elephantt
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My Fantasy Story
This is my first attempt at a fantasy book and i only have the first few pages and am perfectly aware that it is not very well ordered.
I would appreciate any comments on what i have written to be sent to elephantt@hotmail.co.uk
I will be updating it as i progress with my writing and also changing it with people's suggestions
Prologue
The moon shone red that night. Terath had not been able to sleep for weeks. This was, of course, not due to any problem. The High Mage of the Order of the Planet had visited him three weeks earlier and asked a favour.
‘I need you to do something for me, old friend” the high mage requested with more than a hint of malice in his voice, “I need you to find me a slave.’
Terath stuttered. He was the master of the Order of the Bear, why should he have to answer to a feeble old man?
“We have plenty of slaves, as do you, so why do you insist on taking one of ours?” replied the now more than slightly frustrated young man, his own words fuelling his hatred for the other man.
‘I don’t want just any slave.’ The mage sneered and at that moment his eyes seemed to glow red for a fraction of a second before returning to the black abyss of inhumanity that marked one of the Order of the Planet. ‘I want a certain type of slave.’
‘Well as you should know by now, the Order of the Bear does not keep women slaves. The women are all married off at fourteen or sent away to the Order of the Tree for “enlightenment” but we haven’t had to do that for many years.’
‘I do not wish to partake in you pathetic acts of debauchery that you deem as entertaining.’ The red flashed again more vibrant this time and even more terrifying. Once the eyes had returned to the black the sheer emptiness of them allowed Terath to realise he was dealing with something a lot more powerful than a human with a few little tricks like fireballs and floating objects. This was no mere street performer and no battlemage either. This was something more pure, more refined and more deadly. This situation was beyond his control.
‘The slave I want is a boy, about seven years old. He has been in your pens as long as he can remember, and I need him. He is a stable boy I believe.’
Terath knew at once whom he was talking about but also knew that the boy he searched for had died during the previous year when a renegade mage worked his way into the slave pens at Hertlam and then collapsed them on himself as an act he believed to be martyrdom but that the Order of the Planet seemed to believe it was an unfit action for one of themselves.
‘The boy is dead. He died at the incident at Hertlam.’
At this the Mage knew that Terath was no longer of any use to him seeing as he clearly believed the boy dead. The High Mage of the Order of the Planet raised his hand in front of a screaming and terrified Terath, he knew that as the Master of the Order of the Bear was seeing the red glowing in his eyes and as he did a burst of pain stabbed through Terath’s temples and he collapsed writhing in pain on the floor destined to spend his dying days in complete and total agony. For four days the healers of the Order of the Tree and the ones responsible for the antidotes at the Order of the Fox tried to cure Terath but they all knew it was too late for him. His world had become pain and pain was all that existed for him now. Only one person in the history of the realm was known to have survived such an attack and he was rendered insane by the crushing blow he suffered as the pain left him after a seven-year span. He could not take the silence. He soon after took his own life rather than live without the unbearable pain that had become his life and that he could not live without. The Order of the Tree allowed Terath to die in nature as they believed fit for all living things and placed him deep within one of their forests. For seventeen more days Terath was seen lurking around the villages near his headquarters screaming in agony. Then one night, as he became silent he walked through the woods not to be seen again. Thus began the War of the Battlemage.
Chapter One
Daum was on his way to work. Another day in the forge, the hot, damp, sweaty underground pit of metal, muscle and in many cases blood. Every day the slavers dragged him and the seventeen others he was working with down the high street past the nobles’ servants and slaves buying and selling to their masters’ wishes at the multitude of vibrant and appealing stores along the forefront of the road and the not so appealing dark, sinister, less legitimate vendors with their wares shown to all on blankets ready to run if the officers of the crown happened to be passing that day; well the honest ones. The city of Felst was not the grandest not richest in the realm. Nor was it even the most reputable for any of its traits, besides its notorious affection for slave labour.
Daum had been a slave as long as he could remember. He knew nothing of his past, nothing of his home, nothing of his family. In fact he knew very little at all. He was brought up from childhood as a slave. He had, however, moved swiftly from the lowly, menial tasks to those he enjoyed much more. From little more than scrubber boy he had worked his way to shoe shiner of the lords in the castle at Hertlam to a stable hand, then a tanner’s assistant and before he knew it he was in the line of work he had barely dared dream of; as he knew that those who dreamed were filled with desire, and those who desired strove to achieve their desires. And those who tried that little bit harder would try so hard on the intricacies of any number of small details that they would most likely forget one of the more vital aspects of their job and as a consequence be sold off as a slave of a lesser order.
Daum was a slave of the Order of the Bull. This was one of the five orders of the world. The Order of the Bull chose primarily the slaves with as full a physical capacity as they could want. Daum, while not one of these specifically, was definitely a gifted asset to their slave pens. Their hierarchy was determined solely by hand-to-hand combat in the form of whatever the challenged desired it to be. This way the challenger could know his opponent before the challenge but the challenged one could know the weapon. This almost balanced out the order of things seeing as challenges were incredibly likely to happen on the spot.
The Order of the Tree concerned themselves only with nature and lived among nature in the forests around the cities and in the country. They were also known as the Providers because without them the food supplies would run dry. The Providers could make food grow almost nowhere and were said to be the descendants of the elves.
The Order of the Fox was of great concern to a great number of governing bodies in the realm as they were a guild of assassins. Their bond with the providers was their best asset as all the poisons and antidotes they needed were a mere few leagues away and all it cost them was a promise never to unnecessarily harm a living thing besides those they were paid, and indeed sworn, to kill.
