by Alec Hutson
The Silver Sorceress © 2018 by Alec Hutson
Published by Alec Hutson
Cover art by John Anthony di Giovanni
Typography by Shawn King
Map by Sebastian Breit
Edited by Laura Hughes
Interior layout and design by Colleen Sheehan
All rights reserved
First Edition
ISBN:978-0-9982276-4-1 (paperback)
978-0-9982276-5-8 (ebook)
Please visit Alec’s website at
AUTHORALECHUTSON.COM
To Will. Thank you.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Maps
Dedication
What Came Before
The Story So Far: The Crimson Queen
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The history of sorcery is scribed in blood.
The seekers of the Reliquary say that the first men to draw power from the beyond were born in ancient Menekar, the Mother of Cities, in the years that its armies swept across the white plains. Most tribes knelt in fear before their glittering power, awed by this sign of the god Ama’s favor. Those who dared resist were consumed and left as ash to be trampled beneath the boots of the marching legions.
For a time, the first sorcerers were content to serve Ama and the emperor. But the hunger for power that comes with a mastery of sorcery is insatiable, and when no more cities remained to conquer the sorcerers turned back towards Menekar. The emperor was cast down from the alabaster throne, his broken body hung above the Malachen Gates, and the Warlock King rose in terrible glory. In his court, those touched by sorcery were venerated as holy and those without the gift seen as barely more than animals. All manner of depravity was condoned.
Ama was not so easily ousted, however. There arose during the darkest time a champion infused with the divine light of his lord – the monk Tethys, first of the Pure, bearer of a white-metal sword. Immune to the ravages of sorcery, he led a crusade that destroyed the Warlock King and his monstrous court and returned Menekar and her empire to the sheltering radiance of Ama.
But the knowledge of sorcery could not be suppressed. Across the mountains of the Spine, in the shadow of the decaying wraith kingdoms, walls were being raised against the wilderness. In the fertile lowlands Kalyuni was founded, and soon the first Star Towers thrust towards the sky. Sorcerers now had a new sanctuary to pursue their art, and one by one the Mosaic Cities of the south were bound into a great Imperium. At the same time, in the far north, the holdfasts of Min-Ceruth emerged deep within the towering peaks of the Bones of the World. The wraiths were beaten back into their mountain sanctuaries, and the queens of Nes Vaneth ruled with a merciless splendor.
For centuries the history of Araen was shaped by the rivalry between these three great powers: the holdfasts of Min-Ceruth, the Mosaic Cities of the Kalyuni Imperium, and the vast and etiolated empire of Menekar. The Pure – the paladins of Ama – had taken as their divine task the liberation of man from sorcery and all the evil it brought into the world, but the power of sorcerers was great as well, and for an age the strength of these three realms remained in balance.
The Pure were right to warn against sorcery. When the princess of Nes Vaneth was murdered by a diplomat from Kalyuni, her grieving mother set in motion an ancient spell the sorcerers of the north had long ago constructed as a final devastating strike upon their rivals to the south. The waters of the Derravin Ocean surged over the western mountains and flooded the lands of the Mosaic Cities, creating the Broken Sea. Yet even as the churning water climbed the gleaming walls of their Star Towers, the wizards of the Kalyuni Imperium unleashed their own cataclysmic spell, bringing black ice and endless winter to the Min-Ceruthans.
Two great empires perished that day, entombed within ice or drowned beneath the waves. Menekar wasted no time, dispatching its shining legions and the Pure over the Spine to restore order in the devastation and cleanse what remnants of sorcery remained. Treaties were signed at the point of a white-metal sword between Menekar and the kings and archons and padarashas of the western realms. Sorcery was renounced and any surviving practitioners given over to the paladins of Ama for swift and brutal judgment.
Menekar was not long without a rival, however. For decades the Shan and their Empire of Wind and Salt had wandered upon the waves, fleeing a devastation in their own lost homeland. Now, even as the north convulsed in the aftermath of the cataclysms, the Shan set about recreating their glorious empire in the lands south of the newly formed Broken Sea. They erected towers for their warlocks from the bones of the turtles that had ferried them across the ocean, built mighty cities in the ruins of the Imperium, and once again their brilliant culture flourished as they sought to forget the Raveling that had devoured their ancient lands. An age ended for the Shan, and the Empire of Wind and Salt gave way to the Empire of Swords and Flowers.
For a thousand years afterwards the pulse of magic faded like the heartbeat of a dying man. Until once more it began to quicken …
Keilan is the son of a fisherman from a tiny village on the shore of the Broken Sea. His mother, who had been plucked from the sea during a storm, was accused of sorcery and put to death by the frightened villagers. His father was nearly broken by this tragedy, numbing his sorrow and rage with drink. Keilan’s own power begins to awaken during this time, and while using his sorcery to hunt for fish he accidentally brushes against a vast and terrible presence slumbering beneath the waves. His brief disturbance of this creature brings him to the attention of Dymoria’s Crimson Queen, who is the first great sorceress born since the cataclysms. She dispatches her servants to claim him, but a paladin of Ama, Senacus, discovers Keilan first and takes him from his village. Like all children found with the taint of sorcery, Keilan will be brought to Menekar to be cleansed, in the hope that he will rise again filled with the holy light of Ama.
