Warrior of the Void Page 13

  The ogres broke and ran, leaving the angry giant untended. It took two steps following them whipping at them with the huge chain still shackled to his right wrist. Chureal and Cobalt sped after them, and while the dragon played cat and mouse with the terrified ogres, taking his time and either hauling them into the air and dropping them, or scorching them in their tracks, Chureal melted away the iron bindings from the giant, all save for the one he was using like a whip to break and crush those who had just been his captors.

  Chureal would have melted that one away, too, if the giant would have held still long enough, Braxton was sure of it.

  How did Cobalt avoid being stunned by her? Braxton asked her with his mind.

  I stuffed his ear holes full with soft material, Chureal smirked, I tried to tell you I had a better plan, but you wouldn’t listen.

  A shout from below and behind him came from the bailey yard. Braxton turned and saw about forty worn and bloody men standing ready, thinking that the ogres were still coming. Braxton was about to tell them otherwise when Lord Amicuss did it for him.

  "Fled! They fled!" the lord yelled. "They're running like cowards from a little girl, no less." He turned toward them and thrust a gauntleted fist into the air.

  "Like cowards, they fled a little girl and her dragon." Cheers broke out across the walls, but not as many as Braxton or Lord Amicuss expected to hear. They met eyes, and then surveyed the dead and dying. Both men shook their heads, for more than half those on the wall had lost their lives.

  "Help me up damn ya," the old man who'd kept Braxton from going over the edge said. Braxton did so and saw that he had a bad gash across his thigh.

  It looked like he'd made the wound himself with the ax he still held in his white knuckled grasp. But Braxton didn't have any time to say anything about it because the sound of more fighting rang out, and it was coming from beyond the keep where the caves that held the women and children were.

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the blink of an eye, the white falcon erupted from Braxton's chest and the old man Braxton had just helped up, stumbled back cursing, with a fresh wash of blood gushing down his leg. From his now seated position, the man clenched his eyes shut, terrified of the wizardry he'd just witnessed. The young man's form was still there, but when he cracked a lid to look, he could see through it as if it were made of mist. And the bird, well, nothing in his mind could explain the bird.

  Braxton circled high above the keep, trying to keep directly over the clamor of steel on steel and shouts of battle he was hearing. From the higher altitude, he could see the whole area of Grey Rock's bailey. There were dead everywhere. Some dressed in black, some in silks and fineries, some in chain and plate armor, and some clad in gray, the same color as the rocky structure around them.

  The dead humans wearing the fancy garments had been ripped and torn apart as if savaged by animals. The ones in armor looked like long dead heroes under the cloud dulled morning sun, but the rest looked to be made out of the same cold, dull stone as everything around them, like little statues toppled across the turf.

  He saw the source of the commotion now. A ring of guards had three or four darkons pinned against the cliff near where the natural stone was scalloped back into a shallow cavern. His first thought was why weren't the darkons climbing straight up the cliff, because they could, but then Braxton realized they couldn't climb where the wall had been cut back. They couldn't climb hanging upside down, or partially so.

  One of the enemy had a hostage, it was a little boy Braxton saw, and he banked on his feathery wings to get a better look. One of the guards loosed an arrow into one of the darkons, and Braxton saw that the boy was Russen, the servant who had cared for he and Cryelos when they had first arrived. The thing holding him was the one Braxton had attacked out in the Green Sea when the freed Sir Jory and Sammani. He was no regular darkon, for he was half again as thick and tall as he had been just a week or so before. From above, the scars on his head stood out like black snakes would in snow.

  The other darkon charged to the side in an attempt to get where the wall wasn't leaning out. He slashed the face of one of the guardsmen and spun him about so that he took the bolt another guard fired with his crossbow. He made it another three leaping steps, and then ten feet up the wall, before half a dozen arrows sprouted out of his side and back.

