Fate Rides Wicked: Volume I of the Lerilon Trilogy (4 page)

“Come back to me, Tych. Escape whatever holds you
in its grip.” The warrior stiffened. She could see an image
forming in her head in which she played a part. In front of
her a man with a head, which consisted of a grotesque
combination of animals, sat on a horse. Drawing her
sword, she turned to her right to circle in front of her
apparent enemy. In doing this, she saw Tych, ropes of
blackness binding his arms and legs. A shimmering sphere,
dark as the night sky, surrounded his head.

The enemy spoke. “Leave him to me, warrior. You are
too young and weak to resist me.”

“Who are you?”

“They call me Fear. I have entered his mind to gain
control over him.”

“You must come through me to do further harm, beast
of evil.”

“And so I shall.” The creature made symbols in the air.
Recognizing that a spell was being woven, Lendril dropped
her sword, removed her bow from its covering and nocked
an arrow. With accuracy that hinted magical guidance, the
shaft sped across the dream landscape and struck Fear in
his throat. The creature gagged and reached for his neck,
ending the spell.

Lendril ran to Tych and cut off the bonds, successful
from her lack of knowledge that this should be impossible.
Tych’s hands flew up and tore off the sphere. Lendril
grunted as Tych tackled her. “Why...” she began before
looking to where Tych now pointed. Fear rubbed his neck
and he had just cast a spell.

Lendril swore. “How is this happening?”

Tych stood calmly. “The parts of our minds where
dreams take place have been combined and now we face
the personification of fear.” The prince was not accurate in
his guess about Fear, but close enough for an idea to form.
“I think we must defeat him by being courageous.”

“No. We must face our own fear.” Lendril picked up
her bow as she stood and pulled it back without an arrow.
She stifled her trembling and whispered, “I will not be
afraid.” She repeated this over and over again until she felt
her fear subsiding. Tych had been doing the same while he
held an arrow, using the malleability of dreams, which
allows one to do anything. Placing the arrow, containing
all his fear, onto the bow, containing all of Lendril’s fear,
he yelled, “We no longer fear you.” Lendril fired with the
same accuracy. When the shaft struck, the dream world
exploded with light.

In the real world Lendril felt consciousness return and
screamed. Without knowing it would help, the expression
of pain freed her from her contact before being mentally
injured. She jumped in surprise as a hand weakly gripped
her shoulder.

Corl stared into her tired face as she looked up. “What
happened?”

“When I touched him, the creature which had taken
over his mind drew me into the world where he held Tych
in his grip.”

“What creature?”

Lendril shivered. “Fear.”

“That explains the feeling I had that someone besides
Tych was forcing me back. The prince has become
unconscious. How did you defeat the enemy?”

“We emptied our fear into weapons and fired it at Fear,
denying his power over us as I fired. It broke his grip.”

“Very well done. Come. We must get him and you to
a safe place to rest.” He beckoned two soldiers over.
“Help her inside the valley and take her to my tower.” The
wizard bent over Tych and picked him up. Upon reaching
the magic wall, he vanished with the body.

The other twelve looked up as their leader came out of
his trance, screaming. For a moment he wavered, gripping
the edge of his throne with white knuckles. “He has
defeated me and locked me out of his mind.”

Worry frowned. “How can any mortal never feel fear?”
“He will still feel it but not enough for me to enter and
manipulate the energy which is in his mind. His lover
helped him defeat me. I could never harm her because she
already feels only enough fear to make her fight through
exhaustion and danger.”

Distress cursed the endarilan unpredictability. “We are
undone!”

“NO! They do not know I exist in a non-dream form.
We will merely make the path we want desirable so that he
may take it. Our goal is one that all mortals desire. We
will just have to hope he does what we need, now that we
cannot directly control him. He will leave the valley again,
and then we’ll start our work.” Fear stepped down from the
throne and turned to Prejudice. “Begin to work with the
human kings to reduce their prejudice against endarils. The
rest of us should gain strength by spreading our emotions of
fear.”

