Zietsch The Woodzee Chronicles: Book 2 - Nightfire

1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-3-946773-38-2
Verlag: Fabylon
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 450 Seiten

Reihe: Woodzee Chronicles

"A great fantasy adventure that is impossible to resist after the first few pages." Lies-und-lausch

"More legends, heroism and epicness you will rarely find." Mediamania

The great epic about young knight Rowarn and his battle companions.
Centuries ago, a magical artifact shattered into seven pieces during a murderous war. Only the Two-Splitted, it is said, can heal the Tabernacle - but no one knows what will happen.
Who might it be? Will he use the powers for good or for bad?

The battle for Ardig Hall is lost, young knight Rowarn and Vision Knight Angmor are imprisoned in the Splinter Crown in the desolation valley of Starfall.
But Femris is by no means the victor, he too has suffered heavy losses.
The search for the Shards of the Tabernacle continues.
Rowarn's burden grows as he must face revelations about his true origins - triggering tragic destinies ...

Autoren/Hrsg.

Zietsch, Uschi

Leseproben

Chapter 19
The Gray

So it has been a lie after all: my life.

Rowarn lay lonely in his gloomy cell, brooding restlessly, incessantly. There was nothing alive in here but him, no distraction, no comfort. But at least it was less dark in the dungeon than in his soul.

So it was a demon that lurked inside him, that made him unpredictable and dangerous. How could he have thought that he was a rithari? This blind fury, the obsession in the fight, did not come from a disease, but from the side of the darkness. From … Nightfire, the murderer of his mother. The confidant of Femris. The Twilight Walker.

Was it really possible that the Velerii had not suspected anything about the demon blood in him? Why had they insisted so strongly that Rowarn was not the Two-Splitted? Claimed that the Two-Splitted must be a being of a special kind, with qualities he did not possess?

If only it were so!

Once again, the feelings threatened to overwhelm him. He lay rigid and gritted his teeth. He could not let himself go!

The floor was hard, and the thin straw bed offered little comfort. Rowarn alternately sweated and froze, depending on how deeply he became entangled in his thoughts. Only ever briefly could he escape to sleep before aching bones woke him when they wanted to be moved.

There were demons who had chosen the Rainbow, like Fashirh. Rowarn respected the Red Demon, but he also feared him as an alien being with whom he would never be familiar. They were too different, and Rowarn didn't want to be anything like Fashirh, or any other demon. Especially not like Nightfire.

Tears burned hot on his cheeks and his insides were on fire. He had sworn revenge on the murderer of his mother, and now he had to face his own father. Did Nightfire know that he had a son? How had it even come to this?

At this point in his deliberations, Rowarn could no longer contain himself. He jumped up, pushed himself into the gloomy corner next to the narrow viewing hole, and threw up sobbing. It was unimaginable to him how it might have come to his conception then. His mother and the murderer … no. What could he have done to her … how could she have endured to feel Rowarn growing inside her …?

he thought, as he continued to retch. it

Sometimes he tried to console himself with a kind of dry humor: But this kind of joke had never been his strong point, and it didn't make him feel the least bit better.

Rowarn no longer had any doubt that he was the Two-Splitted after all. He was a true son of the Rainbow and the Darkness, both sides united in him, but could no longer form a true UNITY. The Eternal War had arisen because the UNITY was broken and the DIVIDED realized that they could never come together again. Rowarn was thus divided in two. The split in two! The thought could not be suppressed, and nothing could settle his stomach, whether there was anything in it or not. Always Rowarn had struggled with having to vomit when strongly aroused. Now the attacks were worse than ever, and Rowarn sank deeper and deeper into self-pity, disgust, and horror of himself.

Rowarn did not know how much time had passed since his capture. His world was almost dark and very small. Three steps long, two and a half steps wide. Hardly any possibility of movement.

His thoughts did not advance either, they constantly turned in circles until he became dizzy. Then he stopped for a moment, and everything came to rest. Until it started all over again.

