The Eight Walls of Rogar: An Epic Fantasy Adventure Series! (The Lost Kingdoms of Laotswend Trilogy--Book One) (14 page)

The Blue Bottle

Andaris regained consciousness slowly.  First he became aware that he was moving, then, upon opening his eyes, realized he was strapped to a makeshift travois constructed of leather and wood, the heels of his shoes dragging lines in the dirt. 
Who’s pulling me?
he wondered.  He craned his head around, and there, larger than life, was Gaven, good old Gaven, limping along with him in tow.  The man had a bloodstained bandage wrapped around his head, one on his shoulder, and a couple around his ribs.

“You don’t look so good,” Andaris observed, peering up at him.

Gaven turned his head without stopping.  The big man’s face was haggard, but determined.  “Glad to see you back,” he said, managing a tired smile.  “I was getting concerned.  I couldn’t tell what was keeping you under.  The bolt hit you at the very bottom of your armor.  A couple of the scales got pressed into your skin, and the tip of the bolt gave you a shallow cut, but that was it.  All I can figure is that it hit you hard enough in the middle of the spine to knock you out.”

“Where’s Trilla?” Andaris asked.

“It has her,” Gaven said, his voice flat, “and it’s, best I can figure, a couple of hours ahead of us.  We have to catch up before….”  He cleared his throat, unable or unwilling to articulate what he feared.  “Well…fortunately it leaves a trail like a macradon, and is slowed by its wounds.  I don’t know what in Kolera’s name shapelings are doing so far east of the Onarris, but we’ll catch it.  Don’t you worry.”

“And Jade?” Andaris asked.

Gaven gestured to his right.  “She’s there.”

Andaris turned, seeing her running through the tree line with her head low to the ground.

“She won’t lose the scent,” Gaven assured him.  “It’s foul enough that even I can follow it.”

Andaris looked at his legs and wiggled his toes. 
Nothing appears broken,
he thought.  “I can walk,” he offered.  “You can’t keep dragging me if we hope to catch up, especially in your condition.”

“At least I’m upright,” Gaven argued.  Nonetheless, after a moment, he came to a halt.

By the time Gaven set the end of the travois down, Andaris had the second strap unbuckled.

Gaven took the strap from him, which Andaris now recognized as Gaven’s belt, and put it back around his waist.  Andaris stretched his legs and, with a groan, tried to stand.  Gaven offered him a hand.  Andaris stoically refused, getting to his feet without aid.

Once the world stopped spinning, Andaris looked at Gaven and, with a broad smile said, “Well, don’t just stand there, get a move on!”  Unfortunately, after speaking these spirited words, his legs began to tremble, his vision blurred, and he startedto perspire as though he’d just finished running a foot race.

Gaven shook his head and, from one of his pouches, pulled a blue-tinted bottle.  He held the bottle up to the sun, jiggling it as he peered through the glass, causing the liquid inside to bubble and froth.  “This was Ashel’s,” Gaven told him.  “He said it is very rare, and is only to be used when the need is great.  I’d say this qualifies.”  Placing his thumb and forefinger on either side of the cork he twisted and, with a loud pop, pulled it free.  The liquid fizzed to the top of the bottle’s neck.  “I’m not sure how much you should use, so I’d say start with only a swallow or two.”

Andaris took the bottle from his friend and, before he could talk himself out of it, tipped it back.  The liquid flowed warm and bubbling down his throat, the taste reminding him, interestingly enough, of maple syrup.  He waited, but nothing happened, so he took another swallow.  “I wonder how long it takes?” he asked.

Before Gaven could respond, Andaris was overcome by a surge of giddiness.  A feeling of warmth and a sense of well being spread through his body, filling every part of him with a euphoric strength that flushed his face and made his skin tingle.  Now finding it difficult to even stand still, Andaris grinned and handed the bottle back.

“Well then,” said Gaven, taking a quick swig for himself, “I’d say not long.”  After re-corking the bottle, he returned it to his pouch, wiped his mouth clean, and threw the travois, which Andaris now recognized as Trilla’s tent, into the trees.

