The Immortal Crown
Page 1
Maps by Isaac Stewart.
© 2016 Kieth W. Merrill
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All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Merrill, Kieth, 1940– author.
The Immortal Crown / Kieth W. Merrill.
pages cm — (Saga of kings ; volume 1)
Summary: The legendary stones once touched by the hand of the god Oum’ilah will grant immortality and supreme power to whoever can gather them and place them in the rightful crown.
ISBN 978-1-62972-025-8 (hardbound : alk. paper)
I. Title. II. Series: Merrill, Kieth, 1940– Saga of kings ; v. 1.
PS3613.E7762E98 2016
813'.6—dc232014040881
Printed in the United States of America
Lake Book Manufacturing, Inc., Melrose Park, IL
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my eight extraordinary children, some of whom will actually read this book and like it.
And to Dagny My best friend and finest fan and favorite critic . . . who loves everything I do.
The seal is broken
The ancient evil is come again
The secret works of darkness rise
The Immortal Crown is blind.
And that which was lost shall be found
To be gathered in the righteous hand
By the child of pure blood
By the strength of a sword he cannot hold
Endowed with the powers of godliness
And returned to the crown of endless life
To evil or to good
In the age of chaos
And the saga of kings
—Codices of the Navigator, XXIII
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 7
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 23
CHAPTER 22
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
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLOGUE
Annum 1059, Age of Kandelaar
Oldbones Keep, Dominion Dragonfell
Jagged bits of bone tore flesh from Drakkor’s back. The birchwood pallet pinioned his tongue and was almost bitten through.
I won’t cry out! I must not scream. I will endure this agony in silence . . . or die. The grim resolve pounded through the boy’s head. I will not die. I will not die.
The brute with the cat-o’-nine-tails lashed him again. Blood oozed from the mangled flesh and ran down the boy’s legs. He was only fifteen years old but considered himself a man. He clenched his jaw tighter and closed his eyes until his mind was a blackened void where he screamed in silence. I will not die. I will not die!
The sorceress watched from the shadow of the woolen cowl that covered her head.
She was encircled by the thirteen magi of the Scarlet Council, who stood beneath the graven image of she-dragon looming from the wall of the cavern.
The sorceress’s bloodred robes dragged on the floor. She was old and hunched, as if the lump on her back were a stone too heavy to carry. She stepped forward into the cold blue light of the winter moon that fell through the opening above. Burning faggots of yew wood smeared with suet cast a flicker of fire on her face. Her old bones and crippling pain made her limp with the awkward gate of an imp. Pallid skin stretched over a rack of twisted bones.
Talismans and dead things hung from a string of twisted grass around her neck. A dragon curled in a black tattoo from the gnarled lump of her belly to her bony shoulders where the tail wrapped around her neck and was lost in the wrinkles of her face. Her blackened, ink-stained flesh gave her the appearance of a gargoyle.
She muttered a spell and willed the boy under the lash to endure in silence, to prove himself worthy to fulfill the archaic prophecy that echoed in her head.
In the time of kings and the day of chaos, the seal is broken. The ancient mysteries arise. She-dragon is blind and rages from the mountains. That which was lost shall be found. The eggs of stone forged in the breath of fire, gathered in the hand of might by the child of no man—who is worthy of the blood of the dragon, being purged by death and suffering in silent darkness—and, clustered in her claws, will rise immortal by the power of the ancient secret, to rule all flesh and reign forever as god of the world.
The cryptic meaning of the prophecy was an endless cause of contention. When the sorceress had been elevated as the Esteemed One, she had resurrected the ancient ritual and renewed the cult’s long-abandoned search for the “child of no man.” A generation of warlocks, witches, and a following of hapless creatures had sworn the ancient blood oath and traded their souls for the secrets of darkness.
If her desire was to be and her failing life renewed, the child must be found and the prophecy fulfilled, and soon.
Purged by death and suffering in silent darkness. Her dying heart fluttered, and a wave of faintness washed over her. To rise immortal and reign forever as god . . . and queen? What else could it mean? The sorceress believed because she dared not doubt. Her time was almost past.
The origin of the prophecy remained a mystery. The Scarlet Council of Dragonfell claimed it had existed since the times of creation, when Tiamat formed earth and sky and bego
t she-dragon of the dark world, who rose from her glimmering egg in the depths of the sea.
