Chapter 19

For a moment there was only silence, it seemed like everyone had paused. Even the souls as they gathered around him remained stagnant and then in a split second everything came crashing down around him. He could hear the King calling for his arrest as the knight rushed down from the mountains. The Queens were still screaming and so were many of their maidens as they ran for cover into the trees.

Sampson could see Linshanth running towards him, his face emblazoned with fire, his eyes as cold as ice. He had promised the Prince that he would stop running away but in that moment he knew he had no choice. "Run away", he spoke.

Sampson started running and the souls crowded around him, running with him. Those limp bodies with weapons they could barely drag along with them, where now carried at their sides as they ran like they were as full as youth as he was.

Being without a leader for all this time had drained them and given them life with little direction or purpose, now that they had a leader they were beginning to get back to their original form from when they were first created. Arrows were shot all around them, so they pierced through the souls and straight to the floor. Sampson had no protection and so the only thing he could do was run faster.

"Sampson", he could hear Linshanth calling after him but he ignored him and continued running. The Prince would only drag him back to the castle and there would be no saving him from the King's wrath then.

He committed an act of treason and for that the only punishment given was death. He heard a pained shout from behind him and his head turned. He saw Linshanth on the ground, his body was leaking blood from where he had been shot with an arrow.

The knight party were fast approaching but with the amount of blood was coming out of him they wouldn't get there in time to stop the bleeding. "Stop them for as long as you can but don't kill anyone", he told the souls as he ran back towards the Prince. His eyes were half lidded, as they opened as closed as he came in and out of consciousness.

"You idiot", he heard the Prince grumble. "Why can't you ever do what you're told?". "You should stop demanding things at such a high price and maybe I will", Sampson muttered.

He ripped open the top half of Linshanth's robes, seeing a deep cut of where the arrow had pierced through. "Deiniol. You need to take me back to my uncle", Linshanth remarked softly. He cut the sleeves of his robe and wrapped it around the Prince's wound. The white cloth immediately stained red.

The souls were fighting the knights, creating a protective barrier around Sampson that they couldn't penetrate. It would take them over two days to get back to the castle. "There's no time. I'll have to take it out myself". "Spell", the Prince murmured. "There's a spell. But I can't do it on my own. I need your help". "What spell?".

"It can take us back to the castle. I need you to channel your magic into me". Sampson gripped his hand, hard. He had no idea of where his magic came from but every time he had managed to perform magic there was only one thing he seemed to be able to think of.

It stemmed from when he thought about the Prince and him as boys. He thought about that time again and how happy he had been in those moments. No matter how brief that he had spent with the Prince.

The Prince was mumbling words under his breath, an incantation of a spell that Sampson couldn't hear the words to. The royals had their own language and whilst they rarely used it, they spoke in their mother tongue when they performed spells. It was deter their enemies from ever taking their spell books as they would never be able to translate them.

It was genius but as the succession grew each King had gotten lazier than the last. The King On could barely perform magic, not that he needed to. He took power by the force of his army and the will of good people, magic was merely but an added extra.

The knights had changed their tactics, they had formed a circle with the outer fighting the souls and trying to get people in the inner circle to break through the barrier that the souls had created. It wasn't long before they would get through and when they did they would kill Sampson and take Linshanth away. Without his help the Prince wouldn't survive the trip back to the Kingdom.

"You need to hurry up Linshanth, we don't have much time". The Prince remained reciting the chant with his eyes closed like he hadn't heard Sampson at all or he had and chosen to ignore him.

Sampson continued to grip the Prince's hand, channelling magic into his palm when suddenly a gust of wind blew around them, picking up the leaves and surrounding them. Sampson's vision blurred the longer he looked at the tornado that surrounded them. He held onto the Prince covering his wound as best as he could with the thrashing wind.

As quickly as the wind came it disappeared in an instant. When he looked around they were no longer on the mountain floor but in Deiniol's room back in the castle.

Linshanth was lying where he had been when he had woken up after being held in the dungeons. The thought of going back there made enveloped him in a cold sweat. He doubted the King would give him such a kind punishment now.

The Prince was no longer conscious and the white cloth that he had used to cover his wound was dripping with large droplets of blood, painting the floor red. "Deiniol", Sampson called. The room was empty and given the state of the room, the old man could be anywhere.

He could barely see the door to his spell room because there were more stacks than books. They had grown taller since the last time Sampson had been there and the room now looked like it was fit to burst.

