Circle of Reign (35 page)

He shouted out the top of his lungs. His terrifying scream of fear echoed all around him and he tapered his volume gradually, then quickly. His echoes lived on for several moments more.

“Daneris!” he heard someone call. He did not answer. Others called his name but he still did not answer.

“Everyone hold!” Hadik commanded. “The Dark take you, hold!”

Daneris did not hold but continued to descend as silently and quickly as possible. He did not know how long the blessed overcast conditions would last, but he had to try and escape now.

Another opportunity may never present itself
.

His limbs shook with the effort and palms were wet with perspiration. The reckless velocity of his descent was more challenging and nerve-wracking than the climb itself. His large calf muscles burned with every step and his massive biceps cankered with pain.

When another hour had passed, Daneris could no longer contract his hands for grip. He slipped and did not even try to catch himself. Mercifully, or not, the ground met him in less than twenty feet. The wind was knocked from his lungs and his shoulder made a terrible popping noise followed by searing pain.

In a few moments he breathed normally again and rolled onto his side, his broken shoulder side up. Daneris squinted and saw the smoke rising from the smelters at the Jarwyn mines. They were only a league away, two at most. He thought back nearly six years prior when he had delivered the most important message of his life to his contact. The contact was then to ride the rest of the way to meet an ore master at the Jarwyn mines to begin the flow of the specialized ore that was only found at the base of these great peaks through a secret network, one that had been in place for hundreds of years.

“Did he make it?” Daneris asked aloud as he winced in pain. He did not know but prayed the message had been ferried quick and true. The fate of Våleira as a living world may depend on it.

With some effort, the Khan, who was a Warrior of Light, made his way to the mines. He tore away his telltale cape and tunic until only his pants and boots remained. A rough man greeted him with some concern, noting his injured arm.

“Oi! Needing help, are ya?”

“I am a current,” Daneris responded.

“What’s that, now?” the miner asked. “Looks like your arm is badly broken.”

“I am a current,” Daneris repeated.

The man scratched his head. “To tell you the truth, you might have hit your head as well as broken your arm. What’s your name, son?”

“Ore master,” Daneris said. “Who is your ore master?”

“Eh, well, today that would be Master Aramith.”

“Please good man, show me to him.”

The gruff miner shrugged. “Follow me.”

They passed many workers, some exiting the mines, others working at smelters’ fires, still others sharpening tools with wet stones and files. Daneris spied a tent in their general direction, the flaps of the entrance tied open. Inside he saw a man sitting at a crude table drawing on large sections of parchment.

“Master Aramith!”

The man at the table looked up. “Yes, Stanton, what is it?”

“Found this man, here. Says he needs a word. He don’t look so good if you ask me, what with his arm and all.”

Aramith came forward and met Daneris with some concern in his eyes. He looked at the miner and said, “Thank you, Stanton. That will be all.”

Stanton, the old gruff miner, walked off, presumably back to his duties.

“What has happened?” Aramith asked. “You are hurt.”

Daneris stepped forward and raised his good arm to Aramith’s shoulder. He rested his hand there for a moment before wrapping it around the back of his neck and gently pulling Aramith’s head toward his until their foreheads met.

“I am a current,” Daneris whispered. No response came.
Please!
he prayed.

He repeated the greeting again, emotion in his voice. “I am a current—”

“—of friction and Light,” Aramith answered, “a spark against the Ancient Dark that cannot be extinguished, a beam of the Lumenatis.”

Daneris let a tear of relief fall to his cheeks.

“Worry not, brother,” Aramith reassured him. “We received your message and have arranged every needed preparation.”

Daneris’ relief was palpable.

“Now,” Aramith said, pulling back, “let us see to your shoulder.” From a sheath on his belt, Aramith pulled a short blade. It was darker than pewter.

“Infused?” Daneris asked.

“Yes. Are you ready?”

The Khan held a deep breath and nodded. Aramith stabbed the point of his blade sharply into the joint of Daneris’ broken shoulder. The Khan grimaced with pain but did not cry out.

