The Chosen (The Compendium of Raath, Book 1) (41 page)

O
tom pulled his robe down into a Skada and wrapped his hands
in Fire. After so many weary months of travel he felt a surge
within himself as he charged the nearest pack of Foglins. He fell
into a powerful stance, low and ready. The first Foglin that came
to him met a swift end, Otom's fist bashing through the side of its
skull. The thing cracked open and blood and bone spattered out. Not
normal blood, but the black blood of a Foglin.

Then Otom was dancing, his powerful legs
taking him high and low, left and right. He whirled and tumbled,
his martial arts becoming again a part of who he was. Each Foglin
that came against him fell gasping with some wound inflicted by the
hands of a man who had been born a fighter. He vaulted the low
swing of a Foglin and kicked out while still in mid-air. His heel
connected with the monster's face and Otom heard a fantastic snap.
He used his momentum to handspring himself back to his feet,
whirling just in time to block a series of blows from a Foglin
whose arms were thick as tree trunks.

Otom would not be stopped.

He heard Raven scream and whirled to see her
down on the ground and backing away from a pack of Foglins,
scrabbling on her hands, her dark hair stuck to her head with
blood. He summoned more power and placed a wall of Fire in front of
her, allowing her time to get to her feet and run to him. She was
trying to cling to him, gripping wildly at his robe, and he was
trying to shake her off. She was bawling, unable to talk through
her sobs.

She's going to get us both
killed.

Otom spun and grabbed the head of an
approaching Foglin in his burning hands, throwing it to the ground
with all his force. The monster's body went limp as it connected
with the stone floor.

Otom pointed to Raven and
then to a nearby window.
You have to get
out of here if you can
.

She nodded, her teeth gritted. She sprinted
over to the window and scrambled up to it. Her slender body barely
fit through, but she made it, harp and all.

Hopefully there aren't more
out there
.

Otom turned back to survey
the fight. The Kingsguardian's sword was wheeling in the air,
slicing faster and faster.
He seems
fine.
Animals were running all over the
place in a panic, but the old woman seemed to be taking care of
them and herself. The girl with brown hair was holding her sword
very badly, but she was still standing for now. He saw Halimaldie
running towards the back of the building, daggers held in both
hands. But Otom couldn't find the blue-and-yellow-robed woman,
Domma, so he pulsed his Detection, worried that she might be in
trouble.

She was against a wall and surrounded by
enough Foglins that Otom couldn't see her. He made straight for her
then, charging over the corpses of monsters as he ran. The Foglins
were closing in on her, surely within reach soon. He caught sight
of her.

The woman threw back the hood of her blue
and yellow cloak and in what seemed to be a last desperate attempt
to keep them away she yelled, “Stop where you are in the name of
God!”

Otom's heart stopped. Suddenly his jaw hung
slack and the Fire on his fists went out. He was struck dumb in the
midst of the battle. Tears formed in his eyes.

He would have known her anywhere, in any
time, in any place, in any world, hair or no hair, and the first
word to pass from his lips in thirteen years came free.

“Allura,” he whispered.

O
tom crashed into the Foglins with such force that he carried
all of them a good ten feet away from Allura. He was a man truly
alive for the first time in a long time. He felt life and love
surge through him, but most of all hope. He ignored the wounds on
his arms and legs as he battered the Foglins with renewed
energy.

His arms were powerful pillars of fire, and
the flesh of the monsters burned away as the inferno that was Otom
broke into them. With powerful strokes Otom separated limbs from
torsos, heads from bodies. The Foglins that had been attacking
Allura were barely recognizable in the small, burning pile that was
left.

Allura was alive and here. He didn't know
how it was possible and he didn't care. She was marked, just like
Otom. Their fates were once more intertwined.

He ran back to her and his heart dropped
when he saw her slumped against the wall. He lifted her in
powerful, bloody arms and checked her breathing. She was still
alive and still beautiful.

“Allura,” he whispered again. “Allura.” His
voice wasn't capable of anything louder.

Her eyes fluttered open for a moment and she
looked confused.

“Who . . . who are you?” she asked, then her
eyes closed again.

D
omma stood in a world that couldn't have been real. It was
completely white.

She remembered fighting Foglins only moments
ago, but now she was elsewhere and in a different body entirely.
This one was at least fifteen years younger with long, flowing
blond hair and a more slender figure. She felt her forehead for the
soft spot, but there was none. Her glowing symbol was gone too.

“Where am I?” she said, in a voice was still
her own but younger, lighter.

“It is time to fill in the gaps, Allura,”
said a voice.

“Why do you call me that?”

“Because it is who you are. Try to remember.
You have prayed to know these things. It is now within my power to
make them known to you, here in this Chrysalis, at this point in
history.”

Allura looked around and the place changed
before her eyes.

She stood in a cabin in the snowy north that
she recognized. She remembered now how she had told Ris . . . she
had told Ris that Otom had slept with her at the Kilgaan
Tournament. It hadn't been true, but she had said it to him. She
had been angry over something. And, oh, the wild look in his eyes.
He had come to find Otom and Allura had followed him, trying to get
there first. Trying to warn Otom.

Everything . . . Otom's parents' deaths . .
. burning down the cabin . . . had been her fault. Everything.

“I don't want to remember anymore,” she
said. “Please, don't.”

“It is already being done.”

The mists of her past began to part.

She remembered a day, wrapped in fever, when
she learned that Otom had gone to the Dryad Tree for her and hadn't
come back. She remembered her heart breaking, and having been so
sure that he would return.

But he hadn't.