"Deiniol". "What are you screaming about?". The sudden voice behind him caused him to jump and almost rip the cloth from the Prince's body. "Well…", Deiniol spoke in a condescending tone. His face and beard was covered in soot which made him look that he had recently come back from cleaning the chimneys. He would have been messing around with his spell book again.

"The prince has been shot with an arrow", Sampson murmured, stepping aside to show him the Prince's damaged arm. He expected Deiniol to leap into action but instead his scowl only deepened. "He's staining the floor. I've only just cleaned". Sampson knitted his brows, holding back his thoughts that his room was no better than the night beasts cave.

Deiniol stripped back the protective cloth and inspected the Prince's wound. "It's not a deep cut". "But he's losing so much blood". "The arrow severed one of his arteries, I'll have to stitch it up". Deiniol disappeared and came back with a handful of cloth, with a needle and string on the other hand. He looked half mad as he leaned over Linshanth. Sampson caught his wrist in his grasp just before he started stitching Linshanth's arm.

"Is this safe? You haven't even sterilised the needle". "Why would I need to? It's clean". The needle had clearly been used before given that there was still forgetting string poking from the end of it. "Here. Give it to me".

Sampson took it from him. Deiniol had a fire in the corner of the room, protected by stones to stop it from spreading. Sampson took the tip of the needle and placed it in the fire.

"He's not going to make it if you continue to be slow". "I have to make sure the needles clean first or his wound will get infected". He had nothing to protect his fingers from the fire and it wasn't long before he could smell burning flesh but he didn't remove his hands until he was sure the needle had properly been sterilised.

When he removed it from the fire it was so hot, the silver colour had disappeared replaced with brass. "Pass me the string", he hurried, taking the thin black string from Deiniol. It wasn't durable string but it would have to do with the little time they had.

"We need to remove the arrow first", Deiniol finally spoke. "Once I do, you won't have much time to stitch his wound. He's lost enough blood as it is".

"I can do it", Sampson remarked. It was his fault the Prince had been shot. The arrow had been meant for him and not the Prince. If he had stayed and decided to face the consequences for his actions instead of constantly running then Linshanth wouldn't have had to come after him.

Linshanth's skin had turned pale and his skin had sunken into his skull. His chest rose and fall at a rapid rate but his eyes were firmly closed. Deiniol removed the arrow and a gush of blood came from his chest.

Sampson cut into his skin, opening the wound further dipped his fingers into the hole on Linshanth's chest. Having spent so many years with the seamstress he felt comfortable with the needle in his hand. He often stitched his own wounds, but he had never done anything quite like this.

It was hard to see exactly where the severed artery was because of the amount of blood that was flooding from his chest. He found the artery with his fingers, dropping his head closer to get a better view of it.

It was seeping with blood and he worried with the way it was cut that he wouldn't be able to stitch it up. He had no other options regardless. If there was a spell he could use he was sure Deiniol would have used it by now.

He began sewing the artery, gradually stopping the flow of blood until the hole was completely closed. Blood moved through it when the hole was closed.

Sampson sewed the rest of the wound on the Prince's shoulder whilst he burned through low and high fevers. When he was finished he kept his head bent praying for the Prince's recovery.

"Where did you learn to sew like that?". "I lived with the seamstress for several years. She was the one that brought me to Toombak", Sampson answered. He washed his hands in the water -and as he stared down at the water turning red he thought about what he had done.

He hadn't even been thinking about what he was doing when he told the soul to kill the King of Sun Valley. It was almost like someone had over taken his thoughts and was thinking for him. He only remembered how angry he felt in that moment.

"Do you think the Prince will recover?", he asked Deiniol who was feeding the Prince a trinket of brown murky water. Whatever it was he didn't like the taste of it, his brow wrinkled and his expression deepened. "That depends on him".

"What are you giving him?". "It's a concoction I made myself. It will help his wound heal". "What's in it?", Sampson asked. "It's made from Peathius".

"What's peathius?". "Snake spit". Sampson shuddered. He would rather not now just how Deiniol would have acquired it.

"It has many healing properties. You should take some yourself". "I don't have anything to heal". "I have seen the scars you try and hide Sampson", he spoke, catching him off guard. Sampson kept his body covered at all times. How is it that Deiniol would know he had scars unless Linshanth told him?

"I changed your clothes when Linshanth first brought you to me. They are nothing to be ashamed of". "They're big and ugly. It's nothing worth talking about", Sampson spoke, putting an end to the conversation before it started.

