Deliverance (18 page)

The air outside was becoming much warmer as
mid spring approached, and so Blaze decided to go to the training
ground. He walked onto the ground and immediately saw Gavril
training a group of rebels in swordplay. As soon as Gavril saw
Blaze, his face hardened.

“Don’t stop on my account,” Blaze said to
him.

“Actually I could use a volunteer. Would you
mind?” Gavril responded.

Blaze didn’t think Gavril was going to make
this easy, but he still nodded, walked over, and asked, “What do
you want me to do?”

“I have a few new recruits joining me today,
and I wanted to give a little demonstration on swordsmanship. I
needed a worthy opponent to do so,” replied Gavril, putting
sarcastic emphasis on the word “worthy.” Gavril then turned to the
rebels and said, “Everyone, you all know Prince Blaze, right? You
know, son of the man who stole your lives and freedom away?” Gavril
then patted Blaze on the back. Neither Blaze nor Gavril looked at
each other and both bore an obviously fake smile.

“Cute, General,” Blaze remarked.

Gavril ignored Blaze’s comment and
announced, “I am going to demonstrate a disarming technique with
Blaze here.”

Gavril then lifted his sword to Blaze. The
prince then unsheathed his sword and held it out the same way.

“Now, Blaze, now charge at me with all
you’ve got,” Gavril instructed.

Blaze hesitated, but then Gavril nodded
reassuringly, so he obeyed and charged at the general. However,
Gavril used his sword to block Blaze’s. The prince then swung his
sword from the opposite direction, but the general blocked it
easily. Gavril then counterattacked by striking at Blaze’s sword
just in the right spot to knock it to the ground.

The rebels clapped as Gavril straightened up
and faced them. “That is how you disarm an opponent. You must catch
them off guard—”

“—and then use their own strength against
them.”

Everyone turned to see Crystal leaning
against the wall watching them. She smiled and then said, “That’s
what you always taught me.”

“And here you see my very first student, who
uses my techniques with a short sword to block attacks,” Gavril
said proudly.

Blaze looked at the general and asked, “Are
you done making me look like a jackass now?”

“Sure, Blaze.” Gavril responded, “Thank you
for your time.”

After rolling his eyes, Blaze then picked up
his sword, placed it back into its sheath, and walked off, mumbling
furiously under his breath. Crystal approached him and grabbed his
arm.

“Hey, are you all right?” she asked.

Blaze moved his arm to release her grip.
Even though he wanted to yell, he found himself calmly saying, “I’m
just tired of that bastard always treating me like scum.”

Crystal sighed and replied, “I’m sorry,
Blaze. I will talk to Gavril about that later. It’s just that he
has this deep grudge against Bogdan that fuels his anger.”

“When is he going to realize that I am not
Bogdan?” Blaze blurted out.

“Look, Gavril is a great man. It’s just that
he has a bad habit of holding grudges. He lost so much to Bogdan’s
cruelty, and from what I understand, it went back to before the
invasion even began,” Crystal explained. She then started walking
and beckoned for him to follow.

He started walking and replied, “What do you
mean?”

“Well, you see, my father first met Gavril
when he found him injured and floating on a raft down the river
that runs from Daldussa,” Crystal said.

Blaze then remembered the night that Gavril
told the story at the inn, and muttered, “He’s mentioned that.”

“Well, he’s never told anyone who did it to
him or anything else about the events leading up to it. Whenever
anyone talks about Bogdan, he gets upset, defensive, and sometimes
leaves the room. Well, a couple of years ago, I finally convinced
Gavril to talk to me about his past, even though it wasn’t much. He
confided in me a secret of his that he never told anyone else; he
told me that Bogdan murdered the woman he loved and made him
watch,” Crystal explained.

“Who was she?” Blaze asked.

“I never found out her name or what kind of
person she was, but I have a strong feeling that her murder and his
being found on the raft are connected. I can’t be sure though,
because he refuses to talk about his past. I sometimes catch him
looking out at the ocean too, and he has the same look on his face
when he told me about his lover, so I have a feeling that it must
have something to do with her. She must have been the world to him
. . .” stated Crystal.

