A Warrior's Legacy (32 page)

“Is that all you have to go on?” Gavin asked
despondently.

“It is enough and besides that his sword is
still glowing.” Thora said with emphasis as she pointed with one
outstretched talon to the gently glowing sword.

White walls and long halls. It seemed like I
had been walking for a long time and reached nowhere and I was
getting frustrated. This surely couldn’t be heaven, because if it
was my disappointment with it couldn’t be higher.

Finally I saw something different up ahead
and I rushed to it in eagerness for something different from the
sameness all around me. It was a window. I stepped up to it and
peered through it. On the other side of the window must be
heaven.

I looked out upon a beautiful garden. It was
full of flowers, butterflies and children. There were several girls
and several boys of different ages all frolicking in the idyllic
setting. All of a sudden looks of joy washed over their faces and
they charged toward an approaching figure screaming

“Mother!”

The mother was Raya! My heart squeezed
inside of me at the sight of what I hadn’t been able to enjoy with
Raya. She looked happy and whoever she had married must be treating
her right.

I was glad for her, but this was more like
torture than anything having to see the future without me in it.
The children were screaming something.

“Where’s father?”

Raya laughed, “He’ll be along.” And then she
looked right at me.

A door I hadn’t noticed popped open beside
of me and stood ajar. I stared at it for a moment and then I
reached for the handle and I opened my eyes.

There was Raya sleeping beside me and I
kissed her till I felt her kiss me back and then I just kept on
kissing her, because I knew it was real and what a gift I had just
been given.

Her hands twined into my hair and eventually
we both had to come up for air. She was looking at me with her
heart in her eyes, “You came back to me!”

I smiled, “Yes, the Heavenly Father is
good!”

I kissed her again and when I drew back it
was to see a smirky look on her face. My brow wrinkled in
puzzlement and I looked at her questioningly. What had I
missed?

“It doesn’t bother me honey, but you do know
that we have an audience don’t you?”

I glanced upward and around at the large
crowd of grinning warriors some of which were crying while they
smiled and blushed slightly.

My thoughts had been completely focused on
enjoying the gift of life with my lovely bride. Those same thoughts
had figured heavily into getting started with the kids I had seen
in my dream vision. I looked back down at the still slightly
smirked up face of my temptress, “I guess we won?”

“Very much so!” Gavin said squatting down
beside us and even though he was smiling he was also wiping away
tears.

“I could get a tent set up for you here if
you would like Zevin.”

I let a look of false relief pass across my
face, “Could you please?”

Raya smacked me in the chest and laughing I
got up and then helped Raya up. I picked my sword up and my
merriment of the moment faded as I saw the mountains in the
distance and the work still needing to be done.

“We will assist you in restoring the order
of Assoria master Zevin.” Said Thora indicating the mountains at
which I had been looking at.

Looking at her closely I asked, “How did the
sorcerer gain access to Tadias’s powers anyway? I thought that he
left everything sealed away and he had mighty beasts such as you to
guard it. How did the sorcerer breakthrough?”

Thora looked extremely remorseful, “Like you
we had confidence in our master Tadias’s sealing away of his work,
when his time came to leave this life. But we sadly did not
consider the potential of his lock being misused. You see Tadias
intended that one day his work would be found by his descendents
and carried on, but sadly all families no matter how noble some are
there are often weak links in the family chain so to speak. His
work was always open and available to those of his own blood
line.”

Incredulously I stared at her, “You’re
saying that the Sorcerer is a Ta’lont?”

“Yes, he is Tadias’s younger half-brother by
a different mother. We knew that he had arrived from somewhere off
world. He did not go by the Ta’lont name, but rather by his
mother’s and by the time we realized our mistake it was too late
and we could only watch as our fellow guardians fell from the sky.
Since then it has been our ardent desire to bring this errant
strand of the Ta’lont family to justice. We never suspected that
any relation of Tadias’s would be capable of what the sorcerer has
done. We have paid a great price for our foolishness and all
Assoria with us. We cannot stop now! We must finish what has been
started master!”

