Chapter 27 - Tymoros Returns
High King Tymoros came back to consciousness, slowly and painfully. He felt decades older than his fifty-five years. As memories returned, he tried to sit up, but he was so weak. Then he heard scuffling close by and he spoke softly. “Who is there?”
The noise approached. “Just me.” It was a child’s voice, whispering. “Stay quiet, mister, or them creatures will come back.”
“I have to get to a communicator,” Tymoros tried to insist. His voice sounded like it came from someone nearly one hundred years old.
“You ain’t in a state to find one,” Pyr told him with a child’s bluntness. “When them robed ones came and found you, they took off the net thing, and every thing else.” He didn’t state the obvious, “Even your clothes.”
“Yes, indeed,” Tymoros managed to sound calm. He added, for the boy’s benefit, “A standard means to instil fear in a prisoner. Do you know where we are?”
“Some building,” Pyr said. “They took you from where Jordan had you.”
“Why are you here? It is dangerous,” Tymoros chided gently.
Pyr didn’t answer the first part of the question. “They are not interested in children. Besides, they never saw me. When I stay still, no one does. Reckon they think children are stupid or mindless.”
Tymoros sensed the resentment, but didn’t try to probe it. He was thankful for the child’s presence. It offered him hope, and he did not share the sentiment about the lack of worth of children.
“Do you know where my clothes are?” Tymoros asked.
“They left them where they cut them off. Them’s in shreds anyway. They dragged you here like you were. But I’ll look and see if I can find something. Someone must live here.”
They both heard clicking noises. Pry whispered, “That’s them talking.”
Tymoros heard him scuttling away, making as little noise as a rat. He was glad. He didn’t want the boy to see what these creatures did to him. With his memory returning, so did the pain. Before leaving the council building, they had tried to make him tell where all the treasures were. Tried to make him withdraw all the Tymorean troops and make them surrender. He knew, that they knew, that he would not. They merely wanted a reason to play with him. Their games were painful. They wanted him to scream, but they liked watching him grit his teeth and stay silent. When he had given in, and screamed, they had left him alone for a time.
Then they had brought him elsewhere, and made him watch as they tortured the jeweller, Dantry. This must still be his private dwelling. They had tortured Aldiv, who had tried to protect him. They burnt him alive.
The guilt came close to overwhelming him. Aldiv had been, more than a servant to him for over two decades. They had been friends. The memory made him roll over and try to stand. Only then did he realise that his hands and feet were tied to each other.
The only warning he had was the swishing of the fabric robes over the metal armour. For a fraction of a second, he felt something cold and metallic touch his back, and then the terrible pain lanced through him again. This time, for the child’s sake, he bit back a scream. He knew this was only the beginning. While his mind was full of pain, he heard the insidious voices trying to command him, to make him obey them. His mind shields had slipped. He tightened them again.
The level of pain decreased when the weapon was withdrawn. He heard the clicking voices and wondered what they would try next. They had tried the flame weapon and discovered that it did not hurt him. From the way they had all gathered and chattered, they did not understand why. They demanded to know, but he had not told them that he still had a force shield on. Unlike their own, his was skin-tight and unseen. The disadvantage was that the rod weapon when placed on his skin caused a local overload. A knife stab would have a similar effect – if they thought of it.
Pyr scuttled behind the robed figures. He knew what they were going to do and it made him want to be sick. He couldn’t hate the man. He was not going to let the creatures take his mind over, and he didn’t want his people to suffer because of him. Those two now dead, had chosen to try to protect him - not out of fear, but because they really respected him. Pyr had sensed that. He had never sensed such sentiment from any of his guardian’s men. Except for Jordan and Vila, they would have, but that was more out of a sense of duty.
“But he wouldn’t help us either,” Pyr’s mind insisted, thinking of his guardian. He knew it because he had been listening to what Kellex had told Jordan and Vila.
Those horrid creatures were punishing the Tymorean worse than what Geller had done to him. But these creatures were doing it for their own greedy reasons, not so that the man would help the Aeronite people.
Being out of the room wasn’t enough. Pyr felt when the punishment began again as an echo in his own body. The only advantage was that all the robed ones hovered nearby, enjoying their captive’s agony. Even if they saw him now, they wouldn’t care. They quickly tired of tormenting children.
Now was a good time to sneak into where the owner kept his clothes and see what he could find for the man. Pyr had been in here before, hiding, and knew there was a wooden chest at the end of the bed. He guessed it contained clothes. When he lifted the padded lid, a foul smell greeted his nose. He quickly shut the box.
