Rythe Awakes: The Rythe Quadrilogy, #1

Dedication

For all the Legends. This would never have been without them.

Acknowledgements

A huge thanks to Faith Kauwe for her continued work and dedication in editing these novels.

Prologue

The First (The Sacrifice)

It was a wizard’s castle; paranoid and proud. Torches adorned each polished wall, bathing its many halls in reflected light. Murmuring wind and guards in subdued conversation made the only sounds. Any noise above a whisper and the castle’s latest master, Lord Fridel, March Chief of the Protectorate, would hear.

A quiet, careful, ninety-three years old, he rested secure in the knowledge that no intruder could reach his marble sanctuary. As a member of the Protectorate’s ruling council, he was afforded great security. The walls of his castle were five feet thick in places, a full garrison of loyal guards patrolled below, and two of his personal retinue stood watch outside his room’s thick oak doors. The castle had but one tower (a winding staircase the only point of access), and Fridel’s chambers perched on top, safe from would-be murderers and assassins. The defences were enough to deter anybody.

But not anything.

*

Far to the south and west of Lord Fridel’s stronghold, on the outskirts of Lianthre city (the capital of Lianthre, named for the continent), a summer breeze blew soft black hair across a darkly pretty face. A young woman, only twenty-five years of age, stood atop a flat roof that overlooked her ornate country gardens. She stared into the night, directly at the solitary tower of the castle she knew was there. It was tall and bright in the daytime, but hidden in the dark.

Below, the carmillon’s evening blossoms went unnoticed.

She had expected to feel joy this night, but her heart felt utterly empty. There was only the void where hatred once flowed. The feeling was not pleasant, and she mourned the opportunity missed; the chance to slip a dagger between Fridel’s ribs herself.

It was not murder, or worse, assassination. It was just a balancing of accounts and the rahken warrior, her warrior, would play the scales in her stead.

She pulled her hair back from her face as the blossoms closed. Without their lurid light, she could see nothing of her lands or servants, only a faraway lantern. On a moonless night like this, the sole indication of how large her estate had become was the lantern’s tiny firefly glow bobbing in the distance – a guard, patrolling the boundary.

The rahkens were a strange, fierce race that lived outside both the Protectorate and the human spheres of influence. Before the creature’s arrival, there had been only an overgrown and thorny wilderness across her land.

She had been tending the family grove in the sweltering heat of the previous high summer when the rahken came to her. The grove was modest then, lovingly restored by her after years of neglect during her expulsion. Thoughts of larger plots worried at her as she worried over the growth.

Alone and unannounced the rahken had arrived, startling her despite the brightness of the suns. A dagger appeared in her hand, sliding from where it lurked in the sleeve of her dress, but had not flown. Instead, in stunned silence she stayed her hand as the warrior knelt and bowed its head to her.

She had expected assassins, not a supplicant. With its fingers, the rahken made the sign of the circle, and with that simple motion its rare service was hers.

She grew in power as a councillor in Lianthre’s seat of human government, the Kuh’taenium. Her initial triumphs were perhaps granted in sympathy, but her current status was due to genuine respect...and all would come to nought. In merely six years, she had been elevated to the same status her father had achieved before her at half his age. Just six years to reach the pinnacle of human power on the continent of Lianthre.

But a human would never be as powerful as the Protectorate.

Even with such an ally as the rahken, what could one woman returning from exile hope to achieve against such a mighty adversary?

Now she knew. Revenge was all.

All she had discovered to find her father’s assassin, all that she had risked, and for what? Who among her fellow Councillors could she tell? There were few in the Kuh’taenium she called friend and could confide in none.

Even so, she was proud of her rise to power, for all that her father would have told her pride was for fools.

Perhaps pride is foolish, she thought. But isn’t every human triumph folly to those who rule from the shadows?

*

The blue-burning torches in the hallway outside Fridel’s door sputtered in the drafty tower. At each gust light flitted through the shadows. The rahken warrior merely pulled the darkness tighter and waited, silent and unseen, as it watched the guards outside the protocrat Lord’s door.

It was at home in the gloom. The great beast’s pure brown eyes – the colour of its pelt – saw in a way entirely different to human sight, reliant only on the facets of light, rather than the whole. It saw the changing shades of stone and metal, the movements of the guards and the play of the wind through the dark corners and the bright hall. Heat from the soldiers at the door appeared as a corona, orange, with the black of cool steel where chainmail covered torso. The guard on the left shifted slightly. He would move soon.

