by Damien Lake
Forest For the Trees
Book Three of
The Chronicles of
the Crimson Kings
By
Damien Lake
FOREST FOR THE TREES
Copyright © 2014 by Damien Lake
Written by Damien Lake
Cover and maps created by Kryslin Franks
First Publication 2014
Version 1.2
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole, in part, or in any form by any electronic, mechanical or any other means now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, recording, digital copying, scanning, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Thank you for purchasing an authorized copy of this novel and complying with copyright laws. By not distributing this novel without permission, you are giving support to all self-publishers and allowing them to continue sharing their creative spirit with readers worldwide.
Dedication
This novel, the final of the first Folcrist trilogy, is dedicated to my 6th grade English teacher. When I broke my leg trying to slide into home plate during P.E. class, I missed the final month of school thanks to four weeks in traction in a hospital bed. My English teacher visited me in my ordeal. Having noticed that I spent more time in his class reading Greek mythology books from the school library rather than learning to diagram a sentence, he brought me a trilogy of fantasy books from the Dragonlance series. Had he not gone out of his way for me then, my tastes in literature might have followed entirely different paths.
Thanks, Mr. I.
Table of Contents:
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Interlude
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Sneak Peek at “Silver in the Darkness”
Table of Maps:
Kingdom of Galemar
Southwest Galemar
Prologue
The city never fell into a complete sleep. Cityguard patrols ceaselessly roamed the nighttime streets, their complaints regarding the cold that froze their hardworking arses off the only warmth to enwrap them. They barely turned their gazes off the beaten path to ensure the peace. Once they passed the tar-black alleys, those skilled at defeating locks continued to ply their trade.
Dogs could be heard barking from every district. Many were tethered outside residences, providing a greater nuisance than the scoffed-at iron locks. Perpetually open taverns hosted bleary-eyed men with cherry noses as well as the odd night watchman slipped off for a hot meal or a wet tankard. Men either stumbled where they walked or kept to the shadows until they returned to their guard post at their employer’s premises.
Most legitimate businesses were closed until the next dawn. People slumbered. Whether they wandered the half-world from atop feather-stuffed mattresses or wadded piles of rags, they each waited for the new day.
Thoenar claimed a higher number of shabby districts than those that sparkled with the pride of the upper-classes. The worst were in the western reaches, near the outermost defensive walls and within the Outer City. Districts where chemical fumes and slaughtering pen aromas drifted to the nose on the slightest breeze. Old buildings were missing half their slate roofing tiles. Numerous walls canted at alarming angles, the derelicts sheltered in city pockets tucked away from sight. Hard eyes gazed at strangers from harder people who scratched out their living with no idea what the next day would bring.
Deep in the night, light shone without warning against a crumbling brick wall. It came from across a dirty alley, apparently originating from a splintery post supporting a sagging balcony. Rainbow luminescence emanated from behind the thin column, shining from nowhere at all, casting hues in brilliant reds, greens, yellows, pinks and purples across the rusty bricks.
A shadow of a man appeared in the glow shining on the building’s backside. Fingers closed around the post to grip it in a drunkard’s queasy wobble. The hand pulled against the leverage until Rail Drakkson pitched forward, emerging from behind a post no thicker than his arm as if he had exited from a door in an unseen wall.
Rail tumbled to the ground. He thudded hard into the ancient paving stones under their layer of dirt. His sword clattered loudly off the stone before coming to a rest several feet away. He gasped for air, his heart hammering wildly, his body quivering in involuntary muscle spasms. Shivers wracked him as if he were a man exposed to a raging blizzard.
Behind him, the Red Man exited from behind the post with greater dignity. His hands emerged, followed slowly by the rest of him coming into view from behind the narrow span. Far too narrow to have hidden the amount of body stepping into the alley.
The Red Man spared a single glance for Rail quivering on the ground before turning back to the post. He raised one wine-colored glove to the space he had emerged from. Behind him, the multi-hued light cast against the wall began shrinking, contracting to a pinpoint of oyster shell brilliance. It finally winked out.
He stepped beside Rail. The hanging end of his long coat brushed over the prostrate man’s knuckles, satin interior flashing in the gloom. “You push your body harder than the situation strictly demands, friend. The kkan’edom is drain enough on your life as it stands. You need not contribute to the toll without just cause.”
Rail struggled to his knees in order to glare unobstructed at the Red Man. “Just bloody cause, is it? At the current rate you’re slogging along, I’ll be dust in the copping wind before you and he meet for the catch-all!”
