The Ossard Series (Books 1-3): The Fall of Ossard, Ossard's Hope, and Ossard's Shadow.

by Colin Taber

  With unblinking eyes, the captain dropped to one knee and knelt before the instrument as he uttered a prayer to the Kinreda’s god of war, the Lady Andrasta. After a pause, with sure hands, he lifted the horn free of the velvet folds that bore its worked silver, and then stood and turned to face the High King.

  The captain spoke as tradition demanded, “As commanded, I will sound the call to war.”

  Caemarou nodded with a smirk on his face and a sparkle in his eyes. “Yes, I command you; announce the High King’s call!”

  The captain grabbed a square of loose velvet from the case and dropped it on the marble paving. He then rested the base of the horn on the material before checking that the valve built into the frame supporting the mounted naskae, joining the soul-pearl to the horn’s long chamber, was closed. Certain it was safe, he positioned himself and brought the mouthpiece to his lips. He widened his stance and then took in a deep breath. A moment later, he began to blow and empty his lungs.

  A strong and deep note rolled out to blast those in the garden and roll across the pillar-city. In the dawn's light and the early morning's quiet, the strong, low note rose as it thrummed out amongst the pillar-towers, streets and countless bridges that joined so many of the islands spreading across the city-spanning lake.

  All in the roof garden turned to look out across the city to watch for the reaction.

  At first, there was little to see, other than birds scattering from trees in the roof garden, but the call continued to roll out. Soon, the long note returned to them as an echo, throbbing and rumbling as it rebounded off the city’s many towers.

  The captain ended the note and took in another deep breath. After a pause, he blew again, the second of the three traditional calls.

  The Garnamora Mountains rose at the back of the city – a metropolis built over and around the waters of Lake Finsalsa that lay alongside and nearly joined the adjacent sea – those nearby slopes sent the first call back as a much stronger echo, just as the second note began to roll out.

  And with it came the first of the call’s answers.

  A solitary horn from the direction of The Temple of The Lady of War called out its answer first, but others joined in as the captain’s second note ran on before finally ending. His call didn’t die though. Despite him taking his lips from the silver mouthpiece, the long and loud notes fell into stronger echoes, and echoes of echoes, all reinforced by a growing chorus of answering horns.

  The call to war had been heard!

  The captain took another deep breath before unleashing the third and final call. As he put his lips again to the silver, more horns rose in song, no longer numbering as a few, but in the dozens.

  A ball of light flared celestial blue over Andrasta’s temple. A heartbeat later, another blue light blazed on the mountaintop behind the city that hosted the Garnamora Watchtower.

  The captain blew on, his lips beginning to sting and ache.

  Scores more horns joined the call while other tower tops blazed with celestial light.

  The captain continued blowing until he was red in the face and sweat beaded on his brow. Finally, his last note died.

  His lungs emptied, he lowered the silver neck of the horn to his side.

  They all stood there to witness what had been unleashed.

  Hundreds of horns now sounded across the city, giving birth to their own chorus of echoes; their wails demonstrating the pillar-city as a maze of canyons seemingly built to repeat and amplify such a call.

  Others in the mountains and further along the nearby coast took up the note.

  The rising noise took on a life of its own, destined to spread from the city and race across all of Lae Wair-Rae’s inner provinces, as the Core took up the rallying song.

  The captain of the Silvan Guard licked his numb lips, noting the taste of blood.

  Around the city, birds scattered across the sky, disturbed by the growing maelstrom of noise.

  If the roar of horns wasn’t enough, scores of others joined the first two flaring lights – signal naskae – to blaze as they burned out their energy, working to push the message further out.

  War was coming!

  The naskae signals burnt pure soul-stuff, not just to accompany the crazed chorus as lit beacons, but also to let the military know that wherever its forces may be, it was to rouse and prepare. Down in the port, along the mountains’ chain of watchtowers, and at lighthouses along the coast, other signal naskae also blazed.

