Legacy Read online

kick your rusted little knife the rest of the way.”

  Krastyo pulled a clump of dark hair falling from his scalp and moaned at the loss of his shoulder length curls. The warrior ridiculed him with a wheezing laugh, “No more singing your way into the miller’s daughter’s smallclothes, with that-” a fit of coughing interrupted the jibe. “Mayhap the miller’s mother will give you a whirl.” Dust motes appeared, leading them to daylight. Renewed strength coursed through Krastyo’s aching thighs. His brother bellowed in triumph and raced toward salvation.

  The brothers leapt as one from the cave into a dark forest filled with towering oaks and elms, evergreens and ferns towering to unseen heights. Krastyo collapsed amid a bed of colorful leaves and prayed to all the gods worshiped throughout the world. Please don’t let them come out. Please. Please.

  Vacek knelt and softly laid his sister in a circle of ivory rose bushes. Krastyo noticed dingy veins streaming along his brother’s face and naked arms. It seemed he ignored the debilitating poison by sheer force of will. A red-eyed gaze focused on Krastyo. “Place the blade by the cave, you squirrel-raping trout.” Coherent thoughts slipped. The plan seemed sound, but he could not move.

  Vacek growled as Veilspawn tried to seep out of the cave and raced toward Krastyo with a drunken gait. The warrior shrieked in defiance and clasped the poisonous blade bonded to Krastyo by ancient rites.

  Krastyo winced as a fleshy burst created a bloody shower excreting from Vacek’s forearm and shoulder as he charged the darkened cave entrance. The bard moaned at the sickening crunch of snapping bones as Vacek denied the curse. With a barbarous shout, the warrior clasped the hilt with his off hand and sheathed the blade in the earth before the cave. A chorus of inhuman howls filled the woodland as the blade separated prey from predator. Vacek collapsed with a defiant, victorious smile.

  Heroic, Krastyo thought, but futile. As with all dragon boons, the power came with a price. The bard lamented a life of regrets. So close. The pale dragon, Kovinth, prophesied his redemption on this fool’s errand before forcing the undertaking upon him when the bard refused. Looks like I was right.

  A nearby rustling interrupted dark thoughts. With the last dregs of strength, the singer lolled his head toward a patch of rose bushes where Bakarne sat cross-legged in meditation. With some unknown power, the visible effects of the toxin diminished. Oily fissures along her heart shaped face and slim neck faded. Reddened pocks marring sunken cheeks cleared. Ivory roses melted like wax, blackened, burned. A ring of splendor died around his sister as her health improved.

  Vacek moaned, “No,” while trying to crawl toward the Magissa defiling his precious Mother.

  Bakarne shrugged, nonchalant. “Would you have me die, Vacek?”

  “This land- pure. Ba- karne- please.”

  “The forest burns yet acorns survive to grow it anew.” Melancholy and withdrawn, Bakarne lectured as the foliage fed her strength. “Birth, reproduction, and death. The mystic power you serve knows this cycle.” She rose and adjusted the robes of her order. “Both of your journeys are over. Goodbye,” she bowed and glided away.

  A plea died on Krastyo’s lips. Swallow your pride, man. You can’t die here- not yet. “Wait,” his melodious, baritone voice sounded hoarse and scratched in his own ears, “help us- please.”

  The Magissa returned and knelt in front of him, shaven head tilting inquisitively as thin lips frowned, dimpling an arrogant chin. “As you helped me when the raiders came?” Deft hands covered in demonic tattoos traced the contours of his face. “The captain gave me a silver penny when he stole my maidenhood. The pirates recompensed with a copper penny after that. I had an old pickle jar filled with them. I lost my pennies to the sea when they tossed me overboard. Did you know that?” Manicured nails, painted a burgundy so deep it seemed black, dug into Krastyo’s skin. “No you did not, because you absconded. You all did.” She stood abruptly. “Now pay the price for your perfidiousness.”

  That’s not the way of it, Krastyo wanted to scream. Instead, he searched for an answer. Would an apology work? No, too much bitterness and rage in her heart. Perhaps- “We’re here. Now. You’d be dead without my sword.”

  Bakarne flinched as if goosed and returned, considering. “You,” she sounded begrudging, “may have a valid argument. So be it.” She thrust palms into the crisp air, sleeves sliding down to reveal intricate nightmarish tattoos along her arms, and murmured a foreign chant.

