Dragons' Onyx (12 page)

“He is a spy,” protested one of the Lanoirian soldiers.

“Of course he is,” acknowledged the authoritarian voice. “And what are you told to do with spies? Are you told to beat them? Kill them? No, you are told to capture them and bring them to the emperor. Perhaps some of you would care to be taken to the emperor in the spy’s place?”

The crowd reverberated with low grumble as it quickly dispersed, leaving the mercenary curled in a ball on the ground.

“Get up,” commanded the voice.

Captain Orteka’s body was wracked with pain. He rolled onto his stomach and tried to push himself to his feet. His head began to swim again, and he collapsed on the ground. A boot slammed into his ribs, and the mercenary heard an audible crack through his scream of pain.

“When I tell you to get up,” commanded the voice “I do not mean later. I mean NOW.”

Orteka gritted his teeth as he gasped for breath. He kept waiting for another kick as he struggled to get to his feet. Instead, a hand reached down and grabbed his collar. It hauled him to his feet and then some. The mercenary was only able to open one eye, but he saw the owner of the authoritarian voice. The man’s uniform had the gold trim indicative of the Emperor’s Guard. The man glared at him, but Orteka realized that someone else was holding him above the ground, his feet dangling helplessly.

“So spy,” sneered the voice. “What have you seen here today? What did you plan to tell you master in Trekum?”

Captain Orteka swore to himself that he would not give the Lanoirian the satisfaction of an answer, but he swiftly changed his mind. The Emperor’s Guard held a razor in his hand, and the man holding the mercenary was laughing wickedly.

“I was going to tell them to run,” gasped the captain. “Never has there been an army so enormous. There is no way that we can win.”

He was not sure what had made the words come out of his mouth, but Captain Orteka was in too much pain to care anymore.

“A wise thing to say,” the Emperor’s Guard said with surprise in his voice.

“He would say anything to be let free, Chadic,” announced the voice of the mercenary’s holder.

“Correction,” sneered Chadic. “He would say anything just to be allowed to die quickly. Still, freedom is what he has earned tonight.”

“Is that wise?” asked the holder.

Chadic ignored the holder as he stared the mercenary in the eye, “You will return to your master in Trekum and tell him those words. While it would not take us long to march over all of the new graves in Trekum, the Emperor prefers to avoid the battle. Tell your master to flee while he can. Anyone who is still in Trekum by the time we arrive will die.”

“Where should we go?” croaked Captain Orteka.

“Far, far away,” laughed Chadic. “Wherever you go, don’t let me find you between here and Tagaret. Get him out of my sight.”

The holder raised the mercenary higher into the air and tossed him onto his horse. Captain Orteka’s body was quickly tied to his mount. The horse was led to the edge of the encampment and whipped to make him run.

* * *

“They fight well,” Tanya commented to Alex as she watched the four Alcea Rangers spar. “I think I can understand why you loved being with the Rangers so much. Competent warriors are something that gives you a warm feeling.”

“The whole purpose of the Rangers was to create an elite unit that was well versed in all types of fighting,” nodded Alex. “I chose the best of the best to form their ranks, and then I trained them mercilessly. They were the finest fighting force ever assembled.”

“I would think that they still are,” smiled Tanya as she thought back to her sparring in Miriam. “I would not care to spar with three of them at the same time.”

“You are an excellent fighter,” replied Alex, “but do not get too cocky. Every fighter will meet his match someday. When you allow yourself to get overconfident, you develop a weakness that can be exploited by your foe.”

“I think my problem is that I am female,” frowned Tanya. “I feel as if I constantly have to prove myself to the world.”

“That is all in your head,” smiled Alex. “While many people will always categorize a female as a victim, they are fools for blinding themselves to reality. You do not have to prove anything to them. Strive only to become the best that you can be, so that your skills can help the poor unfortunates that are incapable of defending themselves. You have been given a gift, Tanya. Several gifts actually, but it is incumbent upon you to develop those gifts for the good of all people.”

“Is that the way you see it?” inquired Tanya. “Do you feel obligated to protect the innocent? Is that why you spent your life searching for the Children of the Ancient Prophecy?”

