Warrior of the Void Read online

  "But too far to the good," Braxton suggested, trying to grasp what Zyken was saying.

  Zyken nodded, pleased that Braxton was getting it. "First, I want you to know that you alone did what all three of us tried to do centuries ago. We tried to destroy the demon but could only trap him."

  "If I would have trapped him, his weight would still be on the scales," said Braxton. "By destroying him, the scales tipped too far the other way?"

  Zyken smiled. He knew then Braxton was brighter than he looked. "To say too far would be wrong. More accurately, the scales tipped just far enough for them to go bouncing back and forth, trying to settle on a final resting point. They tipped far enough for several good things to happen, some that might be very bad later. One of these things is the void child you created with Nixy."

  He leaned forward and held a hand up to stay Braxton's words. "A child, a thing of innocence and beauty, is the ultimate good, but a child born of the void’s magic has to be both good and evil."

  Braxton started to speak again, but Zyken shook his finger so that he could finish. "So, this child of magic destined to be of good nature was conceived and the balance must be kept, and somehow it has. While the scales were tipped to the side of good, another child was conceived in the void. And even though the conception of a child is a good thing, this other will be born into a world of hate and destruction. It will be a child of evil. The opposite of the son or daughter you seeded in this woman named Nixy."

  "It has already happened?" Braxton asked. "How could you know such a thing?"

  "Yes and no," said Zyken. "Yes, both have been conceived, and no, neither child has been born."

  "But what does that have to do with me?" Braxton asked. "Are we supposed to kill this child before it's born? I don't think I could do that."

  "No, Braxton, you must kill the child's father. You helped create him when you attacked him on the plains. He is the one who tore your soul and ripped the white falcon from you. He will not stop until Drar is freed and you are destroyed."

  Zyken-Whay put his elbows on his knees and looked deeply into Braxton's eyes. "This thing is after you. It is hunting you, and sooner or later, it will find you, for it is of the void just as we are. Right now, the scales are moving up and down, back and forth. They are trying to decide where to settle. If I could help you more, I would, but I have battles of my own to fight. At the outer fringes, the loss of Pharark has caused the cusp to bulge and stretch to near breaking. I cannot allow that to happen, but I will aid you when and where I can. I will also teach Chureal what I can through the ring."

  "But who is going to teach me?" Braxton asked. "Chureal already knows more than I do."

  "No, she can do more than you can, but she knows only what we teach her." Zyken-Whay tossed Braxton a skin, and when Braxton sipped from it, the potency of the fine, plum tasting brandy nearly choked him. The sweetness and the way it felt sliding down his throat and coursing through his body was otherworldly.

  "What you lack right now, the Rokkan will teach you. He is a great educator if you can keep from getting killed by him. But it will not come as a school lesson, Braxton. The Rokkan won’t recognize you, or respect you. You are not complete."

  Braxton's head was starting to spin, he wasn't sure if it was from the brandy or something else, but he knew they were about to face the Rokkan on the Island of Skorch. Zyken's smiling face began to fade from him and the room slowly turned from gold and grey to the empty black nothingness of the void.

  "Destroy the thing that ripped at your soul. Only then can we destroy the Drar. The Rokkan will let you know what you need to do, but time is running short," Zyken-Whay said as he and his voice continued to fade away. “I will see you again, brother.”

  "Goodbye, Lord Braxton," he heard Daisy hiss from behind her closed eyes.

  "Wait!" Braxton shouted into the blackness. "What is the Rokkan? How do I defeat it?"

  "You cannot defeat the Rokkan." Zyken's laughing voice trailed away into nothingness.

  "Wait!" Braxton yelled, and found that he'd woken Cryelos and Chureal yet again. Zyken and the void dream were gone.

  "Go to sleep." Cryelos growled.

  "He does that to me, too," Chureal mumbled groggily. "Daisy said that he–-um-–he—" she fell back asleep before she could finish the thought, and Braxton had to laugh to himself. He took a sip from the skin Cryelos had given him, expecting to taste watered wine, but nearly choked when the sharp bite of the plum liquor burned his throat.

