The Mark Of Iisilée

by T P Sheehan

  For Max and Georgia. I love you more than all the stars.

  Published by Querencia Books

  Copyright © T.P. Sheehan 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any person, entity or in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recoding, scanning or stored in a retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-0-6480928-2-7 (paperback)

  First edition print - 2019

  Querencia Books

  info@querenciabooks.com

  Querenciabooks.com

  Follow the Gone Dragon series:

  GoneDragon.com

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  THE MORNING AFTER

  HANNAH - ONE

  WEIR

  SARAH

  BLACKSMITHS

  HANNAH - TWO

  WARNING

  FURY

  A GYPSY’S OATH

  MARSALA

  THE MARK OF IISILÉE

  ALAVIA

  SPELLS

  FIRST WAVE

  HANNAH - THREE

  RED PASS

  CLIMB - ONE

  COUSINS

  HANNAH - FOUR

  CLIMB - TWO

  SCOUTS

  MESSAGES

  TRAX

  THE HIGH PRIESTS

  REUNION

  LINÉ

  BRUE

  RACE TO THE ROMGHOLD

  IRIS

  A CONFESSION

  PYRE

  A CURSE

  A PRISONER’S ADVICE

  ‘ONE’

  TRAINING AND FAREWELLS

  SOUTHERN PLAINS

  A SINGLE CHANCE

  TWO TRUTHS

  JAEL’S TALE

  CALM BEFORE THE STORM

  BATTLE AT NUYAN

  FIRST WYVERN

  ELECTUS REVEALED

  PIECE OF MY MIND

  HUNTERS

  HOME

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  “A friend as a brother has fallen to darkness.”

  “You speak of Lucas.”

  “There is but a single chance to reconcile, else fate be challenged.”

  “Are we not always challenging fate?”

  “Challenges are a part of life. To survive them and meet your inevitable fate is irony.”

  “How then do you see a second chance to reconcile with Lucas to be challenging fate?”

  “Because to do so will be beyond the will of the gods.

  THE MORNING AFTER

  The white tip of Lucas’s fleu-steel sword pointed at Magnus.

  ‘No holding back, Magnus. Show us what you’ve learned.’

  ‘What I’ve learned, Ganister?’ I’ve learned how to kill…

  Behind the white of the sword and the blue of Lucas’s eyes, a grey mist appeared, spreading from one side of Ganister’s training hall to the other. The mist became opaque, folding over itself and mutating into the shape of men—a hundred of them.

  The hundred ghosts of Ba’rrat’s arena…

  Dead at my hand…

  Come to testify to what I have learned.

  The ghosts drew toward Lucas, morphing together until as one with him. Lucas shuddered and bowed his head. Magnus shook in fear.

  “No!”

  Lucas slowly raised his head. His eyes—now steel-grey—held the souls of the hundred. ‘You have indeed learned to kill.’

  Lucas’s words scratched at the raw wounds of Magnus’s conscience.

  “NO!”

  Magnus woke from the nightmare, scrambling for his sword—Lucas’s sword. He spun about in circles, pointing the sword in every direction. There was the river, the trees, the Black Cliffs and the wrens singing their morning song, but he was alone. Magnus sighed in relief, remembering Catanya told him to rest while she bathed at the river. He lay again beneath the beech tree, closed his eyes and let the wrens’ song sooth him.

  Still… Magnus contemplated. Something is not right…

  The figure appeared as a shimmering phantom disturbing the spears of morning light through the water. Catanya strained at the end of her breath. Chasing bubbles to the surface, she willed the Quagman to look away. Knife in clenched fist, she breached the surface of the river and silently let her breath go. The cool water cascaded down her long, black hair and over her naked back. She hesitantly opened her eyes—they met his.

  He has seen me…

  “Of all the rivers beyond all the Realms of Allumbreve, looky-here what I’ve found…” Removing his spiked, black helm, the Quagman’s deep-set eyes groped Catanya’s body. He hunched, reached for Catanya’s hair and pulled her toward him.