“I guess that is part of it,” Alex mused. “I did not grow up wanting to be a warrior. It was thrust upon me at an early age. I had a whole village put in my care during my youth. I guess that responsibility made me seek to become the best defender of those women and children that I could become. It was years before I realized that I had a special gift. By that time I had already dedicated my life to helping others. It just seemed natural after that.”

“You said that was part of the reason,” probed Tanya. “What was the other part?”

“The Mage,” frowned Alex. “He tasked Jenneva and me to find the Children of the Ancient Prophecy. It was a heavy responsibility, but neither of us ever gave a thought to abandoning it. Are you still bitter about us not using the time to look for you instead?”

Tanya sat and stared at the ground for a long time before answering. “I was disappointed in people that I had come to know as perfect heroes,” she began. “At the time, I did not even know that you were my parents, so I do not think that you can call it bitterness at being abandoned. It just seemed to me to be a flaw in otherwise perfect people. I have learned much since those days, and what I have learned is that you and Jenneva acted the only way that you could. Had you done differently, you would not be the great people that you are.”

“I am glad that it is all so clear to you,” sighed Alex. “It has never been clear to me. Many a night I berated myself for my course of action. It was as if I was being forced to choose between two goals that were incompatible.”

“Your life has been one of self-sacrifice,” Tanya smiled compassionately. “Your devotion to finding the Children of the Ancient Prophecy over the search for your own child is very consistent with who you are. Had you acted differently, you would have cursed yourself for doing so. Besides, we now know that you would never have found me anyway. Surely, that vindicates your decision?”

“I don’t like to dwell upon it,” shrugged Alex. “Although what you are saying is perfectly logical, I will never be happy with that decision. It is something that I must learn to live with.”

“Then my task is to make it livable for you,” smiled Tanya. “I am the injured party, if you can call me that, and I want you to know that your decision was right. While you could have taught me the warrior skills that I learned in my youth, and Jenneva could have mentored me in the other skills that I possess, our present situation would be much worse than it is.”

“How do you mean?” quizzed Alex.

“The Children of the Ancient Prophecy would have been left for Sarac to find,” explained Tanya. “That means that the whole world would be without hope right now. You and Jenneva have made that hope possible for everyone, including me.”

“That is one way to look at it,” shrugged Alex.

“It is the only way to look at it,” Tanya continued. “Plus I would never have come to know the Mage personally. I can’t help but think that that knowledge is going to be extremely important.”

“Why?” questioned Alex. “What does the Mage have to do with this?”

“That is the golden question,” frowned Tanya. “The news that Fredrik brought has lain heavy on my mind since leaving Tagaret. If the Mage is turning against the Ancient Prophecy, we will have a mightier foe than Sarac opposing us.”

“Opposing us?” echoed Alex. “You sound as if you have already chosen sides in this?”

A puzzled frown fell over Tanya’s face. “It does sound like that, doesn’t it?” she sighed. “Yet in my mind, I do not feel as if I had made any such decision. In fact, I cannot even fathom which side Jenneva would take in any confrontation with the Mage. He was very much like a father to her, as he was to me. That thought scares me.”

“Scares you?” frowned Alex. “I think you are not letting me know what is really troubling you.”

“It is the recurring dream that I had when I lived with Master Khatama,” explained Tanya. “I always saw myself falling in magical combat with some unseen foe. The places changed in each dream, but the scenario was always the same. The one constant was that Jenneva was always by my side. That is why I knew that I had to save her life when we were restoring the Unicorns’ Opal.”

“I remember that well,” smiled Alex. “Without you there, I would have lost Jenneva forever. There would have been nothing that I could have done for her. I fail to see why such a thing would scare you, though. With you and Jenneva by my side, I feel as if I could do anything.”

“Yes,” Tanya murmured as she was lost in thought, “but suppose for a minute that my dream is a type of foretelling, which I have always believed it was. Suppose that Jenneva was not really by my side, but actually the one that I was fighting. Suppose she is the one who is killing me.”

“How can you possibly think such a thing?” protested Alex. “She loves you as much as I do, and I could never oppose you, or imagine you opposing me.”