The Order of the Wave were the most widely known as the richest merchants in the world. They chose only a select few members and these members would have to prove themselves worthy of joining by managing to persuade the thirteenth member of the order to make a trade which came out in favour of the newcomer. The trouble was that only the merchant elite, the one in rule of all the merchants, knew the identities of all the other merchants. This way the secrecy between the members would allow them to not know when an unknown member of the order was pursuing them in regards to taking their position in the order from them. Only the merchant elite had the right to choose his successor and each week he would keep the parchment in which he wrote it on his body at all times. Each month the merchant elite would reveal who his previous four choices were and then retire to his chambers in the royal palace, unbeknownst to the royal family as this was all arranged with the Order of the Fox for just a small percentage of the merchant elite’s annual earnings. It was of wide opinion that the merchant elite were the rulers of the world as they could buy out almost anyone who disagreed with their policies, and with the Order of the Fox beside them to back it up it was definitely unlikely that anyone who argued over “moral ground” would be living long enough to recall what those morals were.
Finally there was the Order of the Planet. They were extremely elite and not known by many at all even to exist since the war of the battlemage ten years ago. The Order of the Planet was deemed as extinct by all but the few fanatic followers who were rejected before the demise of the Order of the Planet but judge themselves and the street magic and healing arts they behold the only way to rebuild the Order who have started their own, unofficial order known to them as the Order of the Dark Knights but known to everyone else as nothing but the group of fanatics that they are, driven mad by the destruction of the guild they devoted their lives to trying to join.
Daum was of an average build and had seen the passing of sixteen summers, he had very little recognition as to what changes he should have been expecting but he was now well on his way to manhood. He had short scruffy brown hair, cut every month by the slave barber who was little more than a slave himself who had managed to fashion a blade from some flint and charge a small amount of food per cut. Daum also wore an untidy mask of stubble around the lower half of his face, too dangerous to try and remove with a blade as simple as a flint knife. Had he been living as a free man he would have, with no doubt, caught the attention of any number of young girls, but he was not. He had not, in fact even seen a girl let alone talked to or touched one. This was the life of a slave. He existed only to master his craft and then be forced into another that would bring him closer to that fabled position among the slaves, the Slavemaster. Every five years the Slavemaster, a former slave himself, would be removed from his position and set free. The most skilled and faithful of the remaining slaves would then take up his occupation for the next five years and then their freedom came. Daum did not have a life, he lived through the memories of others distorted and exaggerated by time and little more than absurdities in his mind. He knew nothing of the real world.
During the time he had been at the forge Daum had been shown favouritism by the forge master, his master. This would normally have created an upheaval in the other slaves but in this case they knew it was well deserved. Daum’s preferential treatment was not for any petty reason that any other “favourites” may have been exalted for. This was a gift to him in return for his finest labour which put to shame the efforts of even the forge master himself. Daum’s speciality was sword making; if you had a sword made by the slaves you could expect to pay around ten gold pieces.
This was how the forge worked; the slavers keep slaves who, on average, make around ten swords in a day. Each of these swords is sold for ten gold coins and then three of the hundred gold coins made are spent on keeping the slaves, buying them food and clothes or whatever else they happened to need. Only the bare essentials were available to the slaves. Only Daum was an exception; he had managed to produce on average two swords a day, but the quality of his work was remarkable to the extent that not only were they priced at one hundred and fifty gold pieces each, more than most would pay for an entire suit of armour, but the master of the Order of the Bull had commissioned a sword from Daum and only from Daum. Daum worked for three days, each until two hours after the sun went down. He specifically asked for elements he knew could be used to colour the leather during the process of covering the handpiece. He also asked for a ruby, to be placed, not in the pommel, as had always been the tradition, but in the centre of a feature, which can only be described as a crescent shape with the two ends pointing to either side giving the sword an almost barbed effect. The purest shining steel blade with blood red leather handle, had a single teardrop shaped ruby with the point towards the pommel in the centre of the crescent shape on the blade that had come to be known as “Lunetsang”, the blood red moon.
Chapter Two
Lyrath was crouched atop a small mound just south of the southwest corner of Felst’s outer wall. To the untrained eye it looked like a mere grassy knoll surrounded by more grass of its kind. But Lyrath knew better. Not because he had some special training, although he was an extremely well trained huntsman and knew nature better than most, but because it was partly he that build the knoll and the network of rooms and dormitories below.
Lyrath was an ex-slave freed when the renegade mage broke into the Hertlam slave pits. He was one of twelve to escape that night. Of that twelve two were too elderly to continue past the first league, three were caught up by the city guard and most likely slaughtered and one died on the trail attempting to outrun the guards tracking them. The remaining six would never have had a chance of survival if it were not for the skills Lyrath had learned in his hometown of Yesk in the neighbouring Kingdom of the Night.
Lyrath was removed from Yesk in the middle of the night when a raiding party from the cave dwellers up north captured him and nine other boys to sell to the traders of the Realm. He was kept in the caves for two months where he was forced to scavenge for his food in the neighbouring desert. His skill with his hands and his natural stealth allowed him to feed upon the more nutritious but hard to catch prey in the desert. At first he gave all he could spare to the other captured boys but he soon realised that all of them at the age of nine or ten were content to take but not to give and soon learned the realities of the real world in a life or death situation. He became completely self sufficient and decided not to trust those who did not place their trust in him first. A terrible and lonely way to live but one necessary to survive as an ex-slave on the run, even after twelve years, and as a convict.