  While he lay there, trying to drift back into slumber, he remembered Zyken saying he had helped create the striped-headed man-thing that ripped the white falcon from his soul. He couldn't begin to fathom how that happened, or worse, what kind of vile creature it had mated with to conceive a child that’s only destiny was darkness and evil.

  Chapter Twenty

  "This is just plain foolishness," Cryelos said to Braxton when he first saw the boat. Braxton had to admit it was small, about half the size he'd envisioned, and it sat horribly low in the water. The two steel clad knights sat in the middle by the oarlocks, patiently waiting for the others. The bundles of torches, coils of rope, rations, and casks of ale they'd purchased were loaded as well, and there was barely room for one more person, much less four. Braxton shook his head at the overeager knights. "Out of the boat and out of your armor," he said to them. He knew someone had to take control here. "You don't wear armor, at least not plate and chainmail armor while you're on a boat." He turned to Sneak but pointed at the two little boats back nearer to shore. They were tied to the long wooden dock running out through the grass to the deeper water. "Go see if you can get the man to sell us one of those to pack our supplies, and these twos armor, on."

  Sneak hid his laugh as he darted back down the plankway, then through the marshy grass and up the slight hill to the grassy of the village to find the man who owned the boats. He wouldn't be hard to locate, he had just taken possession of eleven horses to hold until they returned, or to keep if they didn't. Midsummer was the deadline, for Braxton figured if they hadn't returned and claimed their horses by then, it was too late anyway.

  "I'm not going onto that evil island without my armor," said Sir Jory defiantly. And after Sir Monster grunted a few times, he added, "And neither is he."

  "We aren’t going to take your armor away from you," Braxton soothed, "but if you fell out of the boat in that heavy steel, you'd sink to the bottom like a rock. Besides, it will only make it that much harder to row if you're wearing it."

  Sir Jory's expression reversed when he heard the words sink to the bottom. Clearly, he hadn't thought about that part of the deal. He explained it to Sir Monster, and added in a way that Braxton understood, that they wouldn't be fighting anything while they were on the boat anyway. Reluctantly, the two climbed out and began the long process of unbuckling and unclasping their heavy protective wear.

  More than once, Sir Jory cursed the day he was talked into traveling without a squire. Sir Monster's grunts could only be taken for agreement as each helped the other out of the tricky stuff while trying not to fall off the dock.

  Braxton, Cryelos, and Sneak decided not to tell the others about the grass eels, though over their morning meal, Hunter mentioned them and was quickly hushed. Hunter picked up quickly on the rouse and held his tongue. Braxton looked around and wondered where the plainsman was right now.

  Two of the bar wenches had accompanied him to bed last night, at least Sir Jory had hinted as much. Maybe he was just saying his goodbyes. The Skorch island hoodoo, as Braxton liked to think of it, was no laughing matter to anybody, especially Hunter and the people of the village. The plainsman feared the place, and it showed in his eyes when Chureal asked him why they called it the Island of Skorch. Thinking about Chureal, Braxton felt a sudden wave of panic and turned a circle searching the sky for her and Cobalt.

  No sooner had the group gotten past the crude wooden wall that separated the village from the Green Sea, and the marshy beginnings of the Lak
e of Life, had Cobalt come swooping by sending a herd of sheep and a poor shepherd scattering in a hundred directions at once.

  Braxton made the group help the terrified man gather his flock before allowing Cobalt to land and Chureal to fly off with him. Braxton had given her the ring back before leaving the room and made her promise to stay close while they were all on the boat. It irritated him that she was nowhere in sight now. He wished she would try harder to stay—

  His thoughts were pulled from Chureal by the sight of Hunter, Sneak, and a young boy of maybe ten or twelve summers, picking their way down the shore to where the wooden dock began.

  The two knights, now unarmored and sweating from the removal of so much steel, looked far less intimidating than they had just moments before. They began helping Cryelos unload the bundles of supplies they brought from Grey Rock and the other things that they'd purchased in the village.

