Blood of the Earth

BLOOD OF THE EARTH

Copyright © 2012 by David A. Wells

All rights reserved.

Edited by Carol L. Wells

This is a work of fiction. Characters, events and organizations in this novel are creations of the author’s imagination.

www.SovereignOfTheSevenIsles.com

Chapter 1

“Darkness comes, My Love,” Chloe said, spinning into a ball of light.

Alexander scanned the debris field for any sign of a threat. Rubble lay in every direction. The wreckage was scattered haphazardly within the walls of the ancient city. Piles of

broken buildings were interspersed with a dozen large craters where Mage Gamaliel’s terrifying weapons of utter destruction had fallen.

Northport was completely obliterated. The devastation was so thorough that Alexander felt the weight of guilt bear down on him as he surveyed the remains of the once great city.

Over the generations, countless thousands of people had made this place their home, and in one moment of need Alexander had ordered their homes, shops, and communities destroyed.

And destroyed they were.

Little worth salvaging remained. The lumber was reduced to splinters and kindling, useless even as firewood. The stone was pulverized into gravel or dust. Scarcely a stone larger than a man’s head could be seen anywhere within the uneven field of broken homes.

All that remained intact was the outer wall.

In the distance a man stepped up on a high place in the field of detritus. His colors screamed out an alarm within Alexander’s psyche that was at once visceral and terrifying. It looked like a man and a creature of the netherworld inhabiting the same space. Alexander knew of only one such creature.

A shade.

Alexander drew the Thinblade and pointed toward the advancing enemy with his impossibly sharp sword.

“Enemy!” He shouted. “I think it’s a shade.”

Isabel gasped, then tipped her head back and closed her eyes, linking her mind to Slyder.

“There’re two more,” she said.

Suddenly, the man mixed with darkness disappeared, leaving just a hint of black smoke where he’d stood.

A fraction of a moment later, he reappeared about twenty feet closer. Alexander couldn’t quite be sure what he was seeing.

Then another man appeared on top of another pile of debris. He had the same tortured colors as the first man—like a man possessed by darkness.

A moment later a third man appeared just as the second man disappeared and reappeared almost instantly about twenty feet closer.

Alexander had seen magic, but this was something altogether different. He watched, mesmerized, as the three men advanced toward them, taking a few steps, then disappearing and almost instantly reappearing closer. They covered the distance quickly.

He’d decided to survey the damage done to Northport before returning to Blackstone Keep. The bulk of the army was moving north under his father’s command with only a legion of Rangers held in reserve on the outskirts of Northport.

Alexander intended to rebuild the vital port city, and quickly. The Rangers would play an important part in organizing the timber crews along the northern edge of the Great Forest. They knew the woods better than anyone, knew which trees to take and how to transport them from the forest to the city.

Mage Gamaliel had accompanied him to survey the damage, partly to see the results of his weapons and partly to lend his advice concerning the resources that would be necessary to rebuild. Mage Landi and Wizard Sark were there as well, along with Lieutenant Wyatt and the dozen remaining battle-tested Rangers that had served Alexander so well during his voyage to the Reishi Isle and Ithilian.

Jataan P’Tal and Boaberous Grudge shadowed Alexander, following him wherever he went, whether he asked them to or not. They remained quiet and unobtrusive, in the background, observing and protecting.

Isabel hadn’t left his side since the terrifying battle with the scourgling. While the weight of the world bore down on him and the war raged throughout the Seven Isles, he occasionally found himself feeling profoundly grateful for the terrible responsibility he’d been given, for the simple reason that it had brought Isabel into his life.

After having been separated from her for several months, he found that every moment he shared with her was a gift. Her presence soothed his soul and filled him with a deep and abiding joy.

As the enemy advanced, Isabel nocked an arrow.

“Why would all three shades come here?” Jack asked, frowning. “What do they want with us? Aren’t they supposed to be searching for the keystones?”

He’d been quietly observing from the background, as usual. Until Chloe’s warning they’d all been sharing a somber moment, taking in the utter destruction around them.

Alexander shook his head. “I don’t know, but all three of those men look like they have a demon inside them.”

Wizard Sark and Mage Landi started casting spells. Lieutenant Wyatt assembled his Rangers into a firing line; they waited with arrows at the ready. Jataan sauntered out in front of them all and took his position between danger and his charge, hands clasped lightly behind his back.

Boaberous dropped his war hammer and drew a javelin. Mage Gamaliel took out a slingshot and loaded it with a stone the size of a plum.

The three men drew nearer, each disappearing, leaving only a wispy hint of black smoke in their wake and then reappearing twenty feet closer, taking half a dozen steps before doing it again.

