Dark King Of The North (Book 3) (13 page)

“My son should be along soon,” Verkain said.

At that, a pair of doors to the left of Verkain’s throne swung open with a groan, as of heavy stone scraping steel. The doors had been nearly invisible, built in such a manner as to appear part of the wall; a tapestry pulled to one side appeared as if it would hide the opening at other times.

Through the opening came two burly soldiers carrying a limp Randall between them.

Markwood nearly rushed forward as he took in the torn, dirty rags covering the young man’s bruised and scarred form. “What have you done to him?”

“He is my son,” Verkain said. “I do with him what I please.”

Markwood raised a fist as the two soldiers carried Randall toward his father. Another pair of soldiers appeared from one side of the room, these two carrying a sturdy and long oak table.

“Raise your fist all you want, wizard,” Verkain said to Markwood. “Go ahead and curse me, if you dare. It will do you no good. Your spells are useless here.”

The guards carrying the table placed their heavy burden in front of their king. Randall’s unmoving figure was then drug forward and slung upon the hard, flat top.

“You’re going to go through with this,” Markwood said as he slowly approached Verkain’s throne. “Why? Why would you kill your own son?”

“To end the suffering of the world.” Verkain unsheathed a gilded dagger from his belt.

***

Kron watched all from high above. He could not hear the words spoken, but could guess some of what was said.

At the sight of Verkain drawing the dagger, Kron’s right hand reached up to his shoulder to draw his sword while his left hand unwound his rope and grappling hook.

Sensing the time for action was approaching, the man in black looked over the row of three tall windows before him. There were no latches on the outside and none of the panes were open. He would have to break his way through when Markwood needed him. That suited him fine. There was nothing as thrilling as making an explosive appearance.

***

Verkain slid out of his chair and approached his unconscious son.

“Do not do this,” Markwood said.

“Or what?” Verkain’s eyes flashed on the wizard. “Your magic means nothing here.”

Markwood raised a finger and pointed at Verkain. Words older than time itself sprang from the the old man’s lips, words spoken boldly for all to hear.

The king of Kobalos laughed.

Markwood pointed the finger again and muttered the same words.

Nothing.

“You fool,” Verkain said. “I’ve deadened all potential magic within this hall for the night. Without your spells, you’re nothing but an old man, an old man who will soon wish he had stayed in Bond and not interfered in my concerns.”

The Kobalan king made a motion, a slice of one hand. Four of his men drew swords and surrounded the wizard.

Markwood glanced about slowly with his head hanging. Then he lunged, darting between two of his armored guards. He reached out and grabbed Randall by the shoulder.

It was too little too late. The four burly Kobalans fell upon the mage, smashing him down with the pommels of their swords. Within seconds the wizard was little more than a bleeding pile of flesh, his harsh breathing the only sign he remained alive.

“Take him to my personal dungeons,” Verkain said, waving a hand over the unconscious Markwood, “but he is not to be killed. It will delight me to spend hours introducing master Maslin to new levels of pain.”

Bishop Althgar had not moved from his seat during the commotion. Now he responded only with a grimace, as if he did not fully approve of the events unfolding before him.

The four soldiers grabbed Markwood by his limbs and drug him from the room, retreating the way Randall had been brought.

Verkain stood over his son, the dagger in his hand poised over the youth’s chest. He stared down and saw the healer’s eyes flutter.

“How appropriate,” the king said. “My son wakes for his own sacrifice.”

***

Kron tried not to panic. Whatever had happened below, it had obviously not gone the way Markwood had planned. Kron had not known what the mage would attempt, but he knew Markwood had had enough confidence in his own abilities to take on Verkain in a hall full of the king’s soldiers.

Apparently the old wizard had underestimated their enemy.

Knowing not what else to do, Kron went to work. He pulled back his sword and slammed the butt of its hilt against the glass.

The window did not shatter.

It did not even crack.

