The Elf King (70 page)

“
Shadox? What...happened?”
Tane asked, his words soft and frail.

Shadox wiped the beads of
sweat off Tane’s face. “You saved us, King.”

“
The power of the Flame,”
gasped Terill, arriving with Ankar Rie. Slina and Ern Dwull rushed
over as well, followed by the bowmen, who formed a protective
circle around them. All eyes fell on Tane.

“
Tane, are you alright?”
Ankar asked.

Shadox turned to face them.
“He will be fine. Go to those who need you.”

They hesitated for a
moment, before Terill turned and sent them into battle. The Lyyn
was being attacked, he told them. They had to act. Parting from
Tane and Shadox, they wished the King a quick recovery and raced
across the charred plains.

“
Sorcerer,” Tane mumbled,
losing strength, his eyes half open. “What is in me? What am
I?”

“
You are King Andelline.”
Shadox could see the worry in Tane’s eyes. “You hold the power of
your ancestors. The magic is yours, Tane.”

“
But it’s not in the sword.
It’s in me!” Tane sat upright, moving slowly, feeling his head
flush with heat.

Shadox nodded. “The sword
was a vessel, like anything else used to hold something. The Elves
created it to keep Issilix Delsoue safe until an heir unlocked it.
Your blood, the magic living with it rather, did so, Tane. The
Flame of Blood is in you. It belongs to you, Tane.”

Shadox extended his hand,
Tane grasping it firm, as he pulled him to his feet. “Do not be
afraid, Tane. Your people need you to be strong now.”

Tane shook his head. “I did
not expect this, sorcerer.”

Shadox smiled sadly. “That
is the way of some things, King.”

Tane struggled with the
acceptance. Deep within he could feel it surging through him like a
pulse of its own. He looked past Shadox to the war taking place
beyond. Even from a great distance, he could see
Takers
shifting in the
darkness. Tane nodded. The sorcerer was right, he knew. They did
need him.

He turned to meet the black
eyes staring back at him. Shadox was waiting for him, he knew.
Those fierce eyes, that unbreakable confidence, that poise under
the most violent circumstances, standing taller than himself,
waiting to be led into battle.

“
Shadox,” Tane began,
“let’s finish this.”

Shadox nodded. The
friendliness in his face washed away. As Tane raced away, Shadox
followed.

Q
enn moved back slowly, watching the air in front of him shift
and swirl. He saw chains on the walls, smelled the rot and decay,
and realized where he was. He swallowed hard. Instinctively, he
reached for the staff. But he didn’t have it. Even the burning
torch lay just out of reach. He had nothing.

“
Come to me,” the darkness
hissed with the sound of a thousand ghoulish pleas.

Qenn nearly cried. Through
the circling dark mass, he could see slight movements within. It
was shifting, he noticed. Then a smoke-like tongue reached out and
licked the air around him, vanishing back into the
blackness.

The hissing began anew with
excitement. “It is time.”

Qenn felt his sweat turn to
ice. And then the darkness came to him. Qenn shuttered, clinging on
to Kandish tightly, mumbling to her to wake up, that they were in
danger and she needed to use her power. He began caressing her
hands with his, but she did not respond. It spoke again, but Qenn
could not make out the words over his own screams. He tried to
rise, tried to flee. But his feet were held tight by the magic in
the cavern. He sat in helpless despair, watching the blackness move
over to him.

Then the stench of death
was shrouding him, putrid and thick. The wave of rolling air was
covering him; he flinched at its touch. As the pit of blackness
settled down on to him, he closed his eyes tight, squeezing Kandish
with all that he had.

Voices screamed at him
then, relentless and anguished. Qenn opened his eyes. He was in the
darkness. It swirled and moved like wraiths. He could feel
something latch onto him, holding him stable. Kandish’s limp form
began to drift out of his arms, rising into the blackness. Qenn
tried to call to her, but he had no voice. Helpless, he watched
Kandish’s limp form float up into the dark, her arms stretched wide
to her sides, her head stared blankly forward.

Qenn felt something at his
legs then. Instantly he was ill. He felt his body shutting down.
His sight dimmed. His breathing slowed. He could feel the poison in
his body, mixing with his blood, overtaking his soul. He screamed a
soundless cry. His body wracked with excruciating torture and waves
of nausea. It was in him, he knew. He was becoming one of them. The
Seer was right. Kandish tried to tell him so.

He struggled to scream to
Kandish, watching the darkness slowly wash away all that he could
see.

The
Mrenx Ku
howled wickedly. It was
time. It would enter the girl and devour her magic. It had waited
long enough. With a piece of itself already destroyed, it would
risk everything and enter her as it could and begin its reign. It
reached forth and attached itself to her face. Drawing from the
depths of its creation, it began traveling through the tentacle and
into her mouth and eyes. She was strong enough, it thought. One
without magic would not be able to sustain its overtaking, and
would be destroyed. But she had a very strong core of magic. And
once it wrapped itself into that, she would be claimed.

