Devan Chronicles Series: Books 1-3 (121 page)

“—little bastard kicked me!”

“Hoy! Watch what you’re doing you little—”

Lorcan took no notice, and barged his way through. Finally, he dashed down a street not knowing where he was going, but only intent on getting there fast. He dodged down an alley that let out onto a quieter street, then into another alley.

Gasping he went to ground and watched his back trail.

“This way!”

“Where my Lord Sor—”

“Quiet fool! I sense him close by. Send two down that alley and—”

Lorcan bolted with fear in his heart. He hadn’t realised that they could track him with magic. The Lady had never mentioned spells that could do that, and the stories always spoke of fire and lightning, not tracking. He sped down a street and into a more crowded one. He didn’t hesitate as the opportunity arose. He snaked a hand onto a man’s purse but bypassed it. He snatched the sheathed dagger at his waist instead and ran like the wind.

“Stop thief!”

“Hoy, stop him someone!”

“Call out the guard!”

Lorcan would almost welcome the guard, but he had to save the Lady. He ducked into an open door and found himself in a bakery. The smell of baking bread made his mouth water, but he was more interested in his dagger. It was a good one—wide bladed and strong. He dropped the sheath and stashed the blade in one of his secret places. It felt good to be armed again.

“Get out of here you dirty little beggar!” the baker shouted and came forward with a broom in hand.

“You have a back door?”

“Get out I said or I’ll call the—”

The dagger was in Lorcan’s hand again and glinting in the sunlight. “Point to it, Baker, or feel my steel.”

The baker stepped back with narrowed eyes, perhaps calculating his chances. They weren’t good, and he backed down. He pointed to the right of the counter. Lorcan dove over the obstruction and rolled to his feet feeling the wind of the broom as it swung over him. He slammed out of the door and jumped a low fence. He darted a look around.

Alley.

He sped to the end of it, and ducked back when he recognised the surly sergeant. The Hasian was searching the doorways. He turned and sped to the other end of the alley skidding to a stop. He peeked around the corner.

Clear.

He darted across the street under the nose of a team of horses and into a doorway. He looked both ways and found himself safe for the moment. He straightened his robe and walked calmly out of the doorway and down the street as if he had nothing to worry about. He wiped his face free of sweat and followed the grade downward. The river and the docks would be that way. He needed to steal some clothes, he decided, his robe was too easily identified.

“Keep walking, boy,” a youngish sounding voice said, and Lorcan felt the prick of a dagger. “Keep walking I said!”

He moved on again and carefully retrieved his dagger.

“Down to the right.”

“Who?”

“Now that would be telling. You should know better than that. Thieving on my turf and then asking stupid questions. Where you from?”

“Ganger?” Lorcan said trying to decide whether he could take this man or not. “Are you?”

“You’re just full of questions, aren’t ya?”

“No harm in asking,” he said and turned down the alley his captor had pointed to.

“Depends on the question, I reckons. I’m a guild man, I am.”

Lorcan snorted. “Hardly.”

“Oh, it’s
hardly
now is it? Don’t you put on fancy airs, I saw ya swipe that purse.”

“And you want it. Do you?”

“Yeah, I wants it—you took it on my turf.”

“Have it then,” Lorcan spun and rammed his blade to the hilt in the man’s belly.

“Gah!” the dirty-faced man said with eyes gone wide in shock. “Why did you have to do that? You kilt me…” he sighed and dropped to the cobbles dead before he hit.

“Stupid question,” he mumbled as he searched the corpse.

He found another dagger, a purse of silver, and a pair of dice. He took it all. The dagger went into his boot. The silver and the dice went into one of his secret pockets. The clothes were too big for him, so he left them. He cleaned his dagger and made it disappear before leaving the alley and returning to his original task. He found the docks quickly enough and secreted himself nearby. He didn’t know how he was to free Julia, but he would think of something—he had to. Could he sneak aboard the ship in the darkness? Maybe, but there were many guardsmen with Demophon. What he needed was—

“There you are,” Demophon said walking around the corner. “How very disappointing. I thought we had an understanding, you and I.”

