The Medievals 2 Read online

  Suddenly, Richard’s father is falling.

  “No!” Richard shouts, the words shooting up from his belly.

  As his father’s body falls, time seems to slow, and Richard dives for him without thinking, reaching out his hand and hoping to close the impossible distance between the two of them. Richard’s own body hits the surface of the roof, his knees and chest bouncing, but all of him still moving toward the chewed edge of the roof. Only, not fast enough. For Richard to reach his father, either his arms must be longer or time must stop.

  But then his father reaches up. And it gives Richard the chance he needs. Suddenly, Richard’s body reaches the edge of the roof and his hand grabs hold of his father’s wrist, clutching it.

  The weight of his father’s body pulls Richard forward, but Richard uses his other hand to stop himself against the lip of the roof. The grip of Richard’s right hand holds steady to his father’s arm, and his father manages to wrap his own fingers around Richard’s wrist.

  “I have you!” Richard shouts to his father, his words echoing the very assurance his father had given him when Richard was dangling off of Mount Saurian.

  But as soon as Richard utters the promise, the glove on his father’s held hand begins to pull loose.

  The skin of his wrist appears as the glove slides further. Richard is losing his grip. Without fully thinking through his next action, Richard digs the toes of his boots into the roof and releases his hold on the lip. Then, he reaches down, grasping his father’s arm now with both of his hands.

  “Richard, no!” his father protests. “I will only pull you down with me!”

  But Richard shuts this possibility out of his mind, and he sends all of his energy to his arms, trying to conjure a miracle just by thinking it so. He wills his fingers to be made of the same iron that once helped his father save him as he nearly fell to his death.

  And to Richard’s surprise, his strength perseveres, his arms able to pull his father up onto the roof.

  The two men stand as they recover from the peril that the King just escaped, each of them catching his breath.

  “My son, you have saved me,” he says, gratitude laced into his words.

  Richard sighs with relief.

  But the King’s face is suddenly seized by surprise. He does not groan or gasp. He does not cry out. It is a silent agony.

  And in his eyes, Death is quickly writing its name.

  “Father?” Richard questions, his own eyes furrowing with confusion.

  But the only response from his father is the blood that bubbles on his lips.

  Richard looks down to his father’s stomach, where the bloodied blade of a sword protrudes from his chainmail. The King falls to his knees, revealing the continuation of the sword sticking out of his back. But it is a sword wielded by a ghost. There is no enemy behind his father, no one there to have plunged the sword through the spine of the King. There is only a gathering cloud of smoke rising through the streets, the conflagration having now spread to the southern side of the city.

  “Father, no!” Richard cries out, and several of the knights of the Lead Guard turn his way.

  When they see the King on his knees, they rush to the King’s side.

  Richard pulls the sword from his father’s lower spine, and his body then crumples to the roof in a heap. Richard kneels down beside his father.

  “Richard--” his father attempts to speak, but it is labored and muffled, his bloodied lips against the stone. “You... must lead now.”

  The grim resignation in his father’s words pierces Richard’s chest. He has never heard the timbre of his father’s voice sound so weak, or so despondent.

  “I cannot,” Richard despairs. “I am not ready to lead.”

  “You… already have,” his father struggles to say, blood thickening his speech, his face ashen. “Ivanhoe… El Cid...They chose to follow you here.”

  You will know you are a leader when men follow you. Not because they must, but because they choose to. The echoes of his father’s words from atop Mount Saurian reach Richard’s ears, but they do not comfort him.

  “Father, do not die,” Richard pleads, his words swallowed by emotion. Then, as his father moves his lips but no sound comes, Richard leans his ear closer to his father’s mouth. “What, father?”

  His father coughs, crimson spittle staining his beard.

  But then his words come in a whisper: “Your bones... are my bones,” his father says, a sentiment he has repeated to Richard over and over again in their private moments, only now it will be the last time he says these words.

  Before Richard can respond, before he can convey a final message, his father’s eyes take root. The muscles around his mouth go still. Death has completed its inscription.

