Whill of Agora: Book 02 - A Quest of Kings (2 page)

“Why do you laugh, sire?” Nah’Zed asked with a smile.

Roakore pushed the thought aside and coughed. “Nothin’, nothin’, just admirin’ the door is all.”

Nah’Zed instantly went to one of her many scrolls. “Yes, the door. Shortly a band of Elves, as ye know, will be here to gift Roakore’s door, as it is to be named from this day forth. They should be here a’fore midday, sire.”

“Yes, yes, I be knowin’. It’s to be a great gift, it is, from me friend Zerafin. They say it’ll take more than a week, it will, en’ more than fifty Elves’ll be helpen’.” Roakore said with wide eyes as he continued to inspect the vast door.

“Yes, sire, about the Elves, their lodging has been arranged and—”

“Bah, I be knowin’. I told ye, don’t be tellin’ me everythin’ that be happenin’. I got me own worries and lists. If what needs to be done is gettin’ done, then ye be doin’ yer job, en’ I don’t need to be knowin’ yer doin’ it, ‘cause when you ain’t, I’ll be knowin’, understand?”

Nah’Zed scribbled furiously on her scroll and nodded. “Yes, sire.”

Roakore sighed. “And you don’t need to be writin’ down everythin’ I… bah, never mind.”

Zerafin looked upon his seemingly sleeping sister as she lay upon soft silk cushions next to the quiet river. Their
mother knelt beside her, gently stroking her unresponsive daughter’s forehead. Zerafin could hardly stand her gaze as she looked upon him from his sister’s side. Though it was a loving gaze, he felt undeserving of such affection; he had failed.

He and his sister had faced Eadon, and Avriel had done what she felt was right in the moment to save Whill. She had tried to perform the dying curse. She had been successful in a sense; she had unleashed all of her power and utterly destroyed the ship while protecting those she meant to protect, and she had attacked Eadon with blinding power. But Eadon was not hurt, and he had even managed to capture Avriel’s departing soul and cause her body to remain alive.

He is indeed powerful. What chance do we have against one such as he?
thought Zerafin as he turned from his mother’s gaze.

I know what you would say, sister: Whill is our chance. Whill shall defeat him, and we will once again be able to return to our homeland. But how? Whill is lost to us. For these last six months, there has been no word from our spies, not a whisper of his whereabouts. The enemy has him, and he is likely dead, and we are likely doomed to suffer the same fate as Drindellia, our homeland. Eadon and his horde will scorch this land and kill until nothing is left but ashes and smoke and the fires of evil
.

But if Whill is dead, why does Avriel remain alive? Eadon has no use for her other than to bend Whill to his own will
.
He could be saving her to force surrender, but, no, Eadon has no interest in surrender. He wishes only to defeat violently as he did in Drindellia. So the riddle remains—why is Avriel alive? The fact that the attacks have not yet begun in full and that Eadon has not presented himself to either the Dwarves or humans would suggest that Eadon has not yet succeeded. Surely he has not found the sword of Adimorda. Though neither have we
.

I believe the prophecy. I have to; without it, there is no hope. If the prophecy is to come true, then Whill must be the one to find the sword, and thus, Eadon cannot find it without Whill alive. But Eadon cannot wield the sword—no Elf can—it was made so that no Elf could wield it
.

This thought process had been played out by Zerafin for months and was being pondered by a great many wiser and older Elves than himself. Still, no one had come to a convincing conclusion. If Eadon’s only threat was Whill in possession of the sword Adimorda, why would he not simply kill Whill? Many conclusions had been thought up. The most popular was that Whill was dead and Eadon kept Avriel’s soul from departing and killing her body simply to confuse his enemy, and if that was indeed the case, it was working. Another theory was that Eadon wanted to use Whill to find the sword and somehow harness the great power within it. A new thought had come recently from his own mother—an idea so strange it would not leave Zerafin’s mind.

“What if Eadon believes the prophecy as we do?” his mother had asked.

Zerafin had looked upon his mother in astonishment and wonder. She’d stood before him with her back to the setting sun, beautiful even in her age.

Zerafin’s mother, the queen of Drindellia, widow to the fallen king of the Elves of the Sun, had let herself naturally age since the passing of her husband. To a human, she would look about seventy but with a straight back and strong muscle tone. She had declared that her beauty was for her husband only and it would no longer exist if he did not. But Zerafin still found her beautiful, because beneath her gray hair and lined skin, he saw her strength, her majesty, and her great power.

She had raised an eyebrow. “Well? Suppose that Eadon believes that Whill shall kill him, destroy him as the prophecy says. What if he believes it and also wishes it to happen?”

Zerafin had thought for a moment, and his brow had shown his confusion. “But why would Eadon want the prophecy to come to be?’

Why indeed
? Zerafin asked himself, still staring at Avriel.
The answer to that question is the answer to the riddle. If Eadon seeks death, he could easily find it himself as so many Elves have done before him. It makes no sense
.

One thing was clear to Zerafin. If Avriel lived then there was a good chance that Whill did also. It was time
for the vigil to end. If Avriel was to be saved, Whill had to be found and freed.

The elders had agreed that the top priority was the preparation for the final war and the finding of Whill. Zerafin had spent five months in isolation within the woods of Elladrindellia. He and his sister’s mission had been to bring Whill back to Elladrindellia alive, so that he might begin his training in the ways of the Elves of the Sun and become what he was meant to be, their last hope. In his despair upon arriving with the broken Avriel, Zerafin had begged the elders to give him an army and send him against Eadon and the entire might of the Draggard and Dark Elves. They had denied his request.