But the queen’s magister, Vhelan, and his knife, Nel, rescue Keilan from the Pure and flee. After a harrowing escape from dark sorceries that still lurk in one of Kalyuni’s ruined cities, they join a caravan traveling along the ancient northern road. Among their fellow travelers is the seeker Garmond, a scholar of the Reliquary, and his Fist guardsmen. One of the Fist brothers, Xin, becomes friends with Nel and Keilan, and begins to teach them the secrets of his swordfighting. Also among the caravan is a Shan by the
name of Cho Yuan. He claims to be searching for something important that was recently stolen from the Empire of Swords and Flowers.
The caravan is attacked by wraiths under the command of a shape-changing monster. Cho Yuan is slain, and Keilan unleashes sorcery that wounds the monster badly enough that it is forced to flee. In order to discover more about the demon that attacked them they descend into the Barrow of Vis, one of the world’s great libraries. There the spirit of the Barrow bequeaths several ancient tomes to Keilan, though at the time he does not understand their importance.
With a Visani escort they soon arrive in Herath, the largest city of Dymoria and the seat of Cein d’Kara, the Crimson Queen. Keilan pledges himself to her and joins the Scholia, her school for sorcery. When the queen realizes the depth of Keilan’s power she enlists his aid in unlocking the memories of the sorcerer Jan, who has recently arrived in her court and claims to be the last of the vanished Min-Ceruthans. With Keilan’s help, Cein passes through the barriers in Jan’s mind and discovers he was part of a mysterious cabal of sorcerers who orchestrated the cataclysms that destroyed the old world – all so they could use these deaths to power a spell that would render them immortal.
Even as these truths are laid bare a trap nested by the sorceress Alyanna within Jan’s mind is tripped, and a surge of sorcery nearly kills Keilan and the queen. When Keilan awakens soon after, he discovers the queen barely alive and goes to find aid, only to be captured by another of the ancient sorcerers, the swordsinger Demian, and Senacus, the paladin who first took him from his village. While Demian stays behind to interrogate Xin and Nel, Senacus takes Keilan from the palace. Before they can flee the city, however, Keilan reveals that he saw Demian in the memories of Jan, and that the swordsinger is in fact a sorcerer. Shaken by this revelation – though it does confirm his own suspicions about Demian – Senacus abandons Keilan at the gates of Herath.
The next day Keilan discovers that Xin is dead, slain by Demian, who has now disappeared. Nel and Keilan intend to chase after the paladin in the hopes that Senacus can lead them to the vanished swordsinger.
Jan is a farmer in the Shattered Kingdoms. He is plunged into grief after his wife dies of a sickness, and in the depths of his sorrow something happens that awakens long-suppressed memories. To his shock, he realizes he is in fact an immortal sorcerer, though most of his past still remains lost. The incident that triggered this revelation was a murder committed by some sort of supernatural creature near his farm, and Jan comes to believe this was done to wake him. He follows the creature’s trail, until he arrives in the pleasure gardens of the Menekarian Empire. There he meets Alyanna, who claims to know him, though his own memories of her are indistinct. She tells him magic is returning to the world, and that a great sorceress has arisen in the far west: Cein d’Kara of Dymoria. Alyanna promises to restore his lost memories if he investigates this Crimson Queen for her. Jan asks about the creatures he has chased across the plains, and Alyanna tells him they are her new servants, recently freed from imprisonment in Shan. Despite his wariness, Alyanna convinces him that they are firmly under her control.
Jan travels to the kingdom of Dymoria, and Cein d’Kara quickly unmasks him as a powerful sorcerer. Curious about his missing past, she agrees to try and break through the barriers in Jan’s mind. During the ceremony, a magical trap laid by Alyanna is triggered and the queen and Keilan are nearly killed. In her anger, Cein decides to imprison Jan until she can be sure that he is no longer a pawn of Alyanna.
Alyanna is an immortal sorceress who has lurked in the shadows for over a thousand years. It was her magical brilliance that crafted the spell that rendered a secret group of wizards immortal, including Jan and Demian. To her distress, she finds that the potency of this spell is fading, and she has begun to age again.
In recent years, Alyanna has posed as a concubine in the pleasure gardens of the Menekarian emperor, hoping to unravel the mysteries of the Pure, though she has become intrigued by her new servants, the Shan demon-children that call themselves the Chosen. She heard them calling from their prison inside the bone-shard towers of Tsai Yin and freed them in return for their servitude. Alyanna learns from the Chosen that a demon hunter from Shan is searching for them, and that he wields a weapon capable of imprisoning their spirits again. She dispatches another of her servants, the shape-changing genthyaki, to slay the demon hunter Cho Yuan. He is traveling with a merchant caravan to Dymoria because he believes it was Cein d’Kara who liberated the demons. During an assault on the caravan Cho Yuan is slain, but the genthyaki is badly wounded by the sorcery of the boy Keilan. Alyanna learns from the dying genthyaki that Keilan is a Talent, a rare and powerful breed of sorcerer. Hoping to use Keilan to recreate the spell that granted her immortality she sends Demian west to capture the boy.
