Haven 5 Blood Magic BOOK by Larson B. V

Author:Larson, B. V. [Larson, B. V.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-09-16T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

The Dead Speak

Oberon had but one call yet to make. This last one, the most crucial, would tip the balance of power clearly in his favor, should he be successful. He had little to offer the Dead, however, except a great bounty of new minions.

Even Oberon, ancient and knowing as he was, did not seek the Dead without trepidation. Of all the folk of Cyrmu, they were easily the most mysterious. Their motivations were strange—twisted. They did not seek to build. They did not seek to destroy. Some thought they sought rest, but why then did they occasionally march upon the land and the floor of the sea, slaying all that stood before them?

Any sane being feared the Dead and their awesome power. If they all arose at once, how could the living hope to prevail against them? What generation of any folk were not outnumbered by all their passed on ancestors, should they decide to rise up from their cold slumber and slay their own descendants?

The Dead felt nothing, most of them. Not sorrow, remorse, joy or pity. Certainly pain and mercy were beyond them. Those times they had marched in the past—and Oberon was old enough to remember several such events—they had devastated all that stood in their path. They had consumed the living, adding them to their own ranks as fresh troops with every bloody yard of ground gained. They had only been stopped by some failure within their own multitudes, some signal to sleep once more.

It was quite mysterious, and Oberon quailed somewhat, for only he knew the real nature of what he attempted to release. But such was his desire to return things to their rightful balance, with the Shining Folk clearly dominant, that he was willing to risk the entire world. Some would think him mad, but then, other folk commonly considered all the Fae to be half-mad at best. Oberon smiled grimly at the thought. Perhaps there was a grain of fact in their judgment of his people.

One of the many benefits of immortality was that you eventually learned, after some millennia, where things lay. In this case, he knew where the Dead had gone to ground, where they had sought refuge from the random buzzing of the living. A spot where they could rest, relatively undisturbed for one lazy century after another.

The Dead Kingdoms were empty of the living, but most of their citizens had never left. They had simply been interred. One spot, in particular, had a catacomb of note. A fantastic affair, full of a thousand layers of dusty skulls, cobwebbed archways and segmented, scuttling things.

Castle Anwyn had been the greatest of all nine of the destroyed castles of the Dead Kingdoms. Only a dozen miles from Castle Rabing, it was said to have suffered more than any of the other great structures of stone.

It was at Anwyn, amongst the blasted, tumbled masonry and cratered earth, that Oberon found a particularly soupy spot in the land. He stood atop a great granite head that sat in a pocket of mud.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.