The Book of Deacon: Book 03 - The Battle of Verril (6 page)

Fortunately, before much longer the roads
they came upon began to show the telltale signs of upkeep. Soon
after, they reached a road with fresh hoof prints. Further ahead
the smell of burning wood signaled the presence of a town. Hope
began to rise. This must have been where the others had been
headed. Gradually, though, Myranda's heart sank. Perhaps they had
been here, but not any longer. Any attempts to detect them assured
her that they were nowhere near. Worse, it seemed that they were no
longer together. They now were far below, perhaps already off of
the mountain. She wanted badly to join them, but the horses, and
truth be told, she and Deacon, needed shelter, food, and sleep.
When they finally reached the town, it was a tiny mining community
called Verneste, a place Myranda had passed through before. This
was good news. She'd raised little stir during her last visit, and
there was an assayer who would likely give them gold in exchange
for some of the more unique contents of Deacon's bag.

The gray wizard, rather than relying upon the
general's seal to provide him with free provisions, sold a few of
the smaller shards of Myranda's broken crystal. In addition, one of
the bottles of healing potion brought a very high price indeed, as
it was revealed that the alchemists and wizards that normally
crafted them had been warned, under penalty of death, only to
provide them to the military. This was ostensibly to ensure that
the military had a plentiful supply, but most knew it to be simply
another way of keeping the general populous in check. The money was
enough to resupply, stable the horses, and spend a night with a
roof over their heads and pillows beneath them. Myranda was
mercifully able to reach their accommodations without drawing any
attention. The room had but one bed, and thus it was shared. If
this was another time, that night might have been, and by all
rights should have been, something truly special. Alas, the
weariness of travel and the heaviness of the task on their
shoulders brought little more than sleep.

The next day, the first in some time that saw
both Deacon and Myranda fully refreshed, was spent desperately
trying to catch up with the nearest of the Chosen, but the fear and
duty that had driven the others along put far too much space
between them. By the time flat land was reached and real progress
could be made on horseback, the three Chosen they sought had
already converged, and in the presence of two generals. The two
wizards arrived in time to narrowly ward off each of the generals
and escape without losing a single hero.

#

“And that brings the tale full circle,”
Myranda said.

With the last words of her story told,
Myranda fell silent. Deacon put his hand on her shoulder, trying to
comfort her. The telling of the tale had done little to dull the
edge of the sorrow she felt. In her desperation to end the
devastation of the general named Epidime, and to save the lives of
her friends, she'd crossed a line she had promised herself that she
would never cross. She'd killed a man, a fellow human. At the time
she believed him to be Epidime himself, and that taking this one
life would save countless others. In the end, she discovered that
the man she killed was but a pawn, and Epidime was not a man at
all, but a presence, a possessing spirit associated with the
halberd he always bore. His body destroyed, he merely selected a
new one and escaped, leaving Myranda emotionally shattered, blood
on her hands and a death on her conscience. Now she sat with the
others, hidden by a small glade of trees and licking their wounds
from a fight that had destroyed half of a city and nearly claimed
their lives.

“That was a somewhat more mundane explanation
than I had anticipated. For a moment I had thought you were almost
worthy of your place among us,” Ether stated.

The lack of compassion was typical for this
Chosen One. She was a shape shifter, able to assume virtually any
form, physical or elemental. She'd existed since the dawn of time,
but seemingly had spent the whole of her life convincing herself of
her own superiority, and that emotions were little more than poison
for the soul.

“Are you MAD?!” came a voice of protest.

All eyes turned to Ivy. The young hero had
been sleeping, recovering from near death since the recent battle
ended. Now she was sitting up and fully awake. If ever there was a
beast that could be considered wholly Ether's opposite, it was Ivy.
The very same malthrope that Myranda had contacted, she was an
enigma. Her own history was unknown even to her, though it seemed
likely that she owed her current form to the machinations of
General Demont. She was childish, enthusiastic, caring, and
dangerously emotional. When her feelings ran strong enough, she
became something else entirely. A berserker, surging with rage or
fear, she seldom left behind anything but rubble, and often found
herself helplessly drained when the smoke cleared. If not for the
intervention of the wizards, she would have been left in the hands
of the generals, or worse, bled to death from her wounds.

