Adversaries Together

Adversaries
Together

Ascendant Realms, Book
One

Daniel Casey

Copyright © 2012 Daniel
Casey

All rights
reserved.

ISBN-10:
150328686X

ISBN-13:
978-150328686

CONTENTS

Prologue 6

Chapter 1 10

Chapter 2 87

Chapter 3 169

Chapter 4 227

Epilogue 376

The Syr Nebra calendar is
divided up by eight different celebration days serving as the name
and first day of the month. The year is slightly longer than an
Earth year:

Winterfinding (December
20-23)

Imbolc (February
2)

Ostara (March
19-22)

Beltane (May 1)

Midsummer (June
19-23)

Lammas (August
1)

Mabon (September
21-24)

Samhain (November
1)

The Common Epoch (CE) began
after the completion of the Grand Cathedral in the Cassubian city
of Sulecin. The current year is 1167 CE. The Nations of Syr Nebra
and their major cities:

Essia: Paraonen, Rikonen,
& Heveonen

Cassubia, also called The
Lakes District or The Cathedral: Sulecin & Havan

Novosy: Hythe, Medves,
& Calla

Silvincia, also called The
Seven Spires: Rautia, Anhra, Bandra, Ardavass, &
Elixem

Adrenia: Dystos, Pyrgos,
& Elvos

The Aral:
Lappala

PROLOGUE

The pinprick’s dusty beam cut through the
chamber’s drabness widening until it encircled an ancient looking
man in a tall chair before a huge oaken desk. Bald and bare headed,
he slowly rubbed his scalp slouched on his throne. His gaze was
fixed on a sheet of parchment. Leaning forward he clutched his
silken epitrachil, its gold embroidery flared in the small light,
balling it up in his skeletal fist. His paper-thin skin wrinkled
and smoothed as he kneaded the cloth absent-mindedly.

Hours passed. Slowly the light from the
aperture moved, and soon enough his seat was in a brown dimness.
Moving his hand over his face, he rubbed his reddened eyes then
reached into his dark plum mantle. Made from a thick felted wool,
he wore it more and more often simply to keep himself warm. Fishing
around in the inside pockets, he pulled out a golden nib. He sat up
straight and set the nib on the desk below the parchment. Reaching
back into the mantle he fished out a long, thin bone handle, which
he placed beside the nib. His lips, dry and cracked, began to read
the elegant scrolling script written in golden ink. Without looking
down, he removed a phial of ink from a small drawer of the desk
setting it in line with the other pieces.

He read. The words were in the First and
Common Tongues, written in parallel horizontal lines. It had been
ages since he had read the First Tongue, so he ignored it as he
read the monition:

…
as an outlandish people
whose craft and merchandise are only meant as instruments to sunder
the ascendant realms, to terrorize and pit county against county,
shire against shire, city against city, and people against
people.

Refusing all governance, rebuffing all
beliefs they use subtlety and guile to deceive and cleave lands,
goods, and coin from the faithful.

Their impunity marks them as an anathema to
all and demands swift action.

The Assemblage had debated the language for
nearly a year, but he still found it clunky and distasteful. His
Vicegerents had read it, made amendments, but it read no better
perhaps even crueler. He began to twist the golden nib to the
polished bone handle. This would be his legacy, he thought, this
would be what set him apart from the past Patriarchs. Veneration?
Most likely not, there would be some but more would vilify him.
But, then again, most of them would be killed. Dipping the now
formed pen into the ink, he scratched his signature. He took his
time, letting the ink of each word dry completely before he wrote
the next—

Patriarch Arsene
Parmentier, Fifth son of Yoss Parmentier of the Twin Dominions of
Elixem and Ardavass, the Hundred and Seventy-Sixth Patriarch of the
Amaranthine Light Seated in the Grand Cathedral during the
1103
^rd
Year of its establishment

He finished writing and set the pen down.
Reaching back into the same drawer from which he had drawn the ink,
he removed an ivory hourglass-shaped gavel. Holding it firmly, his
index finger curled along its smooth surface. It was done. The
edict was signed.

The sound of the gavel against the oak was
deep and loud, the echo revealed that the room was large and nearly
empty. The silence that followed the three strikes were pregnant, a
call awaiting an answer. It finally came in the form of a muffled
grinding noise from a far wall behind the Parmentier. The sharp
sound of iron door latches being lifted followed. What light
remained in the room from the ceiling aperture revealed little
movement. Suddenly, there stood beside Parmentier a middle-aged
priest.

“
It is done, Patriarch?”
The priest sounded deferential but at the same time sly, his severe
features betraying a kind of contempt that was nearly
mockery.

Parmentier nodded slightly then spoke in a
rasp, “It is Arius. You have your victory.”

Arius reach down to pick up the parchment. He
inspected it. Seemingly satisfied, he rolled it up into a tight
scroll slipping it into the sleeve of his navy cassock. He tugged
at the silvered hem and folded his hand together before his
chest.

“
You have done the right
thing, Patriarch.”

“
Have I?” Parmentier
scoffed not bothering to look at Arius, “What would you know about
doing the right thing?”

“
That wounds me, Master.”
There was a bite to Arius’ reply, “Shall I have your supper brought
to you?”

