The Rawn Chronicles Book One: The Orrinn and the Blacksword: Unabridged (The Rawn Chronicles Series 1) (18 page)

Vara was at her happiest with the children; she had a firm but kind nature with them and they all behaved around her; she used this nature with the king, who liked the woman’s company, and his booming laugh always reminded Vara of Hagan. She nagged Vanduke constantly about his drinking and he agreed that she should help him. She mixed up a vile-smelling concoction of potent plant extract, and she and Lord Rett forced the king to drink it.

“How long before it takes effect?” Lord Rett asked his cousin with a concerned look, because the king’s face had gone slightly red.

“Oh... not long,” she said.

It was a comical moment for all who witnessed it. Both Lord Rett and Vara fled from the king’s tent five minutes later when he started vomiting violently and defecating everywhere. All through the rest of that month he cursed at Vara, telling her never to come near him again as his sickness continued. Of course, she looked after him, fed him, and wiped the sweat off his brow; not even his Rawn powers could make him better. When the effects of Vara’s brew wore off, he found that he could not drink alcohol again, or the sickness would come back.

A sober Vanduke, a rejuvenated king, took the newborn into his arms and smiled for the first time in months. The king had not felt so happy in days. The child had a shock of black-brown hair and his father’s green eyes, which was a Cromme trait.

Magnus called him Havoc Valient Cromme, to everyone’s delight.

The wind pushed the dark clouds away from the full moon and its bright dust rings. Its light shone on the silver Orrinn on Tragenn’s hilt. Havoc concentrated on the opaque surface and willed it to share its secrets.

He had travelled for a number of days now to try to put some distance between himself and the people of the prairies around the lower goat paths. He had now stopped in a quiet stretch of a serene glade and fished for brown trout in the bubbling brook near his camp.

Tomorrow, he would cross the stream and stick to the mountains on the other side. The summer night was warm and dry; river flies floated on the warm currents of air by the waters banks. Otters squeaked on the far side and played in the currents. All was calm and still on the river surface. A light breeze wafted through the trees close to Havoc’s camp and made a low whooshing noise as it flicked through the leaves and branches.

Havoc had stoked the fire one last time before bed; he stared into the flame now and wondered about the fire element. He had no training in the use and control of fire, but knew the techniques to follow and had thought about doing it for some time now.

There were times, at the start of his journey, when he noticed Dirkem would always stay close to him on the colder nights to share body heat; he never thought much of it until he realised that he was never very cold himself. Before sleep, he would clear some snow and put down pine branches for a bed. In the morning, he discovered that the snow melted around him in a two-foot radius. He put this down to an effect of the Pyromantic energy connecting with the dreams he was haunted by. However, as he continued to study and meditate on the surges, he sensed that the warm air surrounding him formed part of the elemental power and not anything to do with the Pyromantic energies. He instinctively knew it was the fire element and remembered the day Lord Ness had produced the fireball. The Ri he had taken the heat from the air, perhaps this was the answer.

He decided to give it a go to see if he was right; he looked into the Orrinn to help him find a trance state, and closed his eyes. He reached out his mind to the warm air surrounding him, then he summoned it to move into the palm of his hand as one tiny globe of heat that he hoped would ignite into flame.

Sweat beaded on his forehead. No matter how much he pushed, the flame would not appear. Nevertheless, it was his first attempt and he had just managed to get the heat down to a certain point and no further; frustrated, he gave up.

He was so annoyed with himself that the Pyromantic energy associated to that emotion appeared as a hot white flame on his thumb. He blew it out quickly.

“Well, I can make flame, Dirkem, but not in the way I want to,” he said.

The black stallion shook his mane and scraped the ground with his foreleg.

“Yes, I know, practice makes perfect.”

Lord Ness blessed Havoc Valient in a well-organised ceremony dedicated to the god, Tri-nut, god of spring, new life and all plants. He was the main god of the Roguns, and all the people from the Sky Mountains near and far came with gifts for the baby, and paid homage to the god.

A week later, Magnus and Eleana were married.

The crowd cheered as Ness Ri said the final vows and tied bracelets of silver-covered vine on their wrists.

At the ceremony, Lord Rett shocked Magnus, and everyone else, when he gave him the Red Ring, a ruby with the Red Duke’s coat of arms. This symbolised that Magnus was now the Red Duke’s heir.

The smiling, but blushing bride was carried by the girls to the bridal bedchamber, where they stripped her naked under cover of the tent flaps and lay her in bed.

