Kethril

by Carroll, John H.

  Kethril

  John H. Carroll

  Published by John H. Carroll at Smashwords

  Copyright 2011 John H. Carroll

  Cover Copyright 2012 John H. Carroll

  Cover photography by Tracy Carroll

  Cover model: Jessica Jorgenson

  Revised March 2012

  This book is dedicated to a random stranger I’ve never met, will meet, or ever be aware of. I hope you have an awesome life!

  Note: This is the third book of the Willden Trilogy. I highly recommend reading book 1: “Rojuun”and book 2: “Anilyia” first. You can find them at the same store you purchased this one from.

  Table of Contents

  Map of Ryallon

  Map of Willden

  Map of Kethril

  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

  Excerpt from Dralin

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  “Vevin is Evil.” The words still rang in Tathan’s ears and sent a chill up his spine. Three nights earlier, Princess Anilyia of Mayncal told him about the four colors of dragons: white and orange were good, purple and black were evil. Vevin, Tathan’s friend and his cousin Liselle’s lover, was a dragon in human form with purple hair, cream-colored skin that had a lilac tint, sharp teeth and liquid-silver eyes.

  It was said that dragons lived on the world of Ryallon before humans. They were the most powerful and intelligent creatures in existence and very little was known about their lives or habits. It wasn’t for lack of curiosity on the part of humans who attempted to study the great creatures. The problem was that dragons didn’t invite humans into their homes or society. To make matters worse, they had a bad habit of eating any human who attempted to study them.

  A treaty made long ago ensured peace between the two races. Dragons would not kill humans and vice versa. Enforcing the treaty wasn’t a problem because dragons didn’t care about the lives of humans. A few humans tried attacking or stealing from dragons, but they often became dessert. The treaty had an exception that allowed dragons to kill any human who tried to study, kill or steal from them. It also allowed dragons to eat princesses.

  When making the agreement between dragons and humans, princesses were excluded from protection. The reasoning was that they had traditionally been offered as sacrifices to keep dragons from eating livestock and citizens. The kings who signed the treaty decided it would be sensible to keep the option of royal sacrifice open in case someone did something stupid and killed a dragon. It gave the kingdoms a means of peaceful resolution. Moreover, most kings considered princesses to be a pain. Sure, there was the occasional sappy king who allowed his daughter to wrap him around her little finger, but those were few and far between.

  Princess Anilyia had been educated about dragons by royal tutors in case she should ever be needed as a sacrifice. Even with that education, she didn’t know very much about them. No one knew how dragons governed themselves, how they flew, what their social habits were or much of anything. Tathan hadn’t talked to Vevin or Liselle about everything the princess said. Anilyia had asked him not to and he didn’t know how to approach the subject anyway.

  He also hadn’t spoken to Sir Danth, a bodiless suit of armor sixteen hundred years old, about the matter either. The knight had been especially quiet for the last few weeks and Tathan wanted to know what was bothering him before bringing up anything else.

  At the moment, Tathan was relaxing atop a water tower. It was a beautiful morning and birds were singing merrily while searching for the first meal of the day. Mist had covered the forest around the Lost Road Inn the first few days the companions stayed there, but when Tathan had woken at sunrise, it was gone.

  From his vantage point, he could see steam rising off the massive inn downriver as well as the outbuildings that once would have been filled with activity. Moisture on the stone evaporated in the sunlight, adding to the thick humidity in the air. Dense forest surrounding the long empty inn and the intersection of two ancient highways was noisy with wildlife going about their daily chores while industrious woodpeckers hammered away at trees. Droning insects zipped about over the head of woodland creatures rustling in the verdant underbrush. The sun warmed the dew-laden forest, drawing scents of moist wood and grass into the air.

  The Lost Road Inn, the companions decided that would be its name, was a five level stone building at the intersection of two ancient roads from the Kingdom of Morhain. It had an enormous barn, servant’s quarters, innkeeper’s house, brewery and the water tower he sat on. A stone aqueduct carried water to the tower from a small waterfall upstream. At the bottom of the tower were stone pipes that led to the buildings below, providing running water inside.

  After more than a millennium, it should have collapsed. Vevin explained that preservation runes were etched into everything, keeping it intact. He said they could last for thousands more years.

  Vevin. Tathan couldn’t stop thinking about his dancing friend. They had found him injured in the ruins of Aaltdiin after leaving the valley. Something had hurt Vevin, taking his home and treasure while leaving him with a large gash along the left side of his face from crown to chin. The scar that remained was long and stark white. Throughout their journeys, Vevin had been an outstanding friend, fallen in love with Tathan’s cousin Liselle and even saved her life. He couldn’t be evil.

  “Tathan!” Princess Anilyia called from below, having just exited the innkeeper’s house. He lay down on the slanted stone roof of the tower so she wouldn’t see him. Anilyia scanned the surroundings for a moment before holding the hem of her dress above her ankles and walking over the soggy grass to the inn. Her waist-long platinum hair swayed in time with the rest of her lovely body as she walked. The princess was truly beautiful. Her unique hair complemented the olive skin customary among the people of Mayncal.