They believed the “eggs of stone” were the magical stones of fire, begotten in the deep and burned by the fire of she-dragon’s breath to light the way from the darkness of chaos to the human world. The Scarlet Council possessed only one of the legendary stones of mystical power and had guarded it through the centuries as their most sacred duty. The rest of the stones had been lost. Some said they had been stolen from the sons of she-dragon by the one known as the Navigator, who crossed the endless deep in boats in the days of fierce winds a thousand years before.
Some claimed the prophecy was a corruption of the writings of the Navigator, twisted by interpretation and exegesis and then transcribed by a warlock to his grimoire in archaic times. The book of magic, the mythos claims, was secreted aboard a boat of the Navigator’s voyaging fleet.
Others believed the prophecy originated with the shedding of first blood and the beginning of the secret oaths. The ancient alliance of evil to murder and get gain.
Ten centuries had passed away. Finding one worthy of the blood, who could gather that which was lost, had never come. The mysterious riddle of renewal, regeneration, and endless life remained unknown. None of the boys put to the trial had endured the ritual demanded by the cryptic words of the prophecy.
Purged by death and suffering in silent darkness. The sorceress mouthed the words of the prophecy, her lips a picket line of wrinkles. Shall these things never be while I am yet alive? The tragedy of the thought taunted her, and her heart stuttered in arrhythmic thumps. She stared at the boy with desperate hope as another slash of knotted cords was laid across his bloodied back. He did not cry out.
The sorceress ordained that the ritual of purging take place once a year and always on the shortest day of the twelve moons. Slave to superstition, she believed the long night satisfied the oracular meaning of “in silent darkness.”
Suffering in silent darkness. Could this be the boy? At last?
Another lash and still no sounds of agony.
Please, the sorceress begged in silence to the confusion of gods and dragons that lived in the imaginations of her dark dreams. Let this boy be the one to gather the thirteen stones of fire so I might become immortal and reign forever.
Her obsession to escape death surged through her in a rush of hope. Her old frame trembled. She closed her mind lest the magi of the council divine her secret desire. They must never know the truth of her eagerness to find the child of prophecy.
Another lash. A splattering of blood. Agony in silence. Hope.
The boy under the lash was of unknown blood. An ignorant, unkempt orphan from the slums of Black Flower. Like other boys the council enticed, coerced, or kidnapped and subjected to the ritual, he was an impoverished child. It didn’t matter if he was born a bastard of the brothel or spawned in the rot and refuse of the harbor by the scavengers that rummaged there. He was, by the council’s interpretation of the prophetic riddle, “a child of no man.”
The boy had been brought to Oldbones Keep by the man who revered himself the Peddler of Souls. A lowly scum of a man who traded human misery for a jangle of coin, he had pimped and pandered over many seasons to ingratiate himself to the hooded magi.
It was not the first time he’d brought a boy to the Scarlet Council as a candidate for the chosen child, but this time was different. This time he prostrated himself and gushed, “This boy is made known to me by the dreams of night and the whisperings of she-dragon.” No lie was too outrageous if it filled his palm with silver. He had seen the depth of superstition at Oldbones Keep. He had witnessed the trials and the scourging. He had learned about the legendary magic stones and witnessed the consuming power of the ancient prophecy.
When the gossipmongers in the taverns of Black Flower first spoke of the mischiefs at Oldbones Keep, the nefarious old dog of a peddler saw the opportunity to put silver in his palm.
It had been many years since he’d first arrived at Dragonfell to sow the seed. With cracked gray lips close to the old woman’s ear, he’d told of desperate, barren women imbibing poisonous elixirs brewed by the hag of the woods, then giving birth to fatherless boys before dying themselves in the birthing.
“A child of no man is an orphan, Esteemed One,” he whispered, since making it a secret seemed to make it true.
It fit the description of the prophecy, or nearly so, and in the loam of the sorceress’s desperate hope, the words sprouted like noxious thistles.
The Peddler of Souls promised to find the boys born of the dark magic and bring them to her for the purging so she could find the chosen vessel. His offer was benevolent and selfless—except, of course, for the generous fee he requested for each of the children he delivered.
There were plenty of orphans in and about Black Flower, and the Peddler of Souls found it easy to entice indigent boys with the promises of all the things they’d never had.
