Darkstone - An Evil Reborn (Book 4) (38 page)

It took half an hour before the forces began clash. The Dakkoran’s had segregated their units. At least half were conscripts and just as they had with the western and eastern hidden armies, the marauders were quickly sent to the less experienced units as soon as they were identified, chewing them up. A battle began to rage on the other side of the Dakkoran’s camp as dust rose to obliterate the South end of the valley.

Bolts of fire flew over the heads of the Dakkorans and landed amongst their earthen works. The pits and mounds helped to shield each army from the other. Smoke began to drift eastward in long trailing streams. The pits erupted with flames. The Dakkoran supply wagons had obviously included combustible oil.

Anchor called a retreat and sent a Ropponi south to Shiro. How many trips could a sorcerer make? The Dakkorans who pursued the Bessethians were cut down. Anchor hadn’t unleashed Restella or Antzen yet. He waited for two hours, his position out of bow range. An occasional Ropponi ballista bolt flew into the Dakkoran army, but the where the enemy stood observant and calmly moved out of the projectile’s path was where the more seasoned soldiers had congregated. Anchor now knew where to concentrate his forces.

After the fires had died down, they advanced once again. This would not be a feint. He didn’t have to worry about men hiding in the pits. They still sent up thin tendrils of smoke into the clearing sky.

The expected bolts of wizard fire blazed into the soldiers. Men fell. Anchor felt guilty that he couldn’t hear their cries from his vantage point, just the overall clamor of war.

A few bolts shot out from his soldiers. Just enough to give the sorcerers pause.

More flames came from the enemy’s ranks but even Anchor could see the diminished size of them. The Dakkoran sorcerers’ actions had quickly emptied the power from their bodies. No Affinity was available for them to recharge their strength. Their longer stay on Ayrtan had depleted their power.

His commanders had been briefed to look for the bolts that shriveled in intensity and that was the signal for his soldiers to advance. He used another Ropponi to teleport to Restella’s position and Antzen. Those two would execute a strategic retreat and fight the experienced Dakkorans that he had just identified from two sides. His forces finally were in position and began to attack the camp from the slopes of the valley’s hills. A few half-hearted bolts ended up among them and then the real fighting began.

Anchor looked at Lotto. His friend’s face was ashen, his thoughts far away. Perhaps if given the opportunity, Anchor might think of other things as well. He sought in his mind for a typical Unca quip. “I do believe it is time to spoil Daryaku’s party.” He smiled at Lotto. His friend barely smiled back.

“Whatever happens, I will make sure we are victorious,” Lotto said. He looked sick as he said it. Anchor didn’t ask Lotto what meant. They had no time for talk.

Chika stood next to him. “Take us to their leader,” Anchor said, dismounting. Lotto joined him.

She nodded and they stood in front of Shiro, Mistokko and the two Ropponi. Anchor had his back to the battle.

“Can you do that again?” Anchor asked.

“Maybe once or twice and then…” she shook her head.

That would be enough. He turned and looked at the fighting. Anchor didn’t know if his numbers would be enough. Did he make a mistake splitting his forces?

“Lessa sits with his forces a half hour away. Should we bring them up?” Shiro said.

Anchor nodded. “I’d like to let the Ropponi take a few of their troops home.” His sentiment reminded him of something Unca would say, he thought.

He turned to Chika and five others of the Red Rose. “You know what you have to do.” They ran towards groups of Ropponi troops and disappeared. His major advantage lay in teleportation. He’d use it until his Ropponi ran out of the ability to do so.

“Now we wait.”

They saw flashes of sorcerer bolts in the camp. Four Ropponi returned. “We are in position.”

Anchor nearly lost his breath. He nodded and stood with Lotto and a group of Ropponi. Lotto closed his eyes and opened them up again. Did Anchor detect a shimmer around his body? Could the Moonstone be doing something?

Shiro walked to his group. Yushidon and Ashiyo did the same. Mistokko walked to another group. He’d let the captain witness the final drama that was to come. Two hundred teleported at Anchor’s nod.

They broke out of their teleported clusters and created a perimeter. Troops sporadically attacked them, but as Anchor expected, most of the Dakkoran soldiers had left to fight. They didn’t have far to walk to the Emperor’s tent.

A Dakkoran officer ran up and stood outside the Emperor’s tent. Anchor knew a smattering of the language. He said something that he thought meant ‘you have visitors’.

Emperor Daryaku sauntered out. Anchor had never seen the man. He looked middle-aged, but something appeared wrong. He had never been notified of effeminate characteristics. The Emperor had long fingernails. Something more of what he would expect of a Ropponi. Daryaku’s eyes burned with intensity, almost tinged with madness.

“We have come for your Darkstone.” Yushidon said. He knew the language much better than anyone else.