The warrior readied itself as the guard on the right picked at something stuck between his teeth that smelled like meat. It stretched its huge shoulders. The other soldier strode lazily closer to the waiting rahken, shrouded in shadow. They were quiet boots the guard wore, but may as well have been iron on the stone, for stealth could not fool the rahken. The protocrat came closer and the great beast struck out with sharp, hard claws. There was no malice in its eyes as it spread its powerful fingers apart and tore the guard’s windpipe. Breath wheezed and blood flowed, welling in the chainmail links before dripping onto the stone floor. The drips slowed and the guard’s polished leather boots gave a final judder.

The warrior lowered the protocrat to the floor.

Seconds from death the second guard hummed a slow tune.

The rahken wasted no time.

Bounding, blindingly fast steps and the warrior’s hand smashed palm outward into the guard’s gnarly face with enough force and speed that he barely had time to register a blurring of the dark, and then, nothing. His head smashed through the door, bone jutting and blood flying and the door splintered, shattering apart, the guard and rahken both tumbling through into the chamber beyond. Lord Fridel rose from his chair, sighting along a crossbow. Light from the fire in the hearth glinted on the bolt.

The rahken coiled and sprang. Its hard head drove Fridel into the air. Open hands, claws extended, rent the late Lord’s chest and the March Chief of the Protectorate died as the bolt clattered, blunted, in the hall.

The rahken stood for a second, focusing on the room, its barrel chest barely moving. On Fridel’s writing table was a letter. It was no creature of letters, but if it concentrated, it could see the aftertrail where Fridel’s eyes had passed the script. Meaning hung in the air. It could recognise the intentions, and they were dark. It was enough.

Clutching the papers in one hand, it left the way it came.

*

Tirielle A’m Dralorn heard the siren call in the distance as guards signalled the attack. Her warrior had succeeded again. Folly or not, Lord Fridel’s death had been a long time coming.

For you, father, she thought. Then, she turned and went inside to wait the rahken’s return.

*

The Second (The Saviour)

Across the wide seas of the world of Rythe lay a continent unknown to most Lianthrians. The entire western side of that continent was taken up by the wild, vast plains of Draymar.

A solitary figure stood in the meagre shelter of a tree. In Draymar growth was sparse and the grass underfoot and the occasional lost tree were the only things to break the monotony of the landscape until the mountains to the east, magnificent and breathtaking after miles of barren land. The man watched, eyes narrowed as he strained to see through the mists that slid down the slopes.

He wore what had once been a cloak, which hung from his frame in tatters. A scar ran from cheek to cheek, straight through his nose. The stitches that had held his face together once had done their job. They had left their impression, however. Observers often thought of a caterpillar.

It would have been the defining feature on most peoples’ faces, but not for this man. The scar became invisible very quickly.

His name was Shorn. It was his most recent name, but not the only one. In his line of work names were a skin to be shed. The deeds of a mercenary should go unsung.

He was famous in certain circles – revered – almost. Among others, he was very unpopular, although his critics never seemed to get their harshest words out in time.

Shorn breathed slowly into the wretched cloak to make the most of the warmth. Watching the horizon behind him from the shadow of the tree, he thought about his chances. Time was a commodity. Time was something Shorn understood better than most. Rhythm. Breath. Heartbeat. His heart beat slower now and he counted time to it. He stood under the tree for a very long time, but he forced himself to count and remain calm, not sure if he had been still for long enough. Ahead lay the woods, and the mountains.

Safety beyond them?

Straining all his senses, he willed the mist to part and let him see, but it was heavy and dark would come soon, then he would be hunted and blind.

There was nothing for it. It was his profession to know when to run and that time was now. He pushed away from the lonely tree and broke for the forest.

He did not see the spines that rose up in the mist behind him, slicing the mist as they passed.

*

The Third (The Watcher)

Far out to sea, the triangle was complete.

The Third was charged with watching the First and the Second. Together, these Three mortals were fated to come together at the end of days. He had watched Tirielle A’m Dralorn and the mercenary Shorn for many years. Now, Shorn was close - just across the mountains and he would be in Sturma.

The First, on Lianthre, was beyond his reach.

The First was the Sacrifice. The Second was the Saviour.

The man who watched them was called Drun Sard, the chosen of the Order of Sard. The Order of Sard were paladins, and Drun Sard their sole priest, he alone among their number gifted in the arcane arts.

Well enough versed to understand that the time had come to show themselves.

The time of the return is close.

Drun Sard knew this without doubt.

He had been on a platform at sea for a long, long time. An unkempt mass of knotted hair and beard now reached halfway down his chest and back. He sat on a wooden platform that floated on the waves where few birds flew. He ate what fish he needed and drank rainwater when it came. Occasionally the birds brought him gifts. He always thanked them.

