The Awakening (34 page)

“Marne?” she questioned, her features etched with pain.

“I will do what I can,” he replied, understanding her devotion as few others could.

Esta tore off into the woods, searching for the path that had brought them here originally. She heard the heavy pounding of Parsifal’s horse upon the ground, and she departed with the sounds of death in her ears and in her mind.

Margot backed up a pace or two, hastening out of the way of this possessed warrior. She was too surprised by his attack to have reacted sooner and she needed a minute to gather her strength and her wits about her. She watched in disgust as her soldiers fled in fear, or died upon this knight’s sword. From the safety of distance, she began to gather the power she had. Lifting her arm, she conjured a ball of blue fire upon her palm. Pointing her long, crooked finger at the knight, she sent it flying in his direction.

Parsifal was aware all the while of the menacing woman who led this disparate crew. He anticipated the moment when she would unleash her awful magic upon him, but he could do nothing to prepare for the pain. As the glowing ball of burning death came hurtling for him, he raised his arm to partially deflect it. The armor that covered his skin was thick and strong, prized by all and forged in the hills outside of Avalain, tiels ago by the great masters of the craft. It possessed the qualities of both absorption and diversion, stealing from the missile some of its potency, while throwing back a greater portion of its more dangerous elements.

It struck him on his left shoulder, causing his arm to drop limply by his side from the impact alone. The pain was searing, burning through his body like the fire of Sedahar itself, and he slumped over in his saddle. His right hand remained fixed around the hilt of his great sword, though both hung almost to the ground. Margot could not see that his weapon remained within his grasp, as the huge body of his war-horse concealed it from her sight.

Challan, weakened by Marne’s previous attack, grew bolder now, seeing that the Knight was injured and appeared to be unconscious atop his horse. He approached him openly, attempting to regain the respect of Margot and the other, smaller orcs after succumbing to the humiliating wound foisted upon him by the woman from Avalain. Arrogantly, the troll raised his axe high and whilst smiling, he turned his back upon Parsifal and his mount, thus displaying his fierce courage for all to see.

Before his expression could even turn from hubris to fear, Parsifal rose in his stirrups, and in a sweeping arc, swung up and around, lopping off Challan’s head with his mighty sword. It fell heavily upon the soft earth with the smile eternally frozen upon his face for all to see. He then roared “Avalain!” once more, swung his horse toward the dark haired woman and leapt forward.

Margot stepped aside in fear, searching for something to hide behind before she was trampled by Parsifal and his massive steed. She was too startled to focus her energy and attack him before he reached her. The Knight rushed directly for the panicked woman, but veered off in the final moment as he approached, and with his reins in his teeth, leaning precariously over the side of the saddle, hanging almost to the ground, he reached for Marne’s limp body. Without hesitating for an instant, he pulled himself upright, the barely conscious woman now cradled across his lap, and galloped out of the clearing in pursuit of Queen Esta.

Margot stood once more, alone and furious. She could not believe that her efforts had failed to topple him from his horse once and for all. Angered by her own personal defeat, she watched in disgust as the frightened contingent of despicable orcs hung their heads in fear and cowered before the Knight of Avalain.

“Go after him you fools, or you will have to deal with my wrath instead of his,” she screamed at them. “Someone will pay for this. I want that woman in chains before the day is out. I only hope for your sake that the others in the woods are not as cowardly as you are,” she hissed. “Follow them. They have nowhere to go. They will find soon enough that their paths are few and that I have not been so careless as to allow them a route by which to escape,” she admonished vehemently, sending them scurrying as quickly as they could, headlong into the woods.

Parsifal had caught up to the Queen, who was fending off an attempt by five or six of the enemy to throw some coarse ropes over her and bring her to the ground. She spun her nimble horse first one way and then the next and avoided becoming entangled in them. She was tiring nonetheless as they came at her from many directions at once, and she could not keep this up indefinitely. They successfully blocked her efforts to flee the circle, keeping her penned in while they yelled for help.

The Knight rushed into the small clearing and easily decimated the group harassing the Queen. Within moments, four of them lay dead or dying upon the grass, while the others fled until more could arrive to reinforce their dwindling numbers.

