Delver Magic II: Throne of Vengeance - Jeff Inlo (diy ebook reader .txt) 📗
- Author: Jeff Inlo
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Without an eye or a care to the rebels, Jon’s hands dropped to his belt and unhitched his mace. He threw it to the ground, thereby disarming himself. The weapon made a lonely thud against the stone floor.
Jon stepped up to the lone dwarf that blocked his way to the door. “If you intend to stop me, I suggest you swing that axe now. No? Then step aside.” He turned his head back to the others. “And unhand my advisor. He will accompany me. Follow if you will. Your presence means nothing. It’s your leaders I wish to address.”
At first, those holding Hern did not comply, but a hard sneer from the king and his defiance to move without his minister forced their submission. Hern stepped free and moved along side his king. The rebels followed closely behind.
As Jon stepped past slain palace guards, rage filled his brain. He cursed heavily as dwarves well-known to him lay in crumpled heaps near the wide doors of the throne room. The sight of Yave sitting smugly on the throne, surrounded by dwarves unknown to him, did little to ease his anger. He had to bite his lip in order to avoid a heated explosion, but he would no longer cower before his mother. He faced her with shoulders squared and back straight. He looked into her face with unblinking eyes. When he spoke, his voice would not crack. It carried the weight of authority Yave would not recognize.
“What you have done here is criminal.”
Yave was caught off guard. She expected Jon to whimper, not this.
The king disregarded her surprise. “Those that stand with you now also share this crime. And none of this can be forgotten or overlooked. I will make no plea to you, no demand for reason or request for mercy. I know you well enough that such words would be useless. You are stubborn enough and filled with enough hatred to have your way regardless of the means. It seems you have taken the throne. What is your will now? How will you further divide the dwarves of Dunop?”
Yave stared into Jon’s face as if she did not recognize him. “I am once again queen. I will not divide the dwarves, but bring them together. I will bring them together by seeking justice against those that have dared to wrong us.”
“You are no longer the queen!” Hern shouted. “This is treason.”
The queen placed an apathetic glance upon the advisor, but she would not be insulted by him again. She mouthed an order as if calling for dinner.
“Kill him.”
A rebel by her side drew a broad sword, and with deft precision, pierced Hern through the heart. Hern doubled over and folded into a quickly growing pool of his own blood.
“No!” Jon cried and he attempted to rush to his minister. Several rebels took hold of him and kept him in place. Tears filled his eyes. As he could no longer look at the lifeless body of his true friend, he slammed his eyelids shut and the tears rolled down his cheeks, disappearing into his gray beard.
Yave ignored the anguish of her son as did the remaining dwarves in the throne room. He was powerless, he was no longer king.
The transference of power was illustrated in Yave’s own transformation. Her expression of anger and fury quickly mutated into determination fueled by newfound power. She felt the approval of the rebels that surrounded her, and she chose to feed it. “Let it be known that the rightful ruler of Dunop has retrieved her throne. Let it also be known that all treaties and alliances are null and void. The dwarves of Dunop no longer need to depend on the elves. We will begin collecting all food and wood for ourselves. There will be no more trade with the elves. We will also no longer live with the threat of the humans. Any human mine shafts begun near our city will be destroyed. Any humans found near the entrances to our home will be summarily executed. It is also time we amend the greatest grievance cast upon us. I declare war upon the algors, the ones responsible for the death of Tun Folarok, the true heir to my throne.”
Nodding approvals came from those rebels that surrounded Yave. They had their victory. The dwarves would become self-sufficient and more. They would reaffirm their superiority; they would teach a lesson to any that dared to oppose them. They would no longer hide from the humans, and they would no longer rely on the elves. They truly did not care if Tun’s death was avenged, but they were more than happy to assert their superiority over the algors as well. They welcomed the war.
A lone voice called out objection.
“What you’re doing is wrong!” Jon heaved.
“Is it? Is it wrong to extract justice? Tun was killed by sand giants created by the algors. You yourself brought that news back from Sanctum. The sand giants were merely the weapons, the algors were the murderers. I will not let this crime go unpunished.”
“What about your crimes?” Jon wailed. The knowledge of what had happened tormented his soul. “Good dwarves lie dead because of your deeds. Who will bring justice to their families that grieve for them?”
The queen remained unfazed. “People that protect or defend murderers create their own grief. They do not require justice.”
“That’s ludicrous,” the dethroned king cried. It was more of a moan than a statement.
Yave grew tired of this talk. “Take him away. We need not kill him. We will imprison him and use him as an example that justice will always be served.”
The rebels pulled at Jon and dragged him from the throne room.