He looked around his home, held to its spot by Seafarer magic and protected by his own. He laid an uncalloused palm on the worn wooden frame.

I won’t miss this at all, he thought. The time for watching was over. What it heralded he could not celebrate, but to see land again...

Drun dived into the sea, where he ran his hands through his hair and beard under the water. He stayed there long enough to remove the knots of the last few years. Then, still dripping, he sat on the platform under the gaze of Rythe’s twin suns, closed his eyes and dreamed of the circle far across the world.

*

In a circle at the soutHren reaches of Lianthre, nine men sat.

One opened his eyes, and said, ‘The watcher is ready.’

Others nodded. All heard Drun Sard’s words, but this man spoke first for them in matters of war.

‘Our ancient enemy already plot the downfall of the Sacrifice. Their hand is evident in an attack on the Saviour, too.’ The speaker, their leader Quintal, sat with the paladins - leader, but not at the head of their number. The circle was their symbol, and had many meanings but foremost; unity. ‘It is time for us to act. The Watcher will go to the Saviour. We must protect the First. A’m Dralorn is our charge.’

The man next to Quintal rose smoothly, despite having sat in the circle for hours while they waited on word from Drun Sard. Each man wore armour of shifting colours and their eyes were golden. Shining hair fell across the swordsman’s face as he bent to pick up his sword,  stretched, straightened and looked around at his brethren.

He bowed his head slightly to the leader of the Sard.

‘Then we ride?’ he asked.

Quintal nodded. ‘We ride.’

‘Good,’ he said.

Outside, nine horses pranced impatiently. The remaining devotees of the Order of Sard mounted and left their temple home Sybremreyen behind. They rode to a future where only battle was certain.

*

Drun heaved an upturned boat from the platform. It turned mid-air, splashing into the sea.

He had watched the Sacrifice and the Saviour take the path toward oblivion. The Sard may have changed over many, many years, but the Order always remained the same in their duty; to watch for the coming of the Three, and to oppose the Protectorate wherever their evil manifested.

The time of the last battle neared.

Drun hoped that it was not too late to make a change. Tirielle and Shorn had made their choices, learned many lessons. Now the time had come for the Third to join them together and for their real teaching to begin.

Part I.

The Fisherman

Chapter One

‘Renir! Get up!’

Renir groaned into his pillow and rolled the covers over his ears. His wife did tend to grate on his nerves first thing in the morning.

‘Renir! I know you can hear me!’

She clattered about for some time before she resumed.

‘It’ll go cold.’ Hertha scowled though the opening leading into the bedroom.

‘RRReniiir!’

She knew there was no need to shout – the hide covering between rooms would not drown her out. Renir wondered if she took enjoyment from tormenting him. He stuck his fingers in his ears.

‘If you don’t get your lazy behind out here now, the dog’ll have your breakfast!’

Renir Esyn was a placid man. He never understood his wife’s constant nagging. Nobody else seemed to find him offensive. People took to him because he looked just like them. True, he was a shirker, but he smiled and was honest about it at least. Or so people said when excusing him to those he had offended. Everyone knew him for what he was – a lazy good-for-nothing. They even said so to his face, with rare honesty that flourished in small villages everywhere. In answer he would say, ‘I’m saving food for everyone else by not working up an appetite’, or something similar. People would call him a fool, then he would smile and joke and change the subject. He had an easy manner and was well liked by everyone but his wife.

A pot flew at the hide, ruffling it out before it fell to the ground and shattered.

He got up.

After a breakfast constantly interrupted by snide looks from the dog and grating syllables from his wife, Renir donned his worn leather jacket and left without saying goodbye. Their door opened onto the village’s single street. Renir’s small fishing boat was shored in front of the bedroom window. Hertha insisted he drag it up there in case of thieves. Renir couldn’t remember a tale involving boat thieves but did not complain.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had looked out of the bedroom window either.

Or the last time he’d fished. His last catch ensured enough food on the table after they had been traded at Turnmarket, and Renir disagreed strongly with working when there was no need. Hertha disagreed with him on this as she did everything else.

He could hear Hertha as he stood in the sand that the villagers called a street, talking as if he was still there. He wondered if she was actually talking to the dog.

Conspiring against me.

The village itself was a pathetic cluster of shacks on the soutHren tip of Renir’s native land of Sturma. Sturma, a verdant country, nestled between Draymar to the west, Teryithyr to the north and the sea to the east and south. The village was more of a hamlet – a few simple huts, an open stall for the traders that passed through, some fishing boats. The blacksmith’s was the only place outsiders ever really visited.

