Vitiosi Dei (Heritage of the Blood Book 2) (16 page)

              First Eighthday

Serenity Valley

Institute of Learning

              Shawnrik was eating lunch and going over the last Eightday in his mind. Only an Eightday before he had been in the Giant village of Tranquility Mist. Going from that quiet, measured environment to the bustling, hectic atmosphere of the Institute had required quite the adjustment. Both places were good in their own ways, but he found himself missing the quiet of the village and the endless expanses for him to explore.

              He had learned so many things about this strange valley over the last Eightday, and he still wasn't sure that he believed them all. The first thing he had learned was probably the most obvious to anyone that lived, or had spent any amount of time in the valley. The walls that reached towards the sky and ended in darkness were the inner lining of an ancient volcano. Someone had long ago carved out and restructured the volcano so that they could hide the valley from prying eyes. Whose eyes Shawnrik didn't know, but whoever built it had done a good job.

              Verrian said that the entire ecosystem was self-contained, and that they had regularly scheduled rainfall. The sunlight was channeled and reflected into the valley, and on days that the sun wasn't out, they had large lights that were called Solar Simulators that provided illumination when needed. All of this was handled by something called a mainframe that was housed somewhere on the campus. Shawnrik had the feeling that there was a lot more about this wondrous valley that would stretch the limits of his imagination even further.

              Perhaps the most useful thing he had begun to learn this week was also the thing that frustrated him the most. He was beginning to understand the basics behind how a computer worked, but the thing still hurt his head whenever he thought about it. The usefulness of such a device couldn't be overstated, but trying to learn how to use one at the same time you are trying to learn your coursework was a daunting process. That's not even mentioning the fact that even though he
could
read and write, he wasn’t able to process the words at anywhere near the speeds that his fellow classmates could.

              Luckily, many of the computers were able to understand most of what he was saying, so if he was having an especially troubling time inputting a command he could ask the computer how it was done, or simply tell the computer what it was that he wished to accomplish. Many of the students simply told the computers what to do, but he felt like he should learn how to utilize these devices to their full potential, like he would with any tool or weapon at his disposal.

              Shawnrik had enjoyed most of his classes. His favorites so far surprised him, with Basic Mathematics and Mythology taking the lead. He enjoyed his other classes as well; he just liked those two more than the others. Any issues in his classes that he foresaw having either dealt with information he might not know that was expected for him to know or problems with other students, Rigael in particular. The young Stroml'Dier had still given Shawnrik no hints as to where all of his ire was coming from, but he figured that Rigael would get around to telling him sooner or later, and in one way or another.

              The only class that they had not yet been to was the one called Martial Arts, which took up the entire afternoon of Firstday. Shawnrik had looked up the course in the school's database earlier in the week, and what he had read interested him greatly. Ashur and Dunnagan had taught him several ways that he might be able to use his body as a weapon in a fight, but this discipline seemed to take some of those ideas to a whole new level.

              Today was the only day that the two of them had off to themselves, and neither of them knew what to do.

              “Do you have any material from any of your classes that you need to go over?” Verrian asked.

              “Not yet, I don't think. So far the concepts have been fairly easy to grasp, or were at least well enough explained that I was able to understand them. I think the only classes I might have trouble in that you don't take with me, are Metallurgy and Basic Mathematics, though I think Instructor Daymarr will be a very good instructor; I looked at some of the things further along in the coursework, and it just seems so foreign.”

              “I wish I could tell you that I understood where you are coming from, but I have grown up with numbers all of my life. I'm pretty sure my father taught me to add and subtract before he bothered trying to teach me how to speak,” Verrian said, only partly kidding.

              Shawnrik laughed, “Not too long ago I would have had no idea why that was funny, because I wouldn't have known what an accountant even did!”

              “That's true; it is still strange to me how different our lives have been,” Verrian said, sobering a little from his friend’s words. “So, what is it you think is going to be wrong with Metallurgy?”

              “It is a lot more complex than I ever considered that it would be. They use mathematical formulas for some of their alloys that I don't think I'm even going to be covering in Instructor Daymarr's Basic Mathematics course. At least I understand some of the basic principles from my time working in the smithy with Pedrial.”

              “That's your Grandfather, right?”

              “Yeah… it's still weird trying to think of him like that. To think that he could have told me about my mother all this...”

              A steady swaying of the room caught their attention, steadily growing in intensity.

              “What's going on?” Verrian asked.

              Shawnrik had no idea, but he heard several people shout, “Earthquake!”

              “Quick, we need to get to a doorway,” Verrian stated.