“Come, your Highness. We have little time. There are many of these creatures in the woods, and that woman, surely Colton’s surrogate, will not quit her pursuit so easily,” he urged.

Seeing Marne’s lifeless body laying across his horse’s withers caused her to cringe with pain, but she was relieved that he had been able to remove her from the evil hands of the enemy. Esta needed time to administer to her friend, to assess her condition, but until they were out of danger, she knew she could not.

“Follow me,” she said. “I saw a narrow path up ahead. If they pursue us there, they must do so in single file,” she concluded, and she prodded her mount forward.

Parsifal followed close behind, as they rushed down the winding and debris strewn pathway through the woods. They heard the grunting and guttural noises of the enemy as it hastened to catch up to them. The sky was barely visible through the treetops now, as the vegetation became more abundant and their ability to maneuver became more restricted.

“How is she?” Esta turned her head and questioned.

“She does not move, your Highness, and her breath is unsteady. I fear that her condition is dire,” he replied honestly.

“We must get her to safety as quickly as possible,” she said.

“For our own sakes as well,” he rejoined.

“How did you find us, Parsifal?” the Queen asked as they rode.

“I have been tracking you since the moment you departed the castle in Avalain. I could not let you walk the land unprotected in times such as these,” he answered. “Forgive me your Highness, for not carrying out your orders as you requested. My men went on to Talamar without me. It caused me great conflict to disobey you,” he said, hanging his head.

“Well thank the First for men such as you, dearest Parsifal,” she said honestly. “I could not have held them back forever. If you had not arrived when you did, I would be a prisoner by now, on my way to Sedahar I suspect,” she concluded, shivering at the thought.

“Whilst I still have breath in my body, that will never happen,” he swore.

“If we do not evade those beasts pursuing us, we may both end up where we do not wish to be,” Esta commented, stone-faced.

She saw a dark line of orcs running down the narrow avenue upon their pony-like beasts. They were astonishingly quick, and the gap between the enemy and them was lessening by the minute.

“Quickly your Highness, follow me,” Parsifal said suddenly, and he veered off through an opening in the tree wall that had fronted their pathway since they left the clearing.

Esta swiftly reined in her horse and redirected her toward the small outlet that the Knight had just disappeared through. As soon as her mount’s hooves set foot upon the new ground, an incredible smell reached her nostrils. It was so wonderful that she feared she might faint from the odor alone. The trees on her left and right had become eminently more abundant, and their colors were sharper and more distinct. The ground was soft underfoot, and her loyal mare found it more difficult to run at her prior speed, try as she might, as her hooves were sinking slightly into the lush foliage. Worst of all though, was the fact that their path was now obstructed by a very dense wall of branches that they could barely even see through.

Parsifal immediately regretted his choice of direction, seeing that they were now trapped and that they could barely even maneuver. The enemy quickly caught up with them, as they had not progressed very far after taking this detour. He could see their foes gathering behind them at the entrance to this wooded enclave, and despite his stiff commands to his horse and Esta’s stern urging, they were unable to budge nary an inch.

After a moment or so, Margot reappeared in front of her associates, smiling wickedly at the predicament they were in. She had yet to step foot onto the ground beyond that which they had just bolted down, but she could see that they had no place to go.

“Watch the big one carefully and if he charges, strike him down quickly. Make no mistakes this time, for if he does not take your life, I most certainly will if he escapes again,” she warned them.

The orcs rapidly lined up with their small bows drawn, the poison tipped arrows clearly visible to both Esta and Parsifal.

“If you do not surrender…” she addressed the Queen, “…I will kill your friend,” she said as cold as stone.

“She will assuredly kill me anyway your Highness, if she can,” the Knight said to Esta under his breath.

“I cannot take that chance, Sir Knight,” Esta replied, as she slowly turned her horse’s head in order to face the enemy. “I have lost one already who was dearer to me than most people I have known. I will not risk the loss of another so equally beloved,” she said to him fervently.

Parsifal bowed his head humbly at the Queen’s remarks.

With her head held high, Queen Esta of Avalain dropped her reins and prepared to dismount.