  Out to sea, naval ships witnessed the flaring beacons and answered with their own.

  The streets below were also beginning to fill, the buzz of growing crowds joining the great chorus of horns.

  The call would travel through the day, carried across land, water and the skies.

  The signal naskae – twisted and altered soul shells – didn’t simply flare bright. They also cried out into the celestial so any who might be sensitive to that other world might also become aware of the three-fold call of light, sound and spirit.

  By sunset, all of The Core would be aware that the military had been roused.

  A grand and terrible thing had been set into motion; an action started with the purity of silver at dawn but doomed to end on a future dusk, amidst dirt, sweat and blood.

  A Prelude In Two Parts

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  Part II: In The Clouds

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  Ossard, The Northcountry.

  Nightmares and dreams mixed with my memory of what happened on the ridge overlooking Ossard.

  I could remember little for certain of my failing above the city, where my dark hunger finally arose to overtake me. Yet I could recall every detail of Inquisitor Baltimora’s demise far away to the south, his body impaled on a spire over his faith’s most sacred city.

  Having said that, I still could remember far too much of what I’d had a hand in.

  Below, in the valley, the city rose up – that stolen city, one undeniably claimed by cultist souls. They did so as the forces of the Inquisition and my husband and his volunteers fell to their counter attack.

  The deaths of so many in that bloody feint, ambush and counter-feint were too much for me to behold. So I likewise fell, but the fall for me was from my duty to Life into the calling of Death’s work. I lost control of my boiling hunger, and the frenzy of soul feeding only grew, setting me to steal away the lives of many, not simply to kill them, but to drain their souls and damn them to the nothingness of Oblivion.

  With each passing heartbeat, I sunk deeper into my feeding, my elation soaring as my comprehension of my misdeed faded away. Each moment I took only more. Those about me on the ridge dropped, lifeless, as I consumed their souls, including my mother-in-law, Angela, who collapsed beside me.

  More collapsed in the city, as whole alleys and knots of fighting succumbed to my rapacious dark appetite.

  No one was safe, not from me. Dozens became scores, and scores became hundreds.

  Why had I ever doubted it – I was the Forsaken Lady!

  Then I did one of the few things that might cause me to hesitate – I recognised the soul of Pedro as I drained it dry. My obsession with feeding was so great that I didn’t pause until so little of his soul remained that its light faltered, threatening to fail completely.

  My husband was dying!

  His body lay unconscious in the bloody streets below after he’d taken an arrow in the side and been struck on the temple by a stone from a cultist sling. Perhaps the wounds were mortal, probably in fact, but it was not those injuries, or time, that stole away any last chance he had to live – it was me. I suckled on his soul like a drunk kept parted too long from his drink. When I realised what I was doing and hesitated, there was just too little left to save.

  I killed him.

  The saddest part was that even though I finally paused, only to watch his life-light expire, I also drained another hundred souls during that short expanse of time.

  Tasting those last sparks of my husband’s essence made me stop, letting
my consciousness rise above the primal high that had me spinning so far out of control.

  Just then, the world seemed to pause with me, as if holding its breath. I could feel the cultist Lord of Ossard, Heinz Kurgar, observing me, awed at the way I downed souls by the hundreds. And further afield, in the dark void of the celestial, much larger entities also turned their attention towards me.

  Who dared steal the promised souls of their followers?

  But then, as that pause came to its end – whether because Kurgar was going to try to stop me or whether one of the death-addicted gods was going to lash out and extinguish me – something completely unexpected happened: The Prince’s spectral-blue hand appeared from behind me, his cupped palm covered in moonroot. He placed it at my mouth and nose to baffle my link to the celestial and stupefy my consciousness.

  Suddenly, I could no longer feed, whether I wanted to or not.