He crouched upon the slave pits he had built here before his transfer to Hertlam and his eventual escape. The only entrance lay inside the walls and under his feet was thirty feet of soil between him and the slaves he had sworn to free along with one of the other escaped slaves. By night the hole, covered with a sheet of bracken and moss collected from the nearby forests, was gradually reaching the ceiling of the slave quarters. The only noticeable effect was the small amounts of dirt falling onto the topmost, and highest quality, bunk in the room. This was, however, not that rare an occurrence seeing as wooden pillars around the perimeter of the room were all that held up the ceiling. Eventually, with all the soil deposited in the forest every night, the hole went undiscovered until on the fourth night, during the heaviest rainfall seen at Felst that year, Lyrath was able to break through.
Immediately there were screams and shouts from all the slaves and as a rope ladder was dropped down a small, barely man sized, hole a sudden rush of dirty blood encrusted hands were all grabbing for the ladder and forcing those in front of them up quicker just to get themselves out to the free world as soon as they could. Within minutes the sentries had summoned the sleeping guards in the barracks in the next tunnel and all the slaves attempting to escape were being maimed or slaughtered to prevent them escaping.
Daum, as the preferential slave, was on the top bunk, almost exactly below where the ladder was dropped. Being in such a vital yet vulnerable position he was the first to be shoved up the ladder into the free world. The free world, which he knew nothing about. The free world in which he knew that he did not belong. As the weight upon the ladder increased the waterlogged turf into which the pegs holding the ladder in place were inserted came loose and all of a sudden Daum and three other slaves were half trapped in the loam that had encompassed them during the collapse of the shaft. Lyrath, seeing this, ran to the hole and began digging, trying in vain to re-open his last four night’s work; but to no avail. In the end he simply saw the four guards running towards him and retreated into the woods.
Daum, being trapped at the top of the tunnel just after a major breakout attempt, was not appearing too well in the eyes of the guards. In fact to them, because the shaft was directly above his bunk and he was the first out it seemed that it was he who had arranged the whole fiasco and attempted to run for his freedom. As he was being escorted back to the gates of the city one of the guards suddenly dropped to the floor, then another. Of the remaining two one drew his shield and aimed to advance towards where the shafts, now embedded in the necks of the two unfortunate guards, came from. The other turned and fled but before long he had a shaft embedded between the plates of his armour penetrating the kidney, another shortly followed into the man’s neck as he fell. The final guard approached the unknown archer before receiving a stout thump on the back of the head from a seventeen year old slave who had just realised that his options were that or face a public execution.
He suddenly knew; he was to create himself a new life, away from the slave pits, but this was not something he knew how to do. He was not a quick learner but a devoted one. He was not particularly educated and had almost no recognition of what writing even was. He did, however, realise that he must first thank, or rather forsake, those who removed him from all he had knows, for it was they who were responsible for his predicament. He first tended to the distraught man who he had come to know as Lyrath, the hunter. Lyrath, he came to learn, was no traditional hunter with bows and daggers but he hunted with his bare hands in an attempt to become as close to nature and therefore reach his inner potential as a warrior and provider. At this point, however, Lyrath was in a rage. Every little thing he could see was being blamed for the waste of a two month long trek and over half a week’s digging.
‘Why tonight?’ he screamed at the large oak in front of him as he launched a small stone at its trunk, ‘Why did I have to be tonight that it rained? Why of all nights did I even bother breaking through tonight? I could have gone through any other night but no; I had to be impatient and now all my hard work is for what? One miserable slave. What a successful plan this turned out to be.’
‘I don’t understand why you did what you did tonight, but I would like you to know that although you freed me you are in a situation that I would appreciate having explained to me. For example:’ his voice rising to a crescendo. ‘Why did you remove me from everything that I have ever known? What have I ever done to you to have my world brought crashing down before my eyes? In the last quarter hour I have been woken up by dirt falling on my head, then had a ladder thrown at me, had almost three hundred other slaves shoving me up a hole I did not particularly want to be shoved through, and now I find myself guilty of assaulting an officer of the realm. What kind of freedom do you believe this is?’
‘Well isn’t that just great,’ the man replied, drawing himself up to his full height to be seen as one of the tallest men Daum had ever seen, ‘We only manage to rescue one and the b*st*rd isn’t even grateful.’ Lyrath’s eyes glinted with the knowing look of a man who had seen the less common and more toxic side of the realm. On closer inspection Lyrath was seen to be a good fifteen years older than Daum at the least, but an extremely dominating presence which immediately brought Daum back into line as he removed all thoughts of aggression and replaced them with the curiosity that now filled his completely traumatized mind. Why was this man here? Why did he come to free the slaves? What will I do now?
His attention was suddenly averted as a mysterious figure approached him from the direction of the bodies of the guards. The figure was cleaning down the shafts that had been loosed into the necks of the city guard on its tunic. This was most certainly the archer who had saved him from certain capital punishment. The figure walked slowly and more gracefully than anyone Daum had seen in the slave pits. They seemed to have a presence that released strange urges he had never felt before. He was overcome with curiosity and suddenly forgot all of his anger and frustration and became immediately paralysed by this appearance.