“The thought never entered my mind until Fredrik spoke in Tagaret,” Tanya said defensively, “but I can now envision such a scenario. I believe that there are two people in the world who could cause Jenneva to turn against me. You, and the Mage. If the Mage is at odds with the Ancient Prophecy, what then happens to those of us who are dedicated to fulfilling it? You asked before if I had chosen a side in this hypothetical split. Have you asked Jenneva the same question? What if our answers are different?”

“I do not like where this discussion is heading,” worried Alex. “Our family is finally united after too many years of being broken up. I can not think about it being destroyed again.”

“Yet you will,” sighed Tanya, “as will I. You have taught me to consider all angles of every problem. I doubt you can stop yourself from doing so.”

“I think we are dwelling too much on the words of Fredrik,” Alex shook his head. “It is not as if the lad is beyond deceit. Why would the Mage suddenly turn against the Ancient Prophecy? It makes no sense.”

“It makes even less sense to me than it does to you,” countered Tanya. “Master Khatama shows an uncanny knowledge of the Ancient Prophecy. He knows things about it that nobody else could fathom.”

“Like what?” inquired Alex.

“It was Master Khatama that directed Arik to the Island of Storms,” Tanya pointed out. “As we now know, recovering the statue of Abuud was not necessary to fulfill the Ancient Prophecy. In fact, Boris had the Diamond of Edona with him while Arik was heading for the island. Remember that Niki had stolen it? He could have stopped Arik from taking that dangerous journey. Why didn’t he? Why did he send him to the Island of Storms in the first place?”

“At the time, he must have thought that the statue of Abuud was required to fulfill the prophecy,” mused Alex.

“Or did he know that Arik had to find the Breastplate of Alcea?” countered Tanya. “Was that the real reason that Arik had to go to the Island of Storms? Because without that breastplate, Arik would have died several times already, and the Ancient Prophecy would have failed.”

“But that would mean the Master Khatama knows more about the Ancient Prophecy than he is telling us,” argued Alex. “Why would he hold such information back?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Tanya, “but do any of us truly know the Mage? We know of him from stories and words of others, but there is so much about him that we do not know. We have never heard about him from people who consider him an enemy. Does he have a darker side that we are not aware of? It gets even scarier,” she continued. “The Mage is a timeless being. Given that thought, that means that he was around when the Ancient Prophecy was written. Never is it mentioned where the Ancient Prophecy originated.”

“But you think that the Mage might know who wrote it, and therefore has more knowledge of what it entails?” posed Alex.

“Worse,” frowned Tanya. “What if the Mage is the creator of the Ancient Prophecy? That would explain his intimate knowledge of it.”

“Why then would he ever go against it?” questioned Alex.

“An excellent question,” nodded Tanya. “We know that the Mage and Alutar are perpetual enemies. They have fought each other before, and I am sure that they will again in the future. You learned from Egam that sometimes they involve others in these battles, like when the elves were called to help the Mage imprison the Demon. Assume that the Ancient Prophecy is the Mage’s way of countering some attempt by Alutar to gain the upper hand in this continual battle. What if Alutar found a way to alter the Ancient Prophecy to his advantage? What would Egam do?”

“You are making my head spin,” Alex replied. “You are proposing that Egam made the Ancient Prophecy to best Alutar in some way, and that the Demon figured out a way to turn the tables around. I can see where that would cause the Mage to alter his plans for fulfilling the Ancient Prophecy. It makes it sound like we are all pawns in some huge game where we don’t know the rules.”

“Exactly,” Tanya nodded vigorously, “and I don’t like being anyone’s pawn, especially if pits me against my family.”

Jenneva came back from the stream and saw Alex and Tanya sitting by the fire and approached them with a broad smile on her lips.

“It is so wonderful to see the two of you having a good father-daughter talk,” smiled Jenneva as she walked up to the campfire.

Alex and Tanya looked at each other and nodded. “Sit down, Jenneva,” they said in unison.

The elven magician nodded satisfactorily to herself as her finger ran across the ancient scroll. She smiled inwardly with the satisfaction of having solved another riddle. Podil stood and stretched. She was stiff from sitting for hours on the library floor. While her flawless skin belied her age, the elf magician felt her advanced years at times such as this. Remaining in one position for extended periods of time always seemed to bother her. As she had done so many times in the past, Podil promised to get out more in the future and limber up her body. She bent down and slid the ancient scroll back into its place on the shelf.