“I never thought the general had it in him
to actually have a lover. He’s always so damned serious,” Blaze
remarked.

“He’s a very nice man; he’s just hard to get
to know sometimes. Anyway, after my father found Gavril floating
down the river, he brought him back to the castle in Cartigo and my
mother healed his wounds. After Gavril recovered, he joined my
father’s army and eventually became general. All the while, he and
my father became best friends. Even though my father never found
out about what happened to him before he found him, he never pushed
Gavril to talk about it. He did, however, assure Gavril that he
would listen when he was ready to confide in him. When Gavril and I
both watched my parents die at the hands of Bogdan, he vowed to
bring justice,” Crystal explained.

Blaze stopped walking and said, “You watched
them die?”

Crystal stopped too and muttered, “Yes, when
I was only ten years old.” When she saw his puzzled expression, she
added, “It happened in the throne room. My mother brought me out of
my bedroom and brought me in there to meet my father. He and Gavril
were ordering soldiers to different posts, and I remember my father
embracing us both when he saw us. The castle was surrounded by
Daldussan soldiers and there was no way of leaving, so my father
instructed Gavril to hide with me behind a large mirror that
covered a secret compartment for that specific purpose.

“At first, he told my mother to hide too,
but she insisted upon staying with him. Gavril and I hid behind the
mirror, which turned out to be a one-way mirror, so we could see
everything in the room even though no one could see us. That way,
we could see when it was safe to sneak out. I remember the exact
moment when the doors to the throne room flew open and Bogdan
walked in.”

Blaze then remembered the enormous mirror in
the throne room. He had always wondered what the mirror was for,
but never did he imagine that it was for hiding.

Crystal then continued. “My father agreed to
surrender if Bogdan just left his family alone, but Bogdan just
laughed, claiming that it didn’t matter if my father surrendered
because he had already defeated him. He then heartlessly plunged
his sword straight through my father’s chest, and when my mother
screamed and tried to embrace him as he fell, Bogdan grabbed her
and stabbed her as well. I remember Gavril covering my mouth before
I could scream once I saw my father get stabbed, and then he hid my
face in his cloak once Bogdan stabbed my mother. It didn’t do any
good to shield my eyes, though, because hearing her shriek was just
as terrible.”

At this point, Crystal began wiping away
tears that soaked her cheeks. Blaze just stood there awkwardly,
unsure of how to respond.

“So after witnessing the murders of his
closest friends on top of the murder of his lover, he vowed to
protect me, his best friend’s daughter, with his life,” Crystal
finished.

Blaze sighed. He felt uneasy sitting there
while Crystal poured her heart out onto him. He then saw a stone
bench and gestured for her to sit, and he did the same.

Once Crystal was seated, she cleared her
throat and said, “So, can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” he said.

“We all know who your father is, but what
about your mother?” she asked gently.

“What about her?” Blaze asked.

“Where is she?”

“Buried in the ground near the castle in
Daldussa; she died when I was a baby,” replied Blaze.

“Oh . . . I’m sorry.” Crystal muttered
gently, “Well, what do you know about her?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know . . . how about we start with
her name?” Crystal responded.

After a short pause, Blaze muttered,
“Althea.”

“What a beautiful name!” Crystal exclaimed,
“What was she like?”

“I have no idea. Like I said, I was a baby
when she died,” Blaze replied.

“Well I just thought someone must have told
you about her. How did she die?”

“Fa—I mean Bogdan told me she got really
sick after I was born and died a few months later,” Blaze said.

“Oh, that’s so sad . . .”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s gone now and not
coming back,” retorted Blaze.

Crystal stared at him and said, “How can you
say that? She was your mother!”

“That I never knew. In fact, all I know is
what I just told you, her name, that I like just like her, and how
she died. I don’t know what she was like or who the hell she was at
all. And if she’s anything like Bogdan, maybe that’s a good thing,”
Blaze muttered. He then rose and walked off without another
word.