The noise attracted attention. Pyr saw the movement in the doorway and froze in place, praying to Jyx that he would not be seen. He clenched his teeth to stop them rattling in his terror, as the robes of one of the creatures brushed his legs. He had drawn his knees up to his chest. The creature stopped, right there, in front of the box. With one metal covered hand, it held the lid up. With the other, it reached into its robes, unsnapped something, and began to eject waste liquid into the box.
Pyr held his breath until the robed figure had gone. When his heartbeat slowed and the blood stopped pounding in his ears, he realised that the pain echo had stopped. Then he heard animated clicking from the outer room. Something was exciting them. He didn’t know what, but he hoped they would all stay at the front of the building.
He recalled his reason for being in the room, and knowing that the creatures had fouled all the owner's clothes, he grabbed some sweat smelling garments from half under the bed. A shirt of some kind, and breeches. The fabric was soft, at least.
He was intending to go back to the man, but the animated clicking coming from the front of the building was loud. He wondered what the matter was, and put the clothes in a corner and slipped along the passage.
He watched from under a table, and saw the creatures going out into the street, disappearing in the doorway.
“Stealth suits,” Pyr confirmed for himself. “Cowards,” he whispered. They were if they used such things on defenceless enemies. He crawled behind chairs and other furniture, drew himself up next to the window, and stood perfectly still. With care, he drew the curtain aside just enough to see into the street.
He drew in a breath with shock. For a moment, he thought the red headed woman was Vila, and he almost called out a warning. Two things stopped him. The woman wasn’t Vila, because she was wearing dirty brown coveralls and if he called out, the creatures would cease to ignore him. They would be angry if he warned their prey off. They might kill him before he had a chance to…to help his father and before he had a chance to try to atone for things done by his Guardian.
He knew the woman, though. She had said she was his sister too, though Jordan had told him that the woman was vicious, and mean. Right now, her expression seemed to confirm that.
He couldn’t help her, but she had managed fine before. He needed to help his father. That mattered more to him now.
As he edged back away from the window, staying on his feet this time, he saw a collection of objects carelessly tossed on a table. He glanced at the door, the last two robed figures were watching the street, they didn’t see his hand reach out and take one of the objects. It looked like one of the transporting devices Jordan had shown him.
He needed to freeze again when the figures turned to grab weapons from near the door. When they hurried outside, Pyr raced to the back room. His mind told him that the creatures really wanted the redhead and he prayed that she would be as clever at evading them as she had been in escaping from Kellex. Oh, his guardian had been purple faced with rage.
He was glad now that he had not mentioned his brief abduction to his guardian. Jordan had been angry enough, and had spanked him, almost as hard as Geller had. He believed their guardian was always right, and had warned that Kellex would treat him worse if he argued that he wasn’t.
Pyr grabbed the bundle of clothes as he ran, but found the man…his father…barely conscious.
“Quickly…is this yours?” He pushed the metal thing in the man’s bleeding hands.
The man roused, identifying the transmitter by feel.
“Hold on to me,” the man hissed.
Pyr obeyed. In the next instant, he saw a bright light, and before he could exclaim, he saw they were out in the street at the back of the building. He guessed what had happened, but didn’t stop to think about it. The man was naked, vulnerable, tied up. Someone would come if he didn’t do something. He took out his small knife and tried to cut the stuff tying his feet, then felt the man hold his arm. He stared in amazement as the man strained against the wrist ties and snapped them. With his hands free, the man did the same with the ankle ties.
“Help me up,” the man asked, and Pyr obeyed, but either the man was heavy, or he Pyr, was weak with fear.
Then he heard a sharp whistle, and saw a man beckoning from a nearby doorway. As he helped his father that way, the man emerged, darted looks up and down the street, and came to help.
As soon as they were all inside, someone shut and locked the door. When his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Pyr saw two figures. A woman came and eased herself into position to take the weight from him.
“You be a good lad,” she told him. “Let us help him now, though you would do best to stay here for a bit.”
He was happy to agree, and sidled to where he could peep through boards that were a crude barricade across the window. He still saw no one in the street, but the building across the way was now aflame.
“No!” he whispered to himself. He tried to believe that the red headed woman wasn’t in there.