As far as Renir knew, the place had never been named. He called it ‘the village’, as did everyone else. The Culthorn mountains could be seen in the distance on a clear day. The village of his youth, Green Hall, was not there any longer. It, and his remaining family (his mother and his scrawny cousin Serig), had been destroyed soon after his wedding, along with the whole town. The Draymar, always the aggressor in border quarrels, had burned it to the ground.

Renir had met Hertha there, and, after a hasty drunken coupling outside the local tavern (The Bull Catcher, where he had tasted his first beer) had felt obliged to marry her. The law was perhaps more of a goad, though.

At the time he had thought her a catch far beyond anything he could ever have dreamt. And he had been moderately drunk and flattered, like all young men, to be offered that which they crave. They had performed their deed behind the tavern in the dark. He had itched from the cheap sackcloth he threw over an unopened barrel of ale at the back of the tavern. Hertha had fidgeted about too, evidently bored of him. Which was strange, he thought, for he had been swift.

Renir would have got away with the pleasant memory of a drunken lay behind The Bull Catcher, a tale to tell his friends of the girl he had wooed, with her breasts like the mountains that hide the Draymar if not for Jugun, the town gossip, who had happened to observe his endeavours whilst walking back from the tavern.

Renir wished he had never married.

A man of twenty-five at that time, everyone thought Renir would turn out like Trangerth the blacksmith, who had never wed, and who it was rumoured had an unusual affinity for the beasts he shod. Renir had thought himself a lucky man; only his second time in the saddle and it hadn’t cost him a penny. Of course, when sobriety finally reached his head in the morning and she came to knock at his door, he saw her plain face and heard her voice. His mother had been delighted but Renir had inwardly cringed. He had thought to get out of it – drunken couplings were not unheard of – but for a man without a trade the law dictated that if the man had no trade and his mother gave consent he would have to marry or join the army.

Not much of a choice for a man with Renir’s approach to hard work.

Should have joined the guard, he thought. Would’ve been a damn sight easier after all.

And the sort of women who followed a warrior’s camp weren’t quite so prone to nagging.

The law had come about after the battle on the Draymar steppes where so many young men of Sturma now lay with their skulls reduced to pots for saplings and grasses. His grandmother had told him once she hoped his grandfather was lucky enough to be growing something nice. He had always liked flowers.

When Gek Fathand had issued the call to arms, the other Thanes had each sent a thousand men. Not since then had any Thane inspired such devotion. Even so, the enemy had outnumbered the Sturmen by ten to one.

His grandmother told an impressionable young Renir that Gek Fathand’s hands were so large on his double-handed sword he had to use it one handed. Renir still wasn’t sure his grandmother’s tales were entirely true, but believed Gek had been called Fathand for a reason.

Wave after wave of Draymar were repulsed as the Sturmen fought with their backs to the foothills on the other side on the Culthorn Mountains, until the dead mounted so high as to make the Draymen’s horses useless. The Draymar commander – some Sturmen called him Tyrinne, some Gyrainne, nobody seemed clear on his true name – had ordered his lines to attack on foot, when Gek had pressed with every last man, catching them against their horses and in confusion.

The battle had ended only when the bodies of the dead covered the field as far as the eye could see.

Lots of dead men was, unfortunately, a common result of war. The carcasses of towns abandoned littered the countryside. Empty houses, empty fields, women empty of babies. So they were supposed to get married and breed like mud-brags.

Cackhanded, Renir thought. He was sure he could have made a larger impact on the population without a wife.

Hertha harrangued him, or maybe she just muttered to her dog, and he decided he’d rather walk to Turnmarket than listen to her any longer. The mountains rose in the distance, covered on the peaks by snow reflecting the suns’ glow, as he remembered that first night with Hertha back in Green Hall.

He sighed. Some men’s lives - and wives - are perhaps destined to be ordinary.

The village slumbered as he strode along the street. It was cold on the coast where the salty air blew in and nobody in the village would rise from the comfort of their beds this early unless forced.

He came to the front of the blacksmith Gordir’s smithy, where the big man was up and sweating, firing the great furnace ready for a day’s work. Visitors came from all over the Spar, the district in which Renir’s village sat, with work for Gordir. The blacksmith always had an order to fill. A hulking man with hands tempered by years of heat and hard toil, he and Renir nevertheless got on well. They usually waved and smiled a morning greeting – a ritual for the few times Renir passed the smithy this early. The smith was often at work; early and late. Gordir’s work ethic was, it seemed, directly converse to Renir’s.

