The Sword and the Sorcerer (21 page)

When King Leonidas saw that Talon could not get free of the ropes without a blade, he jumped up on the table and cut the binding with one slice. Before Talon could spring to his feet, he caught sight of the archers readying to release a volley of arrows at his friends and mercenaries. He was about to shout, “Look out!” when he saw Mikah, Rodrigo and the other rebels pouring onto the balcony to fall upon the archers. Talon sprung to his feet and ached to join them in the fray that ensued, and he wildly looked around for a sword.

“Talon!” he heard his beloved Darius shout. He turned in his lieutenant’s direction. There, standing also on the long table not twenty feet away, was Darius grinning and warding off a Klaw with one sword and holding Talon’s tri-bladed sword in the other hand. “Here!” he shouted again, tossing Talon’s sword at him. “Join the fun!”

Talon caught the tri-bladed sword by the hilt and instantly felt a surge of power infuse him. The weapon was more than just an ingeniously designed sword. It was a symbolic blood-tie with his father, King Richard. And when he had its long contoured hilt in his hand, he felt that the martial spirit of his father was also wielding the sword with him. Oddly enough, now that he was holding the gift that Richard had given him on the eve of his murder, he felt no pain surrounding the drying punctures through his palms.

Talon spiritedly spun around three times on the table like a whirling dervish, wildly swinging the tri-bladed sword over his head and howling a battle-cry of such volume and piercing decibels that it was heard above the screams of the fleeing women and dying soldiers.

He now sped like a marathon runner down the table—lopping any Klaws’ heads that he passed in progress—and made a flying leap for the long velvet drapes hanging on steel rings from the three-storied overhang. He grabbed hold of the thick material and used the momentum he had generated running to swing with the drape to the balcony where Mikah and his rebels were fiercely engaged in battle. At once he savagely plunged into the siege, felling one Klaw after another. Side by side he fought with Mikah and Rodrigo, exhorting them to greater and greater ferocity, himself shearing and hacking through the Klaws with dauntless vigor.

When he perceived that Mikah’s rebels could more than handle the Klaws’ dwindling ranks up here, Talon shouted above the fray, “I’m off to retrieve your sister and ax Cromwell!”

He leaped and rode the drapes again, this time to the courtyard, where he bounded over tables and sundered bodies to the nearest exit. But he stopped cold when he ran head-on into a Klaw wearing the steel gauntlet he had stolen from his hand. Talon howled with outrage and with one swift unerring swipe he lopped the Klaw’s hand bearing the steel brace. Ignoring the screams of the offender, Talon stepped over his convulsing body to the severed hand, ripped away the gauntlet and slipped it back on his own left hand, where it had been for many years. Feeling secure because his trademark was once again on his person, Talon shouldered and cut his way through three more Klaws and plunged outside into the night.

TWENTY-THREE

onnecting one wing of the castle with another was a long, wide, pillared arcade with a high, vaulted ceiling and green frescoed walls. Because of its hollow interior the slightest sound carried like a pebble dropped in a deep well. The long, slanting shadows cast by the flaming wall torches on the tiled floors and spaces between the pillars created a forestlike effect.

Hurrying through these thickets of shadows and stone pillars like hunters fleeing with a poached quarry were Cromwell and five Black Klaws. Slung over one of Cromwell’s shoulders was a trussed and gagged Alana.

The king’s head still whirled with the unbelievable events that had occurred in the courtyard. How was it possible that everything he had planned with such flawless precision went so wrong so fast? Rebels invading the castle through secret passages, mercenaries and sea scum mysteriously escaping from the dungeons, the kings turning on him, the ruining of the marriage ceremony, and the so-called leader of the mercenaries pulling free of three-inch stakes by sheer brute strength and will power!

Cromwell sneered. Everything went wrong because supernatural forces were once more at play against him, as they had been from the cursed day he had mistakenly resurrected the sorcerer. In other words, once more the diabolical handwork of Xusia was evident in the destruction of his plans. And more than ever he was convinced that Xusia’s evil spirit resided in the godlike body of that young hulk. Who else but a sorcerer of extraordinary powers could have torn loose from his own pilloring?

Without turning around the king recognized the light steps of Machelli running to catch up with him.

“Excellency! Wait!”

Cromwell slowed down until his worrisome chancellor was at his side.

“Fearing some kind of chicanery on the kings’ part,” Machelli blurted out, “I put the army on the alert several days ago. They are gathered at this very moment high in the mountains waiting for your appearance.”

Cromwell smacked Alana’s behind because she began to kick and squirm over his shoulder. Then he looked at Machelli with a suspicious eye. “Quite perceptive of you to assume something might go wrong.” He made no attempt to conceal the sarcasm.

“I’m always looking out for your majesty. With you at the head of the full force of your army, you will once and for all crush this puny but annoying rebellion.”

“Not so puny,” Cromwell’s angry voice boomed in the arcade, “if you remember what happened back there in the courtyardl”

Suddenly the demon he had tried to crucify tonight stepped out from behind a pillar, blocking the procession.

“You have a big voice, Cromwell. Pity you haven’t got the courage to match it”

Cromwell stared at his antagonist, incredulous. Where did he materialize from? He was still only partially clad and his shoulders, arms and massive chest were splotched with fresh blood. In his steeled hand he held a deadly looking three-bladed sword. It was Xusia himself—as he wished he could look like all the time.

“How did you get from the courtyard to here so fast?” He was sure that someone in his own court was in league with the wizard.

