The Seedbearing Prince: Part I
Read The Seedbearing Prince: Part I Online
Authors: DaVaun Sanders
Tags: #epic fantasy, #space adventure, #epic science fiction, #interplanetary science fiction, #seedbearing prince
By DaVaun Sanders
Copyright 2012 DaVaun Sanders
Smashwords Edition
*****
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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to
persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely
coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s
imagination and used fictitiously.
*****
Chapter 10: The Detritus Chamber
Chapter 17: Chimes Upon the
Wind
Chapter 19: The Dance of Shells
Chapter 21: Thirty-Eight
Worlds
Chapter 25: Flutterbird Takes the
Nectar
Chapter 26: A Shardian’s Heart
T
he torrent shifted
again, and a thousand shards of onyx flashed to fire as Corian
swept through a roiling field of ice and stone. The sheath on his
worn black armor held, but would not last much longer. The stream
of rock in the space between the worlds drifted slower here, and
boasted several floating mountains large enough to hold a layer of
air. Green ferns covered the surface of the nearest, providing
plenty of cover. Corian was tempted to stop and rest, but crater
wolves likely roamed in such thick foliage. The entire World Belt
hung on the message he bore to the Ring, and he could rest after
his task was done.
A field of red granite stretched in the space
above him like the bizarre clouds of some nightmare, the individual
boulders careening off each other by the hundreds. Only the hardest
minerals and metals endured the endless pounding of the rock flow,
and only the most foolish men would brave such a swath of torrent.
They were moving the direction he needed to go, into the flow where
the rock moved fastest.
In the torrent, speed kills,
he
reminded himself. He was the best courser among the Ring’s
Guardians, but the rock never cared.
Corian deftly attached a new talon to what
remained of his silver wingline, then heaved it. The metal hook
took hold, his wingline snapped taut, and the boulder yanked Corian
into the flow. He repeated the process, each time roping a boulder
moving faster, until his last guide rock pulled him along at
hundreds of spans a second. A layer of white frost appeared on his
armor and mask in a blink. He reeled himself in and clung to the
red surface, like a flea riding a river bison in the middle of a
stampeding herd. He watched every direction at once from his perch,
digging his gauntlets into the crumbling surface. The boulder was
actually some ancient rusted metal, not granite as he first
thought. The torrent here was so thick he could barely see the
stars, and it filled his ears with a distant roar.
He sped along this way for some time, until
he spied a pockmarked mass of stone and iron, large as a dwarf
moon. A cleft right down the middle threatened to split the entire
thing in half. A tower in the northern axis had seen more than its
fair share of rust, but the light strobing from it pulsed
regularly, illuminating the smaller rocks orbiting around it. As a
whole, the wayfinder was ugly and old, but the mass of rock was the
most blessed sight Corian could imagine after a week of surviving
the torrent’s attempts to grind him to powder.
His next wingline took him closer. If the
wayfinder was powered as well as he suspected, he could use the
array inside it to find out where he was in the torrent, and see
how close the Ring lay. He might even find food and water, if peace
favored him.
A fellow Guardian must stop here often for such an
old wayfinder to be this well preserved,
he thought.
Smaller debris pelted the wayfinder’s old
crust, disintegrating in flashes of light. The surface shone with
hundreds of impacts, large and small. Corian chose a crater near
the old tower, perhaps seventy spans deep with high walls that
would offer good angles to slow himself as he approached.
As he prepared to throw out another talon,
dark shapes poured from the wayfinder’s cleft. He stared for a
moment, incredulous. There could be no crater wolves on a
wayfinder, with no game to hunt, unless they were marooned after
striking some other erratic in the torrent. No, those shapes moved
with a military precision, more lethal than the deadliest pack. He
could see them clearly now, massive men covered in black. “No. Not
here!” Corian barely recognized his own weary voice.
The voidwalkers had seen him. A pinprick of
light shone on the wayfinder’s surface, brighter than the tower’s
regular strobe. He eyed it mistrustfully as he searched for a place
to throw his next wingline and change his momentum. He spotted a
tumbling boulder half covered with ice, moving away from the
wayfinder too fast.
The light near the voidwalkers flashed. A
beam of energy rushed into Corian’s path, hot as molten steel. A
lifetime of coursing experience kicked in, and he curled his legs
up until his knees touched his ears, rolling forward. The strange
fire passed underneath him by less than a span. He could feel the
heat of it through his protective layer of sheath. The beam burned
past, and slammed into a rock fifty spans away. The tumbling
boulder barely even slowed in its course, but the spot where the
weapon struck—for there was no question that is what it was—glowed
red hot at the edges. The glistening center had cooled quick as
glass.
Another pinprick of light. He twisted around
in the weightlessness of the void to point his feet back toward the
wayfinder and make himself a smaller target. It did no good. The
beam rushed straight at him, and his world turned red with
pain.
An impact jarred him awake. Another. Corian
opened his eyes.
I’m much too cold.