He brought three new candidates to Dragonfell and stayed to look after them at the sorceress’s request. Their first days were joyous. There were baths, hot and scented with perfume. Their bodies were massaged with precious oils, then dressed in silken robes and adorned like the prince of the North. They were given a feast with foods of such taste and abundance it was beyond imagining for the impoverished boys. And, of course, they were given all the wine they could drink.
With their bodies cleansed, their muscles massaged, their bellies full, and their shoulders draped in silk, the orphan boys from the slums of Black Flower could not help but believe they had fallen on good fortune.
It was at their height of pleasure when they learned the greatest of the Peddler’s promises—“No harm will come ta’ ye!”—was a lie. They were stripped of their silken garments and placed in a circular arena deep in the bowels of Oldbones Keep. The roof was a frame of arched timbers that rested on a wall of rock rising half again the height of a man.
A dragon’s claw hung from a leather thong in the center of the ring. It dangled higher than a man could jump. It looked at first to be an ornament of homage to she-dragon but was in truth, a weapon of brutal death.
Candidates became contenders. They were lowered into the arena on hemp. The access portal was barred. Escape was impossible. The candidates were placed equidistant from each other with their backs against the stones. It was not until they were there, nearly naked, confused, and full of fear that the real purpose of their invitation to Dragonfell was finally explained.
The sorceress called out to them from where she and the Scarlet Council watched. She recited the words of the prophecy, explained why they had been chosen, and described the ominous events that lay before them.
“The trial of death by three is the meaning of the prophecy’s cryptic ‘purged by death.’ There are no rules. Only one of you will be allowed to leave the arena alive,” she said in a calm and level voice. “By your victory over death, you will earn the right to the second trial—the lash and suffering in silent darkness.”
The sorceress had witnessed many battles, blood, and grizzly killings during her reign. She did not see the boys as impoverished children, deceived and condemned to death. Rather, they were creatures spawned to a purpose. They were less than human—otherwise such blood and torture would be too ghastly. Even for her.
The sorceress looked at the boy who had managed to hold his silence. She waited for the final lash, anxious and hopeful, but her feelings for the child troubled her.
The boy raised his bloody face and held her eyes.
She felt a nauseating wave of empathy she had never known. She could not make of him a creature less than human.
Is he the one? The thought tightened a knot in her stomach, and she forced her uncertainties away. She would not allow her rising hope to falter. Not here. Not now. No one has come as far as this boy. None has been so close to fulfilling the prophecy.
His
intelligence, his prowess. The utter ruthlessness he had shown in the trial of death by three! Her heart beat faster as she remembered. She pursed her lips and closed her eyes and saw it all again.
The only means of inflicting death in the arena were bare hands, feet, and teeth. The dragon’s claw was out of reach. The ritual was more than a game of killing. It was a game of strategy. One boy could not kill the other two without a weapon. If he grappled with one, the third could seize the advantage. If two conspired against one, they could easily acquire the claw and the third would swiftly fall. What then?
The signal to begin was given. At first the sorceress thought him a weakling. His body was strong and his muscles taut, but he cowered against the wall as if he were afraid. It seemed as if he hoped to avoid the fight in some vain hope of rescue.
The other two boys raced to the center of the arena and collided in a ferocious exchange of pounding fists, slashing nails, and kicking feet. One gripped the other’s neck, and they grappled to a writhing impasse of tangled limbs.
The third boy sprang from the wall and ran up their bodies like a spotted lion climbing a tree. With the momentum of his sprint, he used the thighs, hips, and arms of their tangled torsos as if they were footholds on a rotted stump. He vaulted upward and grasped the dragon’s claw.
By the time the grappling duo had untangled themselves, he had landed like a cat, leaped forward, and slashed their necks. The grapplers grasped their throats in a desperate attempt to stop the blood, but their lives had ended.
The boy had stood over them, his shoulders hunched like a beast, his chest convulsing as he gasped to regain his breath. He let the bloody claw fall from his fingers. He stared at his hands, then smeared his face with his opponents’ blood and raised his chin toward the sorceress. A fire of defiance danced in the black of his eyes.
The final lash was badly placed. One of the nine knotted cords wrapped around the boy’s neck and ripped a chunk of flesh from his jaw. Thirty and three lashes. The mystical number was suffused with ancient power.
The scourging had ended. The second task of the ritual was finished. He had not cried out. He had suffered in silent darkness.