The First Life of Tanan (17 page)

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

When Tanan and Brakkas entered the king’s private chambers, Dannap was standing at a window looking over the palace grounds.  There was another man sitting in a large chair next to the fireplace.  Two King’s Legion men in golden armor stood at the far end of the room.

Dannap turned as they walked into the room.

“Your majesty,” said Brakkas with a slight bow.  “This is Tanan.”

Dannap gave Tanan a sarcastic smile.  “So this is the person that murdered my brother and threatened to reduce me to ash.  I’ve been expecting you.”

Tanan suddenly realized that something was very wrong.  He couldn’t move.  He felt as if he were being squeezed inside an invisible tube.  He tried to summon energy from the air around him and couldn’t.  Somehow, the magical restraint was blocking it.  When he summoned fire in his belly, he couldn’t push it past the invisible barrier either.  Tanan was helpless inside the magical restraint.  He took the precaution of erecting a protective field of his own.

The seated man began to laugh softly.  Tanan looked at the man, who was giving him a sickly sweet smile.  “Poor boy.  Magic isn’t as much fun when it’s being used on you, is it?”

Dannap crossed the room to stand in front of Tanan and gloat.  “Did you really believe that you could walk into the Royal Palace without me knowing?  And did you think I would be defenseless against your magic?  I am the king of Komisan, boy.”

The King gestured to the seated man.  “This is my aide, Zasin.”  The bald man smiled his saccharine smile again.  “Abbots are not the only people in the world gifted with magic.  Unlike you traitorous Abbots, Zasin is loyal to his King and his country.”

“But,” he continued, “a Lataki wouldn’t know anything about loyalty, would you?”

“Dannap,” said Tanan, “you have the power to stop this.  I defeated your army at Jesera and offered you a way out.  The Lataki pose no threat to Komisan, and the Abbots have left your island.  There is no need for this war.  What do you have to gain from this?”

Dannap turned on Tanan, his eyes flashing with rage.  “You murdered my brother!  Do you think you can murder the King’s brother and go unpunished, Lataki?”

“Killing me won’t bring your brother back, Dannap.  But if it will end your war, kill me and be done with it!”

Dannap got close to Tanan and whispered, “It’s not you that I’m going to kill.”  He turned to the guards at the end of the room.  “Bring him in.”

One guard left the room and returned dragging an emaciated man by the arm.  He shoved the man to the floor between Dannap and Zasin, then returned to his post.

The man looked up at Tanan.  It was Soama.  His eyes were sunken and bruised.  His entire body was covered with old and fresh bruises.

“You took my brother from me, Lataki.  Now you can watch while I take away someone you love.”

The king drew a gold plated sword from the scabbard on his hip and looked down at Soama.

Tanan shouted, “You took my father from me!  You took my grandfather, and you took Jelak!  You’ve had your revenge, Dannap.”

Dannap wheeled around, face to face with Tanan.  There was madness in his eyes.  “I will take everyone from you, boy.  Everything you love will die.”  He turned back toward Soama for a moment and then back to Tanan.  “You threatened to turn me to ash?  I will turn your entire world to ash!  The Komisani will burn your world to ash and every Abbot and every Lataki will burn with it.  We know about your monasteries.  We know about all of them.  Thirteen armies will leave this island within ten days and there is nothing you can do to stop them.”

Tanan cursed himself for being stupid enough to walk into this trap.  Brakkas stared at Tanan with utter loathing, and Zasin smiled his cloying smile.

Dannap looked down at Soama, who was curled up on the floor.  “I will give you one thing that you never gave me.  You still have time to say goodbye to this pathetic old man before I cut out his heart.”

Soama lifted his head weakly and looked into Tanan’s eyes.  Through cracked and bloody lips he whispered, “Kill them all.”  Soama’s skeletal hand shot out and grabbed Zasin around the ankle. With a touch, Soama violently drew every bit of energy from Zasin as Dannap’s golden blade drove through Soama’s back, piercing his heart.

Something inside Tanan changed in that moment.  He was free.  Free to move, and free to do what needed to be done.  The Komisani were finished, Tanan knew that before Dannap pulled the golden blade from Soama’s dead body.  Tanan, enraged, channeled so much energy through his body that he couldn’t control it.  A pulse of white hot energy emanated from his body, blasting everything and everyone away from him and blowing out the room’s windows and doors.  He stood in the center of the room with his head down and his eyes closed, as a vortex of flames whipped around him, cleansing the room with fire.  When he was finished, sparks and dark smoke swirled around him.

“Kill them all,” Soama had said to him.  “Kill them all.”

•        •        •

Tanan left the room.  The door he had come in through had been blown off its hinges and was on fire.  Guards were running into the throne room and Tanan dispatched them with a thought, engulfing them in flames. He stormed out of the Palace, burning anyone who got in his way.

