A King's Caution Read online

  A King’s Caution

  Book Two of The Eternal War

  By Brennan C. Adams

  brennancadams.com

  © Brennan C. Adams.

  All Rights Reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions, contact:

  [email protected]

  Cover Art by: Rachel Bostwick

  ISBN: 9781549759246

  This book contains strong language, graphic violence, and sexual innuendo. There is no explicit sexual content.

  Table of Contents Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Interlude I: Apprehension Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Interlude II: Arrogance Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Interlude III: Caution Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Epilogue

  For my sister who reminds me it’s ok to be grisly and gruesome on occasion

  Chapter One

  Hello, Diary!

  Is this the correct way to greet you? Kinlith would say no, I’m sure, but mama told me I could write whatever and however I want in you. So, Kinlith can go rot!

  Today’s my birthday! Many people gave me gifts, but you’re my favorite by far because you’re from mama. She said, “An eight-year-old prince must have a place to record his uncensored thoughts.” I don’t know what that means, but I’m happy to have gained a new friend.

  Ugh! Kinlith is calling again. He probably wants to review proper greetings for the Esela representative before the man arrives. I’m tempted to hide from Kinlith. If I’m destined to become Alouin’s representative on earth, then I should be able to say or do whatever I want to his servants! But if I don’t do as my tutor asks, mama will scold me…

  I’m sorry, diary. I’ll write in you another time.

  “Are you sure about this?” Raimie’s best friend asked him.

  Clinging to the fortress’s wall, he shot a glare at Kheled.

  “This was your idea!” he whispered. “Are you changing your mind now?”

  Kheled shook his head. “Taking Da’kul is a sensible next step, but when we succeed here, Doldimar will know our relative location. After the weeks of peace, I’d like to know you’re ready for the resistance we’ll encounter from this point forward.”

  “Winter’s over, and the snows have almost thawed. We have to start at some point. Now’s as good a time as any. My arms tire, Khel. Can we get on with it?”

  In response, Kheled blinked from view, and Raimie quickly followed suit. If he concentrated fiercely enough, he could sense his friend’s position, a distinct distortion of reality climbing overhead.

  Safely ensconced in his Ele bubble, Raimie hauled himself up the vine coated wall. Sloppy to leave such a vulnerability plastered to the fort, but the vine was thin and spindly. Teron probably hadn’t considered it a threat to Da’kul’s impregnability, and conditionally, the dead Enforcer would have been right. Without the Ele Raimie sent through it, he was sure the leafy thing would have long crumpled beneath their weight.

  The spindly vines ceased its growth several feet from the wall’s precipice, but again, Ele assisted his climb. With a push, he vaulted the crenellations of Da’kul’s outer wall, hastily scanning for possible enemies, but the only other person he could detect was Kheled.

  As expected, the fortress was deserted. After the battle on the beach, few of the soldiers garrisoned here had attempted to return, and of those who had, scouts from Tiro had eliminated a vast majority. The gutting left Da’kul with a skeleton force, not even enough to regularly patrol the walls.

  Raimie easily avoided what patrols he did encounter until he found a stair leading into the bailey. A small, two-man guard blocked their path, and before he could decide how to handle them, Kheled momentarily slid from his bubble to decapitate the Kiraak. Raimie helped him drag the bodies from prying eyes, and the two of them descended the stair, invisible once more.

  Their goal, the fortress's single gate, couldn't be far, but Raimie couldn't say where it pierced the wall. While sneaking to the fortress, he and Kheled had taken a circuitous route to avoid detection, one which had twisted his sense of direction. The lack of knowledge wouldn’t hamper their plan, however, as they could skirt the bailey and come across the gate before long. After that, it would prove a simple matter to open it and usher friendly soldiers inside.

  The bailey’s grassy courtyard was empty, a fortunate happenstance as Raimie’s bubble of invisibility burst upon stepping into the open. Frantically, he backed into the poor concealment of the open stair while searching for Kheled and his splinters. His friend was nowhere in sight, bubble still working perfectly. His splinters, on the other hand, were visible, and their demeanor frightened Raimie.

  What the hell, Bright? he asked, scrambling for his source.

  The Ele splinter didn’t respond, only held perfectly still. His guise had ruptured, spilling white light over the bailey.

  Dim?

  “What?!” the Daevetch splinter snapped, eyes brimming with fury and restrained violence.

  Raimie shuddered. Never mind.

  “Gods, how did I miss it last time?” Kheled murmured beside him. “Da’kul is the home of a tear.”

  He dropped his bubble out of courtesy, and they ducked into the darkness beneath the trebuchets dotting the bailey. Huddled there, Raimie considered Kheled’s claim. Now that he was aware of it, the tear’s miasma of anxiety and panic stuck out like a sore thumb, and he kicked himself for not detecting it earlier.

  “That will throw a kink in the plan, won’t it?” he asked.

  Kheled said nothing, his grim countenance already answering Raimie’s rising fear. Surely, his friend wouldn’t ask it of him. Kheled must remember what had happened last time, outside Allanovian. Surely, his friend wouldn’t consider relegating a task so draining to him again.

