by Colin McComb
This book is a work of fiction. Everything contained within is a product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or real-world events is coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Colin McComb/
www.colinmccomb.com
Edited by Ray Vallese
www.rayvallese.com
See also the Monumental Works Group
www.monumentalworksgroup.com
Cover art created and copyright © 2012 by Stone Perales
www.stonewurks.com
Original graphic design by Don Strandell
www.donstrandell.com
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by 3lb Games LLC
www.3lbgames.com
ISBN 978-0-9848929-3-8
Limited edition, 1st printing: June 2012
Dedication
To the anchors, to the feathers, to those who ground me and who let me fly:
Robin, Caroline, and Lachlan,
My love always.
To my old friends and to my new:
Years behind and years ahead, I hold you close.
Prologue
It was Clasping Year 588, and the king was dead at last. He had not succumbed to the wounds he had taken in the assassination attempt from the rogue knight Pelagir two years before, for all the skills of the Archmagus had kept him teetering at the edge of life. No, his end was more prosaic: one of his twins had knocked over a candle in the royal bedchambers, and the room went up in a blaze, taking the entirety of the royal family with it.
Two years before, Pelagir had engineered a massive explosion in the course of his escape, snatching the infant daughter of King Fannon as he fled. She was, most believed, dead or enslaved to pay for Pelagir’s flight to the west—perhaps he had gone to Suryat, or perhaps he had fled to one of the western lands where Terona’s power was reflected only in its merchants.
And now the line of Fannon was at an end, his betrayer a man who had broken an unbreakable oath. And now Fannon’s friend Athedon, who had assumed the regency during the king’s recovery, reluctantly took the crown with a vow to find the man who had destroyed the royal family.
This was the official story, but as is so often the case, it was a lie.
The Prisoner
When the darkness lifts, I have time to speak. So listen, listen.
I am a prisoner. I admit that now. I suppose there’s no way to deny it. I have no chains on my limbs, no dungeon around me, and no guards to stand watch over me. Yet for all that, I am held more securely than any in the Imperial prisons. My prison is my body and my mind.
I am not insane. I must stress this point. I don’t think I am, anyway. I may be suffering from hallucinations, blackouts, and other delusions. But what frightens me most is that I can’t define my condition with the knowledge I currently possess, I cannot seek help, and my jailer is more than a figment of my imagination.
When my captor comes, he… it… brings madness and death. In the space between the drawing of a breath, in the time it takes for me to blink my eyes, I am cast into utter darkness, I see nothing, I hear nothing, and when I awaken, I am someplace new, with no idea of how I arrived. There is something that drives me during these times, and it is a bloody-minded master.
I… I don’t know what it is I do when my eyes go dark. No. No, I must be honest. I do know, and my mind recoils from it. I have seen the bodies of innocents before me. My hands have dripped with blood. Gods help me, I have spit human flesh from my mouth because my stomach could hold no more. Those who follow me do so out of fear, but I do not know how to calm them. I do not know if I dare. What if they realize my dual nature? What if they were to kill me once I have returned to myself?
These things I do… I cannot help myself. I see my hands, I hear my voice, I feel the dark satisfaction… the infernal pleasure… that twists through me. If I could stop, I… I might.
But this evil calls to me, and I start to succumb.
I know that I am a prisoner, because I remember being taken captive.
Stay with me and I will tell you how it happened. I will tell you of my apprenticeship, how I became the Magus Underhill, and how I was destroyed by my pride. I could say that it began with the abduction of the king’s daughter from Terona by Sir Pelagir, one of the King’s Chosen, and his flight into the west. I could begin earlier, with the conspiracy that set his actions into motion as he tried to save the royal family’s life. I could begin with an even more ancient history, detailing the feuds and factions of the capital and how they led inexorably to this point.
But I think it would be better to start where these events intersected with my own life. I did not know these facts when I first set my feet on this oathbreaker’s road, nor of the tide that has swept up the Empire in its wake.
So be it. Listen.
Childhood’s Tale
CY 587
The town of Lower Pippen was the largest of its kind for at least ten miles, with a good two thousand people living in the town proper. They even had a stone wall squaring the center of town, behind which they could retreat for a short time in case of danger. They made their living farming the fields, hewing the woods, and fishing the nearby river. They had a granary and a slaughterhouse; they had two blacksmiths, a tanner, chandlers, weavers, two inns, and three taverns. An officially sanctioned church offered spiritual comfort, with satellite chapels scattered nearer the smaller hamlets. Lower Pippen was a center of trade every seventh day, with the farmers and the trappers coming into town to sell their wares to the townsfolk and to each other. Traders came in off the Imperial road, some miles away. Some of them were Bhumar, some Deng, some Westkitt, and others carried freight for whomever paid most at the time. Some of their freight wasn’t exactly legal. Thus it was that even a small town, far from the capital of Terona, could hear the accents of the world and taste some of its pleasures.