Meanwhile, Alyanna forges an alliance with the dreaded kith’ketan shadowblades, enlisting their aid to destroy the Crimson Queen before Cein can become a true rival to her power. Alyanna’s web of plots comes together on a single night, as the trap she laid within Jan’s mind is triggered by Cein just as Demian and the shadowblades invade the queen’s fortress in search of Keilan. Alyanna transports herself inside the palace and challenges the weakened queen, but is defeated when the Chosen refuse to obey her commands. She is forced to flee back to Menekar, where she is captured by the genthyaki she thought had perished. Now the creature serves the Chosen, having been succored back to health through their dark magics. He is consumed by the desire to inflict suffering upon his former mistress.
The land of Araen is poised to enter a new age of sorcery, but darkness gathers…
“Your father is dead.”
– self my nothing the self my nothing the self my nothing the self my nothing the self my nothing the –
“Your father is dead, Mistress.”
It was a voice from a distant peak, cast across a chasm plunging down into unimaginable depths.
– self my nothing the self my nothing the self my nothing the self my nothing the self my nothing –
“Mistress, your father –”
Cho Lin’s eyes snapped open. “Is dead,” she finished.
A single melted candle guttered in the small chamber. The light burned her eyes, and she forced herself to stare into it.
– the self –
Kan Xia huddled before her, forehead pressed against the stone, his arms outstretched in supplication.
Cho Lin unclasped her hands from the chigreum mudra. Her fingers felt stiff, unresponsive.
“How long?” she asked, swallowing away the rawness in her throat.
Kan Xia spoke into the floor, his words muffled. “The disciple outside said two months… He said you –”
“No. How long has my father been dead?”
A pause. Kan Xia’s hands scrabbled at the chamber’s stone floor, as if trying to find purchase. “We… we are not sure, Mistress. One month, we think.”
“You think?”
“Y-yes. He was across the Sea of Solace, in distant realms. Word travels slowly in the barbarian lands. They have no couriers on fast horses or arrow-straight roads.”
He was across the Sea of Solace. “Kan Xia, what has happened while I’ve been away?”
“Much has happened, Mistress,” the servant murmured, trembling. “Much has happened.”
She swept from the chamber, Kan Xia trailing behind her. A disciple stood outside, his eyes averted, her clothes folded across his arms. Cho Lin undid her robes and pulled on the silken breeches and embroidered yi shirt she had arrived at Red Fang Mountain in many months ago. She gathered her long hair back and secured it with a jade pin.
“Where is Master Ren?”
The disciple did not look at her. “Master Ren is secluded within Gold Leaf Temple. He is expecting you.”
Cho Lin frowned. How long have they known?
She walked the twisting underground corridors, pa
st other cells containing monks, the ground slanting upward until she came to an ancient wooden door painted with a picture of the Enlightenment. She pushed through it, and her vision was consumed by dazzling blue. Clouds were piled to the horizon. Swallows flitted between the eaves of pagodas. Sunlight. For a brief moment everything seemed to tilt and spin, and she had to close her eyes.
– the self my nothing –
The world righted itself. Cho Lin breathed deep, savoring the many smells of the world above. Someone was cooking braised pork, and her jaw ached at the thought of eating real food. Between the temple’s paths lilies were blooming; when she had retreated into her trance the delicate shoots of those flowers had just been starting to emerge.
She crossed the courtyard, enjoying the feel of crushed stones beneath her bare feet. Disciples in red tunics hurried past her, eyes downcast. There, a familiar face coming towards her.
“Master Gu,” she said, inclining her head.
If the saffron-robed monk was surprised to see her outside, he did not show it. He mirrored her gesture and pressed his hands together in the mudra of greeting. “Mistress Lin. My heart soars to see you this day. But my mind is curious to know why you have abandoned your meditations.”
“My family’s servant brings notice that my father has died.”
The monk pursed his lips and bowed his head slightly. “Lord Cho has died? A great loss for Shan. I shall remember his name in my prayers.”
“My ancestors thank you,” Cho Lin said, her fingers steepling in the mudra of respect. Master Gu nodded in reply and walked on.
She came to Gold Leaf Temple, blazing in the day’s brilliance. The roof of the pagoda, it was said, had been forged from the melted jewelry ripped from the bodies of the Third False Emperor’s concubines. It had taken a dozen wagons to carry the metal to the top of Red Fang Mountain, and a hundred craftsmen many years to shape the rythenki spirits and malachen demons that now cavorted across it in flashing gold.
“Wait here,” she told Kan Xia, and the servant drew back.