They started at a slow jog, but in no time were running, the landscape speeding past on either side.  It seemed to Andaris that his lungs and heart were operating at double their normal capacity.  Jade gave them the strangest look as they overtook her, then adjusted her pace, and was once again beside them.  Gaven and Andaris ran in perfect step with one another, jumping over streams and bounding up hills, their heightened senses in tune with everything around them.  Now they really could smell the shapeling, its fetid stink making their nostrils burn and eyes water.  The animals of the forest fled before them, no doubt wondering how the normally slow humans could sprint as swiftly as deer.

The Crypt

A
fter passing through the iron doors, King Laris, despite his previous success, had become turned around.  He’d been searching for some time now, and had yet to locate the entrance to the crypt.  There were so many interconnecting tunnels that he just couldn’t remember. 
It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to get from the iron doors to the crypt,
he reasoned
.
I’ll just have to keep backtracking until I find it.

He’d been feeling so muddled lately.  One minute he’d be fine, and then out of nowhere he’d become confused and start forgetting things he’d known just moments before.  The longer he wandered, the more crippling his doubts became—his grandfather coming to him in his sleep, his enemies subverting his will, one of his advisors spinning betrayal like a spider spins its web—it was all so difficult to believe.

Here I am,
he thought,
with my cloak and my staff, traipsing about in the middle of the night.  And for what?  A dream?
  He came to a stop. 
Was it real?
he wondered. 
Or am I losing my mind?  Perhaps
I really am mad.
Perhaps...I should just turn around and go back to bed.
  He lowered the hood of his cloak, rubbed the nape of his neck, and sighed. 
Well,
he decided after a moment,
I suppose
there’s only one way to find out.

Nearly two hours later, after having walked into and out of a dozen different tunnels, Laris at last approached the entrance to the crypt.  Holding his daystone at arm’s length, he peered about for the lever that would open the door.  Once he found it, he wrapped his hands around its rusted end, and pulled.  The lever scarcely moved, so he pulled harder, using all of his once-great strength.  “Come on!” he sputtered.  “Infernal thing!”

Eventually, after several more derogatory remarks, he managed to bring it the rest of the way down.  But not without a price.  Trying to catch his breath, he leaned against the wall and watched as the slab of stone began to slowly grind open.
Pathetic,
he thought, holding his hands together to keep them from shaking. 
Can’t do anything any more.

As soon as the gap was wide enough, he went through, walking with measured, almost reverent steps, into the crypt.  “So still,” he whispered, feeling as if he were the first person to ever speak in this place.  He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, and immediately began to cough.  There was an unclean odor on the air, a staleness born out of many dark decades of stagnation.  Decay had seeped into the very stones of the place, into every crack, until the air itself had become fouled.

The dust upon which he stepped had not been disturbed for a very long time.  Nobody, it seemed, had come down here for years, including him.  He knew he should visit more often, to pay his respects and what not.  It was just that the crypt, with all its caskets and cobwebs, made him feel so...uncomfortable. 
Won’t be long before I join them
, he thought with a shiver.

The walls of the crypt were divided into separate tombs, each housing a different family.  The tombs were divided into individual compartments, hundreds upon hundreds of them, almost all holding a full casket.

No one had been laid to rest here since his mother, more than thirty years ago.  Another crypt had been built at ground level to accommodate new arrivals, complete with oversized doors that could be opened to catch the afternoon breeze.  Laris’ place, however, had been reserved since the day of his birth, here, with his parents.

If it were up to him, he would be buried outside, in the fresh air and sunshine, but it was not up to him.  He was not some anonymous peasant, free to rot in whichever patch of earth he preferred.  No, he was the king, which meant he had certain obligations, including, unfortunately, spending eternity in a sealed vault with his ancestors.

The compartments he stood before were filled with Danodrens dating back hundreds of years.  The higher up the body, the less significant the title.  The compartments on the bottom were larger and more elaborate than the rest.  Rather than just a casket in a slot, they were equipped with drawers that could be pushed in and out for easier viewing.  If a person wished to view a body that was out of reach, they had to use the scaffolding.  The metal wheels of the scaffolding, when properly aligned, could be rolled back and forth inside a shallow track that stretched from one end of the crypt to the other. 
Probably rusted in place
, he thought.  Though as far as he was concerned, it was just as well—he’d never trusted the contraption anyway.

