The Vitalis Chronicles: Steps of Krakador (58 page)

The officer from Rowlands looked at the pistol in his hands in disbelief. It took him a moment before he looked back up at Phelts. “On any conditions we put forth?”

“
Well,” Phelts smiled at that. “Within reason.”

R
ENDIN
R
ENAULT WAS SO GLAD TO SEE THE
D
RAGON'S
T
EETH RISE IN THE DISTANCE THAT HE ALMOST KICKED HIS HORSE INTO A GALLOP THE MOMENT THEY CAME INTO VIEW
. His thankfulness for the ability to even ride was made stronger by the large number of wounded they had worked hard to bring with them. So many had died in the mountains fighting, and so many more had never made it out of the burning wastes below them.

His gladdened heart was quickly saddened by the realization that he had done nothing to secure his people's fate. While his faith had been rewarded with the appearance of the Brethren, they had never returned from their battle with the Relequim. In fact he was almost certain they had been defeated, which only left the possibility that his greatest fear had been realized. The Relequim was left undefeated, his weapon near completion, and there was no one left to stand in his way.

Exploring the mountains brought few answers. They found what they believed to be where Krakador had stood, but nothing remained save a giant sinkhole that had claimed the nearest slopes of the surrounding mountains. With no enemy left to fight and no reason to keep his army afield, Rendin had reluctantly returned.

And now Rain was gone as well. She had never returned to them; none of the scouts had ever made it back alive. Rendin had wept over her nearly every night since they had left the Desert Mountains, hiding his tears in his cloak as he slept on the ground. He was grateful that they had survived, even more so that they had routed the Relequim's army before beginning their own retreat. But his sister was gone, and soon his Kingdom could come under attack from forces he knew nothing about.

As they neared the crossroads at the foot of the mountains, he divided his tribunes up to carry their wounded as necessary. The remainder of Sir Bramblethorn and Sir Hembrody's men had already parted from them as they traveled south, and soon Sir Beldin would continue on with his own men. It made Rendin sad to see the young tribune go, but he would see him again all too soon when his commanders next convened.

The long days riding home had given him a lot of time to think about what he should do next and how he should approach the impending doom he was certain faced Islenda. There was hope, albeit of the slimmest variety. They had done away with the Relequim's last known army in Grandia. It was his weapon, and the Relequim himself, that plagued Rendin's thoughts.
Perhaps the Brethren destroyed him after all...
He hardly dared nurse those hopes, but they came nonetheless.
It would be like them to simply disappear afterward.

To see the towers guarding Albentine renewed that sad sense of hope, and as he passed through the valley where his father had won his second to last victory, he wondered what the old King would have done now. How would his father handle such a final defeat following on the heels of such a desperate victory?

Rendin had resolved to bolster his people's hopes, and laud this victory as a definitive blow against the Demon, but he knew it was only a way of biding their time. The people of Islenda would breathe a collective sigh of relief, mourn their dead, and begin preparations for a war on their own doorstep. He didn't know how long it would be, if even they would be given another generation to prepare, but they would have no other choice. Whether or not it was right for him to allow such hope was no longer his decision to make. He knew that it was what he was bound to do as their king, and he would fight to the death to convert it into an honest fighting chance.

He smiled as Islenda came into view at the far end of the Spring Vale, her tall white spires glistening in the sunlight like they had for centuries. He would fight to defend this city, this nation, and he would see her relieved of her enemies or die in the process.

Rendin left his wounded at the inner gates to Albentine under the care of the military physicians with the garrison and continued the rest of the way with his bodyguard. The green grasses and silvery-white mountains drove him to reflect on the long lineage of Renaults that had borne the very crown he returned to. It caused a lonely desperation to grow in his heart to realize he would be the last of their line.

Rain,
he thought as the walls of Islenda grew above him.
Whatever will I do without you?

The massive white gates swung open smoothly on their ancient hinges, and to his surprise and disbelief, Rain stood on the other side in glistening green, waiting for him.

“
Rain?” He said as she smiled to see him. “Rain!”

He leaped from his horse, his light armor clattering dully as he ran towards his sister. She came running then too, tears streaming down her face as she threw her arms around him and held him close. He almost collapsed from the weight of her, but somehow he kept his feet as he wept in her golden hair.

“
I thought you were dead...”

“
I was worried for you too, brother.” She smiled. “Though I never thought I'd have to wait so long for your return.”

“
How did you get here?” He took a step back as he studied her, dressed in their family green with the wolf running over her breasts. “How...”

“
Brother.” She took his hand to walk him inside. “Don't fret, it's me. I want to introduce you to someone. This is Ardin.”

A young man dressed in strange white armor and cloak stepped forward and bowed with two fingers on his brow. “It's good to finally meet you, your Majesty.”

Rendin took a knee before the man in white as everything came together for him. Waves of relief washed over him as he felt the burden of his nation lighten infinitely in his presence. “It is of the utmost honor to meet you, Ardin, Demon Slayer.”

Over the coming weeks Ardin made his way among the soldiers at the fortifications below Albentine, healing them, shaking their hands, and receiving their praise. His newfound understanding made healing the simplest expression of his power possible. Had it not been for that, Rain would have certainly died under the Relequim's fortress. The soldiers were glad to have him, but he found facing their cheer a difficult task. He knew it was his duty to do what he could, but every time he visited the hospitals or barracks, he felt lonelier and more distant from them than the time before.