I couldn’t agree more with what she was
saying.

“Why do you call me master?”

“Because that is what you have now become!
May your father and mother be blessed among mankind for giving
birth to one in the likeness of character and strength as your
great ancestor Tadias. I have but known one master before and now
it is with pride that I accept you as my second.” Thora bowed her
head low to the ground as she finished.

Humbled beyond words that such a great beast
would bestow such an honor on me I was not prepared for Kregridor’s
rusty rumble, “I have lived longer than Thora, but without her
wisdom I would not have lived half as long as I have. Thanks to her
our part in this victory today has been made possible. I am a
tannin and perhaps the oldest left of my kind. I have known but two
masters and now I welcome a third. Each has been as great as the
last. And now while the opportunity is ripe let us end this
struggle once and for all!” He roared even as one massive wing
extended out to me its tip touching the ground at my feet.

Resolutely I walked up the wing and then
across the massive heavily plated back to sit behind the giant
neck. Raya looked forlorn to me standing alone on the ground, when
surprised she turned at the gentle tap of a wingtip on her back.
Thora gave her a toothy smile and nodded towards the back of her
neck.

“Mistress if you would please allow me to be
of service that is if you wish to follow the master.”

Raya looked at her hesitantly.

“As I said before the past is behind us
child. Now let us instead embrace the glorious new future opening
up before us shall we?”

Raya ran lightly up the wing and across
Thora’s back and sat down as I had and the great beasts took off in
unison.

What a rush! Never would I have believed it
if I had been told by someone that one day I would ride such a
beast as the tannin were. We beat high up into the air and soared
among the lower clouds. The land passed by quickly beneath us and
it seemed that within moments the great up thrusting bulk of the
mountains were upon us.

A few minutes later and I got my very first
view of the Blue Castle. The castle had been built by my great
ancestor Tadias just as Thunder Ridge had been. It wasn’t the
fortress that Thunder Ridge was, being much smaller in size, but in
beauty of structure and setting it had no equal as it lay nestled
firmly among the mountain peaks.

It was terrible to know that so much beauty
and the power it held within had been in the hands of a madman for
so long.

A madman that I was directly related to.

Everyone has a choice in life and some do
not choose wisely, but at some point unwise decisions come back
around for judgment. No blue lightning bolts shot out from the
castle to blow us out of the sky.

The castle in fact as we circled nearer
appeared completely deserted and it looked as if it had been so for
a very long time. Gardens and lawns were unkempt and overgrown.
Sections of roof were missing on some of the towers torn off by
some storm in the past never to be repaired.

Didn’t the sorcerer care for the upkeep of
his position of power?

It seemed incredible, but it appeared that
he hadn’t in a very long time. Kregridor and Thora sat lightly down
onto a high upraised commons that must’ve been made for just such a
purpose.

Kregridor spoke, “The sorcerer will be
somewhere behind those two doors in the deeper confines of the
castle. Raya should know the way.”

I glanced at Raya and woodenly she nodded as
she gazed at the double doors ahead of us. One of them was half off
of its hinges and slightly ajar. Raya and I started off for it even
as Thora and Kregridor prowled off elsewhere.

I started to pull the one half attached door
open, when it literally broke off its rusty hinges causing me to
have to catch it and set it heavily to the side.

“Why is everything left gone to pot around
here Raya?” I asked as I stepped through the empty doorframe sword
in hand.

“My mother.”

I glanced at her briefly as we made our way
up the darkened corridor.

“What does your mother have to do with
it?”