“Do what you will with me,” she said to Margot. “I can recognize when the gambit is lost,” she admitted. “But, I will accept your word that you will not harm my loyal friend,” she said.

“On my honor?” Margot replied with a sneer, preparing to place a heavy noose of hemp around the Queen’s wrists. “Kill him,” she ordered her henchmen as she stepped into the small clearing.

Chapter Thirty-eight

He sat atop his dark horse, silent and alone and the weight of his burden sat upon his shoulders like a mantle of stone. He could barely look upon the grounds and buildings surrounding him, knowing that they were as unreal as the professed loyalty of those who populated them.

The pain in his head grew stronger with each passing day, and there were moments when he had to struggle just to remain conscious and not black out from it. It was so difficult to maintain the assault and to build it and strengthen it and spread it across the land. His powers were vast, but they were being strained.

Something resisted his efforts and it was not a force that he had encountered before. The boy was still unaware and untrained, trapped in the Heights of Seramour. If he could prevent the awakening, it would save him a tremendous amount of effort later. But he could not see clearly into the city of the elves. His vision was obstructed by the natural forces that opposed him, and try as he might, he could only see the city as if it were concealed behind an opaque glass. He learned of his presence only through the betrayal of one of its own.

Colton’s emotions were governed by different principles than those of other people. As the tiels passed, he grew harder and colder and more estranged. No one could understand his motivations completely; his desire for dissolution and for the nothingness that would bring him peace once and for all. He saw it as his salvation, as his only means of escape from the torment that he lived with each and every moment of each and every day.

He had become so thoroughly evil, so totally corrupt, that his thoughts and motives no longer even resembled those of other living creatures. In fact, to speak of him as evil, as the opposite of good, was misleading. He existed in a world that was not governed by the rules of morality that created order amongst the nations and races. He was altogether dissimilar, and therefore it was impossible for a moral man to understand him. He lived outside the law, apart from the natural order of things. To even be in his presence wreaked emotional havoc, for his very being emanated contradiction and unsettled confusion.

His vision had grown sharper of late, and he focused his eyes in the distance, upon the breeding grounds and the armories. Like tiny insects, insignificant and emotionless, he watched as his minions scurried from one task to another, mindlessly. They meant nothing to him, as if they were not alive at all. Yet he was their entire world. His power captivated them and drove them onward. They would sacrifice their pitiful lives for him in an instant, thinking that to do so would bring them closer to the salvation he craved for himself. But, they would never attain anything more than death. There was nothing for them after this. Their lives were wasted and meaningless, merely tiny sparks in the darkness, seen but not remembered, flashes that burned out before they were even noticed.

The pounding in his head was almost unbearable and he had to press his hands hard against his temples to contain it. He felt as if his spirit was trying to burst out of his body, and he was not ready to let it loose upon the world. He needed still to control the forces that drove him so that he would not waste himself needlessly. He needed to stop the boy, the heir of Gwendolen, from finding the Gem—

Seramour was shrouded in mist. He could not see it clearly, try as he might. But, he knew that his assault would have to begin from above, and he had thus spent many a day cultivating the weapon that he would need for this offensive. The sharp beaked mammals that had helped to thwart his attack upon Pardatha had inspired him, and he now had a formidable army of flying beasts, though more like giant bees than the great Selgays, ready to be unleashed above the skies of Seramour.

Something was bothering the Lord of Darkness, and it was not the existence of the heir. He had known of this since the boy had been born and he had anticipated it even before that. He sensed the rifts, the shifts in potency, the underlying currents within the earth, and his attention was drawn to all the well-springs of power. The accursed trees were often the fonts from which the energy emanated. But this time, he could not determine what it was that drew his attention like a moth to a flame. He sensed another force and this one kept eluding him. He would concentrate upon it with his black eyes closed tightly, and each time he felt he drew nearer to it, closer to distinguishing it from all the other images that flooded his mind, it would fade away and leave him with a desperate feeling of abandonment and frustration.