It was not the kind of place where one expected monsters to grow.
The land around the town was slightly hilly, thickly forested with leafy trees except where the farms had cleared out patches, and the soil was rich and dark, excellent for farming. The Eschback Mountains to the west bordered the Sickened Lands and were a formidable natural barrier to the creatures that lived therein. Still, sometimes those creatures came and brought death to the peaceful yeomen of the area, so the townsfolk stood vigilant against the terrors of the west.
In all, it was a thoroughly unremarkable town, though the locals surely felt themselves superior to those who lived outside the town’s reach. Perhaps it was the presence of the wealthy men of the area, each of whom claimed a social status that none of the town’s ordinary citizens could seek; these men had walled compounds outside the town’s palisades and businesses near the market, with servants to attend to their basic needs.
House Westkitt oversaw all this land through the hand of the Mulvrains in Northvale, a day’s ride to the north. The Mulvrains were a lesser cousin of the House whose members sought to spend most of their time in Ausakie, the seat of the Westkitt court. Those who remained in Northvale devoted their efforts to maintaining the tax rolls and artistic concerns—which is to say, they rarely troubled their tenants as long as their subjects paid their tithes and taxes on time. The speaker of Lower Pippen made sure that his charges did just that.
Lower Pippen had a magus, too, though he rarely left the environs of Underhill Tower. He came to town once every few months or so, and thoug
h he was never spied descending the bald hill to the south, it was an undeniable fact that he was in town. The townsfolk avoided him if they could, and bowed to him and looked at the ground until he had passed. He paid good, honest coin for that which he bought, but the farmer who got it had to spend it outside town.
Most of the townsfolk didn’t even know his name. It was Alastair. The town’s speaker knew it, as did the ecclesiast, the moneychanger, and the blacksmith, who did more business with the man than they liked, and who were less afraid of him than the other townsfolk were. If the merchants had business with him, they conducted it through the speaker. Everyone else called him “Sir Mage” when they had to speak to him, and they looked at his staff and wondered if they could control the storms with it, too. They wondered why a man who could make the lightning dance and the rains swell the river would wear such a tattered old cloak, when surely he could afford better, and why he seemed so gray and dull under his dark skin. Dusty, they might have said.
Once, a small boy named Alton was foolish enough to boast that he wasn’t afraid of an old man with a stick, and his friends promptly dared him to ask the magus a question. He was stuck, but his pride was greater than his fear, so while his friends hid around the corner and watched from the shadows, he spoke to the terrifying man.
“Sir Mage, why does Underhill Tower turn into the sun?” he asked, trembling under the man’s riveting eyes. He had meant to ask how, but his fear had tripped his tongue.
“Why, boy? Why? Have you never seen a sunflower seek the sun?” The mage was looking carefully at the boy’s features when he replied. Studying him, some would have said. The boy answered, “Sure, it’s so it gets all the light.” The old magus cracked a rare smile, and the boy rushed on, “But why does your tower need all that light? What’s it for?” The old man laughed and turned away to resume his shopping, leaving the boy to his curiosity.
The mage was not always so generous to those who crossed his path. Some years before, a small detachment of Imperial guards had quartered in Lower Pippen for a time, and their lieutenant had chanced to make an ill-advised comment to the mage in public. The two of them had been speaking quietly to the side of Market Square, when the lieutenant began shouting at the old man… words like “prerogative” and “command of this town.” The soldier had gone so far as to draw steel, but before he could brandish his blade, a spark leapt from the mage’s beaten staff and exploded the lieutenant’s head. The other soldiers in the company had advanced on the mage, and though all eight of them surrounded the man, he showed no fear. Lightning danced up the length of his staff, he spoke more quiet words to them, and nearly as one they lowered their swords and backed away from him. This cemented the mage’s fearsome reputation, and the townsfolk steered well clear of him after this. He did not appear to mind.
Thus, Alton’s friends were surprised—and perhaps a little disappointed—that he hadn’t been reduced to cinders for his impertinence, but mostly their amazement won through, and he was a hero to them that day. Because of his boldness, he came to the attention of Underhill, and in three years, that attention would save his life. It would also make him a monster.
But that night, it earned him a whipping from his uncle Pohl’s hickory switch. The man loved his sister’s son like his own, and the fear that had gripped him when he heard of the boy’s bravado almost destroyed his self-control. His dead sister’s son was as headstrong as she, and he whipped the boy in hopes that it would at least make the lad more careful. And while Alton did become more careful in his risks, danger always seemed to seek him out.
Alton’s mother Sara had remarried after Alton's father had been killed by brigands several years ago. She married well, to the merchant Dimbleman, and she and Alton moved into town to live in his house. For a short time, it seemed that Alton might obtain the life of a tradesman, buoyed by his stepfather’s wealth—but a rock avalanche in the Houser Hills orphaned Alton exactly one year before his meeting with the mage, and he went to live with his aunt and uncle on their farm. They gave him as much love as they could, and they let him grieve, and he began to work on the farm when the worst of the pain had passed. He worked hard from dawn until the afternoon—his mother had left some money for a tutor, and Aunt Bethlyn was scrupulous about ensuring his attendance at Dame Dolores’s twice a week.
