Serpent Kings Saga (Omnibus Edition) Read online

  “Pass through the wall, my child,” the voice said.

  This was different than all of the times before. She wondered at the strange instruction. Pass through a wall of rock? Still, she felt an overwhelming compulsion to obey the voice. She had done as her father had instructed, surrendering herself as completely as possible to the voice years ago.

  Shalindra stepped forward despite the logic screaming to her of the impossibility of the command. To her astonishment, her body passed through the wall as easily as through a veil of mist. On the other side of the illusion, a massive vault was set into the rock. A large locking mechanism began to turn by its own volition. Thick bars were drawn out of the wall into the door and floor. The seal on the door hissed loudly as gases passed through.

  A thunderous roar filled the chamber where Shalindra stood, knocking her off of her feet. The vault door blew outward, slamming into the rock, bending the hinges. She sat on the ground terrified, gazing within the total darkness held within the vault space.

  Two coals of fire burned high up, moving together. Shalindra knew that this was the source of the voice, Lord Belial, as her father had told her. His eyes bored into her now, willing her to stand. At once she obeyed, feeling both pain and pleasure as his power washed through her very being.

  The darkness in the vault was such that nothing could penetrate. She still had no light to see by, yet in her dream state she could. But even her dreaming eyes could not reveal what lay there.

  “This is no dream, child,” Belial’s serpentine voice cooed.

  Shalindra nodded her head, though she didn’t understand. Had she actually made the journey tonight that she had only made in dreams before? Apparently it was so.

  “My lord Belial,” she said hesitantly, “why have you brought me here?”

  “My appointed time has come,” he said. “I am held captive no longer. Though my time is short, you will be my chosen vessel to bear my will upon this kingdom. Go and gather my followers from every village and town. Preach unto them my deliverance from their oppression beneath the heel of Ezekiah.”

  “How can I do this, my lord?”

  “I will be with you,” he said. The burning eyes shot forward from the darkness, trailing a thick, black vapor. The entity of smoke took the form of a dragon. Shalindra gazed upon him in wonder. The dragon descended upon her, enveloping her, filling her.

  She had never felt anything like this before. Belial had taken possession of her. The power flowing through her was almost overwhelming.

  “Do not fight me, Shalindra,” he commanded.

  She felt her head thrust up and back, her mouth opened. The billowing black cloud funneled down into her. The act shook her slight frame so violently she thought her bones would shatter within her. Belial’s eyes disappeared last with a maniacal chuckle; the malevolent spirit thoroughly delighted to inhabit a physical form again. Shalindra fell to her knees gasping.

  Her body no longer belonged to her. She could feel it, but could not control it. Numbness spread throughout her core to her limbs, finally consuming even her mind in the torrent that was Belial. When her eyes opened again, she was no longer the girl she had been upon entering. All of her rage remained, but she had been absorbed into this godlike being. The power was hers to have, but Belial was truly her master as never before.

  Shalindra left the vault where Belial had spent five hundred years of imprisonment under the authority of Elithias. She knew this because his thoughts were now her thoughts. She was not repelled by them, but embraced them as she had Belial’s soothing voice within her mind so many years ago.

  The journey back to her family’s land was shorter than expected. She did not recall taking the steps. Only the incredible power and insight of her master remained to occupy her amazement.

  She stared at the house where her mother lay sick in her bed, likely waiting for Shalindra to come home in order to take care of her. A fire kindled in her mind. The wood structure before her sparked and caught fire. Within minutes her entire home was ablaze. Her mother’s screams reached her outside, but she still did not move.

  This was Belial’s will. It was for the best. Part of her struggled with the realization; but only for a moment. Then Belial’s thoughts invaded and she considered only the distraction her invalid mother would be to the higher calling she now served.

  She turned from the inferno, starting off toward the town of Briar nestled within a valley one half day’s travel from here. Shalindra walked away from her burning home, from what had been left of her family, her former life. She was no longer the same person. She belonged to her god, his prophetess to an unsuspecting kingdom. Shalindra would deliver his words to the people whether they wanted them or not.

  GOODBYES

  The morning had segued into afternoon, and evening after that, without Shalindra considering much about it. Only her determination to fulfill her commission from Belial mattered. At some point she passed into a wooded area with bordering farmland. She had noticed several men working the land, but considered them of no consequence. At least until one of them stopped her at gunpoint.

  “Who are you, woman?” the young man asked. “What are you doing on my father’s land?”

  Shalindra simply stared at him, amused by such an insignificant threat. “I said...” he began, pushing the barrel of the gun closer to her body.

  Quick as a flash, Shalindra whipped the gun out of the young man’s hands then dashed him across the head with it. The blow shattered the rifle in her hands and crushed his skull. He fell dead to the ground.

  She heard an older man scream from behind her, “No!”

  She turned to find a burly man with gray hair approaching with several other men; presumably the man’s children. “What have you done to my son?” he bellowed.

  His sword was already in his hand. The younger men had bows, swords and guns ready to slay her. The older man went immediately to the body of his son, falling upon him. Realizing his son was dead, the man wept, stroking his blood-soaked, blonde hair.