Qenn’s vision was
deteriorating by the second. His brain was slowly shutting down. He
was barely able to reason the insanity he was witnessing now.
Darkness funneled his vision. He kept his eyes focused as best he
could on Kandish. Even with the poisonous magic running within him,
he still felt the love he had for her. So beautiful, he thought.
She deserved something better. Then he remembered something. It was
vague in his mind, like smoke in the wind. He focused harder. It
was a voice. Someone he knew. A friend, perhaps. An old woman. She
was saying to remember his feelings for Kandish.
When the darkness begins to overtake you both,
focus on each other. Remember your love. Love is the key. Love is a
catalyst.
The voice died then. Faded like
the memory of a dream upon waking, it was gone. Its replacement was
cold and evil. Its promise was death.

But Qenn held strong,
remembering his love for Kandish, how she looked, how she smelled,
how her eyes twinkled always. He felt the evil stirring up through
his chest begin to steady. He fought then to think back to memories
of her, but his mind was too dizzy to focus; the transformation was
too advanced. The poison was filling him with hate, replacing all
that he loved, all that he cherished. It was suffocating him. And
slowly his sight was dying. All that he could see now was Kandish,
with her form lined in a grey cloud. Soon it would be over. And the
pain was so tremendous now that Qenn was hoping it would end
quickly. Kandish’s form blackened. Dimmer. Darker. Blending into
the blackness as one.

Qenn sighed.
I’m sorry, Kandish.

Then he saw a
light.

A
nkar Rie fought with a dozen of swordsmen and a handful of
archers, trying to put an end to the
Takers
entering in the Lyyn Forest.
But they were quick, moving snake-like through the night, storming
past the thin line of defense almost unchallenged. It was too late,
Ankar thought grimly. He had arrived too late to stand with the
remaining flank, and scores of the soulless figures had already
disappeared into the trees. The Ailia Court would be overrun and
would undoubtedly fall.
Takers
were already beginning to set fires. He stared
helplessly, angrily. Screaming, he spent all that he
could.

“
Sorcerer!” Ern Dwull
called, rushing over to his aid carrying a quiver full of arrows.
He passed them out to the archers quickly, commanding them to fire
at will. “These are from the King. Dipped in his blood!”

Even speaking the word king
was something hard to swallow for Ern. He had only discovered
Tane’s identity an hour ago. Cillitran never had a part elf as a
king before. It would take some getting used to. But his new king
had a plan and Ern was not about to disobey. Tane had coated the
tips of the arrows in his blood, giving them to Ern to disperse to
all archers. The blood, he told Ern, would destroy the enemy. A day
earlier Ern would not have believed. But after seeing things
firsthand, there was no hesitation.

Arrows dipped in Tane’s
blood shot into the field of
Takers
. Blinding eruptions came as a
result, exploding wretched bodies to pieces. Archers yelled in
delight. Ern Dwull jumped in the fight right away, slashing his
sword as he could, pushing aside the pain in his thigh, screaming
to his men not to let down, that the world was depending on them.
But even he knew that they were fighting now not to save the world,
but to save themselves.

Across the other side of
the battlefield, Tane, Shadox, Terill, and Slina stood their ground
between the small groups of fighting Men and Elves. Tane’s magic
could be seen for miles as it swept into the sea of shifting black
forms, burning them to ash. Blooders swept down in a tight
formation, shining with blood coated bodies, as they continued to
burst into the head and chest of their enemy.
Takers
fought back, sending their
red fire into the flock, destroying a few birds with each pass.
From end to end, the Shyl Plains was smothered with burning fire
and falling ash, with horrible screams of death and pain, and
urgent pleas for anything to end it all.

T
he light engulfing Kandish’s body grew brighter, her voice
absent past her open mouth. Qenn stared without understanding,
feeling his body convulse as the poison within him recessed and his
vision became less cloudy. He still could not form a theory, could
not reason out what was taking place above him. So he stared,
waiting.

The
Mrenx Ku
had seeped itself down into
Kandish’s soul, had found what it was looking for, then began to
absorb her magic into it. But then something unexpected happened.
Releasing the binds that held the power source stable, the
Mrenx Ku
began to devour
what it found. But what was there was the power of the
LifeWaters
. Just as
the
Mrenx Ku
had
separated itself to branch away and do its bidding, so did
the
LifeWaters
,
creating a life of itself unto Qenn’s staff, then into Kandish, and
now into the
Mrenx Ku
. As the pure magic embraced the putrid evil, the
Mrenx Ku
tried to
withdraw. But it was too late. The
LifeWaters
flooded through Kandish,
pouring out into the
Mrenx
Ku
’s tentacle, streaking down into the
ball of magic that was its life source. It was too powerful to be
denied, and the
Mrenx Ku
could not shut away quickly enough.