***

Randall’s eyes opened to stare up at his father, but the young healer was too battered and weak to attempt to protect himself. The grin on Verkain’s face reminded Randall of his father’s war demons, those plate-wearing monstrosities from hell.

Verkain leaned over his son and gently ran a hand through Randall’s brown hair. “I wanted you to know your death will not be in vain,” the king said. “You will be sacrificed to fulfill our destinies once more.”

“Why, father?” Randall managed to croak.

Verkain returned his hand to his side. Then he straightened and faced the hall of warriors and officers and the few members of Kobalan nobility allowed to attend the event. He raised the dagger over Randall’s throat.

The king pointed to Bishop Althgar. “With the official witness of an ambassador of the Holy Ursian Empire, and the death of the last of my offspring, I proclaim myself Dark King of the North!”

The soldiers hailed their king, shouting his name in orderly fashion. “Verkain! Verkain! Verkain!”

“Thus we welcome in the last of days,” Verkain yelled, “and we welcome the return of  Ashal!”

Once more the invisible drums boomed, shaking the walls.

The Kobalan lord leaned over his son again. “I apologize for the pain, but if you truly wanted to end this, it lies within your power.”

Randall’s eyes asked what his lips could not mutter.
How? How could I end this terror?

Verkain stood straight again, the grin on his face growing wider, his dagger hanging just above Randall’s bared neck.

The soldiers continued to chant their leader’s name, and the drums still blared, the sounds reverberating throughout the hall in a rising crescendo not unlike thunder.

***

Kron panicked. He hammered his sword into the glass several more times, but there was not even a crack or dent. Sheathing the weapon, he slammed a shoulder into a window. Still, nothing.

Looking behind himself, Kron realized the ledge was not wide enough to get a running start. He eased to one side of the nearest window, then kicked at the glass. The pane held solid, and Kron rebounded, teetering on the brink of falling.

He grabbed an edge of masonry sticking out from the wall. It wasn’t much of a grip, but it was enough to keep him from plummeting to his death.

Worried he already might be too late, Kron dared another glance inside.

***

Verkain held the cold blade against the warm skin of Randall's neck, then the lord of Kobalos shut his eyes. “I call upon my own will to guide my hand,” he said, though the din of the room was too much for anyone to hear his words.

Randall too closed his eyes and began to mumble words beneath his breath.

Verkain’s eyes snapped opened and glared. “No incantation will save you now.”

The king stabbed deep, cutting into the youth’s throat.

***

In a frenzy, Kron hammered with everything he had, his sword, his dagger, his fists, his booted feet. Nothing would crack the yellow, magic glass.

***

The knife tore through the healer’s larynx as Verkain continued to slide the blade from one side of the neck to the other, nearly severing the head from the body.

Randall’s body arched, the young man’s feet and shoulders all that remained touching the table. Then he collapsed with a gasp and a gurgle as blood splashed Verkain’s robes.

The body unmoving, more blood slid forth out of the gaping wound as if syrup, pooling around the neck and head, then creeping its way to the edges of the table to drip off the sides to form another pool below.

“It is done.” Verkain withdrew the dagger and moved away from the body.

“Do you wish me to perform last rites?” Bishop Althgar asked from his seat.

Verkain turned to the old man, thinking Althgar looked like a feverish frog with his wide, yellow eyes. “No need,” he said. “It would be most ironic to have the Ashalite rites provided for this one.”

Chapter Fourteen

Kron sat back on his heels, stunned.

Randall’s throat had been carved open as if by a fishmonger cleaning a carp. Of all the deaths Kron had beheld since returning to Bond, the healer’s was the most destructive to his soul. Randall had never harmed anyone, and had had no intentions of harming anyone. The healer was the purest, most blameless person Kron had ever known.

The man in black collapsed, dropping to his knees on the window’s wide ledge. His back slid against the glass behind him and his head sank between his shoulders. His eyes stared unblinking. Below him, gray smoke swirled up from chimneys to waltz away on the night’s breeze over squalid tenements, narrow brick streets and crooked alleys.