A man of few words, but quick to smile in company he found tolerable, Gordir had a laugh that matched his size and a deep, hoarse voice; from the smoke in the smithy, no doubt. The two were often seen at a table in the tavern on joint trips to Turnmarket, Renir talking loudly to the consternation of passing strangers.

This morning Renir approached said, ‘What are you making today?’

Gordir, put down thick, steel tipped bellows as Renir approached. ‘I’ve been commissioned. The Lord is having his armour repaired.’

‘What was wrong with the old armour? Has our Lord been in the wars again?’ His voice took on a dainty air as he said ‘our lord’.

Gordir’s mouth turned up at the corners. Both men knew the Lord of their realm had not seen a fight in his lifetime. ‘His son knocked it off its display stand and dented the breastplate.’

‘I didn’t think the little brat strong enough to shift that bulk,’ Renir laughed pointing at the huge breastplate. ‘Maybe you should let it out some while you’re at it. I doubt he even fits in his gauntlets nowdays.’

Gordir shrugged quite eloquently. ‘I just do what I’m paid for.’

‘Don’t we all? Anyway, I’m going to Turnmarket this morning. It’s a long way off so I’d best be gone, lest she skins me for a rug.’

‘What are you buying?’ asked Gordir.

‘Hertha threw a pot at me early this morning.’

Gordir’s eyebrows raised. ‘Ah.’

‘Yes, she’s angry that I don’t work enough. She’s also angry that I have legs and arms and teeth, but then, she is angry at everything.’ He gave a wry grin, ‘So, now I have to walk to Turnmarket on my day off.’

‘Isn’t everyday a day off for you?’

‘Ha. Yes, but that’s beside the point. Right, I’m going. It’s too early for this.’

Gordir thumped Renir on the shoulder. ‘Be wary though, there’s worse abroad than Hertha.’

Renir glanced at the mountains. ‘Well, in that case I’ll want to be back before dark,’ he said, rubbing his shoulder.

‘You can bring me back a flagon then. Perhaps we’ll share it?’

‘That I will, and that we will.’

Renir turned and headed up the street, his mood slightly improved. The sea was at his back and the mountains stretched before him.

Could certainly be worse, he thought, and lengthened his stride.

Chapter Two

Sixty miles southwest of Turnmarket, Shorn rested in the wooded foothills leading into the Culthorns and the soutHren pass. Turnmarket was not far beyond that, the only town for miles, and thankfully Sturman.

Without his sword Shorn was practically defenceless. These beasts would not be slain by hand alone.

It was daylight and the second day of pursuit had begun.

He made the most of his lead through the night, resting when tired, but using his greater speed to open a gap between himself and his pursuers. Now the entrance to the pass was in sight and the fearsome black hounds were not.

Running through the night would have finished most prey, but Shorn was inured to hardship through nearly thirty years of physical discipline. He was tall, lean, running to gaunt sometimes during longer campaigns. Daily, when able, he carried out his Shartrias, ritualised exercises with and without his sword. His hands were calloused and fast from both practice and the reality of war.

Few men knew their limits as Shorn did.

With his canteen still containing water he could keep his strength long enough to reach the hills and refill from one of the many streams flowing from the rock. He had only taken sparing sips during the nightlong pursuit. His lips were cracked, but that was to be expected.

He saw no option to lose the beasts that did not involve the mountain pass. The crevasses and the massive drops that were the main danger in the mountains seemed to be his best chance. It would be cold up higher, perhaps deadly cold, and the creatures’ spines had torn what little thread was left from his favourite cloak.

Not like it was ever a winter cloak, he thought. And I’ll take the cold, just to see how they fare at climbing.

What choice did he have, unarmed? He still smarted at losing his sword. If he had been more attentive in the training camp, he would not be reduced to running around in mountain passes. His sword in Nabren’s hands was unthinkable.

Nabren had been his last employer, the job; training the Draymar for attacks across the border into Sturma.

Stupid, Shorn realised with the benefit of hindsight, how his need for the constant challenge of the fight had overruled his misgivings when he had ridden into the training camp that first time. Work had been slow enough to bend his already shaky ideals and sign on with Nabren’s band. His skin had crawled from some presentiment then, cried out to him. The dull taint of magic swam eel-like through the air – dark, loathsome magic – and still he had ignored the senses that served him so well.

How quickly the proud fell when faced with the obsolescence of age. Only just past forty and he had let his fear of growing old persuade him that all was well.

Stupid.

Magic left signs a trained mind could discern. The signs he noted