He liked Deiniol, he was strange and often at times Sampson thought he was living in a different world but he was completely harmless and posed no risk to Sampson. He had never threatened Sampson in any way or berated him for talking out of turn with someone of his status.

"Are you going to tell me what happened now and how the Prince came to be shot with an arrow?". Sampson had no idea where to start but he couldn't keep running. All he had done since becoming the lost son of Vahda was hate every minute of it. He wanted to go back to being a simple servant but he was passed that now.

"I told the soul to kill one of the Kings. I tried to leave with the souls but Linshanth followed me. He was shot with an arrow that was meant for me. He used his magic to get us back here", Sampson muttered. He expected a look of horror or hatred but Deiniol's face remained expressionless. Sampson understood where the Prince got his serious expressions from now because it was exactly like looking at Linshanth.

"I didn't want to kill the king. I wasn't even thinking when I asked the soul to kill the king", Sampson mumbled. "Then why did you do it?".

"I was angry. I could see them all up there laughing and cheering at me and the souls. I could hear the vile things they were saying". "You could hear them from all the way down the mountain".

"Well, yes", Sampson remarked. Thinking about it now there was no way he could have been able to hear their vile whispers from where they were standing. But it had been loud enough as if the words had been spoken right next to him, they might as well have been shouting them in his ear.

"I'm not sure. It's all a bit fuzzy now", Sampson mumbled, turning his back to Deiniol so he couldn't see that blank expression and feel like he was losing his mind even more. "It doesn't matter. I did it, I will have to face the consequences for it". "The King will kill you if you reveal yourself. It's best you stay hidden here until Linshanth recovers. He can talk to his father and reason with him".

"It won't work", Sampson murmured. "Why not?". "Because the he asked Linshanth to kill me at the mountain. He already wants me dead, he just needed a reason and now he has one". Deiniol's eyes widened.

"Then it's true". "What's true?". Deiniol began scooping up books from the floor and flicking through them. He sighed with every book he picked up and threw them back on the floor. "What are you doing?", Sampson asked, trying to avoid being hit by one of Deiniol's book. He was rampant in his search, not even bothering to arrange them back into piles.

"It must be here somewhere". "What?". Deiniol ignored him and continued to search through the books. He searched through every book in his room until he stumbled upon a pile of books. "Here, they are. All the books we have about the tribe of Vahda".

"What about the ones hidden in the library?", Sampson questioned. "Those books are filled with blank pages. It is to deter anyone that may go looking for them". Sampson looked at the Prince in disdain. He had no intentions of ever telling Sampson anything about the tribe and used the books to deter him.

"I don't understand what this has to do with me killing a king". "It is because you are cursed Sampson". "Cursed how?".

Deiniol made him sit down before he continued speaking and even brought Sampson a cup of water. He brought over a stool for himself and sat down in front of him, holding one of the books in his hand. It was one of the thicker books with pages stuffed together and filled with writing so small you could barely read it.

"There was a reason the army of souls were created and there is also a reason the tribe was slain. It is because of the curse of Vahda". "I have never heard of the curse of Vahda before?", Sampson mumbled. "That is because only a select few people ever knew. The curse died when the tribe did, or so we thought".

"I don't understand". "The Vahda tribe possessed a special type of magic. Magic that could bring the dead back to the land of the living and it didn't come without it's consequences. When you bring back a soul you don't only bring back their body but their mind. You bring back their hurt, pain and their anger. Souls aren't living and so they can't feel, whoever brings them back must absorb their mind and take it as their own. Many people in the tribe would only bring back one or two people back in their lifetime but there was one man who brought back a countless number of souls".

"The chief". "It is how the army of souls were created. He created the army as a weapon to defend the tribe but it turned him crazy trying to take on all their minds. He became hungry for power and after that it became impossible to stop him".

"But that won't happen to me. I don't even know how to bring the living back from the dead and even if I did I wouldn't". "When the chief died he cursed his predecessor to finish what he started and destroy all of the Kingdoms. When the lost son was nothing but a myth there was nothing to be afraid of…".

"But now that I am living that is why the King tried to have me killed", Sampson finished for him. It made sense now why the King had so desperately been out of his blood and had even got as far as asking Linshanth to kill him. "How do you know I carry the curse? I know I am his predecessor but I would never let myself end up like the chief. I would never cause harm to those who don't deserve it".

