by J Glen Percy
THE WEB
RULERS WEAVE
RUINS OF UNITY
J. Glen Percy
Copyright Information
The Web Rulers Weave: Ruins of Unity
J. Glen Percy
Copyright © 2015 J. Glen Percy
Publisher: The London Annie Press
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under U.S. 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.
The events and characters appearing in this work are fictitious and pure fabrications of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance or similarities to actual events or to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
First published in the United States of America
First Edition: 12/20/2015
Other works by J. Glen Percy:
A FEW LIVES LOST
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HERH8S4
Paperback ISBN: 1519556594
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1519556592
For the people you meet and the places they take you; farther into the grey.
And for the doers of the world, whose company I one day seek.
C O N T E N T S
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
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 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
“What word from the West, my lord steward?”
Ryecard Starling had given up trying to get the young engineer to call him by name. Work that required the rolling of sleeves, especially work of this magnitude and duration, did not require such formalities.
“General tidings from my wife,” Ryecard responded, spreading the hawk-delivered note between his fingers and furrowing his brow the further he read. “It would seem a few months without their father are too long for my distressing brood.”
The man - hardly old enough to merit the distinction – was holding up a much larger paper, though with a much simpler problem in Ryecard’s estimation. It contained the engineer’s plans and architectural diagrams for the latest wonder in the kingdom. A project so complex in organization and intricate in execution that it required funding, men, and resources from all four of Cairanthem’s provinces. Still, Ryecard could sooner create and replicate the structure a thousand times before corralling the Starling children’s spirits.
“Another week and you’ll have no problem leaving the job to us. You’ve ordered the project well. I suspect you’ll have little issue setting your trouble-catching children right, your lordship.”
Ryecard smiled at the engineer’s unconscious decorum as he tucked the small paper under his sturdy coat with the others. He was nearly a thousand leagues from home here in the Northern Province, and though it did not lessen his nobility, it should lessen the young man’s attentiveness to the fact.
“Trouble-crafters, not catchers, is what they are,” he corrected. “They’re as industrious creating mischief as this lot is raising the king’s columns.”
The engineer lowered the draftsman’s plans, revealing the mostly finished structure, and the battalion of men and beasts laboring to bring the printed diagrams into reality. Stone arches fifty paces high supported a manufactured river - an aqueduct, the engineer called it - as it cut a line across the dipping valley and disappeared over either horizon. Upon completion, the channel would carry water from the River Ash, across Northern Province to a holding reservoir just this side of the Stallion Spine. There, a second marvel in the form of a horse driven pump would push the water over the mountains to the arid plains of Ryecard’s Western Province. An unfathomable undertaking for the prosperity of the relatively young kingdom.
“If you’re looking for a sure way to shorten your life Finbar, don’t start a war with some blood-thirsty Grayskin. Start a family.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, your lordship.”
Ryecard liked working with the young man and though it was the intense sleeve-rolling sort, the last touches of the northern winter had sleeves down and cloaks fastened. The stallion-marked bracer on his left forearm, matching the golden stallion on his chest, was not for the temperature however. He was seldom without the leather guard. It kept his bow-arm ready, and more deliberately, concealed a less than convenient truth for those he ruled.
Shielding his eyes from the warmth-less morning sun with his bracer arm, Ryecard admired the beauty of it all. None of this would have been possible when Ryecard was the engineer’s age, when Cairanthem was first united under the First King. Many in the provinces held that Unity was the undoing of their former kingdoms, the precursor to the loss of sovereignty and identity. Ryecard held the opposite to be true.
If only they could witness this creation. Over time, they would certainly witness its many benefits. As a result of Unity, miracles like this aqueduct were possible. As a result of Unity, mothers no longer lied awake wondering where their children’s next meal would come from or whether the oncoming sunset would be their last. No longer would the vast prairies of the West be suitable only for the herds. The water channeled here would nourish crops as bounteous as those found in the East, ultimately nourishing the bellies of the stubborn provincial-born themselves.
Lore, the lord steward’s dark bay, stamped a heavy hoof to his other side. “What’s the matter, you dislike the idea of sharing? There will be grass aplenty yet to be had, old friend.” Ryecard fondly rubbed the mare’s muzzle between jets of frosty breath.
A sudden scream shattered the morning’s tranquility. Ryecard knew the scream well. It wasn’t the scream of mishap or alarm, nor of terror, though a form of terror touched all screams above a certain age. It was the scream of impending death rising from over the valley’s crest.
“Keep low Finbar, and stay near.”
The lord steward was in his saddle racing towards the sound, having not waited for the engineer to mount up, when the official call met his ears. “We’re under attack!”
