A Rite of Swords (Book #7 in the Sorcerer's Ring) (22 page)

Thor peeled open his eyes as he
felt his wrists being dragged, his arms being raised and hoisted above his
head. He felt himself yanked up, his body scraping against the hard, dirt wall
of the pit, in and out of consciousness as his body scraped against mud, roots
and rock.

Thor opened his one good eye, the
other still swollen shut, and found himself laying face-first on the cold
winter ground. He squinted at the harsh light of day, shivered from the cold
gust of wind that struck his bare back and chest. He looked up to see an Empire
soldier standing over him, scowling down.

“The Great Andronicus wishes to
see you now,” the man said coldly.

Thor felt several sets of strong
hands grab him from behind, and set him on his feet. Thor stood on unsteady
legs, his wrists still shackled with Akdon, still feeling weak, and wondered
how long he’d been out.

He felt himself shoved hard from
behind and he stumbled forward, dragged by several men, across the Empire camp.
Thousands of soldiers gawked at him as he went. He felt every bump and bruise
in his body, felt like he weighed a million pounds with every step he took. He
felt more dead than alive.

Thor looked up to see he was
being led to a small, ancient octagon-shaped structure, adorned with marble
fluted columns. It was the ruins of an ancient temple. It sat alone in the
camp, the Empire soldiers keeping a safe distance from it. Its huge iron doors
were bolted shut, and Thor could sense an intense evil energy coming from
inside as an attendant unlocked the door and swung it open.

Thor was shoved inside, and the
door slammed behind him, echoing in the silence. It was colder in here than
outdoors and something in the air made his hairs stand on end.

Thor stood alone in the
octagon-shaped building; it was dim in here, lit only by a circular opening in
the ceiling through which streamed a shaft of sunlight, tinged with scarlet,
near day’s end.

Thor sensed someone else in here
with him. He looked up and saw with dread that, standing in the center of the
empty circle, was his father. Andronicus.

He stood alone, as tall as a
mountain, smiling down at Thor, as Thor stood across him. It was just the two
of them now, facing each other in this empty, ancient ruin of a temple. Thor
could hardly believe that he issued from this man. It was like a nightmare that
would not go away.

“You have tasted the strength of
the Great Andronicus,” he began, his voice ancient, booming, echoing through
the hall. “You have begun to learn the price of defying me.”

Thor felt his shoulder throbbing
and burning where he had been branded by Andronicus, and he hated this man with
a hatred greater than he ever thought possible. He thought of Gwendolyn, of
what Andronicus had done to her, and he ached for vengeance for her, too. He
was so livid, he could barely breathe.

“I can feel your hatred for me,”
Andronicus said. “That is good. Your hatred will serve you will in this life.”

Thor felt exhausted by his own
hatred, felt barely able to stand anymore. He felt as if he were being broken
by this man.

“Thorgrin,” came the voice.

Thor looked up, shocked by the
voice, and saw standing across from him now was Argon. It was a voice he loved,
a man he missed dearly. Argon looked back, his eyes glowing with a fatherly
love. It was a love that Thor had never experienced in his life.

“Join Andronicus,” Argon said.
“He is your father. Embrace who you are. Embrace your destiny.”

Thor shook his head, confused. He
stepped forward.

“Argon?” he asked. “It can’t be
you.”

Thor blinked, and the figure
before him became someone else. His mother.

“Thorgrin,” she said sweetly.
“Your time in the Ring is over. It is time for you to go someplace greater.
Choose life. No one will fault you. Join him. I want you to join him.”

Thor stumbled towards her.

“Mother!” he screamed.

Thor blinked to find Andronicus
standing before him again. Thor shook his head, trying to shake off the
visions. He knew Andronicus was using some sort of dark sorcery to play with
his mind. But he could not understand what.

“Those shackles,” Andronicus
said. “There is an easy way to get them off, to regain all your strength, to
become the warrior you once were.”

“How?” Thor asked, his voice
weak.

“Join me. That is all you have to
do. Join me, and the two of us will rule the Empire together. Join me, and you
will be stronger than you’ve ever been. Strong enough, even, to kill me if you
choose. That is what you want, isn’t it? To kill me? Yes, it is…I can feel it.
Join me, and you will be strong enough to.”

Thor breathed heard, his mind
muddled, trying to make sense of it all. Strong enough to kill Andronicus?

