Book I of III: The Swords of the Sultan

Book I of III: The Elysian Dynasty

Smashwords Edition

Copyright J. Eric Booker, 2008.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by
any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.

Booker Enterprises Books

Printed in the United States of America on
acid-free paper.

BOOK I OF III: The Elysian Dynasty:

The Swords of the Sultan

Publisher’s Notes
: 1) This is a work
of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or, are used fictitiously, and
any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental. 2) The numbered-translations to
the two foreign languages used through the course of this story can
be deciphered at the end of the book, where exist the English
translations.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data is available upon request.

Booker, J. Eric, The Swords of the Sultan

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Contact: [email protected]

Edited by Em Petrova—SPICY ROMANCE AUTHOR

www.empetrova.com

DEDICATION

I would like to dedicate this book to my
mother. Thanks for all your assistance in bringing me up to be “an
achiever in life,” which I’ve really become, and thank you for your
assistance in making this book a reality! Love ya, Ma.

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d like to specially acknowledge my team of
artists and graphic designers—all you guys did “a tremendous job”
in making the swords and/or book-cover design:
“BLING-BLING-BLING!!!”

Brenton P. Wilson

“Joliet James”

Philipp Leibelt

“That’s what being young is all about.

You have the courage and the daring

to think that you can make a difference.”

- Ruby Dee

In a remote galaxy on the opposite side of
the universe….

There once existed a world just like ours,
except for these four major differences.

First, there were two moons of the same size
orbiting over her skies, but they moved in opposite directions. The
nearest moon looked identical to ours in everyway, except for the
meteor markings. The other moon—twice as far away and so it
appeared to be half the size—never stopped glowing a bright-red
color, due to the trapped surface gases.

Second, the land and water masses on this
inhabited planet possessed their own unique shapes and sizes, along
with a wide variety of terrains and biomes.

Third, a little over ten million human beings
existed across the globe—all living in an age far more primitive,
barbaric and ruthless.

Fourth, located on the western shores in the
very middle of the largest continent, one hundred miles north of
the equator, there stood an ancient-yet-powerful metropolis named
Pavelus.

Now the first-of-many features about this
city was the fact that although the sun rose from the eastern
horizon between five and six o’clock every morning, it took nearly
two extra hours before the sun’s rays could first touch the dusty
streets.

This delay was caused by all of the shadows
cast from the six-hundred-foot tall by one-hundred-foot thick by
seven-mile long walls of fortified stone—spanning around the
eastern, northern and southern borders. There was one heavy-guarded
entrance located in the center of these very quadrants.

Added to those already-formidable defenses
was the vast Sharia Desert—blistering hot, dry and windy desert
terrains of all types that spanned for hundreds and hundreds of
miles in just about every direction.

Just because there were no fortified walls or
desert on the western banks of this capital city ruled by the
Sharia Empire, do not think for one single second that this side
was unprotected—actually, there were two just-as-powerful
defenses.

The first defense was the seven-mile stretch
of mountainous harbor, also manmade, consisting of hundreds of
thousands of massive boulders all stacked upon each other at a
distance of five thousand yards from the beach—the seagull-infested
peaks rose about five hundred feet above the seawater.

There was one entrance located in the middle
of the enclosed harbor, just big enough to allow two large ships to
sail in opposite directions. Built inside were five thousand docks
of various sizes, all made from waterproofed steel.

And parked inside was the second defense, the
Sultan’s five–star naval fleet—two thousand ancient battleships
ranging from sleuths, to soldier/supply transport ships, frigates
and galleons. More than half of this fleet consisted of a brand-new
type of sleuth proudly heralded by the citizens of Pavelus as “The
Swordfish.”

This sleek-in-design sailing and/or rowing
ship resembled an actual swordfish because of the abnormally long
and pointy bottlenose located in the bow—made of the same steel as
the docks, yet always kept polished so it gleamed like platinum.
Bolted side-by-side onto the ship’s most outer railing (starboard
and port) was a large number of square steel shields—equally
shiny.

Swordfishes had not been built by some of the
greatest shipbuilders in the world for looks, but for purpose: ram
through small-to-midsized enemy ships at top speed and survive the
impact. There were always a dozen swordfishes patrolling the harbor
(inside and outside), and each ship carried an armed crew of thirty
sailors and one captain.

And there were two crucial reasons that this
harbor was so safeguarded—one, protect the city from the sea’s
furies; two, protect the scores of merchant ships that continuously
departed and arrived every day, importing and exporting exotic
goods like spices, animals, silks, and oftentimes, slaves.

