Savants of Humanity (The Scholar's Legacy Book 2) Read online

  “It's from Uraj,” he muttered darkly. “He says he wants to see me at once. Some urgent business.”

  “Uraj!?” I blurted. It had been at least six years since the last time we saw him, on that fateful day when Hawke reclaimed the last piece of his soul from the grasp of the man most knew as the Forge. He and Hawke might have once both reigned as the Old Kings, but Hawke usually grew distant whenever his former partner's name came up these days.

  “Did he say what it's about?” I asked.

  “Nope. Only that I should come right away and bring you if I'm still babysitting, as he puts it.” He crumpled the paper in his fist and tossed it directly behind him into the brazier. It flared up and burned away in seconds.

  “Well, we're going, right?” I asked.

  Hawke clicked his tongue. “I'd rather not, considering his manners don't seem to have improved much. If he's asking me to come back to Damkarei, though, I assume he's gotten into some real trouble. He knows how much it irks me to see him.”

  “Don't be that way,” I chided playfully, giving his arm a little shake. “Let's go see what the oldest man alive wants. Heck, when I show up you can rub it in his face with how good of a dad you've become.”

  Hawke glowered at me deeply. I gave him my most innocent smile; I knew he hated it when I called him dad.

  “Fine, let's head out then.” He stood and started out the entrance. “Might as well take advantage of the night. I'd rather be cold than burning up out there.”

  I opened my mouth to argue how long it had been since we'd slept in anything resembling a bed or had a meal that wasn't dried or smoked. He turned and raised an eyebrow at me. After a moment, I closed my mouth and remained silent. He did have a point.

  As I followed him out, I just wished his point didn't mean another night of kicking up sand in the freezing cold with nothing but dry rations to look forward to.

  Chapter 2: The Fallen Noble

  Crossing the Madness was a difficult journey, fraught with unknown dangers all over. Yet, for all that, it only took a day's (or night's) travel to make it across.

  By contrast, the land that composed the Old Kingdom was far safer, even if constantly embroiled in perpetual civil war. With so much distance to cover, it was simple enough to spot signs of recent disturbance and avoid it.

  That didn't change the fact that there was a lot of ground to cover. And, of course, the city of Damkarei where Uraj ruled was at the very edge of the Old Kingdom.

  That meant weeks of travel by horseback through hills, forests, dry lake beds, and ruins. Oh, the ruins. There were likely as many fallen cities in the Old Kingdom as there were actual functioning ones. Some were holdovers from before the Pilgrimage, when the grinel that conquered our world first appeared, but those had long since faded to little more than piles of dust and rust. Others were far more recent, holdfasts of crumbling mortar and rotted wood from small empires that failed to stand the test of time.

  If there was one positive to so many ruins, it was that you were less likely to come across unwanted attention in one than in a town proper. Sure, there was always the threat of outlaws or the rare grinel, but those were simple problems compared to prying eyes and ardent worshippers. That was a problem Hawke was more concerned with than myself, but it made no difference to me how we got to our destination. Just so long as we could manage it without incident.

  We had been back on the road for just a few days out of the Madness when we found another such ruin waiting for us just outside of a forest we had been stuck in the last couple of days. It wasn't the largest fallen city we had come across, but trying to go around it would have wasted hours of time, so we plunged straight into the mess of rubble.

  Hawke and I always kept a sharp ear open for any trouble when moving through territory with such limited visibility, always on alert for the sound of conversation or weapons being sharpened. Typical bandit noises, basically.

  So, imagine our confusion when the soft sound of laughter reached our ears. It wasn't the rough, callous laugh of a couple of brigands sharing a ribald joke. It was high, nasally, and accompanied by nothing other than the sound of the hoofbeats from our horses.

  Normally, we'd avoid the sounds of other people unless it sounded like they needed help, but something tickled my curiosity. Who would be simply sitting in the middle of a ruin and cackling to themselves?

