CHILD OF DESTINY (The Rising Saga Book 1)

by M. K. Adams

  Another scream. It sounded like the king was working them hard today Terravin thought as he slouched back against the wall behind him, trying his best to let his body drift off into a world of sleep. Rest was rare these days. At first, the strain which his body went through after being put through rigorous shifts of using his magic at the order of the king had exhausted Terravin. Every time he returned, he would collapse in his cell and sleep until the guards came to fetch him for his next shift, his next watch. As time passed, the exhaustion turned into constant pain which turned into agony. His body was no longer left with scars, but instead began to slowly decay.

  At times, he had wanted death to take him, for the God of Death to take pity on him and to claim his soul. But the king was good at keeping people alive when he wanted to, even if it took some of the more loyal warlocks to do so.

  The sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor outside. His was the only cell down this corridor, he knew. Terravin tried to steady himself, his body already hurting, like a phantom pain travelling through his body as he heard the footsteps drawing closer.

  They can’t, he thought, it can’t be my shift again already.

  Terravin had no knowledge of how many years had passed since he had been caught; his only glimpses into the outside world came from the visions that he witnessed at the king’s command. Most of which were admittedly dull. He had been able to work out the pattern of shifts, their frequency and when he was due for another. This was too soon.

  “No,” he muttered out loud, knowing that no one would hear but hoping that it would drive away this nightmare all the same.

  The footsteps drew nearer, and he could make out the muttering of people outside his door. Something was wrong; the guards never spoke to each other. Panic coursed through his body like the very blood that kept him alive. A key entered the door and the locks began to unbolt one by one. A guard grunted as he tugged at the handle and slowly pulled opened the door, allowing feint light from flickering torches on the walls of the corridor to fill his cell. Terravin raised a hand to cover his eyes, but through his fingers he could make out four figures standing at the entrance to his cell.

  Four? There are never four, Terravin worried. The man closest to the door was a guard, but his armour was red and gold, not the usual black of the guards who work the dungeons and mines.

  “I haven’t seen those colours in years,” Terravin muttered weakly as he tried to use what little strength his body had to raise to his feet on his own. He failed.

  “Quiet,” the guard commanded. Terravin regarded the man; he was one of the Dauntless, the king’s personal men.

  Another figure held out a hand across the guard’s plated armour, signalling that it was alright.

  Blinking against the light Terravin continued. “If he really is one of the king’s personal regiment… then that would make you -

  “It’s been many years Terravin.” His voice was as regal as ever Terravin thought as he inspected the king with his own eyes for the first time in what must have been over half a decade by now.

  “Your Majesty,” Terravin said as mockingly as his current situation would allow. “Forgive me if I’ve forgotten your face, but you don’t appear to have changed much. Just the grey hairs…”

  Terravin’s eyes quickly fluttered between the other two figures, he didn’t recognise either. But then again his mind was no longer what it used to be; he could have met these two a thousand times before he was thrown down here. But the ling, he was one he’d never forget.

  “Your king has need of you,” The smaller of the other two figures said, his voice was high and full of ceremony.

  Terravin never removed his gaze from the king’s solemn face, even in the dim light he could make out the displeasure and contempt the king had for being down here. “Why me? I don’t think my body is of much use to you anymore.”

  The king cracked a smile. Not the kind that would put Terravin at ease, in fact quite the opposite. He’d seen this kind of joy from the king before, all those years ago when he used to serve him. It was the kind of joy the king took in causing others great pain and sorrow.

  Maybe the God of Death has finally taken pity on me, Terravin wondered before readying himself to ask why again. “Why me?”

  To Terravin’s surprise, it was the king who replied. “I’ve been having trouble recently with some insurgents hiding in the countryside to the south.”

  Terravin hated the guessing game, but he knew the king had been vague for a reason. He wanted him to probe further, and he was happy to oblige. He didn’t get to have many conversations these days. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “They stupidly let one of my more recently recruited warlocks survive a battle. Between the information he has given me and what my friend here has been able to establish,” The king continued, gesturing in the direction of the fourth figure that stood in the doorway, hooded and robed. The scars of magic barely visible beneath his hood. Terravin didn’t know what it was, but the fear that the fourth man caused to form in the pit of his stomach was almost as frightening as any the king had induced. “It appears as though your son didn’t die in the Anya the way I thought he had all those years ago.”

  The words sent chills down Terravin’s back. His son?

  “No,” he said weakly, the breath suddenly escaped from his body.

  Terravin shook his head. His son was supposed to live a free life away from the entrapments of the king. He wouldn’t risk that for some insurgency, he couldn’t.

  “My son died,” Terravin insisted, silently praying to any God who would listen that they had the wrong person and that his son was living a quiet life with a family off on some far off land.

  “Wrong Terravin. I had my suspicions, but it all fits together so perfectly,” The king boasted. “A boy pale as the moon and gifted with magic. No, Turiel is alive and well. He is committing frequent acts of treason against my crown, and you’re going to help me bring him to justice,” the king spat with cruelty and venom in his mouth.

