Fate Rides Wicked: Volume I of the Lerilon Trilogy (14 page)

Lendril was caught by surprise and could only stare in
disbelief as the man yelled, “You are finally here, and now
I can die!” Tych struggled against the man but could not
move. Lendril tried to get near but some unseen force
pushed her back. A very bright light began to emanate
from both Tych and the old man, and a warm feeling began
to flow over the Prince. The man seemed to become less
and less solid, then faded away, leaving only a startled,
glowing endaril lying on the ground, paralyzed. Lendril
tried to wake him, get him to speak, but nothing seemed to
work, not even her kiss, so she settled down in the chair to
wait. Then the sound of other prisoners reached her and
she went about letting them out before taking up her watch
in the chair once more.

The night air felt cool like the nights of northern summer should
be. From his position in the trees near the castle’s western
wall, Crat could see the endarils in the village sitting on top
of their homes looking at the stars. Only the sound of tiny
winged insects and the whispers of the villagers could be
heard, except for the boots of the single soldier that walked
the catwalk around the castle.

In this part of the trees the bushes grew especially thick,
and Crat had carved out a little hiding place. This area of
the valley always bore the rich scent of tree sap and
steaming moss during the summer. The sheer heat of the
day brought out these smells, and the cool night air was
hard pressed to remove them. From Crat’s little ‘fort,’ he
could see the walls of the castle, and here he waited.

The little thief cursed the beauty of the night and the
tardiness of his assistant. Both of these would make his
work more difficult as the endarils stayed up later and his
plan would get pushed to later in the night. Disgruntled,
Crat sat down and waited.

His wait ended quickly as a loud noise announced the
arrival of Rabin, one of Lendril’s cousins-by-blood, and the
only member of the good daril races that would help Crat.
Rabin was the youngest of the di Rutif family, only in his
early fifties. As he stumbled into the hideout, Crat cuffed
him in the ears and he howled with pain, which brought a
fist to his jaw. Rabin slumped to the ground and Crat
slapped him back to consciousness.

“You better stop hitting me like that or I’ll report
everything we’ve done together to Corl,” whined the child.

“If you don’t learn to move quietly and gracefully,
you’ll get us killed anyway. Now, do you remember your
part?”

“I have to distract the guard while you position yourself
to kill him quietly.” In his mind the youngster felt sure this
continued to be just fun and games and they would only
fake killing guard to prove themselves.

“Can you get onto the catwalk without alerting all of
those accursed villagers looking at the stars? One of them
spots you and it’s all over with.”

“I’ll try.”

Like lightning, Crat’s hand shot out and grabbed the
collar of the younger endaril. Jerking Rabin towards
himself, Crat looked right into his eyes. “Don’t try to do it,
just do it. Understand?!”

Rabin nodded furiously, his brown eyes open wide in
fear. Crat nodded. “Go do your job,” he said, then dropped
Rabin and watched him scurry to the wall.

As Rabin carefully negotiated the cracks in the wall,
Crat slipped silently, like a snake on wet marble, to a spot
just below the catwalk. With great agility, he leaped to the
wall and used it to launch himself to the walk, where he
hung underneath it like a fly. Grasping the supports to the
guard’s path, he watched Rabin negotiate the climb to the
top. As the younger endaril landed on top of the catwalk,
Crat felt the guard move by overhead towards his assistant.

Once again his agility came into play as he swung
himself to a vertical position then settled softly onto the
walk behind the guard. Rabin approached the guard, finger
to his lips. “Shh, be quiet and I won’t have to kill you,”
whispered Rabin as he got closer. Crat now stood within
striking range. The guard pulled his blade, going along with
what he thought was a game, and chuckled.

“What are you doing here chi...” but the guards last
words choked out through the blood in his throat where
Crat’s dagger protruded. Before the startled boy could
move, the assassin grabbed him by the collar with his left
hand and the sword-hand of the guard with his right, and
pulled Rabin onto the extended blade. As the boy’s eyes
grew wide, the prince stuffed a wadded rag into the gaping
mouth of each dying endaril.