  Hawke must have felt the same way. He motioned for me to stop, and we dismounted to delve deeper into the ruin, towards the source of the laughter. We clambered over some rubble and rounded a jagged hunk of stone that might have once been a wall. On the other side was the source of our curiosity.

  The stranger sat upon the remains of an old wooden chair that still bore tattered scraps that must have once been cushions. Those tatters seemed to blend in with the man's clothes, though I'm being generous when I call them that. The filthy, threadbare silk was rotted full of holes, and he didn't wear them so much as let them hang limply off his form.

  The man threw back his grotesque, wrinkled head and laughed again. His stringy white hair fell away to reveal sunken eyes trying to hide in the depths of his bluish, pale skin. The nose, though, the nose on that one! I had never seen a person alive with a nose like that until I met that man. Sticking up in the air like that, it resembled a shark's fin rising from the waves.

  His laughter slowly died, though the smile full of yellowed teeth he flashed with it remained. His head lowered slowly, and he shook his head.

  “No, this doesn't feel right either,” he muttered with sadness in his voice. His screechy, nails-on-a-chalkboard voice. “I suppose it was too much to hope.” He looked at us, his eyes widening as if he just noticed we were there.

  “Uh, can we help you, sir?” Hawke asked.

  The stranger narrowed his eyes at my companion. “ 'Sir'? Do you take me for a common frump?” he huffed. “You stand before the rightful ruler of the kingdom of Ravoso: Ricard Valentine von Bojangles, the Third of his Name!” The bizarre man crossed his legs and lifted his chin. “Show some proper fealty, you cur!”

  Hawke's lips curled more and more in disgust the longer Bojangles went on. By the end of the short rant, it looked as if he had suffered a stroke.

  “I'm sorry, Boyanglay, you said?” I tried to pronounce his name, but I couldn't chew my words in the same way the disheveled man could.

  “That's Lord Bojangles, you foolish wench,” he spat back. For all his filth and the rank odor suffusing him, I had never met a man so full of himself. “Fret not. I am not a wroth man, and I forgive you both your missteps. It's not every day the common folk get a look at true royalty.”

  I edged close to Hawke and whispered to him out of the corner of my mouth.

  (Is this fool really some sort of royalty?)

  “Ravoso, you say?” Hawke mused, loudly enough for Bojangles to hear.

  The supposed ruler smirked proudly. “The one and only. A greater kingdom has never existed. Though my jape of a father lost it to a mere peasant uprising, I know that I alone have what it takes to bring it back to its former glory!” He glanced around the ruins we were talking in. “As soon as I can find it.”

  “You've got your work cut out for you, then,” Hawke said to him. “There are scores of failed kingdoms littering this side of the Madness. Dunspan, Corellia, Bopielt… yeah, I do remember there being a Ravoso as well.”

  “Excellent! You shall point me in its direction at once!” Bojangles leapt to his feet and drew himself up. I was impressed that he managed to stand almost as high as Hawke, who was tall compared to the average man. I was more surprised to see the ornate rapier at his side, its scabbard lined with rubies and sapphires, its hilt wrought with silver inlays and twisted into a complicated pattern. It was like a diamond in the extremely rough.

  “Sorry.” Hawke shrugged. “I don't know where it is. Ravoso fell, what, at least thirty years ago? I don't think it ever even made it on the map.”

  Bojangles's face darkened faster than the sky i
n a hurricane.

  “Are you mocking me? Do you think you're being witty by dismissing the greatest kingdom that ever existed as a footnote of history!? Who dares to speak to me that way!?”

  Pressure began to build around us, like the air was growing heavier. I had experienced this before. It was the feeling of someone releasing their essence. In this case, Bojangles was all but declaring his hostile intent.

  Hawke felt it as well, his mouth going rigid. He said nothing to me, but the words from his training echoed in the back of my mind.

  In a contest of essence, not answering power with power will kill you nine times out of ten.

  I concentrated and let my own essence fill me until it bubbled out and surrounded me, effectively acting as an invisible barrier to Bojangles' own energy. Hawke had already done the same for himself, the push of his essence against mine like a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

  Bojangles raised a hairless brow. “I see you're no ordinary chaff,” he half-complimented. “Name yourself.”

