The Warrior (The Hidden Realm) Read online

  The Warrior

  Book Three

  of

  The Hidden Realm

  by

  A. Giannetti

  The Warrior

  Copyright © 2012 A. Giannetti

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the author.

  PROLOGUE

  The Warrior chronicles the adventures of Elerian and Ascilius as they cross the Broken Lands after escaping from Nefandus. Their journey to Ascilius’s home city of Ennodius takes an unexpected detour that embroils them in a war between the Goblins and the riders of Tarsius.

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Map

  Chapters

  The Broken Lands

  An Unexpected Visitor

  The Gavius

  The Bear

  The Orb

  A Surprise Attack

  In The Nick of Time

  The Cave

  The Hidden Place

  The Hunting Party

  The Pass

  Calenus

  The Stables

  The Bridge

  The Dark King

  The Lake

  The Undine

  The Secret Door

  Escape from Calenus

  An Unexpected Obstacle

  The Horse Herd

  The Encampment

  Preparations for Battle

  A Night Ride

  The Ambush

  The Knoll

  A Last Stand

  The Aftermath

  The Race

  The War Camp

  The Feast

  The Contests

  The Lion

  Ascilius’s Revenge

  A Surprising Invitation

  The Canyon

  The Ruin

  The Shape Changers

  An Unexpected Visit

  The Judgment

  The Red Fire

  Parting Gifts

  THE BROKEN LANDS

  In single file, with the Dwarf leading, Ascilius and Elerian walked warily through the ancient forest that covered the Broken Lands, traveling east toward the old Dwarf road that they had seen the day before from the mountains, which rose up behind them like a green rampart.

  The trees surrounding them were immense, the kinds of trees it takes hundreds and hundreds of years to grow. Their massive trunks, many a dozen feet or more in diameter, rose up like gray columns from the forest floor, and their thick roots snaked across the ground in all directions. Far above the ground their long branches, broad as young trees, formed a thick canopy through which a dim, greenish light filtered down to the forest floor.

  Elerian walked behind Ascilius with a lithe, silent step, leaving almost no sign of his passage through the lush green ferns and over the drifts of brown leaves that covered the forest floor. His thick, shoulder length black hair was tied back neatly with a leather thong for ease of movement in the forest. His lean, beardless face had a worn, aged look to it, testimony to the hardship and torments that he had suffered in the mines of the Goblins. The shadow of Nefandus which was graven into his face had already faded from his gray eyes. They were bright now with mischief and good humor.

  Ascilius walked ahead of Elerian with a firm tread, planting his feet solidly on the ground and leaving an easily visible trail behind him of crushed leaves and broken ferns. His thick brown hair was double braided, and he sported an abundant, full beard, also double braided, that reached to his waist. His rough-hewn features and deep-set brown eyes radiated seriousness and purpose. He looked behind him almost as often as he looked ahead. Having suffered through more than one prank at the hands of his mischievous companion, he was determined not to be caught off guard.

  Ascilius and Elerian were still barefoot; their only article of clothing, worn leather pants that barely reached their knees. Half healed cuts and burns crisscrossed their pale skin, but already, they bore little resemblance to the two filthy, half-starved slaves who had escaped from the Goblins’ mines a little over a week ago. The last traces of gray rock dust, from the mines where they had been imprisoned, were gone from their bodies, washed away in the clear streams they had passed. Each of them now carried a rolled up cloak made from the skins of the canigrae that they had slain back in the mountains two days ago, and they were no longer unarmed. Over his left shoulder, Elerian carried a bow and a quiver filled with a half dozen stone tipped arrows. Thrust through his leather belt was a long stone knife, clear as glass and shot through with twisting green and red threads. Ascilius carried an ax, similar in appearance to Elerian’s knife, in his right hand.

  Elerian had shaped all of their weapons from stone and wood with the aid of a transformation spell and his own clever fingers. Ascilius had then hardened the knife and ax with a spell that made them almost indestructible.

  Even though it was his second day in the Broken Lands, Elerian still found the forest that covered all the land around them a delight to his mind and eyes after the weary years he had spent underground in the bleak mines of the Goblins. As the miles passed beneath his feet, however, he became uneasy. Although the sound of liquid birdcalls filled the canopy, Elerian noticed that there was an odd lack of game in the woods around them. Even the gray squirrels that normally filled the forest canopy, barking and chattering at intruders, were missing.

  “Why are there no animals in this wood?” Elerian finally asked Ascilius. “Even in Nefandus, there was game in the forests.”

  “I had not noticed,” said Ascilius without turning around. “Some lack of food perhaps,” he suggested without much interest, for his mind was focused almost entirely on returning to his home city of Ennodius as quickly as possible.

  “Or perhaps something chased everything away,” thought Elerian to himself. “Perhaps some creature of the Goblins has crept out of Nefandus and made its home here, slaying everything that crosses its path.” Elerian said nothing more to Ascilius about his suspicions but resolved to keep his eyes and ears open.