Thinking that, he suddenly saw her appear in the street, and flames suddenly engulfed her. He shoved his fist in his mouth, wanting to look away, but unable to. In the next instant, there was a brilliant flash of light. When his eyes stopped watering, he saw the woman lying in the street and the flames were out. She was no longer clad in the dirty coveralls, but she wasn’t a blackened corpse either.
He tried to will her to wake up, to run. There was no response. With a glance at the old couple who were clucking like hens over their guest, washing his wounds and wrapping a blanket around him, Pyr sidled to the door, studied the simple locking mechanism and opened it. He went out, giving the old couple no chance to protest, and closed it behind him very quietly.
Before he went from the door, he saw robed figures appearing out of the air. He didn’t dare move, since he couldn’t tell how many more robed figures were still in stealth mode.
One figure nudged the woman with his foot, and then leant down to hold her neck. After a brief clicked phrase, he took the woman over his shoulder. That must mean she was alive, Pyr realised.
He watched as three of the robed figures went along the street to his right. The others turned the other way and vanished again.
For over a mile, Pyr followed the robed one who was carrying the woman. Then his skill at stealthing deserted him. A robed figure grabbed him by his hair and he was dangled so his feet were two hand spans off the ground. It clicked a speech, and the other ones turned. The hand holding him shook him, and then the creature’s other hand pointed to the woman’s red hair.
With a sudden pounding of his heart, and the throbbing of blood in his ears, Pyr realised that they believed he was related to the woman. He tried to struggle free, but his captor backhanded him with his metal covered hand. He felt his nose break and searing pain in his cheek, before his mind blacked out.
Tymoros accepted the fussing of the old couple as they tended the most recent wounds. He had managed to tend the earlier ones, but now his power was at low ebb. They hadn’t asked his name, but simply assumed he was Royal because of his hair, which was still red despite the encroaching grey hairs. They talked of seeing the king some years ago when had had last come through Amik on his tour. Then they chattered about the shields that had protected the city, not complaining that they had failed but firm in their belief that the Governor’s would soon fix the problem.
“I need to report,” Tymoros said with a hoarse voice. It was barely a whisper. His throat was raw and painful because one of his tormentors had shoved a device in his mouth before activating the burning beam.
The old couple exchanged fearful glances, but the woman nodded and the man slipped away. After a long time, by when the woman had finished washing his wounds, bandaging the worst of them, and had helped him into the torn breeches and tunic the child had dropped, her husband returned with two Tymorean fleet officers.
Tymoros struggled to sit up, and stand.
“Your Majesty!” one exclaimed, recognising him and taking in his condition. “We did not expect…”
The old woman put her fist in her mouth, and looked close to fainting. Her husband moved to support her.
“It’s the king,” she whispered with agitation. “I should have found something better to wear than that torn tunic the child had with him.”
“Where is the boy?” Tymoros asked, looking around. He was now on his feet, supported by the officers.
“He ran off. Saw something out the window and slipped out before I could stop him,” the old man said.
Tymoros did not berate him. “If any of your friends find him, look after him. He helped me when I needed it.”
“We will, Sire. I will spread the word,” the old man promised.
“And I will advise Commander Pellis,” the fleet officer promised. “Governor Reslic sent down four companies to re-take the city. He told us that Princess Kryslie made the request.”
Tymoros nodded, recalling a moment in his delirium that he had felt her mind trying to reach his.
“Is my daughter still in Amik?”
It was the old man’s turn to look ashen grey.
“Oh…” he said, his hands going from his wife, to wring together. “ I…” he gulped convulsively, “I didn’t connect…”
“You may speak without fear, sir,” one of the fleet officers invited.
“It’s just that…Silas said…them robed ones picked up a red head from the street, just outside. I never thought…”
“My daughter, if it was her, is adept at surviving. She is an excellent fighter – with and without weapons.” Tymoros’s voice was still hoarse, but he was calm. “If they took her, she is still alive. Perhaps the boy went after her to help her as he helped me.”
The old couple clasped each other’s hands, and huddled together.
“You have my sincere thanks for helping me,” Tymoros told them. “I wish I could reward you, but I must return to the palaces and my duties if this warfare is to end.”
Then Tymoros vanished as abruptly as he had appeared in the street. The old couple could only hold each other and pray to the Guardians to help their king to end the war and the rising toll of dead.