“I have seen plans by countless number fail when their enactors proceeded without complete necessary information. The importance of—”
“Stuff it!” Rail snarled. The trip via the kkan’korsa had sheered away his tolerance and temper both. “I’m damned for knowing that already. Taking down that black dog is more important than me, else I wouldn’t have signed on for this journey.” He scowled balefully at his companion’s fiery red hair and ruby-jewel eyes. “Not that you fully explained what I was signing on for beforehand.”
The Red Man returned the stare calmly. “Would you that I had left you on your own? Living your mercenary ways as the likes of Xenos grew into his power and midwifed a rebirth of history?”
Lilly. And Marik. Rail hoisted himself to his feet with an angry sneer born from his foul mood rather than any hatred for this…man. He did not need the Red Man to remind him why he had embarked on this crusade without visible end. “Don’t lecture me. How long were we in there? And where in the ninth hell are we?”
The Red Man lifted one hand high above him, his fingers cupped as if to scoop out a portion of the alley’s air. He brought his hand down and inhaled deeply from his palm through his mouth, exposing his tongue fully. After a moment spent tastin
g whatever he had collected, he answered, “Not longer than nine days, as I believed. Surly less, but six days in the minimum.”
Rail spat. A moment later he collapsed back to his knees. His heart hammered still within his chest in furious abandon. He gritted his teeth while sweat dripped into his eyes from his brow, forcing his body to calm, to relax, to be at ease…
“Shall I—”
“No!” Rail growled, annoyance and rage at life twisted around each other. “I’ll hold on as long as I bleeding have to. I refuse to blow out until then.”
“You will last all the longer if you limit your pace until we need your strength in the full.”
“It didn’t work last time, did it? He sluffed me off like a duck in the rain. I can’t surpass my limits unless I push myself. And don’t start in on all that theory again. I know me better than some thinker a thousand years dead.” Rail grabbed his sword’s tip and pulled it to him. He used the blade to support his weight while he rose to his feet a second time. Grasping the hilt tightly as the point ground between paving stones, he demanded, “You haven’t told me where we popped out.”
“This is the capitol city of your homeland.”
“Thoenar? Why here? Why not in Tullainia close to where he’ll land?”
The Red Man stroked the back of one gloved hand with the fingers of the other, a habit he usually engaged in when deep in consideration. “There remains too much in shadow to be certain of the best path to choose.”
“As usual,” Rail quipped. He had long since grown weary of his companion’s hesitancy to act directly against Xenos. The result was that bloodthirsty murderer had grown too strong to deal with easily.
Rail noticed the Red Man’s eye tick slightly, and he took pleasure in this small show of exasperation from the otherwise stolid figure. “He has set his sight continually on this, the land of your birth. Warfare and strife, the tools that do aid him best, could easily be accomplished among the kingdoms on the far side of the ocean, yet he persists in sending his strength to locales long forgotten by Arronath and its peoples.”
“He was probably after something here all along,” Rail replied, restating a point they had touched on briefly before entering the kkan’korsa again. “We chased him to Arronath before he had the strength to face us.”
As before, the Red Man refused to commit. “That is a possibility among the threads, I concur. Yet it feels too much the plan in waiting that he fled to the Earthen Lands and discovered the ancient catacombs of his god waiting for his hand to touch.”
“He had to run somewhere. But the cur’s too obsessed with Merinor for it to amount to any good. Whatever he wants, it will probably give him the strength he needs.”
“In that I agree, and so have I chosen to come to your capitol. Within this, the heart-city of Galemar, must lie the answer to why his eye persists in resting on these lands.”
Rail risked lessening his death-grip on the sword hilt and found his legs capable of supporting him. “We’ve gotten ahead of the bastard for once. We’ll be waiting in front of him while he’s still casting his gaze back over his shoulder.”
“So do I hope,” the Red Man responded. “And yet time is not a companionable ally in this engagement. We must discover with haste what is it that draws him so surely as moth to flame.”
“We’re not going to do that freezing in an alley,” Rail muttered. “Let’s find a decent inn worthy of your metal.”
They glanced about, looking for the best route to escape the grimy alley. Rail limped along using his sword as a crutch, refusing to accept help from the Red Man and pretending not to notice his crimson companion’s slower walking pace.
Book 05
Citadel
Chapter 01
The view from atop the boulder was magnificent. It was located on a climbing slope by the forest’s edge. From that vantage one could see across the treetops stretching away in a green, swaying sea. Very little snow remained. Spring thaws were reclaiming Galemar’s native colors. Only four miles in length, the small wood could be seen to end nearby with another starting a short distance beyond. Soft morning light made the trees seem much more alive than usual, shining through the gloom to glow with a radiance of unsullied nature…or perhaps it was only that he was thankful to be alive to see the vista.
On his boulder, the man raised his arms as if addressing multitudes. He spread his hands wide and proclaimed to the trees, “I, Marik Railson, am a great, stupid idiot!”