  As they penetrated deeper into the ancient wood around them, their progress became less steady, for Ascilius often stopped to inspect the lie of the land. He was uneasy journeying through this enormous wood, for like most Dwarves, he had little liking for forests other than as places to hunt or gather wood. Were it not for the possibility of running into a pack of Goblins, he would have much preferred to travel on the Dwarf road that ran north of them rather than trek through the forest.

  Occasionally, their line of travel brought them to the edge of one of those peculiar openings that appeared without warning throughout the Broken Lands. Most were small glades covered with meadows of tall grass growing between expanses of exposed gray bedrock, but some were quite extensive. The sky Elerian and Ascilius glimpsed above these openings was a cloudless blue, and the bright sunshine that filled the air was always a shock to their eyes, which had become accustomed to the dim light under the trees. Ascilius always reluctantly circled around these glades, staying under the cover of the trees he disliked so much rather than expose himself and Elerian to the possibility of being seen by unfriendly eyes.

  “No sense revealing ourselves unnecessarily,” he thought moodily to himself. “Who knows what spies the Goblins have in this forest?”

  Trolls, as well as Goblin spies, were also on Ascilius’s mind. In the old days, even when the Broken Lands were under the protection of the Elf king, they had occasionally come down out of the mountains to the north to set traps in the forest, hoping to catch some tasty morsel for their dinner. More than one unwary Dwarf or human had ended up on a Troll spit, spinning over a roaring
fire. Even the Elves had occasionally fallen victim to their cunning.

  The sun was at its zenith when Ascilius suddenly came to an abrupt stop, as did Elerian behind him. Almost at the Dwarf’s feet, Elerian saw that the ground abruptly fell away. When he looked over the edge of the break, Elerian saw a sharp drop of almost a dozen feet. At the bottom of the break, the land continued away level again.

  “I have never seen a drop off like this before,” said Elerian to Ascilius, as they climbed down the steep slope. “The ground seems to have sunk here instead of eroding away as it would in a gully.”

  “There are many depressions like this one in this land, some small and others quite large,” said Ascilius when they reached the bottom of the slope. “Because of them, the land was given the name Terra Fractus by the human inhabitants. It became the Broken Lands in the common tongue. Legend has it that a race of giants lived here once, leaving their footprints behind in the earth.”

  “Giants,” said Elerian dryly. “Surely, Ascilius, you don’t believe in such things.”

  “Who can say what might have come from Outside before leaving the same way,” replied Ascilius with a shrug of his shoulders.

  Elerian thought about what Ascilius had said as they continued on their way. He had heard the term, Outside, before, both from his old mentor Tullius and from Anferth, the Troll he had encountered in Ancharia. It was a widely held belief among the mages of the Middle Realm that there were other realms touching on their own world, accessible at times through magical doors. Anferth had claimed that the race of Trolls had come from Outside.

  “I have never heard of anyone claiming to have seen giants, however,” thought Elerian to himself. Just then, a second, almost vertical slope reared up before them.

  “What do you say now?” challenged Ascilius as they climbed the rise, using roots and projecting rocks as handholds.

  “It does seem almost like a great footprint,” admitted Elerian doubtfully, for there was a troubling gleam in the Dwarf’s dark eyes. He thought that there was a very good chance that Ascilius was poking fun at him in revenge for some of the pranks he had suffered through at Elerian’s hands while they travelled through Nefandus.

  “However the land was broken, be wary of running on the ground,” said Ascilius when they reached the top of the rise. “These breaks appear without warning, and you would not be the first to fall and suffer a broken neck or limb by falling down one of them.”

  Having scaled the break, they continued on in silence until Elerian suddenly put his left hand lightly on Ascilius’s right shoulder. Ascilius stopped immediately, a questioning look on his face.

  “Let us go softly, Ascilius,” said Elerian to his companion “I sense that the road is nearby.”

  Side by side, they continued quietly on until they saw an opening through the trees before them. Concealing themselves behind an immense oak tree, the two companions peered around opposite sides of the trunk. The road before them, which was at least twenty feet wide, ran north to south and resembled a green tunnel, for the branches of the trees on either side of it reached over it and intertwined to form a green roof. No sunlight reached the ground, but the dim light did not hamper Elerian, whose keen gray eyes saw as well by night as they did by day. He noticed at once that the ancient road was in poor condition. No trees grew upon it, but a thin, knee high growth of thin grass covered it from culvert to culvert. Here and there, an old gray paving stone was still visible through the grass, some of them upended by frost and forming dangerous footing. In the center of the road, the grass was worn down, forming a narrow, winding path that looked suitable only for foot travel or someone mounted on horseback.

  “That path is not a good sign,” thought Elerian to himself. “Who else but Goblins or perhaps Trolls would be using this remote road so close to Nefandus.”

  “I do not like the look of that path,” whispered Elerian to Ascilius. “Do we really need to cross this road?”

  Elerian knew that if Ascilius set foot on the road, he was sure to leave signs of his passage that would be plainly visible to any Mordi who passed this way. The thought of having Wood Goblins pick up their trail was not a pleasant one, for Elerian still remembered how relentlessly he had been hunted by them in Ancharia many years ago.

