Heir To The Nova (Book 3) (3 page)

Ollis guided me quickly to the royal box. Surrounding us were a number of the council members that I recognized from my briefings earlier that evening. I chuckled soundlessly as I noted that most of them looked as pale as any human in the glow of the lights strung across the ceiling.

Seated alone and feeling vulnerable in the long ornate black dress that I had been given to wear, I waited and watched. Picking out the three opposition clans was easy; they were all formed up in a tight bunch directly across the arena from me, all looking daggers in my direction. Coincidently, their group also had the highest number of heavily armored and armed warriors in the arena.

Finally, the head council member, the same one who had proclaimed me Queen hours before, stood up and made a speech. I couldn’t really tell you what he said as I was concentrating on watching the crowd. Winya was on high alert on my wrist, and I could feel both dragons pressed tightly behind my large chair.

Suddenly, the murmuring of the crowd increased, interrupting the speaker, as a noble in lavishly ornate armor and a sword on his belt leaped over the rail and dropped onto the sand floor. The speaker abruptly and nervously completed his words and sat down to watch what was going to happen along with everyone else.

The warrior strode arrogantly across the sand until he came to a point directly in front of me; he had his silver hair back in a warrior’s plaited braid. A beaked nose and hard eyes pointed to him being an unpleasant individual at best. He looked me over with some derision, pausing to grin back over at his entourage and play to the crowd. Fixing his hardest gaze on me, he raised his voice and the arena fell quiet.

“I am Siorian Kedareign, Scion of the Dorin Hall clan, and I have over 200 kills to my name!” he bellowed. “What I see before me is no Queen! A marginally adequate evening’s bedding perhaps, but no Queen! Tell me, O Great Queen, will you or will you not continue to follow the same path to destruction that your drooling idiot of a sire insisted we take? Will you continue to defy the will of the greatest force on this planet, Duke Pharmon?”

I stood up and stared him down. “Yes, I will follow the wisdom of my father, King Talmin, and the path that leads our proud people out from under the heel of the foul necromancer!”

He laughed and pulled his sword, waving it in the air and snarling, “Then I challenge you! The winner will choose the path we take!” The crowd immediately started buzzing loudly in excitement. Politics in dark elf society is very much a blood sport, and there were already bets being taken in the upper levels.

Before I could say anything, two more warriors dropped onto the sand floor, each outfitted like Siorian in ornate plate and heavy chain armor. One held a sword and the other a small one-handed battle axe. As a pair, they raised their voices to the group.

“Not so fast, Siorian Kedareign! We have as much right to challenge this pathetic Queen whelp as you do, and we will not be denied our opportunity to serve Lifebane as King!”

The three of them rounded on each other, squabbling and thumping their chests in front of the crowd, and making complete asses of themselves. Ollis leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “These bloated toads are the scions of the three clans that oppose you, my Lady.”

“Scions?” I whispered.

“Yes, the oldest male children of their generation. They are all next in line for clan leadership when their sires die,” he supplied helpfully.

“Excellent! Thank you, Ollis.” He gave me a strange, puzzled look but returned to his seat.

I could use a way to work off some stress. Willing Winya into her dagger form, I hastily chopped away most of the long dress I was wearing, and kicked off my shoes, then leaped over the rail, landing lightly in the sand below. The three warriors in the center of the arena were still arguing lustily, but when the rest of the crowd suddenly grew stone quiet, finally even they noticed.

“No need to argue over me, gentlemen,” I called out as loudly as I could.

“Mistress, you aren’t wearing your armor!” Dawn pointed out.

“Don’t need it for this,” I said, as the dagger in my hand elongated and changed into the white and silver long sword that I moved lazily back and forth in a looping pattern. The crowd was still flummoxed, but the three warriors finally turned to face me and smiled. Siorian took a step forward and sneered.

“You really are a crazy bitch like everyone says, aren’t you? Too bad, you would have looked better in that outfit in my bed than face down on the arena floor bleeding your guts out.” He extended his sword and the other two warriors spread out to either side and advanced.

