Suzerain of the Beast (Vision Dream Series Book 3), page 59
“Son?” Valerdwin heard Duuganraile say to him, as Croasdorac was nearly upon the old woman.
“I got it,” replied Valerdwin. And without thinking, Valerdwin raised his bow, dropped the tip of his arrow at the face of the charging leader of the thieves, and let it loose.
The arrow struck Croasdorac in the left eye, flipping him backwards and into a puddle of mud and snow…and blood. The thief’s horse veered harmlessly away from the old woman, who turned her horse toward the high brush at the side of the road and began riding up and down it, searching.
“Charge!” shouted Erlerwin, and Valerdwin, Duuganraile, Erlerwin and the other men kicked their horses and rushed headlong into the fight to cut off any escape by the thieves.
❖ CHAPTER 59 ❖
“HOW DOES SHE know where she is going?”
“I am not sure,” said Angelterra, as Selkeeda tugged at the princess to walk faster down the long dark corridor.
They had been walking for what seemed over one turn of the hourglass, but since everything around them was black, she could not be sure how long it had really been. It seemed that Selkeeda had been here before or had seen this place in a dream and was now taking them all to the beast. Perhaps her Sweetie had overheard so much of the talk about the hunt and the beast that Selkeeda was trying to help the princess find it. She was being a good daughter, so Angelterra would follow her daughter to wherever the little angel wished to take her. Then Selkeeda stopped short. And just stood there staring and holding her two little rag dolls.
“What is it, Sweetie?”
“No fire,” said Selkeeda to Lord Georveld, and she frowned at him.
“But this is our only torch,” said Lord Georveld. “Our only source of fire.”
“I ask you, My Lord, to please humor her,” Angelterra pleaded with the young lord. “I have the bracelet which now gives off plenty of light, and, if need be, I can restart your torch with just a…well, I could use my….”
Angelterra was not sure how to tell Lord Georveld that she could rekindle the fire with magic…even without her Concera close by.
“You brought a fire striker with you then?”
“Yes, of sorts,” said Angelterra. She smiled at him.
“All right,” he conceded. And he snuffed the torch out against the smooth black wall.
When all the embers of the torch were out, Angelterra’s bracelet provided the only light.
“There,” said Selkeeda, and the little girl pointed somewhere to the left. The little girl walked toward the left wall and then stood before it, waiting expectantly.
Angelterra held up her bracelet to this portion of the wall. It appeared just as smooth and jet-black as the rest of the walls of the corridor. She touched it gingerly with the fingers of her bracelet hand. Her fingers passed right through.
“It is not solid,” said Angelterra. “I think it is just like—”
Selkeeda suddenly charged headlong towards the wall and vanished.
“Selkeeda!” she screamed, and without thinking the princess plunged into the darkness of the wall after her sweetie. The darkness felt thick like molasses, and it was hard to run through it. After a few slow strides she was free of it and found herself in a very bright cavernous room with a bluish tint to it. The floor was made of the same bluish-white material as the walls. Great columns of the same stuff towered above her. She glanced around and caught sight of Selkeeda just in front of her. She ran to the child. Angelterra slipped and slid as she went.
“Sweetie, please stop running off,” said Angelterra. “You are scaring me, my precious Sweetie.”
“Momma,” replied the little girl, and she held her arms open for Angelterra to pick her up.
Angelterra looked back and noticed that Lord Georveld had not yet come through.
Was he trapped on the other side without her power and the bracelet to help him through?
She carried Selkeeda back to the section of the bluish-white wall where both she and her Sweetie had emerged.
“Lord Georveld?” she called.
But there was no answer. She looked down at her glowing bracelet. Perhaps all it took was her touching of the wall with her hand wearing the bracelet to trigger the entrance to open up once more. She tried it.
“Lady Angelterra? Selkeeda?” she instantly heard his voice when her fingers touched the icy cold wall.
And the wall became shiny and wavy as if she were looking into a pool of sunlit water.
“Walk through, walk straight through the wall, My Lord,” instructed the princess.
“Are you sure?”
“I am,” she assured him. “Do not hesitate.”
After a moment, he came through the watery wall, making a swimming motion with his arms as he did.
“That, be a horrible, horrible door,” said Lord Georveld, checking himself as if he had left some of himself in the thick darkness.
“It seems my bracelet is not only a compass, but also a key,” noted Angelterra.
Both Angelterra and Lord Georveld took in the cavern around them. Besides the towering columns of bluish-white, high, high above them the massive domed ceiling was covered with dozens of huge and pointed bluish-white stalactites. As she looked closer she realized the stalactites…and everything else in this cavern were all made of…
“Ice! It is all ice!” said Lord Georveld, looking around. “A cavern made of ice. That must mean—”
“The beast is near,” finished Angelterra.
Selkeeda began to wiggle furiously in Angelterra’s arms. The princess was surprised at the little girl’s strength and nearly dropped the twisting wiggling child.
“Down! Down!”
It was all Angelterra could do to get the now flailing child to the ground without dropping her on her head.
“Settle down, Sweetie! Settle down!”
“I would wager she is going to—” began Lord Georveld.