‘That’s my daughter,’ Lyrath pointed out, ‘I returned to Yesk only to find her mother had been executed for practices of witchcraft. In Yesk witchcraft is known as hereditary in women and I knew I must remove my daughter as soon as I could. We have been working together ever since, I taught her the use of basic weapons, for I myself know little of such things, and she soon progressed to be more than proficient with a bow and with less known but just as deadly stiletto knives she hides on her person.’
Daum could still barely contain he excitement. He had finally met a real woman. Although she was a good two summers younger than him he still could not believe his eyes. She was a well-figured young girl that he came to know as Elana. As the three renegades camped in the forest Lyrath managed to forage a good few handfuls of berries and two rabbits for their supper. Daum had rarely tasted meat an when he had none was as succulent and tender as this was. He did not know what to expect the meat to taste like but although Lyrath and Elana seemed to be almost repulsed he savoured every bite, thankful that for once the meat was actually cooked.
The small pit in the centre of the makeshift camp was little more than a pile of slightly warm charred sticks when Daum awoke the next morning. Elana and Lyrath were nowhere to be seen and all that remained was he and the pit of embers. He wondered what he had done to offend them to the extent that they would leave him so soon after they had “freed” him. He suddenly realised not only had his whole world been removed from him but he was in a material world with no possessions but the clothes on his back. He suddenly realised that staying there was going to do him no good so he stood up and started walking. He walked away from the city, his home for the last ten years, and removed himself into the wilderness of which he knew nothing. Before long he came across a track in the dirt but thought the better of taking it as he presumed he was to be killed on sight by any guards who spotted him. He came across a small stream noticed that it led almost directly away from the city and was a healthy supply of water. He followed it for what seemed like hours before he could walk no further. He drank his fill from the river and decided that he would need to sleep sometime soon. He managed to find a large hollow rotted log and curled up inside for protection from the vicious elements that were promising to show themselves that night.
Daum could never remember feeling such cold. He could barely sleep and seemed to be shivering, a sensation that he had never experienced in the slave pits. Quite the opposite in fact. This was the first time he had managed to sleep without his bunk being almost covered in sweat beforehand. The slave pits had a horrid smell of sweat and excrement from the lavatories next door but they at least kept him warm throughout the nights. The cold was very new to him and he slept very little. When he finally awoke he found himself wrapped in a blanket with a small fire next to him with a rabbit and three rats cooking over it. He also saw two familiar faces that had evidently followed his trail.
‘Why did you abandon me back in the woods?’ he barely whispered as he struggled to comprehend what he was seeing, ‘Why have you followed me and provided me with food again? Why are you here?’
‘We never abandoned you in the first place!’ Elana burst out, ‘we went to the stream to find ourselves some water to make porridge for breakfast. When we returned, you had disappeared.’
Your trail, however, was not too hard to follow seeing as you seem to have no regard for those chasing you. It was obvious that you did not choose the trail because you thought it would offer better protection but does a footprint show up more against damp soil or against many others that take the route daily?’ Daum felt embarrassed at his mistake, then realised he had no skill in the matter and suddenly realised that his life could have been forfeit right now if it were not for the two renegades who currently were keeping him alive.
‘I’m sorry for treating you so badly. I guess I was so caught up in losing all I had that I didn’t stop to think that I might now have the opportunity to live as a free man, fulfil my dreams, forge my own destiny.’ He was becoming more and more fuelled as his own words sparked his imagination ‘Thank you Lyrath, and you Elana, for giving me this opportunity. I shall live my life as I see fit and nobody shall stand in my way!’
‘Good luck with that,’ the knowing tone of Lyrath’s voice managed to suddenly grab Daum’s attention.
‘What do you mean “good luck with that”?’ he replied, wondering what the huntsman meant.
‘I mean you’re going to need a lot more than enthusiasm to make dreams come true, this world needs more than enthusiasm for you to survive in it. You need more than that. You need help.
Chapter Three
Kale was riding toward the Realm of Five Orders at breakneck speed. His steed, the finest in the Kingdom of Taeron was driven nearly o death with the exhaustion of almost three weeks solid riding. The urgency of his mission was of greater importance to Kale than of any other and because of that he had been hand picked by King Taerath XVII as the courier for his message to the Order of the Tree. The Tree of Silver as it had come to be known due to its silver leaves, was in trouble. Every year it shed its leaves, just as any other, and the people of Taeron would gather them up and create a robe for the newest Knight of the realm.
Each knight was given a twelve-year service and his cloak finally decaying back to the nature from which it was conceived marked the end of his term. This way there were always twelve knights of supreme loyalty to king and country and these were known as the Silver Knights, after their cloaks from the leaves of the Tree of Silver. Kale was due to be the next of these knights. His training has lasted since he came of age, at twelve in the Taeron states. He had been an exceptional pupil and only the extremely elite could even be considered as a possibility of being the next Silver Knight. This year, however, the silver leaves did not fall.