“A sweet old gentleman by the name of Devereux whispered the castle’s secrets in my ear.”

Devereux! He should have guillotined that senile fart years ago! And he would have liked to wipe that supercilious smile off the audacious upstart’s face permanently! On his life he would make this young peacock crow for mercy!

“Here, Machelli. Take her!” He transferred the burden of Alana into his arms, motioned the Klaws to hold back and then unsheathed his sword. “Wait here with the baggage, Machelli. This shouldn’t take long.”

Cromwell began to cockily circle his adversary. He had been recapitulating their last clash over and over again since it happened, and he was positive he now knew the young giant’s weak points with the sword. “This time, Xusia—and don’t pretend you’re somebody else—you will die!”

Once more Talon wondered who this mysterious Xusia might be.

For the second time in forty-eight hours Talon’s and Cromwell’s swords made sparks in the dark, the clash of their heavy blades resounding throughout the arcade.

While the king and his opponent crossed swords, swearing at each other with each thrust and whack, Machelli seized the opportunity to slip behind a huge pillar and, out of sight and earshot of the Klaws, he propped Alana against the pillar and quickly untied her.

She sighed with relief and rubbed her sore wrists and ankles, studying Machelli with a mixture of gratitude and confusion. “Then you really are on our side?”

“Of course, my lady. I always have been.”

“For a while I couldn’t tell.”

They both spoke in hushed tones.

“Come, Alana. We must get you to safety.”

“Where?”

“To the catacombs under this very castle, and which no one knows about save a very select few. The catacombs will lead us to a boat I have waiting for us at Fisherman’s Cove.”

“But what about him,” she asked, pointing to Talon, “and Mikah?”

He patted her hands reassuringly. “That one will take care of himself, I assure you. As for your brother, he waits for us in the very same boat! Come!”

He took her by the hand and led her around the tall, stout pillars without arousing the duelists’ or the Klaws’ attention. They would have disappeared from the arcade unnoticed but for the bursting open of a door at the opposite end of the arcade, through which Mikah and the rebels came storming into the scene.

The intrusion for a moment stopped the puffing and sweating swordsmen.

The Klaws pulled on their swords.

Alana jerked her hand out of Machelli’s. Mikah? But Machelli had said he was at—? Why had he lied to her? She started to back away from him, just as the Klaws clashed swords with the rebels and the king and Talon resumed dueling, “You’re not on our side, are you—theirs or ours? You have some kind of nefarious scheme of your own, don’t you! Stay away from me!”

Machelli smacked her across the face, threw her screaming and kicking over his shoulder and raced out with her the way he came.

Cromwell did not miss this development. Machelli was running off with his future queen! Stopping and punishing the treacherous swine was of more importance than slicing the sorcerer in disguise. “Finish him off for me!” he yelled to his men. Two Klaws instantly took his place fighting the fierce warrior. “Dismember him and throw the pieces to the dogs!” He tore off after Machelli and his stolen prize, Alana.

“Take my place, Mikah!” Talon shouted. “I’m going after Alana before Cromwell gets her again!”

“Go, good friend! We will soon follow!”

As Mikah and his twelve men vanquished the five Klaws in rapid order, Talon streaked around the pillars and tried to catch up with the king.

TWENTY-FOUR

he castle had been unwittingly built on top of a network of catacombs. Once persecuted religious sects conducted their forbidden ceremonies here. Later, the secret witches of Elysium performed pagan rites here, which involved crossbreeding snakes of different species. Naturally phosphorescent minerals and cracks of light from above the catacombs bathed them with an unearthly luminosity night and day. And creeping through these corkscrew shafts of greenish radiance were underground streams and stagnant pools.

Neither the reptiles that had been spawned here nor the profusion of shafts bothered Machelli He was at home here. Because he was attuned to the reptilian mind the snakes left him alone. He flourished in the shadowy world of the catacombs. It suited his personality and values well.

He was holding his hand over Alana’s mouth, pressed into a deep niche in the cavern wall as Cromwell sprinted past them with the look of a mad dog on his face. He was full of malicious glee knowing the frustrated king was running into a maze of shafts in which he would probably get lost. And as he continued to hold Alana from behind, her silky round buttocks pressing against his crotch were beginning to arouse him. But he would postpone gratifying awakened desire until he had her alone in the secret cavern chamber he had appropriated for himself in the catacombs.

Machelli was about to remove his hand from Alana’s soft mouth when he heard the more thunderous gait of the young giant pounding toward them. He tucked himself and his prisoner more tightly into the niche until the new runner shot past them too, hot on Cromwell’s trail. When Machelli thought it was safe, he jumped out of the niche with Alana and, his powerful hand still over her mouth, he dragged her in the opposite direction from the one Talon and Cromwell had taken.

Once Machelli had slammed the round wooden door shut, the full realization of being absolutely alone with him hit Alana with the impact of a fist. What was she doing here? His purpose of absconding with her escaped her. Nor did she have any insight regarding why he had been obviously two-facing Mikah and the king.

The sight of a giant pink and white speckled iguana lounging on a quartz rock did not make her feel any more secure. And when she saw the half-submerged monstrous serpent eyeing her from a shallow stream of turbid water running through the torchlit chamber, she instinctively sprung forward, unwittingly making herself prey to Machelli’s outstretched arms, which were, considering how slender he was, like iron rods encircling her. Alana tried to break free but she couldn’t.