The Rawn Chronicles Book One: The Orrinn and the Blacksword: Unabridged (The Rawn Chronicles Series 1) (19 page)

He had no idea why he needed their names, but he asked anyway.

“Can I please use your names?”

There was a pause as the dragons looked down at him.

“Of course...”

“...You can,” finished Sin, and they looked away from him and became as impassive as stone.

Havoc was very confused by the whole conversation. It was, after all a dream, so he shrugged.

He looked at the gates. They shone brightly in the gloom; he could see through the ornate grillwork, but everything beyond them was indistinct. He took a step closer, but felt an invisible force resisting his every step until he could move no more.

“It is not your time yet,” said a voice behind him.

He turned around and saw Verna in her blue dress holding Prissie upside down by one leg. She had her fine brown hair in pigtails and he could see clearly the brown freckles over her nose and cheeks. Havoc was pleased to see her, but he looked again at the gates and then back at her.

“I thought you would be in there,” he said.

“I have much work to do before I pass through the gates of the dead,” she said with a very serious expression on her face.

“What work is that?”

“Vengeance,” was her only answer, and Havoc could see a raven fly in and land on the ground beside her, dispersing the thin mist that was forming over the ground. It regarded him with a beady black eye.

“I want that too,” he said to her.

“Of course you do, for you are Death,” she said which confused the prince, and yet at the same time, explained much.

More ravens flew in from the darkness beyond and soon they littered the ground and trees all around.

“I have called them. They wait for the death toll you will bring them,” said his sister, indicating the ravens. “You are my envoy and I’m your queen.”

Havoc was about to speak when he felt something in his hands; he looked down and found he was holding the Nithi daggers again. He did not remember taking them from his boots.

“Find the girl, brother, save her from evil.”

“Girl... What girl?”

Verna was turning away and walking through the mass of ravens, which obediently made a path for her.

“Your destinies are entwined.”

“Who is she? How do I fine her?”

“Follow the daggers.”

Then the growing darkness around them swallowed her up. As she vanished, all the ravens took off and swarmed around the prince. He tried to fend them off with the daggers...

...And rolled off the furs shouting at such a volume that Dirkem jumped awake and trotted back a few steps. Havoc got up breathing hard and looking around him. He was holding the daggers; he must have pulled them out of his boots while asleep, he concluded. He looked at the hilts and saw the feathers, faintly worn and the colours were fading. They were much clearer in the dream.

Follow the daggers
– what did that mean?

Dirkem’s blanket was empty; the red kite had gone in the night. He wished it well.

In the early morning, he broke camp and headed north. He did not know why; he just felt compelled to. The daggers were Nithi and that meant south, but he just knew he had to start in the north. At midday, he stopped by a stream and filled his canteen; he ate some dry biscuits he had made from some wild wheat he had found growing in(a) clearing a few days ago. The trickling sound of the stream was soothing, so he sat and munched the biscuits and sipped the cold, fresh water. The sun was beating down and a cool breeze ruffled the collar of his woollen shirt. Above him, he heard a high-pitched keening and looked up through the trees to see the red kite flying above him in a circle.

“So you are still with us, are you?” he asked, and turned to the stallion. “Maybe she wants to say goodbye properly.”

To his surprise, the bird’s call issued again from the Orrinn on his back; he unsheathed Tragenn and looked at the orb. It had opened. He could see into the Orrinn; its silver surface became grey clouds that blew away from the surface to reveal mountains and forests.

“Dirkem, its showing me trees,” he said excitedly; the horse shook its head and snorted.

He could see the trees coming closer, as if he was falling on top of them from the sky, then, as the tops of the trees became bigger, his view rose through a gap in the canopy.

“It’s going to show me something,” he said as he gripped the hilt tighter in anticipation.

The view was nearly at ground level now and he could see a small river flowing over rocks and pebbles, then the view changed as it tilted left, and a dead tree stump took up the entire picture. Just as the image was going to fly over the crest of the stump, it stopped and he could see...

...Himself.

He was shocked. He could see himself in the Orrinn sitting looking at the silver globe. He heard a flutter of wings, and turned to his left and saw the red kite sitting on a dead tree stump further down river and looking straight at him.

“I’m looking through the eyes of the bird,” he said, but somehow that did not seem right. “No, I’m looking into the Orrinn and the Orrinn is looking through the eyes of the bird. The Orrinn is for seeing things at long distance; this is amazing.” He called to the kite and she flew over to his arm; he was conscious of those sharp talons on his bare flesh.

“I will call you Mirryn; it means Loud Voice.”

Mirryn keened as if in acknowledgement of her new name.

She jumped off his arm and flew back the way she had come. Havoc looked at her flight passage in the Orrinn, as she got higher and higher; it seemed as if he was flying with her through the clouds; his stomach flipped as she banked and swayed in the currents of air. She was looking around for something on the ground and, when she found it, Havoc frowned.

A few miles away, a thick column of black smoke was drifting out of the trees.