Laris stepped forward and, with the hem of his cloak, wiped one of the nameplates clean, revealing his grandfather’s name and station engraved in flowery script.  He felt a sudden urge to wipe clean the nameplate adjacent to it, but resisted, for he knew, beneath the thick layer of dust, what he’d find—his own name and station, lacking only an end date to make it official.

Instead, into the hole beside his grandfather’s compartment, he inserted a brass key, the narrow body of which he twisted around and around, as though winding a clock.  As he twisted, a small half circle of stone within a ring of symbols began to slide out.  When the stone was an inch above the surrounding surface, he removed the key and rotated the half circle so that the notch on its flat side lined up with the symbol of the hawk.  “Left to the hawk,” he whispered.  “Left to the shield, right to the ship, left to the sun, and right to the griffin.”

Knowing that he had dialed in the correct series of symbols, he stepped back…and waited.  There was a metallic clank followed by a whirring noise.  Then, fast enough that it startled him, the panel slid open and the drawer whooshed out.

When the dust settled, the hair on the back of Laris’ neck raised.  Lying there before him, virtually unchanged since his death more than sixty years ago, was his grandfather.  The tightness of the seal, combined with the embalming treatments, had left his corpse in pristine condition.  There was a brittle, papery appearance to his skin, but other than that, he lay there as though merely asleep.  His great sword stretched the length of his armored body, hilt clutched firmly in his large hands.  The expression on his face was one of fierce pride and conviction, made more imposing by his dominant Danodren traits—the jutting cheekbones, lantern jaw, and mane of thick hair.

“Even now,” he told the corpse, “you intimidate me.”

With trembling hands and a pounding heart, Laris reached around his grandfather’s neck, undid the clasp on the thin chain, and pulled the amulet of Sarcasis from beneath his grandfather’s breastplate.  The amulet shone in the green ambience as it slipped free, looking as untarnished and bright as the day it was made.  Laris held it up to his glowstone and, using his thumbnail, pried it open.  “Thank Rodan,” he whispered.  For there, etched into the metal, exactly as his grandfather had said it would be, was the inscription.  “To my friend and lover,”
he read
,
“we shall always be bound, Arvelay.” 
The dream was real
, he thought, his face lit with relief and wonder. 
I’m not mad after all.

As the significance of this began to sink in, he put on the amulet, leaned forward and, with more strength than he’d had just moments before, shoved the drawer back into the wall.

“I won’t fail you,” he whispered.  Now that he knew he wasn’t mad, there was no time to waste.  There were many wrongs to make right.

Remorse

Trilla came to with a scream trapped in her throat, the side of her face pressed hard against the coarse fur of the shapeling’s chest.  She had exhausted herself trying to break free of its iron grip, and since had been drifting in and out of consciousness.  The shapeling was running faster now, heart thundering in her ears, breath hot against her skin.  She found that if she stayed very quiet and very still, it didn’t squeeze her quite so hard.  Night had fallen some time ago, but the moon was bright enough that she could see the forest floor passing beneath her.  Where was it taking her?  And why?  She feared she knew the answer.  Where else would it be taking her…but to its master…to the Lost One?

Andaris’ dream had warned them that the Lost One was planning to use her against her father, perhaps as a bargaining chip, or worse, as an example of what would happen to Rogar if the king did not surrender.  In either case, she knew her father well enough to know that he would not negotiate with the enemy, not even to save her life.  But she also knew that her death, especially considering the way in which she would likely be killed, would break his heart.  And his heart had been broken too many times already.

Trilla suspected that her father would have preferred a son, a strong male heir to whom he could pass his crown.  Before Trilla was born, her mother, Abigail, had suffered through a total of five miscarriages—two boys and three girls.  Her doctors had told her that she was putting her life in danger, and that the danger would only increase with age, but she had not listened.

A couple of months after Abigail’s forty-second birthday, her doctors had given her the most crushing news of all.  “The change is coming,” they told her.  “It’s a decade early, yet there is no doubt.  All the signs are here.  When it comes, you will no longer even be able to conceive, much less carry a child to full term.”

Becoming desperate, she and Laris disregarded the growing risk to her health and tried once more.  That year a miracle occurred.  Abigail gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, who they named Trilla, after the king’s grandmother.  She was just what they wanted—and needed, filling their hearts with a quiet joy unlike anything they had known, reaffirming their love for each other, and giving their lives new meaning.  She was, indeed, a miracle.