  I collapsed, surprised he’d come, but even more so that he’d come prepared for my soul feeding. My vision blurred as paralysis overtook me, but I heard him whisper with a broken voice, “Grae Ru.” His tone came full of sorrow, as though a burden of guilt weighed him down – guilt even heavier than my own – despite my terrible crime.

  So, as I lay on the grassy ridge top, amongst the dead, the city below fought off the invaders they had so carefully invited in and trapped. Meanwhile, in the waters before Ossard, half a dozen ships of the Black Fleet burned, wreathed in blue flames, as those nearby unfurled their dark sails and tried to escape.

  Bolts of blue fire continued to race out from the Fishing Wharves in great tumbling balls, skimming over the waves to draw steam and catch those ships still exposed. Amidst great thumping booms, bewitching celestial flames and billowing plumes of smoke soon wrapped any vessels too slow to make open water. The first of many quickly started to sink, and only a few made it clear of the sound. All that happened as dark laughter rang out – an old woman’s laughter, the chortling deep and elated as it finally found its revenge.

  I knew the voice – Grandmother.

  Her maniacal laughter came accompanied by the blue flames that she cast out, the very same spectral fire that had so long ago eaten her mortal form on an Inquisition pyre.

  Meanwhile, back in the city, fires were tamed while gangs of cultists made their way through alleys and streets to make sure none of their enemies remained. By the time the first of their forces ventured out to carry their search into the vale, I also had company, if of a different and thankfully friendlier sort.

  Felmaradis the Lae Velsanan.

  The further I sank into the moonroot’s mire – paralysed but also partially aware – the more fantastical images that made little sense assailed me. In them, I saw myself, now abandoned by the Prince, being picked up by Felmaradis after he had somehow found me on the ridge’s spine. Those delusions showed me his face, as hard as stone but with tears escaping his eyes as he bellowed at the top of his lungs, demanding his physician urgently join him and attend to me.

  My confused vision stumbled on, sometimes wavering, but eventually found focus again as I was massaged by the wind under billowing sails.

  We cast off in a small boat, but not from the shore, instead from the hillside’s heights. Above me, the sky filled with silk as though a huge sail had somehow folded over on itself, and still bulging with gusting wind, set us free like a feather on a breeze.

  Strange sights then taxed my already confused mind. Vertigo set in as the boat rocked back and forth under those odd sails and creaking rigging, while the wind buffeted us and pushed us across the sky. Visible over the side spread not the blue of the sea, but the broader lands of the Northcountry far beneath us.

  Undeniably, we were flying.

  I had seen the Northcountry from above during the recurring dream that showed me a hint of the heartwood and the Prince’s sanctuary. Now, I saw it again, but not while flying like a bird, but as a passenger rescued from Ossard, one lifted free from the ground in a boat that sailed on a gentle but steady elemental breeze.

  We rode the wind, and all the while Fel looked to me with worry in his eyes as his physician worked to aid me.

  I knew the legends: The Lae Velsanans could fly – some said their past Dominions had harnessed the skill through the power of the elements.

  Had they again?

  Lost in my confusion and struggling to rise out of my paralysis, one memory from that morning stood stronger than them all. It wasn’t of Pedro dying while he asked for a blessing, nor Inquisitor Baltimora’s despair at failure, or even the knowledge that somehow I hadn’t taken my unborn son’s soul, or that I was in a boat that could sail the wind. No, what struck me most was how the Prince’s spectral palm, caked in moonroot, had been ready to steal away my hunger, paralyse me, and all but take my consciousness.

  If the Prince had known I would lose control and become wild with my hunger, why had he let me go?

  Why take such a risk?

  Why let so many die, while at the same time putting me in a situation that could only result in my feeding and the strengthening of my addiction, bringing me closer in alignment to Death?

  Had he wanted me to fail?

  By My Own Hand

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  A Third Belated Introduction

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  The telling of this tale only gets harder, dredging up more memories and pain. Yet it needs to be told lest the lesson be forgotten and the world be made to live through it all again.