  Perfect…

  Catanya drove her arm up, sinking her knife into the Quagman’s throat. His black eyes widened inside their bony sockets then dulled as his life drained away. He fell forward toward the river. Catanya took the weight of his body in case a splash drew unwanted attention.

  “That’s for the arrow in my back yesterday.”

  Catanya slid her knife back into the thigh of her Ferustir armour. She pushed the corpse beneath the river’s surface and fed it into the strong current. There were more of them—she was certain of it. The previous evening, as Catanya fled from Ba’rrat with Magnus, a Quagman wounded her. He then fled when he recognised Magnus for who he is—for what he is…

  The Electus.

  Catanya was sure the Quagman had returned and tracked them up river and was equally sure he wouldn’t have come alone.

  She heard them first. Moments later she saw them. Three Quagmen were approaching on the opposite side of the river. They’ve found where we crossed.

  Catanya peered across the river to the embankment at the foot of the Black Cliffs where Magnus lay sleeping beneath a beech tree. “Wake up, Magnus…” Catanya strained her thoughts, willing him to hear her. “WAKE UP!” She knew it was in vain—it took years of training for an Irucantî to master telepathy. Even then, most priests needed a dragon present. We could do with a dragon about now.

  Taking a breath, Catanya dove deep and swam across the river, stroking diagonally to offset the current. Surfacing at the northern riverbank, she cupped her mouth with a hand and coughed. Looking at her palm, it was spattered red with blood. Her nose wrinkled at the sight of it.

  The voices were getting closer.

  The rest of Catanya’s armour lay on the riverbank. She refitted her torso armour, wincing from the pain in her back. She fitted her vambraces and tightened their buckles, took hold of her Ferustir’s lance and counted her knives—two, four, six, seven.

  “Shh.”

  “What is it?”

  “Where’s Maddrock?”

  “On the south bank.”

  The Quagmen fell silent for a moment.

  “He’s supposed to be within sight!”

  “He can manage himself.”

  “Wyvern crap! He fled as soon as he spotted the Electus.”

  “What would you have done, Elmot?”

  All three appeared at the river’s edge. Catanya sunk into the water, ducking her head beneath a thick beech root that arched from the bank into the river.

  “THERE!”

  The dead Quagman had surfaced and was floating right by them.

  “They must be over the other side!”

  All three Quagmen leapt into the river and waded across. Catanya watched on, knowing if any of them turned they would see her. Then they would come after her or wors
e—one carries a loaded bow. With a twenty-foot embankment climb to get to Magnus, she would be an easy target for the archer.

  The river’s current was strong and the Quagmen moved sluggishly thanks to their heavy armour. Catanya had another idea. She could swim with the current and intersect them mid-river. Underwater, she could slay the archer and perhaps another before the third knew she was there. It was risky. If her timing was wrong or they spotted her too soon, she would be dead. And perhaps Magnus would be too…

  The Quagmen reached mid-river. If she was going after them, it was now or never. Catanya drew another breath and sunk beneath the waterline, sheathing her lance. She pushed off the bank toward the middle of the river, dove deep, and speared through the water. The current carried her downstream to the Quagmen even faster than she anticipated. Less than twenty feet from the archer, Catanya redrew her lance. Ten feet away, the current was driving her straight at him. Ignited and pointed, her lance was aimed at the archer’s belly and then, just a foot from her foe, something heavy smashed through the water overhead and drove her body to the riverbed.

  Held fast against the bedrock, Catanya managed to keep a grip on her lance. She wrenched her head about and saw the Quagman beside her, one foot and a huge arm pinning her down. Another came, reinforcing the hold with an extra boot. She thrashed about, but her sword arm was soon pinned with a third boot.

