A Warrior's Journey (10 page)

Dark prophets were standing all throughout
the room and watched our progression into the room quietly not
lifting a hand to stop us. I think I would have preferred to walk
through a scene of battle, with ten thousand dead upon the ground
then to pass through the tortured human wreckage of this place.

It would have been cleaner somehow. All I
saw in this place was the work of wicked men consumed by darkness
and I hated it and its perpetrators with a stronger passion than I
had ever felt against anyone before in my life. I felt something
touch my hand and I looked down at what had once been a man.

I couldn’t believe that life still remained
in the form of the creature that stared up at me, his eyes sunken
into a face gaunt with starvation and the memory of pain.

Barely I heard his cracked lips whisper,
“Kill me, please!”

Oh God!

I thought to myself as I was overwhelmed
with the plight of so many being tortured within the room and who
knows how many before them.

Father continued on into the room toward an
upraised dais that had a chair like throne upon it.

Reaching it father turned to the room of
dark prophets and those they had tortured for some demon’s delight
and asked, “Who sits here?”

“I do.” Came a sibilant reply.

I watched as a skinny man, who looked in
near starvation himself, separated away from the group of those
standing within the room. I stepped up beside father, as the other
dark prophets gathered close, as if they were a circling mass of
scavenging vultures.

“Roric son of Lorn why do you trouble our
hall of suffering, our most holy shrine? These souls are guilty of
the punishment that they receive, they require no savior.”

“That is a lie! To all a Savior has been
born and has ascended upon high!”

The leader darkly chuckled, “Is it of
yourself that you speak oh lofty one born among the ranks of
men?”

Father lifted his sword to hold it leveled
out and pointed against the offending prophet, “You utter blasphemy
against the Ancient of Days! By His direction I have reached this
place and by the Spirit of His power I will destroy this place of
darkness, where the hearts of men have run free with vial
imagining!”

The leader cackled at father’s words, as if
he thought them but an idle threat not to be concerned with, “Oh
mighty warrior valiant among the living, even you will die, as all
mankind will!”

“Your point?” Father asked in retort.

The leader spread his thin arms wide, “Those
you see are but a few of the number that our ranks have swelled to.
While our ways are abhorrent to you they are sweet to those we
serve, who indwell us with the power to change the hearts of men to
the selfish pursuits of their own minds, as it should have been
from the beginning. It is only natural for man to rebel from a
strict an overbearing tyrant such as the master you serve. Our
masters give us freedom for our service to them in place of the
stricture of the undeserving one that you continue to yoke yourself
to in a show of pathetic and truly pitifully useless faith.”

“Freedom?” Father asked incuriously looking
around the room.

“Come Roric, we are both men of wisdom you
know that there is a dear price to pay for freedom. It is a debt
that someone must pay. You were a fool to come here to this city,
to our holy shrine. The people will unite against you even stronger
than ever before and adopt our ways in droves eager for the revenge
that we offer to those to combat against the unbelievers. Did you
think that we did not know of your coming to our city? You’ve done
our work for us within a single night! Truly Roric you have become
a laughingstock among not only our own people, but also your own.
Your people no longer want you and your high handed ideals! Even
your eldest son rebels against your foolish faith. Why waste your
life on adhering to the code of a forgotten God that offers a fairy
tale future in place of enjoying your life the way you were meant
to in the here and now. It is a promise that was never meant to be
kept even if He ever could. Come be like us who followed the first
rebel. We have found our freedom in him and more than that he has
given us power to wield that no ordinary man may ever posses. Be
one of us and we will make you a king above all men!”

“Never! Cease your senseless muttering child
of hell itself! Shame on you! Shame on all of you for the loss of
your souls in exchange for a season of hellish glee! May the
Creator curse you for the vileness of your actions and for the
wicked quality of your words to speak so against the sovereignty of
the Ancient of Days, who reigns supreme over all creation!”

The gaunt looking leader spoke vemenously in
reply, “Fool, we offered you more than you deserve considering the
trouble you have been to the advancement of our holy cause! You
shall perish here with your whelp of a son that you were so foolish
to bring! You will see our power oh mighty Valley Lander and be
brought down to your knees. You will beg us for that which we
offered you!”

As one the dark prophets began to chant, as
the one we had encountered upon the patrol had. Father turned to me
and I was shocked to see him smile at me. In that moment I felt
that I was alone with just him in the room, as the dark prophets
around us barraged us with their dark words.

He kept my gaze as he set his glowing sword
point down between us. His hands drifted out to grasp the cross
guards of the sword leaving the handle free.

He couldn’t be serious!

But he was, “I think you should pray this
time.”

I stammered out, “I’m not ready for this
father! Am I?”

Father nodded, “I think you are. Zevin it
says in the Words of the Creator that where two or three are
gathered together in prayer that our Lord is in the midst of them.
It also says that when two are gathered together in prayer that
whatever they ask for in faith believing will be bound both in the
Earth and in heaven. This may not be the Earth, but it is a world
of our Lord’s creation none the less. Zevin it’s time to pray.”

He pushed the sword down and it penetrated
the stone of the floor. His head dipped as his eyes closed in
prayer. It didn’t matter if I thought I could anymore or not. I
just had to!

I grabbed the handle of the sword and
started praying like I had never before in my life. After a while I
couldn’t even understand what I was saying, as the words that came
forth made no sense to me.

Was I being taken over by the dark
prophets?

I didn’t think so. I had never felt so right
about something since my experience with God in my tower loft, but
I didn’t like my lack of understanding as to what was happening. I
opened my eyes to see if father had seen what I was doing.