This torment kindled his hatred even more, and he wished for nothing else than to terminate all of these feelings. With the weakening of the tree’’s command, more of the land was vulnerable to his dark caress. He reached out and sucked the very life-force out of the soil, drying it up, turning it into an unfeeling morass of dead and dying matter. Colton turned things upside down, and he used nature’s own properties against themselves. Where cold was needed to maintain the balance, he sent heat. Where light was required to sustain the environment, he shrouded the area in darkness. He deprived the earth of that which allowed it to perpetuate itself, and as each tree withdrew from an area, he moved in with the quickness of a bolt of lightning.

“Gather around me, my children,” he said aloud. “It is almost time.”

Although he spoke quietly and from a great distance, everything alive in his realm heard his words. All of the beings, whether birthed here or brought in from the lands outside Sedahar, stopped in their tracks, dropped whatever it was they were doing and began to march, drone-like, toward the source, toward Colton, while the air was abuzz with the fast beating wings of the borers, the name he appended to his mutant breed of fighter.

As they neared him, he appeared to grow in stature, to rise up in height before their very eyes. He outstretched his graceful arms and closed his eyes. He caused his skin to pale to an almost white color, contrasting dramatically with the black of his hair and the deep crimson of his cape and tunic. As they approached, they were all awestruck by their master’s appearance.

The eight women reached him first, each eager to be near him. The Forsaken. They shuffled and scurried in order to be in the forefront of the gathering. Once there, they lay down upon the ground with their faces flat against the hard soil, and they awaited his command. The others, all manner of beast and abomination, also vied for their positions near their Lord, though they did so with great care, fearful of disturbing him. Within a short period of time, the land before him was covered with his supplicants, large and small, some grotesque and some perfectly normal looking, humans, orcs, trolls, Valkor, wolves, and one lone elf.

Ruffin wore a tunic of crimson, much like his master’s. His eyes were dazed and dark, as if the whites were dyed black, and the pupils were enlarged. His hair was still brown, though it was braided and adorned with ebony pins, almost like a woman’s, and his face was painted around the eyes and lips. His skin was whiter than seemed possible wherever it was exposed, though his elfin features stood out clearly. The slightly slanted eyes and pointed ears, the shapely face and high cheekbones, the sinewy build and long, thin fingers, all were even more obvious in contrast to the others in Seramour. His entire body glowed as though charged with a power from within.

He wandered through the assemblage, unflinching and unaware, until he reached the line of prostrate women. Without paying any attention to them, he stepped past the eight and stood next to Colton, closer than anyone else dared. The Dark Lord placed his gloved hand on the elfin boy’s head and caressed his hair as if he were a cherished pet. Ruffin smiled and responded to the touch, basking in his own glory and in the envy of the women before him. He lived now only for his master’s touch, for Colton’s admiration and recognition, for the fulfillment of his Lord’s vision, for his own death and the prospect of dissolution.

Adrianna dared to raise her eyes from the ground, only to be infuriated by what she glimpsed before her. But, as with all who worshiped Colton, her emotions became confused, and she found herself loving the boy a moment later merely for bringing pleasure to her Lord and master. If Colton should frown upon him in the next instant, then her love would quickly turn to hatred of the deepest kind. Her world was consumed with his emotions, governed by his every whim, and controlled completely and entirely by his slightest grimace or faintest smile.

Colton surveyed the area around him, and then his dark eyes lingered upon the horizon to the north east, toward Lormarion and the tree city of Seramour. A total and complete hush blanketed the plain before him, though it was covered by the prostrate bodies of thousands upon thousands of his slaves and servants. No one dared even to move, including the great beasts whose very breathing almost stopped so as not to disturb the Master. Ruffin alone stood, looking out over the masses before him.

“You will lead the beasts, my boy. You will ride the first one to the city of the trees, and the people below will see one of their own leading the attack,” the Dark Lord said to the elf. “They will understand the meaning of betrayal,” he said softly as he stroked his hair. “They will know it was one of their own who revealed their vulnerabilities, who gave them up.”