Tych sat up suddenly then lay back down as the blood
left his head, leaving him dizzy. Corl appeared above him.
“I remember everything,” said the prince.

“Lendril told me all that happened after she was drawn
into your battle. Tell me of before then.” Corl listened to
the images being described and the tempting of Fear. “You
learned control much faster than I would have thought
possible.”

Tych shook his head. “It took so much concentration, I
would be able to do nothing else.”

“I will reduce the protection from the energy slightly so
that you can learn to channel little by little until it can help
you.”

“It has helped me. During the battle five weeks ago I
gained in strength as I fought. When Lendril bumped me,
she gained in strength momentarily, but there was a barrier
which prevented more than a tiny bit from flowing through
me.”

“The valley’s magic must have widened the crack to the
point that the barrier broke. Be sure that we will turn your
torment to strength.”

Tych grabbed Corl’s cloak as he walked away from the
bed. “How is Lendril?”

“Fully recovered. I have tested her and discovered an
enchantment too unusual for me to understand. I think
Lendela has blessed her and
that
god moves in ways that
are slow to be revealed. I’m sure you will discover the
blessing eventually. Now rest; your mind has taken a
terrible blow.”

Effortlessly!

Crat grimaced. From his window he was watching
Tych fight a magic orb: effortlessly. Corl created the orb
because Tych endangered his banal opponents. Crat turned
back to his desk. In three days his brother would be
christened an adult, given his secret name and freed to
marry Lendril. All the younger had amounted to be was a
thief, with skills normally reserved for the evil daril race,
the credarils.
And thieves are not wanted in the Hidden
Valley,
he thought to himself.

Suddenly Crat’s eyes settled on his bed. Under the
mattress was a book, hidden because of its evil nature, and
it gave him an idea. He leaped from his seat and quickly
closed the blinds on the window. To be discovered was to
face the wrath of the only man he feared, Corl.

The thief smiled as his hand settled on the object of his
joy. He knew what he was planning would make him an
assassin, but the idea went unnoticed. The brown leather
book had a black bird embossed into the cover. Crat cared
little how the book got into his room, he only wanted its
secrets. The dry smell of death met his nose as a sharp
crack came from the old binding.

Crat felt a moment of panic that somebody in the hall
might have heard the sound but it quickly faded. Slowly he
paged through the huge tome, without knowing for sure
what he wanted. The pages were made out of a heavy,
chemically treated paper, and the smell of his room became
that of a dusty, unused closet.

The information he wanted jumped up and grabbed his
attention as soon as he turned to the page. It was a recipe
for death:

Hypnotic Brew: This potion will give the mixer
control over his victim, for the duration of one
command. The victim will also lose his voice for
three days, giving time for a getaway. Combine
equal parts of:

Tamarin Bark
Alcohol
Healing Potion

Crat read the formula repeatedly until memorized, hid
the book, and then ran out of the castle in search of
ingredients. For the next two days he prepared to do his
work. He stole healing potion and hair from Morg’s study.
He took a silver spoon, a wooden bowl and a small can of
oil from the kitchen. Finally, the thief had to choose the
object of his command to Tych.

The decision was easy. There would be maids helping
the prince prepare for the ceremony. One of them had
shunned Crat quite forcefully and the thief saw an
opportunity to get revenge on two enemies. As the
preparations got hectic on the eve of the one hundred
fiftieth birthday of Tych, Crat paid a visit to the harried
director of festivals, a man volunteering to oversee the
preparations.

Crat found him in the kitchen. “Gudiln, his majesty,
Prince Tych di Corl, has a request.”

Gudiln hated Crat’s lack of respect and considered him
a suspect in the various store robberies of the last few
years. “What do you want?”

Crat yelled, “Talk to me as royalty should be! Besides,
Tych is the one with the order.”

Sarcasm weighed down the director’s answer. “Yes,
your majesty. What would the birthday boy desire?”