  “Hawke Morau, the Scholar,” Hawke replied, “once of the Old Kings. I know a thing or two about royalty myself, Lord Bojangles.”

  The so-called noble's eyes lit up. “Ah, so you're the other one. I just had a chat with the old man in Damkarei.”

  “You spoke to Uraj?” Hawke said, betraying surprise.

  “We were discussing matters of the realm. Speaking is for peasants, young sir.” I almost laughed at the way he addressed Hawke. He had to be at least three hundred fifty years younger than my companion.

  “What would Uraj possibly want to say to you?” I asked. Bojangles turned to me with eyes full of disdain.

  “When nobles are speaking, little urchin girls do not speak until asked to.”

  As he spoke, there was a sudden change in the air. I could feel his essence twisting against my own. Had I pushed him too far? Was he about to attack? I braced myself for him to strike out, and Hawke's hand drifted toward the sword at his waist.

  Bojangles didn't move, though he kept a shrewd eye upon me. When a few moments had passed and he still made no move, I went to make a retort.

  My mouth opened, but I found myself unable to utter a sound.

  Bojangles narrowed his eyes and gave me the most insufferable smirk I'd ever seen. “I see you understand,” he said. “It's quite all right, girl. Many a peasant has forgotten their manners in the presence of their betters. Awestruck so profoundly, their meagre brains forget any semblance of civilized behavior.”

  I wanted to scream at his horrid, sagging face, but not even a squeak would escape my lips no matter how hard I tried. His smirk grew even wider.

  “Of course, a proper peasant would know that you do not stand beside royalty like an equal. You should kneel to your better.”

  Again, his essence began to stir, and I steadied my own power to try and fight back against whatever he was doing. Instead, I found my legs moving on their own accord. Even straining my muscles until I was shaking with effort, I couldn't stop my own body from going to one knee on its own. I looked up at him with all the loathing I could muster, still unable to utter so much as a peep.

  “Better,” crooned Bojangles, sniffing with satisfaction.

  I heard a quiet ping sound, and faster than my eyes could follow, Hawke's sword was against the ragged noble's throat.

  “Release your power on Micasa, or we'll see how blue your blood really is,” Hawke snarled under his breath.

  The blade was caked with rust, the edge scored with numerous gouges and nicks. To the average onlooker, Hawke's sword would have looked more like a thin hunk of old steel than a proper weapon. Symphony was no ordinary sword though; forged by Uraj and named by Hawke's lost love Rouge, the weapon carried such sentimentality for my guardian that it was practically a part of him. As such, he could channel his essence through it to make it sharp enough to cleave through even steel with ease.

  Bojangles's bloodshot eyes went wide, but his sneer didn't falter in the least.

  “Really, young sir, chivalry for the lowest caste is just absurd!” whined the haggard man. “I've no more business here anyway, with this worthless kingdom or with you.” He turned away from Hawke's blade with a speed and grace that looked entirely beyond him and began walking away.

  “We're not finished here—” Hawke started, but Bojangles cut him off.

  “No, I do believe there's nothing left to say or do between us. Good day, young sir.”

  For the third time his essence flared, and this time it was Hawke who stopped in his tracks, eyes wide in shock. He seemed to be fighting against himself to undo whatever power Bojangles had ensorcelled us with, but he too failed to overpower whatever had taken hold.

  I was floored, in more ways than one. It was the first time I had seen Hawke put in such a position by anyone. Not even Uraj had left him looking so powerless. Hawke himself looked so surprised his eyes were bulging out of his head.

  Then I took a closer look at his eyes. His silver irises expanded to fill the whites, his pupils contracted to pinpoints of black. Hawke was drawing upon his own power, the one his namesake was derived from.

  The Scholar.

  His mouth worked silently as he looked at the back of the retreating stranger, his eyes drinking in not just the details of the man, but also the way his essence had changed when he had worked his power against us. In all the world, there was no better student at unraveling a situation than Hawke Morau.

