The Seedbearing Prince: Part I (43 page)

The voidwalker swiftly closed with Nassir,
whose left arm hung uselessly at his side. There were no more
attempts to throw him, the voidwalker simply meant to tear him limb
from limb. Lurec looked on helplessly.

“Run, Preceptor!” Nassir shouted, urgent and
fatigued.

The voidwalker laughed, an ugly grating
sound.

“Run!” The Defender rolled and twisted away
from the voidwalker’s reach, doing everything possible to give
Lurec time to escape. The brute caught hold of Nassir's ankle in
the middle of a kick. He slammed the Defender into the ground so
hard his sheath flashed, and the split walls echoed with the force
of the impact. Nassir somehow recovered, and bounded free of the
voidwalker’s grasp to crash several spans away toward the northern
end of the plaza. He staggered back in a feeble attempt to pull the
voidwalkers from the plaza.

Scattered shouts echoed up the walls of the
split. A handful of guards finally appeared, eyes wide at sight of
the two Thar’Kuri, nightmares given flesh.

“They are flesh and blood! Don’t let their
tricks cloud your mind!” Lurec shouted. His thoughts were beginning
to clear, although his head might as well be stuffed with mud.

Moridos stared down the split, the wind
blowing steam from his body in waves. One of the guards broke ranks
and fled with a shout. The rest advanced, but their swords trembled
in their hands. “Kill the Ringmen,” Moridos ordered. He turned to
Dayn.

The other voidwalker scowled down the split
where Nassir had disappeared. “Coward.” He rounded on Lurec. “Time
to break your back, little beetle.”

Dayn finally regained his feet, just as
Moridos’s shadow fell on him. The boy reached into his pocket and
pulled out the orb. It glowed a brilliant red, bright enough to
make the second voidwalker turn away from Lurec.

“This is what protects him? What Raaluwos
sent us for?”

Moridos stopped at the light, his lips
curling in a snarl. “Nothing protects him. He’s just a boy, with a
worthless old―”

The Seed flashed in Dayn’s hand. He held it
up to Moridos. The voidwalker lurched, and looked down at his
chest. Cracks formed along the surface of his black armor, like
brittle parchment curling before a candle’s flame. He screamed as
steam hissed out of the fissures spreading across his chest.

“Dayn,
no!”
Somehow Lurec knew this
was all terribly wrong.

“Moridos!” The second voidwalker ran forward
to help, even as Moridos staggered back from the Seed’s light. He
stopped in his tracks as his own armor began to fracture.

The sound of thrumming boots echoed up the
split―Nassir must have rallied the guards. Lurec shouted out,
urging them to hurry. “This way! Murder in the plaza!”

A shadow flickered over the face of the
setting sun. From the corner of his eye, Lurec saw Nassir swooping
down, his sword retrieved from the stands above. At the last
instant, the voidwalker looked up to see the Defender, death
falling from the sky, sword raised high for a critical strike.

“Enter oblivion!” Nassir shouted, driving his
blade down. The sword plunged through the flesh of the voidwalker’s
exposed gullet, straight into his abdomen.

In one motion Nassir released the hilt of his
sword and slammed his boot in the voidwalker's torso. The hulking
brute sputtered and collapsed, still clutching at the sickmetal
blade driven through his jaw. Hot steam billowed from the horrific
wound, and the pale skin bubbled and hissed wherever it touched the
noxious metal.

Lurec’s world went white with pain. He
realized the mournful howl echoing from the canyon walls issued
from his own throat. He writhed on the ground, clutching his head.
A thousand slivers of agony drove through his skull, so sharp he
could not draw breath. His mental defenses were useless.

Suddenly the sensation vanished. Somehow
Lurec willed his hands to uncover his ears and feel over his body.
He expected to find cuts, or perhaps burn marks. Nothing.

The Defender stood over him, extending a
hand. Lurec numbly rose to his feet. “What happened to us?” The
Echowind Split lay unchanged.

Dayn wept softly where he lay, the Seed held
tightly in his hand.

Nassir sank to one knee next to Lurec,
cradling his damaged arm. His chest heaved raggedly. “The death
scream of a voidwalker is no easy thing to forget,” he said. His
voice was exhausted but steady. “The foul energy contorted within
them doesn’t leave willingly.”

