Dark King Of The North (Book 3) (24 page)

“Yes?”

“All of Verkain’s immediate opponents have been taken out of the scenario,” Belgad said. “Until the Western army and its mages become involved, there is no one to stand in Verkain’s way.”

“True,” Fortisquo said. “I doubt the Prisonlands’ wardens will put up much of a fight. Talented they may be, but they are not an organized military.”

Belgad’s flat gaze shifted outside again, to the cold stars above the city and the horizon. “And once Verkain is working with the East, there will be little to stop them from moving against the West.”

“I was for leaving, but you said no ...”

“I should be offering you an apology,” Belgad said. “The last few days I’ve been trying to find a way out of this mess without bringing Verkain’s wrath down upon our heads. I’ve been playing a game of wait-and-see, and it has failed us.”

“Then we ride with the Kobalans tomorrow, captains among their ranks.”

Belgad’s eyes returned to the fencing master. “You know me better than that.”

“Then what would you have us do?”

“I’m still working on a plan. But I can’t go through with Verkain’s war.”

“Why not?” Fortisquo asked. “It may pay well.”

“It will,” Belgad said with a smirk, “for a while. Then, once Verkain has enslaved the West and turned against the East, what do you think will happen?”

“I had not planned on living that long,” Fortisquo said. “Like the Prisonland wardens, I’m no soldier. I will die on the field, or I will flee when I see opportunity. I don’t believe either of us, any of us, will be alive much longer, a year at the most.”

“There is truth in your words,” Belgad said, “and anyone fortunate enough to survive the coming war will only become one of Verkain’s slaves in the end.”

“That’s if Verkain wins.”

“Even if he does not, the West is not strong enough to best both the Kobalans and the East. If Verkain should fall, the Eastern pontiff will control all of Ursia again.”

“Which still does not bode well for us.”

“Agreed,” Belgad said. “The only way to avoid this mess—”

“Is to slay Verkain,” Fortisquo finished.

Belgad nodded.

“You’re suggesting we should have been working with Darkbow and Tendbones all along,” Fortisquo said.

“My plans have gone awry,” Belgad said. “Joining Verkain in a war was never part of my design in traveling to Kobalos. Our situation is different now, and perhaps I am to blame in part. But I won’t help another man enslave me.”

Fortisquo sat up in his chair. “I am no patriot,” he said, “but I much prefer my life in Bond than the subjugation Verkain offers.”

Belgad grinned. “I, too. Why destroy Bond when there is so much gold to be made there?”

Fortisquo chuckled.

“We have to act,” Belgad said, “but if Verkain’s idiots catch word of this, we are both done for.”

The fencing master nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I don’t think I will ever forget how arbitrarily he killed Karitha.”

Belgad nodded agreement.

“Do you have a plan?” Fortisquo asked.

“I’m working on it. That’s why I’ve been pacing.”

“Speak to me,” Fortisquo said, leaning forward to place an elbow on a knee and a chin in a hand. “Allow an experienced assassin to help with your planning.”

***

Kron woke with a start, vaulting up from the ground as if he had been resting on hot coals. He glanced around the nave of the chapel, seeing little had changed. Rows of pews were knocked over or tossed aside. Bodies of Kobalan soldiers had been flung here and there, the throats and chests of the men torn open by the claws of the demon. The moon’s light still shifted through shattered windows, revealing Randall’s coffin atop the altar.

Kron glanced inside the casket.

There was no body.

Kron breathed in heavily. A missing Randall meant the healer might be alive somewhere, somehow.

Kron breathed in again, then wondered at his lungs taking in air. He had been broken. He should have been dead. But he no longer felt the wounds that had torn through his body.

He looked down at himself.

His cloak and shirt were torn and shredded in places, and dried blood darkened further his black garb, but he felt whole and unhurt.

He laughed. “Am I dreaming again?”

“It is no dream.”

Kron spun, staring from shadowy corner to corner, but caught no site of anyone stirring.

“Randall?” he asked the air.

A shadow moved at the far end of the church as a door creaked open to reveal a cloaked figure. Moonlight spilled around the person, outlining them in a hazy gloom.