Lorcan turned to run but suddenly he felt his legs jerked out from under him. He crashed to the cobbles cursing. He tried to rise, but he couldn’t, his legs were held in a vice of nothing, and a moment later his arms were bound similarly.

“Don’t struggle so, boy.”

He spat at the sorcerer and struggled harder.

“Oh well, go ahead then if it makes you feel better. My—” Demophon lowered his voice to a whisper. “My magic will out last you, boy. Terribly sorry.”

The surly sergeant came around the corner and with a word from Demophon threw Lorcan over his shoulder. Lorcan cast around desperately for help, but the sailors just laughed to see him carried like a sack of oats.

“Drunk again,” Demophon said loudly. “He’s a great disappointment to me, but his mother does dote on him so.”

“Ha! Looks like skin and bones to me. Should fatten him up some!”

“—he all in white? He going to be a priest or what?”

“Ha, ha! Look at him glare. Blister paint off your door he could!”

He cried tears of rage at the laughter, but when he tried to shout, he found his breathe stopped in his throat. He struggled to yell, but nothing came out. He couldn’t breathe!

“You see how it is, Lorcan,” Demophon said bending to look him in the eyes. “You do see the futility now I trust?”

He glared and turned blue.

“You may take a breath, but if I hear one word from you from now until we are safely on our way, I’ll kill Gideon. Not you, but Gideon—understand me?”

He gasped and nodded.

“Good, good. Glad that’s sorted out. I can’t wait to see you enrolled in our school. You might even give your instructors pause. I would really like to see that.”

The sergeant carried him up the ramp and onto a boat and then dumped him roughly on the deck. He grunted with the impact but did no more than that. He took Demophon at his word and stayed silent.

“Cast off forward!”

The sergeant bent toward him and searched his robe roughly. The sergeant grunted in surprise when he found the silver and the dice. He took both items and added them to his own purse.

“Cast off aft!”

The sergeant came up with the dagger next, and his eyes narrowed. “Intending this for me, were you?”

Lorcan glared, but gave the man a nod.

The sergeant tested the edge with his thumb and quickly stuck the bleeding member in his mouth. The dagger was of the finest quality and razor sharp.

“A very fine gift. I thank you,” the sergeant said and chortled at his own wit. “Hold out your hands.”

He did so and was bound tightly—tighter than on the wagon.

“Get up and go down below. Move!”

He struggled to stand, but managed it finally. He had time to see Anselm receding before descending into the dark. He allowed his shoulders to droop, but inside he was thanking the God for the sergeant’s stupidity. He hadn’t found the second dagger.

“Hello again, Father.”

Gideon nodded to him sadly, before turning back to his care of Julia.

* * *

20 ~ Dream World

Julia stood amidst the wreckage, and glared. She was just a little bit upset. Well, closer to exploding like a volcano with rage would be the best way to describe her feelings at this moment. She was standing in the burned out remains of Fortress Meilan—Gylaren’s fortress—and this wasn’t the first time she had found a reality where Deva was destroyed by war. Dozens of attempts to find a peaceful resolution to Deva’s problems always led her to something like this—war on a scale that would see the entire kingdom destroyed.

Demophon had forced her to drink Tancred dozens of times, too many to remember clearly. She had been confused, disorientated and stumbling from one future to the next never remembering what she had learned in each, but that had changed now. She was learning. She not only remembered what she saw, she was able to direct her course through the realities. What she wanted was a course of action leading to peace, but so far she had failed to find even one. All of them led to this kind of destruction.

Deciding on a new plan, she frowned in concentration and the world dimmed rapidly. In the blink of an eye Meilan was restored to its bustling self. She watched a troop of cavalry making their goodbyes and wondered where they were going. She listened to three men talking at the head of the column.

“Three thousand is too many, Dylan! How am I to see the border secure with you taking two-thirds of my strength?” A young man of about twenty-five years said.

Dylan laughed. “It didn’t take you long to take my place, little brother.”

“Never would I!” the younger man said in outrage.