The voidwalker weapon
had burned away his sheath. Layers of his black armor were peeling
away from the metal plates like paper curled in a fire. He had been
caught in a tangle of purple-rooted vines intertwined in a mile
long cluster of the floating rock, what Jendini coursers called a
knotted forest. The roots were nearly hard as stone in places.
Dusty old bones from animals Corian did not even recognize littered
the tangles. Debris from the torrent stretched around the forest in
every direction, and errant stones pelted the mass of vines, which
he immediately recognized.
Courser’s nap, the whole forest is
covered with it.
Corian reached into a compartment on his
armored belt and removed his last flask of sheath. He applied the
clear liquid to his ruined armor in quick, smooth motions, not
leaving one inch exposed. The sheath locked together in small
patches of light, and his body’s heat immediately began to warm the
interior of the invisible, protective barrier. Once the sheath was
gone, his armor would not prevent the smallest pebble from killing
him, if one struck him moving fast enough. For the first time,
Corian considered that he may not survive.
This was to be his last circuit as a Guardian
for the Ring, and he held the hope that he would look into his
grandchildren’s eyes back on Jendini now that his service was
finished. Yet his duty hung over him, heavier than ever. In the
distance he could see the world of Shard, verdant and green just
beyond the torrent’s chaos. His resolve hardened.
He slipped a speechcaster into his mouth and
began to speak as he worked himself free of the tangled vines. The
small wafer could hold his words in secret for a few days, should
things go badly here.
“I am Corian Nightsong, a Guardian of the
Ring. There are Thar’Kuri warriors on the world of Nemoc. The
voidwalkers have built a device that allows them to…teleport
themselves at will through the Belt. They are gathering in numbers,
preparing for an attack. There are captives from all over the
worlds imprisoned on Nemoc. The voidwalkers have weapons unlike
anything known from the Ring. They use energy and can attack over
great distances. They must have been made in the age before the
Breach.
If you knew where to look for this message,
you must deliver it with all haste to Force Lord Adazia on the
Ring. The worlds all depend on you, for I have failed them.” The
admission filled Corian with bitterness, but he forced a strength
he no longer felt into his words. “My sons and daughters live in
Denkstone, on Jendini. Tell them…their father served well.”
One of the vines tangled around his torso
began to quiver. Corian looked down, fearing a leaf, but instead he
saw a voidwalker, climbing toward him. Corian was tall, but the
hulking brute easily overtopped him by a head. His glistening black
armor looked as if it were melted to his frame, and covered him
from head to toe save two dark slits for his eyes. The vines broke
like dried mud in the voidwalker’s grasp.
Corian began to climb, scrambling further
into the vines. He did not bother to draw his sword, the voidwalker
would overpower him in moments if they were to fight.
“So afraid of an old courser?” Corian
shouted. He pulled at every vine in his path as he fled, but most
of them were stiff and gray. Living vines of the courser’s nap were
purple and sticky, but the true danger lay with the leaves.
The voidwalker’s gravelly voice called to
Corian, cold as an orphan’s gravestone. “Come to me,
degenerate.”
Corian drew his sword, and began slashing his
way through the vines. They sparked as his blade struck, but gave
way. He leapt through an open space nearly ten spans across. The
voidwalker followed without hesitation.
So strong.
Corian
knew the brute meant to take him alive. He could not allow
that.
He landed on a solid gray swath, fleshy
beneath his feet. He rolled and lunged just as the leaf stirred. A
row of spikes slipped out of the edges, thick as Corian’s leg and
sharp enough to cleave a horse in two. Corian barely cleared them.
The voidwalker was not so lucky. His momentum carried him right
into the center of the carnivorous plant, which enveloped him with
a twist of blue-veined leaf. Steam issued from the folds near the
plant’s edges as it fed.
More pods of the courser’s nap were coming to
life, enlivened by the voidwalker’s screams. Corian avoided the
leaves wherever they stirred. He climbed and lunged and dived
through the vines, soon pulling himself to the edge of the knotted
forest. Pure torrent lay before him, an endless landscape of
chaotic rock. There was no clear flow in any direction, the
individual boulders in the skyscape crashed into each other in a
hundred shattering impacts.
I’ll leap blind and pray that my
sheath holds.
Another voidwalker tore himself out of the
vines a few spans away.
Peace, but look at the size of him!
The voidwalker’s armor looked as chewed up as the oldest rocks of
the torrent, endless dents and scratches plastered the black
surface.
“I’ve enjoyed hunting you, degenerate.”
Another courser’s leaf reared up behind the
voidwalker as he lumbered toward Corian. The leaf lunged and took
the voidwalker up, curling round and round as the folds of leaf
tightened. Corian allowed himself a moment of elation, but it was
short lived. A pale hand appeared on the side of the courser’s nap,
and bright green fluid poured out. The leaf whipped back and forth,
emitting a piercing shriek as the voidwalker pulled it apart piece
by piece from the inside. Corian needed to see no more. He leaped,
and prayed the torrent would show him mercy.
