A Clash of Fates
The Echoes Saga: Book Nine
Philip C. Quaintrell
Also by Philip C. Quaintrell
THE ECHOES SAGA: (9 Book Series)
1. Rise of the Ranger
2. Empire of Dirt
3. Relic of the Gods
4. The Fall of Neverdark
5. Kingdom of Bones
6. Age of the King
7. The Knights of Erador
8. Last of the Dragorn
9. A Clash of Fates
THE TERRAN CYCLE: (4 Book Series)
1. Intrinsic
2. Tempest
3. Heretic
4. Legacy
For John and Wendy, thank you for always being there…
Dramatis Personae
Adan’Karth (Adan)
A Drake
Adilandra Sevari
The late elven queen of Elandril and mother of Reyna Galfrey
Alijah Galfrey
Half-elf and self-proclaimed king of Verda
Asher
Human ranger
Athis
Red dragon, bonded with Inara
Doran Heavybelly
Dwarven Ranger/Prince and War Mason of clan Heavybelly
Ellöria Sevari
The late Lady of Ilythyra
Faylen Haldör
An elf and High Guardian of Elandril
Galanör Reveeri
Elven ranger
Gideon Thorn
Master Dragorn
Gondrith
Reaver - bonded with the dragon Yillir.
Ilargo
Green dragon, bonded with Gideon
Inara Galfrey
Half-elf Dragorn/Guardian of the Realm
Lord Kraiden
Late Reaver - bonded with the dragon Morgorth.
Kassian Kantaris
A previous Keeper of Valatos
Nathaniel Galfrey
An ambassador and previous knight of the Graycoats
Reyna Galfrey
Elven princess of Elandril and Illian ambassador
Rengyr
Late Reaver - bonded with the dragon Karsak.
Sir Ruban Dardaris
Captain of the King’s Guard
The Crow (Sarkas)
Late Leader of The Black Hand
Veda Malmagol
The Father of Nightfall
Vighon Draqaro
The usurped king of Illian
Vilyra
Reaver - bonded with the dragon Godrad.
Contents
Prologue
Part I
1. Home
2. Northman
3. Instincts
4. Heavy is the Head…
5. What Defines Us
6. The Dawn of a New Day
7. A Royal Gathering
8. Face to Face
9. I Am Ranger
10. Together Again
11. The March to War
12. Introductions
13. Finding Harbour in the Storm
14. Not Forgotten
15. Farewells
Part II
16. A Night on the Plains
17. A Rogue Memory
18. Battle of The Moonlit Plains
19. A Larger Tapestry
20. Crosshairs
21. Off the Beaten Path
22. Where Worlds Collide
23. Cursed
24. Aftermath
25. Survivors
26. Familiar Faces
27. First Contact
28. On the Hunt
29. Inside the Cage
30. Old Friends
Part III
31. Bending the Knee
32. A Heart of Three
33. Why We’re Here
34. King to King
35. An Intimation of Hope
36. Messenger
37. Hard Truths
38. The Future Lies in the Past
39. An Alliance of Two Shores
40. Out of Time
41. Cast Out of the Heavens
42. Preparations
43. End of the Road
44. Those Below
45. ’Tis Life
46. Eternal Companions
Part IV
47. A Master’s Wrath
48. Thorgen’s Blood
49. Palios
50. Endings and Beginnings
51. Home is Where the Heart Is
52. Feeling It
53. The Beginning of Something Beautiful
54. Choosing Joy
55. The Valley of Death
56. Where it all Began
57. A Clash of Fates
58. Keeping the Hope Alive
59. New Beginnings
60. Through Shadow
61. Legacy
62. The Blood of Erador
63. Creed
64. A New World
Epilogue
Author Page
Author Notes
Appendices
Prologue
This is the end.
How could it not be? The world had been set alight, the sky blackened with ash, and the earth torn asunder. Civilisation was falling into ruin. Dragons, bereft of their murdered Riders, melted the stone with their righteous fire, torching the streets of Ak-Tor, Illian’s doomed capital.
Sarkas watched it all like a god, removed from the carnage and death. The winds of time battered him, threatening to hurl him into the bleak future he now witnessed. With bloodshot eyes, he willed himself to keep watching, to observe the world to come.
Despite those ethereal winds, tearing at his clothes and pummelling his pale body, Sarkas wore the grin of a very satisfied man. For all the madness and sheer terror of such destruction, it was indescribably beautiful.