Ruffin smiled at his touch. He leaned his head into Colton’s hand, like a cat being petted by its master. His thoughts were disjointed and unclear, though he was aware enough to recognize that he relished being in Colton’s presence and that he despaired when he was away from him. He would gladly do his bidding in Seramour, if it would make him happy. The prospect of pleasing the Dark Lord caused his heart to beat faster and his blood to course more swiftly. The thought of riding into the elfin Heights atop one of Colton’s beasts, leading the attack against the city that rejected him, against the King who refused to allow him to see his beloved, was almost too exciting to imagine.

These images came to him more as scattered moments in some opaque future, than as thoughts, but he watched them with glee. He felt Colton’s presence in his mind, in every part of his being, and he opened himself up completely to his Lord. He would be his eyes and ears during the attack. Colton would see what he saw and hear what he heard.

The buzzing grew enormously loud, as hundreds of giant wings beat relentlessly above the supplicants on the plain of Sedahar. Dust rose in the air, clogging it with dry, dead particles and causing those on the ground to bury their heads deeper in the soil. As the beasts above settled upon the ground all around Colton, those in their way fled as quickly as they could. Any who were not swift enough to avoid the spiked claws of the descending animals, suffered death at their mere touch. Their talons were razor sharp, and the barbs that they released were imbued with the deadliest of poison. Once the skin was pierced by one, a slimy, sap-like excretion quickly spread over the entire body of the victim, smothering it while it seeped through the surface. In the first instant, the prey was immobilized, and within moments, it was an unrecognizable mass of disintegrating flesh.

Only the eight women remained in their places, barely moving a muscle during their descent, and the flying army avoided them carefully, settling down all around them but never touching any one. There was a hierarchy to the powers in Sedahar, and no one needed a lesson in order to comprehend it. Even one small mistake was always fatal. Mercy was not a concept that functioned in this realm. Sedahar was governed by values that were far removed from those that regulated the rest of the world. Life was not sacred here.

“Gather round, my children,” he said. “The moment is upon us. Those who wish to perpetuate what has always been, seek salvation in the awakening of the child in Seramour. They think he will rid the world of evil,” Colton spoke to his followers. “They do not understand me. They do not understand us,” he continued.

He grew in stature as he spoke, and he motioned to everyone before him to rise and to listen.

“We are not evil. We are other than evil. These words have no meaning here. What we seek, they cannot grasp; Peace. Eternal peace. It is beyond their comprehension.”

He hesitated momentarily, while all those before him waited anxiously for his next words, though some barely even fathomed them. It was enough just to be by his side, to hear him speak.

“The trees continue to die. They realize that their time is over. But those who rule the cities, they do not wish to give up their earthly pleasures. They wish to eternalize what is. They cannot accept the changes we desire. They call him the heir. That is a misnomer. He is the last. And he will join us in Sedahar soon, dead or alive. If we are too late to prevent his awakening, he will live out his final days here, and he will come to understand what we have already realized. When he dies, dissolution will begin. The blood line will end, and no other Gwendolen will be alive to fulfill the prophesy.”

The throngs around him were completely silent. There was no banging of weapons, no cries for death and blood. Colton loomed enormous before them, and they all stood awestruck, mesmerized by his power. The air grew thick with moisture and heat, and the dark, storm clouds gathered above this hushed mass as if they were another army called upon to assemble.

“Go, my children,” he said to those who were chosen to ride the beasts to the Heights of Lormarion. “Destroy the elfin city. Bring me back the boy. We shall welcome him here with our arms wide open, whether he comes to us as a corpse or a living thing. He will help us to hasten the coming of the end.”

Colton raised his chin high and thrust his right arm into the air with his fingers outstretched. He lingered that way for a moment or two, until total silence cloaked the plain. He turned his head from left to right, slowly panning the field and gazing upon those who stood before him. Shifting in his saddle slightly, he faced in the direction of Seramour.

“The fabric weaves according to my will,” he roared, rearing up fiercely upon his black steed.

He raised his sword into the air and it radiated his power, sending titanic bolts of crimson light high into the sky, feeding the turbid mists above and directing them onward toward Seramour. The flying beasts began to rise into the sky in endless waves, darkening the ground with their shadows, each with an armored warrior upon its back. The clamor was earsplitting and it echoed across the plain.