The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman (74 page)

Then I bid you the same.

The Dragon God seemed to scoff.
And I tell you what I told them
:
As long as your kind hold dominion over this world
,
my sleep will not be a lasting one.

Even before His passenger had found a perch, the monstrous creature slid farther out into the frothing waters. His immense torso twisted, head snaking to the south. Torin quickly lost sight of Annleia amid the forest of coral and spines, but felt her peering back at him in silent farewell.

While the Dragon God sliced an unerring furrow through the sea.

L
ONG AFTER THEY HAD ESCAPED
his view, Torin stood in place, a cold sense of finality taking root as he listened to the wind and the waves and studied the rise and fall of the ocean swells. Annleia was gone. Whatever he might have offered her was not enough when measured against the demons she carried. So, that was that.

All for the best, he assured himself, reaching up to fondle Dyanne’s locket. For without the elven woman clouding his head and heart, he was closer to where he’d once been—closer, perhaps, to where he should have been all along.

Still, he could not shake the lingering image of Annleia’s eyes, those orbs wherein had lain his last chance for happiness. Never again would he gaze into them and find the hope, the wonders, they had so briefly offered. So much promise, resulting only in emptiness.

Even so, he would forever be indebted to her, he knew—not only for cleansing him of Thrakkon’s influence, but for her faith and companionship on the road that had followed. So brief, it now seemed. Despite the bittersweet outcome, there was little for which he might trade their common adventures.

Such dark times, he marveled, made somehow wonderful.

Nothing lasts forever.

He’d had his opportunity.

Gone.

As with Dyanne, all that was left to him, all that he would ever know, was the longing.

Another memory.

Another season in the Abyss.

“I
T WAS A LOVELY CEREMONY,”
Marisha remarked.

Their small group stood in an antechamber to the food hall in which last night’s coronation dinner had been held. Only a few score had attended: friends and noblemen from within and without Alson. Many of the same had gathered again this morning, and were waiting behind closed doors for the new king to join them at breakfast within.

King Nevik inclined his head graciously. “A modest affair, by any measure.”

That, it had been, Allion thought. With so much pain and devastation still fresh in everyone’s hearts, it hadn’t seemed appropriate to hold any kind of lavish, drawn-out celebration. Some within the Circle had argued against crowning the new king at all, claiming that it was far too soon to be seen as moving forward—that doing so was somehow disrespectful to those who had fallen. The prevailing opinion, however, was that there was no better way to put to rest so many lingering doubts and set forth on the long road of healing than by formally anointing he who would preside over the slow, arduous restoration ahead.

“Tastefully done,” Corathel agreed.

“A bit
too
tasteful, if anyone’s asking me,” Jasyn added. “I’ll expect much more feasting—and much more drink—at the royal wedding.”

Nevik seemed to blush behind his thick beard, and cast a nervous glance at Ghellenay beside him.

“His Majesty has many pressing concerns just now,” the baroness offered dismissively, though Allion did not miss the gleam in her eye. “Let us not burden him yet with such trifles as the choosing of a queen.”

“In any case,” Nevik offered, after clearing his throat. “I should think you’ll find ample reason to celebrate in the weeks and months to come. All know that King Thelin will accept the imperial mantle in time. And there is your own people’s monarchy to consider.”

“When will that be decided, by the way?” Marisha asked, with a teasing look at Corathel.

“Not for some time yet, I’m thinking,” the chief general replied.

Allion understood his friend’s reservations. Galdric’s sons had yet to be discovered—alive
or
dead. Still, with as much time as had passed since that fateful flight from Atharvan, there seemed little reason to hope. The land of Partha—struck harder than any other by the Illychar—needed for that very same reason, he believed, to usher in quickly a dawn of recovery.

“The cries for
King
Corathel follow you everywhere you go,” Allion observed.

“He knows,” Jasyn said. “He chooses not to hear them.”

“You’re
the king’s blood,” Corathel countered, “not I.”

That
caused a moment of silence, in which those assembled turned to the Second General in obvious surprise.

Jasyn seemed abashed by the sudden attention. “A cousin’s nephew only. Or is it a nephew’s cousin? I can never quite remember.”

“But you
are
of royal lineage?” Marisha asked.

“It’s not something I take pride in.”

“Joined the army by choice, fool that he is,” Corathel snickered. “Could have had a long life as some court advisor or palace cretin.”

“No longer than the rope I’d have been compelled to hang myself with,” Jasyn groaned.

Nevik smirked. “I trust we’ll be among the first to hear, once you’ve sorted it out. Shall we eat?”