When he reached the iron gates at the edge of the grounds of the palace, he created a protective bubble around himself and expanded it so fast that it blew the gates open and left them hanging at wrong angles.

He turned back toward the palace and closed his eyes.  Again, he channeled massive amounts of energy from the air and earth around himself.  He sent wave after wave of fire into the palace creating a fire so hot that some of the stone blocks were glowing red and growing soft under the weight of the structure above.  When the palace collapsed in on itself, Tanan turned and walked away.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

Tanan walked through Panna, retracing the route he had taken when he entered the city.  The area around the palace was in chaos as people ran to see the destruction he had caused. 

A platoon of King’s Legion soldiers attempted to arrest him and it did not end well for them.  A large number of people saw him kill the platoon of men, and that became a problem.  When a mob began to form around him, Tanan was afraid they might overwhelm him with sheer numbers.  They began to hurl insults at him, along with rocks, bottles and anything else they could pick up.

The world froze around Tanan.  He created a bubble of fast time around himself and started to walk.  He had meditated in a bubble like this many times, but never had he attempted to move the bubble.  He was able to move, but it felt similar to walking through waist-high water.  Tanan needed to get off the island quickly, and even if this were difficult, it was going to have to work.

•        •        •

To the mob that had gathered around Tanan, he was simply there one moment and the next moment he was gone.  Another platoon of Legionnaires arrived on the scene and attempted to disperse the mob only to find themselves under attack.  The mob turned their attention to the people who had failed to protect them and began to throw their rocks and bottles at the Legionnaires.  Within minutes the area around the ruined palace became a full scale riot.

•        •        •

Tanan was tired.  He had done a lot of walking before arriving at the palace.  Channeling energy through his body always left him feeling a bit worn out and jittery.  The energy he channeled while in the palace had been more than he knew he could even handle.  Tanan was drained, but he had to keep moving.  He had thirteen armies to stop and there was only one way he could do it.  And time was a factor.

He pushed on, moving through the people of Panna as if they were statues.  He found the road that would take him back out of town and kept walking until he was out of the city.  He walked through the town of Larin and past the huge army training camp.  When he reached Cosh’s Springs, he stopped walking and dropped his bubble of fast time.

Tanan went into The Wretched Wench and ordered food.  He needed to eat, and rest.  He had another steak smothered in beans and fried potatoes.  The walk to Port Billen was going to take another five days and he had lost his pack at the royal palace.

He left the tavern and walked back toward the lake to the first of the large army training camps.  It took him twenty minutes to find the supply building, which was one of the few wood constructed buildings in a sea of tents.  The supply master didn’t want to give Tanan a new canteen without the proper requisition form.  Tanan took out a handful of the money he had left and dropped it on the counter in front of the supply master.  It was about two month’s Legionnaire pay.

The supply master took a look at the coins, smiled and asked, “How many canteens did you want?”

“Three,” said Tanan, “full. And some dried beef if you have it.”

The money disappeared and Tanan walked out of the supply building with three full canteens, a new pack and enough dried beef for several weeks.

As he walked through the camp, he realized there was a commotion.  A soldier ran past him, stopped and ran back, saluted him and said, “The Royal Palace has been attacked, sir.  Everyone is supposed to report to their units.  We’re at war!”  The soldier ran off.

There would be no time for Tanan to rest.

He slipped into fast time and started walking.

•        •        •

Tanan slogged through the next thirty-six hours in his fast time bubble, moving steadily to the East.  He removed and abandoned the heavy armor and sword almost immediately.  By the time he crossed over the mountains and reached Yants Bay, he was fighting to remain conscious.  He had to stop and rest and he didn’t think he could maintain his fast time bubble while he slept.

As he had walked, time around him continued to move, but very slowly in relation to him.  He’d left Cosh’s Springs late in the evening, and it was now after dark  He dropped his time bubble as he entered Yants Bay.  People were asleep and the town was quiet.

Tanan walked down to the docks where the boat construction was happening and walked right up to the young soldier who was on guard duty.

The soldier started to challenge him, and Tanan just held up his hand for the young man to stop.  Tanan pulled out the rest of the coins in his pocket and held them out.

“I need a quiet spot to sleep,” Tanan said.  “I’ll give you half of this now and other half if you wake me up an hour before sunrise.”

The soldier looked at the money, then pointed toward a building, a little away from the area he was guarding.  “You can sleep there, but not down here.”

Tanan nodded, counted out half of the coins and gave them to the soldier.  “An hour before the sun comes up,” he said again and then went and laid down next to the building the soldier had pointed at.  He barely remembered to summon his protective bubble before he fell asleep.

