Book Two of the Souls of Aredyrah Series
The Search for the Unnamed One
by
Tracy A. Akers
Gold Medal Winner
The Florida Book Awards 2007
Young Adult Literature
The Search for the Unnamed One
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2007, 2010, 2011 Tracy A. Akers
All rights reserved under United States, International and
Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Smashwords Edition
License Notes
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system -except for brief quotes used in reviews- without the written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Ruadora Publishing
P.O. Box 3212
Zephyrhills, FL 33539
[email protected]
Front Cover and Interior Art: Annah Hutchings; copyright © Tracy A. Akers
Introduction
by
William F. Nolan
The heartening thing about writing in any genre is that there is always room for new talent. The door to creativity is never closed. If an individual, man or woman, has a talent for putting words on paper, and works hard at his or her craft, readers will respond favorably. This is true of all genres, from romance to westerns, from sports to sci-fi, from hard-boiled to high fantasy.
Tracy Akers writes high fantasy. She is a new voice to be heard, a new talent to discover and savor. With the first two books in her “Souls of Aredyrah” series, she has firmly established her place in the popular genre of high fantasy. If you enjoy reading about mystical realms, magic potions, and handsome princes, of legendary gods and wicked kings, of conflict and sacrifice, then Tracy Akers is for you.
She delivers fully-realized characters and genuine emotion. In the volume you hold in your hands, book two of her ongoing series, the stakes are high for Reiv, her teenaged protagonist. He achieves vivid life in these pages, and the reader shares his defeats and his ultimate triumphs.
Here is high fantasy written with vigor and imagination, providing readers with new worlds to experience, new challenges, new romance. Here is a zest for life!
There are several characters who figure in the action of this new novel, and each is presented in deeply humanistic terms. The reader gets to know each of them in the course of a stirring narrative, and each has a pivotal role to play in the special world created by Tracy Akers.
Yes, indeed, there is always room for a dedicated new writer in the vast landscape of popular literature—and Tracy Akers now stands alongside so many others who continue to give readers the thrills that only proven talent can provide.
High Fantasy. High Talent. Welcome to Aredyrah.
William F. Nolan
Author of the Logan’s Run series
BACK TO ToC
Book Two of the Souls of Aredyrah Series
The Search for the Unnamed One
by
Tracy A. Akers
MAP OF AREDYRAH
Table of Contents
Introduction by William F. Nolan
Map of Aredyrah
Chapter 1. Phantom
Chapter 2. Patience, Prince
Chapter 3. Painted Faces
Chapter 4. Loyalties Lie
Chapter 5. Into the Vortex
Chapter 6. Game of Chance
Chapter 7. The Catalyst
Chapter 8. Burden of Truth
Chapter 9. The Crooked Child
Chapter 10. All That Slithers
Chapter 11. The Far Reaches
Chapter 12. Stone Secrets
Chapter 13. Seirgotha
Chapter 14. Life or Death
Chapter 15. Beyond the Veil
Chapter 16. Confessions
Chapter 17. Birth of the Clans
Chapter 18. Coronation of Evil
Chapter 19. Promise Broken
Chapter 20. First Kill
Chapter 21. Call to War
Chapter 22. Facing the Demon
Chapter 23. Forewarned
Chapter 24. Vision Fulfilled
Chapter 25. Aftermath
Chapter 26. City of Rats
Chapter 27. Destinations
Chapter 28. Departure
Preview of Book Three: The Taking of the Dawn
Glossary
About the Author
Chapter 1: Phantom
The air in the catacombs was thick and damp and filled with the odor of human waste and lingering decay. Whyn pulled the stench through his nostrils and into his lungs, his belly tightening with a desire that tingled to his toes. It was not the same desire he felt for Cinnia, his wife, nor for any woman who had ever pleased him. This was different, and yet the effect it had on him was as powerful as an aphrodisiac.
Whyn stared at the slender back of the Priestess who walked but steps ahead of him. She possessed a beauty unlike any woman he had ever seen, and an ugliness he found equally attractive. She seemed to float on air, her long white hair swaying at her back, the hem of her pastel gown trailing behind her. As Whyn gazed at her, he realized the ache in his belly was for her, but it was not like that of a man for a woman. It was more like that of a soul craving sustenance. Until recently, he had only thought of the Priestess as an authority figure; even now he feared her more than longed for her. But for some reason the need to drink her in was overwhelming. It was as though she were a separate part of himself, and he had only to fill himself with her to find completion.
He glanced past her toward the light in the corridor ahead. A grizzled old man shuffled several paces in front of them through the twisting darkness. The lantern in the man’s hand swayed, its golden orb casting eerie shadows upon the walls. One by one grimy doors came into view. Wide eyes watched through tiny, barred windows, only to melt into blackness as the lantern passed.