“You will not have it, Yushidon. I sense the Warstones among you.” The Emperor threw back his head and cackled. The man’s laughter sent chills down Anchor’s spine.

“Bring them to me,” Daryaku said in Bessethian.

Anchor felt a tugging in his mind. He blinked and shook his head. Shiro and Lotto did the same. Something clouded his mind. He reached up and put the Bloodstone in his hand. Shiro did the same. Yushidon and Ashiyo visibly fought off the onslaught. He noticed a ring of Dakkoran sorcerers around them. He knew the enemy had plenty of illusion spells, but this was different. He struggled against the compulsion to move forward, but his body still brought him, unwillingly, towards the Emperor, Bloodstone in hand.

Lotto’s eyes widened as he looked at Anchor and took out his Moonstone and held it out like Shiro and Anchor. He walked stiffly, and took Shiro’s stone and Anchor’s. He looked into Anchor’s eyes.

“Forgive me, but I won’t go back to being like I was,” He said quietly and turned, standing in front of the Emperor, the three stones clenched in his hand.

“Hold them out!” The words came out like shrill scream.

Anchor continued to struggle. He moved his foot and another and began to shuffle towards the emperor, he couldn’t pull out his sword, but he had to do something. Shiro began to do the same. Only the pair of them moved at all.

Lotto still clutched the stones in his hand.

“Open your hand!” The Emperor shouted every word.

Anchor would never make it, nor did he think Shiro would. Their fate was now linked to how much resistance Lotto could put up.

The Emperor yanked at his neck and put the Darkstone in his hand.

The jewel seemed to suck all of the light into it, looking more like a hole in the Emperor’s palm than an amulet of power.

Lotto began to shake as he fought to keep his hand closed. Anchor wanted to cry out, but as soon as he tried, he lost control of his legs and stood frozen, unable to move.

Anchor watched with horror as the Emperor began to chant. No!  He couldn’t have fought for years and travel to Ayrtan to suffer the ultimate defeat. Emperor Daryaku would have the ultimate power on Goriath and Anchor couldn’t move a step forward. He would see the enslavement of the world, first hand. He forced out a cry. It sounded like a wounded animal.

His eyes were transfixed on the Darkstone, but then it began to shake in the Emperor’s hand as the chanting continued. No. The gem didn’t shake, the Emperor’s hand did. It began to jerk, making the Emperor stop his spell recitation. He tried to steady his hand, but it continued to shake. Anchor heard the man wail as the Darkstone dropped to the dust of Ayrtan.