Finally, he lay still for once. Welcomed the captivity and the darkness around him. Monsters like him belonged locked up, kept away from the light so they couldn't even see themselves. He kept his eyes closed most of the time so he wouldn't notice his own shimmering. The Naurakian heritage within him. All that was good. And for him now unbearable.

Was that why Queen Ylwa had cried so when she left her newborn with the Velerii? Had she already known that her demon child was the Two-Splitted who alone could use the Tabernacle? Was that why Rowarn had stayed alive, because he had to complete the task?

, he thought time and again as he began the circle of thought anew.

Also in his inside nothing had changed since he knew his origin. It had not caused or awakened anything hidden in him. Except self-hatred.

he took refuge in defiance when he mustered the strength.

There was still one tiny possibility that it was all just a bad nightmare that would one day simply dissolve: namely, that Angmor, the Vision Knight, was mistaken. Rowarn had put him through too much after the fight against Femris, had shaken him up too much that it had cost him his last strength. Perhaps Angmor had seen the images too blurred and therefore misinterpreted them. That remained as the last vestige of hope, which Rowarn clung to in order not to finally despair.

Now and then he was interrupted in his circles of thought. At approximately regular intervals, as far as Rowarn could judge, he was given something to eat through a flap, a jug of clean water and a plate with some meat and bread and dried fruit. They wanted to keep him strong and healthy, presumably until it was decided what to do with him.

At some point, Rowarn counted and estimated how many distributions he had missed by then. It was time to get back to caring about the world out there. He couldn't lie there complaining and drowning himself in self-pity for all time. One day, he had to move on.

He was alive, and hopefully Angmor was too. So the first thing Rowarn had to do was find a way to get out of here. The fight was far from over – especially not now. He owed it to Angmor, who had only become a prisoner because of him. What became of could not matter to him. But the Vision Knight had to be freed. He was the most important fighter for the Rainbow.

After twenty meals, when Rowarn had reasonably adjusted to the rhythm, the door to his dungeon suddenly opened. "Come with me," croaked the gruff voice of a Warine.

Rowarn stood up and entered the torch-lit hallway, blinking. Now he would finally learn where he was. He had only awakened in the dungeon from the unconsciousness into which the soldier Moneg had beaten him. Perhaps he had been given an additional drug to keep him sedated longer, for even such a violent blow should not have put him out of action for more than an hour or two. But more, much more time must have passed, for all around Ardig Hall there was no prison camp of the enemy. So they had probably taken him farther east, perhaps even to beyond the Golden River, where Rowarn had never been.

If Moneg had told the Dubhani all about Rowarn, they knew of his uncontrollable frenzy at extraordinary excitement, which gave him the forces of at least four strong men – reason enough, therefore, to keep him unconscious during the journey.

, that crooked little soul, who had betrayed him to the enemy only out of revenge! Thus Rowarn had fallen into captivity, and so had Angmor, which should never have happened.

A total of four Warines awaited him outside the cell, their broad, short swords at the ready, taking Rowarn in the middle. If he had been a normal prisoner, he would now have felt a certain pride at being so heavily guarded. For he weighed quite a bit less than a Warine and was much younger than these seasoned soldiers. Once they had been dwarves who had made a covenant with demons and now carried their life essence within them. This made them long-lived, dangerous creatures who lived only for battle.

A short distance followed, during which they passed a series of doors similar to his. Then Rowarn stepped out of the rock into a deep, wide ravine with high bluffs all around and a ditch in the middle.

It was early morning, a few oblique rays of sunshine already managed to illuminate the opposite rocky edges. A deep blue sky stretched over the canyon. Rowarn saw cliff dwellings cut into the rock, and more barred dungeons, supply stores, and many cavernous entrances to shelters. There was bustle, as in any army camp. The only difference from Ardig Hall was that here were mostly Warines running about, some humans and very few dwarves. And on a high pole flew the banner of Femris: the broken Tabernacle, its seven splinters close together, in red and gold on a black background.

The sounds were also different. In the camp of Ardig Hall, a constant buzz of voices had been heard, much laughter and often singing, even during the day at work. Here, however, there was little talking, mainly orders echoed from the...