by E. S. Bell
Copyright ©2017 E.S. Bell
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover by The Cover Collection
Interior formatting by That Formatting Lady, http://thatformattinglady.com/
Lunos map by Kate Didyk
Dedication
Map of Lunos
Prologue
Part I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Part II
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Part III
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Epilogue
About E.S. Bell
Glossary
Acknowledgments
For my father, with love.
(Select the image to expand for greater detail.)
I stood on the deck of the White Wave. Dawn had yet to break. In my spyglass, lanterns hanging in cabins and mounted on the mastheads of three hundred Zak’reth warships were the only light—starbursts among the mass of shadows that were converging on another indistinct shape. Isle Calinda. The Zak’reth did not care about stealth. They were bold and brazen, and the innocent people of Isle Calinda would know their merciless fire unless I stopped them.
The White Wave was lightless. As was the Firestar beside her, where Skye stood upon its quarterdeck. As were the other twenty or so Armada ships that had come on this dangerous mission.
“First light,” Skye had told me the night before. “We’re going to sail you close. As soon as the sun breaks the horizon, do it.”
I’d nodded grimly. “Yes, Commander. But…”
“Yes?”
“What if I’m not strong enough?”
“Then we’re all dead,” Skye said.
Now, I stood on the main deck of the White Wave with Ilior beside me. My pale blonde hair whipped my face where it had been pulled from its tight braid by the wind. The Vai’Ensai—the dragonman to the crew—was to brace me as I cast the spell, and he would catch me as I fell into unconsciousness or died, such was the exhaustive power of Summoning.
The White Wave pulled away from the Firestar, drew nearer to the Zak’reth fleet that was only a league and a half in front of our nose. Skye’s plan relied on the fact the Zak’reth would not look back.
I thrust my chin out. I stood tall with shoulders thrown back. I was a Summoner. Not for a thousand years had there been one such as me. I was blessed by the god in a way no other living Aluren Paladin could imagine. I was a vessel into which the god could move the seas.
My bravado only barely concealed my fear.
I looked at the Zak’reth ships, thought of the men aboard. Forty men to a ship. Three hundred ships. Twelve thousand men were breathing their last breaths as I, their destroyer looked upon them. The number was too big, too staggering, even if it belonged to the enemy. Then I turned to the township that hugged the shore of Isle Calinda. Four hundred souls huddled in their homes, watching the Zak’reth approach, believing their last moments were at hand.
But no. I would save them. They and the countless others the Zak’reth would murder in their war. They had already laid waste to the Farendus Isles. I nodded to myself, even as my heart clanged against my chest and my limbs trembled. As the sun crested the eastern horizon, I looked to the other ship. To Skye. She raised her hand and brought it down again. My order was clear.
I raised my own arms and drew in a long, shaking breath.
I had never sought to call so much water. My training in the Moon Temple had been scarce; the Summoning drained me terribly. I wondered with a stab of fear if asking the ocean for so much would kill me. It might, I thought. Penance for taking so many Zak’reth lives. A sacrifice for the greater good. I left it to the god to decide.
I spoke the words.
The deck beneath my feet canted downwards and I felt Ilior grip the back of my belt to keep me on my feet. I heard the gasps of the sailors around me and then all sound was drowned out by the deafening surge. A wall of water rose up in front of the White Wave, blocking out the sight of the Zak’reth warships. Up, up, it rose, higher than I could have dreamed; and I exulted that the Two-Faced God loved me, loved the Aluren and the Alliance and the people of Isle Calinda. By its good graces, I was going to save them all.
I held my arms upward for another heartbeat and then thrust them forward. The wave ceased its upward surge and raced toward the Zak’reth armada.
I sank to my knees, watching as the water crashed over the ships, shattering them and sending bits of wood and bodies flying into the air as a churning whirlpool broiled beneath. Men screamed and drowned as their ships were smashed against one another and against the water that pummeled them like a fist of a mighty giant slamming down. The destruction was total. Three hundred warships gone, their sturdy hulls rendered into kindling, sails torn and floating like shrouds on the water; rigging tangled with red-armored men, dragging them down into the churning froth.
I rejoiced…until I saw that my wave had been stronger than even I could have dreamed. It smashed the Zak’reth ships but did not stop. With a silent scream of horror, I watched it crash against the shores of Isle Calinda. The water, like a giant’s hand, clawed the settlement and when it receded the shoreline was wiped clean. The settlement was gone. Four hundred people…gone, carried into the swirling aftermath of the wave and dying with the Zak’reth who would have killed them too. Gone. All gone.
My soul cried out as I couldn’t. I hadn’t the strength. The joy of my victory blackened and rotted at what I had done. The horror of it—not just the people of Calinda but the Zak’reth too; hundreds of people dead at my hand. It overwhelmed my senses. It seemed as if all the world had become one loud, long, anguished scream that only I could hear.
