Sword Bearer (Return of the Dragons 1)

Woltan shook his head. Kara spoke. “It depends on the wizard who cast the spell, Anders. Until he is destroyed, or the spell fades, we can only keep her alive. We can’t bring her back to consciousness, to true life.”

I stood up suddenly. I felt like such an idiot.

“My father! She told me to get him instead. She must have known this would happen.” I felt suddenly weak. But before I could fall, Woltan and Kalle were there at my sides, guiding me back down into the chair.

“He will now be heavily guarded, I’m sure,” Woltan said. “You disobeyed your mother but followed your heart when you pulled her through the gateway. Even as she was following hers when she told you to take your father first. Love is an admirable thing, even when it leads us into trouble. It’s good to follow the love in your heart, in times of so much difficulty.”

There was Woltan twisting the truth again, making life seem simpler than it was. I shook my head.

“She always told me I should listen to her, and to my father. And I always thought I knew best. You may say that I acted with my heart, but I was just being like I’ve always been. Thinking I knew better. And now she’s unconscious, and my father is ...”

I bit my lip. I couldn’t go on.

Kara looked at me searchingly. “Your father is what?”

“I don’t know. Heavily guarded? Dead?”

Kara’s face looked grim. “You can’t know any of that for certain, Anders. Maybe that’s why your mother wanted you to get your father first, but that doesn’t mean she was right. They may now think they’ve killed you, or at least spelled you out of commission, and their defenses may be down. I’ve just spoken to my uncle. He said you must contact and try to save your parents.”

I stood up. “It’s settled then. I’ll try to contact him now.”

Woltan nodded. “But only with Kalle and me at your sid

e, to protect you.”

Kara frowned. “What about me?”

“You will stand to the side, and back us all up. Anders and Kalle may need your help in closing the connection.”

I walked back over to the table. “I need to do one more thing.” I took a sip of tea. I sat down, and sighed. Then I ran my fingers over the runes of the table until they were all glowing, and I started to speak. The words flowed out of my mouth, words my mind couldn’t understand. Soon the whole table was glowing and vibrating.

I closed my eyes and tuned everything out. My mind had only one thing present, and that was my father. But what, exactly, should I remember about him? Who was my father really, and had I ever really known him?

If I was a three-blood prince, what did that make him? More than a diplomat, that was for sure. And why had he never carried the sword? The sword that lay at my side? I pushed these thoughts aside. Right now I needed a memory, something strong, to pull up my father in my mind.

My father needed me.

I needed him too.

I closed my eyes, and I remembered the ocean.

The ocean and my father were always intertwined in my memory. It was my father who first told me about the sea, and my father who first took me there. It had been a three day journey, and I could not have been older than eight. I sat behind him, on his horse, and we rode every day from dawn to dusk, stopping only to water and feed the horse, and then to sleep and drink and rest ourselves at night.

I remembered my father’s smell, as he sat on the horse in front of me, remembered the soreness from so much riding, remembered the clear clean smell of the sea on our last day of riding as we approached the ocean and the dirt gave way to sand. What had father’s business been that day? At the time I hadn’t even thought to ask. My father had never told me much, and probably he wouldn’t have confided in me even if I’d asked him to.

There was something sealed and secret about father, then as now.

But I tried to put that out of my mind, and concentrate on my father’s smell, on the feel of his hand holding mine as we walked together into the ocean.

I opened my eyes to see a face completely covered by a crimson hood.

There was no face to look at, but it had to be my father. He was tied to a chair, and the chair was bolted to the floor. There was a hole in the hood for his mouth, so he could breathe. That was it. I listened intently. The room was still. I felt a touch on my arm. It was Kalle.

Maintain the connection, and we’ll see what we can do.

I nodded. I tried to keep focused, but anger and fear surged up. I wanted to tear through the gateway and cut my father’s bonds with my sword.

And if anyone attacked me?