“I heard the whole thing. I didn't want to
interrupt you,” Ivy said to Myranda before turning to Ether. “This
man
fell
from the
sky
to save her life! What about
that is mundane!?”

She turned to Deacon and approached him, arms
extended. He offered a hand for a shake, but she pushed it aside
and embraced him.

“You saved Myranda's life. That makes you my
friend, and friends don't shake hands,” Ivy asserted.

When she was through she released him from
her embrace and turned to Myranda.

“It is so good to see you! I told them that
you were alive, but they didn't believe me. At least
she
didn't. I'm not so sure about Lain, but
I
knew for
sure
,” Ivy said.

Ivy threw her arms around Myranda and hugged
her tightly. The joy was quite literally infectious, as a golden
glow spread weakly out from the ecstatic creature. Deacon's eyes
widened in wonder at the phenomenon he'd only heard described
before. A feeling of warmth and joy filled him, and to a varying
degree the others as well. Any nagging ailments melted away. It was
another peculiar effect of her emotions. They tended to spill over
into others, and just as rage brought strength and fear brought
speed, joy brought relief and recovery, easily the match for a
spell of healing.

“It . . . it is remarkable. Emotion radiates
from you!” Deacon proclaimed.

“What?” Ivy asked, turning from Myranda.

“I've never seen anything like it. It is like
some sort of mystically fostered empathetic symbiosis!” Deacon
blurted.

Ivy blinked.

“Oh, never mind. I am just . . . it is a
dream come true to meet you. All of you. It is an honor and a
privilege of which I am truly unworthy,” Deacon said.

Ether's eyebrows raised.

“I would not have expected a human to be so
keenly aware of the degree of his lack of worth,” she said.

“Don't listen to her. What is your name
again?” Ivy asked.

“Deacon,” he said. “And she is quite right.
You are all Chosen, the warriors selected by the gods to protect
your world. You have a purpose greater than any other. The world
rests in your able hands. By comparison, I am nothing at all.”

Ivy turned to Myranda again.

“Your friend is very strange,” she said.

“He means well,” Myranda replied.

“That I most certainly do. I mean to be as
useful to you as I can. If there is anything at all that you wish
or require of me, I would be honored to do all that I can. I am a
capable wizard and an able fighter. Do not hesitate to ask
anything,” he offered eagerly, looking to each of the Chosen.
“Lain? Ether? Ivy? Anything at all.”

Lain showed no reaction. He seldom did. A
malthrope, like Ivy, his life had forged him into a vicious warrior
and a feared assassin. The hatred shared by his race and the
hardships it had brought had burned away at him until all that was
left was a shell of a being, nothing but iron resolve and an
absolute dedication to his purpose. Currently that purpose was to
see to it that Ivy would be safe from harm. She was the only other
malthrope he'd met in ages, and judging by the life he was living,
she would soon be the last. She must survive, whatever the cost. If
something did not contribute to this goal, it did not concern
him.

Seeing that the silent hero required nothing
of him, Deacon looked to the others.

“There is nothing that you could offer that I
could require,” Ether rejected.

“Umm . . . “ Ivy thought aloud. “I really
don't think I need anything.”

“Just get some sleep. When we have rested, we
will share what we have found. There is much more to be done than
we had suspected,” Myranda said.

“I will make every attempt to sleep, but in
the light of our current company, it will be difficult to do so,”
Deacon said.

Myranda settled with her back to a tree,
Deacon to one side and Ivy to the other, her head rested dreamily
on the girl's shoulder as she drifted happily back to sleep.
Myranda's own slumber was slow to follow, and the dreams it brought
were painful. Her battle with Epidime haunted her. A bolt of
lightning tearing from the sky by Myranda's will. His body
blackening to stillness. Then, impossibly, the halberd rising and
flitting to the hand of a child. The young boy's face taking on the
look of terrible intellect and detachment. The images were repeated
constantly in her mind.