The men accosted the equally blushing Magnus outside of the tent, stripped him of his clothes, and threw him on top of a laughing Eleana.

Chapter 13

Mirryn

The low sun cast a golden glow along the vista of mountain peaks, sending long shadows into the hidden valleys of the Tattoium. The warmth was leaving this high place as night descended, but Havoc did not feel cold; he sat on his blankets and furs and looked out towards the spectacular view.

He was feeling homesick more and more these days. He wondered how his family and friends were coping. He thought of the last time he had seen his father and felt a strong sense of embarrassment and stupidity for his actions on that day; he hoped that his father would forgive him.

He pictured Magnus and Eleana in his mind and wished them much happiness.

Lord Ness was always with him, though; his voice’s dulcet tones resounded in his mind always, as he carried out his training.

However, the worst feelings were of his mother and her abduction and incarceration in the Vallkyte capital. He knew she still lived; he could feel it. His uncle would not waste resources in taking her just to have her executed. Havoc tried not to contemplate his uncle’s real intentions towards his mother; it hurt too much.

His thoughts turned to his Uncle Kasan. How was he able to destroy the Sonoran kingdom and send the Roguns, the most powerful tribe in the land, into exile? He had to admit his uncle was a brilliant strategic and tactical genius. Granted, he had Mad-daimen as an ally, so when in the war did they form an alliance? The Vallkyte people were less in number than the Roguns, hence the need for Kasan to augment his armies. How was this kept a secret from his father’s spies and, of course, the Ri Order? His uncle must have had help in other quarters to pull this off. Surely, there must be more to all this than Kasan’s obvious needs to dominate the island.

It was these thoughts among all others that swam around his head as he sat on the hillside and prepared to meditate. He looked into the silver globe of Tragenn’s pommel that was the Muse Orrinn, and focussed on reaching a trance state.

He felt suddenly tired from the long journey up the hill, most of it on foot holding Dirkem’s reins, the ground being treacherous with loose shingle, and his eyelids fluttered closed. His body went loose and his head fell forward; his brow touched the Orrinn.

He made a link with his sleeping subconscious mind, and a lightning flash of images flooded for an instant into his head.

…He saw a boy with frightened eyes, a trinket box under oak flooring, a man with bushy red hair and beard carrying an axe, a girl in a wicker cage, and a huge bear with a maimed claw. He saw Skrol carved on a stone cairn, pieces of a broken sword, a dwarf covered in sweat and dirt hammering at an anvil, two sky ship’s and a beautiful white-haired woman in a purple robe ready to strike him with her sword…

His visions change suddenly as they took him to a different place.

…he could see he was sitting on a small branch in a pine tree. His left arm felt such terrible pain, he was sure it was broken. He fell from the branch, attacked from behind, but bit back at a long ferret-like creature with his hooked beak. He landed on soft pine leaves and started calling in a high-pitched, shrill voice…

He woke and pulled his head back, clutching his broken arm, but the pain had gone and his arm was fine. He stared at the Orrinn in shock and saw what looked like silver clouds closing up around the pine tree scene and that shrill calling was fading. He looked around, astonished. Some time had passed, but the sun had not sunk behind the mountains yet; the images were only a split second in length.

He had made a connection, yet could not fathom out anything he saw. The only thing he recognised was the sky ships; they were Sonoran. He forced himself to memorise every detail of what he had seen, then he tried to perform the link again, but could not even hold the trance state.

He did not sleep well that night; he was too excited.

In the morning, he was up before sunrise and killed two rabbits with his bow; he skinned and gutted them. He cooked one on the small fire he had made, allowing it to roast on a spit for a couple of hours, then carved it into bite-size chunks, which he wrapped in leaves to keep them fresh. He would have the other later that day and decided to head down the mountain and look for some berries and tubers to make a hearty evening meal.

He was on a sheep path in a small valley when he heard an insistent high-pitched calling from somewhere close behind him; he turned to look at the path he had come along, but could not see anything. His Rawn talents told him that there were no animals close by. He frowned and shrugged; the calling had stopped, and he clicked his tongue at Dirkem to continue.

At the head of the valley, he found some berries and some root vegetables that looked like large onions, though had the taste of garlic, hot like raw radish. He was putting the bulb into a pouch on Dirkem’s saddle when he heard the shrill chirping again from behind him.

“Where is that coming from, Dirkem?”