              By the time the two reached a doorway that was crowded with half a dozen other students, the shaking had stopped. A moment later, a loud noise was heard, accompanied by a much smaller vibration. They exited the building with the other students who had been eating lunch and saw a giant cloud of dust reaching towards the volcano's walls from the center of town.

              “I think the earthquake tore loose a piece of the inner wall. I hope no one died,” one of the kitchen staff said. “Well, there's nothing we can do to help, so either get back to lunch or go find something else to do.”

              Like many of the other students, Shawnrik and Verrian continued to stare towards the town. Knowing there was nothing they could do to help didn't stop them from wanting to go and help. After a short while, Verrian spoke.

              “I don't think I'm hungry anymore, Shawnrik. Let's go to the library.”

              Finding that Verrian was right and he no longer had an appetite either, Shawnrik nodded and followed his little friend.

First Eighthday

Continent of Terroval

Ruined City of Asylum

              “Report,” Stewart Cantel snapped as the young Sergeant entered the tent.

              “Sir,” Sergeant Tanner said, saluting. “We have scoured the area within several leagues of the city, with five teams heading directly towards the most likely taken routes, and we have found no trace of the Princess.”

              The High Commander returned the salute half halfheartedly. His fist slammed the table in front of him, resulting in several of the pins that had been in the map to bounce free, which caused a round of cursing as he tried to put the markers back where they had been.

              “No sign at all?” Nim said, stepping into the conversation as Stewart Cantel continued his litany of curses towards the map.

              “Correct, sir, not even an identifiable boot print. With the wave of refugees that have been going away and back into the city, the ground out there is awash in tracks, and there is no way to tell one from the other.”

              “They planned this well,” Nim said. "This was no spur of the moment snatch and grab."

              “Does knowing that help us in any way?” Ashur said from his seat at the side of the tent where he was pouring over dispatches.

              “Yes and no,” Nim said. “It helps in the way that we know that they have an established plan, thus they may utilize resources that might otherwise be unavailable. On the other hand, it could also mean that they realized that we might know some of those resources, so they may put them in motion simply to distract us.”

              “So what does that mean?” Ashur said with a sigh, setting the papers down. “We just give up and hope the Mages can locate her? Or we just wait until someone gives us a ransom note?”

              “Again, yes and no. I don't think wasting our soldiers on a fruitless search of the surrounding area is a good idea. Sending out patrols and missives to the outlying townships and cities like Freeport might give us results, however. I also think a small team, or teams, should be dispatched towards likely destinations in order to increase our chances of locating the Princess in transit.”

              “Fruitless search...” Ashur stood and began to yell, but the world buckled under his feet and he found himself sitting once again before the chair toppled over and left him staring up at the swaying tent poles above him.

              The world settled down once again a moment later. One of the legs on the map table had given out during the earthquake, and there was a pile of pins sticking out of the mat that had been laid beneath the table.

              “Nim is right,” the High Commander said, staring at the now useless table in front of him, treating the quake like a mild inconvenience.

              “But...” Ashur said.

              “No, he's right. We are looking for a tick on a Dragon, and we need to look under the scales.”

              “Alright, I'll take a team...” Nim began.

              “No, this happened under my watch, and I'm taking point,” Cantel replied.

              “You are the High Commander of the Protectorate, you can't just run off on a ghost hunt—no offense, Ashur,” Nim said as he picked up the table to see how cleanly the leg had broken off.

              “If I have to resign I will, but I am taking point in this search. She was taken not only from a Protectorate city, but from inside my encampment. There is no way that the nobles are going to let me keep my position if I am not the one to bring her back unharmed.”

              “He's right, Nim, the nobles are going to have a field day with this. If he goes back to Safeharbor, they are going to do everything they can to undermine his position.” Ashur pulled himself up from the floor to find that the dispatches he had been going through had been scattered by the quake.

              “Alright, who do you want to send, and where are you going first?” Nim asked, knowing that his friend leaving would mean more responsibility in the future for the rest of them.

              “Send what is left of the Vigilantes into Dracair territory and inform Erin and her group what happened. I know you have her out looking for any trace of Victor, but if her leads don't go anywhere she should divert her attention to finding the Princess.” Stewart Cantel began packing for the trip he was going to take, not looking at the three other men who stood in the tent with him. “If I am gone too long and Elyse and Adrian offer you the position of High Commander, Nim, I want you to take it. I know you don't want it and would rather do anything else, but that is why it should be you. Elyse would do fine at the job, but she doesn't have as devious a mind as we do. At the very least, be there to keep her out of trouble. As for me, I think my first stop in the search will be Freeport.”