Crat knew that it wouldn’t take long for one of the star
watchers to notice the absence of the guard, so he moved
quickly to the nearest corner of the castle. Farther down
that wall sprouted Corl’s tower, about halfway between the
east and west corners of the southern wall. Here also stood
the door by which the guards reached the catwalk. The
assassin slipped in and slid silently over to the edge of the
landing. He could hear only the sounds of the cleaning
staff working in the throne room and kitchen.

Crat moved quickly up the fifty or so darkened stairs to
Corl’s door and paused. Knowing he had only one strike,
he dipped his second dagger into a vial of highly potent
poison and held it away from him. His first dagger
remained in the throat of the guard, but he planned to
retrieve it on his way back to the woods. Turning to his
current task, he listened for a few seconds then turned the
handle on the door. He slipped silently into as small an
opening as possible, and then crouched.

So intent was he on his goal, he failed to notice the
darkness of the room. Even though both moons lit up the
entire valley, not even the stars could be seen through the
window. The room stood in pitch-blackness. He turned
towards Corl’s bed on his left and could see the heat of a
body in the single sheet. In two quick steps, he struck,
plunging the dagger deep into...empty space. As the blade
hit the sheets, the room lit up with the brightness of day,
but since Crat had been in the dark so long, he felt like he
was in the sun. He turned to see three figures, which he
soon managed to identify as Morg, Greentree and Corl.
Furious at the deception played on him, he charged Corl,
dagger above his head, ready to strike like a serpent. At the
last minute, Corl vanished and reappeared in front of the
bed.

Crat managed to stop his momentum and gain his
balance. He turned, growled and began to rush the
magician again. Greentree’s hand reached out to stop him
but he slashed out and she pulled it away in pain, a long
gash on her forearm. As he neared the wizard, he dove at
him. The evil prince passed through empty space. The
assassin slammed headfirst into the wall behind Corl’s bed
and fell unconscious.

A few minutes later Crat woke. He looked up from
prone on the floor and felt an incredible urge to tell
everything he had done. Corl’s spell made him do just this,
and in a few minutes, Tych had been acquitted and Crat had
doomed himself. While Greentree and Morg looked on,
tears running down their faces, Corl began a new spell.
Soon Crat began to change, becoming fuzzy to the sight.
As Corl finished, they could see a field mouse where the
assassin used to be.

The powerful wizard spoke solemnly as he said, “Crat,
you are no longer welcome in the valley. May an owl find
you more acceptable.” With this the mouse that was Crat
vanished and the three endarils remained.

As Morg bandaged Greentree’s arm, she put on a
warrior’s face and turned to Corl. “You have caused us
much grief and suffering. I’m not sure I want you as a
father-by-love.”

“Do you remember, Queen of the Endarils, what
happened when Rangdor created the xadineft, those green
scourges of the mountains?”

“Yes, the neftir were also created, a good race, equally
skilled in the skills of mining, warfare, and mountain
living.”

“And when he created the forangen, did not the
hiftnuvin appear, a race as peaceful as the forangen are
vicious, but also as fragile?”

“What you say is the truth but neither takes away the
hurt.”

“Before the conception of Crat, how often were you
fertile?”

“Once every one hundred fifty years, if that often. But
Cert came only twenty-five years after Tych and Crat ten
years after that.”

“I am about to relate something to you that may shock
you.” Corl gestured for them to sit down on the beanbags
in the far side of his room. “Neither Crat nor Cert are
entirely your children. Rangdor apparently conspired to
bring you a child of such evil, that he would kill Tych and
end the problems of the prophecy. He had learned,
however, that whatever he did that affected the creation of
life also brought an opposite reaction. So rather than make
you fertile with an evil egg, he helped you create inside of
you an endaril of such good as has never been seen before,
by sucking all the evil from you and making you fertile.
Then when you and Morg made love, he continued the
process of purifying the fetus.