After all, the key to Pavelus’s incredible
success and wealth—trade—was its centralized location to more than
a dozen major cities and seaports around the Sea of Albusina—the
largest sea on the planet.

Approximately eighty thousand citizens and
forty thousand soldiers—both army and navy—populated this thriving
metropolis, ranging from the “very poor” to the “very rich.”

Yet very few ever dared to oppose the
“tyrannical will” of the Sultan—he and his ancestral family had
ruled this capital city with an “iron fist,” as well the entire
empire that included another thriving city and thousands of miles
in between … for a little more than five centuries.

Not surprising, most of the population feared
that their Sultan had spies everywhere, which he did. Those even
caught hinting of rebellion were typically found impaled, as both a
promise and warning to others, just outside the eighty-foot high
defensive walls of fortified stone that surrounded the palace
(literally made of gold), located at the south-central part of the
city.

The final necessary-to-mention piece of
trivia about Pavelus was that it had been broken up into seven
sections, bearing forty-foot stonewalls that prevented the lower
castes from entering the higher castes’ sections; for stationed
twenty-four hours a day at each checkpoint, there were guards who
checked everybody’s citizenry identification and status
paperwork.

Three hours after sunrise one such morning,
just near the northeastern border within the “lower middle class”
section, the sun’s rays finally entered the alleyway in between two
abandoned factories.

Minutes later, that light peeked through the
hole of an old, wooden floorboard balcony.

That ray of light, soon after, skimmed across
the dark-brown face of a thin and dirty boy, who slept underneath a
blanket of the same quality. Even though there was no facial hair
to speak of, the color of his unkempt hair on his head was black.
This twelve-year-old boy went by the name of Baltor.

Due to the very annoying sunlight that
penetrated through his shut eyelids, he turned over, yawned, and
tried to fall back to sleep. Only a moment or two later, however,
he heard and felt his stomach grumbling in angry tones!

Realizing that it was time to eat, the boy
got up, but felt that all of his muscles and joints were very sore
and stiff from sleeping on the cold, hard ground.

For most of his life, he had lived the
middle-class lifestyle with both parents and without any brothers
or sisters. His father had been a modest blacksmith who preferred
to repair weapons of steel but mainly replaced horseshoes for a
living. His mother tended to their only child until he had turned
eight, when his father began to apprentice him in the craft of
blacksmithing for the next several years to come….

Unfortunately, Baltor’s memories were still
haunted by that horrific night, only fifty-five nights ago, one
week after his twelfth birthday. He and his family had long been
asleep when the robber had broke his or her way in, in the middle
of the night.

He had only awoken out of his own deep sleep
upon hearing his father yell from downstairs, “I thought I heard
some funny noises going on in my shop! Don’t make me use my mace on
you, buddy, but slowly lay down my sword on the ground and
surrender! Wait a second… I know who you—”

What interrupted his father’s words was his
“death scream,” which in turn caused his mother to begin screaming
hysterically! It was apparent that she had followed behind her
husband, witnessing
the murder
!

Frightened out of his wits, Baltor could only
lie frozen in his bed and sob. A handful of seconds after, his
mother’s screaming abruptly stopped, and he knew that his mother
was also dead!

At that moment, he somehow managed to get his
wits together, slip on his clothes and shoes, crawl out his
second-story window, slide down the gutter, and take off into the
night—he escaped seconds before the unknown murderer had kicked his
door open….

However, with nowhere to go, and no one to
care for him, this hole is where he ended up—traumatized, homeless,
destitute and orphaned. Therefore, he had no choice than to turn to
thievery—stealing bread, meat or fruit from vendors, in order to
survive.

Of course Baltor had only recently become
aware that one of the strictly enforced laws of Pavelus, due to all
of the trading and commerce, was that thieves minimally had a hand
cut off, though the typical penalty was death. Only three weeks
earlier, he witnessed a six-year-old orphaned girl who had her hand
chopped off by one of the Sultan’s guards—she had only stolen an
orange.

He had also been quite aware that she had
belonged to the local street gang, ranging from the ages of four to
nineteen. Not only did they steal food and other goods from
vendors, yet carried weapons and even mugged people.

Thus, Baltor made sure to stay out of sight
whenever this gang was nearby, including this day—his fifty-sixth
as an orphan.

After tucking the blanket away into a little
nook and making sure the coast was clear in the alleyway, he exited
the hole, and of course, stretched his thin arms and legs out to
get nimble and loose.