Fleeing men dodged Lore as they scurried in the opposite direction, their own terror filled cries mixing with the growing number of death-shrieks behind them. How many were there? From where? Why? The questions were all part of his initial assessment. To know your enemy was to know the conditions of victory. The most important question was therefore, who?
Several hundred leagues from World’s Wall, Furmen tribes could not organize a raid half so deep. Even a small band of Grayskins would find it difficult to push so far so fast without alerting the entire kingdom. The king was supposedly preparing a massive wall in the East to deal with the threat from the Drab anyhow. Then Ryecard caught a glimpse of the foe and immediately understood the conditions for victory; kill or be killed.
Feminine in form but entirely inhuman in behavior, a two-legged creature leaped with unnatural strides from one terrified man to the next. Gro
tesquely long arms grappled her prey before hand-length fingernails were employed as butcher’s utensils. So emaciated was the creature that sinew and bones raised impressions in her toneless flesh like tent poles under taut canvas. A shrill noise emitted from behind the stringy black hair that curtained the creature’s face, and was immediately answered by several more unworldly calls.
Long retired nightmares surfaced, causing Ryecard to halt Lore despite the horse’s willingness to battle. Terrible, unspeakable memories. Memories that Ryecard had buried alongside the creatures themselves and prayed never to witness again. He supposed this was one more instance where the gods hadn’t listened, or perhaps, specifically betrayed him. He forced all peripheral thoughts from his mind. Fear, gods, and fear of the gods were not needed here. He and his abilities were.
“Get back to camp and prepare whoever’s there,” he roared at the engineer, who had pulled up next to him. Like the draftsman’s plans, the ghastly creature existed to the young man only in written form, and, like the draftsman’s plans, the ink had come to life before his very eyes. Quite dissimilar, however, was the fact that the real life aqueduct had never caused the man to lose control of his bladder. “Finbar! Go, now!”
As Ryecard approached the bloodshed, he spotted the two beasts that had responded to the razor-nailed witch’s screech. A fourth, what appeared to be a hairless lion with blackened veins underlying its translucent skin, crawled from a large hole in the ground where stones were being extracted for the enormous archways. Tusks grew up through the beast’s snout, the gouged holes secreting the gooey black fluid that coursed beneath. Expectedly, the chill air failed to mist the animal’s breath. There was no question as to their origin and nature now. A horde of Grayskins on Furmen steeds would be preferred to this discovery.
The lion fixed Ryecard in its hollow eyes, leaping towards man and mount with gaping jaws. Sword flashed, cloak flailed, and Ryecard found himself winded on the ground beneath the pierced monster. No single stroke could kill the miscreation he was up against and the monster continued its assault. A short blade appeared in Ryecard’s bracer hand, then disappeared into the creature’s skull. Again and again he plunged the dagger, again and again the beast snapped its malformed jaws. Its efforts were fruitless and Ryecard’s bounteous. After more than a dozen bone-piercing stabs, the demon lay helpless. Not dead, but helpless.
Ryecard struggled from beneath the heaving creature to a handful of men armed with picks and shovels. Finbar wasn’t among them.
“We’re here to help with the fiends, my lord,” one man spoke boldly.
Ryecard had led enough men to know which would follow him through their darkest dreams and which would turn-tail at the first hint of mortality. The entire ragtag clutch – stonemasons and wagon drivers mostly - lay securely in the latter. “You want to help? Seal off this hole.”
Ryecard called to the witch as he rushed forward, causing her to throw aside her latest severed trophy. Several arrows protruded from her deceptively delicate frame. Her feline companion’s fluid taunted her from his steel and drew another hair-draped howl. One awkward yet highly effective leap, then a second, and she was lunging for him with ten independent knifepoints.
Besides himself, Lord Ryecard Starling would claim to completely know only three things; his wife, his horse, and his blade, the last having made his acquaintance long before the previous two. Whirring through the air in precise lightning strokes, the sword’s song was pure. He parried the multifaceted attack, then countered as swiftly. Insipid, pale skin and bleached eyes were the only commonality amongst the misshapen assailants. That, and the light-absorbing pigment of their blood which Ryecard now sought with the abandon of a madman and the precision of a seamstress. Like a grandmaster of stones, he perceived the witch’s moves well before they had formed in her own rotting mind. Twirl here, guard there, slash now. Black liquid poured from her open torso. A directed thrust of the hand-width steel through the stringy veil of hair, and the witch was well on her way to whichever hellish afterlife would receive her.
Ryecard scanned the field and found only relief. By some godforsaken miracle, the other two creatures had been vanquished. Perhaps there were some men here he wouldn’t mind fighting alongside.