Winya chuckled in my thoughts, seeing what I was seeing. None of them bothered to put on their helmets, expecting this to be easy sport. Each was more worried about which one of them was going to get credit for the kill than if I was a threat. So I was facing three individuals instead of a coordinated attack; I smiled sweetly and faced my attackers. They were far more concerned about each other than a mere girl with a white sword. Elbow back, I dipped Winya down for just a fraction of a second, muscles winding like a clock spring and then snapped into action.

The first two warriors lost their overconfident heads – literally–in the first twenty seconds. My trainees back in Xarparion were more of a challenge, and I’m pretty sure Winya was putting a little extra into her blade as nothing was stopping her. She slid through sword, axe, and armor plate like they didn’t exist. Their steel-encased carcasses spun uncontrolled to the sandy soil less than ten feet from each other.

That left me only Siorian, who was dumfounded as he watched the hot blood geyser from the bodies of his fellow warriors. Snapping out of it wild-eyed, he noted the plate steel that had been sliced through like cottage cheese, then his eyes grew panicked and he ran. His heavy armor, which looked more for show than utility, hampered him greatly–once, twice, three complete revolutions around the arena. He stopped briefly in front of the spot where his fellow clansmen were seated, screaming at them to pull him up into the stands. But each time, I closed on him before he could gain assistance and Siorian was forced to retreat. It was actually embarrassing that I had to chase him around the ring the way I did.

A little slip of a girl, barefoot, in a ragged short skirt, running after a fully-armored adult dark elf; I could hear the crowd come back to life and boos began to rain down on the Scion of Dorin Hall. Finally, I cornered him–in a manner of speaking–as he tripped over one of the bodies and didn’t scamper up fast enough to get away.

Placing Winya’s blade between his legs, I backed him up to the nearest wall, thankfully on the other side of the floor from his supporters. He had already thrown away his weapon in his blind haste to try to scale the walls to escape. Shaking my head in disgust, I wondered how many of his alleged two hundred kills had been unarmed farmers, or even women and children. This was not the standard of the fierce dark elf warrior that I had grown up respecting; this was a sad disgrace, and I wondered just how far we had fallen as a people. Snapping out of my reverie, I watched his eyes glaze over as Winya casually split him in half.

Walking out to the center of the arena, I saluted the crowd, hot blood still pouring down my sword’s fuller channel and across my hand. I was heartened to hear more than a few claps of approval.

..................................................

Alex

It’s the morning of the third day for us on the road. When we had reached the crossroads where the roads to the dark elf and dwarf capitals converged, Somnus had been insistent that we take the trail leading to the dwarves. And at that point, I really didn’t much care where I went, or why, so there wasn’t much use in arguing with the big guy. Once on the new course, Rosa had cautiously started talking to me again; and according to her information and maps, we should be finding the dwarf capital soon.

The past few days and nights were rough. Neither Nia nor I could conjure up the ambition to cook, so we just lived on hard tack biscuits and water. Sleep wouldn’t come, or if it did in fitful starts and stops, it was almost always interrupted by some undead wandering into camp. I had to keep buttoned up in my armor, including helm, just in case a ghoul should show up. Most of the time, they were just stupid zombies and Somnus would casually amble over close enough to incinerate them on the spot. The stench of a magically burning zombie is not something your nose forgets easily.

Mid morning, the trail opened up into a vast field that had been clear-cut years ago, most of the stumps already having rotted into sawdust. That’s not all that was rotten, however; the area was filled with thousands of undead. Really dead undead. Most of them were pincushioned with multiple crossbow quarrels or heavy ballistae bolts, and quite a few were even crushed by what had to have been catapult or trebuchet stones. It takes a lot of hits from ranged weapons to incapacitate undead, so this was most impressive. Normally, I would have concluded that a large-scale battle took place here, but the fact that a number of the corpses I passed were in the final stages of decay led me to believe this was a long-term holding action.