Crystal was grateful that Blaze finally
decided to open up for a change, but she still felt like there was
more to him that he didn’t want to show. She wondered why he was
never told anything about his mother other than what he had told
her.

Crystal was still wondering about it all
when Kerali suddenly came running towards her and shouted, “Another
shard has been spotted!”

CHAPTER 12

“The shard is in Typhoon Canyon,” Kerali
explained everyone in the meeting room. He and his troop of elves,
which of course included his fiancée, Breuvial, had returned from
the northern territory between the hideout and Cartigo. Crystal and
all of her friends were sitting in the room with her and they all
exchanged worried glances.

“You mean the same canyon that is home to
hundreds of criminals that escaped justice, including murderers,
rapists. and thieves?” asked Gavril.

“The very same, I’m afraid,” responded
Breuvial.

“What’s even worse is that these regularly
violent criminals are beginning to act even MORE violent than
usual. When we first heard of that, we suspected that a shard was
involved, and we then confirmed this when we heard that a nearby
village was raided by a group of thieves recently, one of whom was
seen holding a dark red gem,” explained Kerali.

“The dark aura from the Eye of Gaull must be
making them more aggressive. That is certainly not good news for
us,” Thaddeus stated, stroking his beard.

“We will have to be very careful when we go
there. Who knows what kind of trouble we will run into,” Crystal
said.

“I agree. If these thugs are even more
violent than before, this will not be an easy task for us,” said
Gavril.

“So what are your orders, Crystal?” asked
Kerali.

Crystal looked down at her feet and pondered
the situation carefully. Everyone remained completely silent while
she thought, and then she finally broke the silence by saying, “Let
us get several teams together. I believe I have a plan.”

****

Crystal decided that she and several other
rebels would travel into Typhoon Canyon and a few separate groups
of rebels would wait in the neighboring villages to protect the
residents in case there was another raid. The group that actually
ventured into the valley would be smaller so they would not attract
a lot of attention, but another group would wait just at the top of
either side of the canyon walls to make sure that the main group
was not flanked.

The main group would consist of Crystal,
Gavril, Blaze, and Sigurd. Kerali would wait with the elves on one
side of the canyon and shoot arrows at anyone who tried to jump the
main group, and Maryn and Taryn would sit with the halflings on the
other side and be ready to throw knives or darts if necessary.

However, Typhoon Valley, as they had
discovered, was well over half a mile wide and ten miles long, and
Gavril worried that the groups at the top of the canyon would not
be able to see them or help them every minute they ventured through
the area. However, Thaddeus came up with an idea to remedy such a
situation if it were to occur.

Just as they had done in Ordale, Thaddeus
agreed to stay further behind so that he could see the group
through Blaze’s eyes and warn everyone if there was danger.
Everyone agreed with him and the elves assured Thaddeus that they
would sit by him once he entered his trance and would be ready to
act the second he sensed danger.

Though Blaze was still peeved by the
tracking mark, he did not voice his annoyance. He did, after all,
have to admit that it made things easier in most situations. He
didn’t want to admit, of course, that he was starting to feel
comfortable with the rebels, especially not Crystal.

The morning after she had received the news,
Crystal then gave the order for all rebels to leave and find their
posts. None of the rebels who guarded the villages were to state
their true business, but to claim they were simply travelers that
wanted to rest for a day. Each group left at a different time and
took different routes, as usual, and by nightfall, everyone had
settled into their areas and sheltered themselves until
morning.

The opening of Typhoon Canyon was in a very
arid and rocky area a ways north of the hideout. The dried up
canyon opened and traveled northwest for roughly ten miles. Crystal
and the rest of the main group approached the opening of the
canyon, which sloped downward from ground level and then stayed
level for many miles. By the time the four of them had reached the
deepest part of the canyon by late morning, the canyon walls were
over eight stories high.