Kale was distraught. He had been training for almost ten years and all his hopes of becoming a Silver Knight had been dashed on that fateful day where each year the leaves should fall. The Order of the Tree were widely known to be the best attuned to the needs of trees although the Order of the Planet may have been of more use seeing as this was not an ordinary tree. Unfortunately for Kale they were all believed dead. He was almost at the Realm of Five Orders now and the adrenaline was pumping through his heart. He if he completed this task he was to become a battlemage. The order of the tree, it seemed, had its headquarters in a forest near the city of Felst which spread for almost thirty times the size of the city itself, not somewhere to attempt to enter alone; which he would not have to had a swarm of kel not devoured his companions. He was a hardened warrior though and his training prevented him from doing all but what was necessary in the face of over three hundred fist sized reptiles nipping his feet with their razor sharp teeth and climbing up his legs to more vital areas with their incredibly well developed feet which allowed them to walk on virtually any surface at any angle. Eventually he managed to loose his horse to prevent any damage to its nearly flawless hide and then released the horses of the other two riders in the same direction. The kel, drawn by the overpowering scent of blood from the horses swept after them allowing Kale and his steed to ride off as fast as was possible without attracting the attention of the kel again. Three days later there he was. The border guards just ahead of him could not fail to recognise the insignia of a silver tree on his shield. They knew that this was a knight of Taeron. They suddenly were extremely cautious, as they all knew the rumours of the magical strengths of these, the most powerful of battlemagi.
‘What is your business in the Realm of Five Orders?’ the larger of the two guards just about managed to stutter out as he shrank back into his mask of fear.
‘I seek passage to the forest of the Order of the Tree.’ He replied with a stern authority to his tone, which left the guards struggling even to find words to react with. ‘I am on a mission regarding the most holy of beings in the Kingdom of Taeron; the Tree of Silver.’ At this the guards inwardly sn*ggered but dare not show such a reaction to one so devoutly religious. The Realm did not have religion. Its basis was entirely on the five Orders. The heads of the Orders were almost living gods and any one man, woman or child who refused to bow to their will would be punished in the way that the offended party’s order considered fit.
The deity of Taeron’s name was knows to none but the most senior Silver Knight and the king himself. No others were seen as worthy to know the name of a god. The Silver Knight’s however had the most devout belief in their deity, as that is where their magical powers were drawn from. Their deity had created the Tree of Silver and spoken directly to the king who the deity chose to be his first disciple and he also spoke to a common farm boy who he made the first Silver Knight, the most powerful being on the planet. The power of the Silver Knights was drawn from within themselves, as it could be from all men if their training was correct, but the ability to unlock it came with ease when the knights wore the leaves of the Tree of Silver.
During the was of the battlemage both sides desperately attempted to gain the aid of the Silver Knights but the Silver Knights believed that such a war had no benefit to either side and was just to solve a petty argument that could just as easily been settled with a duel. The fact that the war was between the Order of the Bear and the Order of the planet left the battlemagi, a collaboration between the two, in an extremely difficult position. While many decided not join in the war between their founders, many more chose one side or the other and the war raged on for an almost insignificant time scale of a mere two weeks but the havoc that can be wreaked by ten thousand battlemagi on opposing sides was more immense than any war before has ever seen. Two thirds of the known world became uninhabitable for three years afterwards as the remnants of magic seemed to manifest themselves in the forms of demons and spectres and all who die there added their internal magic to the melting pot of the Desert of the Dead leaving more and more destruction and more and more spirits and demons ready to conquer all those who entered their lands. After the war of the battlemage it took the High Mage of the Order of the Planet over a month to seal the battleground, preventing the escape of the spectres that random magical energy has a strange tendency to form. And it took the combined effort of all the magi both sides could muster to eventually condemn the demons into that non-existent world of in-between known only as the silence.
The guards let Kale through when his mission had been explained although they were slightly less intimidated once they found out that the one they feared so much and not even gained the ability to use the magical energies he had been training to increase over the last few years. He immediately stopped off at the nearest inn and bought himself a tankard of ale when three large men approached him. The largest of the three, most obviously the leader, decided that he was not in favour of the knight’s choice of inn and thought that a fight was in order.
‘Me an’ my brothers don’ like yer shiny coat an’ we be thinkin’ you be needin’ t’ give us yer gold t’ make up fer it.’ The big one yelled in Kale’s general direction. A few moments later when Kale deciphered the rustic local tongue he decided it would be best if he removed himself to his chambers for the night. Silently he walked confidently to the door to the bedchambers when suddenly he heard a roar of anger and he turned to find a fist being flung full force towards his face. He immediately threw down his visor as he ducked beneath the blow and returned to his feet. He managed to slowly advance on his attacker but due to the limited visibility of his helmet he neglected to notice the two other brothers. He looked in around his field of vision before feeling a sharp thump on the back of his head. The attacked screamed in pain as the magically hardened armour broke three of his fingers and left him with only one good hand. Kale, now in a stronger position, threw his fist at the third brother who was trying to sneak to Kale’s legs to trip him. The man’s nose shattered and with a gush of blood the enraged stranger launched himself at Kale taking him to the ground. The largest man suddenly had a knife to Kale’s throat and was again demanding Kale’s gold.
This was one situation, which the knight had not the most basic idea of how to escape from.
‘I have no gold; I am merely a messenger travelling to the Order of the Tree from the Kingdom of Taeron. All I own is carried upon my person as my needs are catered for by the King himself.’ Kale replied hoping that the giants of men would leave him be.
‘Then yer shiny coat it is.’ The eldest brother bellowed in a triumphant roar. At this Kale became distraught. Having one’s armour removed from ones possession was the greatest shame amongst the silver knights.
‘No!’ Kale screamed almost in pure agony at the thought of all he knew being ripped away from him due to a bad choice of inn, ‘My master will be able to pay you any gold you desire, just please don’t take my armour.’