Preparations for war had begun, such as had not been seen since the final battle of Drindellia. Elladrindellia was a vast land, home to more than twenty thousand Elves. All but a thousand were born there after the coming of the Elves across the great oceans. In those five hundred years, they had thrived. The once-barren land was now forested and rich and dense. The Elves thrived there as they always did, as they always would, due to their great relationship with the elements and nature.

For more than four hundred years, until the recent Draggard wars, the Elves had lived in peace, storing their collective energy, waiting. Now the time had come. Their power was rested, their energy saved. Next
to nothing had been used to fight in the recent wars in which they were always aided by humans. Soon the Dark Elves would know the power of the sleeping Elves of the Sun. All knew that though Whill was the supposed savior, the Elves of Elladrindellia would give the Dark Elves a fight not easily won, if won at all. Some elders dismissed the prophecy of Whill altogether, thinking they could win without him. Others thought they were doomed as they had always been and believed it to be a curse of the ancients.

Of the more than twenty thousand Elladrindellia Elves, four thousand showed proficiency in the arts, and of those, more than three thousand were masters of at least one school of learning. The other fifteen thousand were no different than the average human, though with more advanced gifts and abilities. But they were the power behind the soldiers or Nanji, as they were called by the Elves. While the Nanji trained day in and day out, the others, the Enta, took one day out of three to pour their energy into the blades of the Nanji or the various stones and crystals used to harness such power. For more than four hundred years, the power had been accumulating to be used not only in the individual blades but also in one particular blade, Nifarez, the blade of Zerafin.

Given the task of finding Whill and bringing him back safely, the Elves had endowing Zerafin’s blade with the power and strength of more than one thousand
Elves—each having given their energy for more than four hundred years. Zerafin’s blade had been made more powerful than any yet known in Elladrindellia, a power truly unknown to anyone. The issue of the offering of power had been a great debate lasting more than a week. But Zerafin had proven himself time and again in the Draggard wars, and even when being tempted by the Dark Elves, he had proven righteous. Many had given their consent simply for the fact that he was the lost king’s son and heir.

Zerafin looked upon his sister, his jaw clenching. He had come from the woods prepared for the task at hand. On this, the day before the offering of the blade and the beginning of his quest, he was ready; he was anxious, and what a curse it would be to stand against him in battle in the days and weeks ahead.

CHAPTER TWO

The Prisoner and the
Assassin

W
hill had not eaten in months; he had drunk only his own blood. His captors kept him alive with the same energy they used to torture him and revive him. How long he had been within the dungeons he did not know. His life beyond the dark, damp dungeon walls now seemed a fantasy. These times of rest, alone in his small cell, were torture far worse than that of any blade. The silence was maddening, the anticipation of the torture to come, unbearable. They would not come for him sometimes for days, and other times, they would give him only a few hours’ reprieve. His anxiety outweighed his physical pain, which he had become accustomed to. The wounds would be healed before they killed him, but his mental pain was never healed.

The torture was not always to his body; indeed, physical pain was a reprieve from the mental torture. The vicious Dark Elves were masters of mental torture, bombarding Whill’s mind with horrific scenes. Terrible illusions played out in his mind—images of himself killing innocent men, women, and children alike. In these twisted visions, Whill had seen himself commit the most heinous acts imaginable. But the most effective and painful torture was that of hope. Occasionally Eadon had created the illusion that Whill was with Avriel. Whill would awaken next to a stream within a forest of dancing light, and she would come to him. In her arms he found peace, love, and silence. For days the fantasy would play out, until finally, violently, the illusion would end.

Now, Whill hung from his shackles, which cut sharply into his flesh. The only things within his dark, dank cell were the echoed cries of fellow prisoners. He did not feel the shackles burning into his skin, nor did he hear the cries. In his mind, he was within the gardens of Kell-Torey, seated across from Avriel and Zerafin. He had blocked his mind from the world completely, living within his meditation. After so many months of torture and mental probing, he had finally snapped. He created massive mental walls, a fortress of willpower, which, to his torturer’s surprise, was thus far impenetrable.

Remember, it is not the rock that you are moving or the water that you are controlling at your will. It is the Keye within the
vessel; it is to the spirit of energy within all things that we connect
. Avriel had spoken the words, and Whill had taken them in, but he did not register their meaning at the time. Now, in his defensive coma, he took in every word. She spoke to him from her heart stone, which he now wore beneath his skin and muscle, against his breastbone.

He remembered that her spirit had been taken by Eadon just before the great explosion that had destroyed his ship and killed his friends. That thought he could not bear, and he fled from it, returning his mind to the distant garden, to Avriel and the sun in her raven hair.

“How long has he been in this condition?” Eadon asked Velkarell.

The Dark Elf torturer turned his tattooed face from Whill to Eadon. “Nine days, lord. He has built a mental wall.”

Eadon’s thin eyebrows perked. “Really? This is sooner than I thought.”

Velkarell walked toward Whill and punched him in the face. Whill’s head flew back, and blood poured from his nose for a moment; otherwise, he did not respond. Instead, he laughed in his dream state. Velkarell presented his fist to Eadon. The Dark Elf’s knuckles were sizzling as if acid had been applied to them. The melted flesh dissolved from his knuckles all the way to his wrist. Velkarell did not grimace from the pain; instead, he
closed his eyes, and in seconds, the skin returned to normal.

“As you can see, the human has made pain pleasure, and his body has gone into a lethal, self-preserving mode.”

Eadon smiled and took in a long breath. “How long did it take you to master the ways of self-molding?”

The Dark Elf torturer looked to Whill with slow-burning resentment in his eyes, and grudgingly, he answered, “Fifty years.”

Eadon walked close to Whill and studied his face. “And Whill is but twenty years old. Already he can heal himself and others; already he can drain the energy of his victims, and already he is as advanced as a five-hundred-year-old Elf.”