  So my daughter tells me.

  Originally, I awoke to many truths during the Fall of Ossard, when that great city-state first fell at the hands of Heinz Kurgar’s cultist conspiracy. But there was more revelation to come, most of it bitter.

  The second time the city was engulfed in chaos – besieged by an awkward alliance led by the Inquisition and its Church Loyalists, and my husband and his volunteers – I began to comprehend more of these truths. During that time, as our volunteers shed blood and fell in Ossard’s deadly streets, I also succumbed, but to the divine addiction. But there, in those moments of terrible misery, I would finally gain some real understanding of the troubles that plagued our world – and my role in banishing them.

  The knowledge bloomed alongside my certainty that the solution would be most painful.

  Meanwhile, while I waged my battle with my dark hunger and fate, I could only watch from afar as Sef, Anton and the winged Dagraun woman, Matraia, walked into another war that would eventually make Ossard’s suffering pale in comparison. The once wealthy city-state of merchant princes might have burned and been besieged, but that was nothing compared to what was about to befall Kalraith and the hidden cities thus aligned to Life’s other surviving divine daughter, Dorloth. Yet my hope still prevailed, for if I was the spark to trigger what came next, then Dorloth was the striking flint. We only needed tinder.

  We pick up the story after the cultist defenders of Ossard expelled the bloody remnants of the Inquisition led force and pursued it up the Cassaro Vale. Mostly oblivious, I lay above it all, collapsed on the ridge side, where I had been overcome by a dose of moon root, the celestial-stifling herb being the only thing to stop my descent into a frenzy of soul feeding.

  Juvela

  Part I

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  And Hope Lives

  Chapter 1

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  A Scorched Land

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  Beyond the Flet Frontier, Kalraith.

  The vista spreading before Sef and Anton was unbelievable – a wasted land, rugged, cracked and charred. The wide and low valley looked as though fire itself had once lived here, only to leave behind blackened stone, the substance again solid after being torched until molten. At their backs stood the edge of the woodlands, marked by traumatised trees scarred from the nearness of the catastrophe that had befallen the land ahead. Further behind lay the deep forest of Fletland’s frontier, the woods standing as a buffer between this new waste and the Flet Lakelands beyond.

  But Sef and Anton had to go forwar
d, to cross the Varm Carga Mountains so they could reach Kalraith.

  From the shade of the nearby trees came a soft voice, one rested but apprehensive all the same. “Is it time to go?”

  Sef and Anton both turned and looked to Matraia, to where she stood beside a tree, the north facing bark of the ancient oak charred black, despite the burns already being seasons old. What had happened here would take more time than that to fade. None of this had been the work of normal flames; this was the ruin caused by concentrated fire drawn from the elemental world. And lots of it.

  Matraia, the Dagraun lady, wore colours similar to the blasted land ahead, her clothes sporting hues of grey, black and brown that extended to her feathers, courtesy of dyes used by the Debast in order to stain her magnificent wings.

  With her wings lame, her feathered majesty was now her personal wasteland.

  They all wore clothes of such colours, yet also had some cloaks of lighter white and grey hues packed. The latter matched the mountain heights and were a gift from the Debast, who used greens, greys and browns in the woods to help them move unseen.

  Anton glanced at Sef before turning back to her. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “We have to,” she answered without any hesitation.

  Sef said, “Well, yes, Anton and I do, but if you come with us you’ll be stuck on the ground.”

  “I’ll be alright. If the need arises, I can still glide, and aside from that, you’ll need my help once you’re in Kalraith.”

  The big Flet reluctantly agreed, but he pushed, “But you’ll feel crippled if stuck on the ground.” And as his words sounded, Sef couldn’t help but glance at Anton and his maimed hand.

  Anton shook his head. “Well, we’re all cripples in one way or another: Me because of a few missing fingers, Matraia due to her wings being lame, and you...”