The Last Scion (The Guardians of Light Book 1)
THE LAST SCION
THE GUARDIANS OF LIGHT: BOOK 1
R. MICHAEL CARD
CONTENTS
The Last Scion
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Other Books by R. Michael Card
About R. Michael Card
THE LAST SCION
R. MICHAEL CARD
She can’t ignore the mystery he carries.
Other than being taller than the other village girls, Senia had never thought of herself as special, until a mysterious man stumbles into their village with a large bundle he protects with his life. Now something is calling to her, something so familiar it sings in her soul, something she can’t ignore… something that will change her life forever.
Ahrn was named after the most powerful of the gods, but he failed to protect his friends and brothers, the monks of Embreth. All he could save was the precious artifact they were carrying to St. Antin Abbey, their northern stronghold. And when a girl comes to claim that artifact, he finds his heart torn between the mortal woman who captivates him and the god he serves.
The Last Scion
by R. Michael Card
Copyright © 2017 R. Michael Card
Published by Gryphon’s Gate Publishing
ISBN 978-0-9937651-4-8
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written consent, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are entirely the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual locals, events, or organizations is coincidental.
CHAPTER 1
Senia.
Again, her name was whispered on the wind.
She lay awake in darkness. Night deepening beyond her shuttered window. Sleep eluded her, as it had since she’d lain in her straw-stuffed bed that evening, as it had since she had first heard her name called quietly, urgently, barely more than a hushed breath next to her ear.
Come to me, Senia!
She sat up, sweat beading on her brow at the call. This call was much closer, louder, more pressing. She clutched her woolen covers to her neck, the fibers rough against her skin, and searched for any hidden figure. Only three faint lines of moonlight slipped through the slats of the shutters. Her eyes were keen, they always had been, and adjusted well to the black of night, yet she saw no one there. Only her small chest of drawers along the far wall across from her bed and the small night table next to her.
She shivered despite the comfortable warmth of the late spring night.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
Come to me, Senia… please. The call echoed, distant, like the footfalls of someone out on the street below her room, not at all as strong as it had been just a moment before. And there was something in the voice, a strained, hoarse quality as if the last call, so strong and clear, had cost it much.
Senia, terrified, trembling, but somehow curious and drawn, slipped from her bed. Every word, every sound, every breath of this voice resonated within her. She was a bell and it rang through her, beating at her. She couldn’t help but move.
She crept to the door of her room, the smooth worn wooden floor cold against her bare feet.
Her hand touched the latch before she realized she wore only a light linen shift, hanging loosely over her, cut at the knee. She looked over at her chest of drawers.
Senia.
The voice filled her, shook her. Chest forgotten, clothes forgotten, slippers left next to the bed, she slipped into the hall.
She had always been quiet, always able to move undetected. To her own ears, sharper than anyone else she knew, her footfalls were the barest of whispers on the planks of the upper hall. Having lived here since her parents had died, nearly twelve years before, she knew every board and every creak. She was no more than a mouse, scurrying through the corridor, past the rooms of her adopted parents and siblings, down the stairs to the shop and smithy below, and out onto the street.
The village lay still, the sky bursting with stars, the dirt of the road soft with evening moisture against her unshod soles.
It must have been late, for no one else walked the street. No drunks staggering home from The Silver Stag, no late night lovers. She looked to the wall around the village. Shadows moved slowly along the upper walk, pausing at length to lean on the rough timbres encircling the town. The fact that there were any guards up there at all spoke volumes of the unusual events of the previous day.
Senia, yes, come.
The voice was stronger. She was near. She knew not how she knew where to go, but she did, drawn, inspired.
She crossed the town, unseen, unheard, and found her hand on the latch of the door to The Silver Stag. Without hesitation, she opened the door and slipped inside.
The two large hearths of the tavern glowed faintly, the coals banked for the night. There was only one candle lit, standing in a holder next to the dozing form of Kamdon, the tavern keeper. Forms large and small slept on the long tables, unable to afford a room, or unable to stagger home.
The rough straw, thick over the dirt of the floor, trampled flat by so many, muffled her passing. No more than a shadow, she glided across the large room to the stairs in the back corner.
So close… I have waited so long… you cannot know how long.
She ascended the stairs, a puff of wind, and billowed down the upper hall to a room.
She stopped before the door, her breath still within her, uncertain and yet, completely at ease. There was something familiar about this voice. Was it her father’s, from beyond the grave? Maybe an uncle or sibling she had never known. She could not place it, and yet every fiber of her being knew it, responded to it.
“I’m here,” she whispered as she entered the room.