  Scarhead used the diversion to get away from them to the other side. He kept the arrows from flying his way by holding Russen as a shield over the vital areas of his body. Braxton circled low, and his vision focused tightly. He saw that Scarhead had one black eyeball, and remembered seeing Sir Jory remove the normal one that had been there before. He was edging his way toward the lower wall of the wood haven, and if he got there, Braxton knew, he would use his speed and climbing ability to be gone before the guards could stop him.

  Russen looked to be scared stiff. Seeing the boy yanked about in such a way angered Braxton so much that he decided to end it. Like an arrow shot from a bow, he dove straight at the unsuspecting scar-headed thing, whose attention was on the guardsmen he was holding at bay, and the low wall he was trying to reach. He took one, two, three steps and was leaping towards the top of the wall. Braxton could see blood caked all around his toothy mouth, and it looked that since he no longer needed Russen, and had now jumped into the forested area, he went to sink his teeth into the boy's neck. Just before they closed on the young man’s flesh, Braxton, in falcon form, raked his claws right down the thing’s face. They dug deep into his normal eye, and Braxton used the grip of his claws to stop his momentum. Scarhead dropped Russen, who fell hard, landing inside the Wood Haven.

  Braxton's talons ripped deep furrows into Scarhead's face straight down from his eyes, leaving him looking as if he were crying huge bloody tears.

  Braxton had intended to get both orbs, but he'd missed the blackened one. The other ran down his face like the yolk of a cracked egg.

  Braxton felt himself batted away by an unnatural strength. He went spinning in a cloud of white feathers. The last thing he saw was Scarhead running away. He screamed in pain and possibly rage, but he disappeared into the shadows unchecked.

  Back on the south wall, Braxton's human body crumpled into a heap at the feet of the terrified old man. He let out a yell of his own, but he was still in the void, or partially so. Not sure if he was bird or man, his mind reeled. He couldn't grab a mental hold in either form, and knew that the impact of Scarhead's fist might have done terrible damage to him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't bring himself out of the tumble.

  From a great distance, Chureal heard, or maybe felt, Braxton's pain. She heeled Cobalt back toward the keep, leaving the half-dozen ogres they'd been chasing to the fate of the chain-wielding giant. As they left, the giant yelled out and nodded a strange acknowledgment to them, as if thanking them for helping him break free. Cobalt answered with a shrieking roar, but then focused all his wing strength on finding the source of Braxton's pain-filled call. Chureal was surprised to feel her dragon's love for the Warrior of the Void Braxton had become, and she felt the dragon reach down deep for strength and speed to get he and Chureal there as quickly as possible.

  The pain was excruciating. Braxton had never felt anything like it. It wasn't only the physical pain of his broken and twisted arm and shoulder, it was deeper, as if the pain were in his soul. An oily burning tear, with heat that still lingered, throbbed deep inside his magical self. The falcon was no more, he knew by instinct, and he felt like his own life and all the magical power of the medallion was leaking out of some empty hole that was left by its absence.

  Another hole inside, Braxton thought as consciousness swirled away from him. Darblin Rockheart, my father and brothers, Sorrell and Vinston-Fret, and his beloved companion Big H were all holes in his soul. The image of Nixy's headless body landing in the snow at his feet was a hole bigger than the rest of them combined, and the pain of losing her and their unborn child almost swallowed up this new sensation. Oddly, his mind to
ld him that this current pain was a small thing in comparison, but the agony made him wonder why it hurt so bad? Mercifully, he was engulfed by blackness before any answers came.

  The blackness receded a few shades and the dim sparkling reflection of murky green water shone a thousand times over in tiny crystal droplets of the ice that surrounded him. It took him a moment to recognize where he was because he had never been here in the winter. It was the hidden cavern at the lake where he'd first found the medallion, the place he'd found himself several times since, a place that was peaceful and seemingly safe.

  His arm and shoulder ached, and he didn't think he could defend himself, even if his life depended on it.

  "Foolish boy," a familiar voice came from just above the surface of the water. It was Taerak's voice, and hearing it lifted him with a rush of encouragement.

  "Taerak?"