“All you have to do is decide,
inside your heart, that you are my son. That you are ready to embrace who you
are. Once you do, those shackles on your wrists will fall off by themselves. It
is the only way to get them off. You will be reborn as one of
us
. As my
son. And you will reach a level of strength you could never comprehend. You
will become the greatest warrior of all time. All you have to do is accept me.
Accept me as your father.”

Thor shook his head again and
again, trying to get the voices out of his head. They seemed to spiral into his
brain, to lodge deep in his mind like a foreign entity he could not shake out.
Thor felt as if some force were invading his thoughts, making him unable to
think, to decide, for himself.

Was it all true? Was Andronicus
really his father? Would he really be wrong to defy his own father? He was
starting to feel that if he said no, somehow he would be betraying his father.
Betraying himself. He couldn’t understand his own thoughts. It was as if they
were turning on him, as if everything Andronicus said was starting to make
sense.

“Thorgrin,” Andronicus said,
stepping closer to him, hardly a foot away. He reached out and lay a hand on
his shoulder.

“You know I speak the truth,” he
continued. “You’ve never had a father in this world. And, aside from me, you
never will. I am the only one who claims you. Now you must claim me. I am a
part of you. A part that will never leave you. If you want to make all this go
away, to silence that voice in your head, then claim me. Claim me as I have
claimed you.”

“NO!” Thor shrieked, sinking to
his knees, trying to raise his hands to his head to blot it all out.

Andronicus’ words circled inside
his head, making clear thoughts impossible.

“Join me, and together, we will
crush the Ring. The Ring that never embraced you. Join me, and become
unstoppable.”

“NO!” Thor shrieked, so loud, his
voice echoed off the walls, blotted out all his thoughts.

He leaned back and roared in agony.

Thor heard a noise, felt
something lift, and he raised his wrists and stared at them in shock: the Akdon
shackles snapped.

They dropped harmlessly from his
wrists, and landed on the floor with a clang.

Thor looked up at Andronicus, and
saw his own eyes looking down at him.

“Father,” Thor said, feeling a
new strength begin to well within him.

Andronicus smiled wide with
satisfaction.

“My son.”

Kendrick felt a renewed sense of
optimism as he rode beside Bronson and Erec. Ever since Bronson’s arrival, they
had wiped out the Empire division. Together, they had all crossed the valley,
their thousands of men merging seamlessly with one another. The size of their
forces had doubled, thanks to Bronson, and momentum was finally on their side.

Kendrick knew that they owed
Bronson a great debt. Bronson would have a friend in him for life now, and if
they all ever survived this, Kendrick would make sure Bronson was given a
position of honor and power. He marveled at how wrong they had all been about
him. He should have known all along that it was his sister, Luanda, who had
duped him. She had always been that way: conniving, power-hungry, and willing
to stop at nothing until she had her way. Much, in a way, like Gareth.

With their newfound momentum,
Kendrick felt they had a renewed chance to burst through enemy lines, rescue
Thorgrin, and get him out. They had weakened the Empire army, or at least a
sliver of it, a sliver wide enough to allow them to achieve their goal. Their
plan was working. Now, before the Empire could regroup, all they needed was to
press through the crack in the men they had created.

Kendrick recalled the olden days,
when King MacGil had been alive; when the Silver had been all together, there
was nothing in the world that could stop them. He felt something like the olden
days returning once again, and felt that they were on the verge of achieving
one of the greatest conquests of their lives, one that would be sung of for
generations.

The valley narrowed, leading them
on a path between two steep cliffs, and as they rounded a bend, a new vista
opened up before them—and Kendrick’s heart fell.

Blocking off their path in the
narrow valley, facing them in combat, waiting to ambush them, were tens of
thousands of men. More Empire soldiers than he had ever seen. These were led by
thousands more. Men he recognized at once from their armor, from their banners.

Tirus’ men.

At first, Kendrick was confused.
Why would Tirus’ men be joined with the Empire’s, one unified force facing him?
Then he realized: they had been sold out by Tirus.

As all of his men came to a
sudden stop, Kendrick sat there on his horse, dumbfounded, hardly able to
breathe. Tirus sat there, grinning back with a huge look of satisfaction. The
battlefield was thick with a tense silence of anticipation.

Kendrick finally cleared his
throat and called out to Tirus across the battlefield:

“You have betrayed the better
half of the MacGils,” Kendrick called out to him.

“Whoever said you were the better
half?” Tirus answered.