Tymos found it as hard to wait for news as it was for his friends. What news he heard through his communicator, he passed on to the others. They knew that Zacary was dead, and it seemed he had killed himself. Elsewhere on the Estate, the buildings were almost deserted. Only a skeleton staff remained. Stenn should have gone already, but he refused to leave his self-imposed duty of helping to protect Llaimos. Tanya had refused to leave for Dira, choosing to stay in Kryslie’s suite to wait with them. Her reason was simple. When her consort returned, he would come there.
And near dusk, he did.
Tanya gave a cry of relief and sympathy. She leapt from the chair and ran to him. Holding him tightly and being held tightly in return. The younger men all turned their faces away, as the king and his consort were reunited. Only Llaimos watched, and expressed his understanding by increasing his grip on Tymos’s hand. The king needed those moments to receive the special calming empathy of his consort.
When he felt the gentle hand on his shoulder, Tymos turned and looked into the bruised and blackened face, and took in the torn and odorous clothes his father wore.
“Father,” he said with sympathy, and he reached out his free hand to send some of his healing energy into him.
“I am well enough,” Tymoros whispered hoarsely. “We must bring Llaimos to the Temple. He needs to be there.”
Llaimos freed his hand from Tymos’s grip and threw himself at his father. Tymoros lifted the tall child into a firm embrace. Though he did not say so, he felt the power surging in the child’s body. It was like a tidal wave, trying to reach the high ground. He sensed Llaimos’s potential, and the mind’s strength, even though it was still ignorant. Whatever it was controlling that surging power, was weakening. He and Tymos were doing all they could to bolster it. When that wall was breached, Llaimos needed to be in the place sacred to the Guardians so that there was no chance of that mental void being contaminated.
“The Ciriot will attack here in force within the hour,” Tymoros spoke, and everyone was quiet. “Jono is tracking a thousand fighter ships coming from the second continent. He has the fleet fighters keeping the Aeronites away from Dira. The defences are permeable to transmission. The Elders and the missionaries, are also be coming to Dira…they will come to the Temple when called.”
“Uncle Ty,” Stenn asked then. “What of Kryslie?” He knew she was going to be needed to open the gates of Dirakee, the legendary fortress of the Tymorean people.
“She will join us in the Temple,” Tymoros stated, holding onto his belief that the Guardians would protect her.
Tymos placed an arm around his father, on the other side to Tanya. He shared his power with his father, and spoke to his mind. “Kryslie is alive! I don’t know what happened, but she is alive. She went to help you – what happened?”
Tymoros placed his hand over Tymos’s and shared an intimate moment of mental fusion. Llaimos seemed part of it too. “I think she is a prisoner of the Ciriot,” he summarised.
Tymos did not betray that news to his friends. He simply straightened, pulled himself free from his father and spoke to his friends. “Stenn, Jon, Kel – come to Dira.”
He took Llaimos from his father, and would have carried him but his brother wriggled free.
“The Aeronites have turned to flee,” Tymos explained. “We must go now.”
He glanced at Tanya, but her stance next to Tymoros said clearly that she would stay with him.
Down in the beam-in room the evacuation was in its final stages. The people queued up to leave moved aside to give Tymos and his group priority.
As soon as they arrived in the room in the city of Dira, they transmitted again via the reset beam to the Temple. In that place, a strong sense of peace settled around them and the tension they had been under for the past hours began to ease.
Tymos took a deep breath, and drew in the aura. He still had Llaimos by the hand as he looked around. He was on the Temple’s lower level, in the open space between the double row of columns, at the front entrance. Stenn, Jonko and Keleb automatically looked around, hands on weapons.
“We will be safe here,” Tymos assured them. “The Guardians protect this place.”
Stenn was the first to relax his stance. Reverence towards, and belief in, the Guardians had been bred into him. He was now looking around with eyes wide and a facial expression close to awe.
It was rapidly growing dark, but as the Temple was set on a hill, light from the setting sun still lit the façade.
Keleb looked down, becoming aware of a faint glow at their feet. He saw they stood on an intricately tiled mural depicting three figures walking up a hill. When Stenn became aware of his interest, he glanced at the picture and explained.
“The Guardians of Peace walked here, millennia ago.” Then, as if that thought roused another, he added, “We can’t stay standing here. Tymos and Llaimos will want to be in the Altar Room.”
He turned to them and said, “How do we get there?”
Tymos gestured at the stairs that ascended from each side of the entrance. “That way, but come inside first. We will need more light inside now the sun is down.”