“You’ve saved our lives,” Lurec said. “I’m
indebted to you.”

“I would do the same for any Ringman, as
would you.” Nassir nodded to where Dayn lay. “But the farmboy is
who saved us. I didn’t know the Seed was a weapon.”

“It’s not, or at least I have never heard of
such.”

A cloud of death cloaked the voidwalker's
corpse. As the echoing wind faded, it cleared away the noxious
fumes until none remained. The armor that turned aside Nassir’s
monstrous sword had shattered like Aran glass after a brush with
the Seed’s power. Lurec knew he should feel lucky to be alive, but
a sense of dread ruled him. He forced himself to find calm once
more. “This is an unprecedented opportunity for study. I must have
you―”

Nassir raised an eyebrow and Lurec hesitated,
choosing different words. “We should speak with Shir-Hun at once,
before the High reach his ear. They will seek to hide this blunder
from the Belt. After their plotting against Suralose, the worlds
may turn against Ara.”

Nassir nodded. “Whatever knowledge you gain
will be invaluable, Preceptor. People likely felt this deathscream
a hundred spans away. Show us how to defeat them without succumbing
to it. I’ve seen the death of just one Thar’Kuri warrior wipe out a
whole force squadron of Defenders. Thar’Kuri fare poorly in the
torrent, but his parting shot left our force helpless to even grasp
their talons. Stunned as they were, the torrent ground them all to
dust.” The Defender closed his eyes for a moment, lost in thought.
“We would fare even worse on the ground. The World Belt is not
prepared to face them in greater numbers, which will soon
come.”

Lurec had never considered battlefield
strategies, but his mind worked over the scenarios. Nassir made
sense about a great many things he did not care to admit. “It seems
some are more sensitive than others.”

Dayn lay still. His eyes were closed, and he
was pulled into himself, as though to protect the Seed. He did not
look injured, but Lurec suspected the voidwalker's wounds lay far
deeper than his own comprehension.

“See to him,” Nassir said, rising to his
feet. He waved over the Aran guards who were moving numbly through
the plaza, checking the fallen. They could barely bring their eyes
to rest on the Ringmen, or the dead voidwalker. Their faces,
haggard and defeated, told him more than enough.

The Defender’s right,
Lurec thought as
he knelt to touch the Seedbearer,
We’re not ready.

“I wish he’d dispatched the other one.
Moridos. A blood debt drives him. He won’t stop until his thirst is
sated.”

Lurec turned his back hastily while the
Defender set about freeing his sword. Nassir spoke calmly over the
wet, gurgling noises. “We must speak about the Seed. It must
be...reconsidered, now.”

Dayn did not move. The Seed pulsed regularly
in his hand, offering no assurances of its true nature.

Shir-Hun's Study

The voidwalker's thrall literally unhinges the mind
of his foes. The victim will suffer delusions pulled from memory or
imagination, yet experience them as real. For those who are weak of
mind or heart, the encounter will be fatal, instantly or years
afterward.

-field notes from the Preceptor Lurec

A
cool breeze rippled
fitfully through the windows of the Highest Shir-Hun's private
study. The voidwalker's stare haunted Dayn, burned into his vision
like a child who had allowed his gaze to linger too long on the
sun. He turned away from the window and back to his opulent
surroundings, but his eyes slid away from where the Ringmen
conferred with the Highest.

“There’s no need to apologize,” Lurec was
saying. He stood at the head of the carved stone table in the
middle of the room. “These circumstances were not of your
doing.”

Once order returned, the Ringmen had met
privately with Shir-Hun for hours. Dayn had joined them just
moments ago, but now wished to be anywhere but Shir-Hun’s study. He
could not dwell long on the voidwalker encounter without breaking
into new fits of shaking and sweating. Lurec and Nassir never asked
him to speak, though they glanced his way frequently. Dayn clenched
his hands into fists to stop them from trembling, but that only
seemed to worry the Ringmen more.

“My grandfather served the Ring for many
years,” Shir-Hun said quietly. “As a child he would sit me on his
knee, and scare me with stories of darklurkers. I hoped never to
see one in all my days.”

“Any world could be just as easily deceived,”
Nassir said. His wounded arm hung in a sling, bandaged from
shoulder to wrist. He took a measured breath before continuing.
“Or...even the Ring. Ara is the first to root them out.”