Dietrik Balledry nodded sharply beside him. “Keep going.”
“I am a tremendous lumbering moron! A dyed-in-the-wool jackass!”
When he paused, Dietrik poked the back of his thigh with one hard finger.
“Uh, and a damned, swollen-headed fool who deserves to be tarred and feathered by his much put-upon friends!”
“And that’s the gods own truth, mate.” Dietrik finalized the statement by crossing his arms and nodding his head sharply.
Marik stepped down from his perch to sit on the boulder facing his friend. His fingertips strayed to his face, to the skin wondrously there where it had no right to be. To the flesh returned from a severe mutilation undone by a miracle of Healing.
“Confession might be a balm for the soul,” Marik told the man to whom he trusted his life before all others in the world, “but it doesn’t put everything right. Apologies are the least of what I owe everyone.”
Dietrik waved that away with one hand. “Genuine regret is atonement enough for a shieldmate. Bugger all the rest. Just don’t let your pride run away with your good sense again so you stop seeing the forest for the trees.”
“I won’t.”
“Good. Because I don’t fancy chasing off after you to keep a watch over your back the rest of your life. At this point, you shouldn’t need a bloody nursemaid.” Dietrik grinned a hard smile. “Though I admit I am very much looking forward to returning to Kingshome and hearing what dear Uncle Tollaf has to say on the matter.”
A sour grimace scarred Marik’s features. “Fraser chewing my skin off for Glynn to Heal all over was bad enough. I could almost wish we get sent back to clear out the invaders rather than going back home.”
“We won’t be heading homeward for a good while yet,” Dietrik grumbled. “They need every fighter they can find to deal with these blighters and their tommy-monsters.”
“What they need is every fighter they can find heading to eastern Galemar to kick the Noliers back where they belong.”
Dietrik cursed softly. “The whole world has flown straight out of its tree. Why did the kingdom wait until my lifetime to start turning inside and out?”
Marik kept his silence on that score. He didn’t see how the king and his knight-marshal could deal with two major border wars on either side of the kingdom simultaneously. It had taken every man they could field to drive back the Noliers two years earlier. From talk floating around the camp already he knew that most people considered these black-armored invaders and their monsters to be a significantly lesser threat. The soldiers wanted to move to the eastern border as soon as they could gather their belongings.
Orders were due to arrive any day. The Ninth Squad from the Crimson Kings Mercenary Band, along with the survivors from Baron Atcheron’s guardsmen and the Eighteenth Outpost on the border, had moved inland fifty miles from the Stoneseams Mountains. They were camped on the Southern Road, licking their wounds and waiting for a higher authority to tell them what they should do next.
The wait harbored an urgency it would ordinarily have lacked, since they were holding over half their own number in black soldiers as prisoners of war. Divested of their weapons and armor, a hundred men could still cause significant damage if they revolted in an organized manner. A constant watch was kept on them.
Marik slid to the cold ground until his back rested against the mossy rock. He relished in the feel of its chill through his clothing. Surviving death by an infinitesimal margin made him keenly appreciate the various sensations of being alive.
“He still hasn’t come back yet.”
Dietrik had hunkered down against the boulder’s east side. He shifted his eyes to his friend. His voice low, he mentioned, “I would stop waiting for it, if I were you, mate. Wherever Colbey got off to, I think we’re well shot of him.”
“I want to know what happened to him,” Marik stated firmly. “Men don’t snap and suddenly start trying to ride on the edge of a golden coin for no reason at all.”
A shrug was Dietrik’s only reply. Silence reigned for several moments, or as silent as it could be beside a camp of armed soldiers and mercenaries. At last, Dietrik changed the subject by asking, “What will you do if we find ourselves in a fight? No sword to lay about you with.”
The words briefly resurrected the memories; his sword melting in an instant, splashing steel burning the flesh from his arm and face…Marik shoved those thoughts away hard. “I’m not happy about it, but I’ll look through the wagon holding the blades we took off them.” He gestured to the prisoner area where men, perfectly ordinary-looking without their strange armor, were tied wrist and ankle to each other.
“I suppose it will do for the time being,” Dietrik agreed. He abruptly stood to peer along the road.
Marik followed suite to see a rider coming at a fast trot, clad in the standard green and brown tunic of an army messenger. “Looks like our fate has finally been decided.”
Dietrik nodded without words. Both men immediately headed back into camp, congregating with every other mercenary near the tent used by the officers whenever they needed to discuss their situation. They figured it would not be long.
Indeed, in short order, Atcheron and Fraser both emerged from the tent and studied the wall of men facing them. Atcheron arched an eyebrow at Fraser, who shrugged as if he could hardly care less. The baron addressed the crowd.