The god will be so angry with me, I thought.
And then it happened.
From the ether, or the sky, or the moon itself, some unseen missile flew at me and struck me in the chest, blasting me with a merciless, raw power that could only have come from a wrathful entity not of this world. I heard my own lungs make a horrifying sucking sound as they tried to draw in air. Agony bored into the core of me, into my heart that radiated deathly cold like a dead, black sun
. The pain of thousands of people dying, drowning; the pain of thousands breathing cold water instead of air; that pain lived in me as a slab of ice as tall as the wave I made and as heavy as the world. I tried to scream, to lend my voice to that chorus and die, but that would be too merciful.
I clutched at my chest as Ilior above me cried out for help. It was then I found the mark. The hole. My hands trembled and I was falling away but I managed to open my tunic and peered down to see…
The blackness. It sucked me into its inky depths; a cold, black well bored into the center of me, in the shape of a crescent moon—the God’s Shadow face. The Eye.
“What have I done…?”
And then the moon-shaped hole in my chest breathed its first cold breath and I screamed and screamed…
The Tainted One
Paladin Selena Koren knelt at the altar, head bowed, eyes squeezed shut. Her gloved fingers clenched the crossbar of her sword. A shaft of sunlight from the circular window fell over her, illuminating the gold of her hair, the blue of the sapphire in the pommel of her sword, the silver stitching of her Aluren overtunic. A brilliant slant of light that carried with it all of the summer’s intense heat.
Selena shivered. Always shivered.
Her shoulders burned and hours on the wooden planking bruised her knees, but she did not rise. Outside the small sanctuary’s thin clapboard walls, the ocean crashed, roaring and subsiding, louder and louder as the high tide came in. Within, a salty draft swirled gritty sand over the planking and groaned in the eaves. She listened for the Two-Faced God’s voice in those whispers or the rumble of the sea.
“Please,” she whispered. “What must I do?”
The blackness behind her closed eyes shifted and morphed. A pier jutted out over mist-laden water. The night was deep but stars and a crescent moon shed silvery light. Everything was aglow: the pier, the water; even the mist glittered faintly, and so thick Selena couldn’t see anything but the pier, the water, and the light.
An orange light hovered over the water in the distance, like a small, fiery sun.
If I could just reach it…
Selena walked faster, then ran. The pier stretched out under her feet, on and on, and the light grew no closer. The mist thickened and stole her breath with sudden chill. She felt each particle like a pinprick on her skin—like glass dust—cutting her, biting her with icy teeth and filling her lungs until it felt as though she were drowning. Stiffened limbs slowed her until she fell. She raised her head with creaking tendons and a jaw clenched shut. The orange light, like a small, fiery sun, hung within reach; hung impossibly far away.
Biting pain encased her hands. She looked down. A molten silver puddle of ice spread beneath her knees. The biting agony of her flesh freezing, locking her to the pier, brought a scream to her lips but she hadn’t the breath. The mist thickened, gripped her in a frigid embrace, obscuring everything until there was only it, and she, and the cold that seemed to emanate from her very bones. A voice as old as oceans and just as deep, spoke and she knew from where it came.
From the hole over her heart.
From the icy chasm of her god-blasted chest.
The wound.
Find me, said the voice.
Selena’s eyes flew open and she gasped. The cold mist and the ice encasing her to the pier were gone. She was back in the chapel, clinging to the crossbar of her sword with both hands as a shiver wracked her hard enough to make her chainmail creak.
Find me…
“I’m trying, O god,” she whispered, her lips struggling to form the words.
Find me, the voice said, but the real message behind the simple words was clear: Find the light or die. These words resounded in her mind like a clanging bell of a lighthouse warning a ship it had come too close to the rocks that would rip it apart and send it to the Deeps.
Selena set down her sword and stood on creaking knees. Her small ampulla hung from the right side of her belt, opposite her sword’s scabbard, but the sanctuary had its own bowl of ocean water. She took off one leather glove and dipped her hand into the two-handled bowl on the altar. Unable to feel heat of any kind, the faint tingles on her skin meant the water was warm, having sat in the slant of summer sun all day. The moon was not yet visible, but with her other hand, Selena reached for the sky beyond the sanctuary’s clapboard roof exactly where the moon hid, and spoke the sacred word.
“Illuria.”
An orange glow emanated from her submerged palm, tinting the water as the setting sun does to the ocean along the horizon. She laid her hand, still glowing orange and dripping seawater onto the thick, blue wool of her overtunic. The stiffness and ache in her shoulder vanished. She touched the left shoulder and the muscles loosened there too. Before the healing glow faded altogether—and before she could change her mind—she laid her hand over her heart.