“This brought Cert. Crat took ten years to form, but in
effect he was Cert’s twin, which was why Cert was the only
person he loved. Therefore, Crat embodied everything evil
that we have come to suppress as a race and which allowed
the credarils to take the path of evil. The act also made you
fertile much more frequently, as has been proven by the
birth of Claft and Rander.”

Greentree jumped to her feet and yelled so loudly that
most of the village woke or looked to the tower. She
turned to Corl and asked, in solemn tones, “Why do you
tell us these things after the misery has been endured?”

“Because you would have stopped the natural progress
of events. Things have happened the way they should, in
order to bring the correct results. Greentree, you must trust
me. The very existence of the continent of Li and the
planet of Lerilon depend on that trust. Turn your grief into
love and pour it onto Cert.”

Suddenly, guards burst into the room. Greentree
stepped towards the door around the curve in the wall and
held up her hand. “Everything is all right in here but look
on the catwalk. I was merely being angry at my father.”
She turned back to face her two favorite wizards. “Soon
the village will be alive with activity and demanding an
explanation. Since you consider the atrocious events of the
last month to be necessary, you can explain them. I,
meanwhile, have to go tell Cert and the two babies what
happened to their brother. Cort will be told when he
returns from whatever crazy mission you sent him on.”

“Cort already knows, and in a few days you will see
both him and Tych. In a few minutes I will tell the endarils
of the occurrences, then in three days we will go see Tych
and Lendril and bring Cort back with us. Morg, go with
Greentree and help her with your son and daughters.”

Morg, always silent, nodded and stood, then followed
Greentree down the stairs as the bodies were found on the
catwalk. Born one hundred years after Tych, their daughter
Claft understood enough to cry, but her brother, twenty-five
years her younger cried only because his sister was crying.
Cert took both of them in her arms and comforted them, as
Morg and Greentree hugged all three, and wondered about
the other two.

In this part of the continent, the sky bore clouds, but
every so often a break would appear and one of the moons
would light the night. Less frequently, two breaks would
open up in the right places for both moons to shed their
rays. A single, grey owl sat in a tree, on the edge of a
clearing, in the middle of the great northern forest, waiting
for these moons to give away some food.

Suddenly, with a small flash of light, a tiny mouse
appeared in the middle of the clearing, as the larger moon,
Hift, lit it with its soft glow. Crat, the mouse, ran for the
thick foliage in the forest. The owl swooped down, and
with trained precision swept the mouse into the air in his
claws. He would regret this, for Crat would give him
indigestion, but it proved to be the end of the little assassin
from the Hidden Kingdom a couple of miles to the east.

Lendril had to help Tych most of the way back to the
horses as the sun broke above the horizon in the west. The
morning felt crisp, as if it could be broken like a dry twig.
A thin mist already began burning off. A pallid silence
hung over the wasteland of trees, no birds venturing from
the safety of the forest beyond.

Far above, without a whisper of sound, soared a single
great eagle, circling in broad strokes, alternately watching
the two endarils and the progress of Lord Damarin’s
forangen army. As his fear mounted about the fate of
Tych, he began to consider checking on him. At this
moment, Tych stepped away from Lendril without losing
contact, and seemed to awaken. A soft, blue glow
emanated from his body for a moment, then Gaylin
hummed softly on his right side for mere seconds.

Tilting his head to the sky, he shouted, “I am a
magician!” Still disoriented a little bit, he paused and
confusion spread across his face. “No,” he added softly, as
if perplexed, “I am a warrior.”

Lendril grasped his hand and locked his eyes with hers.
“You are a warrior, a great one, but now you are on your
way to becoming a great magician also. Tych, you’re
scaring me.”

“I’m sorry, but I feel as if an artist opened up my head
and reshaped my brain with a chisel and hammer. Just tell
me where we’re going next and I should recover by the
time I get there.” They had reached the horses. Tych
noticed this and commented, “Oh good, we didn’t come on
foot. Were we on our way to see my father and mother?”

Lendril’s bottom lip began to quiver but she returned to
warrior stoicism. “No, we ride south to save a city.”