Parmentier said nothing. Arius smiled, “Very
well then.”

He turned and disappeared back into the
shadows of the room. There came the sound of a gentle knock, the
creak of a door, its closing, and then the crisp sound of the
door’s latches locking. The aperture light was now entirely on the
surface of the desk leaving Parmentier in the shade. After a good
few minutes, he reached out and stared at his withered hand. His
frail, aged hand was a sad grey in the white light seeming to hang
severed from all utility.

He the scooped up the pen from the desk
surface clutching it in a cruel looking fist. He gripped the pen so
hard that he was shaking, his knuckles grew whiter and whiter and
the raised tendons on the top of his hand flared as the thick, blue
veins waved over them. Just when it seemed Parmentier would have to
release his raging fist, he shot it upwards, thrusting the golden
nib deep into his neck. The bone handle broke off in his grip
leaving what looked like a queer white dart protruding from his
neck.

Blood poured out of the wound. In the dim
light, it looked black like oil. There was brief but muted yelp
followed by a spurting gurgle. The chair shook, its legs rattling
against the floor, as Parmentier held the arms trying to keep his
body still as he bleed out. He gasped and a fine spray flew into
the remaining light leaving tiny red droplets on the desk’s
surface. Then the trembling and gurgling ceased, there were a few
involuntary shudders, and finally pure silence in the dark. Blood
dripped from Parmentier’s now dangling, lifeless hand collecting in
a dark pool beneath the throne.

Chapter I

Ardavass, The City of the
Seven Spires

40
^th
of Midsummer, 1167
CE

In the center of the room stood an
illiterate man surrounded by bookshelves. A few wall sconces
flickered melding with the weak light falling in from the narrow
windows to gray the room. It wasn’t yet dark enough outside for the
sconces and candelabras on the long table around him to give a
warming glow. Tilting his head slightly, his eyes followed pinched
rows of books reaching all the way up to the ceiling roughly twenty
feet above him. Coming closer to the stacks, he put a hand on a
ladder resting against the wall shelf. Pushing lightly, the ladder
wiggled a bit, and he realized it was on some kind of rail. Spying
the rail, he followed it around the room seeing where it met with
other ladders. He thought it a far too involved system for a bunch
of apparently never read books. He gave the ladder a push and it
rolled a few feet away from him. He nodded and pursed his lips.
Bored, he toyed with climbing up a few rungs but held back.

Behind him, the tables were cluttered with
books stacked upon each other, some half-open and stuffed with what
looked like hastily rolled scrolls and others pinning down
parchments. As he turned and came over to the tables, he reached
down gingerly lifting a few covers. The symbols were meaningless to
him, but he could see that they were all different. He had only
encountered two languages in his life--the common and the
cant--neither could he read. He spied a thin script that looked
like waves, a never-ending line of writing.

How does that sound?
he thought to himself.

Looking at another book its letters were
minute hash marks looking similar to the glyphs used by bookkeepers
down on the trading docks. There was a scroll whose paper looked
burnt; yet when he picked it up, it felt soft and limp. The writing
upon it looked like tiny pictures—a house, a man sitting, a bird.
He shook his head as he tossed the paper down. Moving between
tables, he tapped his fingertips dancing them along the tops of
every book.

He came to the window and tugged at a small
chain at his hip, pulling a palm-sized disc from his pocket.
Lifting it up into the dying light of the day, his thumb flicked up
a dial and he held it out to get the best shadow as he could.
Staring at it, he let a sigh escape sounding like a horse blow.
Nearly thirty minutes he’d been waiting; he was restless and
quickly becoming annoyed.

Coming to the city had been an easy enough
task. The masses passing through the gates of Ardavass was
incalculable; there were throngs on either side of the gates every
morning. Pilgrims looking to enter the city to walk the promenades,
gaze upon the gleaming white towers circling the city like a crown,
and wander the great Assemblage chamber where the Kyrios debated.
There came merchants, traders, and tinkers alone and in long
caravans accompanied by serfs from the shires and counties. Those
serfs came into the great city hoping to find a kind of work that
was better than the fields. To labor for the guilds and the
artisans, the masons, and perhaps even the governance the common
folk were sure would give them a better life than the fields of the
counties. The wealthy and powerful required bodies to ferry their
barges into the lake and through the canals should they want to
make the trip north to Ardavass’s sister city Elixem. They demanded
servants and souls to grind down to do their bidding so they could
continue to live in opulence. The Spires drew from all of the
surrounding countryside in the most peaceful of times, but since
The Blockade traffic into and out of the city had surged.

So wandering in was no difficulty, there was
no worry about catching the wrong eye or provoking the guardsmen,
they only wanted you to keep moving. Once inside, you’d be sorted
soon enough and once you left you were someone else’s problem. But
seeing the Seven Spires whether for the first time or the hundredth
always filled one with wonder. Each tower built by and housing one
of the original founding clans of the city and had become
synonymous with the city of Ardavass and the nation of Silvincia.
The Spires were the tallest structures in the known world rivaling
the fame of Lappala’s walls, Sulecin’s Grand Cathedral, the golden
pagodas of Bandra, and the shipyards of Dystos.