Lotto leaned over, all stiffness gone from his body. It had to have been an act. He gave a mournful look to Anchor and grabbed the Darkstone.  His gaze shifted to Mander Hart as he put it together with the others Warstones and squeezed.

~~~

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Aftermath

~

A
nchor blinked the dust out of his eyes.
He rose on his elbows and saw bodies strewn for a hundred paces. All of the tents were blown down. He crawled to Lotto’s body. The man’s features had softened and thickened. His hands were missing from the explosion. Lotto’s clothes no longer fit his smaller body. Anchor checked for a pulse, but he knew the stones had killed him. What must have been the Emperor’s body lay nearby. All of the flesh had shriveled instantly from Daryaku’s bones. The man’s form had changed like Lotto’s. In fact, he looked like a corpse, long dead. Something was wrong with the shape. The corpse was much smaller than Daryaku.  In fact it looked more like a female corpse. He shivered.

The others began to revive. Shiro woke up. The first words out of his mouth were in Ropponi. He looked at Anchor and grinned. “Power. The nexus is restored. Ayrtan lives again!” He stood and pumped his fists into the air.

Anchor helped Mander Hart to his feet and they, in turn, helped the others. Yushidon helped the Dakkoran general to his feet, if he was still that.

“Your emperor is dead. Leave in peace,” Yushidon said. 

The man had uttered what Anchor had intended to say if they were successful. He nodded at the general. “Tell him to get the word out quickly,” Anchor told Yushidon.

“I’ll tell him myself. I’ve spent plenty of port time on his continent.” Mistokko grinned.

~

Few of the soldiers still fought and soon Dakkoran officers stood with Anchor’s men at the Emperor’s tent discussing what would happen.

It seemed that General Bishyar hadn’t been a full supporter of the Emperor, especially as Daryaku had, from their opinions, descended further into madness.

Anchor inspected the Emperor’s remains before they were to be boxed up for burial in Dakkor. The skeleton was indeed that of a woman and he verified the considerably smaller stature. He doubted that mystery would ever be solved.

He now knew what the shimmer meant that he had seen around Lotto. The man had once told him of the anti-magic that the Sorcerer Peleor had used to keep him in his cell and what he had used to defend himself when he fought the Dakkoran sorcerer. The spell had been similar to the wards on the Dakkoran swords. Lotto must have suspected foul play and came to the final confrontation secretly prepared. He had pretended to be affected by Daryaku’s compulsion spell until the right moment came to combine all the stones. Lotto’s sacrifice would be proclaimed in all of the histories that would be written about the Warstone conflict with Daryaku. How fitting!  A Dakkoran spell used against the Emperor. If Lotto’s action hadn’t resulted in his death, Anchor would be grinning. As it was, he looked on Lotto’s sacrifice as one of the great tragedies of the Warstone battles.

He invited General Bishyar, along with Yushidon as interpreter, to a final meeting of the alliance before everyone went their own way.

Mander Hart arrived in the camp with a noticeably smaller, slighter Restella. Shiro and Chika escorted Hart, Lessa, Restella and Kenyr underneath the Emperor’s command tent, which now had the walls rolled up. Their victory had done nothing about the ever-present dust, but Shiro adamantly claimed that next year, Ayrtan would be more green. They all sat down wearing the same color of dirt. Lotto’s body still lay covered on Ayrtan’s soil.

“Lotto’s dead and the link is finally gone,” Restella said as she let out a big sigh. “His body looked more like that when I first encountered him and,” tears glimmered in her eyes, “so do I.”

Mander knelt at Lotto’s side and helped Kenyr put him into a hastily-made coffin. He grimaced as he did it. “I’ll take him to be interred at my family plot in Beckondale. He was like a son to me.”

“And to me,” Kenyr said, tears in his eyes. “I am proud of him. I’ll remember Lotto as he walked the earth after his transformation. His parents would have liked to see him as Lotto Mistad, rather than as the village fool.”

Shiro nodded. “He was a great man and saved us all.”

Emotion filled the air. Anchor took the time to look at his youthful hands. The Bloodstone was gone. He had expected to see the hands of an old man—Unca returned. But his hands were youthful and strong, still sporting the remains of the wound that Chika had healed.

Despite the sadness at Lotto’s heroic passing, he had tears of joy. He had no magical power, but he now knew that the heart of a young man beat inside of him. He thought of Sallia. Perhaps he really could be her consort.  No, he still doubted such a thing could happen, regardless of what she said.  Perhaps she only told him that to provide some courage for the last battle with Daryaku.

“I don’t know what prompted all of this,” Anchor struggled to say.  He waved his hand out towards Lotto and nodded to Yushidon and Bishyar. “Perhaps it was the day Daryaku retrieved the Darkstone. Some of the gods might have abhorred such a thing or maybe Goriath itself wished for the release of the curse on Ayrtan. We’ll never know. Something moved Shiro from northern Roppon to southern Roppon and onto the prison island to retrieve the Sunstone.”

“Not Ropponi gods,” Yushidon said.

Shiro smirked. “My ancestral gods are not yours, Guildmaster.”

The older man shrugged and translated for Bishyar, who presented a wry smile and began to talk. Yushidon provided a running translation.

“The Darkstone captured young Vishan. The Emperor was not the valiant soldier I knew many years ago when I commanded a remote outpost in Dakkor. He would not have done the things the Emperor did. The person, who died earlier today, wasn’t the Vishan Daryaku that I knew. I can guarantee you that. We have our gods in Dakkor and I am sure few of them condoned the Emperor’s actions. They were petty, selfish and if I had a choice I would not have served.” Bishyar shrugged. “The Emperor had his own ways to persuade. I will return to Dakkor and assist in its transformation. It’s not just Dakkor that the Emperor ruined, but all of Zarron.”