  “Noooooooo!” Richard bellows, a fist of spontaneous grief punching his heart.

  His cry is met with a laugh. A deep, guttural laugh. And Richard knows instantly to whom it belongs.

  Waldron steps from the swelling cloud of smoke.

  He appears as a feathered demon, his tall body cloaked in chattering darklings, his red eye pulsing with evil relish.

  In a flash, Richard’s sinking sorrow becomes endless anger, and that emotion powers his legs as he launches to his feet and races headlong toward the Rune. As he runs, Richard pulls his sword from his scabbard, preparing to strike down the very being that took his father’s life.

  But just as Richard swings his sword, Waldron waves the staff in his left hand, and Richard is propelled from his feet, his body thrown backward and landing next to his dead father.

  The knights of the Lead Guard then raise their swords to attack the Rune, and the archers fire their arrows. But, with a swirling gesture from the staff, Waldron steals the swords from the knights hands and slits their throats with their own blades; and he returns the flying arrows to the hearts of the archers. Thirty bodies collapse to the roof at once, a soundless choreography of death.

  Richard, now the lone fighter, gets back on his feet and charges again. And again, Waldron uses the power of the staff to throw him back to where he started.

  Then, again.

  And again.

  “Stay down, Prince,” Waldron commands.

  And the Rune’s command proves effective as Richard tries, but fails, to stand again. The air is heavy, an invisible weight pressing down on his chest. He strains the muscles in his arms and legs, but Richard cannot move.

  “If you are going to kill me, just on with it,” Richard demands, knowing that the war is all but lost, and his life all but over.

  “In time, you will join your father,” Waldron says, making a slow approach toward Richard. “But first…”

  With his intentions left incomplete there in the air, Waldron moves to stand over him. Richard suddenly senses the sky darkening. At first, Richard thinks it might be the Rune’s shadow; or perhaps Richard’s own shroud of misery dimming his world. But then, Richard squints to see that the sun is being blotted out by the moon.

  Using the staff, Waldron is summoning an eclipse.

  “For centuries, I was forced to live in the shadows. Now, in this final hour of reckoning, you and the rest of your kind shall know how such an existence feels.”

  “You do not have to do this,” Richard implores. “Kill me if your vengeance so demands, but do not punish the rest of them. It was my ancestors, my blood, that is responsible for what happened to your people. They were wrong. They made a mistake.”

  “Yes, your ancestors did make a mistake. They left me alive,” Waldron says, his red eye pulsing. “But I assure you: I will not make that same mistake. I will not stop until every human heart of the Realm has beat its last.”

  Then, as the moon completes its veil of the sun, the Rune points the staff at the roof. The stone beneath Richard begins to rumble, and then it splinters and cracks. Suddenly, a large slab of the roof, one that includes Richard and his father’s mortal remains, rises up into the air, levitating there before Waldron.

&nb
sp; “What are you doing?” Richard questions.

  “I am taking you to see the Descendent one last time,” Waldron explains, a dark mirth in his voice. “I want her to finally understand what weak creatures you humans really are.”

  {Wendolyn}

  The moon is eating the sun, and the strangest of light has settled over the landscape. It is as if light has been cut in half, and then half again, and half again, and so on, until only the thinnest of light remains. But while the light is thin, it is dense, and it feels weighted with a deep emptiness that turns bodies into shadows.

  Wendolyn is moving across the battlefield and through the strange light in search of Mulan, who has been missing since she and Wendolyn separated at the church. All around her, Wendolyn can hear the nightmarish chorus of soldiers’ cries as they battle the bloodthirsty saurians. And on the ground, she can see the blood and limbs of the dead among the rubble.

  The onslaught is endless and inescapable, the destruction is thorough; and this has left many of the soldiers dispirited, their formations broken. Soon, this battle will be no longer about crown and country, but every man, woman and child fending for their lives as they flee to prayerful safety.

  As Wendolyn treads quickly but cautiously through the smoke, she calls out to the Blind Shen with her mind.

  “Mulan, where are you?”