Then the figure exited.

“Randall!” Kron took off at a run. He jumped a pew and skirted several others, skidding to a stop in front of the door.

He paused long enough to unsheath his sword.

Easing the door open a few inches, Kron looked outside. All he could make out were the tops of the marble steps that led down to the verdant park in front of the cathedral. Pushing the door further, Kron stepped outside. Before him stretched a white walkway that crossed the grassy yard.

Several Kobalan guards lay unconscious at the bottom of the stairs.

“Where are you?” Kron asked.

A figure cloaked in white slid from behind a column at the bottom of the ascent.

“Randall?” Kron asked, taking a step.

The figure lifted its head, tossing back its hood to reveal the pale features of the young healer.

To Kron’s eyes, his friend seemed changed. No longer did the frightened gaze of a boy rest below Randall’s brows. Now the young man bore a look of peace and of determination mixed with confidence.

The reborn healer motioned for his friend to join him.

Kron obliged, returning his weapon to its place on his back, then hurrying down the descent.

“What is happening?” Kron asked. “We should be dead.”

“But we are not,” Randall said.

“This has to be another dream.”

“It is not, and it is time for you to save another, body and soul.” Randall slowly turned and walked along the path of white gravel leading away from the church.

Kron followed. “I don’t understand. You were dead, and I’ve been dreaming nonsense.”

“They are not exactly dreams.” Randall continued to walk with his black-garbed companion at his side. “We conversed through magic, through our minds.”

“You told me Markwood is dead.”

“He is.”

“Stop,” Kron said.

Randall continued walking.

Kron halted, stamping a boot. “Stop!”

The healer ceased and turned to his friend.

Kron held out a hand. “I have a thousand questions.”

“We do not not have time for the answers.”

“I do not understand ... your survival,
my
survival, and what we are doing.”

“You are going to save Adara,” Randall explained. “I have other tasks to perform.”

“What tasks?”

“There are things I won’t tell, Kron, because it would change everything.”

“Where are we going? At least tell me that much.”

“You are going to remove Adara’s body from where it still hangs,” Randall said. “My whereabouts must remain a mystery. There are things I must do that you will not condone. Yet, they must be accomplished, and we do not have time for me to convince otherwise.”

Kron grimaced, not liking what he was hearing. “Can you tell me anything?”

“Ask, and I will try.”

Kron looked around, his mind searching for the right question out of a thousand possibilities. “Why didn’t the demon finish with me in the chapel?”

Randall grinned. “Because you were near my body.”

“I need more explanation.”

“I will be brief, as our time is short,” Randall said. “Kron, there is a force for good. Call it the Creator, if you will. It has chosen me, for whatever reason, to fulfill its works. This I learned while I was ... away. I also learned Verkain’s demons are no match against the powers of the Creator.”

“I am at a loss,” Kron said.

“It is rather a lot to explain here and now,” Randall said. “Further explanation will have to wait for a more appropriate time.”

Kron pushed ahead. “In my first dream, you said something about the face of Creation.”

Randall shook his head. “We do not have time for this.”

“I am trying to understand, but it is difficult when I’m not even sure you are you ... or that I’m alive!”

“The only thing mortals have to understand is that it is impossible for them to understand everything,” Randall said. “A little faith would go a long way for you, Kron Darkbow.”

Kron’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve seen what faith can do. A thousand years of faith has brought nothing but war and oppression.”

“The church is not faith. It is the will of men masquerading as faith. I’m speaking of
real
faith.”

“The only faith I have is in my sword and my skills,” Kron said. “You ask too much for me to abandon a lifetime of harsh reality for belief in nothing tangible.”

“My father’s soldiers march within hours,” Randall said. “If this happens, the prophecies will come true. Verkain will waste all enemies before him.”

Kron pointed at his friend. “You appear to have survived Verkain.”

“I am the sole exception,” Randall said, “and I will continue to be the sole exception unless I stop him.”