  “No… I won’t,” Terravin whimpered as he pushed himself back up against the wall.

  The king shook his head. “Look what you’ve become, old friend.”

  With a wave of his hand, the guard strode into the cell ready to drag Terravin towards a fate worse than any he had imagined.

  Dear Reader,

  I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to pick up and read my first foray into the world of publishing. Child of Destiny has been my passion project for a long time now, and I hope that it has brought some joy to you as payment for your time spent within The Rive.

  As a self-published author it really is just down to the readers to keep this dream alive. So if you have any interest in the stories to come, please do sign up to my newsletter, where you can keep up to date with all the latest news from The Rive and all future worlds that my writing takes us to.

  Newsletter sign-up: http://eepurl.com/dCGtp9

  As my final thank you and to prove my dedication to providing you all with the continuation of Lyvanne’s story, I have a parting gift. The first chapter from Book 2, Betrayal of Destiny. I hope you enjoy.

  “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”

  - George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons.

  Betrayal of Destiny

  Book 2 in The Rising Saga

  Chapter 1

  The snow fell dutifully against Gromwell’s face. The young lieutenant was long since numb to the icy chill of the weather, but the impairment to his vision was still a trouble he wished he could be without. Stood at the summit of a large snow dune, on the creaking wooden flooring of a makeshift parapet, Gromwell was supposed to have a clear view of the surrounding area. He was having no such luck thanks to the recent snow storms. Thankfully, after two years of being stranded in the same bleak location on the very edge of Tyberia, Gromwell no longer needed to be able to see through the blizzards to know what lay b
efore him. At the foot of the dune, he could just about make out the fringes of uniformly placed tents which housed the 501st Legion of the King’s Army.

  The camp, he knew, occupied an icy plane which stretched out before him before receding into a fresh placement of snow dunes on the opposite side. Those snow dunes were fortified beyond anything he imagined would be possible in such an inhospitable spot of land. Parapets similar to the one he stood on now, wooden palisades and smaller stockades lined the stretch of dunes. The final line of separation between his men and the savage and endless enemy who lived in the ice-tipped mountains which lay in the distance. The thought of their situation had once been a sobering one, but as time grew on and they adapted to this new way of life, it soon became the norm.

  The wooden flooring creaked beneath Gromwell’s feet and turning he saw one of his seniors making his way up a rickety stairway that crawled up the side of the dune, barely visible through the drifting snow.

  “Lieutenant,” the man said in greeting as he approached Gromwell’s side, one hand raised in front of his face to shield him from the weather.

  “Captain,” Gromwell replied, his attention half stolen by the sea which lay beyond the dune to the rear. He couldn’t see it through the blizzard, but the crash of waves against the small rocky outcrops which lay along the shore was unmistakable.

  The Captain lowered his hand as he approached and with a smile clapped Gromwell on the back as he joined his side on the edge of the parapet. Stuck on an icy tundra for two years, the 501st Legion had long since lost the formality so rampant throughout the rest of the king’s Army, but Gromwell wasn’t sure this Captain would be any different with him in any other scenario either.

  “Good morning Grommy,” the Captain said.

  “You know I hate that name, Landsley,” Gromwell replied with a frown.

  Landsley smirked. “I know.”

  The pair had grown up together in the Upper Layer of Astreya, both younger sons of Lording families. Landsley had come from a slightly more well-off family, and had, of course, been given a higher rank of officer. But it wasn’t until they decided to draft into the army together that they finally realised that there was more between them than just friendship.

  Relationships in the king’s Army were frowned upon at the best of times, but during their years fighting against Tyberians alongside the rest of the 501st the two had grown more relaxed about being open around their friends. Fighting to protect the lives of those around you gave you a bond that was hard to shake. Gromwell knew he would give his life for any other man in the 501st and that they would do the same for him. So despite their situation being dire, he enjoyed the freedom from secrecy that being stuck on a foreign continent gave them.

  “You eaten today?” Landsley asked.

  Gromwell shook his head. They’d been on rations for months now. Their ships had been deconstructed and turned into the barricades which separated them from their enemy, and whilst they had been well stocked upon on arrival in Tyberia they didn’t have enough to last for much longer. The ice had helped to preserve what supplies they had brought with them, and smugglers had been sent on regular intervals to help restock what they could. But the dangerous shoreline and weather made it difficult to get much through.

  “Make sure you do, you’re getting skinny,” Landsely joked.

  Gromwell knew it wasn’t true and waved away the joke. The two weren’t just alike in personality, but they looked the same and were built similarly too. Both sported thick beards to protect against the weather, and both were slightly above average in height with broad shoulders and chiselled chests. Skinny, they were not.

  “What are you up here for anyway?” Gromwell asked in return.

  Landsley reached into one of the deep pockets of his fur coat that he had draped over his uniform to keep warm and pulled out a scroll of parchment. “Smuggler arrived in the night, had news for the Major. We’re being called home.”