#

Far away, three figures settled down at a
table. The room was dark, the only light came from the cherry red
embers of a pipe, a weak blue glow of a gem-embedded halberd, and a
handful of similar gems that shifted about organically before
settling against the wall amid much clattering. The room in which
they had gathered was located within a seldom used wing of the
residence of the King of the Northern Alliance, a castle on the
north end of Northern Capital. There was an uneasy silence as the
man at the head of the table drew a long breath through his pipe.
The man was Bagu, one of the four remaining generals of the
Alliance Army, and the most senior among them. He had stark,
handsome features, marred only by a scattering of scars. The well
dressed man held himself with a regal bearing and, at the moment,
barely contained fury. He pulled the pipe from his mouth, breathing
out the smoke.

“Demont, report. I feel I have waited too
long to hear your explanation as to why you came rushing to us with
your tail between your legs,” Bagu ordered, frustrated anger adding
an edge to an already forceful demand.

“There are three Chosen together now. That is
more than I care to face unprepared,” explained Demont.

The man who spoke was shorter, dressed in
clothing less suited for a nobleman and bearing features sharper
and less immaculate. His was the air of a scholar forced into a
business he considered beneath him, and little was done to disguise
the sentiment.

“Unprepared? That was your testing facility,
was it not? That put a veritable army at your fingertips,” Bagu
growled.

“They were being tested because they were
incomplete!” Demont fumed. “Those Chosen came to my facility
unprovoked, with no time on my part to adequately fortify, and I
still nearly destroyed them. If I had a force the size I have been
supplying to Epidime every time you have a tantrum and decide to
send him to kill them,
in complete opposition to the plan
, I
would have brought them back barely alive.”

“Yes, yes. A well formed excuse,” Bagu
jabbed. “Do you have anything useful to add?”

“They aren't acting like heroes. They
destroyed the fort. They fight viciously. I do not believe that we
will be able to count on them reining themselves in for the sake of
honor,” Demont warned.

“One of them will,” interjected a small,
confident, but utterly out of place voice. It was that of a young
boy, the body currently occupied by the general called Epidime.
“Myranda is strongly principled.”

“If that is the human, she is neither Chosen,
nor among the living,” Demont reminded him.

“Wrong on both counts. Whether she was or was
not a Chosen before, she most certainly is one now. And she is
quite alive. Worse, she is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned
with, particularly with the partner she brought along,” Epidime
countered.

“You say she has a partner with her?” Bagu
asked urgently.

“Not a Chosen!” Epidime explained. “A male,
another human. Certainly not Chosen, but remarkably skilled. I'll
have to learn more about him, but the spells he was hurling were
unique, and quite effective.”

“Never mind learning about him. If he is not
Chosen then kill him, as soon as possible,” Bagu instructed.
“Unless . . . Trigorah was with you. Was she present when . . .
“

“No. I had her removed prior to Myranda's
arrival. Conditions for the convergence were not ideal,” replied
Epidime. “She was not pleased.”

“Yes. She was quite vocal in her complaints,”
Bagu recalled.

They spoke of Trigorah Teloran. A
spectacularly skilled tracker and military commander, she was the
least senior of the generals, despite her elfin heritage. She'd
become increasingly displeased with Bagu's decision to keep her
from the front, the place she felt her skills would be best used,
leading the others to keep her on a still tighter leash.

“There is a problem,” Epidime continued.

Bagu's fingers pressed to his temple as a
look of anger surged briefly in his expression.

“What?” he growled through clenched
teeth.

“Lain is trying to deliver Demont's pet to
someone in Tressor for protection. If we expect to be rid of the
Chosen with any finality, we need the convergence to occur, and
that will not happen with Ivy in the south,” he reminded.