“Ours is packed for the road,” Corathel said. “I’m pleased to have borne witness to your coronation, my friend, but I really must be seeing now to the affairs of my country.”

Nevik bowed. “I understand. Thank you for making the trip.” Under the watchful eyes of his guardsmen, he clasped the chief general’s forearm, then wrapped him in a powerful hug. He did the same with Jasyn. “Give my regards to Generals Maltyk and Lar.”

“And mine,” Ghellenay added, as she embraced the Parthan representatives in turn. “Our people would not have been spared without your valiant efforts.”

“And you?” Nevik asked, shifting his attention to Allion. “I know how anxious the two of you are to set forth.”

“Our horses are being readied this very moment,” Allion confessed. “Like the generals here, we just came down to pay parting respects to the new king.”

“Gods, my lady, do you hear that?” Nevik asked Ghellenay. “They speak to me as if I’ve become someone else altogether.”

“You are our lord and king,” Marisha reminded him.

“I am your friend,” he corrected, with a sweeping glance to include them all, “your brother, in battle and blood. Any favor I’m given to grant you—any of you—is but a debt repaid.”

“Is there nothing we might do to persuade you to stay?” Ghellenay asked.

Allion shook his head. “The summer is fast upon us. Best to begin our rebuilding now.”

“Anything more you need, then,” added Nevik, an assurance in his un-questioning tone.

“If so, we shall come and beg Your Highness’s favor,” Allion answered with a sly smile.

“You’ll do so often, I hope,” the king replied, pulling the hunter into his embrace. “Diln is but a half day’s ride, from all I hear.”

“You’ll grow sick of our visits, I’m sure,” Marisha said, as she took her turn at farewell.

“Impossible,” said Ghellenay, “but do try.”

The doors to the food hall opened, and an attendant poked forth his head.

“Ah, my liege. I was about to send a page.”

“Until we see one another again,” Nevik said, ignoring the interruption, “be well, my friends.”

T
HE FOUR OF THEM REMAINED
together as they made their way to the stables. En route, they came across General Zain, whose battlefield promotion had been officially upheld upon his return to Krynwall. It was not a position he had ever wanted; he had been much more comfortable in Rogun’s shadow. Already, however, he confessed to having developed a taste for it. It amused him, he said, the way in which his men—and women—worked harder than ever before to please him.

“Irrepressible,” Allion muttered, as they left the weasel to his salacious smirk.

“The sort of spirit this land needs right now,” Marisha soothed. “If need be, Nevik will keep him in line.”

As they reached the stables, another unexpected visitor awaited them.

“Stephan,” Marisha greeted warmly. “So good of you to see us off personally.”

The chief seneschal bowed, though the look he gave her was somber. “Master Allion, might I a word?”

“Don’t you have duties within the palace?” Allion replied warily.

“A moment is all I ask.”

“We’ll see to the horses,” Marisha offered, and drew both Corathel and Jasyn away.

Allion waited until they had gone. “What troubles you?”

“It’s just…I can’t help but wonder…Are you certain he’s not coming back?”

The hunter did not have to ask whom the other referred to. Stephan had been brooding over Torin ever since the former king-to-be’s story had been relayed to him. “Of course I’m not certain,” Allion sighed. “Torin himself was not. But I know the man better than anyone. If you still doubt his wishes—”

“It’s not his wishes I doubt, sir. I just wonder at the haste with which we carried them out.”

Allion fought hard to suppress a weary groan. Why did so many—or anyone, for that matter—still concern themselves with Torin’s fate? Despite the account he and Marisha had delivered upon their return, all of Pentania, it seemed, ran rampant with rumor, spread by those who refused to believe that the wielder of the Crimson Sword would have chosen on his own not to return. Some said he had been killed. Others storied that he had been dragged
into the Illysp’s realm. And still others posited that he had been consumed by the same mysterious force he had used to vanquish the reavers from their midst.

A small measure of the populace, to be sure, yet such rumors fanned the sympathies of many more, like Stephan, who seemed to think that a hero was somehow being dishonored. Obviously, they knew little to nothing about Torin’s true role in all that had transpired, else they would have saved more of that sympathy for themselves.

What truly gnawed at him, however, no matter any particular man’s beliefs, was that it should be an issue at all. So much remained to be done in making safe the return of Alson’s refugees, in helping their neighbors to pick through the rubble, in washing out the stains of so much death and bloodshed. Why should one man—who could be seen as responsible for so much of it—merit more than a passing concern?

“The baron is a fine man,” Stephan added, as Allion’s silence lengthened, “but—”

“The
king
, you mean. And a better fit for the office than Torin ever was—as Torin himself suggested many a time.”