  Catanya exhausted all air in her lungs as she struggled desperately to break the Quagmen’s relentless hold. Her right arm was still free. She reached across her back. The pain of her wound sent spasms through her body making her gasp, drawing water. Coughing, she retracted her arm and forced it beneath her abdomen, reaching out the other side for a weapon. Her fingertips scraped over one of the throwing knives in her thigh armour but she could not get a grip.

  The boots suddenly lifted and large hands pulled Catanya from the water. The Quagmen bellowed deep war cries at her. She went to scream a warning to Magnus—“Ma…” all that came was a lungful of water.

  The Quagmen drove Catanya’s body into the water again, holding her beneath the surface. Her left arm had lost her lance but was free. She swept it across her thigh, pulled a knife and sunk it hard into the nearest of the warriors. From beneath the water she heard a muffled roar.

  Catanya was pulled from the water again. Her waterlogged senses heard cursing and yelling. Her arms were wrenched behind her back and she gasped for breath, blinking her eyes into focus. A Quagman held her while the archer had an arrow aimed point-blank at her forehead. The third was stumbling about—curses foaming from his mouth—with Catanya’s knife buried behind his right kneecap. Even in her predicament, Catanya was helpless to prevent a smirk from crossing her face.

  The whirling sound of a fast approaching object drew the archer’s attention. He turned to his right just as a fleu-steel sword drove through his neck. He fell into the water. Catanya was wrenched about by the Quagman holding her and faced the assailant. In mid air, with rings of flame dancing about his body, Magnus flew toward her and the remaining two Quagmen.

  Catanya also spotted her lance resting by her feet at the riverbed…

  “WAKE UP!”

  “Catanya?”

  Magnus woke again and leapt to his feet—Catanya’s voice ringing through his head. Was it a dream? No. Something’s definitely not right…

  From beneath the cover of beech trees, Magnus climbed the embankment and gazed over the river. His heart seized at the sight before him—on the far side of the river Catanya was defending herself against three Quagmen.

  Casting his robe aside, Magnus took a running leap from the embankment, out over the river. Lucas’s fleu-steel sword ignited in a ring of ochre flames even before Magnus had drawn it entirely free of its scabbard. The sword left his hand just as quickly, hurtling toward Catanya’s greatest threat—a Quag archer with an arrow pointed right at her head. The sword buried itself deep in the archer’s neck. Magnus’s dragon blood burned fury through his heart, lungs, body and limbs. Before his feet broke the river’s surface, he cupped his hands forming a fireball that he threw at the body of another Quagman who was wrestling with a knife buried in his knee. The ball hit him square in the chest, engulfing him in flames and freeing him from the burden of his wounded leg. He dropped into the river—a charred, bloody mess.

  “Catanya!”

  The remaining Quagman held Catanya fast to his chest. In a swift-footed manner, Catanya’s legs rose from the water, bringing her lance with them. She swung her legs up over her head and drove the sharp pommel of her lance into the warrior’s forehead. He loosened his grip enough for her to pull an arm free, catch the lance, ignite it, and end the warrior’s life.

  Magnus pushed through the water toward Catanya. Her eyes were wild and her lance splayed red light from its Fireisgh engravings between her white-gripped knuckles.

  “You okay, Catanya?” He placed a tentative hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m okay.” Catanya blinked herself free of her frenzy and extinguished her lance. “I was hoping their war cries would wake you.”

  “It was you that woke me,” Magnus affirmed. “I heard you calling me in my thoughts. You were telling me to ‘wake up’.”

  “You heard that?” Catanya spat blood into the river. “That’s good… I suppose.”

  Magnus saw blood on Catanya’s lower lip.

  “You’re hurt.”

  Catanya shook her head. “I think this lot are the follow up.” Magnus was not sure what she meant. “To yesterday’s attack. There’s another downstream.” She wiped her lip with a finger, frowned at the sight and licked her lips.

  Magnus traced a finger across a bruise forming on Catanya’s cheek. “I’m sorry I fell asleep.”