Silence, in a last gambit to save her life,
had hired a local sawbones to come see to her. With his drill. The
soft spot on her forehead was from that operation. It must have
taken her disease away . . . along with her memory . . . along with
her hair. She remembered Silence's strong hands holding her down
while the grizzled doctor's drill had whirred closer and
closer.

And the screaming . . .

She had run from that house as soon as she
could walk again.

“No,” she said, crumpling to the floor. “I
should be dead. The way I lived my life . . . I don't deserve . .
.”

She remembered wandering lost and alone,
reeling from her injury on weak legs, running from Silence's house,
from everything.

She remembered walking up the steps of
Sunburst Temple for the first time, ragged and beaten, to turn her
life over to God, or at least something or anyone who would care
for her.

She even relived her times with Potter, the
most recent and last of her sins.

“I've been horrible my whole life!” she
screamed. “Always misguided! Always selfish! Why would you choose
me? Why would you even care?”

“No one . . . is ever . . . beyond . . .
redemption.”

And then her world was black.

K
rothair and the Kingsguardian stood back to back. It was like
a dream come true for the boy. It was just unfortunate the
circumstances that it had come true under.

Krothair could hear the force of Angloriel's
blows and it spurred him on to fight better than he ever had. His
weapon was alive in the air and where it struck, Foglins died.
There were hundreds of the beasts surrounding him and Angloriel,
but Krothair wasn't frightened, he was simply doing what Ti'Shed
had taught him to do. He was a living weapon.

Even when his sword caught in the chitinous
armor of a Foglin and became lodged there he didn't panic. He
simply reached into his backpack and grabbed the horse's horn he
had stored there. It became his new weapon. It didn't matter what
he held, or even if he held nothing at all. Krothair was death.

“Your left, boy,” Angloriel said.

Krothair had seen it, he had just been
waiting for the right time. He threw the horn into the eye socket
of the oncoming monster. The flesh around its eye seemed to burn as
it dropped to the ground, squealing horribly. Then he unpinned his
cloak from his shoulders in one fluid motion and threw it into the
face of the next Foglin. He dropped low and kicked out, breaking
its knees backwards. The Foglin made a muffled sound as it fell to
the ground.

Angloriel now held two swords: his own and
Krothair's, which he must have dislodged from the Foglin. The
Kingsguardian threw Krothair's blade up in the air and it twisted
and spun as Krothair jumped for it. He gripped the hilt in both
hands and came down hard, cleaving the skull of another unfortunate
Foglin.

He rolled and dislodged the
horse horn from the eye socket of the other dead Foglin. It
had
burned it. Something
magical resided within that horn.

“Know your prey,” he said aloud, mimicking
the figure who had met them here in the Temple. “But more
importantly, know your predator.”

He stabbed and lunged, taking the lives of
two more Foglins, one with each weapon. Both of his weapons ran
black with their disgusting blood. It sprayed off as he swung hard,
slicing through the neck of another ill-fated monster.

There was something inside of him. He could
feel it now. There was a power that burned within that he was
drawing on. It could only have been part of his power as a
Servitor. He wasn't getting tired, he was barely sweating.
Angloriel was the same way.

Krothair saw something Angloriel didn't. A
Foglin's clawed arm shot through the air, coming straight for the
Kingsguardian's neck. Krothair couldn't stop it with his sword
without stabbing Angloriel so he did the only thing he had time
for. He stuck his left arm in the way.

The claw pierced into it and Krothair
screamed, tugging it away as Angloriel whirled and decapitated the
monster.

“Too many,” Angloriel said.

Krothair was holding his left arm close to
his body. The wound burned and throbbed. And the worst part was
that he felt Angloriel was right. The hall was swarming with
Foglins.

“Every army has a leader,” Angloriel said.
“It has to be that man we saw.”

Angloriel and Krothair began to wade through
the Foglins instead of simply holding their ground. They worked
their way back to where they had seen the man, killing as they
went.

Krothair's left arm hung at his side while
he hewed through more and more Foglins. He had chosen the horse's
horn over his sword, letting the other weapon rest in its
sheath.

He and Angloriel danced as a team, as if
they had trained together their whole lives. And then it dawned on
Krothair that Ti'Shed had probably been involved with both of them.
Suddenly the boy longed for the old man. He knew it was too much to
believe that Ti'Shed would coming surging in, his considerable
years of fighting experience turning the tide of this battle.

The old man was sick and wounded back in
Haroma. Krothair would have to do this without him.

The two fighters found what they were
looking for only moments later.

The robed man stood with his back to a stone
wall, and in front of him stood Halimaldie D'Arvenant, his silver
dagger held at the man's neck.

Halimaldie was shouting, “What the hell have
you done?!”

H
alimaldie had recognized that voice, and that recognition had
chilled him to the bone.

He'd lost sight of the robed man, and as he
searched for him he prayed he wasn't right. Halimaldie passed
through the Foglins relatively untouched, as the creatures seemed
to be busy with the other targets. His slow advance was stopped
only briefly as one lumbered up to him, tongue lolling. Halimaldie
held his daggers out, thinking that perhaps this was the end.

"Get away," he said to the Foglin, not
feeling the conviction in his voice.

Just then Otom came tearing through, fists
on fire, and utterly obliterated the Foglin.

"Thanks!" Halimaldie yelled after him as the
Monk ran on to fight somewhere else.

Halimaldie saw the robed man then, across
the room. The man had noticed Halimaldie, too, his eyes widening.
He turned and began to run.

"Stay right where you are!" Halimaldie
yelled.. He felt something within himself burn away, like the
tiniest spark of energy leaving him. His coin lost a bit of its
glow.

And the robed man stood still.

Halimaldie ran up to him and pushed him
against the nearest wall. He brought one of his daggers up to the
man's neck and pushed back his hood. He'd been right.