  Surely, Raimie’s soldiers couldn’t stand near a tear without ripping one another apart.

  “All right, fine! I’ll close the damn thing!” he growled. “Where is it?”

  “Somewhere near the tower’s base, but of the exact location, I can’t say. It can’t be in the open or I’d have seen it when last here. We’ll have to search the buildings nearby,” Kheled answered.

  “Great.”

  The plan hadn’t called for them to infiltrate Da’kul any deeper than the outer wall’s immediate interior. The fortress may have a skeleton crew manning it, but that didn’t mean it was completely without defenders. The closer to the tower they crept, the more Kiraak they’d encounter. With this change, their chances of discovery would shoot up one hundred-fold, and Raimie couldn’t rely on invisibility to sneak him past the Kiraak.

  “Can you make a bubble?” he asked his friend, and when Kheled nodded, he sagged with relief.

  “My Ele splinter’s not responding, and I can’t control my source,” he explained at his friend’s blank stare. “No way in hell am I attempting to make a bubble from Daevetch. Such a prospect seems inordinately risky, but at least you can manipulate your source!”

  “Of course I can,” Kheled grinned. “My source is me, not Creation.”

  “Then why…?”

  “Why does Creation follow me like a shadow? He’s my babysitter, remember? I love tears because they’re one of the few places where he’s too distracted to pay me any mind.”

  Raimie’s hand shot up.
In an enemy fort and surrounded by hostiles, he wasn’t sure why he’d asked. He’d acquired the information needed. Now to put a prospect to his friend he knew Kheled would hate.

  “Forget I asked. Now’s not the time. I don’t suppose you could…?”

  “I’m not messing with my source simply to make it easier for us,” Kheled stated. “You’re more than capable of sneaking through this fortress without invisibility.”

  “Says you,” Raimie pouted.

  “Yes, says me,” Kheled retorted. “Besides, finding the tear while surrounded by my source would be a logistical nightmare. Once within it, the body’s natural reaction to the tear’s wrongness would dull.”

  “And we need to follow the dread to the tear,” Raimie sighed. “If we must go without a bubble, then we must. Let’s go.”

  They crossed the bailey in a flash, eating the distance to concealing building with feather-light feet and profiles scrunched near level with the grass. Once roofs’ eaves had welcomed them, they hesitantly snuck around buildings toward the tower. Soon enough, dread spiked, and they halted. The buildings to either side emanated the same level of anxiety, leaving the success of their decision between them up to chance. Shrugging, Raimie pointed right.

  They approached the squat edifice, scanning their surroundings for enemies. Raimie attempted to open the door, but it refused to budge.

  “Daevetch could break this open, but doing so would be loud,” he told Kheled in a whisper. “Any ideas?”

  His friend fished through his cloak’s pockets as he knelt before the knob.

  “Keep a watch,” he murmured as he brandished a set of lock picks.

  Raimie snorted. Of course, his friend could pick locks. He’d sought someone to teach him the skill during the recently passed winter months, and the person for whom he’d quested had been right in front of him the entire time.

  “Nothing you do surprises me anymore,” he said in response to Kheled’s questioning glance.

  When his friend turned to the door, Raimie pointedly misinterpreted the man’s prior request. Instead of their surroundings, he kept an eye on Kheled’s deft fingers as they nimbly maneuvered the picks into position and twisted them with a click.

  “That was fast!”

  “Mm…” Kheled murmured.

  After that perfect example, Raimie felt he had an adequate grasp of the lock picking skill. Riadur, the leader of their current place of refuge, had provided multiple books on the subject, per their agreement, but books could only do so much. Kheled had given him a live example, and with it, several questions the books had failed to answer resolved. Now, he needed a few practice runs, and he might be ready to take on a certain padlock in his mind.

  I hope you’re happy, Nyl.

  Raimie’s other half suffused him with affection and… was that barely contained panic?

  The door swung open, revealing row after row of weapons and armor racks. He and Kheled ensured their goal didn’t hide behind swords, maces, and bows before assessing their other option.

  Surprisingly, the other building wasn’t locked. Perhaps in a fort garrisoned by carefully controlled and maintained Kiraak, the worry that a soldier might abscond with items from the tear became unnecessary. Unlike weapons, which the blood-thirsty Kiraak fixated on to the point of adoration, the baubles the tear produced wouldn’t prove a temptation.

  Inside, Raimie and Kheled encountered the familiar cracks and waves of stone which indicated they’d found their mark. They hurried to close the door behind them, halting soft light from advancing outside.

  The pinhole-sized smudge in the room’s center forced Raimie’s eyes away, the absolute wrongness of it churning his stomach. Unwilling to turn from the tear but unable to look at it dead on, he kept the white halo which surrounded its abnormal blackness firmly fixed on his vision’s edges.

  “Get on with it,” Kheled growled.

  His friend’s demeanor contradicted his earlier assertion to love these breaks in reality. Kheled’s face had quite literally turned green, and glazed eyes glued to the black hole and wispy white light. His slack demeanor was matched by the three splinters. Creation, Dim, and Bright seemed transfixed by the tear, expressions vacant. They swayed toward and away from the break in reality as if incessantly drawn and thrust back. Their reactions, more than the danger outside or Kheled’s behavior, prompted Raimie to act.

