Seven Kings
Page 1
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Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2013 by John R. Fultz
Excerpt from Seven Sorcerers copyright © 2013 by John R. Fultz
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ISBN 978-0-316-21564-0
Begin Reading
Table of Contents
A Preview of Seven Sorcerers
Newsletters
Copyright Page
In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com.
Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Dedicated to the memory of Evelyn Waggoner, whose great magic was a grandmother’s love
Contents
Welcome
Dedication
Map
Prologue: Stories
Chapter 1: Three Lives
Chapter 2: Sword and Scholar
Chapter 3: Born Into Shadow
Chapter 4: Wings
Chapter 5: Among the Eyeless Ones
Chapter 6: Two Hearts, One Kingdom
Chapter 7: The Night of White Flame
Chapter 8: Bloodshadows
Chapter 9: The Godstone
Chapter 10: Emperor of Uurz
Chapter 11: Mountain of Ghosts
Chapter 12: The Red Wine of Khyrei
Chapter 13: Masters and Slaves
Chapter 14: Two Old Friends
Chapter 15: Stairway to Glory
Chapter 16: Shards of Dawn
Chapter 17: Vod’s Blood
Chapter 18: The Vital Tongues
Chapter 19: King of the Black City
Chapter 20: On the Hidden Road
Chapter 21: A Council of Kings
Chapter 22: A Bottle of Red
Chapter 23: A Nation Reborn
Chapter 24: Shape of the World
Chapter 25: A Decision and a Name
Chapter 26: The Apotheosis of Shadow
Epilogue: The Pale Carriage
Extras
Meet the Author
A Preview of Seven Sorcerers
Publications by John R. Fultz
Dramatis Personae
Acknowledgments
Newsletters
Copyright
Prologue
Stories
The Storytellers of Uurz say that Man lived in the sea until the Gods taught him to walk on land, but Giants were born whole from the great stones of the earth. That is why the sea always draws Men back to its maternal depths, and why Giants are stronger and more durable than Men.
Those same Storytellers, for the price of a copper or a bowl of fermented grape, will speak of an era a thousand years ago when the land was ruled by Serpents. These monsters crawled among the hills and woodlands like colossal centipedes, breathing fire and devouring all that lived. Once the lands about Uurz were thick with forests, these raconteurs will insist, until the monsters burned the trees to dust, leaving the land parched and barren.
This was the Age of Serpents.
Nine human tribes roamed the wilds in those days, so the story goes, and the Serpents feasted on them all. Each of these Serpents could swallow a Man whole, and they often did, one right after another, until only four tribes were left. This was long before the walls of Uurz were raised; long before the secrets of smelting bronze and tilling the earth gave rise to civilization. Long before Men spread the first of their fragile empires across the earth.
If you return the next evening to that same corner of the bustling bazaar or mud-walled tavern of the night before, the Storyteller will continue the famous tale. He will sip wine gratefully from a clay bowl and tell how the four surviving tribes of Man fled into the heights of the Grim Mountains, there to accidentally rouse the race of Giants from their long sleep. The teller might even claim that the Gods had placed these Giants inside the mountain stones for Man to awake during such a crisis, but there are not many who believe this. He will surely tell you how the Giants chased the human tribes out of the mountains and so came upon the horde of Serpents whose breath had charred the lowlands.
The Giants took up boulders and fallen trees as weapons. They poured from the crevices and clefts of the mountain heights, thundering across the blackened earth. They fell upon the Serpents like an angry storm, smashing skulls and ripping legs from bodies. They crafted shields and armor from the scales of the dead beasts, used the great fangs as the heads of their spears. While the four tribes of Man took shelter in caves and remote ravines, the war between Giant and Serpent raged. The earth shook and rolled for eighty nights; some Storytellers will say a thousand nights, but Storytellers often exaggerate.
If you are willing to come back a third night, and if you have yet coppers or drink to bribe this narrator you have chosen, he will surely tell you how the Age of Serpents ended. The Giants destroyed all the Serpents but one, whom they called Omagh the Serpent-Father, greatest of all the scaly behemoths. Most Storytellers agree that the beast had one hundred and twelve legs, and all will tell you how the Serpent-Father swallowed five hundred Giants before the one called Hreeg wounded him deeply with a great spear carved from the heart of a mountain pine. The Serpent-Father slunk into a chasm in the Grim Mountains and fell into slumber at the heart of the world.
Some Storytellers here might pause to mention Vod the Giant-King, who was both Giant and Man, and how he finally slew the Serpent-Father when it awoke a thousand years later. Yet the Legend of Vod is too new a tale to join this story of ancient days. Vod’s tale, they will say, must be told some other night. You see, there is always another story to tell.