“Well said.” Mander Hart stood and bowed to Bishyar. “As the representative of King Goleto of Valetan, should you need any assistance, we would be happy to help.”

Bishyar laughed after Yushidon translated. “You have done much, much more than I ever could today. Your Lotto Mistad was the son of Serytaran nobility and it seemed our continent took care of the threat, with your help.”

Anchor slapped his hand on Bishyar’s back. “Well said. As soon as our Red Rose friends have strengthened their powers, we will be leaving Ayrtan.”

“Kenyr will command the Valetan forces on their way back across the ocean,” Mander said.

“Yes, please make sure that you maintain the chain of command all the way back home for all of the troops. Shiro and I will return to Foxhome.”

Shiro stood and stepped to Anchor, clapping him on the shoulder. “I will take you to Learsea first, so we can pay our respects to King Willom and then to Foxhome. I have come to the decision that I will return to my new home on Ayrtan, Anchor. The land has healed and will grow again. My Red Roses will thrive in their new home. I always counted myself as a good farmer.” He nodded towards the Guildmaster. “Yushidon will send his rejects to me rather than kill them as he has in the past. They will sign the same pledge that we of the Red Rose have. I hope I have no similar restrictions about visiting Besseth?” Anchor, Lessa and Mander Hart all shook their heads. “Good, then we will transport the ones we know and love to Besseth. Lotto will be buried soon.”

Chika walked to Shiro and hugged him. “Our home,” she said to Anchor, with tears in her eyes.

Restella didn’t cry for Lotto. She grabbed onto Lessa and asked a Ropponi to take her home with Armand.

Lessa wouldn’t have a moment of it. He told the Ropponi to take her home by herself with the good news.

“Good news!” She turned, shaking her head and stalked off.

“I wouldn’t worry about her,” Mander said. “We’ll see if she still has the heart for warfare. I am of the opinion that with little persuasion, she can still serve in the army.  Few have her courage.  Without the Moonstone, perhaps her irascibility will be leavened. Come to the funeral, Anchor. If the Ropponis won’t mind, they will still perform transport. Bring your Sally.”

Anchor started at her name.

“She stayed at my house in Beckondale and said we could call her that, too. It reminded her of happy days.”

It did, indeed, thought Anchor. He thanked everyone for the quick meeting and had Shiro transport him to his tent some distance away to wash and change his filthy clothes.

~

Anchor stood in the main hall of Learsea castle. The body of Prince Peeron was wrapped tight in enchanted shrouds at his feet. King Willom shook, as he leaned on one of his servants to stand and look at the remains of his only son.

Willom took Anchor’s hand. “He was of my flesh. I cried when the Ropponi brought his body. Did he disgrace me?”

Anchor said, “Let us say that he joined us on our successful campaign and died, as we all fought to save our world.”

Willom raised his other trembling hand. “That is enough. Thank you. Remember, you are the son of my heart. My adoption remains in effect. All on my council agree and your rise to prince is with their acclaim as well as my own. My heart soared when I found out you didn’t shrivel into Unca’s form.”

Anchor gave the king the barest of smiles and shook his head. “I fully expected to, but no. I’m as I appear. It will be many years before I become old Unca again.”

Willom chuckled and coughed. “Without power, you will never be the Court Wizard again, my adopted son. Think of me as you rule my people.”

Anchor made to object, but Willom grasped his forearm. “Besseth needs you. Serve them well. I go to grieve in private,” the king said as the servant helped him shuffle from the hall.

“Besseth needs you, and Ayrtan has the Red Rose, even if it doesn’t want me,” Shiro grinned. “Chika and I have found a place where we can live without worrying about politics or smelly neighbors.”

“You’ll have to civilize your Ayrtan friends,” Anchor said. He knew that Shiro would thrive in Ayrtan. He would help the savages and bring green grass and laughing, healthy children back to the once-dead continent. “I hope you’ll let me visit you, from time to time.” He smiled through pursed lips. “You can generate building funds by using your Red Rose as transporters.”

“I’ve already thought of that,” Shiro said, grinning.  It was good to see the reserved Ropponi in such a good mood.

~

Anchor paused to absorb the scene of Sallia sitting in a garden, now saturated with the colors of leaves starting to turn. The sun shone on her light blonde hair while tiny insects buzzed around in the afternoon warmth. She held a rose and sniffed its fragrance. Anchor remembered her liking the roses at his holding, when he first took her there.

He walked out of the open door and into the sun. “I’ve returned as Anchor, I’m afraid,” he said, holding out his arms.

Sallia turned and threw her rose down and ran into his arms, burying her head into his chest.

“No one told me. We succeeded?”

“When you slept, we fought on Ayrtan in the sunlight. Lotto is the real hero.”

“I don’t want to speak of Lotto.”

“We must. He died, valiantly saving us all.”

Sallia pushed away from him. Her radiant face darkened for a moment. “I will grieve for him tomorrow, but I will love you today.”

“I can’t become your consort,” Anchor said.

“What? Has something happened? I won’t allow you to change your mind.”

Anchor nodded. “King Willom has adopted me as his heir. It seems Prince Peeron was caught playing with fire and he didn’t survive.”

“That sounds like something Unca would say.” Sallia looked at him sideways.

“Something that Anchor will say.” He smiled and turned serious. “King Willom’s health has declined even further and I may soon inherit the throne of Learsea.”

“Then…” Sallia’s eyes filled with tears and looked away.

“Then,” he cupped her chin in his hands and lifted up her face. “You know with the Bloodstone gone, the kingdom could use a name change. I never could figure out what ‘lear’ meant, so perhaps we can, at the right time, put the two domains together and call a new combined kingdom, Redsea.”

“It has a certain ring,” Sallia said. “The Red Kingdom needs a king and Learsea needs a queen. I like it.” She closed her eyes and lifted her chin.