And all it took was a handful of dragons. Mage knights, cloaked in red, launched all manner of spells into the air. For all their effort, they only succeeded in adding some colour to an otherwise bleak vista. Ballistas hurled bolts, hoping to reinforce the knights’ magic, and some even struck true, bringing down a dragon here and there.
Ultimately, and inevitably, there was nothing to be done in the face of such raw power. If the dragons of Verda wanted to raze humanity to the ground, there was no one, no thing, and no spell to stop them.
Doomed indeed.
To the west, Atilan’s palace succumbed to the wrath of Garganafan, a dragon famed for his hulking size. Sarkas had heard of Garganafan, his name carried in the tales that breezed through The Citadel. Sarkas, however, had never seen the dragon before and attributed the knowledge he now possessed to the magic coursing through every fibre of his being - it whispered the truth into his mind.
Without turning to look, Sarkas’s sight found another dragon to the south, clawing his way through one building after another. Just as he had known Garganafan when he saw him, Sarkas just knew that the black behemoth destroying Ak-Tor’s southern district was Malliath the voiceless.
The black dragon rammed his way through an entire street of houses, his horns flinging people and debris high into the air. His tail always followed him through the chaos, swinging one way then the other to flatten anything that had survived.
When Malliath finally unleashed his breath, the jet of fire engulfed half a battalion of mage knights standing their ground on the district boundary. The smoke would have blinded any who witnessed such a massacre, but Sarkas was granted a view of it all.
The front four rows of mage knights had either failed to erect a shield or their magic had simply failed to hold up to Malliath’s might. Now, the scorched bodies formed a black line in the street, separating the surviving mage knights from the dragon.
Sarkas fought against the winds of time to
widen his vision, but the spell had a life of its own, as if it was showing him only what it wanted him to see.
Apparently, it wanted him to see death.
The mage knights resisted with spells, poking holes in Malliath’s wings and chipping his armour-like scales. It only served to anger the beast all the more. His tail, lined with spikes, swung around in a wave of dirt and debris - a force no man could deny. Half lost their lives to the devastating retaliation, many of whom were thrown, like rag dolls, into the air. More spells followed, bombarding the black dragon until he staggered into the side of a building.
Under a shower of falling bricks and tiles, Malliath inhaled a sharp breath. Sarkas knew what would follow. Another jet of dragon fire spread out amongst the mage knights, weakening any shields they might build. Then, with great savagery, Malliath leapt from the shattered building and used his gargantuan size to crush the remaining humans. His claws lashed out, raking those lucky enough to have avoided his sheer weight.
None survived.
Sarkas wanted to follow the dragon and watch the city’s ruination to its glorious end, but the magic he had conjured grew beyond his control. The young wizard, as he liked to consider himself, was violently pulled and pushed through the currents of time once more.
The world around him blurred into streams of colour as Ak-Tor’s sharp edges vanished altogether. Stars shone through the myriad of colours, dazzling Sarkas into a disorientated state.
When, at last, his vision calmed and the end of days was behind him, Sarkas found himself standing on a beach bathing in golden sunlight. Standing before him, oblivious to the wizard who watched from eons past, was a young man draped in a green cloak and tired leathers.
As soon as Sarkas asked himself who this man was, a single name came to him with perfect clarity.
Alijah Galfrey.
He was treading through the soft sands of The Shining Coast, Sarkas knew, even though he had never visited Illian’s coastline or even laid eyes on The Adean.
Alijah wasn’t alone. Not far behind him was another young man whose name was suddenly emblazoned in the wizard’s mind.
Vighon Draqaro.
The two were friends. No. Closer than friends. They were brothers in bond, if not blood. It felt familiar to Sarkas, who had considered the slaves in The Citadel his brothers.
Through a halo of light, cast over Vighon by the sun, Sarkas caught glimpses of a crown on the northman’s head. His hair had lost some of its colour and, like the crown, it came and went with the vision, lending the man a beard before quickly returning to stubble.
Then came another, behind the king-to-be. Her dark hair succumbed to the sea breeze and took off over her left shoulder. She was a vision of beauty and strength, a combination the young wizard had never come across before.
Inara Galfrey.
Her name hit Sarkas, adding a wave of heat to the ethereal winds that constantly blasted him. She was important to the world, just like the two men who had preceded her.
Inara looked right through him with her startlingly blue eyes, the same shade as Alijah’s. Sarkas watched them ascend the cliffs and return to the green fields of Alborn. The wizard could see that all three of them were entwined, their destinies tied to the realm itself.