Yave addressed her separatist followers. “This is a dangerous time. Magic is free in the land and a threat to every living dwarf. Magic casters from every race will grow strong with the energy that fills the air. They will wish to attack us. We must show we are not weak, that we are unwilling to allow any race to commit crimes against us. The algors will prove an example for the rest of the land. It is time for us to plan our attack.”
Before the magic, before the breach in Sanctum, a delver could seek out the wilderness for untold days. There was little to fear. The challenge was in uncovering the secrets of the land, not in avoiding danger. The greatest threat was the weather, or an occasional wild animal, perhaps a bear or a wolf. No real challenge for a delver. But that was then, and things were different since the destruction of the sphere.
Ryson Acumen, the delver responsible for saving the land from Ingar and his talisman, and just as responsible for the subsequent release of the magic, faced these changes every day. The danger of dealing with the unknown, of dealing with dark creatures, and of dealing with magical mutations was now his to assume. He could not ignore these things, and he could certainly not avoid them. His instincts, his desires, forced him into the wilderness, forced him into the peril. He would not disregard his feelings. He could not; he was a delver.
The call was indeed strong, so many shifts in the land. He thirsted to uncover them all, all of the new secrets created by the magic. With each exploration, he was never disappointed. He found subtle alterations in the ground, in the brush, even in the wind. The magical energy that had spilled out of the sphere seemed determined to make its mark upon every inch of Uton, and though these changes offered much for an exploring delver, they also created new evil.
The signs of bizarre and deadly threats manifested themselves in different ways. Each time he scouted the land, each time he explored territory he thought he knew, he found signs of creatures difficult to imagine. Dark creatures long absent from Uton and unable to exist without the free flowing magic were now returning. These were creatures out of nightmares. Monsters. Their descriptions would have been considered the delusions of the insane had the creatures themselves not made their presence so notable. Shags, goblins, and river rogues felt no inhibition in attacking and killing the other inhabitants of the land. Though these creatures had returned to Uton less than a full cycle ago, they already made their mark in the form of hundreds of victims.
On this day, late in the season of harvest, Ryson continued a scout of the hills surrounding his newly adopted home town of Burbon. He surveyed the crest of a small rolling hill. He looked upon the ground with dismay as markings within the soil revealed unpleasant news.
“Shag tracks,” he noted to himself. “They get closer to the wall every day.”
His hand tested the depth of a single foot print and the hardness of the ground. “He’s a big boy,” he grimaced as he looked around for fresher signs. He calculated these tracks to be made the previous night, but there was nothing around which signaled immediate danger. The hill grass was growing tall. It could hide a large shag if it stayed belly to the ground, but not if it stood to move, certainly not one this large.
“I wonder what it was doing up here?” Ryson questioned. He carefully followed the trail, and mimicked the motions he attributed to each track.
“Small steps. A kneel here at the edge. It must have been hunting. But what was it after?”
The delver stretched his neck as he stood on tiptoes and surveyed the rolling hillsides. His eyes immediately focused upon depressions in the grass.
Without hesitation, he glided down the hillside toward the markings. His own legs left barely a trace in the tall thicket. Light steps lifted and dropped among the tall strands with careful grace, moving them aside with the same gentle precision of a warm southern breeze. When he reached his objective, the true wind shuffled the field back to its natural order. The best of trackers would not have found his path.
Ryson remained alert with both ear and nose as his eyes traced across the older depressions in the grass. Tall strands were pushed out of the way carelessly. They even showed cuts, signs of short swords being used to hack through the thick brush. Ryson had seen these signs before as well.
“Goblins again,” he whispered.
The signs were unmistakable, including small footprints of several clustered together. The tracks clearly indicated movement in a defensive formation, but the winding swath through the field pointed toward scouting activity. It appeared as if Burbon was attracting yet another goblin raiding party.
He followed the trail carefully, hoping to avoid an ambush. His nose could distinguish no scent fresher than that which lingered from the depressions, but the wind was at his back, any scent ahead of him would be difficult to seize.
He looked back to the top of the hill where he had found the shag prints. A question came to his lips that he whispered with confusion.
“Why didn’t the shag attack? There were only six goblins. He could have had at least two of them for dinner.”
He continued for a few steps more, crouched over with his head and back below the top of the grass that encompassed him. He stepped lightly, making not a sound. It saved his life.
The grass in front of him rustled in opposition to the breeze. Ryson froze. He caught the scent of approaching goblins, heard their guttural whispers. With teeth clenched, he waited for another rustle. When it came, he rolled to his side, moved out of the open swath and
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