The Ruens of Fairstone (Aeon of Light Book 2) (36 page)

The tikba opens its arms wide and roars, unleashing another double stream of steam and snot.

Miles grips the dagger with both hands, trying to steady his shaky hand and blade.

Deet rolls on the ground, half-unconscious, but is coming out of his daze.

The tikba springs off the ground with a burst of snow exploding behind his body. Pine boughs whoosh and white crystals blast in the air.

Pard, ten paces from the beast and in the clearing, skids from the packed and slick snow. Energy surges, and an aqua-blue lightning bolt shoots out of his chest.

Now aware of Pard’s presence and the light arcing toward the tikba, it veers off course and zig-zags with an occasional jump trying to outmaneuver the light, but still the light tracks its every move with precision and speed. “
Seeros
!” the tikba yells, and the light slams into the beast’s chest. The tikba freezes in place, one foot on the ground and one off.

Pard’s body sways back and forth as it is tethered to the creature. Immense energy flows through his body, building in his chest.

“Release me, young seeros,” a man with a deep, calm, and noble voice says inside of Pard’s head. “If you release me, I shall not harm you, as long as you promise the same in return.”

“How can I trust you?” Pard says.

“You have my word.”

“But you were attacking my friends.”

“No, they were attacking me. I was defending myself.”

“Do you promise? For real?”

“If your friends lay down their arms, I shall as well.”

Quickly realizing this is their best option for survival, Pard agrees, “All right.” Pard tries to disconnect, but not knowing why or how he connected in the first place, his body doesn’t release the tikba.

“Will you release me or not?” the man says.

“I’m trying too. Sorry, I’m sorta new at this thing.”

“Then let me.” The tikba roars something ferocious, jarring Pard’s brain and bones.

The light disconnects, and Pard flies backward from the jolt and crashes flat onto his back.

“Ah—!” Miles yells, inspired by Pard’s light and it momentarily controlling the tikba. He runs straight toward the beast while swinging his dagger in a crazed rage.

Deet frantically digs through the hole in the snow that swallowed the pistol. He grips the handle. He grimaces and raises the barrel toward the beast.

Pard pops up off the ground and waves his arms and hands. “No! No! Stop, he said he wouldn’t harm us!”

Miles and Deet, both in full-on attack and out of mind, pay no attention to Pard or his words.

The tikba regains himself and sees the oncoming attackers. He roars again, and Miles roars back at the beast, seemingly undeterred.

Pard rushes forward, not roaring or attacking, just trying to stop the oncoming slaughter of his friends.

The tikba leaps high in the air, twenty-feet, and Deet fires his pistol, missing and striking a tree. Bark explodes exposing the white chewed-up pulp.

With every move of the tikba, Deet transitions his aim and fires, bullets missing their mark as the beast leaps up and down. The tikba crashes to the ground with a thud, and Deet fires again, finally nicking the beast in the shoulder.
 

The beast winds back his arm, its massive hand about to remove Miles’s head.

“No—” Pard says as he closes in on the tikba and is now within a few feet. Pard lunges and slams into the tikba’s back. He wraps his arms tight around the beast’s shoulders as it springs in the air with Pard holding on.

Pard screams with a vibrating howl, this time from real fear, and if he could let go he would, but that would cause even more immediate damage to his body as the tikba is over twenty-feet in the air.

Deet aims at the beast and doesn’t fire, afraid he may hit Pard.

Miles skids to a stop and snaps out of his suicidal rage charge. He stares at the tikba trying to buck Pard off its body as it lands on the other side of the clearing.

Pard closes his eyes and buries his cheek into the mane. He digs his fingers deep into the tikba’s hide, holding on with all his strength as the beast again leaps high in the air and crashes into a few low-lying pine branches that ferociously scrape and swipe Pard’s body.

“Let go of me!” the tikba says.

Pard’s voice vibrates from the up and down motion as he replies, “You said you wouldn’t attack.”

“Your comrades are attacking me. The one has a pistol and fired.” The tikba lands on the ground near Miles and it hunches over and snarls, shooting a stream of warm steam and snot into Miles’s face.
 

Miles’s courage again gone, as he’s now face to face with the menacing fangs of the tikba, he inches away. His mouth drops, and he freezes in place, taken by fear and at the mercy of the beast. “Rifle, rifle, rifle.” He lifts his eyes and meets Pard’s, who’s head now droops over the tikba’s shoulder and his own face is only a few feet away.