Years later, however, something happened that was even more miraculous.  By the time Trilla was a precocious five, Abigail had once again become large with child.  She had not meant to get pregnant again.  In fact, because of what her doctors had told her, she had not thought it even possible.  She was supposed to be barren.  She had gone through the change.  She no longer even had a monthly cycle, and yet the swelling of her belly and breasts could not be denied—she was with child.

“It is a gift from Rodan,” her doctors had told her.  “Another miracle!”

And so it had seemed at first, as the months passed, as she grew closer and closer to her due date.  She was healthy.  The baby was healthy.  Perhaps it
was
a gift from Rodan.  Perhaps she could finally give Laris that son he so deserved.

Abigail drew her last breath while holding her newborn baby in her arms—her newborn son.  No matter how they tried, they had not been able to stop the bleeding.  “Love him for us both,” she had told the king, somehow managing a wan smile, face pale, eyes sparkling with a future she would never know.

“But how can I?” he had asked.  “How can I live without you?”

“You will, my love, for a part of me shall live on through our child, and I will be with you both, always.  Shortly after uttering these words, Abigail, the most beloved queen Rogar had ever known, died.

Laris’ son had begun to cry almost immediately, so he had picked him up and cradled him in his arms, weeping right along with him.  A few minutes later, his little lungs laboring for air, the baby had died as well.  The fates, as too often is the case, had decided to be cruel.  Laris was devastated, shaken to his very core.  Without Trilla, he might not have had the strength to go on.  But he never told her that.

Trilla had often wondered if her father didn’t, on some level, blame her for their deaths.  After all, she had been misbehaving the day they had died, failing to pick up her room as her mother had asked.  Trilla would never forget that day.  It had been a clear spring morning full of promise.  Abigail was six and a half months pregnant, chasing after Trilla, half laughing, half scolding, when she had tripped over the corner of her daughter’s largest dollhouse and pitched forward.  Trilla could still hear the shriek her mother released right before she hit the ground, when she realized what was about to happen—that she was about to crush her baby.

I should have done my duty,
Trilla thought,
and married Prince Palden, as father instructed.
 
He didn’t need any more disappointment in his life.
  If only she had listened to him, much of what was happening now could have been avoided.  Her selfishness had put the entire realm in jeopardy.  The words she’d spoken with such ease to Gaven echoed through her mind. 
If they were after me, then that would make it my fault.  There was nothing any of us could have done.  My guilt is no more rational than yours.  Is it?

The fact was, regardless of mounting evidence to the contrary, she had not really believed they were after her, not specifically anyway.  If she had, she would not have been so calm.

Poor Ashel,
she thought. 
He’d be alive today if only I hadn’t run away.
  And what of Gaven and Andaris?  Where were they?  Were they safe?  “They have to be all right,” she whispered.  “They just have to be.”
  
She had no illusions of rescue.  She just prayed they still lived.  She’d seen Gaven go down after he’d been struck on the head by the shapeling’s hammer.  She didn’t think it was a killing blow….

Andaris, on the other hand, was another story.  Andaris she had shot in the back.  He’d been wearing his scale mail shirt.  He rarely took it off.  Even so, the bolt had stuck and he had dropped.  Could it have pierced his armor?  His arms had been raised, and the bolt had hit him just above the tailbone.  Could it have missed his armor altogether?  She had been trying to save him…and he had jumped up just as she was firing.  The image of him falling, bolt imbedded in his back, would be forever emblazoned upon her mind—as was the image of her mother lying on the floor of her bedroom, bleeding from between her legs and crying for help.  Trilla had been so helpless, sitting there, watching her mother bleed to death.  She had sworn she would never again be so helpless, that she would never again just sit and watch while someone she loved died.

And I wasn’t even there to heal Andaris,
she thought. 
I failed Ashel, and now Andaris.
  She was the one who’d convinced him to come to Rogar so he would be safe.  If he was dead, it was her fault.  She thought she had cried all her tears, but now she shuddered and felt the familiar wetness on her cheeks. 
He
w
ould have been better off alone.
They all would have.  Better off if they’d never met me.