Nia perked up and climbed up on her usual perch on my shoulder, pointing ahead of us. There, at the base of a tall hill or squat mountain, was a short stone wall jutting up out of the ground. Bristling with crossbowmen and various types of stationary siege engines, it was a daunting sight, but nothing on the scale of Sky Raven. As we got closer, the scene attested to the skill of the defenders, as there didn’t appear to be any undead corpses within 200 feet of the walls. I could feel Nia getting more agitated by the minute. I turned my head and looked at her.

“What? Nervous?”

“Hell yes, Mr. Alex! Don’t you see what’s all around us? They don’t seem to be fond of visitors, and I don’t want to be a pixie pincushion!”

I chuckled a bit. To be honest, it felt good to laugh again; the last few days had been toxic. “I doubt even they could hit something as small as a pixie. If they wanted us dead, they would have attacked already. Besides, I think Somnus here is something that you wouldn’t shoot at without good reason.” The great horse bobbed his head at my remark and ramped up his blue flames impressively.

“Well, I still don’t like it,” she huffed and muttered the activation sequence to become the Combat Pixie.

As we approached, keeping a slow, easy gait, the wall wasn’t much taller than I was on the back of Somnus. But like I thought, it was very thick, more like a raised platform really. And as we got right on up to it, I noticed that the wall didn’t seem to have a gate or door anywhere in sight, either. Counting heads, it appeared we were facing about fifty dwarves with crossbows trained on us as well as four loaded ballistae. They all wore serviceable hauberks of traditional scale mail, but not much else in terms of decoration.

“Halt!” shouted one of the dwarves.” We see you are not undead, but that is not enough. State your business or move along.”

“I seek to enter the capital,” I said firmly, removing my helm and clipping it to my belt.

“Ha, no one can enter the city without a representative or a writ from the King.”

“I am here to meet with another dwarf named Darroth Gravelshanks.”

“Darroth? Never heard of him.”

“He’s a master smith.”

He snorted dismissively, then set down his weapon and peered down at us. His bowl-style helmet with the nose guard bisecting his face gave him an almost comical appearance.

“Listen here, kid, we’re dwarves; almost all of us are master smiths, so you’re going to have to do a bit better than that. Besides, what possible business would a paladin have with us, anyway? As you can plainly see, we don’t need your help with the undead.”

I looked disbelievingly at Nia, not knowing if I should laugh or get angry at this point; but with the past few days I’ve had, I was leaning toward the latter.

“I am not a damn paladin. I am an enchanter, a wizard from Xarparion, the school of magic!”

He grinned and looked at his fellows to both sides. “Ooooh, you hear that, boys? We have a highfalutin human-type enchanter here. As if good, honest dwarven enchantments on stuff aren’t good enough.”

“Look, is there someone else I can talk to about this? A superior officer perhaps?”

He guffawed and slapped his leg. “Sure, I’ll be happy to wake him up, but you might not be by the time he gets done with you. State your name and rank, Mister Enchanter.”

Wow, why does everyone I meet lately have to be such a prick? Sighing, I complied.

“My name is Alex Martin; I am an enchanter and the ruler of Sky Raven Fortress.” Thankfully, I noticed this had some effect, especially on the older dwarves in the squad. Most of them lowered their weapons altogether, and one actually threw his down and disappeared at a run back down the other side. The younger troops, like the one giving me such a hard time, didn’t seem to be impressed in the slightest.

“Sky Raven Fortress? Never heard of it, so get lost!” he laughed, and poked humorously at one of his comrades.

One of the older dwarves down the line from him spoke up. “I wouldn’t talk to him like that. If he is who he says he is, then it would be best for all of us if you let him pass.”

“What the blazes are you talking about, old timer? We can’t just let him in, you know. The whole idea of building this wall was to not let anyone in. It’s kind of the point of not having a gate.”