Kron glanced off to one side, staring across the grass at the hovels and buildings of Mogus Potere ringing the grounds of the church. His eyes told his tale. Kron Darkbow was a man who acted. It was time to act. Further questions and explanations could come later. “Tell me what needs to be done.”

“First, you will need protection.” Randall muttered a few words while waving a hand over the hilt of Kron’s sword.

***

From beneath a rain-drenched canopy stretched across the front of his tent, Captain Lendo shouted orders, pointing one soldier toward another tent and another soldier back to the city wall behind them. Then he turned and glanced at papers and maps on a field table, a flimsy unfolded workbench.

The captain lifted a sheet of paper and stared at the orders written in his lord’s hand. “Damn.”

“Not your favorite reading material?”

Lendo spun to find the swordsman Fortisquo standing just beneath one corner of the canopy, safely out of the drizzle.

“Lord Verkain wishes to ride at the front of the procession.” Lendo returned the paper to his makeshift desk.

“Aren’t you in charge of his personal bodyguards?” Fortisquo asked. “He should be well protected.”

The shaggy-bearded Lendo spat away from the tent into mud. “I am his solitary permanent guard. I take on others only for special details. Lord Verkain prefers it that way. He believes a bevy of soldiers around him would hamper his defending himself.”

“Makes sense for a mage.”

Captain Lendo’s visage remained dark. “But not for a king ... or a general.”

“True.”

“Did you want something?” Lendo asked. “I can’t imagine you tromped all the way from the castle through the mud for no reason.”

“Again, you speak the truth,” Fortisquo said, leaning nearer the captain. “I need to speak with you of a delicate matter.”

The Kobalan moved toward the swordsman so their voices would not need to carry so far. “What do you have to tell me?”

Fortisquo glanced around suspiciously, then returned his gaze to Lendo. “I fear there will be an attempt made on your lord’s life.”

Chapter Twenty Four

Kron moved among the soldiers without drawing a single eye. There were thousands of the Kobalans, heavy men sharpening weapons, tugging on armor, packing gear and performing the multitude of other tasks needed before an army could march.

Kron slunk past a campfire surrounded by a dozen men smearing black soot on their pale faces. He slipped through a group of young officers tightening saddle harnesses on their steeds. He circled a group of seated warriors running smooth stones along the edges of their swords.

A tall pole of wood loomed out of the darkness above a small fire, the flames barely flickering with the night’s rain dripping into them. Adara’s remains still hung there outside the city walls.

Kron paused, taking in the figure staked above him. The fire below the woman’s feet illuminated her white, sagging skin and shallow eyes.

Randall had promised Adara would be whole, but Kron spied the aging of death creeping into the body. The woman had been impaled and hanging for days, in the sun and now the rain, and her body was showing wear. Her eyes were sunk into her cheeks. The lips were dried, thin flakes of skin peeling away. The flesh of her hands and bare feet were like marble, cold and hard and run through with dark veins.

Knocking back the hood of his cloak, Kron allowed the rain to spit into his face.

Only days earlier, he had gone on a rampage after seeing Adara’s slim wrists and ankles nailed to that tree of death. Now he could only stare with flat eyes at what remained of her.

A near commotion brought him back to his senses. He glanced to one side of the circle of light created by Adara’s fire and spotted Captain Lendo, the man who had delivered Markwood to Verkain, and Fortisquo marching away from a tent. The captain was cursing loudly as he and the lanky assassin headed toward the South Gate.

Kron paid them no more mind. He was there on a mission, and he could not afford to have his thoughts dwelling elsewhere. According to Randall, Adara’s fate rested in Kron’s hands.

Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, Kron eased closer to the upright pole to one side of the flames. His head was even with the iron nails driven through Adara’s feet when he winced at the blood caked down the sides of the wooden beam.

Closing his eyes without thinking of what he was doing, Kron yanked a dagger from his belt. Unseeing, he ran one hand up the outside of Adara’s cold right ankle until he felt the nail’s head protruding.

He went to work.

He thanked Ashal the first nail came free easily, with little fuss and no more damage to the body.

Still with eyes shut, he felt for the nail in her other ankle. The iron peg quickly fell to join its blooded brother.