  Braxton breathed a deep sigh when he saw Cobalt in the distance, though it was more a sigh of frustration than relief. At this rate, it would be midday before they were on their way, and the last thing he wanted was to get caught out on the lake in the dark before they got to the island.

  Braxton tried to relax by taking slow deep breaths while watching Hunter, Sneak, and the boy approach. He needed to get the group underway, and letting his frustration get the better of him wouldn't help. One–two–three deep breaths with his eyes closed tightly, and then he felt the warm sun eclipsed momentarily and knew that Cobalt and Chureal had just flown overhead. Still, he didn't open his eyes. He just calmly inhaled and exhaled as the sound of footsteps clacked up the dock towards him.

  "He says we can use his boat," Sneak said in a cautious tone that let Braxton know there was more to the deal than just a matter of money.

  Braxton opened his eyes and Hunter spoke. "He says he will guide us to the island and let us use his boat if the dragon girl, uh, Chureal will heal his mother."

  "We don't need another child to watch over," Braxton said, but stopped Hunter's translation to the boy before his pride would be hurt. "Ask him which boat is his," Braxton said, wondering how the boy knew Chureal could heal.

  Hunter pointed to the larger of the two boats tied to the dock. "Ask him what makes him think that Chureal can help his mother."

  Braxton waited patiently while they exchanged words with the fiercely determined boy in the harsh Perdunese language.

  "He says he knows that she healed people in a horse trading village after it was attacked," Hunter answered. "He says his uncle saw her do it with his own eyes."

  Braxton looked up and around the sky to find Chureal and, to his surprise, they swooped by again.

  Cryelos's loud girlish shriek and a wavy explosion of water nearly forty paces long erupted beside them. Apparently, the dragon had startled one of the massive grass eels lurking near the dock. No doubt it had been waiting for one of them to fall in. All of them, except the boy jumped into a defensive positions or had fallen flat to the dock in terror.

  Braxton looked up at the boy who was smiling down at him pointing out at the long wavering, snake-like wake made by the eel's hasty retreat.

  "Tell him I will send Chureal with him to heal his mother," Braxton said to Hunter, who had gone as pale as a freshly washed sheet. "We will pay him in gold for the boat, but he cannot come with us."

  While Hunter translated, Braxton couldn't help but notice that Sneak was halfway up the dock, clutching his heart and laughing at himself. Braxton turned to see Cryelos still lying flat in the bottom of the fishing boat, soaked from the eel's initial splash. The elf looked none too pleased. The two knights were trying to hide their fear, something Braxton realized the armor did for them most of the time. Still, they braved the edge of the dock to help Cryelos finish unloading.

  As soon as the boy agreed, Braxton reached out to Chureal in the void and explained the situation. He sent her, Cryelos, and Sneak with the boy, because Cryelos was still visibly shaken by the grass eel, and Braxton hoped that the short time with land under his feet might relax the elf’s nerves, but Braxton couldn't blame his friend for being frightened. The last boat they shared was attacked by something far worse than a grass eel and nearly sank out in a deep sea. That thought made Braxton stop and wonder if his dream last night about being on the Luck of the Little might have been an omen. He forced the notion out of his head and helped Hunter and the knights load their gear into the boy's smaller boat.

  "Ten golden coins for this?" Sir Jory snorted to Hunter and Braxton who were handing things down to he and Sir Monster.

  "That's enough for three horses. Well, two good ones anyway," Hunter added. "The boy could buy himself a new boat twice this size and have silvers to spare."

  "He will take his Ma down to Kingsport and find himself a berth on a big boat to Ormandin if he's got any sense," the knight replied.

  "He has enough sense to help his mother and get three times what this tub is worth," Hunter said, showing his appreciation of the boy's negotiating skills. "I don't think we'll need to worry about him."

  Braxton could tell that Chureal was returning by the way Cobalt circled close, and then thumped down up by the land near the end of the dock.