It was a simple tavern room, two beds, each with a chest at the foot, a small table under the shuttered window. There was a form on the one bed. In what little moonlight filtered through the closed window, she could make out the sprawled figure of a man. One line of light lit on his cheek, illuminating enough of his face for her to recognize him as the stranger who had staggered into the village late the previous day. He had worn an old cloak over leggings and a shirt, all the same uniform brown. He was young, perhaps only a year or two older than she, and he had carried a large and heavy bundle, something nearly as tall as he, wrapped many times over in rough cloth, which he’d clung to like a lover.
Senia, here.
It wasn’t the man who spoke, sleeping still. The voice came from the other bed, from the bundle of rough cloth.
Two strides of her long legs and she was at the bed. Sitting on the lumpy mattress, she reached for the bundle. Her heart raced, pounding within her breast, heaving with gulps of air.
A tentative touch. Her entire body rang like a bell, shuddering.
Take me, take me, I am yours Senia!
Frantic, unable to stop herself, she unwrapped the cloth with trembling hands. Swallowing a lump in her throat as the last shred of wool fell away, she saw that which called to her.
A sword.
But unlike any she had ever seen. The ones her adopted father worked on in the forge were an
arm’s length of blade, this one was nearly as tall as she. The blade was thick, just wider than the palm of her hand, and sharpened on both sides with a groove running up the center traced with intricate scrollwork. The hilt was made for two large hands with room to spare, at least the length of her forearm, leather wrapped and well worn. The cross-guard and pommel were of thick metal, both delicately carved. The guard depicting roses engulfed in flames and the pommel was fashioned as the head of a hunting cat, proud and stern.
I am Emberthorn and I am yours, Senia.
The trembling in her hand ceased. She caressed the blade, guard, grip, and pommel.
“I… know you,” she said shaking her head, for she had never seen such a weapon before. The idea of this being her weapon was ridiculous, for though she was tall for a woman, and stronger than other girls her age from years helping in and around the forge, she would still never be able to lift such a massive weapon let alone wield it. “But… how…?”
The window!
Senia’s hand wrapped itself around the smooth leather ridges of the grip as her head tilted. A shutter was opening, a body slinking inside.
Her heart raced for the second time that evening as two eyes, gleaming in the faint light of the moon turned toward her. The figure was covered in black cloth, a mask covering hair and face save for the eyes. A knife appeared in a black-clad hand and a heartbeat later was spiraling through the air.
Time slowed, and in between the pounding beats of her heart, she watched the knife as it tumbled end over end inexorably toward her.
Then a flash, so quick and fierce it pierced time itself.
In the next moment, Senia found herself standing, the knife embedded deeply in the door to the room, Emberthorn held easily in her small, fine hands. How easily it had moved, so quickly, knocking the knife from the air.
The landing of the knife woke the man in bed.
For the next set of heartbeats, the room was silent and still as the assassin, girl, and man each absorbed the impossible made real.
You see, I was meant for you, Emberthorn said, the words echoing in her head accompanied by what sounded like purring.
The man in the bed was up in a heartbeat and a swift high kick sent the still stunned assassin tumbling back out of the window. He turned to her then.
“Who are…?”
“Behind you,” she cut him off as another form filled the window.
The man spun another kick, his foot captured by the attacker in black. The assailant threw the foot up and away, but the man simply flipped himself around with it, landing on the same foot before launching himself bodily at the man in the window, both disappearing down out of sight.
Follow!
And without thinking, she did.
Light quick steps, a hop to the table below the window, then out in the night air. Emberthorn moved with her, as one. Flashing out to the side as she tucked around, spinning forward, then reversing in her grip as she righted. She thrust downward, slicing into the ground, and somehow this slowed her so she touched down lightly.
Exhilarated, blood rising, her hair wild around her as it settled, she plucked the sword from the ground, and spun it upright, stalking toward the fight already under way.
The stranger from the room above, though he had no weapon, fought like nothing she had ever seen before. He kept at bay seven men in black though they carried knives and swords and he had but his bare palms. One other dark figure lay splayed awkwardly in the dirt.
Battle! Emberthorn cried, filling her with ecstasy.
A stroke, wide and smooth, and two men were down.
The others backed away quickly, terror in their eyes.
“I am whole again. Feel my wrath.” The words were Emerthorn’s, but it had been her lips that had whispered them.
No! She screamed at the blood-lusted blade. But though she could feel, could think, could understand the death she had caused, she wasn’t in control.
The stranger tackled one of the attackers, hands deftly redirecting the assassin’s knife, before springing away lightly to land on the other side. The knife embedded in the assailant’s black-clad chest.