‘A little attached to yer shiny coat are we,’ the shortest and presumably youngest brother retorted, ‘Methinks that’s all the more reason to be a takin’ it from yer. Shows us how valuable it could be, when a man pleads for his belongings before his life.’ Soon afterwards Kale was left with nothing but the under tunic he wore and the leather greaves to protect his legs from chaffing as he walked and soon they too would belong to the three brothers.
Chapter Four
Kale was distraught. His whole world was gone, he, the most devout disciple not yet of the Silver Knights, had been forsaken by his god and had every chance of being completely forsaken by his people also. He truly had lost everything. His skills as a knight were of very little use with no cause to fight for. He had very little chance to do anything but he had already composed himself and determined a course of action. Although a dangerous and dishonourable trade he would become a mercenary; guarding trade caravans for the Order of the Waves. He left the inn the next morning and saddled his steed. He may have had the finest steed but he was in desperate need of supplies and he therefore discovered the nearest stables and sold the mare for a paltry sum not even close to reflecting the prowess of the creature he had been forced to leave behind, but desperate times called for desperate measures; and these were the most desperate times he ever had to face.
He immediately asked around for the nearest armoury only to find that he was in the only town he had ever come across with almost no need for military supplies. Although the town was on the border it was of very little military significance and was susceptible to being taken over extremely easily and the people there accepted that and never bothered to fight when the skirmishes came. All they did was sit back and watch the opposing soldiers slog it out, the villagers with hardened stomachs that is. He was soon wandering round town asking anyone he saw with a sword or weapon of any kind how much they would be willing to part with their weapon for. The answer, as he came to realise, was almost inevitably that they either wouldn’t part with it or that it was way above his price range, even after he bartered for a while. The next forge, he found, was in the neighbouring village about a day’s ride from where he was. The trouble was that he no longer had a mount and it was unlikely that the stable master would want to part with the mare for the paltry sum he had paid for him.
Kale began to walk. He reached his destination purely because of the help of a caravan guard who recognised an almost kindred spirit and lent him a spare sword for the duration of the trip allowing him to earn the food, water and comforts he had been allowed. He also received four gold coins from the men who he travelled with as a parting gift to allow Kale to buy himself the necessary equipment to become a mercenary, although such a trifling sum he could not foresee helping his cause. These men were the closest to friends Kale had ever had and was extremely grateful to them for their generosity. He did, however, have to part ways because while the caravan supported him for that short few days they could not afford an extra guard and still make a reasonable profit. Striding along Kale could imagine his world finally taking a turn for the better when he was on his way to where the young boy on the street had told him the armoury lie. He walked along the street, turned the corner to where the armoury was, and fell to his knees and almost cried.
A smouldering wreck of a building was all that was left after the raids from the creatures known only as sand demons which had somehow managed to spread the fire from the fireplace in the armoury across the wattle and daub walls causing them to char and finally collapse on themselves. He managed to find the owner of the armours at the tavern and asked him if he had any wares left to sell.
‘None but those amongst the wreckage of my livelihood.’ The armourer replied, ‘I will willingly trade any item you find in the wreckage over there but I myself am too disturbed by the sight of my home in ruins. You must, of course, realise that the head will have damaged the blades and they will be nowhere near as strong as they once may have been. The seven times tempered steel will now be almost the same as unfolded iron ore with the treatment they have suffered.’ Kale was more than impressed with the man’s resolve though he presumed the seven empty tankards on the man’s table would have had something to do with that.
‘If I give you all but a small portion of my gold necessary for food would you consider working a few things for me?’
‘Not in my current state lad. Try the carpenters, third building on the right down that way.’ He waved his hand in a roundabout eastward direction.
‘What use is a carpenter to me? I want weapons and armour not chairs and gates.’ Kale was suddenly confounded by his own frustration. Never before had he ever been angry, not since his childhood at least. It was the first law of the Silver. Never lose your temper. He suddenly realised, he was no longer of the Silver, and he was a free man.
‘I’m not suggesting you go to the carpenters just for wood, my apprentice, once the forge burnt down, changed his craft. He works there now, though the world of weapons will be sorely missed without him.’ At this Kale’s heart lightened. He set off immediately to the third building in an eastwardly direction and came across a store with chairs, tables, gates and carts outside. He presumed it was the correct shop. When he entered he saw nothing but huge piles of wood shavings in almost every direction. Normally it would have been sold off to the forge for placing around weapons and armour in their crates for long transit but seeing as the forge was no more the piles just kept growing.
He eventually found the boy working at a lathe, although boy he was not to be for much longer. He was of a large build and heavily biased in muscle towards his left side, the mark of a left handed armourer. It was evident the boy had not the finesse required for working with wood but his attention to detail was immaculate nonetheless.
‘Are you the boy who was the armourer’s apprentice until the accident?’ he asked just out of politeness.
‘That I am,’ the boy replied, ‘and who, may I ask, is searching for me?’
I am a mercenary but I have a lack of weapons or armour. I was hoping you would be able to re-visit the forge and aid me in creating some items for me, for the small amount of gold I possess.’ The boy took one look at the gold in the stranger’s hand and immediately accepted, for the money was of little consequence to a man this boy was not yet on full wages and the few small coins Kale had offered him were a fortune to the boy.
Kale was expecting little more than a rudimentary sword, helm, breastplate, and possibly greaves or shield; but the boy was a perfectionist, much to Kale’s delight. The boy told Kale to return in three days to the forge and while Kale hunted in the fringes of the forest the boy kept his pace slowly, meticulously working the steel to as fine an edge as he could muster. This was the boy’s first commissioned piece and not wanting to make a bad impression poured his heart and soul into his work and the result was incredible.