“Why have you betrayed us?” Erec
asked.

“You MacGils have always been
fools,” Tirus called back. “You take men for their word. You still believe in
chivalry. And that is your great downfall. I believe in gold. It hasn’t failed
me yet.”

“We were gracious to you,” Ere
called out. “Gwendolyn offered you control of the Northern half of the Ring.”

Tirus beamed widely.

“But Luanda offered us the
entire
Western Kingdom of the Ring. Her sister, it seems, is the smarter of the two.”

“Does your word mean nothing,
then?” Kendrick called out.

Tirus smiled back.

“It does,” he answered. “But not
nearly as much as gold.”

Mycoples thrashed furiously
against the Akdon net that entangled her, unable to flap her wings, to release
her claws, to arch back her neck and breathe fire. Filled with rage, she
thrashed again and again, trying her best to breathe or at least claw her
handlers. Dozens of Empire soldiers grabbed onto the rope trailing the net and
dragged her, thrashing, towards the long plank leading to a ship.

Mycoples scraped against the
white sand of the Empire beach, feeling helpless for the first time in her
life. The Empire ship was looming before her eyes, and there was nothing she
could do about it.

Mycoples closed her eyes and saw
Thorgrin, her master. The one person left in the world that she cared for. She
tried to summon him, to share his thoughts as she often did.

But as she closed her eyes, she
saw Thorgrin in a darkened building, beside his father. She saw him
transforming. He was becoming something else. He was no longer the same man she
once knew.

Mycoples’ heart broke. Thorgrin,
the one she would die for, was fading away from her.

Mycoples arched back her neck and
shrieked to the heavens, again and again. It was a shriek so piercing that it
shattered the ship’s mast. But shriek as she did, nothing could prevent her
from being dragged on board, tied down to this ship, and taken far, far away
from here.

Thor
, she thought.
Save me.

Gwendolyn shivered against the
cold and lowered her head against the snow as she walked with Steffen,
Aberthol, and Alistair, with Krohn whining by her side, the group heading
ever-deeper into the wood. A snowstorm had picked up, whipping large flakes
into her face, and she clutched her furs around her shoulders, all of them
shivering violently against the freezing gale. Icy snow clung to everything and
it had become an effort to walk. The deeper they went, the more Gwendolyn was
starting to wonder if Aberthol had been right all along, if this was a journey
they could never fulfill.

As the snow grew thicker, her
legs heavier, the wind so loud she could hardly hear Krohn’s panting beside
her, finally, they turned a bend and Gwen saw light up ahead, peeking through
the thick forest. With renewed hope, they marched faster, and they all came to
the very precipice of the wood.

They stepped forward, out into
the open, and were met with a gale of wind even stronger. The world opened up
before them, a world of white, desolate, never-ending.

Before them lay the great divide
of the Canyon, and spanning it, the Northern Crossing. It was a place Gwendolyn
had heard about, but had never gone herself. It was spanned by a narrow
footbridge, wide enough to hold one person at a time, shaped in a high arch, rising
up over the Canyon like a rainbow. On the far side of the Canyon, there was a
wall of white. Snow whipped about in a frenzy, mixed with waves of fog that
rose up. Indeed, as the footbridge arched down toward the other side, it was
entirely covered in ice, hanging below and off its sides.

They all stopped and stared in
wonder. Krohn whined.

“The Netherworld,” Aberthol said.
“A world of ice and snow and desolation. A world of illusions and traps.”

Gwendolyn swallowed.

“No one has ever crossed and
returned,” Aberthol added.

Gwendolyn stared out into the
witness, the desolation, and knew it would be a long, hard quest. Perhaps an
impossible one. She did not know if she would be able to even find Argon, and
if she did, she had no idea if she’d be able to free him. Most of all, she knew
that she would probably not even survive this journey herself.

Yet despite all of this,
Gwendolyn had no doubt in her mind. She thought only of Thorgrin. She had to
save him. Whatever it took. However remote, however impossible.

“Well,” she said, turning to
Aberthol, “there has to be a first.”

Aberthol turned to her.

“Are you certain, my lady?” he
asked softly.

They all stared at her, awaiting
her answer.

She put her hands on her hips and
stared out confidently.

“More certain than I’ve ever been
of anything in my life,” Gwendolyn replied.

With that, she took her first
step, heading across the empty plane, into the howling winds, towards the
iced-over footbridge, fully prepared to enter the abyss of the Netherworld.