“Fire!” Lieutenant Wyatt commanded. His Rangers loosed a dozen arrows, dividing them evenly between the three men. All three took direct hits to the torso.

Kill shots.

All three shrieked with a mixture of human agony and demonic glee. Then all three disappeared and reappeared twenty feet closer. The arrows were gone and their wounds were healed.

“This might be a problem,” Alexander muttered.

Isabel sent an arrow at the possessed man in the middle and hit him cleanly, but he simply disappeared and then reappeared closer without so much as a trace of injury.

“I’ve never read an account of a shade wielding such magic,” Mage Gamaliel said, shaking his head. He quickly whipped his slingshot around twice and released the plum-sized stone at the nearest enemy. The stone sailed true and somewhere in midflight grew to the size of a pumpkin. It hit the enemy in the chest, crushing his ribs like a stone hurled from a catapult. He went down for a moment, but Alexander could still see his colors: darkness mingled with the living colors of a man.

Then he disappeared. Half a heartbeat later he reappeared, only closer, and without any damage from the punishing attack he’d just been dealt.

They were only a hundred feet away now. Boaberous threw a javelin, but before it found its mark, his target vanished, then reappeared closer.

Isabel dropped her bow and started casting a spell. Jack tossed his hood up and vanished from sight.

As one, the three enemy drew long, black daggers. Alexander saw at once that the blades were enchanted with some form of dark magic, though he couldn’t discern its purpose.

Blink, they vanished.

Wizard Sark transformed into a whirlwind.

Blink, they reappeared, only closer.

Fifty feet now.

Alexander could see the smug, tight grins they wore … like they knew something he didn’t.

Chloe spun into a ball of light. “I’m afraid, My Love,” she said in his mind.

“Be brave, Little One, and stay out of sight,” he replied through the link born of their bonding.

Mage Landi brought forth a creature like nothing Alexander had ever seen before. A luminescent cloud of white smoke eight or ten feet across. Lightning rippled and crackled within it, occasionally dancing across its surface in impossibly complex patterns. Landi directed it toward the advancing enemy. For a moment the cloud seemed to hesitate but then it moved with terrible speed, elongating into a horizontal column of smoke and shooting toward the nearest enemy like an arrow, engulfing the man mixed with darkness completely.

The struggle that ensued was a contest between light and dark. The silhouette of the enemy could just be seen within the cloud creature. He struggled to blink away, only to reappear within the cloud. Electricity played across the silhouette, and a distant shrieking could be heard from within.

The other two ignored the plight of their companion.

Sark, in the form of a whirlwind, bounded to the nearest one, drawing him up into his vortex, spinning him around and around and then throwing him violently away into the rubble. Before the man crashed into a mound of broken rock and splintered wood, he disappeared and then reappeared not fifteen feet in front of Jataan.

The man smiled at the battle mage with unrestrained malice.

“Master sends his love,” he said and then disappeared, leaving only wisps of blackness that quickly faded.

He reappeared behind Commander P’Tal and tried to stab him in the back, but Jataan was too quick. He whirled, catching the enemy’s hand by the wrist and driving his blade to the hilt into the man’s heart. The man’s eyes opened wide and he looked like he was trying to scream, but no sound came from his open mouth … then he disappeared.

The third enemy walked straight toward the line of Rangers. Lieutenant Wyatt ordered his men to fire; a moment later, the enemy was peppered in the chest with a dozen arrows, any one of them a kill shot, but he simply vanished, only to reappear unharmed behind their line. Alexander caught the look of maleficent glee that ghosted across the man’s face as he plunged his dark blade into the back of the last Ranger in the line. Yet another of Lieutenant Wyatt’s men had fallen defending Alexander.

The enemy who had tried to stab Jataan reappeared behind Isabel. When Alexander saw him come into existence, he lunged toward his wife but she was too far away. Racing toward her, he saw the look the man gave him as he raised his dagger for a deadly downward stroke into Isabel’s back.

In that moment, he knew their purpose. These men mixed with darkness weren’t here just to kill him—Phane had sent them to hurt him. These men were here to deliver revenge to Alexander for killing Kludge.

The man stabbed down toward Isabel’s back. Alexander was helpless to stop him. He watched the blade descend on his love and felt a mixture of unmitigated terror and furious rage tighten around his soul. When Isabel saw the look on his face, she spun to meet her attacker. The blade came down hard but was turned aside when it met the magical shell of her shield spell. She thrust her sword into his belly and twisted it for good measure.

Alexander felt relief wash over him like a cool breeze. The thought of losing Isabel again was more than he could bear.