There was no revelry. Once the workers caught their breath and accepted reality for what it was, the harrowing task of collecting and identifying the departed - both bodies and appendages – was organized. All said, a full score of men lost their lives. Most significant to Ryecard was the loss of young Finbar, who had apparently turned back towards the fighting once word had been carried to the camp. The engineer would never see his work complete, nor enjoy those life-shortening children. Ryecard spun the bracer around his forearm as he often did when troubled. It was high time he returned to his children.
“What now, my lord steward?” asked a man whose own forearms, in aiding the wounded, had located much of the day’s lost blood. “Are grimlings and shades to burst from children’s night terrors?”
“Steady yourself friend.” Ryecard stared towards the rocky pile covering the foul demons’ entrance to this world. Like the colorless creatures themselves, a chill pale mist poured from his mouth as he spoke. “Send word to the king; the Ferals live on.”
CHAPTER 1
The evening westerly smashed the choppy sea aground on the cliffs of Shorefeld, whipping banners in the provincial capital and dragging chimney smoke inland. Perhaps the tossing ocean had invigorated the wind’s biting wrath, or perhaps the crisp air still clung to its memory of the long preceding winter. Whichever way, cloaks were drawn close and shutters latched. It was early spring in the Western Province, not that the weather spoke of it yet.
To most it was purely a crusty breeze, a signal that warmer weather was not too far behind. A time of new beginnings. To Meryam, Lady of House Starling and wife of Lord Steward Ryecard Starling, the wind carried an altogether different sign. An ominous sign that the turbulence and uncertainty of winter intended to maintain its foothold well in to the following season. New beginnings, yes, but new was not the same as good.
From Shorefeld Keep’s highest balcony, Lady Meryam’s gaze followed the numerous bending columns eastward across wood-shingled roofs and open countryside to where her husband was away on business. It had been three months that she stood steward in his place, three months looking after the keep, the surrounding city, and the province as a whole, and she was well tired. Lords are lords, and ladies, ladies, after all, not that the one had any further power and responsibility than the other. She simply preferred working behind the scenes as a lady should, not center stage, appreciating fully the draining effects of the spotlight.
Ignoring the bitterly thrashing air in favor of her busied thoughts, and despite her disquiet for the kingdom, Lady Meryam was primarily focused on the usual subject of greatest concern: her family.
The grinding duality was perhaps the most draining, and that despite the similarities. Guiding a family, especially a noble one, was much like managing a province after all. Compromise here, appeasement there, strict negotiation with threatened force if necessary. Running either was effortlessly within her capabilities. Managing both simultaneously, however, was like forcing two cats in a bath. Beyond the wearisome struggle, it was a good way to end up with permanent scarring. And though maternal instinct clearly had her favoring the one duty, political governing was much less troublesome than the hereditary.
Children needed to be steered, and hers more than most. All four were kind, devoted, and principled - everything a mother could want, complete with the intricate trappings of greatness - but with a determined independence that made even drowning felines appear compliant. With her added busyness, one side or the other had to suffer. She certainly wouldn’t let it be her husband’s affairs. General mischief and loose conduct amongst the children had been more prevalent as consequence. Not anymore. As the courier hawks had it, Lord Ryecard would be returning tomorrow. She was determined to have both houses in or
der for his arrival.
Turning into the warmth of the adjacent chamber, she addressed her eldest son. “Breccyn, do your mother a kindness and fetch your brother.”
The keep was one of the only structures in Shorefeld constructed of stone, and the heat from the mature fire permeated the large room from wall to wall. Pulling the solid oak door to its frame behind her effectively eradicated the evening’s chill.
“I’ve already found the little grimling, though he’ll dislike being pulled from his current game I think,” Breccyn replied in frustration.
Sitting across a small end-table from Breccyn was the youngest Starling, Mykel, who was studying the ordered pebbles placed on the grid between them. The Starling’s liegeman, Wyn, sat a few paces away, running a whetstone across a long knife and seemingly unaware of the strategy occurring nearby.
“Breccyn wouldn’t mind, my lady,” Wyn remarked, never removing his concentration from the reflective steel. “Lord Mykel has him at three points. Another, and it’s all over.” Seemingly unaware was right.
The temperature hadn’t followed Meryam inside but the turbulence boiling the unsettled dusk sky had, and rested heavily on her mind. Strangely, the nameless concern seemed to envelope both the province and the family.
“I’m pleased you found the twin that never leaves the hold, now if you’ll be so good as to find the one who’s never here,” Meryam interjected, clear that her original bidding had been taken for request. Loose conduct indeed. “It’s growing dark. Be quick of it.”
“If Gabryel’s as set on making me look as foolish as this runt, I’d rather leave him.” Breccyn’s harsh words were matched only by the fondness on his face. The fondness and out-maneuvered frustration, anyway. “Where did you learn that move, Mykel?”