Dame Dolores had been educated in the great University of Terona, and she had been impregnated there as well. She had fled the capital before the child’s birth to avoid embarrassing the girl’s father with a bastard. The girl died three years later. They said that the child had been torn apart by wolves in the forest to the east of Lower Pippen, though gossip had it that she’d been knifed before being left in the woods. It didn’t help matters that Doctor Auskind, who had examined the girl’s corpse, died less than a week later in a sudden altercation in the market, with merchants who had traveled far and left suddenly afterward, before the city watch could come.
Dame Dolores, in the meantime, remained silent on the matters of her child’s death and the identity of the father. She emerged after a number of years of mourning, determined to educate the children of Lower Pippen, for although the church offered some instruction, it was largely limited to the sacred texts and the duties of citizens to the Empire. She accepted tuition from those who could pay it, and offered to tutor the other children of the village at no cost. Most of the parents, perhaps unsurprisingly, refused to send their children to someone who had suffered such bad luck or invited it—in the end, the two amounted to much the same.
Alton’s mother, on the other hand, insisted that her child be educated outside the auspices of Father Church, and Aunt Bethlyn was adamant that this continue with the money left over when Dimbleman’s debts were settled. So it was that Alton learned to read and do some basic sums, and after a year or so, Dame Dolores turned the boy loose in her small library. He read quickly and widely, moving quickly into deep subjects. She answered his questions at first, and then began debating the boy when he started interpreting the material on his own. These few hours a week went by too quickly, and Dame Dolores was neither wealthy enough nor influential enough to place Alton at one of the Imperial academies, and neither would she relent to have him taught by the ecclesiasts of the church in town. It appeared that, no matter how bright his promise, he was doomed to be an intelligent, well-read, mildly prosperous farmer.
So it was that three years drew past, and Alton was twelve. The year was 587. His uncle was planning his manhood ceremony. The farm was mildly profitable, with some help from Alton’s small inheritance to buy seed and additional stock, and Alton, though dissatisfied with his life and constantly dreaming of a better one, was becoming an excellent farmer. He had little idea as he walked toward town on this bright spring Marketday that his wish for a new life was about to be granted.
Alton walked to the market with Darien, his best friend for the past two years, pulling the cart behind them. They had done so every Marketday for those past two years. Darien’s father owned the farm next door, so the two boys had fallen in together naturally when their guardians sold stock at the market. They talked and joked as boys will, their conversation far and wide, and always returning to the possibility that one of them might enter the Imperial service in one form or another. It was one of the few ways they might leave this farmer’s life behind, and they were both dreamers. This talk brought them from the farm to the market, and once there, they had to concentrate on the supplies they were to buy.
It was a full day at the market, with the farmers bringing seedlings and young animals to the auction block, with the traders and trappers in from the surrounding hills and forests, and with a caravan of goods from Dunlop to the south. Speaker’s Plaza was full of these people haggling, bargaining, restocking from the long winter. Alton and Darien wended their way through the crowds, their cart filling with produce, spices, and pottery.
Eventually, they stood in front of Harron the blacksmith’s shop, admiring the sword he had wrought a we
ek before, and which he had secured behind a steel cage near the door’s lintel. The card below it said it had been made for Turen Ghos, captain of the town guard. Harron made few weapons, for he was not licensed under the Empire for their production. As such, each of the weapons he and other unofficial weaponsmiths created had to be registered with the speaker and displayed for six days—it was an Imperial regulation. It had the unintended side effect of inspiring the crafters of weapons to greater acts of creativity, a showcase for their art.
This one was no exception. It gleamed subtly in the spring sun, its blade smooth like water. The hilt was of polished oak, a finely filigreed dark wire wrapping it from guard to pommel. The sword hung point down in its case, and even on this bright day it seemed to gather the light into itself, so that it was far brighter than its surroundings.
The captain himself arrived while they were admiring it, and he deigned to tell them that he’d take possession of it the next day. He was a fine man, a glorious man, or at least he fancied himself so, and he kept his chain shirt oiled and gleaming, and unlike his men, he wore a polished steel helmet. He was from the southeastern part of the Empire, Hadrani by birth, and had been stationed in the west during his time in the military. He had tried to convince his childhood sweetheart to marry him, and when she refused, he returned to Lower Pippen to live far from his shame.
He was proud of his position, and he kept the order in the town better than anyone had for the past twenty years, and he told those he considered his social equals so whenever he had the chance. However, since none of those were nearby at the time, he amused himself—and edified the boys, no doubt—by imparting a few choice words to them. Truth to tell, the two boys were impressed, for they believed that he was likely the closest they would get to the Imperial service.