“Mylendia shaul,”
Aramith whispered. The short dark blade hummed briefly and a jolting “snap” was heard as Daneris’ shoulder reconstituted itself.

“That was the last of it,” Aramith reported. “The blade’s Light is now spent.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Aiden

Day 29 of 4
^th
High 412 A.U.

“AIDEN! WHERE IS LORD THERRIUM?”
General Roan asked. Aiden realized it was the second time the General had spoken. He was still kneeling down, leaning on Maynard’s corpse. An unusually thick mist lay low, just above the ground, as the morning dew began to evaporate before the sun. Aiden’s eyes drifted toward the servant chambers, then to Roan. The General motioned to several soldiers who followed him to the humble structure. In a few moments, they emerged with a shaken but alive Banner Therrium. His family followed. Mithi’ah, the Archiver, was the last to exit. He immediately started scanning the scene of death before him, recording every detail in the typical fashion of his race.

Aiden’s eyes, still bloodshot, caught the stare of Lord Therrium. He tried to rise, but before he could, Therrium knelt down to Aiden and hugged him. He then took Aiden’s head gently in his hands and kissed his brow.

“Lord Therrium,” General Roan said. “Please allow my men to escort you inside the hold. We will find better protection there.”

For half an hour more, Aiden did not move. He felt the busy movements of the Arlethian soldiers all around him, clearing
debris, checking for survivors. Finally, something roused him from his dream-like state.

“It isn’t possible,” Aiden said, staring in disbelief. “I cannot believe it for fear my heart should shatter if this is only an illusion of the Ancient Heavens. What shade of trickery is this? Some false specter, some cruel mirage of past hope? It isn’t possible. I won’t believe—”

Aiden stopped his elusive ramblings. He didn’t trust his eyes or his senses. Pain still coursed through him as a healer attended to his wounds, lashing Triarch leaves to the affected areas. General Roan and a detachment of wood-dweller infantry and long archers arrived within moments of Maynard’s fall. Aiden expected to be cut down by the hundreds of stunned onlookers, the remnants of the black clad army. He would not have resisted, being overcome with physical weariness and mental exhaustion as he tried to grapple with the unwelcome revelations that had pounced upon his mind as a viper to a field mouse, that apparently High Duke Wellyn had betrayed the Western Province. But the wood-dweller detachment under General Roan easily excused the remaining attackers from existence, securing the hold.

And now Reign Kerr stood in front of him, the long presumed dead heiress of House Kerr, the daughter of his mentor and friend, whom he had failed to protect. He had watched her warily make her way across the field and into the hold, entering the south entrance. As the morning dew evaporated, it fed the thickening fog of the early morning. Seeing Reign emerge through the fog gave a somewhat supernatural aura to her approach. Passing a group of officers in a heated discussion, Reign did her best to conceal her face from the soldiers, but they would not have known her. Raising a hand to her face, she bit down on her index finger slightly in a show of timidity, and said simply, “Hello, Aiden.”

“But, how…?” Aiden asked, his eyes wide and face askew with wonder. “It isn’t possible.”

Reign didn’t answer, but continued to look upon him. The smell of smoke hung in the air with the ruin of thousands upon
the earth. The putrid smell of decay would soon be added to the air he breathed. Crows and ravens circled in scores overhead.

“What happened here?” she asked, turning her gaze and observing the scene around them.

Aiden was relieved to hear her voice again, as if confirming that she was real.

“I…I honestly am not sure. I…there was an attempt on Lord Therrium’s life, but no harm befell him. But that was before…before this.” He motioned to the men clad in black, strewn around the eastern and southern parts of the hold. Servants and wood-dweller infantry were busily collecting and inspecting the dead as well as repairing the eastern wall that had been completely razed in the opening of the attack.

“I am bewildered by this move of Duke Wellyn. In fact, I am not certain this was his doing. Perhaps these men wear his sigil as a deflection of their true identity. At the same time, perhaps Wellyn was flaunting his boldness by not hiding his intentions. I just don’t know yet.”