She was quiet for a moment and then spoke,
“The sorcerer fancied that my mother had to love him simply because
of who he was and the power that he held. He is that arrogant and
self conceited about himself. My mother felt quite the opposite
though. She hated him, but she kept it to herself on behalf of her
father and the safety of her people, but it ate away at her and
what she’d been forced to agree to. When she saw what he had done
to me she went crazy and she destroyed part of the energy core
feeding the various abilities of this place and in the process
limiting what father’s capabilities were. He caught her before she
could finish her work and he told her that he was going to rape her
to death for her treachery. In the process of trying to rape her
she cut his maleness off and slashed his face badly. She nearly
killed him, but the guards dragged her off. When he was recovered
enough he had her tortured and cut into pieces. He made me
watch.”

Oh God I wasn’t hearing this!

The thought of any girl having to see such a
thing done to their own mother was beyond horrible!

“He sent me into Lanoria after that
promising me that if I didn’t succeed in killing the tannin he
would do the same to me.”

We made our way past abandoned rooms and
halls that the absence of care and the ravages of time were evident
everywhere one looked.

“I must have something of my father in me
because I was able to lie well enough to convince him that I had
killed the tannin. Soon after that I ran away with the rest of the
slaves into Lanoria. It was me that caused there to be an explosion
that destroyed the mining operation beyond repair. Before I left
though the signs of an increasing paranoia were quite evident in my
father. He had servants and soldiers alike killed for no apparent
reason. He was petrified about dying mainly because the ability by
which he had concocted of staying forever young had been taken from
him by my mother.”

She glanced at me and in the half light I
saw her embarrassment.

“Thora told me about it Raya.”

There was silence for a moment, which she
then broke.

“It’s a wonder that you can love me at all
as messed up as I am!”

“Oh honey becoming one flesh with you now
that’s an aspect of loving you that isn’t hard to do at all!” I
said tongue in cheek.

I deserved the punch to the back of my
shoulder.

A little time passed and I asked, “So you
think it was his increasing paranoia that drove everyone away?”

“Yes and his scarred face. He is very vain
or at least he was and he wouldn’t have wanted anyone around to see
his disfigurement.”

We were quiet then as we made our way up to
the castle’s higher rooms.

“Do you think you could be comfortable or
even happy living in a place where you saw so many terrible things
occur?”

“It would be hard to in certain places of
the castle, but it’s not the castle’s fault for what happened here.
I could live anywhere really and be happy as long as I was with
you.”

I turned back to her, now that deserved a
kiss, but she held a finger up before our lips could connect.

“You need to stay on task Zevin!” She said
breathlessly.

I moved her finger to the side, “Not a
problem I assure you!”

I kissed her hard pressing her up against
the wall behind her for a long moment.

Pulling back I whispered, “Not bad for a guy
who was dead today huh?”

“Don’t joke about it! I died inside when I
thought you were gone!” She whispered back her voice full of
emotion.

“I’m sorry I said that honey, but it’s hard
to contain myself. Right now I’m just so darn happy to be alive!
You don’t need to worry about your father. Everything is going to
be okay Raya.”

She looked up at me out of her softly
glowing eyes questioningly, “Why what do you know?”

“We’ll talk about it later, but for now just
trust me.”

She searched my eyes with hers and whispered
back, “Okay.”

I took her hand in my free one and together
we walked toward the last pair of double doors. I kicked them open
and found exactly what I had expected to.

Raya’s father wasn’t much more than a dry
husk of a man. His beady eyes fairly popped out of his sunken in
slashed face and he had to crane his head upward to account for the
stoop in his back.

His voice was warbly and thin nothing like
the voice that had boomed out of the menacing cloud cover on the
battlefield. He quivered as he pointed at me with one bony finger
his voice cracking with age, “Now! Now you bring back my cup of
eternal youth! What good does she do me now! I see that you’re
enjoying her for yourself wretched fool! You’ve stripped me of all
my hard won possessions! Assoria was mine! You killed my babies!
The army that would have defeated any army ever made on the field
of battle, but no! You couldn’t play by the rules! You used
technology against me to do what? Protect people little better than
cattle long overdue for the slaughterhouse! You drained me of my
last vestige of power! You’ve taken everything from me!”