The horse nuzzled his back. It seemed louder now and he walked over to some shrubs, but there was nothing hiding behind them. It stopped.

“I think I’m finally going mad,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

He was walking back to Dirkem when the keening screeched again, this time behind his head. He looked at the stallion with wide eyes.

“No, it can’t be,” he said.

He reached behind him, pulled out Tragenn and looked at the Orrinn, then put his ear to it. His whole body jumped in fright when the sound started again.

It was coming from the Orrinn.

“What the...?” He paced up and down, with his ear to the silver orb feeling slightly self-conscious. He noticed that it faded when he walked in one direction and got louder when he walked back the way he had come.

He jumped on Dirkem.

“We have to find the source of this sound, Dirkem; I feel it is important.”

They galloped out of the valley, and then onto a flat, bare ridge. The direction could be a choice of east or west; he chose east, but, after a few hundred feet, the sound faded, so he turned back. The calling took him to a large pine forest further down a steep slope on the other side of the ridge; Dirkem trotted slowly through the trees.

“We are close. I remember seeing pine trees in the Orrinn last night.”

It took them a while to find the right direction through the thick trees; eventually, Dirkem’s ears pricked forward and he stopped; the sound was much louder now; that was because Havoc could hear it in the Orrinn
and
in front of him.

He dismounted and crawled under branches towards the sound. Then he saw a young female red kite sitting at the foot of a pine tree; her left wing looked crooked and she eyed Havoc warily.

“Hello, little one, don’t be afraid.”

He picked her up and took her to Dirkem, who nodded at the feathery bundle in his arms. The wing was broken. Havoc understood the pain she was in, having felt some of it last night. Whatever had attacked her was long gone; she was lucky to be alive.

He made a camp in the forest and used the arts to heal the kite’s wing. The effort weakened him more than he thought. Healing others with the Rawn Arts used more energy than healing himself. The bird was in shock and weak from her ordeal, so he wrapped her in Dirkem’s blanket and took the uncooked rabbit from his saddlebag. He cut little slivers of raw flesh off the carcass and fed the kite. She was unsure at first, then gave in to hunger and ate all she was given. She must have felt safe in Havoc’s presence, because she fell asleep. Soon, a tired man and his horse did, too.

Havoc dreamt. It was not as disturbing as his previous dreams. It was more cryptic and abstract...

…He was walking through a dark forest.

He wore a black hooded cloak, yet the next moment the cloak burst from him as shadow, which merged with his own. The shadow shifted, grew tall, loomed imposingly and radiated sinister, malicious intent.

In front of him glowed light, not unlike moonlight. It cut through the trees like sunbeams. In his hands, fingers long thin and pale, were the two Nithi daggers. On their hilts was a symbol of a feather, one in silver and the other in a light blue. He had not noticed them before. He put them back into his boots.

As he walked on, the glow dimmed, and he could see a tall white archway with its silver gate beneath it. On either side of the arch sat plinths with one large Skrol symbol on each; he looked at them, trying to focus as if he was looking through water.

The one on the left said:

He knew, somehow, it said SIN.

Then he looked at the one on the right.

It said:

This was the symbol for DEX. However, he could not remember seeing these symbols before.

“The names of the dragons that watch the entrance to the land of the dead,” he said with a dry whispering voice.

He looked up.

The dragons were there on their plinths so large that Havoc wondered how he had not seen them before. He looked at them in wonder.

Both were black and identical in feature. He knew from the old fables that Sin had a silver stripe down her spine ridges and Dex’s was gold. They looked the same, because the myths tell of them being twins, the only dragons born from the same egg.

They were sitting down on their hind legs; their backs were ramrod straight, the front claws gripping the edge of the plinth. Black vapour seeped from their noses and their thin horse-like heads turned towards his direction. He noticed that each of their eyes had two reptilian pupils of red on a yellow iris that covered the whole eyeball, and they blinked at him with heavy eyelids.

“Am I dead?” he asked Dex, still in that harsh whispering voice.

Dex said, “We have not been made aware…”

“...Of your passing,” finished Sin.

Havoc was aware that these two formed one unit. A large forked tongue flicked over the male dragon’s sharp white teeth. Sin blinked and Havoc could see she had a softer face compared to her brother’s, and longer eyelashes.

“Then why am I here?”

Sin said, “You must ask something...”

“...From us,” finished Dex in a deeper voice.

“What must I ask from you?” Havoc frowned.

“The use of...”

“...Our names,” Dex growled.