After Hreeg’s mighty battle, the four tribes of Man came from their sanctuary to beg mercy. The Giants chose Hreeg as their chieftain, and Hreeg said, “Your lands are burned and scalded. Your forests are gone. You tiny Men may keep the lands south of the mountains. We Giants will live north of the peaks, where the land is green and the water runs fresh and clear beneath the sky. We also claim these mountains. So if you want to live in peace, keep to your blackened lands. If we find any of you in the mountains, we will kill you and eat you.”
The four tribes followed the advice of Hreeg the Stoneborn. They came out of the mountains and wandere
d across the black sands. They went in four directions searching for water. The Magnahin Tribe found an underground river that had survived the firestorms of the Serpents, and they named it Uurz. They built a great city of green and gold above the river, with many wells and flowering gardens to replace the lost beauty of their forests. For ten centuries Uurz thrived, a golden oasis amid the Desert of Many Thunders, until Vod’s sorcery brought the green earth to life again. That is how Uurz went from jewel of the desert to capital of the Stormlands.
The remaining tribes founded other cities in distant climes, where they developed their own languages and cultures: Yaskatha, Shar Dni, and Khyrei. The unity of the four tribes was lost forever. That is why the race of Men often goes to war against itself.
Now the good Storyteller, having finished his tale, will rise and go to find another paying customer. Such Storytellers will often voice the same legends again and again, but only a few of them actually believe what they tell.
I am such a one, for I know my words are truth.
I tell only of true things, even those that never happened. I know tales drawn from lost ages and dim epochs. I know secrets and terrors, and the names of heroes and tyrants long forgotten.
I know the great Tale of the World that weaves the bright towers of Uurz into its dark fabric even as we speak.
Would you care to hear it?
1
Three Lives
The colors of the jungle were bloody red and midnight black.
Whispers of fog rustled the scarlet fronds, and the poison juices of orchids glistened on vine and petal. Red ferns grew in clusters about the roots of colossal carmine trees. Patches of russet moss hid the nests of red vipers and coral spiders. Black shadows danced beneath a canopy of branches that denied both sun and moon. Toads dark as ravens croaked songs of death among the florid mushrooms. Clouds of hungry insects filled the air, and red tigers prowled silent as dreams.
Death waited for him in the jungle. There was nothing else to find here. No refuge, no escape, no safety or comfort. This place offered none of those, only a savage end to suffering and a blinding slip into eternity. Tong expected to die here, and he welcomed it. He would die a free man, his knees no longer bent in slavery. He ran barefoot and bleeding through the bloodshot wilderness.
Yes, he would die soon. But not yet. He would take more of their worthless lives with him. This was why he fled the scene of his first murder and entered the poison wilderness. It was not to save himself from the retribution of his oppressors. He fled so they would chase him into this scarlet realm of death. The dense jungle and its dangers gave him precious time. Time to steal the lives of the men who chased him. He would survive just long enough to kill them all; then he would give his life gladly to the jungle and its cruel mercy.
Only then would he allow himself to seek Matay in the green fields of the Deathlands.
Already he had claimed a second life, leaping from the trees like a wild ape, plunging the blade of his stolen knife into a soldier’s throat. That first night the company of nine Onyx Guards had been foolish enough to sleep about a small fire. They had assumed their prey would be sleeping as well, somewhere ahead of them on the crude trail Tong’s passing had created. Some had stripped the plates of black bronze from their chests, arms, and shins. They had even removed the demon-face masks that hid their humanity. For the first time in his young life, Tong saw the raw sweat-stained faces of his oppressors, the masters of whip and spear and disemboweling blade.
Their flesh was as pale as his own, their eyes and hair the same black. As far as he could see, there was nothing that physically separated him, a slave, from these tormentors of slaves. Nothing except their actions. Far more than enough to damn them all. While the night watcher’s back was turned, Tong pounced. His short blade ripped the life from a sleeper’s chest as his hand clamped over the dying man’s mouth. His entire weight pressed against his victim’s chest, he watched the man die slowly. When his twitching eyes closed forever, Tong stole his curved sabre and a bag of rations. He slipped back into the night, ignoring the winged vermin that gnawed his skin and stung at his blood-smeared hands. He ran south, toward the mountains of fire at the edge of the world, making sure to leave an obvious and clumsy trail.
In the morning they found the dead soldier and followed Tong deeper into the jungle. He ran as he ate from the stolen food bag. Salted pork and dried apricots. The vegetation of the jungle was poisonous, as were most of the creatures who lived here. So finding anything edible was next to impossible. After days of starvation and pain, the meal sent waves of fresh energy coursing through his limbs. The fire of his hatred burned hotter, and he laughed as he leaped over a coiled viper that bared its dripping fangs at him.
