Brightwill by Randolph Lalonde

Author:Randolph Lalonde [Lalonde, Randolph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780993739835
Google: Sgq-rQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 23523750
Publisher: Randolph LaLonde
Published: 2014-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter XIV

By the time Naze took the podium again, the auditorium audience had finished their lunch and settled in. The sun was high in the sky, and Naze was grateful for the north wind gusting through the tall arched windows surrounding the audience.

His power was growing, he could feel each person in the room simply by opening his mind, and soon he would be able to touch the elements themselves. The Enduring Light was an artefact like few others, a bottomless well of power, and it took discipline to maintain mastery over it.

The younger members of his audience had been warned about the graphic nature of the next portion of the story by their betters, Naze could sense it, but he could also feel that they were ready. The horrors that the children had seen before arriving in the Amber Refuge far surpassed what most instructors and mentors expected. There were few things that Naze could show them that would shock or horrify, which was a relief, since that wasn’t his goal at all. He intended to move them, to draw them in emotionally. How the instructors knew that there was something horrific coming up was no mystery to Naze. Most of them knew the general outcome of the story he was telling, but few knew the details.

He gestured for the podium to be removed, and several students in their teens rushed it backstage. Fitful gusts of wind caught his robes as he raised his hands and brought the image of Riv standing alone in the great arena to life in front of everyone. “My brother is about to learn that victory doesn’t always lead to peace, freedom, or wealth.”

* * *

He stood atop the steel-clad back of the large human knight’s corpse, painted green except for his gleaming white smile. The masses gathered in the arena were in a cheering frenzy at my brother’s sudden turn of fate.

Even from where I was sitting I could tell that the idea that he won was just starting to dawn on him, and he paid attention to the two thirds of the audience that was cheering, bowing and pumping his fists in the air.

I was more concerned with the audience members who weren’t cheering, those knights and well dressed patrons sitting across the arena from us. “Now they’ll execute him,” I said.

“I don’t know, not for sure,” Carmack said, “but we’re about to find out.”

The crier stepped into his box and raised his hands, signalling the celebrating audience to be silent. They complied after a moment, and even Riv looked up at him from the sand of the arena. “As is his right as the patron of these games, your Prince would address you on behalf of his father, the King. I am honoured to present his Royal Highness, Prince Tabbin.” I knew him as the son of the man who drowned my parents and all of my other relatives. Many of us hoped that King Hosten’s son would take the throne back then, and relax the laws suppressing the Ondi, myself included.

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