The third man had a striking resemblance to the others, and Julia nodded to herself. These were Gylaren’s sons. The outraged youngster was Niklaus, Gy’s second son, and that meant the silent one was Gydrid his youngest.

Gydrid stepped forward and took hold of Dylan’s bridle. “Stop teasing him, Dylan. You know how we all feel about this. Father is wrong!”

“Father is
King
, that’s what he is!” Dylan said glaring at his brothers equally. “Right or wrong, we obey him as our father and doubly so now that he is our king.”

“But three thousand leaves me only
one!
” Niklaus wailed. “A thousand can barely man the walls of Meilan, what about patrols?”

Dylan surveyed the fortress as if memorising it. “You are lord here now, Niky. It’s up to you to arrange matters from now on. If I were you, I would collect as many likely lads as you can and train them. Japura is quiet, but the sorcerers will be back. They’ll be needed.”

Julia nodded. Gylaren was King in this reality. That was good to know. If she stayed with this one she might learn why everything always ended in destruction.

She walked away ignoring the commotion as Dylan led his men out of the gate. She wasn’t watching where she was going and walked straight through the curtain wall. She shuddered as the cold stone slid through her, or she slid through it… whatever. The first time it happened she had freaked out. Weird or not, it was very convenient for entering locked rooms. If she decided a wall was solid, then it was solid. If she decided it wasn’t or she was distracted, then she could walk through it without ill effect except a slight shudder as her body tried to reject what was happening to it.

She walked a short distance from Meilan and looked around. This was as good a place as any. She concentrated on Athione, but kept her sense of time fixed on this day—she didn’t want to stray into another of the myriad realities. She wanted to follow this one. The world blinked and she was standing in Athione’s library. Sadly there were no hushed voices to greet her, no whispered prophecy counselling her as she had come to expect when entering the library.

She concentrated on being solidly here—here in the library and nowhere else. The books on their shelves were all in place as they should be, but when she pulled one down to read, it vanished only to reappear back in its slot. She sighed; it was too much to expect to find answers in the books.

“Damn,” she said looking hungrily at the Histories and imagining that one of them contained all she needed. Surely someone had divined Deva’s future as she was doing—they would surely have left some warning. She heaved a sigh in frustration. “The past won’t help me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Julia.”

She spun and yelled in fear. She backed hard from the apparition standing in the shadows. She concentrated with all her might and tried to make him disappear.

“That won’t work you know. I’m as real as you are.”

“Who…
what
are you?” she said staring at the luminous blue eyes.

The apparition was cloaked in shadow and Julia was unable to see the rest of him, but his voice was vaguely familiar. She remembered her stupidity in Deva, and a voice in her head saying to take his hand. The voice was the same. She wracked her memory trying to remember where else she had heard it, but it kept slipping away from her.

The Tancred must be turning my brain to mush.

The figure stepped forward into the light and she paled. “Renard,” she whispered. “I’m dead then.”

Renard smiled. “Not yet,” he said and cocked his head as if listening to music that only he could hear. “Perhaps not for a
very
long time. It depends.”

“Depends?”

Renard nodded. “Depends on many things.”

“Like what for instance?” she said and moved to sit at one of the tables. She remembered to make the chair solid just in time, and flopped down.

Renard strolled along the aisles and pulled down a book from the shelf. Julia gaped at this fresh evidence of Renard’s change, the book stayed in his hands! He leafed through the tome and began to read.

“Renard?” she said and jumped when those glowing eyes turned to regard her. That was very… off-putting.

“Hmmm?” Renard said vaguely.

“Like what?”

“Oh, many things. Whether Keverin does this thing or that, whether Brian does also. There are a great many men who love you, Julia. You are very lucky in this life. It makes up for your last one I suppose… hmmm, I hadn’t considered that, I wonder…”

My last one?

She was fast losing her fear of this new Renard. He was muttering away to himself as if talking to a group of friends she couldn’t see, and he didn’t explain
anything!

“Renard, I’m sorry… I mean I… killed you,” she whispered remembering how she had tried and failed to give him his magic back.