  “Who are you, old man?” Shalindra said. “You look familiar to me.” She had said the words but the thought came from Belial. Personally, Shalindra knew she had never laid eyes on this man.

  The old man stood, brandishing his sword toward her. “I am Varen,” he said with as much venom in his voice as he could muster. “These lands belong to me. You’ll die for what you’ve done here.”

  Shalindra smiled. “Varen,” she cooed. “And are these the children of Jillian, a former priestess of Moloch?”

  The color drained from Varen’s face. “Who are you?”

  Shalindra’s eyes became coals of fire within. She grinned devilishly. “I am Belial the Glorious.”

  Varen reacted immediately, screaming out a war cry as he brought the sword crashing down toward Shalindra’s skull. But before he could connect, the girl flicked her fingers toward him. An invisible force hurled him backward to the ground, his sword landing several feet away imbedded in the earth.

  Varen’s five sons flew into action. Jenner, the tallest, drove an arrow toward her heart. A flick of Shalindra’s wrist smashed it to splinters in flight. Ramin, the quickest, twirled his bow staff toward her, dodging to flank her. As he thrust one end at her face, Shalindra turned sideways allowing the strike to pass before her nose. At the same time, she reached up, curling her slender arm around the bow. A simple pull upward wrenched the bow from his grip. Another arrow flew at her as she flourished the bow. The arrow caught in the wood then she spun it back at Ramin.

  He tried the same trick to recover his weapon. Ramin fell to the earth with his face caved in. The bow flew in a high-powered spin toward Jenner before he could release his next arrow. The impact snapped his neck. Mason, the oldest, fired his gun, as did Layton and Von. Their target disappeared, moving too fast for them to track with natural eyes.

  Shalindra snatched the dagger from Layton’s belt as he fired his last shot at empty space. In one second, Shalindra tore the dagger
across all three throats. They bled upon the ground, gasping for air. Varen watched his five sons die before his eyes, crying out their names as each one fell to Shalindra’s deadly skill.

  She stood waiting for him, holding the bow staff in her hand. Varen stood, pulling his sword from the ground. He knew the futility of his actions, but his grief drove him after her anyway. He slashed furiously at the girl with fire in her eyes. But in the end, she tore the sword from his hands and took his head from his shoulders. His body fell among his children upon the land where he and Jillian had long ago made their homestead, where they had raised three times this many children already, where good crops had been gathered, where their cattle had grazed. Varen and his sons remained in the field long after Shalindra had taken up Ramin’s staff and walked away toward the nearby town, leaving them for the buzzards to feast upon.

  Sobs came uncontrollably as Jillian lay between the body of her husband and one of their sons. Varen had been decapitated, but who could have done it? To have bested Varen and all of her sons when she had trained them to fight herself…only a wraith dancer could have killed them she surmised. But who?

  The only wraith dancers in existence, to her knowledge, were Ezekiah’s wife and the captain of the High Guard, Andrea. Perhaps they had finally found her after centuries. She had no idea they were even looking for her and her family. But there could be no other explanation.

  Jillian stood with tears streaking the dust upon her cheeks. In her anguish she had clawed the dirt until her hands were caked with soil; her fingers cut open by small stones. But she didn’t care. Her entire life had been ripped away from her. All that mattered now was finding the person who had done this.

  The physical evidence: the way the bodies had fallen, the steps imprinted in the dirt of their field and the precision of the kills all told her that one slight framed woman had been the aggressor. The killer’s tracks were easy enough to follow, and now they were accompanied by the imprint of a staff not present before. It could only be Ramin’s.

  His father had made it for him long ago. This person had taken it for a trophy. The trail was heading toward Overton, a village not many miles away. Jillian knew many people in the village. They would tell her if a stranger had come among them. When she found Ramin’s staff, she would also find this killer. And when she found the killer, she would show them the meaning of pain and suffering.

  Jillian returned to her home, the same she had built with her beloved Varen hundreds of years ago. Over time they had essentially rebuilt and expanded the log built structure several times. Long lives gave them plenty of time.

  They had gotten far enough away from the city of Haven to avoid detection by Ezekiah and had hoped to simply live out their lives together, raise a family and see many grandchildren. In time, all of those dreams had been realized multiple times. The children had grown and gone away to find wives or marry husbands. Some had returned to them, visiting for extended periods before moving on again.

  Her dead children had been her last over this century. She could no longer bear more, but it had been enough. These sons had remained with them to work the land and eventually receive it as a good inheritance from her and her husband. Now they were gone and Varen with them.

  She went inside her home and, taking water, cleansed herself in a bath. Her soiled clothes she left on the floor. Jillian removed a worn, old trunk from beneath the floorboards of her bedroom; a storage compartment where she kept secret things. From within, she removed her former uniform; that of a wraith dancer. It had been cleaned long ago and carefully stored away.

  Her weapons lay beneath the clothing. She removed knives and a sword. She dressed herself in these. She would not face her family’s killer in the clothes of a farmer’s wife, but in the robes of a wraith dancer. Concerns over exposing her true identity before those who might alert Ezekiah and the High Guard flashed briefly through her mind. She silenced such fears. Nothing would stop her from this course. No one would stand in her way.