My eyes met his and I saw him nod at me like
he knew what I wanted to ask. Then it dawned on me as I watched my
father speaking in the language of the Spirit that I had seen him
do all throughout my life. I was speaking like him and yet
differently in a language that was understood only by the Spirit
bearing intercession for me to my Creator in a more intimate prayer
of expressed need than I could have ever uttered with the words
known to my mind.

My eyes couldn’t but see what was taking
place around me even as my lips continued to move in the fervency
of prayer that my soul was engaged in. This had to be what
spiritual warfare looked like, when it was visible to the naked
eye.

Flames were shooting off from around a cloud
of light that hung around us heavy in intensity, which consumed the
dark prophets and their incantations against us.

The room had turned into an inferno. Beams
were falling from the ceiling and a groaning of the massive weight
of the temple above could be heard as it settled down upon us. I
closed my eyes again.

Better not to look! I concentrated on being
still and letting the Spirit of the Creator within me reign over
the situation I found myself within.

“Zevin?”

Startled I looked at father, “Time to go
Zevin.”

I looked around in shock. The night sky was
overhead and there was no sign of the room or the temple that had
been above us. We stood alone within a black charred crater.

“Praise God!” I whispered out.

“Praise the Creator indeed for His
deliverance of us!” Father echoed.

It was hard to believe that I had really
been a part of something so amazing as this.

“Zevin I know you want to dwell in the
afterglow of this spiritual progression in your life, but we need
to get our men home before our escape is cut off.”

I nodded my head in understanding and pried
my fingers off the handle of father’s sword, which I still clutched
with a death grip.

We helped each other up the steep sides of
the crater where the temple had been and re-entered the world
around us again. The troops had withdrawn back considerably from
the temple and now they looked at us with eyes that threatened to
fall out of their heads, as they watched us stumble to the top and
over the rim of the crater.

They seemed to break free of their stupor
and rushed up to us with our horses. As I approached Relentless I
saw the young warrior’s hand that held the bridal was shaking.

I felt strangely numb to everything
happening. We mounted up and filed out of the city that was well
ablaze.

We rode hard, never stopping for very long.
Only long enough to keep our horses from death. Zoarinian army
units peeled out of cities and military outposts all around us and
pursued us in a disorganized horde.

A small contingent of the Zoarinian forces
managed to get ahead of us at one point, but we smashed through
their lines and kept on going not staying to mop them up.

Days later we were the first to reach the
beginning of the pass. Our victory would be complete if our horses
held out. The horizon behind us was thick with the dust of our
pursuers not over an hour’s ride behind us.

I wasn’t worried for Relentless, he still
had miles left in him, but some of the horses would never be the
same again, if they managed to recover. Father ordered everyone off
their horses, who could manage to walk.

We tugged our weary mounts up the pass in an
effort to save them. Father’s gamble payed off, when the pursuing
horde pulled up at the entrance of the pass and gave up the chase.
Victory was ours.

As weary as we were we felt ourselves become
giddy with the knowledge of what we had done.

I felt completely done in and able to sleep
for a week, as I trudged up the ramp of the great wall at the head
of the pass. The warriors all along the wall fortifications broke
out in a cheer as we passed through the central gate. No Valley
Lander had ever done what we had just done.

We had taken one of our enemy’s greatest
cities and reduced it to a pile of rubble. In some ways it was a
fitting repayment for the city of Kingdom Pass that lay entombed
beneath us.

We made camp on the other side of Lake Sanjo
in an exhausted stupor. We hadn’t slept for days other than minutes
at a time. Tomorrow we would go our separate ways to our homes.
Home sounded so good I could taste it. I hadn’t gotten any major
injuries during the campaign other than the cut on my face.

I had been lucky, but I would wear the scar
for life. I didn’t want to think about that. Maybe it was silly of
me to be worried about such a thing but I was. If I had scared the
girls off with my seriousness before, now what would they do.

My lot in life it seemed was destined to be
that of a loner. I leaned against Relentless’s side for a moment,
as I stopped brushing him for a second. It was really silly of me
to worry about such a thing. God didn’t care about scars and if He
didn’t care about them then neither should I. But I couldn’t help
it. It bothered me.

It was bad enough having the unfulfilled
urges of a young man, but the thought that the right girl one day
might take one look and then never look back again was a
killer!

My moody ponderings were interrupted, when I
saw one of the governors from the lower cities storm up to my
father’s fire.

“Roric you went against your word and risked
our troops in enemy territory! All for a silly revenge quest of
yours against the people, who turned your men into assassins
against you! I won’t have it I tell you!”

Roric looked up solemnly from the fire and
spoke, “Sir you presume to much and it has led to your
undoing.”

“I don’t know what you mean!” The governor
said passionately, before looking around at those gathered, “Arrest
this man at once!” The governor yelled.

“He has disobeyed the will of the council
and is a traitor to his own people!”

No one moved from their places to heed the
governor’s words, which was significant in another way than the
obvious in that many of those gathered wore the colors of the
governor’s city.

Seeing no help forthcoming from the crowd of
silent onlookers the governor blustered about there being more than
just one traitor in his midst.

“Sir.”

The governor turned back to Roric. “You made
three mistakes tonight Governor. The first is that I never promised
the council that I wouldn’t put troops in harm’s way or enemy
territory. I don’t like people who lie about me. The second mistake
was questioning my authority to do as I please, as the leader of my
people I am accountable to no one but the Creator. It may not be a
welcome fact in some circles of our society, but it is still a fact
and it will continue to be so for as long as I live. Your third and
final mistake is this. I never told anyone other than my son that
the men that climbed the cliff to kill me in my sleep were my own
men. I made sure to keep that unknown and yet you knew about it.
How is that Governor?”