“Miles,” Pard says, calmly but with a slight quiver of fear.

“Pard.”

And the tikba suddenly bucks again and leaps into the air above Miles.

Pard grimaces as something pointy pokes him in the stomach. Then he remembers.
Golden spikes!
He wiggles his body off the sharp hairs and grips the tikba’s hide even harder with his left hand while his other arm is hooked around its neck. Pard’s right hand releases as the tikba crashes back to the ground which swings Pard’s body off the beast’s back, but before doing so, he grips the exposed three golden spikes. Pard clinches the tuft and plucks the three golden hairs with a hand full of others out of the mane at the same time as the tikba bucks again.
 

Pard flies off the beasts back, crashes to the ground flat on his back, and slides on the snow and ice until he comes to a stop against the base of a pine tree.

Again Deet raises his pistol to fire.

Pard’s hand shoots straight up into the air, three golden hairs in his fingers. He stares at them for a split second as it sinks in, and what he now possesses in his grasp.
I got them, holy crap, I got the golden spikes.
His body snaps up into a seated position, and he eyes Deet and yells, “No, Deet, stop, I got the hairs!”

Deet, about to pull the trigger, he finds Pard standing up and holding out the three golden spikes in his hand.

The tikba hunches over and drops to his hands and knees. Its body undulates and shrinks, transforming back into a tall, muscular man with dark bronze skin. His gaze rises to Deet holding his pistol toward his head.

Pard lunges and runs forward, holding out the golden spikes. “Don’t hurt him,” he says to the man, “I got your tikba hairs.”

The tikba snorts with sarcasm and surprise then looks at the dirty snow and shakes his head. “Tena, bested by a mere boy, unbelievable.” He sighs then rolls to the side and plops down on his butt while leaning back with both hands and arms outstretched behind propping up his body.

Miles skeptically creeps past the man now sitting calmly on the ground. But watches him as if he may jump up at any moment and pound his had into a bloody pulp as Hawke had said.

Pard grins ear to ear as Miles reaches him. “Look, I got the golden spikes.”

Miles finally smiles. “Nice, not sure how you pulled this one off, professor, but you did.”

“Now do you owe me or are we even?”

Miles pinches his chin thinking on it and all he’s done for Pard. “
Even—hmm
?”

“A tikba’s got to be worth a lot. Maybe now you owe me,” Pard says, teasing.

Miles relents. “All right, definitely even then.”

Pard lets out a faint chuckle. “Even it is.”

Deet suspiciously eyes the man the same way as Miles did as he passes him by, but Deet also continues to aim his pistol at the tikba’s head.

The man calmly sits, almost in meditation, staring through Pard and the others as if they’re not there.

“What should we do with him?” Miles says. “Should we drain his blood and sell it? Cray said it’s expensive.”

“
Cray
?” the man says, and his eyes open wider.

“Yeah,” Miles says, “we saw him in a town a few miles away from here last night.”

The man’s disposition changes, and he scans the woods for any sign of the famed hunter.

Afraid the man may attack again, Pard holds up the man’s golden hairs. “He told us about the spikes and that it would stop you.”

“And that your blood is valuable,” Miles adds with a smile. He turns to Deet. “So what do you think? Blood or no blood?”

“We won’t be taking any blood, Lord Marlow. We just want to be on our way.”

“That’s a relief,” the man says in his deep, noble-like voice, which is very much unexpected coming from such a ferocious beast. He stands, tall and muscular and wide, he hovers, imposing a shadow over Miles and Pard.

Deet raises his pistol.

Now calm enough to appreciate what they are looking at without fear of death, Pard and Miles both stare at the giant and somewhat beautiful man in awe.

“Dang he’s big,” Miles whispers into Pard’s ear.

“Uh-huh,” Pard replies.

The man touches a deep scratch on his arm created from one of Deet’s bullets. “You won’t be needing the Pistol,” he says to Deet. “I told the boy I wouldn’t harm you if you would not do the same to me.”

Deet looks at Pard for confirmation, and Pard nods.

“I think he would have stopped,” Pard says, “but you both kept attacking him.”

Deet lowers his pistol and stuffs it in his belt. “Are you a man of your word?” he says to the tikba.