Chapter 14

The Countess of Haplann

Three riders were watching from the heights of a steep valley as Havoc took the boar path into the trees. He knew they were there, but he ignored them; they were not making a move to intercept him and they seemed content to just watch for now.

With the dream still fresh in his head, he and Dirkem trotted towards the source of the smoke. He sensed something terrible had happened and curiosity was getting the better of him. To cap it all, last night’s dream made the decision easier for him. He had been planning for a while now to leave the mountains and to seek out the destiny his sister had mentioned. He now knew how to control the Pyromantic energies, simply by meditating away the volatile emotions every second day. Also, his control of linking said energies to his Rawn Arts was improving with every attempt. The dream was all he needed to acknowledge his plans and give him the incentive to leave.

The smoke he had seen was too thick and black to be a simple campfire and it troubled him. As he got closer to its location, he could see ruts in the road made by a large carriage of some kind, and they led off from the path and into thicker deciduous trees. He jumped off Dirkem and left him to graze around the thick bolls as he approached the source of the smoke on foot.

The first thing he saw was the carriage. Its size struck him as odd. High, wide and long, it looked like a home on wheels. Judging by the broken furniture scattered around that was its purpose. It was on its side; he could clearly see the thin, flat suspension plates on each wheel axle. There were two other smaller carts beside the larger one; these were empty; their contents were scattered all over the forest floor, which ranged from fabrics and dresses, pots and smashed plates and three empty barrels of ale. One horse was dead the rest were gone.

Most of the dresses and furniture fed the fire, which smouldering away on its own. The chemicals and dyes in the dresses creating the black smoke. He was about to go put it out when he noticed a tree with rope lashed around it and a pair of hands tied around the trunk. He looked around it to see a man bound to the tree; he was plump, in his forties and richly dressed.

He also had seven arrows protruding from his chest.

The next body he found must have been the man’s wife. She was about the same age. She was naked and tied to the ground, arms and legs spread wide; her throat opened with a wide-bladed knife. The blood had soaked into the ground and covered the leaves around her head. Havoc shook his head in disgust. It was not difficult to imagine what had happened here.

He saw the last dead body on one of the small carriages. She was young, maybe the same age as himself, and quite pretty. She had been tied face down onto one of the wheels and her dress cut up to her neck, exposing her bare buttocks and legs.

Havoc concentrated on quelling his anger and looked at the macabre scene with a cold detachment. A rich family that had fallen prey to bandits, but where was their detachment of guards?

Havoc buried the bodies in a clearing. He dug shallow graves and covered them with stones and wood, and then he returned to the carriage and looked inside. Its contents ransacked, the furniture and chests of clothes now lay outside. The velvet curtains ripped off the windows, fine porcelain plates and ornamental pottery lay smashed all around. The bandits had tipped it on its side to search underneath; they had been thorough. However, as Havoc looked inside the carriage, he noticed the oak floorboards. There seemed nothing untoward about the belched surface at first, but he had seen it before in the Orrinn.

He used the earth element to scan the floor for anything out of place, moving his hand an inch over the surface. He was about to stop when he detected other materials other than wood in the front left corner of the carriage; he forced the wood there to age and warp until they split apart and curled up.

Under the floor lay a bundle wrapped up in thick wax gauze. He unwound the wrapping and found a small trinket box with a coat of arms emblazoned on its curved lid; it showed a dragon and a bear on their hind legs on either side of a blue, enamelled chequered shield with a hammer and chisel crossed in the middle of a cave mouth.

Havoc recognised the coat of arms as belonging to the Count of Haplann.

“Did I just bury the Count of Haplann and his family? What were they doing out here?”

He opened the trinket box and found a fortune in gems, from diamonds to rubies and gold to silver necklaces and rings. He picked up a silver hairpin with the same coat of arms on it. He closed the lid and wrapped it back up in the gauze, then stuffed it into one of the leather pouches on Dirkem’s saddle; he was about to mount the stallion when he stopped and looked at the dresses on the ground; he noticed that some were far too small for the countess and her daughter.

Find the girl, brother, save her from evil.

He realised there must be another girl. He looked around, but could not find her; the bandits must still have her, and he now knew he had to find her before it was too late.

The sun was lower when he left that sorry place, the light under the trees now somewhat dimmer. However, the sunlight left the clearing last and lingered longest on the graves of the count and his family.

The three riders had waited until nightfall before they made their move. They had watched the cloaked rider leave the woods and stop by a stream at the end of the valley, where he had made his camp for the night.

They sneaked into his camp in the early hours of the morning. They had planned to kill him and take his horse and any valuables. They saw him sleeping by a large boulder; his black stallion stood next to him quietly dozing. The oldest of the three, short, bald and a face scarred with pockmarks, walked quietly towards the sleeping stranger. His colleague, a younger man with a black beard and sword, hung back a few paces; the third was a young man with a bow, arrow already notched. He stood away from the others so he could cover them if anything should go wrong.

