Annie Windsor - Arda 02 - The Captains Fancy.pdf - ELLORA'S CAVE (Maykelll) - bugnme5

THE CAPTAIN’S FANCY

An Ellora’s Cave Publication, March 2004

Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.

PO Box 787

Hudson, OH 44236-0787

ISBN MS Reader (LIT) ISBN # 1-84360-675-5

Other available formats (no ISBNs are assigned):

Adobe (PDF), Rocketbook (RB), Mobipocket (PRC) & HTML

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or

locales is purely coincidental. They are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

Edited by Martha Punches.

Cover art by Christine Clavel .

The Captain’s Fancy

Annie Windsor

Prologue

Council of Worlds, Tower on the Tor, Old Earth

Time Before Time

“I cannot kill Barung .” Arda’s Ord’pa , the most fearsome and renowned executioner in the civilized

worlds, shook his head. The black of his unfettered hair seemed deep and endless in contrast to the

startling silver stripes on his taut cheeks. “He is too powerful. The energy he stored during his rising

would disperse and destroy us all. Perhaps the known universe with us.”

The expression he wore, of burden and seriousness beyond measure, was shared by Kaldor, First Priest

of Kaerad, the eldest among the three. Kaldor sat at the Tower’s round table, a table Earth’s kings of

men would one day hold dear. He used the circular structure to keep a healthy physical distance from his

two fellow Council members. Kaeradi were empaths of the first order, telempaths, in fact. Not only

could flesh-contact with an incompatible bring great pain or even death to the Kaeradi, but the projection

of that pain could kill the innocent who touched them as well.

Kaldor had a physical look similar to the Ord’pa , to the Ardani in general, but without the universe’s

living substance etched into his flesh. He had instead a great golden stone set into his chest just above his

heart. Gold was the color of a spiritually transformed leader, of a mystic who had achieved the highest

disciplines. Gold was for the fire that lived in stone, and it was this gold flesh-rock he touched in a gesture

of weary defeat.

“So.” He sighed, sitting back. “We have contained the evil by a combination of our strengths, but we

cannot destroy it.”

“I refuse to accept that.” Myrddin of Perth, and now of Earth only since Perth was no more, stood and

went to gaze out of the tower windows. Avalon stretched before him, bright, sparkling, and new. All that

was good in this world frolicked on the verdant fields, both those with deep magik and those with the

younger, wilder variety bred of this planet alone. Perthling, Ardani, Kaeradi, or halfling mingled with the

lesser-developed humans of this world—it mattered not. All were welcome. All were joyous and free to

be what the universe called them to be. Earth had fulfilled its promise thus far, as a haven for those fleeing

the darkest necromancer ever to rise to power in the universe.

Barung. Lord of the Dark. Eater of Light. Scourge of Souls.

Such dramatic names.

Myrddin sighed.

Even now, he could feel the bastard’s malevolence radiating from the containment field established

above Earth. The true horror came in how quickly people could forget such amorality. In a few

generations, the children of Avalon would have no memory of evil as great as Barung . They scarcely

understood now, even one generation removed from the devastation wrought on Kaerad, Arda, and his

own destroyed world of Perth. Their blood would be mingled, and the unique gifts of each race lost—or

melded to create something even more wondrous. Such things were not to be known until they

happened.

Well, the Kaeradi priest probably knew, at least in the sketchy non-descript colors of future emotion he

could see, but he was wise enough not to share his vague predictive visions.

“I know your grief is deep, Brother Myrddin,” the Ord’pa of Arda allowed. His accent made the name

sound more like “Mertin” or “Merlyn,” which was how many of Avalon’s children hailed him already.

“The loss of Perth was tragic, and the ripples will be felt in the fabric of time until the last breath on the

last world at the last moment of time. Alas, despite the rightness of our vengeance, even I do not have the

power to kill Barung . If we blended all of our great skills together, we would still be doomed to failure.”

For a time, silence claimed the round table in the round room, in the round tower on the round hill.

Circles, Myrddin thought. Powerful and yet powerless.

Kaldor cleared his throat. “We could…banish him, could we not? Bind him in his own squalid energy

and send him into other dimensions to find his way back—if he can?”

“And visit his evil on some other peoples? Leave him to return and destroy our children eons hence?”

Myrddin snorted even as he saw a dawning agreement on the solemn face of the Ord’pa. Perthling blood

ran hotter than Ardani blood, without doubt. Arda was about balance—this with that, strength with

restraint. Perthling blood ran hotter still than the blood of the Kaeradi, who had more power than any,

and an even greater reticence to use it. Perth’s greatest wizard wanted death for his people’s vengeance.

More than that, Myrddin wanted a permanent end to the threat.

“Come, Myrddin.” Kaldor’s tone took a definitive depth, an absolute command only a Kaeradi could

achieve without offending any listeners. “Acknowledge this as our only choice. You cannot deny the

truths before us.”