It occurred to Sarkas that he didn’t know when he was. There was nothing around him to help distinguish the year and certainly no one to ask. As with everything else, he plucked the knowledge from nowhere and knew he was witnessing events ten thousand years from what he considered to be the present day.
The winds began to change again as time twisted and lurched. Illian’s coast was torn away, replaced by a nauseating swirl of colours and stars. Sarkas could feel his strength waning. For all the secrets he had unlocked from the forbidden books of the Jainus, he simply didn’t have experience or training on his side - just his will.
He continued to defy those powerful winds and ride the spell to its conclusion. He needed to see what was to come. The future had to be better.
The heat of Illian’s coastal sun was replaced by the icy cold of winter. Sarkas took in his new surroundings, desperate to grasp his environment as quickly as possible. He was in the woods, The Wild Moores to be exact. Snow coated everything and it was deathly still but for the sound of feet crunching through undisturbed powder.
The young wizard turned to see Alijah Galfrey again, only this time he was older and more rugged in his appearance. He was ploughing through the snow, bow in hand, searching for something. Sarkas wanted to reach out and touch him but the winds kept his hands at bay.
Then he was gone, flung forward in time again. The pain increased but it was nothing Sarkas hadn’t experienced at the cruel hands of his master. His will endured.
Now, he stood in a damp cave beneath the school known as Korkanath. He looked up at the wet rock aware, without having witnessed the event, that the school above was naught but a charred husk.
Growing comfortable with the nature of the Jainus’s magic, Sarkas stopped marvelling at his knowledge and focused on whatever significant moment was occurring around him before it was too late.
Alijah Galfrey was once again standing before him inside the cave. He was looking up at something, though it was obscured by the torrent of ethereal winds. How long did he have left before he couldn’t see anything at all?
Any question Sarkas might have attempted to answer was forgotten in the wake of the splitting headache that ripped through his mind. He closed his eyes but it made no difference to his vision.
To his left, Alijah remained inside the cave beneath Korkanath but, to his right, was an entirely different environment.
And an entirely different time…
The contrast of both environment and time was difficult to comprehend for a mind so fragile as a human’s, but Sarkas did his best to piece it together without losing too much of his sanity.
Scrutinising the new vision on his right, the young wizard laid weathered eyes on a single dragon egg. The shell was rough and easily mistaken for a lump of ancient stone. Deep purple in colour, it was set apart from the lush green vines and grey rock that surrounded it. Scattered around the egg, Sarkas discovered numerous scorch marks where other dragon hatchlings had been born.
Sarkas’s eyes flittered between the two scenes, each more thousands of years apart than he could count, for the egg resided in the time of the great Leviathans, before man roamed the world.
Alijah moved, snatching at Sarkas’s attention. “Things will be different now,” he promised, his voice reverberating throughout Sarkas’s mind. “Balance is the reason you and I have been brought together. But first, we must find harmony.”
Who was he talking to? Displaying a will of its own again, the spell kept the answer from Sarkas.
Instead, he looked back at the egg, his focus stolen by the cracks that began to appear up and down the shell.
“I will take on your suffering as my own,” Alijah continued, his hand outstretched as if he could see the egg. “You don’t have to be alone anymore.”
Unknown to Alijah, so far removed from events of ancient history, the egg was disintegrated by a furnace from within. A small dragon head emerged from the smoke and revealed its purple eyes and black scales.
Sarkas couldn’t believe what was happening, and happening because of him. Whether he had meant to or not, his spell had bridged the timelines. Phenomenal as it was, a single tear escaped each eye and ran back across his temples under the pressure of the spell.
These two beings were bonding across the ages, born into the world with only half of who they were meant to be. Sarkas felt a profound sadness for Malliath, who would be forced to endure eons without the one who coaxed him from his egg as the Dragon Riders did. The wizard already knew that the dragon would never speak to another soul until he met Alijah in Paldora’s Fall.
Just thinking of that event collapsed the two worlds into nothingness. The blinding colours were brief, propelling Sarkas into yet another time and place b
eyond his control.
All was quiet now, but for the sound of licking flames.
The young wizard was suddenly spared the buffeting winds and the constant pain. He looked around, confused. This moment of clarity was unexpected with no mention of it in the Jainus’s spell book. It had spoken of the repercussions, the sacrifices that came with pushing against time, but not this.
Turning on his heel, he was encircled by the sandy rock of The Undying Mountains, deep into Illian’s south. It was dark except for the torches that illuminated the elevated dais that had been carved out of the rock. A new sound reached his ears and Sarkas looked up to see the shattered remains of Paldora’s Star.
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