  Tathan was hiding because she had been spending all her time with him lately and he needed a break from the attention. He was attracted to her and she to him. However, the princess was engaged to marry in an arrangement that would bring peace between two hostile kingdoms. It was the same old bard’s tale Tathan had listened to at numerous faires and inns. Only this time, he and his friends were the one rescuing the princess. The bards never seemed to sing about the princess running off with a rogue and leaving her kingdom to war.

  After she disappeared around the front of the inn, Tathan climbed down the stone ladder attached to one of the tower’s legs. He was in awe of the fact that it was still sturdy despite being as old as the rest of the architecture.

  When he reached the ground, Tathan decided to run into the Willden Forest away from the inn. The Willden was dangerous, but friendly towards him and his companions. Even with that, it was still a bad idea. He just didn’t care. Traveling with an evil dragon, a moody knight, an alluring princess, and a flower child with more power than he’d ever seen in his life was, at times, more than he could handle.

  After fifteen minutes of running, he stopped in a pleasant glade. The Willden was thick and didn’t allow a
lot of sun to come through, but the pretty clearing had rays of morning sunshine tilting toward the grassy floor. Tathan was careful not to step on any of the beautiful flowers just waking up from their morning slumber. He wouldn’t want to upset his cousin.

  Liselle was becoming an enigma to him. At first, she had started out as his simple relative living in the valley where they were both raised. Tathan had come home that spring after being gone for thirteen years. An attack by riders of the Iynath Empire had killed their family, causing the two cousins to set off into the Willden Forest alone after mourning the loss much too briefly. Now it was nearing the end of summer and Tathan was learning that his cousin was not at all simple.

  Mother Tree, a magical entity that looked over the Willden Forest, told them that Liselle’s mother had lain in a flower-strewn clearing after discovering she was barren. The flowers took sympathy upon her tears, gifting life within her womb and Liselle’s father never knew the truth.

  While growing up, Liselle began to gain magical powers that she kept quiet from her family. After beginning the journey with her cousin, Liselle began honing that magic into a powerful force by studying with Tathan and Vevin. Deep in the caverns of the Rojuun, she had touched awareness with the world of Ryallon who gave her even more knowledge of mystical powers. The result was that Liselle was more powerful than any wizard Tathan had seen and her full potential was yet unknown.

  Tathan sat on an old moss-covered log to think, careful not to crush a spider looking for a strategic place to spin a web. The companion’s goal was to get the princess to her home country of Mayncal. They couldn’t go there directly because the Rojuun and the Empire of Iynath were that way and both wanted to recapture the princess. There was the obstacle of hundreds of miles of the imposing Caaldith Mountain Range too. Their current plan was to travel west to Kethril and find a ship that would take them on the two to three month journey along the coast. They would pass numerous countries along the way, many of which might try to confiscate the princess if they became aware of her.

  Saving a princess always seemed fantastic when bards sang about it, but Tathan had known the reality wouldn’t be so wonderful even before they started. He agreed at the time because his companions wanted to and he wasn’t doing anything anyway.

  A tear ran down Tathan’s cheek. He stood in alarm and wiped it off, not understanding why he would cry. Stress was one thing, but the unexpected sadness tugging his heart was out of character. Tathan looked around and saw the culprit at the other end of the clearing. A black bunny with grey paws and purple streaks through its fur was staring at him from next to a tree.

  Bunnies didn’t seem dangerous considering how cute and furry they were, but their magic was sinister. They had the ability to cause emotions of melancholy and gloom in creatures they considered dangerous. Those creatures became apathetic and lost the will to attack the emo bunny. A group of bunnies would create overpowering emotions in a predator and could even cause it to run off a cliff in an act of suicide. Tathan got out of the clearing in a hurry in case there were other emo bunnies around to drive him to madness.

  He walked back in the direction of the inn, paying more attention to his surroundings. Tathan could handle himself well in a city, but forests had different types of dangers, many of which were subtle. He longed to be in a human city again after so much time traveling through wilderness and Rojuun territories.

  Tathan sensed danger behind his left ear. He tumbled to the side, came up with sword in hand and swung it in a whistling arc. His blade thirsted for blood, telling him there was an enemy that must be destroyed. Tathan looked for the person who would dare to attack him, but the only thing he wounded was thin air.

  He looked down at the slightly curved sword. It was stunning. Runes were etched the length of the black metal. Whenever it was out of its sheath, it hungrily ate nearby light. Tathan didn’t even begin to understand how and didn’t care. The blade made killing easy, drinking in blood the way it did light. It never took much, but some of the blood did stay in the blade. It also protected him from things that wanted to harm Tathan and it warned him about those things.