  While Thorne had insisted on teaching Wendolyn how to hide, he had never taught her how to find those that are hidden. Perhaps this was part of her training that was to come, but never did.

  But Wendolyn can imagine that if Thorne was able to find her in a covered hole in the ground where she kept silent, he must have used more than just his eyes and ears to find her. He must have used another sense, a rare power within his mind. A power that the Caemon and the Shen must possess. A power that Wendolyn, as Merlin’s Descendant, must also have.

  And so Wendolyn is hoping she can use her mind to seek out Mulan. For, without Mulan, her protector, Wendolyn does not believe she will be able to defeat Waldron alone.

  Suddenly, the call of her mind receives a response.

  It is not a voice, but a sound. Ethereal and pulsing. Like a beacon. And the sound holds a color within her mind: a deep reddish-purple. Like that of a garnet stone. Or a magnolia bloom.

  Mulan, Keeper of the Magnolia.

  As she quickly moves off in one direction to follow the sound, the color becomes fainter in her mind. Wendolyn stops, realizing she must be heading in the wrong direction.

  Then she turns around, the purple now deepening again, the sound pulsing more quickly. Wendolyn’s focus becomes singular, and she moves with haste and abandon through the ongoing battle, the beacon pulling her ever-forward.

  Her path takes her through the heart of the fight. And in her hazy periphery, Wendolyn sees soldiers stabbing at saurians and diving to escape their fiery blasts. Among the soldiers, Wendolyn can spot Ivanhoe wielding his axe, rage his constant companion. And not far from Ivanhoe, El Cid swings his flaming sword, his face fitted with both pleasure and pride. Both men fight tirelessly against the beasts.

  The pulsing sound quickens even more as Wendolyn presses on, forced to step over bodies and rubble. A gust of wind dirties her eyes with the soot-filled air, and she rubs them clean once again.

  Finally, the beacon is no longer a pulse but a continuous line of sound, and Wendolyn stops, believing that this must indicate the location of Mulan. But as she looks around, Wendolyn does not see the Blind Shen.

  “Mulan, I can feel you. I know you are here. But where?”

  Having searched everywhere else around her, Wendolyn looks to her feet. She notices that she is standing upon a pile of bricks and crumbled stone slabs. It is the remains to a building that has collapsed in the battle.

  And as she looks down through the gaps in the rubble, Wendolyn’s eyes catch a hint of Mulan’s yellow skin. Her sable hair. The blindfold.

  “Mulan!” she shouts, bending down and putting one eye to the hole.

  The Blind Shen does not stir.

  “Mulan! Can you hear me?!”

  But there is no response from Mulan, only the continuous reddish-purple sound in Wendolyn’s mind.

  Wendolyn scrambles to clear the stones and debris. But when she reaches a large stone slab, it proves too heavy. She focuses her mind on the obstruction, trying to use the power of her mind to lift the stone.

  It rises slightly.

  But then clatters back onto the pile of rubble.

  Her mind is not strong enough to lift the slab.

  Wendolyn looks up, searching for help. She sees Ivanhoe and El Cid combatting the saurians along with a clutch of soldiers.

  “Ivanhoe! El Cid!” Wendolyn shouts across the battlefield.

  Both men turn back to Wendolyn. And they must read the desperation in her eyes, because they waste not a second as they abandon their current fight and race toward her.

  “What is wrong?” Ivanhoe is the first to reach her.

  “Mulan! She is buried beneath the rubble here,” Wendolyn says urgently, pointing to the stones beneath her.

  Ivanhoe bends down and peers into the hole that reveals the glimpse of Mulan.

  “She is likely dead,” Ivanhoe judges, shaking his head.

  Beneath his words, Wendolyn hears the shaggy red-haired warrior implying that they should leave her there, trapped beneath the debris.

  “But we do not know for sure. We need to get her out of there,” Wendolyn argues, emotion catching in her throat.

  Before Ivanhoe can respond, El Cid grabs hold of the large slab that has imprisoned the Blind Shen beneath it.