•        •        •

Someone was shouting.  “What the hell is this?”

It was nearly morning.  The soldier attempted to shake Tanan to wake him and encountered the protective bubble instead.  And now he was raising the alarm.  Tanan sat up and looked at the soldier, who was yelling, trying to summon more soldiers.  He jumped up and dropped his protective bubble, and then shoved the soldier as hard as he could, knocking the man down. 

Tanan summoned his fast time bubble and stood for a moment, allowing himself to fully wake up.  He was still tired, but the sleep had helped.  He grabbed his gear and left the frozen form of the shocked soldier sitting on the ground, wide-eyed and frozen.

Tanan made it to Port Billen in sixteen hours.  About thirty minutes had gone by outside the bubble and the sky was starting to show signs of dawn.  Tanan went straight to the docks, walked past a few men who had arrived early to begin their work.  There was a small boat tied to the dock.  He dropped the fast time bubble, dropped his gear into the boat, untied it and climbed down into it.

Tanan pushed away from the dock and started rowing.  The men at the docks didn’t seem to pay any attention to him, which suited him just fine.  He tried forming a fast time bubble around the boat, but it was impossible to move the boat through the water so he dropped it and just rowed.

To Tanan it had been days since he had killed Dannap and burned down the palace.  He estimated that it must have been about twelve hours in real time  The King was dead along with the Commander of the King’s Legion, but there were thirteen army commanders and tens of thousands of soldiers on Komisan.  Tanan didn’t know what they would do, but he was pretty sure they weren’t going to abandon their plans.  If anything, they would be moving forward with them more urgently.

Tanan rowed hard, using his replenishment chant to push his body beyond its normal limits. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been tired. He wanted nothing more than to sleep.

Before he could sleep, though, he had to end this.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

Tanan arrived on the mainland just a half mile from the camp where he had killed the boat guards.  He was so tired he just climbed out of the boat and let it drift.  When he stumbled into the camp, he was exhausted.  The world was a blur.  He couldn’t put it off any longer, he had to sleep.

His protective bubble was still in place over the tent.  Tanan removed the bubble and went into the tent.  He collapsed onto a cot, summoned a large protective bubble around the tent and slept.

•        •        •

When he woke, it was morning.  He didn’t know how long he’d slept, but he was hungry.  His null time bubble had kept the food fresh, so he ate his fill.  He stripped off the King’s Legion clothing, threw them into the fire pit and set them on fire.  After a quick dip in the ocean he put on his Abbot’s cassock.

It was time.

Tanan sat cross legged on the beach and looked out over the water.  He created a protective bubble around himself and then closed his eyes.  He entered a fast time state and began to meditate, eventually entering a state of deep meditation.

After a time, he felt his consciousness separate from his body.  He was acutely aware of the energy in the air around him.  He could feel the tremendous power of the sea. 

Tanan’s consciousness floated up and looked down at his body on the beach below.  He moved higher and higher, to where the energy in the air became a cold nothing.  He looked at the world curving below him, a mix of water and land.  Plains and desert.  It was beautiful.

Komisan sat in the water between two large masses of land.  He dove for the center of the large island and into the earth.  Tanan slipped through solid rock and kept going down and down until the rock turned to liquid fire.  The energy in this churning world of molten earth was tremendous.  Tanan spread himself across the energy, absorbing it until he became one with the fire.

And then he began to slide upward, between the cracks in the rocks, pushing into the tight spaces, melting solid rock and absorbing it into himself.  He was a serpent of molten fire, slithering upward between the layers, throwing aside solid rock, dissolving it, making it part of himself.

He was close to the surface now.  The earth stirred and shook as he slithered beneath it.  He heard Soama’s voice whispering to him, “Kill them all.  Kill them all.  Kill them all.”  He saw his father’s dead body on the ground, with the crossbow bolt in his eye.  He saw his grandfather being cut down by faceless soldiers.

•        •        •

Komisan trembled.  Cracks appeared in the ground all over the island.  The earth heaved and buckled.  The low range of mountains that crossed the island crumbled.  And then the earth split and hell exploded out of the opening.  A rolling shockwave of heat and ash rolled across the island of Komisan, flattening trees, buildings and people.  Liquid rock erupted from the opening and rained down fire on every town, village and forest across Komisan.  A cloud of ash and poison gas spread across the land and into the sky.

•        •        •

Abbots at Jesera, and the few remaining Lataki tribes on the plains felt the earth quake and saw the black cloud climb into the sky over Komisan.  The thousand men of the second mainland Komisani army stood on the beach, twenty miles north of Tanan’s empty vessel, and watched as Komisan erupted, and then collapsed in on itself and sank into the sea.