“Unfortunately, too much so,” the man says, now sitting on a mossy stump next to the fire and tying a piece of cloth over his gash. He picks up his sweater and slides it over his broad muscular shoulders.

Deet eyes Pard and Miles and then gestures toward the other side of the campsite in the direction they were headed prior to meeting the tikba. “Let’s leave the man in peace and be on our way. It’s time to get to town and get you your room, Lord Marlow.”

Deet and Miles walk past the campfire.

Pard watches Deet and Miles walking away through the center of the camp, and then he turns toward the tikba. He gives the man a kind smile and extends the golden spikes toward him. “You can have your hairs back. I keep my word too, and I have no need for the luck.” He glances away and rolls his eyes. “Well, maybe I need the luck, but I said I wouldn’t harm you either, so here you are, take them.”

The man curiously scans Pard’s face. His eyes narrow, and it appears as though he is staring through Pard. “Worthy,” the man says with a shallow nod of approval.

Pard returns a confused look, unsure of what the man’s meaning is. “I don’t follow you.”

Deet and Miles, realizing Pard isn’t following them and is still talking to the tikba, they turn and double back.

“What did Cray tell you of the tikba?” the man says.

“Well, really it was his partner Hawke that told the story. But basically he said that you are rare and strong and ferocious and worth a lot of money.”

Miles butts in, “And it will pound our heads into a bloody pulp and rip us limb from limb and gnaw on our flesh. Unless we have a rifle.”

The man chuckles in a deep bellow. “Yes, that happens from time to time, even if they have a rifle.”

Again, Pard extends the golden hairs toward the man. “He also said if someone can pull the silver or gold hairs from a tikba mane, that they will stop attacking. And you did, so now you can have them back.”

The man sits up even straighter. “Curious boy you are; and indeed it does inhibit my kind from continuing an attack. But he didn’t tell you anything else?”

Pard twists his lips and shakes his head
no
.

“And yet you still offer me my hairs back, with no condition?”

Pard shrugs. “Sure.”

“What is your name, young seeros?”

“Pard Wenerly.”

“Then, Pard Wenerly of the seeros, what Hawke failed to tell you, is that he or she who can remove the tikba’s spikes, shall be judged, and if proven worthy, shall have an ally for life onto death.”

Pard’s eyes narrow. “Huh?”

The man rises to his feet, tall and proud. He raises his chin with a sense of honor. “I am Tor, tena of the tikba, son of Rin, and grandson of Er, and I pledge my life to you, Pard Wenerly of the seeros.”

Pard’s mouth drops. “
You do
?”

“I do,” Tor says. “He who is found worthy in courage and skill to remove Tor’s spikes, and most of all have a spirit to match his own, is he who Tor shall follow and protect until his last breath.”

Pard raises his eyebrows and glances at Miles.

Miles stares at Tor, taking in the imposing man standing before him. “Cool.”

Pard looks at Deet for an answer.

“Up to you, kid,” Deet says.

Tor extends his massive hand toward Pard. “Will you accept this bond of courage and skill and spirit for life, Pard Wenerly? And become esen’er with me?”

Pard smiles, staring into Tor’s proud eyes. His insides lighten as the excitement grows within. He extends his hand back with the tikba’s golden spikes still in his palm, and Tor grasps it tight. “I accept, Tor, tena of the tikba.” The golden spikes seep out of their embrace and rise in the air in front of them, turn into a single beam of yellow light, and it enters Pard’s chest.
 

Tor grins. “And I accept, Pard Wenerly of the seeros.”
 

A thin aqua-blue light emerges from Pard’s wrist, circles his and Tor’s hand for a few seconds, then the light absorbs into the back of Tor’s hand and disappears.

“We are now esen’er, Pard Wenerly of the seeros, bonded for life onto death.”

A CASE OF THE HICCUPS

Pard and the others leave the camp and follow Deet through the forest. It is night now, and they exit the trees and enter an open snow-covered field. The moon above is bright with no clouds in sight, the surroundings lighter than normal as the reflection bounces off the calm sheet of white. An icy crystalline snow descends from the sky which stings Pard’s nose and cheeks. Ahead, a farmhouse windows glow a dim orange from the flickering candles, the structure perched on a small hill surrounded by barren trees.