As soon as they emerged fully into the large meeting area, the altar room caught their attention. It was at the far end of the vaulted chamber, at a level above even the upper galleries on each side.
Two lamps sat on the altar, glowing brightly, illuminating the whole of the Altar Room. The light also reflected off the multicoloured glass window behind it.
While his friends and brother stared at the wondrous sight, Tymos released Llaimos’s hand and turned to a wall between the two front entrances. From his previous visit, when he and Kryslie had spent the Season of Storms here, learning from the Elders, he knew the controls for the lights were behind a false panel there. Though he had never needed the knowledge then, he found he knew how to brighten the lights and proceeded to turn on all the lights both on this lower level and along the walls of the upper galleries. His friend gave a faint sigh of awe.
Llaimos began to tug on Tymos’s hand; his young face was staring at the lights in the Altar Room.
“The front stairs are closer, Bro,” Tymos told him.
Although he had assured his friends that they were safe, they had not forgotten recent events. Jonko and Keleb went up first, Stenn brought up the rear. Tymos made no comment, just slowed as Jonko and Keleb took turns checking each of the side rooms along the north gallery. The first was a servant’s room, then a bathroom, then the room where his father slept when he stayed at the Temple. Then there was the north side chamber, a quarter of the size of the meeting room below, but another place where groups of people could sit and relax.
The lights in there were not on, so Tymos mentioned the storage rooms that led off it. Keleb reported that all the doors were secured.
Then they came to the end of the gallery. Here a closed door, to the left was another door that led to a gallery that went along the outside of the north side chamber. To the right were four steps that went up into the Altar Room. Jonko stepped ahead of Llaimos and ascended first. He stepped to the right at once to let Tymos and Llaimos follow him. Keleb slipped around the left where three benches were placed near the wall. He glanced at Jonko as he began like a feel a cool breeze was blowing through him. His friend was looking around, seeing that Tymos, Llaimos, and Stenn were bowing to the Altar. Belatedly identifying the sensation of the aura, and connecting it to the notion of a Temple as a place of worship, Jonko and Keleb both bowed to the Altar as well.
Tymos took Llaimos over to one of the benches, and sat with him.
“When you get hungry, there should be stasis packed food and water in the storerooms off the south chamber,” he remarked, aware that Llaimos jerked up at the idea of food.”
Stenn nodded, but was too intent on examining the Altar Room. Keleb finally blurted the question that had been worrying him.
“What happened to Kryslie,” Keleb asked. “She went with Jordan and Vila, but then what?”
For a long moment, Tymos didn’t answer. Then he spoke, calmly, but also with a new deliberation.
“When they returned to Amik with Kryslie, the Ciriot had shown themselves there.”
Stenn hissed in anger. “Those creatures that had my uncle were Ciriot? I didn’t know what they looked like, but I remembered you mentioning them. Perhaps this useless war makes sense – unholy sense. You expected there to be more, didn’t you?”
Tymos merely nodded.
“Father walked into a trap, though he thought he was prepared for it. The troops that went with him were hit with a concussion grenade. Half died; the rest became Aeronite prisoners. Father arrived separately and tried to convert Jordan and Vila. He wanted them to realise that their role in this war was wrong. He had no warning of the Aeronite that crept up behind him. Nor did Aldiv. I expect that was when Jordan and Vila left there to come here. They had worked out how to use transmitters.”
“He should have disempowered them,” Stenn said flatly.
Tymos sighed. “He had no chance, then. But it is not their fault that they became what they are…any more than it was yours to become a tool of the enemy.”
Stenn went rigid, as if Tymos had just slapped him. “I would have accepted disempowerment in preference to being a traitor. As Uncle Perrin would have.”
“Both of you are free to fight,” Tymos said fiercely. “And I am glad! I am glad I was able to oust those energy things. Anyway, that no longer matters. To continue – Father was helped by Pyr, the child we met on Kellex’s ship. Only the Guardians know how or why he came to be there. When the Ciriot overcame the Aeronite captors, and took the Father and Aldiv prisoner, Pyr followed. He helped father escape. Krys protected Jordan and Vila, and left them back where Kellex now has his ship. She went looking for father, and provided a distraction so he could transmit away, but she was in turn captured by the Ciriot. Father believes Pyr went after her. He says, as you heard, that Kryslie will come here, as soon as she can, to help us open the portal.”
“So…now we have to wait…again,” Jonko remarked.
“Yes,” Tymos told them. “But you do not h