The cold draft was tangible on her bare wet hand, blowing faintly through the soft linen of her undershirt, her chainmail vest, her overtunic. She found the crescent moon shape of the hole in her chest, and pressed hard, as if she could push the healing light inside it.
“Illuria,” she said with the same beseeching tone that colored her prayers.
The glow faded to nothing. Her shoulders felt strong and free of pain as if she hadn’t spent the last few hours in unmoving prostration to the Two-Faced God. The wound remained, a hollow chasm of endless cold bored into the very core of her being by the god’s wrath. She let her hand drop and bowed her head.
Selena had spent the last few weeks sailing about the lesser islands of the archipelago, watching the orange glow of her magic ease pain and lift the pallor of illness from the inhabitants. She prayed to the Shining face of the Two-Faced god to heal these people as she had so many others during the last five years, and her prayers were always answered. For everyone but herself.
A voice came at the door, soft and hesitant. “Paladin Koren?”
Selena gave a start and turned, wiping her eyes quickly. “Good afternoon, abbot.”
An older man, portly, his skin weathered from salt and spray, leaned against the doorway. Sweat darkened his plain sackcloth robes under his arms and down his chest. From a pocket, he withdrew a letter written on a rich vellum not found on this tiny island and held it to her, his expression soft with kindness.
“My deepest pardons for interrupting your meditations, but a peliteryx has come from the Moon Temple for you. Just arrived here, though our man at the birdhouse says it looks to have been chasing you around the islands these last weeks.”
Selena took the parchment. It looked to be one copy of a letter, wrinkled and wanting to scroll itself, as if it had been rolled in and out of peliteryx pouches more than once. She noted with a pounding heart the other names in the address.
Justarch Yuri Osten, House of Rights and Laws, Isle Parish
Admiral Archer Crane, Alliance Admiralty, Citadel
Paladin Selena Koren, Moon Temple of the Aluren, Isle Lillomet
This issue hereby gives notice that a congress of the above-named Alliance allies and authorities will convene on the 5th of Setilix, NDE, in the Vestibule of the Moon Temple, noontime. Her Reverence Celestine Pollis, Reverent Taliah Ka-Mat-Al, and Reverent Gerus Hannak presiding.
This assembly is classified as High Security. All attendants will adhere to the bylaws of the New Dawn Era treaties and use proper discretion upon penalty of death.
H.R. Celestine
18th of Agout, NDE
Selena felt the blood drain from her face. The 5th of Setilix. “Two day’s time,” she breathed.
“Paladin?”
“I am called back to Isle Lillomet.” She strove to keep her voice even. “I must depart immediately. Tonight.”
“Of course, of course,” the abbot said. “I’ll tell the harbormaster to ready your ship.”
“There’s no time. I’ll go myself.” Selena took up her sword from the planked floor. The sapphire glinted in the twilight hues.
“A thing of beauty,” the
abbot said with a nod at her weapon.
“An unfortunate necessity.” Selena sheathed it with a snap. “Thank you for the use of your sanctuary this afternoon.”
“Not at all.” The abbot smiled. “We are indebted to you. Hilda Youn’s baby is hale and hearty once more when all had seemed lost two nights ago. And we were certain young Tylan would never walk again, and now the boy doesn’t even suffer a limp. You truly have the god’s ear in every way…” His words trailed, as did his gaze, which flitted to the place over her heart where the wound lay, and then to the ground.
“Not in every way.” She smiled gently. “You know who I am?”
He nodded.
“And yet you have been so kind to me. To the Tainted One…”
The abbot met her eye and spoke in a low voice. “That name is ill-spoken and unbefitting. There are so few Aluren left in the Temple and none who make the healing pilgrimages anymore. But for you.” He bowed his head. “You are always welcome.”
Selena felt hot tears sting her eyes. Such courtesy towards her was rare.
They stepped out of the sanctuary and onto the path. It snaked down before them, to the beach. Sage scrub lined the path on both sides, permeating the air with a dusty green scent. They started down the path and a shadow fell over them both.
The abbot fell back and clutched his sackcloth. “My poor heart…”
A Vai’Ensai glared down at them from a height of seven spans, his eyes starkly human in a face that more closely resembled the dragons of old. His scaled gray skin appeared silvery in the dying sunlight, though it didn’t gleam so bright as his immense broad sword. He kept the weapon strapped to his back, between his wing and the tangle of exposed bone and scarred flesh that marked where its pair had been. Selena could almost see the abbot bite back the word “dragonman” to say Ilior’s name instead.
“Master Ilior. …”
Ilior’s voice was as two stones grinding together. “Sorry to startle, abbot.”
“We are called back to Isle Lillomet,” Selena told Ilior. “If you would hurry to the inn and collect my belongings, I’ll meet you at the ship.”