  He hesitantly felt for his sources, thanking his luck when they sluggishly responded. He hadn’t looked forward to dipping his toes into whatever lay behind the tear again. Doing so the one time outside Allanovian had been more than enough for him, thank you. If he could help it, he never meant to touch a tear again. Not that his other option for closing the tear was any better.

  Keeping in mind what had happened last time he pulled primal energy near a tear, Raimie hesitantly teased at the power behind his splinters. As it had in Daira, energy came not only from Bright and Dim but from the tear itself. Streams of Ele and Daevetch eagerly sprang for him, lurching forward as if he were a missing, prized possession found once more.

  Gritting his teeth at the war raging inside his body, Raimie labored to blend Ele and Daevetch into one. The attempt was ten times more difficult this time around. The energies resisted, repelling one another so thoroughly that any time he successfully persuaded them to come close, they immediately shot apart like black and white bullets. Still he persisted, and just when he planned to release them in despair, Ele and Daevetch mashed into something entirely other. He took a single moment to bask in the oneness the combined energy invoked before resolving to face the task he must accomplish. And the consequences which would accompany it.

  Directing the resulting dusk to the tear, Raimie plastered a thin band-aid over the opening. Temporary relief of peace and resolution, of balance, drained with the bland gray, and as he reached the bottom of the barrel, discord crackled in his head. He squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to block returning strife, and the stream of blended energy trickled away.

  As the last drop wrung from him, something deep inside twisted, and Raimie lost control of his legs. Before he fell, an unknown support seized his arm, keeping him upright.

  The temptation to curl around the point of injury dragged on him, and he struggled to remember the very compelling reason he’d developed for closing the tear. Sleep laughed just out of sight, eagerly waiting for him to lose focus for even a single second.

  Behind it all, Nylion screamed.

  When normality abruptly returned, Raimie battled confusion, but Kheled’s sharp intake of breath quickly attracted his attention to the danger he’d left behind. His friend stumbled, and Raimie clasped the Eselan’s elbow, returning the recently imparted favor. Almost immediately, he broke into a sweat from supporting Kheled’s weight.

  “What was that?!” his friend gasped. “A tiny piece of me split away.”

  Kheled must have taken his infirmity, the realization of which turned Raimie cold as ice. What had his friend unwittingly done to himself?

  “Did your lost fragment return?” he asked, silently begging for an affirmative.

  He didn’t know what he’d do if his friend said the piece was lost forever. Losing a part of himself wasn’t how Raimie would describe what happened with a tear’s closure. To him, the feeling was more a papercut in the fabric of his soul, one which tickled his awareness every minute of every day. Relentless in its determination to make itself known. He’d willingly accepted a second cut to keep his soldiers sane while they attacked Da’kul, but if his friend had suffered something similar…

  Kheled removed both his weight and his elbow from Raimie’s support “Yes, it returned, but-”

  “Then, I’m sorry, but we need to move. We’ve been behind enemy lines too long. Let’s not spook our waiting friends any more than we must.”

  Quietly cracking the door, Raimie left Kheled behind. His friend would follow soon enough, and hopefully, he’d leave his questions beside the closed tear. Some inquiries Raimie wou
ld never want to endure.

  Even now, the bailey stood empty, and the lack of soldiers besides the two they’d first encountered niggled a worry in the back of Raimie’s mind. Da’kul’s gate, however, was almost within sight. He pushed concern aside in favor of preparing for the battle soon to come. One in which he was reluctant to participate. One he’d fight because he must.

  Kheled’s panting soon dogged his steps, and he increased the pace, almost abandoning pretense of stealth in his rush to crack Da’kul for his allies. Quickly deserting the cover of short, squat buildings, they sprinted for the gate, feet muffled by grass. Raimie slowed halfway to their goal, worry rising once more.

  The gate stood before them, a thick length of chain and a giant padlock holding it closed. That in itself caused slight anxiety as it would increase the time he and Kheled spent exposed to wandering eyes, but such a security measure was also a reasonable expectation. With few men to stand guard, Da’kul’s defenders wouldn’t waste time posting soldiers to a gate when a lock would do. If those defenders were smart, that is. What wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever, on the other hand, was if the padlock was on the gate’s exterior, easily broken by assailants. Which it was.

  “Trap?” Raimie asked his friend as they came to a stop beside their goal.

  “Trap,” Kheled confirmed, drawing his weapons. “You have enough control to break the lock with Daevetch?”

  “Yes, but it would blow the gate from its hinges too,” Raimie answered. “This exercise is pointless if we don’t take the fortress intact.”

  “Do you have another plan to get us out alive?”

  “I-”

  Hmm. This would be a tough one. Maybe Nyl…

  Amusement and bitter anger flashed from within. Not Nylion then.

  Raimie brushed the chain’s links. Curious, he stuck his arms around the gate’s bars, and they passed through without hindrance. On the other side, his men waited in the trees, intently scanning the sky for the signal to attack. His new family. So close and yet out of reach.