scream. The dark-haired woman appeared behind him, the black spear in hand. She stabbed again, and Baal-Mar-Dan howled and flailed at her. The woman danced away, her hair flying about her head. 

The demon would tear her to shreds. Arran could not let that happen. He had failed to save Luthar and so many others.

But perhaps he could still save her.

Arran surged to his feet, feeling something tear inside of his stomach, and threw himself at the winged demon. His Sacred Blade slid into Baal-Mar-Dan’s chest, blazing azure fire. The demon screamed, and Arran lost his balance and fell against Baal-Mar-Dan. His weight drove the demon backward, over the edge of the gully, and they fell. Arran landed atop Baal-Mar-Dan, driving the Sacred Blade deep into the winged demon. The pommel struck Arran’s chest with enough for to shatter one of Arran’s ribs. 

He groaned and rolled away. 

Baal-Mar-Dan howled in mortal agony. Arran watched as white fire burst from his eyes and mouth, the Sacred Blade shining like a shard of the sun. 

Baal-Mar-Dan burned away to obsidian bones and smoking ash. 

Arran crawled forward and grasped the hilt of his Sacred Blade. He wanted to die with his weapons in hand. 

The world grew dim and hazy around him.

He saw the woman walking towards him, spear in hand, and all faded to darkness.