“I will not doom the worlds of tomorrow to the fate Perth suffered.” Myrddin turned and rapped his fist

on the round table. A sound like thunder burst through the room as wild magik skittered over wood, then

stones.

Instinctively, the Kaeradi priest and the Ord’pa flung up their hands and concentrated their energies on

blocking Myrddin’s rage-spell before it did harm.

The Tor’s tower trembled as the magiks met and intertwined. A few of the stones exploded, leaving

menacing, crackling black holes where they once stood. The air took on a sudden smell of burning and

melting, and a light smoke curled above the round table in the unmistakable shape of a feather.

Kaldor watched the display without passion, but the Ord’pa narrowed his eyes at the smoke-feather, at

the flashing streaks of magikal light, in truth, a brief harnessing of the living substance of the universe.

Myrddin knew the Ardani was thinking. He could almost hear the man’s scientific mind observing,

planning. Perhaps “plotting” would be a better word?

Myrddin narrowed his own eyes, studying the executioner. The Ardani were a crafty lot. Great thinkers

and innovators, much as Perthlings had developed a reputation as naturalists and healers. Kaeradi were

deep into emotion, the spiritual arts and the rhythm of the universe. All three races bred virulent warriors,

though their weapons were decidedly different. Arda fought with science and the focused energy of the

mind, Kaerad with the fire of the heart and resolve of the spirit, and Perth with the force of the body and

natural elements.

“What are you contemplating?” Myrddin asked quietly, in deference to the Ord’pa ’s renewed alertness.

The Ardani clenched his hands before him in the gesture of a supplicant. “Our joined powers cannot

defeat Barung…now.” The silver stripes on his cheeks glittered with sudden manic energy. “We would

have to banish the blackheart, yes. For now. But with forethought and cooperation, we could deliberately

crossbreed our races and mingle them with the wild energies of this world to build the strength we need.

We could also use Perth’s destruction to good ends, laying the proper traps in the energy signature of the

universe where the planet once orbited…”

“That would take thousands of years,” Myrddin said carefully, measuring each word so that Kaldor and

the Ord’pa might heed him instead of humoring him. “Time carves memory like sand carves stone. How

can we be certain tomorrow’s children will know that we existed, much less that we planned for a

disaster we doomed them to endure?”

“Nothing is ever certain, Myrddin.” Kaldor’s calm galled Myrddin, but he kept his mouth clamped as the

old Kaeradi spoke. “Better we leave our children many healthy years—and some hope—rather than

none, yes?”

For that question, Myrddin, despite his powerful passions to the contrary, had no good answer. He

closed his eyes.

When he opened them a few seconds later, the Ord’pa was busy drawing pictures, his long graceful

fingers borrowing liquid energy from his silver tattoos to create wispy designs on the round table and in

the air. A triangle, with three planets—Earth, Kaerad, and Arda—at the corners. In the center, the

Ardani sketched a dark hole where Perth should have been, and showed how, with a few alterations in

solar winds and the pressures and energies of space, an unsuspecting ship or even an entire world might

be sucked into that void and crushed into nothingness. Much the way Barung crushed Perth, in fact.

With the weight of the universe itself, turned on a single point.

Myrddin watched in silent surrender as Kaldor invested in this far-future design, and began to speak of

setting celestial events into play that would produce such a world-crushing void.

Then the talk turned to creating and nurturing bloodlines, and how to establish and maintain channels of

energy between the three planets that could one day ensnare Barung in Perth’s dead space like a fly in an

Earth spider’s web.

This is fantasy, Myrddin told himself, but as he studied the plan and listened to the Ord’pa ’s hypnotic

bass, a small hope caught fire in his heart. He thought about the relative nature of triumph over an evil as

great as Barung .

In truth, Barung was more creature than person. Barung created himself from his own evil intent, from

the dark energy he drew from the very pit of the universe. It overwhelmed him, turned him into naught but

a twisted, deformed channel, absorbing every negative thought in his purview, every wicked action.

Violence, hate, cruelty— Barung became a living embodiment of all such bleakness. The Council had

joined to bind him with their combined magiks.

With our different commands of the energies of the universe, Myrddin corrected himself automatically, as

the Ord’pa would have if the wizard had spoken aloud. Know and name the power you wield, lest

your children forget it.

Myrddin flexed his arms, wishing he could wield those powers to dispel the non-corporeal Barung

himself.

But he knew he could not. The Kaeradi priest and the Ardani executioner were correct. Destroying the

necromancer would release every drop of that formless blackness Barung had absorbed, and the wave

of dark energy would sweep the universe of hope and joy, light and life.

Unless they could trick the beast into the void.

And the void wasn’t created yet, nor the powers that might drive the beast to it without chance of

escape.

Banishment was the only option.

But one day, Myrddin thought with increasing vengeance, Barung will return . He stared at the

shimmering triangle as it turned from silver to gold in the waning daylight. The triangle with the dark

center, even now flickering above and across the round table of Earth’s tower on the Tor. If the

Annie Windsor - Arda 02 - The Captains Fancy.pdf

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