  The winds buffeted around her, churning a whirlwind of leaves about her feet. The floating paradise seemed darker as an unholy nimbus enveloped her. Krastyo’s ragged breathing grew steady. Wobbly limbs strengthened. Thick blades of grass died around him. An ancient pine, wide as a man is tall, bled sap as it shriveled, cracked, and died. She is like Kovinth’s artifact, balancing power with death. As awestruck eyes beheld his powerful sister, Krastyo discerned that this- truth- this balance lay at the heart of his quest. Bakarne manipulated life and death, but the equation balanced, while these Veilspawn tainted the equation, throwing everything into chaos.

  Bakarne sighed and lowered weary arms. “The debt is repaid.” She studied the forest with blind eyes. “This is where we part, I fear.”

  Krastyo sputtered at her senseless deduction. Why heal them and keep the same plan? “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Vacek stormed forward with reinvigorated purpose. “She’s right. I sense it too. Something dark and foul to the east.” He smiled in anticipation. “And something ancient, powerful to the west.” His feet followed the power. “I had wondered why the Mother brought you, sister. Now it makes sense.” Head lowered he began to mutter, “The elders always said I was slow.”

  “And what of me?” Krastyo heard the whine in his voice and toughened his tone. “There are three of us and two paths.”

  Bakarne walked east with a firm stride, fingers curled in anticipation. “You cleared the path through the Veilspawn. Your journey is over.” She entered a rough thicket and disappeared.

  A burly arm embraced him as a woodaxe came dangerously close to slicing his silver doublet, and the nipple beneath. “Come bard,” Vacek laughed and pulled him along, naked shortsword resting on his shoulder. “I’ll give you a song that will make the world remember us.”

  “But Bakarne-” his neck craned to the thicket fading in the distance.

  Vecek’s lips curled into a somber smile. “She’s a warrior in her own right. I see that now. I thought she was evil, what with that black robe, and all those tattoos, and the way she charmed that leviathan. But, she’s no different from me. What right do we have to deny her a warrior’s death?”

  “Death? But-” The query died on his lips as the forest ended before a towering cathedral chiseled from ivory marble and tiled with rare cherrywood shingles. Squared ingresses twenty spans high and wide enough for a dozen men to enter at once arrayed across the front. Krastyo swallowed a lump. What- thing needs a door that big?

  “Enough about her.” Vacek hefted sword and axe while sparing cursory glances to the knives in his boot, bastardsword by his hip, and a sickled chisel paired with a mace on the other hip. Shoulders flexed, jostling greatsword and buckler on his back. “Prepare yourself to write that ballad.” Vacek inhaled, lips parted, eyes closed. “The Mother is strong here. But a prisoner. Let’s say we free her?” He strode through the center opening, never looking back to see if Krastyo followed.

  Krastyo guarded the rear as the brothers slunk through a gargantuan hallway sparingly lit by peculiar silvery flames within gothic candelabras. Krastyo desired to study the eerie mosaic drawn on the walls, but Vacek never left the center of the path, and the bard found the prospect of lonely exploration unappealing.

  The hall led to a vast room. Krastyo surveyed a roaring, natural fire to the left and a throne perched atop a gold dais centered along the far wall. Dais and throne sparkled as firelight and shadow danced. The pair stalked toward an emerald chair crafted in the image of a dragon’s open maw, with rubies the size of a child’s
hand carved into serrated teeth, eyes of opal and onyx, a velvet tongue shaped into seat and armrests.

  Vacek lowered his weapons and halted as the flames revealed a pale youth garbed in dark linens taking his leisure on the throne, one leg thrown nonchalantly over the armrest, booted heel grazing a pointy tooth. “I should have known- master.” He hinted at a bow, an infinitesimal nod of the head.

  The nimble youth’s chestnut eyes flamed with silent rage. “You come into my home, little brother-”

  “Don’t call me that!” Vecek’s body convulsed with anger. Krastyo speculated about the history these two shared, but could not discern how his brother could know someone hidden in this floating city. “I expected some great evil within these halls, but it’s you! The Mother has delivered you into my hands. This- this is justice! I will avenge my wife!”

  The young man’s egg shaped head shook as he replied with a tired sigh. “Your blade pierced her heart, as I recall.” He rose, standing taller than the brothers, and descended the golden steps, dragging an ivory sword sheath behind him. Empty, the dragon’s tongue revealed a gilded ark resting at the top of the seat.

  Vacek hefted his weapons of choice, “The box is what we came for, I gather.” He nodded toward Krastyo. “Do not interfere. This is