  “El Cid can lift the stone,” the Spaniard claims as he strains against the weight of the slab, his long black hair falling over his face.

  When El Cid shows signs of struggle under the stone, Ivanhoe grabs hold of the other side. Together, the two brutes are able to hoist the slab just far enough to reveal the Blind Shen’s limp body in full. Wendolyn reaches down and grabs hold of Mulan’s arms, and then she drags her from her otherwise grave.

  Wendolyn rests the Blind Shen on the ground, and she can see the gash in Mulan’s side where the saurian had sunk its claws into her earlier.

  Ivanhoe leans down over her, pressing his ear to her chest. After a moment, Ivanhoe looks to Wendolyn and gives a reassuring nod.

  “She is breathing,” he says.

  “Mulan, it is Wendolyn,” she says, gently trying to rouse Mulan from her unconscious state. She presses the cloth of her shirt against the wound, hoping to staunch the slow bleed. “Can you hear me?”

  The Blind Shen stirs, but she remains distant, and unawake.

  And then...

  BOOM!

  Wendolyn’s attention is ripped from Mulan to a cloud of dust and soot that rises up not far from the castle gate. Ivanhoe and El Cid also train their eyes on the site of the crash.

  The smoke thins, revealing a wide stone slab. And on the slab, two bodies. Before the dust clears completely, Wendolyn already knows that one of the bodies belongs to Richard. She can feel his heart beating even from this distance. She can feel it beating as if it were her own.

  “Richard!” she cries out, running toward him with all the speed her legs will allow, Ivanhoe and El Cid following.

  When she reaches the jagged stone slab, Wendolyn sees despair etched into Richard’s face. His eyes are empty, his head is without his mind at the moment. And when she looks to the body next to him, she understands why: King Henry is dead.

  The King's bloodless face is angled toward the slab, his lips pressed against the stone, his final kiss with this world. His eyes are open, but pinned. And blood of a deep crimson pools around his crownless head, the kingly diadem lost with the battle.

  “The King! The King is dead!” shouts one of the soldiers situated nearby, horror choking his words.

  Dread blankets the soldiers as the grim news hits their ears. Meanwhile, Ivanhoe kneels beside the King’s corpse in knightly reverence, an act of emot
ion that Wendolyn has not before seen from the wild-eyed warrior.

  Wendolyn’s heart breaks for Richard. For his loss. For his impossible pain. But before she can even search for the words to console Richard, she suddenly feels another presence.

  Waldron.

  “Yes,” Waldron says, his disembodied voice filled with both fire and mirth. “The King is dead, long live the King.”

  The Rune materializes no more than a stone’s throw from Wendolyn, a ghost from the dust, draped in his clamorous darklings. His silver mask glows with the strange, half-eaten light. His red eye appears more violent than ever. In his right hand, Wendolyn sees the staff held at his side.

  “Stop!” Wendolyn demands. “No more!”

  “Why? What do you care for these humans?” Waldron asks. “They want you now only because they need you, because they know that you are their only hope. But where were they before, when you were forced to live in hiding because magic is forbidden?”

  Several archers fire arrows at Waldron. But, with hardly a thought, the Rune returns the arrows to their hearts, killing them and giving pause to other soldiers that might be considering similar attacks on Waldron.

  “Stop resisting, Wendolyn. Yours is a darker purpose. You are destined to sit at my side, to serve as my angel of death.”

  As before, the Rune’s words take root in Wendolyn’s mind, and a harrowing tableau of death and destruction enchants her. The spray of fire from her fingertips burning the Nine Territories. The Four Winds whipping up the earth. Rain turning the land into a watery grave.

  “I know you see it. I can feel you wanting it.”

  Then a new image.

  The darkest yet.

  Richard is floating before Wendolyn in the air. His face is desperate, his eyes pleading with her. Wendolyn’s fingers unfurl. And then, as Waldron once crushed the spider she called Hope, Wendolyn tightens her fingers into a fist, and she watches as the life is squeezed from Richard.

  “Nooooo!” Wendolyn screams, shaking the murderous scene loose from her mind.