From eight to four, the attackers’ numbers had dropped too quickly. They fled.
Like nothing more than the darts her father threw at the board in his forge, Senia released Emberthorn in a side-long toss. The blade turned as it spun and cut down two more of the fleeing forms before spinning impossibly back to her hands.
“I am alive again!” She bellowed his words, feeling only its rush of exhilaration.
Emberthorn, please! Stop.
What?
I want my body back, I… please… release me.
Oh! Right… Sorry.
She fell to her knees on the soft earth of the street, weeping, stomach churning at the easy violence she had committed.
CHAPTER 2
A hrn contemplated the two last fleeing assailants, but they were already at the wall, mage-stim enhanced limbs propelling them up to the walk, then over into darkness.
Breathing heavy, he turned to the crumpled form of the girl kneeling in the dirt, the artifact-sword Emberthorn still clutched in one hand.
An incongruous image next to the enraptured beauty who brought swift death to The Blacklord’s men.
So this was what a Scion looked like.
All his life he had been taught that no Scions remained. The Blacklord’s men had hunted down every man, woman, and child who possessed any trace of the blood of The Guardians. Apparently, the monks at the abbey and The Blacklord’s men had all been wrong.
He tilted his head as he contemplated her in the silent starlight. Long, unbound hair, covering her face and shoulders. It was hard to tell the color in such dimness, but he guessed it was amber, soft red-brown. A moment before, as she had fought impassioned, she had seemed a spirit, or perhaps a statue of the Goddess Aehryn, First of the Gods, come to life. A fleeting thought had swept through his mind, of her as an Avatar of The Vanished God Herself. Arms fine yet strong, legs long and slender, she was tall for a girl, nearly as tall as he, who stood above half the men he knew.
No, she was no God, but she must be a Scion. Beyond her perfect form, there was the way she had wielded Emberthorn. The massive mystic sword was over-heavy for a weapon of its size, few mortal men could lift it let alone attempt to strike with it. The blade would only allow itself to be held, and with ease, by a true-blooded descendant of the Guardians.
He took a step toward her. His soft tread on the earth no more than a whisper, but in the silence of the moment, it startled her. She flinched, rising suddenly, sword held like nothing more than a twig in one outstretched hand. With its amazing length and her extended arm, it came up a hair from his chin.
He stopped, head tilting back.
He retreated a step, raising his hands. “I am no threat to you.”
Her face was still mostly hidden behind a veil, floating wisps of hair, but he could see her eyes. Azure pools, wide and deep, enveloping him with their intensity.
“Who are you?” she asked hesitantly, hoarse from weeping.
He smiled. “I’m Ahrn. May I ask your name?”
The radiant pools dimmed with a squint. She didn’t trust him. He couldn’t blame her. She didn’t know him.
“I’m a monk of Embreth the Keeper. I will not harm you. That sword was in my care, but it would seem that is no longer the case. It called to you didn’t it?”
Her head turned away slightly as she closed off those beautiful eyes even more. “How did you know?”
“A lucky guess. I have been taught since I was a boy that such artifacts are very rare and special. There are… only a few who might wield it, and to them, it would rage like thunder until they were bonded.”
“Bonded?”
“As you are now. The sword to you and you to it.”
“What does that mean?” She hadn’t let down the sword, and though he had moved back a pace it quivered in the air before him, expectant.
&
nbsp; He steadied himself. “I would be happy to explain to you, but perhaps not here? Perhaps somewhere more comfortable?”
“Here is fine.”
“Here is fine,” he repeated as sweat blossomed on his brow. He had no desire to anger a Scion. “Bonding is when a Scion, such as yourself, and an artifact of power, such as Emberthorn, join to become one, their thoughts together, their powers multiplied by the joining.”
“How did you know that name… Emberthorn? Does it speak to you too?”
“No, but the monks have studied such artifacts for hundreds of years. There are a limited number, and each has a name and certain powers.”
“Oh.” The tip of the blade sank, slowly. “What did you call me?”
“When?”
“Just now, you said I was a SIGH-ON?”
Was it possible she didn’t know what she was? “A Scion yes. A true descendant of one of the Guardians from the Lost Age.”
Her mouth and eyes tightened. “A what from when?”
It would definitely appear as though she had no inkling of her heritage. He sighed. “This is going to take a while to explain.”
“I’m not tired.”
“No, the sword will be sustaining you. You won’t tire like the rest of us, not anymore.”
The razor point of Emberthorn rose again. “You keep talking like that! What are you saying?”
“Very simply, I’m saying that from this moment onward, your life will be… already is… changed. You are a Guardian now, and men will fear or revere you.”