“He wants you to make sure the maid Myla serves him
at bathing.” Crat chose to ignore the sarcasm and, in the
revenge mood, marked the storekeeper for trouble.

“Why would he make such a request when it might
make Lendril jealous?”

“Are you calling me a liar?!” yelled Crat. “This is what
he ordered!”

This time there was no sarcasm. “Excuse me, your
majesty. I will do as ordered.”

A smirk spread across Crat’s face as he left the kitchen,
Gudiln glaring at his back. Neither endaril expected good
from the third son of Morg.

The castle of the endarilan royal family faced towards
the small lake in the center of the valley. Upon entering a
pair of wooden doors with the spherical symbol carved and
painted on them, a visitor to the castle found himself in a
long corridor with six doors on each side. Each door bore
the green, brown and silver design on the entry doors. On
the left, bedrooms housed the castle staff in comfort. These
looked out on the village. On the right, one large meeting
to six small meetings could take place with a view on the
courtyard.

At the end of the hall two more double doors opened on
to a throne room large enough to hold every endaril. The
doors consisted of thin, light wood with a huge, royal, six
foot tall seal painted so that the silver ring around the green
and brown halves touched both walls, the ceiling and the
floor. Still in the passage, just before the doors, on the left,
stairs climbed away for three feet to a landing, then
continued up to the second floor hallway.

Crat stopped here at the top and checked to his right. In
front of him opened the entrance to the biggest suite, his
parents’. He knew that as soon as they returned to the
castle they would go through the sitting area and the
bedroom to the bath to prepare for the ceremony that
evening. To his left ran a railing, which allowed people to
see the proceedings below with the curtain open. He
walked to this, closing it. As he turned, he caught a glance
of the stairs to the third floor, and Corl’s tower farther up,
and shivered. Even though his favorite endaril, his sister
Cert, lived upstairs, he dreaded taking these stairs.

His mind returned to the matter at hand. He half jogged
to the first door on the right and entered. Standing
in Tych’s sitting room, he felt jealousy again. A huge
painting of Lendril greeted him next to the window looking
out onto the village. Tych’s sword rested in its jeweled
scabbard diagonally on pegs above the fireplace. His royal
armor, ready for him to wear that night for the first time,
stood behind a plush couch. Two large beanbags were
tossed in the middle of the floor, which was covered with
simulated fur.

A footstep in the hallway triggered Crat’s reflexes and
he sprang through the door on his left into the bedroom.
He landed a few feet from the bed, rolled forward once and
sprang over the queen-sized bed. He landed like a cat on
the other side without disturbing a fiber of the down
comforter. He flattened and listened. He cursed at the
small mistake he had made before his roll, as the guards
passing by stopped to listen. He noted to remember never
to do anything that inherently caused noise, like going into
a roll out of a sudden leap.

He listened. “I thought I heard somebody in there.” He
recognized the guard and could see his blue eyes and blond
hair in his mind.

“You’re imagining things, Beldef. Nobody would be
stupid enough to mess with Tych. Even his older brother
holds the prince in awe.”

“I hope you’re right, Yusan. He’ll lecture my ear off if
you’re wrong.”

“I’d rather face the tusks of a wild boar but I don’t want
to be caught in there if it’s empty.”

“Ah, it was just my imagination. Let’s carry on.”

Crat listened to the sound of the boots fading then
slowly stood. Swiftly and silently he passed through the
door opposite the one that had been his escape route. The
thief circled the tub in the center of the room and crouched
in front of a cold, uncovered stove filled with coals and
rocks, his green eyes passing over the room carefully. A
grating leaned on the wall so that water could be heated if
the natural hot spring ran too low to fill the bath. Next to
this sat a sink with a tap and a hand-pump attached to it. A
toilet dominated an alcove in the half-circle outside wall,
more a covered shelf then a chair.

Satisfied that he knew the rooms, Crat noiselessly
reached the outer room. He listened to the boots of the
guards go down the stairs and slipped out the door. It
clicked behind him but he stifled it by leaning on the frame
over the strike-plate.