Chapter 8

Drog’atol

Year: 3045 AGD

Month: New Year

First Eighthday

Continent of Terroval

Mine
 

              When he awoke, he nearly blacked out again as the manacles chafed the burned flesh of his forearms when he moved. Once the pain of the sudden movement began to subside, his forearms began to itch as if an army of ants had taken up residence under his skin. The intensity of the sensation was, in its own way, worse than the pain had been.

              Looking around, he noticed that the two Goblins were asleep nearby. He had no way of knowing how much time had passed since he had lost consciousness, not that it mattered all that much to him what time it was. Laying his head back he decided to let his companions rest. Distantly, he heard the reverberation of picks striking stone, but he knew that it would be days before any help would materialize.

              He sat there for quite some time, trying to come to terms with their predicament and attempting to ignore the constant itch resonating from underneath the blood red manacles. Finding a small amount of comfort in the fact that he was only in a minor amount of pain at the moment, he allowed his thoughts to drift, and once again fell into darkness.

             
“Does this hurt?”

              Holding back a gasp of pain, Dalton Alexander Theromvore just barely managed not to swear at the woman who had started his branch of the family tree some seven hundred years ago. “Why yes, Tyrdra, that does hurt.”

              “Tyrdra? You must be in pain; I don’t think you’ve ever called me anything but Greatest Grandmother.” She laid her hand upon his leg, eliciting the long line of expletives that he had been holding back. “It is definitely broken. Looks like a clean break. I could fix it for you, but I think the experience will be a good learning tool.”

              “Learning tool? On what? Enduring pain? We’ve already got courses like that at the academy.”

              “No, nothing so barbaric. This will simply be a lesson on why we don’t do foolhardy things in the middle of combat. There was absolutely no reason for you to slide across that table; it would have been just as quick to run around it, or jump the entire thing.” Tyrdra looked at him, her sea green eyes piercing into his skull.

              “Oh come on, how was I supposed to know that the board would be loose? What are the chances of that ever happening again?” Dalton complained.

              “The chances of it happening again become zero if you never do anything so foolish ever again. First of all, you put way too much momentum into that slide. If he would have turned around and shot you, it is likely that you wouldn’t have been able to do anything to stop him. That’s one of the reasons they don’t teach you to jump around and such foolish maneuvers in training, because it is extremely difficult to go on the defensive when your body is already going along a set path. Small, precise movements are the way to do battle. Every action should be well planned out in order to maximize your offensive and defensive potential.”

Tyrdra began to wrap his leg with a roll of cloth that she had pulled out of her pack. Each time the wrap made a full rotation around his leg it shot a small burst of pain through his system.
              “Okay,” Dalton said, panting between jolts of pain. “I promise that I’m not going to do anything stupid anymore, and I will follow my training to the letter from now on. Can you please just heal my leg now?”

“Oh, quit being such a hatchling,” Tyrdra said. “You know, it wasn’t that long ago that an injury like this could take months to heal. A clean break like this, you should be running around again by the end of the week. Each time your leg aches or gets itchy, it will drive home the fact that you need to think before you do something.”

“What are we going to do in the meantime? These hills are teeming with Orcs and Goblins, and I won’t be able to protect myself with a broken leg.” Dalton thought that he had her at that point, but a moment later she started flinging marble shaped projectiles at him. It only took him being hit by two of them to realize that if he didn’t do something he might get even more hurt. He scrambled backward and found a tree branch that he could use to intercept the small balls of force. He used one hand to continue pulling himself backward, aided by his good leg, and used his other hand to bat the projectiles away from his body.

“You seem to be able to defend yourself well enough,” Tyrdra said as she bent down to repack her supplies.

“You are crazy,” Dalton muttered

“We’re all crazy in different ways, you know,” Tyrdra replied with a wink. “What matters is that you are aware of your own special brand of crazy so that you can use its strengths and neutralize its weaknesses.”

“Is everything a lesson to you?” Dalton asked, using the tree to stand up on his good leg and using the branch that he had been using to defend himself moments before as an impromptu cane.

“The only time you should ever stop learning is when you are dead. The only time…”

Kid, wake up.

“Kid,” the smaller Goblin said, shaking his shoulder.

“I’m awake,” the boy replied, trying to remember who he was and where he was after his latest dream. It didn’t take him long to reach that unreachable spot in his mind. It was the place his mind always went to when he tried to remember who he was. Something always stopped his probing, though, and if he tried too hard to break through he would end up temporarily damaging other portions of his mind.