  Liselle and the princess were afraid of the blade, but they didn’t understand what it meant to him and how much it protected him. He watched with fascination as the light warped into it. It made no sound, even when he slashed it back and forth. Just like light and blood, sound was absorbed into it.

  A noise on his right caught Tathan’s attention. He crouched and looked to see a naked woman staring in fear from next to a tree. Blinking twice, he realized it was a dryad. They were mystical creatures spiritually attached to the trees of the forest. Legends told how a group of Druids once encountered wild magic and mated with the trees around them, resulting in dryads, which were half tree and half Druid. It occurred to Tathan that plants did a lot of weird things to people. He didn’t want to know what would happen if a person was lying next to a bush when wild magic passed through.

  The dryad’s green eyes were large with fright as she stared at the horrific weapon. Her skin was like a birch tree, white with strips of black color. Long leafy hair flowed like a willow to the ground. She was five feet tall with delicate features and all the curves of a woman.

  Another thing Tathan knew about dryads was that they adored human men, taking them into the branches or a secluded clearing for a few days to show them the pleasures of nature. They always released and guided the men out of the woods afterwards. Tathan realized he was pointing the sword at her and sheathed it. Instead of taking him into the branches, the dryad ran away at supernatural speed, disappearing within the thick foliage.

  Tathan sighed. Getting lost in the trees for a few days would have just complicated things and Liselle would have found him anyway. He continued walking back to the inn, enjoying the sounds and smells of the forest. While there were many dangers, it could be peaceful and relaxing at times. He saw a doe walking a short distance away. It didn’t notice Tathan because he was just as silent and there was no breeze to carry his scent.

  Upon reaching the edge of the trees, he paused to look around. Everything was peaceful and as it should be. The only sign of life was a wisp of smoke rising from a chimney on the far side of the inn near the intersection. Tathan debated whether to rejoin the group. If he was in a city, he’d disappear for the day, but he just wasn’t in the frame of mind to deal with forest dangers, so he sighed and trudged to the inn.

  He was ready to go to Kethril. It was a kingdom he hadn’t visited yet and the spirit for adventure was strong in him. Tathan was looking forward to visiting Mayncal too, another country he had never been to. Traveling by ship was best because he had a price on his head in a few of the overland kingdoms between Kethril and Mayncal.

  Tathan wasn’t a bad person. He just tended to get into trouble. There were laws against theft and killing people even if it was justified. Most of the killing he had done was in self-defense. Usually he had to defend himself against somebody who was mad at him for stealing, but that was a minor detail.

  The biggest problem he faced was the princess. He liked her so much it ached. It would be fantastic to run off to some big city and live in secret with her, never telling anyone where they were. That wasn’t going to happen because Liselle and the others were determined to take Anilyia home in order to prevent war, the collapse of kingdoms and the loss of tens of thousands of lives. They were being quite selfish about the whole thing.

  He enjoyed pleasant smell of the river flowing under the bridge. Tathan relished his life. Sure he had come close to dying more times than he could count, been thrown in jail, bound in chains, even undergone a little torture. Most of the people he had met along the way were borderline crazy . . . actually, most were far beyond the border. Tathan liked crazy people. They fascinated him. Some said he was crazy too.

  The one thing Tathan hated was the suffering he saw. Throughout all his journeys, he had seen the pain and horror in people’s eyes. Too many times, he had passed an alley
and listened to the screams of an unfortunate woman, or entered a tavern and seen other women so tormented that any trace of hope was gone. Men on the streets held cups out for a copper when in truth they only wanted their dignity and self-respect.

  Tathan had tried to help a few of those women and men. Yet his efforts failed and there were always so many more suffering the same fate. Sometimes, when he slept, he could hear screams or see despairing eyes. Even in rural villages or homesteads, he found suffering and people looking into his eyes in hopes he would rescue them. The worst of all were the children. He could see hurt and desolation in their eyes.

  At various times, he asked others if they saw those things too, but none did. For some reason people looked at him differently, as though their souls communicated their suffering to him alone. It haunted Tathan, although he didn’t speak of it.

  The one person who had never shown him eyes of suffering was Liselle. She was pure and untainted by any darkness found in the world. Once, in the bowels of the world, a twisted creature called Krraa kidnapped and tortured her. Even that nightmare didn’t create suffering behind her eyes.

  Tathan walked around to the front of the inn and entered the large stone doors carved with trees surrounded by a pattern of vines. The common room of the ancient inn was enormous and in excellent condition, though it was unfurnished. Everyone else was standing at the bottom of the grand staircase that led up to a gallery along the back and sides of the common room.

  “Tathan! There you are. We were worried about you.” Princess Anilyia’s voice was rich and mellow. She came over to grab his hand. She always held his hand whenever it was free. “I was surprised when I woke up and didn’t find you in your sleeping bag. Where’d you go?”

  He shrugged. “I took a walk into the forest a little ways to enjoy the morning.”