‘I wish to thank you, Gotel.’ Kale had come to know the boy well as he had frequently been sent for to aid Gotel in the forge. ‘I am more than grateful for your expert skill and the sheer volume of work you have put in to this project dwarfs any dedication I have seen in all my days. I also wish to thank you for providing me with more than I asked. A few basic pieces of equipment I could expect from you and maybe even one or two extras but never would I have expected a full chain mail suit, mush less one created in three days as well as a sword, shield and helm. I wish there was some way I could repay you for your actions.’
‘With that small fortune you paid me I could barely have done work equal to the cost with mere basic equipment. Four of the coins you offered me are stamped with the seal of the wave. These coins are worth tens of mere gold coins. These can be trades with the Order of the Waves for great value.’ Kale suddenly knew that the soldiers had given him their combined pay for that entire journey and he almost burst into tears of thanks at the mere memory of those who served him so well, yet barely knew his name.
With a small fortune’s worth of gold Gotel intended to buy his old master’s forge from him and start up his own business once he had rebuilt it.
‘I shall be more than happy to work for you again, my friend, and seeing as you gave me the funds to pursue my dreams a discount does not even need to be asked for. Someday I hope to prove my prowess to you and become the greatest armourer in the Realm of Five Orders.’
‘I should be grateful when that day comes as it may be under more prosperous terms.’ Kale was again bemused by the aid these foreigners were offering him. He was, however, extremely grateful for all the aid he had been given.
That night he spent the night again on the fringes of the city as that way he needn’t waste his money on an inn. The following morning he woke to find himself being tied at the ankles. He immediately reaches for his sword only to find that it had already been removed. The instinctively grabbed his scabbard as his training had taught him and the man tying his feet was instantly on the floor unconscious with a scabbard shaped mark appearing on his cheek. He looked around all of a sudden and realised, thankfully, that he was still where he has lain to sleep last night. As the man tying his feet fell another men came to Kale’s feet.
‘Do not be alarmed,’ the man said. He appeared to be in his early thirties, with scruffy, sandy-blonde hair and a look of experience far beyond his years should allow. ‘We wish to be your friends.’ At this Kale could barely restrain his laughter, these men had tried to tie him up had removed his sword and now claimed these acts were offerings of friendship?
‘If that’s how you treat friends I’d hate to see how you treat your enemies.’ Kale retorted, malice creeping into his voice which he soon attempted to disguise, not for the stranger’s benefit, but to protect himself from the realisation that had not fully sunk in yet, that he, Kale next in line of the Silver Knights, was allowing aggression to begin to take control of him.
‘We were merely being cautious.’ The man stated. ‘We have no intention of harming you. We just thought it safer if we knew that you would not harm us first.’ Beginning to understand this logic Kale calmed down a little and started to wonder what had become of the man he had hit with his scabbard.
‘He’ll be fine.’ The sandy haired stranger explained, noting the concern and guilt in Kale’s look. ‘He just took a slight blow to the head, that’s all. That scabbard of yours may be a handy little tool but it will make little difference to my companion if you only hit his cheek. A broken jaw is hardly enough to stop a man.’
‘I broke his jaw?’ Kale asked in horror. Never before had he injured someone unnecessarily. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I never meant...’
‘It’s ok.’ The man calmly talked Kale through the injuries he had caused the man and, thankfully, a broken jaw was not one of them.
‘So why are you here anyway?’ Kale realised he knew very little about these men and what they were doing here.
‘We are two friends who have travelled together for almost twenty years in search of adventure and fortune. We have, however recently realised that fortune and adventure are all well and good but what use are they with nobody to share it with? Of course we have each other but that is not the sort of company we are looking for. We have decided it’s about time to start our own families. We are currently scouring the countryside villages seeking out women whom seem appropriate for us to wed.’
The concept of marriage was odd to Kale. In Taeron marriage simply did not exist. When a man and a woman believed themselves sufficiently in love they would attempt for a child. When the woman had conceived the child the father was to leave her under the care of the midwives of the King’s household. Once the child was born the father was permitted to visit his child and it’s mother and between the parents they must take the child to the most senior Silver Knight and he was to use the powers delivered to him by the god of Taeron to determine not only which parent the child was to stay with, but which profession the child was to be brought up to follow.
‘Why do you seek a companion when your friend and you seem perfectly happy with your way of life?’ Kale asked, still not quite understanding the motives of these men.
‘To be honest, the dark haired man said as he sat up rubbing the large red mark on his cheek, ‘this is just another adventure for us. We ran out of bad guys to fight and thought we’d go on a treasure hunt instead.’
‘Then why hunt for something you don’t really want?’ Kale thought he was getting the grasp of this conversation but he also was starting to realise that he had just managed to point out a vital flaw in the logic of these two men. His overconfidence was another trait he was discovering that brought fear into his heart as he started to become what he had tried so hard not to for the seven year duration of his training.
‘The lad has a point there you know.’ The dark haired man pointed out. ‘It’s not like we have secret desires to instantly become family men. We only got into this for a challenge and I think it’s about time we go back into the uninhabitable world to face the demonspawn that escaped from the army of mages’ spells.’ The dark haired man was quite obviously not a fighter as the other man was. He did, in fact, wear no visible armour and carried no weapon but a small bone knife, which looked more for ceremonial purposes than actual fighting. The man’s clothing was what gave away his profession. This was a company of two men who had decided, may years ago, that although friends they were not, their talents complimented each other perfectly and the desire in both to become great adventurers soon united them as close knit as you could expect to members of the same sex to be. The stories of their deeds would be told across the Realm of Five Orders and across the rest of the world. Jorak the warrior and Aslet the mage.