  Chureal's shrill voice carried down to him from some place unseen and, moments later, he saw her struggling to run in her dwarven chainmail. Not too far behind her, Cryelos and Sneak took their time negotiating the marshy grass. Braxton figured with a half-laugh that Cryelos's proximity to the huge eel when it jolted away from the dock area had something to do with his friend's lack of haste.

  Nevertheless, within a turn of the glass, Chureal was remounted on Cobalt. The others were crammed into the fishing boat, all eyeing the little boy's raft that was tethered behind them as it bobbed and rolled with the slow powerful oar strokes provided by Sir Jory and Sir Monster. Not much later, the long wooden dock and the endless expanse of grassy shoreline began to fade.

  Several times, Sneak poked a long, straight, staff-like stick down to see how deep the water was. To Braxton's surprise, it was never more than a few feet deep. Around them, in large patches, grass still protruded from the water looking like small islands in the shallows.

  Just after midday, the water changed to a deep shade of blue and the grass disappeared completely.

  Several times, Braxton had to call out to Chureal to correct their direction toward the island and they all showed visible signs of relief that she was up there watching over them. It was strange being on a lake and not being able to see their destination.

  "Well, I suppose we're over the depths now," said Sneak as he pulled the stick out of the water. "Can't reach the bottom now, and probably won't from here on out."

  Cryelos was sitting in the back of the craft next to Braxton. Both faced backwards. The elf made a funny gulping sound that echoed across the water and punctuated the nervousness they all felt.

  Only the knights seemed not to notice, but Braxton thought it was only because they were in some sort of silent competition at the oars. Sir Monster seemed to be winning because they boat kept turning slightly to Sir Jory's side, and Braxton had to correct their direction with the hand tiller mounted between him and Cryelos.

  Hunter passed around a skin of watered wine and pieces of dry salted buffal that he'd purchased in the village. Then he surprised them all with a rower's song that forced the oars to hit the water to its rhythm, thus straightened their course, as well as lifting their spirits the rest of the afternoon.

  The bottom of the sun was just beginning to touch the horizon when Sneak called out, "Island ahead."

  "It's land ahead," Sir Jory corrected. "Not island ahead."

  "It's land ho," Cryelos corrected them both.

  "But it's not the land, it's an island," Sneak retorted stubbornly.

  "The whole of the land we just left is an island," Sir Jory snorted. "It's just a great big island surrounded by sea."

  "The correct call is, ‘Land ho.’" Cryelos shook his head and chuckled. "No matter if it'
s a little island or a big island. A proper sailor calls, ‘Land ho.’"

  Sir Jory grunted at Hunter and looked as if he was about to say something to Sneak when Cryelos stood up suddenly, which was startling enough within itself, but was even more so because he nearly tipped the boat over. He pointed and yelled and held on to Braxton's shoulder with a mighty grip.

  "By Arbor, what is that?" He pointed insistently at something that only he could see. "Blessed Arbor, what is it?" He started to stretch to his tipped toes to see better, then sat down suddenly to keep from tumbling over the side.

  Hunter stood at the front of the boat looking backwards, put his hand over his eyes, as if in salute, to shield them from the sun's low angled glare. His voice was clearly nervous when he said, "I don't know, but It's ten times the size of that grass eel we saw, and coming toward us from behind." His eyes met Braxton's, who had to crane his neck over his shoulder to see the front of the craft. "It's coming quickly."

  "Row! Row! Row!" Cryelos yelled to the knights. "Row. Row faster."

  Braxton stood to see what Cryelos was looking at and, immediately, his heart fluttered through his ribcage. A row of triangular fins was weaving sinuously to and fro behind them. Whatever it was, it was gaining on them and looking bigger with each passing breath. The fins were growing so much bigger that Braxton was sure that whatever was connected to them was rising to the surface as well as moving at them. He couldn't help but picture a big river pike coming up behind a slow swimming trout in the river back home. It was a sight he’d witnessed several times, and not once had the trout survived.

  "It will get the supply boat first," said Hunter, clearly trying to keep his voice from getting too excited. "Pull in the slack, and I'll hop over and fetch my bow."