Rowan Blaize and the Starbane Exile - Jonathan Kieran (e book reader android .TXT) 📗

Rowan Blaize and the Starbane Exile

Book Three of the Enchanted Heritage Chronicles

By Jonathan Kieran

Prologue

“I am at war, boy. Ha! Oh, you look at me with derision and revulsion, and I don’t blame you. I do not look like a warrior, caught as I am in such grim circumstances, but I am at war, all the same. We are both at war, now.”

A filthy hand erupted, striking like a serpent between the corroded iron bars of a cell in the dungeon gloom, grabbing the arm of a boy being dragged in chains, dragged by guards who loomed above like obsidian towers.

“Who are you? What do you want with me?”

“I’ll tell you who I am,” croaked the far more ancient voice.

It was a voice like small stones being crushed with violence, over and over, in the palm of someone’s hand, a voice that even the murderous soldiers were reluctant to silence amid such darkness, at this strange and unexpected moment. Against orders and their own judgment, the sweating brutes paused in the dank corridor, seemingly captured beneath the veil of some thin and final spell.

“I am a beast that is no longer free, and rather quite soon I shall no longer be!” rasped the caged attacker, spewing flecks of saliva and breath foul enough to wither the senses. “We are fellow captives, you and I, but my heart tells me that you have a chance to escape, boy. You, who are nothing but mortal dust compared to the splendor that I once was, a glory not so long ago diminished.”

“Let go of my arm!”

The boy’s face was a muddy remnant of shadow and his eyes no more than a swift flash of moisture in the black. He wanted to get away from this vile interruption, yet he did not want to get away, for there was no place where one might hope to go. Not anymore. His jailors, those who pulled taut his shackles even now, were hardly to be invoked for assistance in the best of times, much less in the subterranean prison against this new and stinking foe.

“I’ve done nothing to you, old one. I do not know you and have troubles of my own. Can you not see this?”

“See? Did I not say that we are fellow victims, impertinent little whelp? See? I see my doom and your flight. Yes, I see that. Flight like a desperate sparrow, seeking to outrace the winter wind. But you’ll do it, I think. The wretch who’s got us likes to collect certain valuables to increase her status, you see. I expect you know that much, already. I am just one piece in a particular ‘set’ she’s been after. But she must not get all the pieces. And when your flight has begun, I’ll ask that you bring a message to a certain crucial piece, one of my associates, when you can manage.”

“Leave me to my own misery! I don’t know you or your associates. I cannot help myself, far less an unfamiliar voice coming at me in the stench of this tomb.”

“You will help me.”

Another hand shot out between the rusted bars, this one balled into a fist and bearing a signet ring that had, by some manner of trickery, been hitherto concealed from prying eyes—sequestered in places where even torturers’ implements were not inclined to probe. The little ring gave off a weary glow and then sparked a bright, fleeting red in the murk. The fist pressed it hard into the flesh of the boy’s forearm, where it burned its brand. The boy screamed, more in surprise than in pain, for he had been suffering worse than this kind of treatment, of late. The guards emerged from whatever little mind-storm had clouded their progress, their momentary trance evaporated, and they snarled like a pack of hunting dogs suddenly attuned to a ripe scent. Rattling chains and spears against the bars, they kicked the Old One back into the rather shallow depths of his cell.

“Away!” they hissed. “This is her property, not yours. She will hear about your tricks. Oh, you can believe us. She will hear.”

They began to haul the boy up the passage and toward the faintest whisker of light quivering above. The Old One laughed and muttered under his breath as they scraped and clanked and clamored along. Then he cried out a final time.

“Yes, do indeed take him! I shall have no chance, whereas he shall out-chance us all. Go! Go to the South, boy, when your opportunity comes, and find one of my peers. His name is Rowan Blaize, and I have seen the edges of the future, even from this cesspit. You, boy, shall cross his path. Show him the scar on your arm—for my stinging ring shall leave this scar forever on your flesh—and tell him how you got it! He’ll know who gave it to you,” the Old One screeched. “You see, I struck a little bargain with him during a rather harrowing predicament when he first stumbled upon these lands, long ago. He is bound by an old spell, and by his own interests, to aid you on my behalf, if you demand it, and if you show him the sign. And believe me, boy … you shall need aid. I have been subtly taunting her in regard to Rowan Blaize for quite some time, too. Oh, she will appreciate my little trickery … perhaps my final trickery.”

“Who are you?” squawked the boy as he was yanked, breathless, across a floor of rough and jagged stone.

“Just show him the scar when you see him,” muttered the Thing in the Dark. “And you can tell her something, too, when you are granted an audience.”

“I will tell her nothing, for I do not speak to her!”

“Be silent,” barked one of the guards, cuffing the boy on his mouth.

“Tell her this,” floated hoarse words through musk and filth and dust. “A wizard came from Worlds-within, as ancient legends say. ‘When I am dead,’ a captive said, ‘then he must guide the way.’

“Now you go, boy, and you tell her.”

***

Publication Date: 04-26-2013

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