  “No, I’m sorry I wasn’t watching over you like you were watching me all night.”

  “I hoped we were clear of all this.” Magnus considered the dead Quagmen. “What do you think… have we seen the last of it?”

  “From what they were saying, I think that’s all of them.” Catanya did not sound any more convinced than Magnus felt. “We should get moving?”

  “Definitely,” Magnus agreed.

  Catanya retrieved her knife from the Quagman’s smoking carcass. “He never saw that coming.”

  “The knife or the fireball?”

  “Both!”

  They chuckled as they pulled all three of the warriors to the southern bank.

  “With their bodies to the south, travelling north of the river may throw any followers off track,” Magnus suggested. They swam across the river and started running upstream.

  HANNAH - ONE

  Hannah sat on Catanya’s bed in silence, chewing indifferently on a handful of pine nuts. In her lap sat her sister’s diary that she kept in her dresser draw for safekeeping. Her mother and father were arguing again—something that only started when Catanya left with their uncle to join the Irucantî. When they argued, Hannah came to her big sister’s room seeking solace.

  Hannah opened the diary to its centre page where a single pressed iris hid. She admired the flat purple petals and the long green stem, remembering when Catanya first showed it to her.

  ‘Do you want to see my most precious thing, Hannah? Except for you of course,’ Catanya whispered to her when she was five years old.

  ‘Yes! I do,’ Hannah had replied.

  Catanya had taken her diary from her dresser draw and sat beside Hannah on her bed. She opened the diary, revealing the pressed iris in its pages. ‘This was from the first flowers Magnus picked for me, years ago. I knew they would wither in time and so I took just one, placing it here for safe keeping.’

  Hannah had felt the flower with the tip of a finger. ‘It’s really pretty. Why do you keep it?’

  ‘Because I’m a hopeless romantic. But it’s our secret. Everyone knows I’m hopelessly in love with Magnus. They don’t need to know I’m a hopeless romantic as well,’ Catanya had said, winking at Hannah.

  ‘Does it remind you that
you love Magnus?’

  ‘I don’t need anything to remind me of that, Hannah.’

  Hannah would listen to Catanya’s stories while she braided her hair. They would nibble on pine nuts or blackberries and drink lemon water. Catanya’s favourite stories were of Magnus and their adventures together. Hannah thought Magnus was wonderful—tall and handsome. It was not fair that Catanya could not marry him. Perhaps then, when Hannah was older, she would marry Magnus. Kind of the way mother married father after Austagia joined the priesthood.

  Alessandra had loved Austagia dearly, but he left. Hannah had only learned of this in recent weeks from eavesdropping on her parents’ conversations. It was hard to grasp the full story, but her father was angry about everything lately, and her mother was sad.

  Hannah reached for Catanya’s pillow. It still smelled of the jasmine oil she used to rub into her hair. Catanya said it gave it ‘lustre’. Hannah wondered if her sister was able to use jasmine oil in the Romghold but knew her hair would still be beautiful, regardless.

  Her legs hung over the end of the bed. She played with the three remaining pine nuts in the palm of her hand and listened—the shouting voices were still audible from the kitchen, even though her mother had shut the kitchen door.

  Hannah popped the nuts in her mouth and finished them off, then closed Catanya’s diary and replaced it in the dresser draw. She jumped back onto Catanya’s bed and bent backward into a backbend before springing her feet up into a handstand. She held this pose. The sound of the kitchen door opening preceded her father’s heavy footsteps into the bedroom.

  “Hannah,” he asserted.

  “Aye.” Hannah could feel her face flush red as she held the handstand.

  “Your bed is for sleeping. The ground is for handstands.”

  “It’s not my bed.”

  There was a moment’s silence, then the sound of Xavier leaving the room with heavy footsteps again and out the back door of the house. Hannah fell to her stomach, rested her chin on folded arms and closed her eyes.