His breathing came as short gasps, the air inching its way throw the narrow gap of his lips.

For the first time in fifteen years, since the murders of his mother and father, Kron knew despair. He knew defeat. Even Adara’s death had not shaken him so.

Everyone was dead. Adara. Randall. Markwood soon. Wyck had died months ago.

There appeared to be no hope.

A single tear dropped from Kron’s left eye and haltingly struggled down his cheek to rest on the edge of his top lip.

He blinked, then stared some more over the city.

The blare of trumpets, far below, were not enough to stir him from his reverie.

The tear dripped from Kron’s mouth, catching on the back of a gloved hand.

He gritted his teeth and slammed his eyes closed, allowing the numbness and pain to turn to hate. It was his way. It was how he survived the world. Hate. Anger. Vengeance.

When his eyes opened again, he looked out, staring at the distant figure of a woman he could have loved. She still hung where he had last seen her, high upon a cross of oak. A ring of torches about the body highlighted her long, dark hair waving in the wind.

He clenched his fists. Then he opened his hands slowly. He was wrong to think he could have loved Adara because she never could have loved him, not as he was. She had told him, in the Prisonlands. She could never love a monster such as Kron Darkbow. She had not been able to deal with his darkness, his hate and anger and want for vengeance. So Kron had lost her before he had had her, all because he would not change.

He grimaced, sucking in air. He swallowed hard, tasting acid in the back of his throat.

Kron pulled his feet around to dangle over the ledge and the far drop to a cobbled street. He stared flatly at the round, pale moon overhead.

What should he do? Killing Verkain was the simple answer.

Kron shook himself. Killing Verkain would accomplish little. It would not bring back Randall or Adara or Wyck. Verkain’s death would only leave a gulf of power in Kobalos that would soon be filled by another, possibly even someone as deranged and dangerous as the nation’s current lord.

No. Revenge was not the key. Something more had to be accomplished than simple vengeance. A reckoning was in order.

A miniature grappling hook attached to a silk cord slipped from Kron’s belt. He looped the rope around a crenalation and allowed himself to drop. He fell a good ways, nearly to the street below, before tightening his grip. The rope snapped with his sudden weight, then sent the man in black swinging through the darkness.

In one motion Kron flipped through the air and jerked the rope, loosening the cord and sending the hook plummeting to the ground. He landed on a rooftop and yanked, pulling rope and hook to him as he took off at a run, his sword and bow and quiver jingling on his back.

A yell from behind meant he had been spotted. He kept running. Within minutes he had jumped alleys and crossed a dozen roofs. He did not know where he was going, but the night air opened his mind, allowing his thoughts to run as fast as his footsteps.

***

“
Ash
!”

The boy spun around, staring with confused eyes at the woman calling his name.

“Ash, come here!”

He raised an eyebrow. Who was she in her plain white tunic? And why was she so concerned about him? And his name?
Was
it Ash? He couldn’t remember. His mind was atumble, as if he had only risen from bed and was trying to recall a distant dream that had slipped away from his mind.

“Please, baby, come away from there,” the woman said.

The boy glanced down at the ground, which seemed much closer than it should have. He saw he was also dressed in simple white, leather sandals tied around his feet separating him from the dirt beneath.

“Ash, baby, please.”

He looked up again. She was in her early thirties with lengthy gold hair flying about her face. Fear was worn into her features through groves in the flesh above her dark eyes.

“Do not listen to her, boy,” a new voice commanded, a sturdy voice. “Come to me!”

The lad looked to one side. There stood a man, tall and well built, sheltered in a skin of metal bronze with a golden sword in his hands, a helmet of black iron shielding his features.

“I know you,” the boy said.

A grin appeared beneath the chin of the helmet. “Of course you know me. Now come to your father.”

Father? Ash frowned and glanced to the woman. Was she his mother? She seemed vaguely familiar, but he recollected little of his mother. The woman who had given birth to him had died when he was young. Or had she? He didn’t know. His memories were awhirl, flittering on the edges of his mind’s eye.