Rise of the Champion (The Sword of Kirakath Omnibus #1) (45 page)

“Look at the bright side. You helped me murder the Count of Caldreth. If anyone forcefully takes either of us anywhere, it’s probably to the gallows,” Caleb pointed out with a smile. He never enjoyed seeing Katie sad.

Fortunately, the attempt worked, and Katie started laughing.

No more was said for a while as they walked through the forest.

Chapter 5

Two and a half hours after leaving Laus, they reached the Dark Caverns.

Despite the name, there was nothing dark or sinister about the place. In fact, it looked to be nothing but a cave at one of the island’s sandy seashores. With the sun shining off of the golden sand and the crystal clear water within sight, the area actually looked pleasant. The only part that looked menacing at all was the narrow path that led from the cliff top that they were standing on to the seashore.

“Are you sure that’s it?” Katie asked with a hint of a frown.

“Yeah, Abigail actually described it last night,” Caleb replied with a nod.

“What do you think of her?” she asked suddenly.

Caleb looked at her in confusion. He detected something that he did not recognize in her eyes and voice. He knew better than to try to understand a woman though.

“I think she’s a very dangerous person. A single look at her is enough to tell you that she has power. She also has a great deal of pride in being a witch. You should have seen how furious she looked when she spoke to Sir Edmond at points.”

“What do you mean?” Katie asked, curiosity shining in her eyes.

He looked at her in surprise as he realized what he had forgotten to tell her. He went on to tell her what he had learned about Sir Edmond, the Blood of Kirakath, and prophecy.

“You should have told me that,” she said as she slapped his arm. “That’s an important detail. Prophecy is going to be returning to the world because of our actions today. If anyone learns of our part in this, we will be written about in the history tomes. Perhaps blame will be cast on us for the injustices carried out in the name of prophecy, or maybe we will be praised for the good that it brings about. Either way, this is a monumental thing.”

“If I was you, I’d worry more about the task at hand than what’s going to happen in the future,” Caleb remarked dryly. “We’re about to walk into the lair of a mage that has power over the dead. If that’s not something we should focus on, then I don’t know what is.”

He proceeded to make his way down to the beach with his companion following him. He heard Katie mutter something about boys, but he decided that it was for the best if he ignored it.

Like he said, they did have more pressing matters to deal with at the moment.

* * * * *

Though the Dark Caverns seemed to have been named wrongly by anyone that saw where the entrance was, they were appropriately named by anyone that had been inside them.

That was how Caleb saw them, at least.

Half an hour had passed since he began his trek through the winding tunnels that the cave led to, and he was beginning to lose his patience. A torch was held in his left hand and the Sword of Kirakath was held in his right hand. Both felt heavy in his hands, but he ignored his throbbing hands. It was better to have his sword already unsheathed when trouble arose, and it was too dark to see without the light of the torch.

A sense of unease filled Caleb as he saw the walls of the tunnel disappear up ahead. It looked as though it led to a chamber of some sort.

The thought of fighting a necromancer did not bother him at the moment. It did not seem real to him yet, so the words meant nothing to him.

No, what made him feel uneasy was a completely different matter. It was the fact that he was going into a dangerous situation with the knowledge that the Blood of Kirakath was too dangerous to be used at the moment. Sir Edmond had cautioned him that it would grow more and more tainted every time he used it. Before long, he would lose all sense of rational thought under the influence of the magic.

“Death,” Sir Edmond had told him, “would be preferable to coming to your senses as you stand over a comrade with their blood coating your sword.”

At times like the present, Caleb could not help but wish he had taken a greater interest in swordsmanship before the Massacre of Kirakath.

As he stepped into the wide, open area that the tunnel ended at, Caleb saw an elderly man standing before them, clad in black robes with a long silver beard. Bones littered the floor nearly as far as the eye could see.

That was not what caught his attention though.

Near the wall to his far left, he saw a pedestal with a book on top of it. It felt as if the book was calling him to it. He instinctively knew that it was the Tome of Akabar.

“Who are you to come to my sanctuary?” the old man demanded as he hefted a staff of ebony before him. “You seek the Tome of Akabar, do you? Well, you can’t have it.”

He let out a hysterical laugh as he slammed the end of his staff to the ground.

Within moments, the bones that littered the floor began to come together. By the time the echo of the staff hitting the stone floor faded away, thirty skeletons stood around the room. There was nothing physically keeping the bones together. Caleb knew that magic kept them together and allowed them to move, but that did not help matters in the least.

How does one kill something that is not alive?

Shaking his head, he focused his attention on the necromancer. He was not sure if it would work, but killing the one that controlled the skeletons with magic sounded like the best plan.

“Caleb, go straight for him. He’ll most likely bring his minions in to defend himself. I’ll grab the tome while he’s distracted,” Katie whispered from behind him. He had to strain to hear her, so there was no chance the necromancer managed the same.

“For Kirakath!” Caleb yelled as he suddenly dashed towards the necromancer without acknowledging Katie’s suggestion. He was not sure what inspired the battle cry, but it made the necromancer take an involuntary step back.

The skeletons all seemed to turn their attention to Caleb as he ran, though none of them were fast enough to get close to him.

“You won’t beat me so easily!” the necromancer yelled as he thrust his staff at Caleb.

His eyes widened as flames rushed from the necromancers staff towards him. That was not something he had expected, and he could not dodge it because of the skeletons that seemed to form a wall at either side of him. By the time he cut one down and tried to rush through the gap it created, the flames would have been upon him.

Stand firm.