“He was never a very prideful man,” Stephan agreed. “But neither did he ever shirk his duties. Whatever the need, he gave everything he could to fulfill it, and was unafraid to seek the guidance or opinions of others.”

Allion glanced away to find Marisha and the pair of Parthan generals approaching slowly, saddled horses in tow. “He was a good friend to you, Stephan. He afforded you a respect that Sorl and perhaps others did not. But let me assure you this: What was done here is for the best—for Alson, for Torin, for all of Pentania. If not now, you will see it in time.” He clapped the man’s shoulder and turned to the others. “Ready?”

When Marisha looked at Stephan, her smile became uncertain. “Is everything all right?”

The chief seneschal kept his sullen stare upon Allion. “In time, my lady. In time.”

A
WARBLING WIND BLEW OVER
him in sharp gusts, raking the barren summit. His was a treacherous perch, given the loose nest of jagged rocks in which he sat. One false lean, and that wind might send him skittering out over the cliff’s edge.

To a fate determined, at least.

The view before him was of everything and nothing. The ocean swept toward the sky until it was impossible to discern where one ended and the other began, their conjunction veiled by a mist hanging on the horizon. Far below, waves rolled onto the shore south of the bluff like spreading paint. The chill air scraped dully at his flesh as he listened, unblinking, to those waves’ churning roar.

He was unsure of how much time had passed. Weeks. A month, perhaps. He hadn’t eaten or drunk in all that time, and had scarcely slept. He should
have been dead. But he could feel the fires of Asahiel swirling inside him, sustaining him. They were as much a part of him as breath and blood, an enduring tempest awakened within.

Yet they could not answer the question that most plagued him: the road he must travel. More than once, he had wondered if this was how Kylac felt—to bear such vast potential without any clear sense of direction. A victim of the winds due to his own, seemingly limitless choices.

And so the days had slipped past in aimless wandering amid this mountain wasteland, his time spent largely in reflection of where he had been—thinking
that
was where he would find his clues as to what lay ahead. Thus far, he had gained no true focus. Since he’d first drawn the Sword, his life had seen as many peaks and valleys as the Skullmars around him. He had scaled heights undreamed—only to learn what he would never have. If there were lessons to be found in that, he had yet to discover them.

There was the Sword itself, of course, which he imagined he must now put to some great purpose. But whose? For what gain? His answer to the weapon’s riddle had only made its power that much more inscrutable. He wasn’t certain that he trusted it, any more than he trusted himself. Its volatility was tied now to his own mercurial nature. Had this world not suffered enough of that already?

He gripped the hilt of the blade where it lay in his lap, shuddering at the wash of heat unleashed by the talisman’s heartstones. It flowed swiftly through his palm, his neck, his spine. A boundless inferno, since his emotions might be drained, but never extinguished.

Or could they? Much of his confusion, he felt, stemmed from the lingering effects of the Sword’s use against the Illysp. The memories with which he had fueled those assaults had become somehow lifeless. The images were still there, but their emotional influence had diminished, leaving him to feel as if his life had belonged not to him at all, but to someone else. In looking to the past, he came away now with little more than a numbed sense of regret. So many poor decisions, so many pivotal moments that he wished to relive…

But it was too late for that. Detached as he was, he understood there was no going back. Not to Alson and those he had unwittingly betrayed. Not to Yawacor and those with whom he had belatedly discovered such unexpected kinship. Guilt would not allow that he impose himself among any he had so wronged.

Which left him with what? He had no other desires he could recall. The remainder of his goals lay amid the glittering shards of his past. Their luster would not die, yet they were irretrievable, barely recognizable. All he had were those deadened memories, carried now by some faithless stranger wearing his skin.

If only he could find it in himself to be angry. Surely there were others who shared responsibility for this desolate state of his. His brother Soric, Spithaera, the Entients…Had their deeds not forced his hand? What of Darinor and his lies, Eolin and his stubborn refusal, or Cianellen and her subtle
manipulations? How might his destiny have differed without their damning influence?

But such questions—such accusations—held no purchase in his thoughts. Life was but a web of interactions, forcing each man to mark well his individual path, lest he become entangled. He would not use the strands laid forth by others as an excuse for his circumstances.

If his life was to be deemed a failure, he had no one to blame but himself.

A stab of irritation knifed through his inner haze. Even he was tired of such self-indulgent brooding. His endless introspection had played no small role in his unlocking of the Sword, but that purpose had already been served. Kylac had never sat around, waiting for his life’s meaning to present itself. Time and again, the youth had set out to find it.

And what if Annleia had been right? The future offered nothing if not hope. As his own journeys had proven, one never knew for certain what treasures lay beyond the horizon.