Once down, Selkeeda and her two rag dolls rushed off giggling and vanished behind one of the towering columns.
“…Run off,” concluded the young lord.
“Selkeeda!” and she started after the little girl, her boots having a hard time finding traction on the slick cavern floor.
She navigated around row after row of the gigantic columns of ice, until Angelterra found herself in the massive inner chamber. In the center of this chamber was a colossal chunk of ice that was larger in circumference than a modest farmhouse, but just as tall. It had dozens of spikes flaring outward from its backside, as if a blast of icy energy had been expelled at something and then that icy energy had instantly froze in place. Selkeeda stood staring at the massive mound of ice, while clutching her rag dolls tightly in her left arm.
“Bad!” said Selkeeda, pointing at the mound of ice.
Lord Georveld walked up to the ice structure and warmed it with his breath, before rubbing the ice and peering deep within it.
“I can see…I can see people frozen in there,” said Lord Georveld. “There are a lot of them in there. They seem to be all looking over that way.”
Lord Georveld led the way as all three of them walked around to the other side of the structure. Once reaching the spot that the young lord believed to be at the same angle in which the frozen people were staring, he warmed the ice again with his breath and peered inside once more.
“Who are they?” asked Angelterra.
“There are several…knights…and there is a…king too, and there are…” said Lord Georveld.
“Are what?”
Lord Georveld withdrew his face from the ice and it seemed to turn to ashen as he stared off.
“And what?”
“And they are all cowering,” said Lord Georveld, still staring off.
“Cowering? Cowering from what do you think?”
“From that,” said the young lord, and he pointed to a second much smaller mound of ice. A mound not much bigger than the size of a tall man. On its front was a long spike of ice, jetting out from it as if it were the remains of an icy blast of energy that was launched like a projectile at the larger tomb of ice.
Slowly Angelterra, Lord Georveld and Selkeeda approached the smaller ice structure. Angelterra walked up to it, breathed her warm breath upon the ice and smoothed it into glass with her hand. Inside she saw a young lad, barely a teenager, frozen within this chunk of ice. The teen’s head was bowed and his skin had an eerie blue tint to it. Probably caused by the way the light penetrated the lad’s small icy tomb. The lad wore trousers but nothing else. And his hair…his hair was an icy blue as well. And that was something Angelterra could not explain away. In his left arm, the lad was cradling a small wooden box. It was a plain box with no markings upon it at all. Finally she realized that his right arm was thrust outward as if…as if he were using magic in his defense when he too was frozen. Perhaps he was an ancient wizard who had been trapped by his own ice spell. Then Angelterra felt something brush up against her leg. She looked away from the frozen boy and downward to find Selkeeda peering into the ice mound just as Angelterra had.
“The beast?” asked Selkeeda, sounding puzzled.
“No, Sweetie,” said Angelterra softly, as she gently pulled the little girl’s face away from the ice and held her. “No, just a boy.”
“A boy?”
“Yes, Sweetie,” answered the princess. “Just a boy who has been sleeping for a long time.”
“A boy?”
Angelterra swore that Selkeeda looked and sounded disappointed and puzzled.
The princess supposed that finding a boy frozen in ice was a bit of a hard thing for a young girl to understand.
“Yes, Sweetie.”
“No beast?” asked Selkeeda.
“No beast, Sweetie. Just a forever sleeping lad.”
❖ ❖ ❖
“It may take many turns of the hourglass to completely search this place,” said Lord Georveld, looking around.
Upon leaving the frozen lad, Angelterra, Selkeeda and Lord Georveld decided to search the entire cavern. Maybe they would find some clue to just where the Icy Beast was…if it was in this place at all. The princess was quite disturbed by the sight of the mysterious young boy and all the others who had been frozen in their wedges of solid ice. It would have to be much, much colder in here to have that happen naturally.
Could the blue-skinned lad have been the source of this powerful ice spell? Or another victim of it?
Perhaps what he clutched in his ice bound arm was something that would lead them to the Icy Beast. She did not want to think about having to hack him out of his frosty tomb on the remote possibility that the box might be useful in their quest for the beast.
No, we have to find something somewhere else, thought Angelterra. And leave him be.
The princess looked down at her bracelet on which were glowing all its alabastaranium stones. It was of no use this close to their prize. They would have to search the old fashion way, by exploring every inch of the cavern.
“I guess we should keep an eye out for some kind of exit,” said Angelterra, as she held Selkeeda’s hand tightly, vowing not to let the little girl get a chance to escape again. “That long dark corridor appeared as if it went on forever.”
“My men and the king’s knights could make short work of this search,” said Lord Georveld. He gestured all around him. “There seems to be nothing here but ice, ice, and more ice.”
“Do not give up hope, My Lord Georveld,” said Angelterra. “By-the-by, did you recognize the men frozen in that mammoth piece of ice?”
“The king was a white hair, a Swevladilionian,” said Lord Georveld. “And his crown…wait, that cannot be.”
“What cannot be? What was wrong with his crown?”
“The crown had the twin brothers Swevlin and Hwevlin as its focal point,” said the young lord. “That would make him—I cannot believe I am saying this—King Swestavin.”