  “There is no other route we can take,” replied Ascilius.

  He looked up and down the road with eyes that saw nearly as well in the dim light as Elerian’s eyes. It was empty as far as he could see in either direction.

  “There is no sign of any recent traffic,” Ascilius pointed out to Elerian. “See, the grass has begun to spring up again on the path. No one has passed this way recently.”

  Elerian looked closely at the road again, and saw that Ascilius was right. Nothing had trodden this track in a long time. The thought of leaving footprints on the road still troubled him, but he knew without asking that Ascilius would refuse if he suggested they climb into the trees and cross over the road on the thick branches overhead.

  “Let us cross while the way is clear,” urged Ascilius.

  “Very well, lead and I will follow,” said Elerian reluctantly.

  “Go!” said Ascilius at once.

  The two companions darted across the road together, their bare feet making no noise on the thin turf. Crouching behind a wide chestnut tree on the far side, they peered around the trunk, looking up and down the road and listening intently.

  “No one saw us,” said Ascilius, rising at last, as did Elerian beside him.

  “I am more worried about being followed than being seen,” said Elerian, who was still uneasy about the path in the road. Side by side, he and Ascilius began to walk, traveling east.

  “If the Mordi find our tracks on the road we crossed, they will find us without much trouble,” said Elerian after a moment. “If we come to any stream flowing east, we should walk through it to break our trail. Unless, of course, you care to travel through the upper pathways of the forest with me,” he said hopefully to Ascilius.

  “Dwarves were not made to run among the treetops like squirrels,” replied the Dwarf at once. “I will keep my feet firmly planted on the ground, thank you, even if I must walk through water to do it.”

  As they continued on, leaving the forest road behind, Elerian asked curiously, “Why did the Dwarves build the road we just crossed, Ascilius? The Broken Lands seem an odd choice for a place to build a road.”

  “The world was a different place before the fall of Fimbria,” replied Ascilius. “There were Dwarf mines then in the Murus, the mountains that border the western boundary of Nefandus. They were the chief reason that the road to the south of us was built, for there was much traffic then between those mines and Calenus. Dwarves also used the road when they wanted to visit our kin in the Graybeards in the far West on the other side of the Murus. I traveled that way twice in my youth. It was a pleasant journey then, for there were many fair towns and inns along the way. The lands near the road were not nearly so wild back then as they are today.”

  “It seems you have seen much of the world,” said Elerian, impressed by the vast distances Ascilius had covered during his long life. “Are all your people given to such lengthy journeys?”

  “Most Dwarves never leave the cities where they were born,” said Ascilius. “I have always been considered a bit of an oddity because of my desire to travel. I am sure there were many who thought I got my just deserts when I was captured by the Goblins. I was certainly warned often enough that I would come to a bad end,” he said moodily.

  Ascilius lapsed into a gloomy silence, no doubt reliving past, unpleasant memories. Left to his own devices, Elerian became restless, and eventually, the lure of the thick branches overhead proved irresistible. Falling a little behind Ascilius, he suddenly made a lithe spring, which carried him high up onto the trunk of a massive oak. By thrusting his strong fingers and toes into the deep crevices which fissured the forest giant’s thick bark, Elerian easily climbed to the first enormous branch, thirty fe
et above the forest floor. Leaping lightly onto the branch, he fearlessly looked down on Ascilius.

  The Dwarf had stopped as soon as he realized that Elerian was gone. Familiar with Elerian’s propensity for climbing trees, he looked up, shaking his head in disapproval when he saw his companion standing at his ease on a branch high above his head.

  “He is mad, like all of his race to choose such a precarious, uncertain path,” thought Ascilius to himself, remembering the other Elves he had met in his long life and their fondness for climbing trees. “I will choose solid stone over wood every time,” he thought to himself, his feet drawing reassurance from the slab of hard gray bedrock that broke through the ground under his feet.

  “Come down, Elerian,” he called quietly. “We should not become separated. How will we find each other in this vast wood?”

  “A good question,” thought Elerian to himself.

  Although he longed to run sure footedly through the upper pathways of the forest, Elerian hesitated, searching his memory for a solution to their dilemma.

  “A finding spell will do,” he thought to himself, remembering the magical staff his grandfather had used so many years ago.

  Looking around, Elerian saw a rowan tree growing nearby, just the type of wood he needed. Running lightly across the broad branches that made up the floor of the canopy, he soon reached the rowan. He cast a parting spell and watched with his magical eye as a small orb of golden light flew from the fingers of his right hand, striking the base of a short branch half the thickness of his wrist. There was a brief golden flare and the branch fell away, cut cleanly through, as if with a sharp knife. The branch fell to the ground and Elerian climbed swiftly down after it. Picking it up, he cast a transformation spell over it, watching with his third eye as a golden film of light spread over the wood from his fingers, loosening the bonds which held it in its present form. Deftly, Elerian stripped away the bark from the branch before smoothing the now pliable wood with his long fingers. When he ended the spell and the golden film of light covering the branch vanished, he was left with length of polished wood about three feet long.