Never before had Kale met a mage who was not one of the battlemagi of the Silver Knights. It was a most fascinating experience for him as he found out how the orphan from Tarth, the gateway to the ruined world, had become so infused with rage at the murder of his parents that he suddenly began to unleash his skills. He was not angry with anyone but himself for letting his parents be killed when he swore he would never abandon them. He sat alone in his bedroom, the stench of rotting flesh creeping up from the room below, as he had been too terrified to tell anyone what had happened to his parents in case he was blamed. For hours he sat the pain welling up inside him until he could no longer bear it. After seven hours he simply stood up in silence, climbed the ladder to the flat roof of his house and screamed. Every townsperson within hearing distance came to hear the bloodcurdling howl of a boy who had almost nothing left to live for. He stood screaming at the edge of his roof until something finally clicked in his head. It was not his fault that his parents had been murdered; it was the merchant who had hired an assassin to remove the competition from the pharmaceutical trade in the gateway town. His scream of anguish suddenly changed into a scream of pure and utter hatred. His eyes flared blue at the sight of the opposing merchant. He realised that true retribution could never be reached for that man was responsible for two deaths; but the death that Aslet was about to release was the worst kind he could imagine. Atop the rooftop in the midst of the night Aslet began to burn. The flames crept out from his fingertips slowly working their way across his body until he was almost nothing more than a giant blue flame with a slightly darkened outline somewhere in the centre of a man in a state of rage, ecstasy, and he was still in total control. He reached out his hand towards the merchant and saw a giant flaming grip reach towards the now terrified chemist from a sleepy little town. Immediately the rival of his parents admitted his crimes and offered numerous amounts of compensation for their death. Aslet took none. He reached the flaming fist out and took a hold on the obese yet devious merchant and held on for dear life, or death, as it seemed to be in that case.
Chapter Five
Lyrath had managed to persuade Daum to travel with him and his daughter on their pilgrimage to every slave pit in the known world. Daum, although he had a good life as a slave, had managed to start enjoying his life in the free world, and in no small part was this due to Elana. His first port of call, however, was to the nearest border. With the whole faction of Realm guards on the lookout for him he had decided, along with the help of Lyrath and Elana, that a temporary period of recuperation would do all three of them good. During the three weeks of trekking there were few incidents of any consequence. At one point a guard had recognised their descriptions at a customs check point along the main road but fortunately some smooth talking from Elana and a few promises of “benefits” when she returned granted them safe passage to the Kingdom of Night.
The Kingdom had earned its name because during an ancient war between the Kingdom of Night and a now extinct faction of hunter-gatherers, the most precious belonging to the kingdom had been destroyed. The High temple of Relt, the god of the Kingdom of Night, was the most magnificent building the world had ever seen. Innumerable diamonds pearls and precious stoned lined the walls both inside and out. The gems had been added over two millennia of faithful followers of Relt paying the one tribute required of them in their lifetime, and over two millennia there was plenty of wealth to be seen at the temple. During one skirmish between the unknown faction and the Kingdom of Night one rebel of the faction managed to sneak past the enemy lines. This was the hunter-gatherer’s first time to a civilised place and it frightened him. The buildings were taller than even the tallest trees he had ever seen. It was a horrifying sight and the invader felt dwarfed by the immense buildings and it was not a feeling he was used to or cared to get to know that well. The total overriding fear of the hunter-gatherer lost in a civilised world triggered the release of the magic that the Kingdom of Night believed the faction incapable of. Total destruction followed but not of the whole city. The hunter-gatherer focussed these new found powers on destroying the one thing that scared him most. The immense building that shone in the sun. The temple of Relt. Every last remnant of the temple had been destroyed before even the first priest had managed to escape. Caught up in this new found godlike power the hunter-gatherer turned his energies on the largest remaining buildings but neglected to pay heed to the arrow shaft flying through the air directly at his neck. The man dropped, tendrils of pure magic flailing from his fingertips and maw. The rest of the unknown faction witnessed the occurrence within the walls of the city they were attacking and were each almost as terrified as that one man had been who destroyed the most beautiful thing in the civilised world.
As the hunter-gatherers turned and fled they were quickly and efficiently overrun and none but a few captured men were left living and they stood trial and were put to death for their actions. The king at the time was so distraught by the loss of what he considered the heart of the kingdom decided that every king from him onwards was to assume the title “Eternal Mourner” and he renamed the kingdom the Kingdom of night to reflect the darkness he saw every morning of the cityscape that had one had a glistening bejewelled centrepiece now seeming almost bare in every respect leaving the man as hollow as the building he missed so much.
In the centuries that followed with nowhere to worship their god the people of the Kingdom of Night became sceptical about their so-called god and eventually forgot him altogether. The philosophers and magicians at the time of that most ancient war prophesised the demise of the religious sector of the Kingdom and stated that the reason the people would stop to believe was that Relt himself was fuelled by the offerings of gems and diamonds and the discontinued offerings of belief in Relt caused Relt to neglect his belief in the existence of his subjects, so blind the true god was.
Copyright © Dominic House 2006
Post Edited By elephantt, May/11/2006, 2:47 pm
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May/9/2006, 2:52 pm
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