A hand clawed toward the light, the pale face behind it momentarily revealed. “Mercy, good Prince,” a woman’s voice rasped.
Whyn kept his eyes forward, daring not to look at the woman, nor to acknowledge her plea. She was only a Jecta, and no doubt an insurgent bent on the destruction of Tearia.
“Does this place pain your heart, my young Prince?” the Priestess asked, pausing to face him.
“No, Priestess,” Whyn replied. “It lifts my spirits.”
The Priestess smiled, her porcelain skin and gold-painted features reflecting her satisfaction through the darkness.
She flashed her eyes toward the old man. “You,” she ordered. “Leave us.”
The man turned and nodded, then bowed his way back down the corridor from which they had come, taking the lantern with him.
Whyn and the Priestess stood in the dimness. The only light to guide them now was an occasional torch bracketed to the wall. Wynn struggled to focus on his surroundings, listening to the sound of his own rapid breathing and the melancholy drip of water somewhere in the distance.
The Priestess brushed past him. Clutching a shoulder bag close to her body, she ducked into a passage that branched from the main artery. She motioned Whyn in and led him in the direction of what looked like a distant orifice, its circular glow like that of a red eclipse on a starless night. As Whyn followed at her back, it seemed to hi
m that the Priestess was a beautiful phantom lit from within, leading him to a mysterious world to which he would soon be privy.
Moans and hushed whispers wafted from the endless line of cells that they passed. How many people were imprisoned in this place? Whyn wondered. Hundreds, it seemed. But he knew there would soon be thousands…or perhaps there would be none. After the Purge, there would no longer be any need to keep prisoners, no longer any need to waste the food and manpower on them. Now with Whyn’s father, the King of Tearia, dead, there was nothing to stop the Priestess from her magnificent plan.
The air became steamy, the stench more pungent. The orifice loomed larger now, but still seemed very distant. No longer did it look like the glow of a moon, but more like the mouth of a great furnace, its door rimmed by the flames that burned behind it. Sweat dripped down Whyn’s neck and slid over his chest, leaving the thin, gold-colored material of his tunic plastered against his skin. A chill raced through him. Strange how he could feel both hot and cold at the same time. It was as though his flesh had been set afire while at the same time his insides had been turned to ice.
“Here is where we will find answers to the Prophecy,” the Priestess said, halting before a door much like any other.
Whyn stopped, his eyes gazing toward the red circle of light at the far end of the corridor. He felt an overwhelming urge to continue toward it, as though it was somehow beckoning him.
“You will not be going to that place today,” the Priestess said, recognizing the longing in his eyes.
Whyn nodded and turned his attention to the door before them. A flicker of candlelight could be seen beyond the barred window, a luxury none of the other prisoners were allowed.
“Who is kept in this place?” he asked.
“The last of the Memory Keepers,” the Priestess said. She lifted a key from a peg on the wall, rattled it in the lock, then pushed the door open and entered the cell.
Whyn followed and surveyed his surroundings. The room was glittered with candles, revealing tomes and parchments stacked against walls and littering the small wooden table at the room’s center. In the far corner rested a pallet of straw covered by a tattered blanket. An old woman lay upon it, her bony frame pulled into the fetal position.
“Tenzy, raise yourself,” the Priestess commanded. “I do not give you light to sleep by.”
The old woman stirred and blinked herself awake, then raised her frail body from the floor. Pulling her ratty shawl around her shoulders, she eyed Whyn with interest. For a moment it seemed as though she recognized him, but there was no way she could have. He had never been to this dismal place, and she had surely never been within the sunlit walls of Tearia.
“The light,” Tenzy whispered, staring hard at Whyn.
“Yes, fool woman,” the Priestess hissed. “I give you light to find answers within these parchments, not to sleep by.”
The woman’s eyes darted toward the Priestess, then back at Whyn. Her face grew grim. “My error, Priestess. No light here,” she said.
“That can be arranged,” the Priestess said. “Let me catch you sleeping one more time when you should be working and you will find yourself in the darkness like the rest.”
The old woman cackled. “Who would find your precious answers then? You? Or perhaps this pretty boy-thing of yours?” She moved toward the table and shuffled her hands through a pile of parchments, stacking some into piles, rolling others into scrolls.
“Watch your words,” the Priestess warned.
“Or what?” Tenzy retorted. “There is nothing more you can do to me, and there is little more I can do for you. You asked me to find evidence of the Prophecy, and I have found none. As I told you before, there is no longer any trace of it. Your Red King of old saw that no record survived, certainly none written by the hand of those of us you call Jecta. What more would you have me do?”
“I would have you look at this,” the Priestess said, pulling a tome from the bag at her shoulder. She tossed it onto the table.