  Gromwell’s eyes drew wide, and his jaw fell slightly agape. “How? Why?”

  For two years they’d held the shore of Tyberia alone, the last legion of the King’s Army left from a failed invasion of a foreign continent. The thought of going home was a joy the likes of which he’d never thought he would feel again.

  “I don’t know, the letter’s vague,” Landsley replied as he tucked the parchment back into his coat pocket. “Things must be bad back at home if the king wants us to abandon this place completely though.”

  The jubilation hadn’t lasted long. Gromwell knew that Landsley was right. The pair knew that their king was a flawed man; they knew that he could at times be cruel, but they believed in what his Kingdom offered. A stable and secure world, rather than the untamed and wild one which currently lay beyond the borders of his Kingdom. They were happy to fight for his cause in Tyberia, but ever since word had reached them that The Rive itself had been invaded there had been more than one occasion where they had wanted to abandon their invasion in order to return home in its defence. But the King had proved stubborn.

  “The ships will arrive -

  Landsely was cut off. The unmistakable sound of bells sounded out from across the icy plane. A moment later and the camp below them sprung into life with the clatter of steel and the hurried shouts of men preparing for battle.

  “Come on,” Gromwell said before scurrying off towards the stairway which would lead him back down from the top of the dune.

  The camp was chaotic. Soldiers ran back and forth among the blizzard, some fully decked out in armour, others struggling to piece together what items of protection they had managed to scrape together. The majority of movement, however, was going in one direction, towards the snow dunes which lay beyond the edges of the icy plane. It was there that the bells still sounded out, but they weren’t the only sound to echo down into the camp below. The bells had been joined by the sound of whistling arrows, and steel clattering against bone.

  Gromwell didn’t have his armour with him, but the gambeson and fur coat would have to do, he told himself as he refused to go back to his tent to find greater protection. Landsley was racing behind him, his steel armour joining the clatter of noise.

  “Gromwell, you need armour!” he heard Landsley shout, but the noise was drowned out within cacophony that surrounded them.

  The blizzard continued to obscure Gromwell’s vision as he raced up the stairs laid out across the snow dune, but as he climbed the sounds of battle grew louder. With his palms soaked in sweat, he drew his sword from its hilt and climbed the final few steps onto the dune’s peak. The battle was on top of him as quickly as it had come into his vision. His men were pressed up against the various defensive structures, and on the other side were the Tyberians. They were a primitive looking people, their armour was little more than fur and bones, their bodies were thick and covered in hair, their mouths were missing teeth and they fought like animals. He remembered how scared he had been of them when he first arrived on Tyberia. In his first battle, he’d lost three of his close friends from basic training, in his second another two. They were savages of the purest kind, but he was older now, more experienced in combat and when he saw them he felt nothing but the lust to kill.

  Hearing cheers of encouragement from other officers who were just now arriving on the scene Gromwell threw himself into the thickest of the fighting. He didn’t have the armour to push himself beyond his own men and into the swarms of Tyberians, but he was a confident swordsman, so he took it upon himself to plug the gap of the defensive structure, cutting off the few Tyberians who had made it through, leaving them for his men to deal with.

  Fighting in the gap meant that numbers didn’t matter, no matter how many Tyberians rushed in his direction it always came down to a one on one fight, something he would always back himself to win. His sword carved through the air as Tyberian men and women, armed with bone hatchets and probing spears hurled themselves foolishly into his reach. Two, three, four he counted as he slew his enemies, leaving a growing pil
e of bodies blocking the leak in the defences.

  An arrow made of bone thudded into the palisade to his left, momentarily drawing his attention. He considered backing up into a safer position, but thought twice as he considered the luck that would be needed to hit him through the blizzard. Gromwell ducked as an onrushing Tyberian man threw his spear at his head, he grunted as a second later the beast had flung himself onto Gromwell, causing both of them to fall flat onto the snow. More Tyberians tried to follow their comrade through the gap, but the 501st were quick to fill Gromwell’s place in the wall as he wrestled on the floor with his attacker. The Tyberian was strong, but Gromwell was a better fighter, and after rolling him out of the way of his men, Gromwell allowed the hulking brute to punch him repeatedly in the chest and face, whilst using the time to unhook a dagger from around his belt buckle. Putting as much strength as he had in his arm, he plunged the dagger up into the enemy, causing the Tyberian to slump to the floor, dagger wounds covering his chest and side.

  “You alright, Lieutenant?” a passing soldier said, reaching down and offering a hand to help Gromwell back to his feet.

  Gromwell nodded his head, despite the blood smeared across his face telling another story. Holding the soldier by his side, Gromwell looked up and down the snow dunes as best as the weather would allow. It appeared as his section were having a harder time of the battle than most, but he couldn’t be sure. “What’s your name?” Gromwell asked the soldier.

  “Holtby, Lieutenant.”

  “Good name. Holtby, I need you go and find the Major, take note along your way of where the fighting is thickest and have the Major redistribute the men accordingly.”