  After just a few moments, he muttered something under his breath. I felt Hawke's essence flex, not unlike how Bojangles' had. His body jerked, as if freed from some unseen grip, and he let out a sigh. He hurried to my side and knelt beside me, placing a hand on my shoulder.

  “It's okay, Micasa, his power doesn't have a hold on you anymore.”

  I still couldn't stand, and still couldn't bring myself to speak, not even to tell Hawke how wrong he was. Then his essence flared, and my muscles unclenched so suddenly I fell sprawling to the ground. My breath came heavy, relief flooding through me.

  “How?” I asked on reflex, almost gasping in surprise at my renewed ability to speak.

  “I figured out how his power worked and managed to undo it,” he responded. He looked over his shoulder, to where Bojangles had already disappeared around a pile of broken stones. Slowly he shook his head. “What a terrible power. I've never seen anything work like it.”

  I forced myself to my feet, trying my best to stretch out the knots that had formed while I had been locked in place. “What the hell did he do? I've never seen you at someone's mercy like that.”

  Hawke winced. “I never thought a power could affect someone the way that one did. The ability to control people through mere suggestion…if he wanted to, he could wreak havoc with that ability.”

  “My essence couldn't stop it!” I cried out in frustration. “And from the looks of it, neither could yours.”

  “There was nothing wrong with your defense, in theory,” said Hawke. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Bojangles has done something strange with that power of his, though. It's like the very words he speaks carry his essence into his victim.”

  “So as long as we can hear him, we can't stop it?” The idea he could manipulate us with no recourse was terrifying. I shuddered at the thought of what he could have made us do if he had had half the mind to.

  “Well, if that's the case, it might be as simple as blocking out his voice to stop him.” Hawke shook his head some more. “Either way, if what he told us is true, then he's also spoken to Uraj recently.”

  “Do you think it has anything to do with why he's called us in?” I asked. Hawke nodded.

  “I think that's possible. We'd better hurry. If Bojangles did something to Uraj and has taken control of him, things might be worse than we thought.”

  As we rushed back to our horses, I took one last uneasy glance over my shoulder. Bojangles was long gone, but the shell of the kingdom we had found him in still stood, more steadfast than it probably ever had in li
fe. I thought of the city that Bojangles claimed was his birthright and could only feel grateful that there was no kingdom left for him to return to.

  Chapter 3: The King's Summons

  The rest of our journey was blessedly uneventful after the excitement of our encounter with Bojangles the Third. Part of that had to do with us giving a wide berth to any ruins we came across from that point on. It added quite a bit of time to our travel, but we didn't want to risk any more half-crazed former nobles with bizarre powers.

  Eventually, we found our way to the Astral Road that connected all major cities of the Old Kingdom together. Formed from huge chunks of granite that had been fitted so tightly together they could be mistaken for one uncut slab of stone, the road stretched all the way from Damkarei to the western edge of the Madness. Hawke told me that long ago, they had planned to build the road completely across the Madness and all the way to the eastern shore of the Fertile Lands. I wished that they had; it would've saved us a lot of trouble now.

  As direct as the Astral Road was, we made sure to keep well off the main path to avoid travellers, electing instead to travel through the surrounding hills and fields, though never straying far enough to lose sight of the landmark. After a few days, we saw something that made us diverge our course even further.

  Val'Hala was the largest city in all of Astra, possibly larger than Damkarei itself, and its size represented the power behind its walls well. The largest military force in all of humanity resided there, drilling and training daily. Some knew the city as the Lonely Kingdom, for it was the only city that didn't swear fealty to the Old Kings. In fact, several smaller cities in the Old Kingdom swore fealty directly to Val'Hala and its ruler, Lord Othenidus.

  Known by many as Othenidus the Great, the self-styled lord was a fierce and powerful man who held himself as an equal to both Old Kings. I had never met this man - few who lived outside of Val'Hala did - but from what I heard of his brutal nature, I decided that was for the best.