A startled gasp escaped the old woman’s throat. She ran her fingers over the cracked leather cover of the book, her eyes drinking in the symbols tooled into the grain.
“So you recognize it,” the Priestess said.
“Aye, that I do,” the old woman whispered.
“Then you should have no trouble translating it from its abominable language into one I can understand.”
“This is an ancient book…written in an ancient language. My memory fails me these days. I may not be able to—”
“Do not play games with me,” the Priestess snapped. “You will interpret it, and you have three days time in which to do it. If I do not have satisfaction from you by then, I shall seal your books up and you with them.”
“Just as well,” Tenzy said. “I have grown weary of this existence.”
“Perhaps you would feel differently if another was sealed up with you. Test me one more time and the pages of your precious books will forever bear the stench of you and your kin’s rotting flesh.”
“My kin are all dead,” Tenzy said.
“So you say,” the Priestess replied. She turned and walked toward the door. “Perhaps a crooked child would sway you.”
Tenzy stiffened. “I will do what I can.”
“Three days, no more,” the Priestess said, and with that she swept out, ordering Whyn to follow.
BACK TO ToC
Chapter 2: Patience, Prince
The Shell Seekers were gathered on the south side of the hill, their encampment of brightly-colored tents barely hidden from the towering stone walls of Tearia on the other side of it. As tents were raised, sundries unpacked, and wares prepared for Market, small parties began to make their way from the camp toward the selling grounds beyond. Market was held but two days out of the month, and was the only time the Jecta were allowed to sell their goods near the city. It was a profitable event, especially for the Shell Seekers. The elite citizens of Tearia were always eager to trade coin for the spoils of the sea, a place no sensible person dared enter. But even though the Shell Seeker wares were highly coveted, the Shell Seekers themselves were still considered Jecta.
Reiv paced back and forth by the cart that contained his group’s supplies. It was a transporter made of wood and bamboo poles, pulled by the labor of man, not horse, and laden with every imaginable craft and sundry. It had taken hours to pack it for the journey to Market. Now it seemed to be taking even longer to unpack it.
“Gods, let us get on with it,” Reiv grumbled.
“Patience, prince,” Jensa said. “We have a system, and you had best learn to follow it or it will take us longer still.” She eased her pale eyes in his direction, her brows raised in open amusement.
“I have asked you not to call me that,” Reiv said. “You know I am prince no longer. I am Shell Seeker now.”
Torin, Jensa’s older brother, smirked. “You will never be one of us,” he said. “Your skin is too delicate.”
Reiv curled his lip as he envisioned his burn-scarred fist crashing through Torin’s perfect teeth. But he knew his damaged hands didn’t have the strength to stun Torin, much less knock out a tooth.
Reiv was new to the Shell Seekers’ ways, but was determined to fit in. Torin, however, would have nothing of it; he hated the thought of residing with a Tearian, and made certain that everyone knew it. It had been only weeks since Reiv had moved in with them, invited by Jensa when he left Pobu to make a new life for himself. But while Torin resented Reiv’s heritage, and
Jensa patiently tolerated it, their little brother Kerrik thought having a prince under their roof the greatest thing in the world.
“You two are so mean to each other,” Kerrik said as he rounded the cart and stood before them. “That’s not how families are supposed to act.”
“Family—ha!” Torin scoffed. “Since when is he—“
“Let’s put our differences aside today, shall we?” Jensa said. “You and Reiv will not have to look at each other for two days. I
, for one, will welcome the respite from your constant bickering.”
“I don’t see why Reiv can’t work Market with us,” Kerrik said. “I’ll see that he stays out of trouble.”
“I told you,” Jensa said. “Reiv is going to Pobu to spend some time with Dayn and Alicine.”
“Oooh, Alicine.” Kerrik grinned. “That’s who Reiv really wants to see.”
“Silence for once,” Torin said, stooping to work a knot on a strap that straddled the mound of supplies on the cart. “Now help me get these ropes untied.”
“Oh, you never let me say anything,” Kerrik grumbled. He marched back to the cart, his twisted right foot kicking up the sand.
“You may say anything of significance,” Torin said. “Reiv’s personal life does not fall into that category.”
“How about your personal life,” Kerrik said. “Are you going to see Mya?”
“Of course I’m going to see her. Her husband recently passed. I must offer my condolences.”
“But you always saw her before, even when Eben wasn’t dead. I thought—“
“Enough, Kerrik,” Torin ordered.
Reiv chortled. “So Torin does like girls after all.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Torin rose from his stooped position by the cart.
“Well,” Reiv said, “it seems to me that a man as handsome as you—well, handsome to the girls anyway—would show a little more interest in them. I had begun to think your attentions turned in the other direction. I had even thought to sleep with one eye open, just in case.”
Souls of Aredyrah 2 - The Search for the Unnamed One Page 1