His link to the stone had been effectively severed, but the connection it had made to the spiritual realm had stuck. There wasn't such a readily available source of power as the Relequim's weapon, but now he found himself fully connected to all three planes of existence. The sensation of his even greater vision only caused him to feel more out of place than anything else.

He sat at the king's council as the realm was reorganized in the following months. Lands and titles were removed as tribunes took their offices directly from the king, forfeiting family rights and willingly swearing new oaths to the effect. It was easy for Rendin now, since so many of the lords had died in the fighting, but the only task that Ardin busied himself with for which he really cared was writing down everything he had learned over the course of the last year. There was more than just what he had experienced. There was knowledge of history and his world that he knew was on the verge of being lost forever.

He had been changed, altered and transformed until he no longer resembled the boy he had once been at even the most foundational of levels. To know this about himself, and to know the place he now held in the world with the might of his power left him deeply saddened. There was a vacuum in the world, and he had no way of filling it. The Brethren were dead, and though he hoped they would one day return, the words of the Demon haunted Ardin and he feared the monster too might not be gone forever.

But those fears he kept to himself as he copied down the knowledge imparted by Caspian and Tertian, Cid and Hevetican, Charsi and Alisia.

Nine Demons are to come,
he wrote as a warning in the tome that he had bound for his writings.
Lesser in being than their predecessor, but powerful and fearsome to be sure. Their arrival will not be sudden, or simultaneous, but in secret and sequentially. They must be hunted and killed when they cross into our world, and they must never be allowed to take power again.

He gave the book to Rain before he left, unable to stay in the Spring Vale but unwilling to say goodbye. He had no intention of telling anyone he was going. Life here was easy and pleasant to be sure, but it wasn't home. Then again, he wasn't sure there was a place left on earth he could call such.

A few nights after he finished the book and the ink had dried, he slipped past her guard into her chambers in the Citadel and left it on the table in the entryway. He looked at it in the torchlight, its plain simplicity deceptive to the wealth of knowledge and the lore he had inscribed within. He turned then to leave, to vanish into the night.

“
Where will you go?” she asked before he had walked through the door.

He stopped, lowering his head as he put his hand on the post.

“
I know you've been meaning to,” she said with a sad smile in her voice. “You aren't happy here, I can see it. I wish you would be...”

“
I left you something,” he said, unwilling to say more but hesitating to leave. “Don't... don't let anyone forget what happened here.”

“
I won't.” She hesitated. “Ardin.”

He didn't answer, but he didn't leave.

There was so much he had sacrificed, so much he had given that she would never even know. All she wanted was to reach out and give him something in return, as if she had anything that could replace what he had lost. In the end, all she could say was, “
Thank you.”

He nodded, then stepped into the hall and out of her life.

E
PILOGUE

A
RDIN WANDERED THE HALLS THAT REMAINED IN
T
ERTIAN'S HALF-DESTROYED HOME IN THE MOUNTAINS OF THE
N
ORTHERN
R
ANGE IN THE EARLY STAGES OF SUMMER
. The massive peak still stood, though it looked at a distance like it might topple over at any moment should the proper breeze arise. He took to hunting down the boulders and stones he could find from the fateful night when he had killed the Mage, carrying them back to the mountain and placing them within it to rebuild the home.

He didn't know how long he would be there, but he had as little of an idea where else he should go. This was his act of mourning, he realized, as he piled stone into the mountain for the third week now, melting it and reforming it into a useful shape as he resurfaced the mountain slope. The monotony of seeking out the stones and the labor of repairing some of the destruction he had wrought in his life gave him both the time he needed to think and some sense of conclusion he needed where his failings were concerned.

Levanton was gone, his family and everyone he had ever loved dead, and he had taken so many lives along the way... but this mountain he could repair. This he could mend. He avoided the long bridge out to the lower peak from where he would be able to see the ocean inlet. He wanted to go out there so badly. It was the place where Alisia had once told him they could be together if ever they were separated, and yet he couldn't bring himself to do it.

He knew she couldn't be there, and though he wanted to call out to her on the Plain, he still feared the use of any cognitive extension. More than that, he feared confronting the release of pain that seeing her would bring. Instead he busied himself filling, molding, and carving out the halls in Tertian's mountain. He wrote more books, putting down the lore he had stored up for the Renaults in books of his own as he left them among Tertian's half-destroyed library.

There was so much to read, but he didn't lift a page. He had given everything for this, for a calling he had scarcely realized was his. Loneliness was his constant companion and darkness his closest friend. They ate at him and burned him but never dared to ask his secrets, never threatened to abandon him for the monster he knew dwelt beneath the surface. His monster.

Until one night he went to the chest where he had placed his and Alisia's Uriquim. Her soul stone still glowed its gentle green, while his lay dormant and dark among the twisting silver cage cast around it.

“
This is no place for you,” he said as he closed the chest.

He walked out through the halls, both new and old, finished and rough, and along the new hidden balcony he was forming to face the lake. He came to where the bridge had once connected with this mountain, its long, slender suspension broken and gone a quarter of the way from where he stood. He put his hands out and gave himself a push, swirling the air beneath him and mingling the white mist that streamed out of him with the dust off the side of the mountain.

Landing on the bridge was easy, but walking the rest of its length was not. The small castle carved from the peak in front of him hardly showed from this side, but the path that ran around it at an incline was easy enough to see. He swallowed as he began to walk, and found himself suddenly talking as if Alisia were there.