One day he had attempted to break through for most of a night, and the next morning he couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. His ears worked fine and he could hear the sounds they were making, but he couldn’t process them into words. It had taken three days for his headache to lessen, and a day later he began to comprehend what people were saying once again. Ever since that day, he had only very carefully probed the space where he felt his identity was kept secreted away from his consciousness.

He pulled his thoughts away from his internal problems and opened his eyes. The smaller Goblin sat about a foot away from him, clearly uncomfortable.

“Do you have a name?” he asked, surprising the Goblin.

“A name?” the Goblin replied.

“Ha,” the larger Goblin said, sitting up from where he had been laying quietly, conserving his strength. “We are slaves. Slaves are not worthy of names.”

“You must be called something,” he murmured.

“Drog’atol,” the smaller Goblin said. “It means without will.”

“But you have will, you are here, alive because of it.”

“Yes, we are alive, but we are not free. What good is will if you cannot use it?” the larger Goblin said. “We are slaves until we are no longer chained and can walk into the hills on our own. Until then, we are nothing more than tunnel rats, like you.”

“I am not a tunnel rat!” he yelled, standing for the first time since the manacles had burned his wrists. Instead of the piercing pain that he expected as he jostled his chains around, nothing but a dull ache accompanied the movement. This surprised him enough that he didn’t register that the Goblins had taken a step back when he suddenly stood. Probing the outer area where the manacles covered his skin, he found that the flesh was very sensitive, but no longer on fire. He attempted to look under the manacles at the skin beneath, but found that his swollen forearms had bonded with the blood red material.

“Perhaps someday that will be true,” the smaller Goblin said, “but until that day comes, you are Drog’atol, like us. For that day to come though, we need food and water. We talked while you were asleep, and we don’t think that the guards took the day's rations with them when they ran from the quake. They shouldn’t be very far away. If the three of us spread out on the path, we should be able to locate them.”

When they began moving farther into the tunnel, he noticed that the Goblins were moving slowly in a crouched position with their hands out in front of them. It was then that he realized that they couldn’t see, and that there was no light. He wondered why it was that he could see things down here clearly for some distance without any light, and almost asked his companions about it, but a small voice in his head warned him against it.

It didn’t take them long to make it back to the area that had been set up as their work station for that day. Sure enough, the supply packs were sitting right where the guards had set them down earlier that morning. Their slow crawl through the dark made it a long trek towards the packs, and he had to pull the chain a little several times to get the other two to head in the right direction, but they eventually made it. He brushed a lot of rock debris and dust off of the packs before opening them to see what they held. Inside of the first pack was a container that held dozens of compact bars of food: their usual work rations. The other pack, however, held a half dozen packages that contained dried meat, some sort of biscuit, and several different kinds of dried fruit.

Hanging off the side of each pack was a large bladder. The one that hung on the bag containing the workers' rations contained water, and the other contained something that smelled sickly sweet. They each took several swigs of water before taking one of the lunches that had been prepared for the guards. The boy had never had meat that wasn’t thrown into some other dish, so he savored the flavor of each bite. The biscuit was much softer than any of the ones that they had ever been served, and he found that some of the fruit was much too sweet for his taste buds.

              “Funny that it takes a cave in for me to have the best meal of my life,” he said to no one in particular.

              “While this stuff is good after the things we’ve been fed for the past year, if this is the best food you’ve ever eaten, then you, my young friend, have yet to truly live,” the smaller Goblin said. The larger Goblin grunted in agreement as he ate from his second package of food.

They had just settled down to rest when a slight breeze rustled the boy’s hair, catching his attention. Looking around to see where the breeze might have emanated from, he noticed a square hole a few feet off the ground near the next bend in the tunnel. It didn’t take long to convince his companions that they should check out the vent, all of them understanding that it could be a potential way for them to escape.

As they neared the hole, two things became immediately apparent to him. First, that he would not be able to reach the shaft without some assistance, and second, that there was very little chance that the larger of the two Goblins would fit in the vent. He was still hiding the fact that he could see clearly in the dark tunnels, so it took them a little while to “locate” the source of the breeze. Once they reached the vent, he had the Goblins help him into the shaft.

There was only a couple of feet of chain separating each of them, so he was limited in how far he could go into the shaft, but as he moved into the air vent he realized that it was a moot point anyway. Several feet ahead, a large rock had busted through the roof of the shaft, likely shaken free by the quake. Half of the vent remained clear, allowing air to come and go, but the hole was much too small for any of them to fit through.

Keeping up appearances, he moved into the vent as far as he could before he felt the chain go taut, the rock that had busted through the top of the vent was just out of reach. The Goblins seemed nearly blind in the darkness, however, so he knew that he was close enough that the two would never know the difference.