“A pitiful solace in that.” The Highest's
brow furrowed in distaste. “The High urge me to bury this whole
matter. I alone oppose their consensus, but I am bound by our laws.
I am of little use to you now, Ringmen. They intend to claim the
whole thing was a panic, as if a thousand witnesses could be talked
into believing they saw some apparition, or a demon from a
children's fable.”

Nassir spoke softly. “What need for demons,
with men such as these?”

“Thar'Kuri are not men, Defender!” The
Highest visibly composed himself. The Ringmen stood in stunned
silence at Shir-Hun’s shout. “Not anymore. They gave up the right
to be called men when they abandoned us before the Breach.”

Dayn swallowed bile and forced himself to
join the three men.
If they can bear the stench, so will I.
He moved stiffly, his ribs ached as though he had been run over by
a wagon.

The study’s table held the voidwalker’s
monstrous corpse. Nassir's sword had torn the throat wide, exposing
pale green innards from the ruined palate to the breastbone. More
pieces of the ruined armor along the voidwalker’s front had been
carefully removed and laid next to it on the table, exposing a
ruinous mass of twisted muscle and guts. One of the pale hands had
been carefully severed at the wrist. Strangely, no flies drew near
the remains despite the reek.

“Of course, the Ring cannot interfere with
the High,” Lurec said. He had replaced his gray overcoat with a
heavy rubber apron, similar to what a blacksmith might wear at the
forge. Green streaks covered the material, but the Preceptor did
not seem to care.

Shir-Hun's face grew even stonier as he
stared at the corpse. “Tied to your oaths, Preceptor, when swift
action is needed more than ever?”

Lurec exchanged a wordless glance with
Nassir. “If we lose the principles that guide us, all the worlds of
the Belt will join Thar'Kur in darkness. I would ask you to
preserve this...specimen, as a personal favor to me. Whether the
High reveal the voidwalkers to Ara or not, this body will provide
us with centuries of knowledge.”

“Are they really so different from us?” Dayn
finally brought himself to speak. Even in death, the voidwalker
terrified him. Over fifty guards now manned the outer walls of
Shir-Hun's study, but Dayn felt trapped inside rather than
protected.

“Use your eyes, Shardian,” Nassir said
roughly. “You cannot afford to be so innocent. This Moridos now
knows what you carry can hurt Thar’Kur. They’ll send more than just
scouts. Probably a bondleader that will tear Olende apart to find
you.”

The Highest walked over to the lone window
and stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out at
the darkened landscape. This section of the palace faced the open
desert, unlike other wings which conjoined with Olende's warren of
splits.

“We will be of little aid in stopping them,
if it came to that,” Shir-Hun said. “My captains tells me our men
were worthless when the voidwalker touched their minds. Some of
them died. Others are no longer fit to be guards.”

“Highest, this is as good a place to make a
stand as any,” Nassir ventured. “With the Seed at their backs, the
Aran Guard will be encouraged.”

“Perhaps. But I fear this is a dark path we
ponder.” He glanced at Dayn, eyebrows raised in consideration. “In
all of my studies, I can recall nothing of the Seedbearer mentioned
as a...warmonger.”

“Nor I,” Lurec put in. “The Seed restores
balance and fosters life. Not death.”

“Such days have fallen to us,” Nassir said
grimly. “What good is our ancestors’ past glory, if there are no
descendants left to remember it?”

Shir-Hun and Lurec offered no ready reply.
Dayn took the opening to ask a question of his own. “How did he
disappear in the shadow?”

“I’ve only speculation,” Lurec confessed.
Frustration shadowed his blue eyes. At the Highest’s request, he
had studied the corpse hours ago in this very room. Shir-Hun's
books and personal effects were everywhere, he would never be rid
of the stench. Perhaps that's what the Highest wanted. He picked up
the voidwalker’s severed hand and frowned over it. An incision
splayed open the palm. Strands of coiled black metal in angular
patterns were intertwined within the fibers of muscle. “You saw his
gestures, how he used them to strengthen his thrall? I suspect some
device, and this is my evidence. Their abilities are utterly
different than anything the World Belt knows. It is based on
metal
instead of crystal and water, but the poison wrought
on their bodies would—”