“And is he an ancient king?” asked Angelterra.
“The last king of Swevladiliona before the wars,” said Lord Georveld. “In fact it was his disappearance that started the first war. The Swevladilionian’s believed that we killed their king. And yet here he is, unharmed by any Hwevlandarian—frozen by some kind of strange spell—but completely unharmed by a Hwevlandarian blade.”
“So he was killed during a hunt?”
“It appears so. It seems that he was the first to find the beast…and so did that poor young boy,” said Lord Georveld.
“Boy? No, beast,” said Selkeeda, shaking her head.
If it wasn’t so sad that the lad had died in the ice, Angelterra would have thought Selkeeda’s head shaking as cute. Her Sweetie was far more anxious to meet a beast face-to-face than the princess was.
“Room,” said Selkeeda, and she pointed to a bit of the cavern wall that looked as if it were warped. As the three of them approached, Angelterra saw that there was an opening leading behind the wall to the right. Looking straight on, the opening vanished, but coming at it from the left the entrance to a dark hallway behind the ice was visible.
“Your young ward has a keen nose for finding doorways and hallways and passages,” noted Lord Georveld.
Angelterra held out her bracelet as a lantern, while Selkeeda and Lord Georveld followed her into the shadow of the passage behind the ice wall of the cavern. After traveling a short distance, Angelterra noticed that the walls of the passage were carved out of a bright-white stone. The passage ended with a wooden door that was opened part way. As she pushed it opened, it complained with a loud creak.
“We could use more light,” said Lord Georveld, as he drew his sword and entered first.
This back room cave was huge. And though the walls of this room were white in color, the shadow was so deep that they really could use more light. At a small table to her right, Angelterra spotted a candle. She walked over to it. And shielding it from Lord Georveld and Selkeeda with her body, the princess used her magic to light the candle.
“Where did you—”
“The striker,” replied Angelterra quickly.
“It works remarkably well even in this cold,” said Lord Georveld, sounding impressed. Then the young lord’s voice changed.
Without turning around, Angelterra noticed that the room seemed to be carved into the sparkling white rock. She recognized that stone, and looking down at her bracelet she saw why.
Alabastaranium! The room was made out of pure alabastaranium!
“The rock of this room is made out of pure—”
“I see it. A treasure trove of it. But there is something else here. Please do not turn around. Either of you. Cover Selkeeda’s eyes immediately.”
Angelterra stood with her back to the young lord, staring at the candle. She pulled her little Sweetie close to her, keeping her from looking around.
“What is it?”
“There is another small ice mound,” replied Lord Georveld.
“Is there someone in—”
“Yes,” said Lord Georveld.
Could it be some other companion of the lad?
“Do they have…blue skin?”
“No,” said Lord Georveld. “Ashen white from the ice, but I believe his skin was once as normal as ours.”
She heard the lord shuffling up closer to the ice mound to rub clear a spot on it.
Her curiosity was getting the best of her.
“I must see,” said the princess.
“I advise against that,” said Lord Georveld. “It looks as if he were badly wounded before he was frozen.”
“Is it a lad?”
“No, he appears to be about my father’s age. Maybe even older,” said Lord Georveld.
Standing with her back turned was simply silly. She could handle this. Besides, she and Selkeeda didn’t have to stare into the ice mound.
“And another thing,” started Lord Georveld, as Angelterra turned around. “His hand is sticking out of the….”
The princess saw a gray, frost-covered hand jetting out of a chunk of oddly shaped ice. The mound had the same spikes as the other ice mound in the main cavern. The frozen hand clutched tightly a long staff with a sparkling white stone on the end. It was a gruesome sight and Angelterra tried to hold Selkeeda’s eyes closed, but the child wrestled herself away from Angelterra to gaze at the mound and its eerie hand.
“I found a scroll on the cave floor near our unfortunate friend here,” said Lord Georveld.
He walked over to the candle and held the parchment, so he could scan its contents.
“What does it say?” asked the princess. ##
“The lad came to me one day broken hearted. He had lost his true love to a powerful demon. He looked to me to help him. I took pity upon him and gave him the Tear of Forever to help in his search. And the lad slept. And so it was for many years. Then he awoke, and with him came the beast. The beast was colder than ice and made of immense power and rage. Out of the special rock of this place, I foraged three charms to subdue the beast and hide his nature from men. The beast was angry that it had lost its will to me. But for its safety, I willed the beast and the lad to sleep again. The beast and the lad went back to their slumber, dreaming and searching the realms of forever for their true love. I sent away the three charms to keep them safe in case there was need to subdue the beast once more. All was well, until the men of the world began to hunt for the beast and lust after his power. When they found this place they nearly killed me too, until I was forced to surrender the beast to them. They woke the beast. Enraged at being disturbed from their slumber quest, the beast and the lad entombed the men in ice. Then falsely blaming me for bringing the men and for taking away its will, the beast breathed the breath of winter upon me. And I could not fight its power, for I had not with me my charms. It did not entomb my staff in ice thus separating me from it and from my strength to resist. It is with my last bit of magic and from my grave of ice that I burn this tale to you upon this parchment.”