The greater question Aiden struggled with was why would the High Duke betray his own subjects, but those answers would not come without many other questions.

He looked back to Reign, finding her pale. Following her gaze, he saw her eyes fixed upon the man who lay in a thick robe, dead, not twenty paces from where they stood.

“Who was he?” she asked. Aiden glanced back up at Reign, and thought he saw recognition. No, not recognition, but something close to it.

She’s afraid
, he thought.

“I’m mostly without answers. Maynard, he was called, but I don’t know what he was. But he was better than me. I should have died but—” Aiden truncated his words. He looked off in the distance, hollowness in his gaze. “But something,
something
pushed me. I can’t explain it, I’m sorry.”

Reign returned her gaze to him. He could tell he had said something that struck the girl, but she did not say a word.

“But it is you, isn’t it Reign?” Aiden reached out with both hands to take her by the shoulders, but Reign stepped back.

“I am dead,” she said. “I do not exist, and must not.”

As she retreated slightly, the morning fog filled the distance between them. Aiden’s confidence waned as a thought at the edge of his mind took shape.
Am I delirious? My mind fractured?
He dismissed the thought, but then wondered if perhaps Reign was indeed a spirit or ghost of some create.

“What? What are you saying? Reign—”

“Aiden, I am dead. It must remain so, do you understand?”

Aiden was immeasurably perplexed, not for the first or even second time in the past day.

“If you cared for my family, please, you must be silent.” Reign’s eyes continued to plead for Aiden to comply even if he didn’t understand. She looked around warily toward the other soldiers, appearing concerned they would overhear their conversation.

Aiden capitulated for now. “As you wish, Reign. To be honest, I’m having a hard time believing you are actually standing in front of me and not some trick of my mind.”

“Hedron will be here soon,” Reign said.

This was yet another shock to Aiden. “Hedron? He lives as well? We must tell Lord Therrium! He will know what—”

“No!” Reign hissed. “You must not! Swear you will not!”

“Why? Reign, why? What is it?”

“Have you ever seen a man like that before?” Reign asked. Aiden knew who she meant.

“Yes,” he admitted. “Once. It was long ago, the night your father died.”

Reign did not answer but continued to listen. A truth struck Aiden as he searched her eyes.

“And so have you,” he said.

She did not deny it.

“Lord Therrium! Where is Lord Therrium?” The young officer ran over the hold grounds urgently. Other soldiers directed him to a makeshift pavilion that had been set up as a war room near the southern entrance of the hold. There, Lord Therrium, General Roan and several senior officers sat in earnest council.

“Lord Therrium, General, I beg your pardon for my intrusion, but you must come now!” The young wood-dweller officer was insistent in his gaze. General Roan knew the lad. Lieutenant Fherva, he thought.

“Lieutenant, what urgency brings your interruption with such boldness?” General Roan required.

“Please, sir, it’s just beyond the eastern wall. Colonel Bodhin bids me return with you and Lord Therrium at once.”

They arrived at the east wall, or the ruins of it, and looked beyond in the forest. The Colonel found them.

“Lord Therrium, General Roan, please follow me.”

They stepped across the rubble of the east wall into the forest and walked roughly thirty paces, flanked by a small escort. And then, Therrium saw it.

“Ancient Heavens!” he exclaimed in a heavy voice. “Of what create is this evil?”

Before them, where earth and tree root had been was now only smooth stone upon the ground, forming an aberrant road. As Therrium slowly lifted his gaze, he saw trees along the road that had turned to cold, gray stone, appearing to be statues erected in the likeness of trees that had once occupied the same space. No sound of forest animals or birds were heard or felt. No rustling of leaves or branches that sway in the breeze. The unnatural occurrence stretched out before them for leagues beyond their vision. Short distances to the left or right of the stone road were trees and forest unaffected, retaining their inborn state. The effect was narrow, streamlined, premeditated—deliberate. They were indeed in the forest, the Western Province, but what filled the views of all those present was nothing but alien.