O merciless Gods, let them follow me, he thought. I will lead them all into death.
He ran until exhaustion fell upon him like a black cloud. He slept in a hollow between two great tree roots, on a bed of ruddy lichen. He called Matay’s name in his sleep, and he dreamed she was near, reaching for him like she did on the day of her death. Rising from the jungle filth, he reached out and grabbed only a fistful of lichen. A colony of red ants crawled across his body, feasting on the dried blood coating his lacerated skin. His chest and back were a maze of fresh welts, the work of razor-edged fronds, biting insects, and patches of sharpgrass. He uprooted a fern and used it to brush the ants from his body, wincing at the pain of beating his own wounds.
Pain was good, he decided. Pain would keep him from sleep… keep him wary… keep him ready to kill.
He climbed a tree as high as he dared, not far enough to breach the lofty canopy, but high enough to see a great distance across the leagues of crimson undergrowth. He waited there until he saw his pursuers, just at the edge of his vision, cutting their way through the jungle. They reminded him of the marching ants he had wiped away, except these black ants were far more vicious and cruel.
The upper mass of the tree’s branches rattled. A great black bird flew from its nest and burst through the canopy. A ray of orange sunlight fell through the hole the bird’s passing had made. It warmed Tong’s face and shoulders. He recalled Matay’s love of the golden sun, how she watched it sink beyond the fields every evening. Sometimes she even halted her work, forgetting the harvest as the glory of sunset burned across the sky, amber and scarlet sinking into purple. More than once her sun-gazing had drawn the whip of the Overseer. Yet it was her daily ritual to watch the sun sink beyond the walls of the black city and into the Golden Sea, where ships sailed to and from mysterious lands. Somewhere in that walled hive of barbed towers the Undying One sat on his throne of blood and tears, dreaming new tortures for his people.
Matay’s eyes saw well beyond the ramparts of oppression. She discovered freedom in the splendors of dawn and dusk.
Tong recalled the morning after their first night together. She had awoken wrapped in his arms inside the wooden shack, only to slip away from him into the chill of dawn. He lay on his side on the woven sleeping mat and stared at her sleek body as she pulled on the rough-spun colorless garment that all female slaves wore. The blackness of her hair shimmered with silver as the first rays of morning peeked through the ragged window.
“Where are you going?” he asked. “We can sleep a while longer before the work horn blows.”
She paused before the door curtain and looked back at him with sparkling eyes. Her smile was the one she would wear in all his future memories. “I want to watch the sun rise,” she said. She held out her small hand, soft and warm. “Come with me…”
He joined her that day and nearly every day after for six growing seasons, staring into the gray sky as the face of the sun set it on fire, burning away the last shades of night and making way for the brilliant blue of morning. They sat on a log outside his narrow hut, enjoying the most precious part of the day, the part when they were not yet driven to toil and sweat in the fields, when the whips and clubs of the Onyx Guard and the Overseers had yet to appear between the ro
ws of windswept corn. It did not take him long to understand why she valued the beauty of the sunrise, and why she stopped every evening to watch the sunset. Dawn and dusk. These were the only two things she possessed that slavery could never take or destroy. This awareness was a gift she had given to him, long before she gave him the more precious gift that grew inside her belly.
I wish I could see Matay’s sunrise one more time. Tong stared at the ray of light slicing through the red shadows. He climbed down to a lower position in his tree. The path he had so carefully laid would lead them directly below his perch. He need only wait. He may never feel the warm glow of sunrise on his skin again, but he would know the hot blood of his enemies on fists and fingers. He drew the long sabre from its scabbard and crouched like a panther on a wide branch above the trail.
Soon the noise of the masked ones rang through the glade, the swishing of blades, the falling of stem and branch, the tramp of metal-shod boots through mud and moss and rotting leaves. Tong’s own boots were mud-caked leather, torn in places by thorn and brush and stone. The boots of a slave. His feet were cold and his toes tingled against the red bark of the tree. He decided it would be good to meet his death in a pair of soldiers’ boots. Eight such pairs drew nearer to the tree that sheltered him.
He would wait until the last one passed below, then drop and kill the man, drag him into the undergrowth and steal his boots. Then he would march out to face the remaining seven at once and kill as many as he could before they brought him down. He was no swordsman, but his arms were big and powerful, the arms of a man used to laboring all day every day for twenty-three years. The masked ones had their armor, but they were frightened of him. They were cowards, impotent beneath their shells of black metal. Only black ants, marching.
His time in the jungle had made him wild and desperate, hungry for blood like the vipers and the tigers and the flying insects. All things here were hungry for blood. He was becoming one of them.