  "Who else would come to save your hide?"

  "Chureal would save me," Braxton said, almost defiantly.

  "Yes," the creature cocked its strange fishy head sideways, "she would save you if she could, that one." The creature gurgled out what might have been a laugh. "She loves you, and she could heal your physical wounds. She trusts you completely, she does, but some wounds just cannot be healed. That darkonian lord snatched a piece of your soul. That one is strong. Far stronger than all but the Drar himself."

  "And new to us," a different voice said from behind Braxton. Braxton whirled around only to have his breath snatched from his lungs as the pain from his should stabbed through him, but he saw the man, or elf, or gothican, or whatever he was sitting at the far edge of the cavern.

  His eyes were elven, wide, almond-shaped, and the same feral yellow of an owl, or a wolf's, maybe. He had long silvery hair, like Cryelos, but he was far too tall to be an elf. In fact, he was huge, like a gothican, or like some strange mixture of those three man-ish races.

  "Zyken-Whay," Taerak said respectfully. "It has been a long time."

  Braxton swallowed his pain. Zyken-Whay, he knew, was the third Warrior of the Void. The man stood. Braxton looked up at him, standing there with his hand resting on the pommel of a beautifully jeweled sword's hilt. He was so well-muscled that he might have been a carved statue, and with each slow breath he took, his chest threatened to stretch apart his doe-skin vest.

  When he saw the medallion, almost identical to his own, he thought to himself this is what a Warrior of the Void should look like. As soon as the thought left his mind, he felt unworthy and insignificant.

  "So, this is what future awaits me, Taerak?" Zyken asked jovially. "The glamorous life of a squid-fish in some isolated mountain lake."

  "You'll probably not be so lucky, Zyken-Whay." Taerak snorted. "You'll live on as an insect, or a frog, in some steamy swamp, I'm sure."

  Zyken laughed, then looked at Braxton. Braxton knew his expression was full of equal parts of pain and awe, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  "So, this is the one who killed Pharark." It was a statement not a question. Zyken-Whay stepped over, knelt, and put his hand on Braxton's broken shoulder. He spoke some words that were too quiet for Braxton to hear, but the effect of them, and his touch, charged his blood full of energy and leeched the pain of his wounds out through the firm grip. He was left feeling as if he'd never been wounded. The tear in his soul, though, suddenly began to burn horribly, and the pain of it spread through him like fire in a forest full of long dead trees. He couldn't stop as he leaned back his head and yelled out a long, low scream, which caused Taerak to splash away and Zyken to cringe.

  As his scream faded, so did the pain until, finally, he felt sweat emerging from every pore in his body.

  "This one is stronger than he looks," Braxton heard Zyken tell Taerak through the strange haze of consciousness he was in.

  "He never had time to learn," Taerak replied. "He stumbles around blindly and leaps off cliffs when there are stairs and ladders to take everywhere around him."

  "Like me?" Zyken asked. "You seem to forget he is barely a man. Eighteen years is a far cry from eight hundred."

  "Nor is three hundred some odd years eight hundred, Zyken, and you would do well to remember it. I have forgotten more than the both of you put together even know."

  "What of the girl?" Zyken asked. "She's barely been alive ten full summers. Could the jewel have made a mistake?"

  "Necessity forces even magic to react to the situation given," Taerak said and eased back closer to the shore. "She is smarter and stronger than you can imagine. As impossible as it sounds, the brutal nature of the jewel came as a relief to her."

  "I lost your journal," Braxton said weakly. His head was beginning to clear a little, and he wanted to at least explain why he had been stumbling so blindly, as Taerak had put it.

  "But not the maps," Taerak snorted angrily. "What sort of boy doesn't go straight for the X on the map?"

  "One who cares about people's lives more than treasure and adventure," Zyken came to Braxton's defense. "Though, I probably would have gone for the X myself."

  "You would've lost the maps with the journal," Taerak said. "Why haven't you sought out the Staff of Aevilin?"