The old man smiled; this was so easy, and the stallion was now awake, but had made no noise to warn his owner; he pulled back the blanket and he let out an involuntary gasp of breath as he saw the small boulders underneath.

Havoc walked out from the trees quietly; he rammed the pommel of Tragenn into the young boy’s neck, crushing two vertebrae, and continued walking on to black beard as the boy crumpled to the wet ground.

Black beard turned and yelled to the older man; he lunged at Havoc, but his opponent moved so quickly he did not see the sword that entered his side and pierced his heart before it was too late.

The old man only carried a dagger; he ran at Havoc holding the knife high, but Havoc swapped hands and slashed open the old man’s stomach, sending steaming guts out into the dank night. The old man’s dying groans followed the prince as he walked back to the boy, now lying face down in a puddle; bubbles of air escaped at each side of his head as he tried to breath, but he could not move due to Havoc’s paralysing blow.

Havoc flicked him over with his foot; the boy’s dirty muddy face breathed in gulps of air. His frightened eyes looked at the hooded figure above him and Havoc remembered the vision he had seen in the Orrinn, and it convinced him that it had been showing him glimpses of the future.

“Please, don’t hurt me…” said the boy, with some difficulty; his breathing became ragged as he was losing the use of his lungs.

“It’s too late for that now,” said Havoc; he had deliberately intended on keeping one of them alive so he could probe his mind and find out where they held the girl.

He knelt beside the boy, who was only a couple of years younger than himself, and placed his hands on his forehead. He summoned the water element and performed the thought link. He had done this before with Magnus, but only under supervision from Lord Ness. It was simple enough to do, however crude and invasive it was for the victim, and Havoc used all the force he could. The boy yelled, and, despite his paralysis, froze rigid and arched his back. His eyes rolled in their sockets, showing the whites of the eyeballs.

A plump, blonde, buxom girl was at the surface of the boy’s mind, a constant thought for the girl he loved from his home town of Sloe on the northeast side of the Tattoium. The boy’s name was Ched, the old man whose guts now adorned the floor of the valley was his father, and the other was a hired thug who worked for a red-haired, bushy bearded man called Garth, the governor of Sloe, and, from the picture in Ched’s head, easily recognisable as the axe-wielding man in the Muse Orrinn.

Havoc sifted through the debris of memories; he found out many useful pieces of information. The boy had vast knowledge of hidden mountain passes that even Havoc had missed. He found out that Garth was a Vallkyte soldier, believed by the people of the town to be an ex-member of King Kasan’s Royal Guard, hence his advancement to governor. He saw the boy’s conversation with his father about the newly arrived Count of Haplann and his family. The count’s lands now fell to lords loyal to the Vallkyte king; the count went into self-imposed exile. Havoc witnessed his flight to the mountains with his family and paying the governor handsomely to hire guides over the Tattoium. The governor had suspected the count only wished to go to King Vanduke with hidden treasure and support the Rogun cause, so he instructed the bandits to kill the family and bring back the treasure and the youngest daughter alive for further transportation to Dulan-Tiss. There, she would become brainwashed to become a useful ally to King Kasan as she grew up being the only true heir to the Haplann lands, which Kasan could not control by the laws laid down in the Royal Tables.

Havoc felt pity for the tragic count and his family, and hate for Garth and the bandits. He caught glimpses of the youngest daughter bound and gagged, full of fear in her eyes as she looked away from the rape of her mother and sister. He saw through the eyes of the boy as he fired arrows into the count; even while drunk on the barrels of rum, his aim was good. Nevertheless, he also found what he was looking for. Two of the bandits now remained to guard the girl, about three miles north of his position.

He linked the Pyromantic energy from his hate of the boy to the water element and sent a small surge in his mind. The result was instant death for the boy as the contents of his head turned to mush; blood and brain matter streamed out of his nose and ears, and the whites of his eyes became a dark red.

He searched the dead, but they had very little on them. However, he did take a gold earring off Ched’s left lobe; it showed a rearing horse, and he knew from the boy’s memories that it was a gift from his lover.

He and Dirkem rode swiftly to the girl’s location and arrived as the early morning light was about to creep over the hills. Havoc quietly walked into camp. The two thugs were up and eating breakfast, languishing by the campfire. He could see the girl half asleep in the same wicker cage that he had seen in the Orrinn, her blonde hair messy and matted; leaves and dirt clung to her short linen britches and tunic. Her hair was short, and her clothing style gave her a tomboyish look. He guessed her age to be about twelve or thirteen. The men had not seen him, but the girl had and was looking at Havoc with wide eyes.

Havoc walked straight up to the bandits, but deliberately behind one of them. He was like a long shadow as he exited the trees and shrubs and deftly gripped the first guard’s head and snapped his neck.

The second was shocked into action and unsheathed his sword. Havoc gripped the man’s sword arm with his right hand just below the wrist, put the palm of his left hand hard against the guard’s elbow and pulled sharply towards him with his right; there was a loud crack as the arm dislocated at the elbow and the guard dropped his sword.