  This life was now over for her; the precious life she had lived for so long here in this land with her loved ones. She brought their bodies, one by one, back to their home. Varen was the last. She had gathered each within a large canvas and dragged them back.

  When they were all safely inside, Jillian set her home ablaze, smashing an oil lamp upon the living room floor where they were laid. She left them there to be consumed as she walked away toward the village of Overton. In minutes her cabin home became an inferno, bright yellow flames consuming everything she had left behind, mirroring the same burning that now carried her toward vengeance.

  The news of Ezekiah’s death had struck a blow to Gwen unlike any she had ever experienced in all of her hundreds of years of living. For hours after Andrea brought the news she remained inconsolable; so much so that Andrea had exited when Gwen would not stop destroying the furniture in the her bedroom. Hours beyond that she sat within the remains of her shattered canopy bed sobbing, or numbly staring into space. How could it have happened? Why would Elithias take him from her like this? She had no answers.

  A day later the palace servants and Andrea had finally been able to persuade her to come to the funeral. Ezekiah’s body had been prepared in the traditional manner, placed upon a funeral pyre that would reduce his remains to ash. Nothing would be left of their love for one another except their few children, now grown up and living days away in far outpost cities overseeing their father’s kingdom, and memories.

  Standing before thousands of mourners she did not even know, Gwen found it too much for her. As the pyre was lit, she could not even cry, having run dry of tears the day before. She had not accepted any food or drink since hearing the news, nor did she feel that she could.

  Gwen gripped Andrea’s hand next to her as the flames took hold of her late husband’s body lying upon the pyre. She knew that Andrea alone among all of these faces could understand something of the devastation she was feeling now. Donavan had been lost to her some time ago during a rebellion that Ezekiah would later quash, allowing Andrea’s High Guard to execute judgment in the matter personally.

  But this was no band of rebels that had taken her beloved, as had been the case with Andrea. A simple heart attack had swept Ezekiah away from her into the waiting arms of Elithias. Despite that knowledge, she felt no comfort. Not only was he gone, in her mind prematurely, but she was now left alone with a kingdom to govern.

  Later, when Andrea had escorted her to another room within the palace where she might get some rest, she gave Gwen the ring left to her by Ezekiah. “It was his dying request that the ring go to you alone,” she said. “That and his love. He told me he would see you soon.”

  Gwen tried to smile at the sentiment. Ezekiah had been a sweet man even in his dying moments. He had been worthy of her love more than any man she had ever met. Still, Gwen accepted the silver ring with trepidation. She knew the power it held: the power to kill dragons, the power to destroy armies and lay waste entire cities. She did not want to possess it. Nevertheless, she placed it on her finger, if for nothing else than because Ezekiah had wished it.

  Andrea placed her hand upon Gwen’s shoulder. “This will ring hollow now, but believe me when I say that time will soften your sorrow. Only never believe those who tell you that your life will go back to normal. Losing your beloved will change your life forever, but you and I are of a kind strong enough to adapt to those changes.”

  Gwen tried to smile, barely managing it. Then she simply allowed the sobs to come. Andrea remained with her for most of the evening, finally parting with a final sympathetic embrace. Gwen was left alone to face the night and the rest of her life, however long it might be, without her husband.

  VENGEANCE

  Clouds were attempting to supplant the bright sun the next day when Jillian walked into the town of Overton. The trail she had been following the day before had eventually grown cold, but she had seen enough to assure her that this was the destination of her family’s murderer. Still, ther
e was no way to be certain except to find them among this mass of people before they decided to move on. Ramin’s staff would be the key; her son’s cry from the grave identifying his killer.

  Jillian found a local eatery, a tavern called The Bubbling Cauldron, in which to take an afternoon meal. She hoped to find her prey within but found no one carrying the staff. Nevertheless, she enjoyed the food. The rotund woman looking out through the cut window in the wall behind the bar was an exceptional cook. Had her mood been better, Jillian might have taken the time to compliment her.

  Upon coming into the tavern, she hadn’t been surprised to find the place nearly full of people, especially now that she had sampled the cuisine. Overton wasn’t on the fringe of Ezekiah’s territory, but like many of these small towns it did enjoy the fact that it remained largely without local law enforcement. The High Guard were several days travel from here, so the locals handled most cases of malcontent themselves by way of a twelve member council and those willing to act as muscle in order to enforce its judgments.

  During Jillian’s time serving within the High Guard at Tarris, she had come into such places to find wary eyes upon her. The uniform had a way of telegraphing trouble to malefactors. However, the denizens of Overton had barely given her a second glance. They probably didn’t even know what a wraith dancer was, since only three remained in the world that she knew.

  “She arrived yesterday, and I heard her this morning,” Jillian heard someone say from the booth behind her.

  “No good talking such rebellion,” another man’s voice warned. “If she gets people stirred up, we’ll have the High Guard down here in no time.”

  “Maybe she’s right though,” the first said. “Why should we blindly follow Ezekiah? What has he really done for us? Govern territory that we governed ourselves before his arrival. And we worshipped according to our own desires, not this adherence to Elithias that’s been shoved down our throats for so long.”