  "I couldn't leave all of those women and children to the fate of the darkons and their ogres."

  The thing that was Taerak looked at him long and hard through black eyes. "Saving the servant girl and the knight, and Chureal's healing of the prince and princess of Ormandin, is what caused the darka to gain the true princess to use to bargain for the orb. If you would've left that situation alone, then the darka would never have gained anything the king desired enough to trade the orb for.

  "Granted, the prince and princess would be dead," Zyken said, but this time he didn't seem to be defending Braxton. "But two lives compared to thousands is nothing."

  "You will deal with the darka and the Drar, Braxton," Taerak said sternly. "You and Chureal, but you must hurry, for things more powerful are gathering at the cusp, and if they are let loose, times will grow darker than even Drar could imagine. There's no doubt the heart of evil will soon find a replacement to breach the boundary and lead them. I know it is not easy, Braxton Bray, and as much as I wish I could help you, I cannot. This thing I have become has become me, and it is growing harder and harder to find my way to you like this."

  "The mistakes you made were honorable. Those are the kind that must be made over and over again. But the one mistake you made that cannot be repeated is the child you quickened inside that girl."

  Braxton wasn't sure what that meant. He couldn't be talking about the baby Nixy never had, could he? But what else could it be?

  "I had almost forgotten." Zyken nodded. "A child conceived in the void is a dangerous thing. That child will be hunted by the darka once it is born."

  Braxton knew that it was he and Nixy's child they were talking about now. They had made love on a sinking ship and she had caused Braxton to go spinning into the void while doing so. The memory saddened him. "There's no need to worry," said Braxton. "Pharark killed her and the baby, before I finished him."

  "No, he didn't," said Taerak. "The girl and the child inside her still live."

  "There must be some mistake," Braxton protested. He'd seen Pharark bite off Nixy's head and crunch it between his massive teeth with his own two eyes. "I saw her die," he said with tears streaming down his cheeks.

  "You saw someone die, no doubt," Zyken-Whay said. "But Taerak is correct. I can feel the child's pulse in the void even now. As can all of those that know the void, both good and evil. You mustn't worry yourself about it, though, the child is in no danger until it is born."

  Don't worry about it? Braxton thought. Could it be? Could Nixy still be alive and his baby? But how?

  "Braxton." Taerak snorted. "You mustn't let this distract you from what you are doing. Find the Staff of Aevilin and help the elf do what must be done at the top of Mount Preal. You must stop the Drar from coming into power. If you fail, your child's life will be nothing but darkness, for the darka
will not stop until they have its heart to feed their master."

  "And when you face the Rokkan," Zyken-Whay said, "use not your magic, but your wits, for the power of the jewel will be useless against the ancient thing." Zyken touched Braxton's forehead with his index finger, and Braxton suddenly began to spin away from them, like he was falling through a tunnel. The circle at the end was closing like a focusing eye.

  Could Nixy really be alive? Braxton thought. Zyken-Whay's stern face looked at him as if he were looking down a well. "Give this to Chureal for me, and get yourself a dragon." The word dragon echoed and echoed until it became a high shrill sound, like a little girl's voice.

  "Braxton, Braxton." Like Chureal's voice, he realized.

  When he opened his eyes, she was there, standing over him. Behind her, Cobalt's bulky shape shaded him from an afternoon sun that had finally pierced through the clouds.

  "Braxton," she squealed with relief. "You're alive."

  And so is Nixy, he thought.

  He blinked a few times, and after a long moment of silence, he opened his hand.

  “This is for you,” he said to Chureal's confused delight. He handed her the tiny, white-gold ring, the object Zyken-Whay had asked him to give her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "You failed, Skallin, that is what you're telling me?" Prince Verdin raged down from his marble throne at the haggard and bloody scar-headed man kneeling on the floor before him.

  "My Prince," Darka-Xera said in a lusty, seductive voice from behind the throne. "He delivered us the princess. The vengeance was his to serve, not yours. He failed himself, and I think that is harder to swallow than if he had just failed you."