Deiniol's serious expression turned mournful. "I have seen your magic already become uncontrollable and your eyes…your eyes turn red when this happens". Sampson recoiled. He had thought he was seeing things when he saw that look of fear in Onyx's eyes. There was no way such a tyrant who had slaughtered hundreds could ever be afraid of him and yet there was no mistaking that look.

"The mad leaders eyes were that same colour". "What do I do?", Sampson asked in despair. "There is only one thing we can do. We have to go to Vahda and find a way to reverse the curse". "And what if we can't, what happens then?". Deiniol didn't answer but it didn't take much for Sampson to fill in the empty silence. If he couldn't stop the curse then there was only one other way he could be stopped.

"What if I resist the curse?". "This is a curse like no other Sampson. There is no stopping it". Sampson curled his fingers into balls, squeezing his hands until his fingers felt numb. He should have been killed when the Lord Ferimis left the flower in his room, at least that was a painless death. He would have drifted off in his sleep and not felt a thing. The only death that awaited him now would be filled with pain and torture.

"Do you think we can reverse the curse?", Sampson asked. The expression on Deiniol's face didn't falter, whether it was intentional or not, it was filled with pity. "I do not know. The mad leader was filled with very powerful dark magic. No other sorcerer could compete with him. You are just starting but you also hold very powerful magic Sampson. You must learn to control it". Sampson felt terribly sick, so much so he had to sit down on the stool by the table and collect his thoughts for several minutes.

"You needn't worry. The Prince also found it difficult to control his magic. He was sent away in seclusion for several years to learn how to control it". Linshanth had told him the story, but it wasn't one Sampson wished to share. In all that time Linshanth had been alone, performing his magic in isolation was no more than a punishment.

Sampson would have to face the consequences from the Prince first. He still had a day before they would arrive which meant he didn't have much time. "I will do more reading. You should stay and watch Linshanth", Deiniol advised. He scooped an armful of books from the floor. "Deiniol", Sampson called after him. He paused and turned. "Thank you".

"You have no reason to thank me. If it wasn't for you Linshanth wouldn't have survived". Deiniol bowed his head and left to his study. Sampson sat by the Prince, watching him through his fever. At times he shivered uncontrollably, Sampson would put his hand on his forehead and his shakes would stop instantly.

He rubbed his temples in a soothing pattern, smoothing out the Prince's frown line on his head. "Even injured, you're thinking too much. Are you planning how you're going to pay me back when you wake up? I doubt you will get the chance since your father would have killed me first", Sampson murmured.

Linshanth stirred uncomfortably in his sleep, letting out an irritable sigh. "What's the matter? Are you in pain? There's not much I can do about that if you are", he remarked softly. He had stopped rubbing circled into his temple but kept his hand firmly placed there because it stopped the Prince was rolling around and worsening his injury.

"Will you promise me something Linshanth?". Sampson wasn't expecting the Prince to respond, in fact he was glad the Prince was sleeping because he would never agree to his words if he was awake. "If I choose to run again you have to promise not to follow me. I have only caused you to be in danger. I am of no use to you at all".

He knew the Prince's patience with him must have been wearing thin and that he most likely wouldn't have kept Sampson around with him much longer. There was no way of knowing what the Prince would do if he knew Sampson was cursed. His duty was foremost to Toombak and he would never stray from it. If killing Sampson was the only way to protect the Kingdom, Linshanth wouldn't think twice about it.

"I will take your silence as a yes. You have promised me now, you're not allowed to break it". Muffled words came out of the Prince mouth but they were barely coherent for Sampson to make out what he was saying. He did catch one word, idiot. The Prince was still cursing him in his sleep. Sampson watched Linshanth until morning, whispering words to him to soothe him in his sleep. His body had surpassed the fever and the wound was healing well but only time would tell if it would become infected or not.

Sampson knew the moment the King had returned because he heard an array of canons being sounded from outside. He could hear the heavy movement of horses and what he thought were shouts and screams. He waited for as long as he could and left Linshanth's side. He would face up to his actions and it would be the King who decided his fate.

He left Deiniol's chambers and walked through the hallway, he was timid in his steps and with every door and corridor he passed he began to regret his decision but he kept walking forward. He was nearing the west wing which was were the King's chambers lie when he felt a sharp pain in his legs. It was so intense he was brought down to his knees in an instant. He heard a loud chuckle behind him and his blood ran cold. Standing above him was Master Duncan with his cane in his hand and a gleaming look in his eyes.