Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 192

Chapter 192: A dazzling death
Barnabas fell to his knees, leaving his bodyguard momentarily bewildered. Trace and Anaisa watched with horror and fascination.

The tortured shrieks escaping the evil man’s mouth were blood chilling. He held his head and tore at it with his fingernails, as if he could claw Emily’s voice from his brain with them.

Blood leaked from his nose and one of his ears.

His face contorted in absolute agony as he struggled to control himself. He shook as if on the verge of a seizure.

“STOP!!!!” He howled at the top of his lungs. The echo of a command reverberated off the walls, penetrating deep into the cave. Trace froze, and glanced at Sanders. The seer’s hand gripped the broken head of a spear tightly, and the farmer knew they had to act before Emily heard and obeyed the echoing command.

Trace let go of Anaisa and lunged for Oakdown.

The bodyguard reacted under the compulsion of his command to protect the Count and turned to tackle the farmer, pinning him against the wall. The breath was driven from Trace’s lungs by the supernatural strength, cracking at least one of his ribs. Despite that, he instinctively wrapped his arms around his attacker, hugging his head to keep the soldier from seeing what was happening behind.

A split second later, Sanders was plunging the spear tip between two of Oakdown’s ribs, and twisting.

Oakdown’s screams of mental anguish grew garbled as blood flooded into his lungs, and Sanders withdrew the speartip and plunged it in again, a little higher. The soldier, hearing the struggle, wrenched himself away from Trace’s hold, dislocating one of the farmer’s shoulders as Trace struggled to hold on.

Sanders sprang back at the soldier’s return, dropping his hold on the weapon and lifting his hands to show there was no more danger.

And therefore, no more need to protect.

The command to protect apparently did not extend into an implicit demand for aid, because the soldier stood there and watched as Oakdown coughed up blood in the shallow light of his dropped lamp.

The Count fell to his face on the floor, a shallow gasping gradually fading and then ceasing entirely. The room was silent for several seconds as they all stared, realizing that this moment was what they’d been working toward, for Sanders, years, for Trace and Anaisa, months, for the soldier… well, perhaps an hour or so, give or take.

“He’s dead,” Anaisa spoke, and Trace looked at his wife. Her words were the clearest evidence of Oakdown’s demise. “We should throw him into the pit to join his first victim in death. It will be… justice.”

Trace looked at his wife steadily. She was more resigned than relieved. He wondered if the revenge she craved was satisfying at all, or if her heart was with the many others Oakdown had wronged during his life.

[He’s dead… I can’t feel him anymore]

Emily’s whisper in Trace’s mind was fearful, and guiltridden. He needed to find her and tell her as soon as he could that it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t deal the fatal blow, and did not have blood on her hands, metaphorically.

Her mind had enough traumas and burdens without adding the weight of taking a life. He was glad she didn’t have to bear it.

The four of them dragged Oakdown’s body to the pit and dropped it in, with Anaisa giving it the final kick it needed to tip over the edge and fall. There was silence for a long time before the faintest splash indicated that the body had met the bottom, which had apparently collected some or all of the water Seth had pumped into the mouth of the cave earlier.

“Let’s get down to the others,” Trace gasped, his broken rib making it painful to breathe too deeply.

Sanders stood at the edge of the black abyss, looking down with a variety of emotions playing across his face.

Relief. Hatred. Shock. Deliverance. Joy.

Trace took no joy in the death of anyone, even one so evil as the Count, but he had to admit, this was no mere act of revenge. As Anaisa had said, it was necessary. Though no court of law had been present to officially declare it, justice demanded Oakdown’s death, as some small recompense for all the other lives he’d taken.

“We remember.” Trace spoke a moment over the atypical gravesite instead of following his own suggestion that they go. It seemed a simple moment of closure was needed now. “We remember not anything about your life, but we take a moment to remember the lives you took from others.”

“Hector, Count of Oakdown, my father,” Anaisa’s voice was without affection, simply stating a fact.

“Verito, the man you plunged into this bottomless pit,” Sanders spoke softly.

“The queen’s unborn children, who you poisoned,” Trace added.

“Deborah’s husband and child,” Anaisa’s voice broke.

“The innocent young men sent to a senseless war,” Trace closed his eyes, “and those of Foundrel needlessly killed.”

“And all other victims, living and dead, of your disastrous attempt to reign.” Sanders spat into the pit. The fire in his eyes looked as if he wished Oakdown would rise from the dead so that he could be killed once more.

After a minute or two of quiet, Trace turned to go. He took Anaisa’s hand with his good arm, and she hobbled along beside him. Sanders and the soldier followed, the latter seeming half dead from the physical exhaustion of following Oakdown’s extreme commands.

“We should have Emily report to one of the other soldiers…” Anaisa said softly. “One of the two that came down. They will be able to tell the king he is free. And that his child lives.”

Trace squeezed her hand. “Yes. Of course.”

The quartet limped deeper into the cavern, reaching the great room that held the tree.

The farmer hated coming so close to the powerful bastion of magic, but the only way to the others, and to the emergency exit Martin had made for them, was through this chamber.

Sanders’ face changed by minutiae as they drew closer to the golden tree, until finally, if came into view.

He gasped out loud and fell to his knees at the sight laid out before him.