The thought was not his own. It eerily reminded him of the voice that helped him heal Katie during his hunt of the Night Blades.

He took a deep breath as he did exactly what it told him to do.

Before the Sword of Kirakath, magic itself becomes solid. Call to it and command its power.

Without thinking, Caleb did as the voice commanded. It was like embracing the Blood of Kirakath, but it felt different at the same time. Whereas the Blood of Kirakath had always filled him with fire, the Sword of Kirakath was like a cool breeze on a hot day.

He swung the Sword of Kirakath with all of his strength and watched as the blade emitted a faint blue glow.

The blade hit the approaching flames, but it did not pass through the flames as he would have normally expected. Instead, the flames met the blade at a standstill. With the strength of his right arm, he could not push the flames back. It felt as though a small tree had fallen against his blade instead of a torrent of flame.

I have to do it.

The thought left a bad taste in his mouth, but he embraced the Blood of Kirakath for a short time. His blood felt as though it was on fire and an overwhelming desire to kill filled his mind. Fortunately, he was able to release his hold on the Blood of Kirakath almost instantly.

In the short time he embraced the magic, Caleb was able to throw the flames back with the blade of his sword. He briefly saw the dumbstruck look on the necromancer’s face as his own flames engulfed him.

As the fire reduced him to ashes, the skeletons collapsed to the ground, once again reduced to piles of bones.

“That was a bit anti-climactic,” Katie remarked as she walked towards him, looking at the ashes of the necromancer.

“I know what you mean,” Caleb said, shaking his head in disbelief. He had had seen power lurking behind Abigail’s eyes. He had seen a fraction of her power within the necromancer’s eyes. Compared to her, he was nothing. So that posed the question he could not help but think about. Why had other Witches of Akabar failed to defeat him and reclaim the tome? It was true that he would have likely lost without the Sword of Kirakath and the Blood of Kirakath, but he was not a mage either.

 “Thank you for your assistance.”

The bone chilling voice echoed through the caverns, startling Caleb and Katie.

Caleb looked towards the tunnels on the other side of the area from them and saw what looked to be a skeleton wearing black and crimson robes. An ebony staff with a red crystal at one end could be seen in one of its skeletal hands.

“Every time the Witches of Akabar come to retrieve that tome, they make sure to get rid of my disciples. If they are too inept to defend this place against intruders, then it proves how useless they are,” the skeleton said coldly. “I am the real reason no one can steal the tome back. If you were truly impressed by that worthless pretender, then you will see me as a god,” the skeleton said as crimson flames became visible where its eyes should have been.

It pointed its staff at Katie, and blue lightning shot towards her.

“No,” Caleb said as he met the lightning with the Sword of Kirakath. Unlike before, his sword did not meet the magic in a stalemate. Instead of blocking, he parried, deflecting the lightning away.

“The true wielder of the Sword of Kirakath.” Its words were both curious and alarmed.

“What you see before you is a lich,” Katie said quietly with a hint of disgust in her voice. “It’s a necromancer that bound its soul to something to ensure that it didn’t move on after it died. It also helps it stay in control of its remains.”

“You are well informed,” the lich remarked with a cold laugh.

“I am, and you should know that I hate liches,” Katie said as she suddenly threw one of the ever present knives she carried.

The lich lifted one hand and stopped the dagger mid-flight. It stayed suspended in the air a scant few feet away from it. “Good try.”

“But here’s a better one,” Caleb said as he dashed towards the lich and cut the air directly below the knife in a wide arc. The magic that held the knife in place was destroyed by the blade. As a result, the knife shot forward again, having only been halted by magic.

As the knife hit its mark a few inches above the lich’s sternum, an audible cracking sound was heard. Almost instantly, the skeleton collapsed to the ground. The fire in its eyes was gone.

“What did you just do?” Caleb asked in confusion.

“Like I said, that was a lich. I heard that they always bind their souls to amulets or rings to stay in the world of the living. He didn’t have any rings, and I saw something bulging under his robes where an amulet would have been,” Katie explained matter-of-factly. “Do me a favor and get my knife for me. Feel free to grab the broken amulet while you’re at it. That Abigail woman might want to see it.”

Caleb stared at her blankly for a short moment before he did exactly what she told him to. He had no idea what to say or think at that moment. He had been trying to figure out a way to deal with the lich, and he had been at a loss. He thought something good may have come out of him cutting the air below the knife, but he had not known what would have happened. It was lucky Katie had known just what to do and that he had followed his instincts.

He almost laughed as he realized that he had followed her command without even thinking about it. It was rather fitting that she knew how to use such a commanding tone when her father was a duke.

If they were not in the lair of a necromancer, he might have laughed hysterically at the irony of it all. But surrounded by the bones of the dead as they were, that would have been disturbing.

* * * * *

“So, are you going to tell me how you did that?” Katie asked once they were outside of the cave and were making their way back up to the top of the cliff.

“You’re talking about the sword glowing blue?” Caleb asked, stroking the hilt of his sword.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Katie replied in a firm tone. “As far as I know, that’s not something you knew how to do the last time I saw you.”

“I did it the same way I healed you. I just know. It’s kind of like my conscience tells me, if that makes any sense,” Caleb said with a slight frown. “I used the sword’s magic against the necromancer and the lich. It turns magic solid.”

“Talk to your ancestor about that,” Katie suggested with a hint of worry in her eyes. “He likely had no one to teach him about the Sword of Kirakath or the Blood of Kirakath, so that voice may be part of one of them. I imagine it would be useful to have a way to pass the knowledge on without having to worry about it getting corrupted over the years.”