EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (298 page)

Jade stepped in close and lightly kissed his cheek. “I’ve loved you since the day I first laid eyes on you,” she whispered in his ear. She then stepped back, pulled out two daggers and held them in front of her face. Dropping to one knee, she placed them on the ground to either side and bent her head low. “I swear on the lands of Tarmerria to serve and protect you until my body no longer draws breath,” she vowed, frozen in her low bow.
 

Jacob approached, embracing his friend and whispering in his ear, “I told you I wouldn’t leave you. I’m in this until the end.” He stepped back and joined Jade in a low bow before his friend, his brother.
 

One by one, the crytons all began to drop to one knee and bow their heads low. Shantis was among the first.
 

Eric’s eyes scanned across the village as every soul there pledged their loyalty to him, but he didn’t care. Sure, he would protect them to the best of his abilities, but it wasn’t what dominated his thoughts right now.
Krytoes…you’ll pay for the lives you’ve taken.

Ilirra continued to scramble about the castle, barking out orders to the servants. The poor wretched souls who’d been controlled by the puppeteers were being brought inside the city walls as they regained consciousness. She ordered her men to begin setting up beds as well as buying out the local taverns. It would be a very long time before the former hostages could comfortably rejoin society again, but for now, water, food, and a warm bed would be as good a start as any.
 

“My lady,” said Azek from behind, giving her a start. “You must come with me immediately,” he said, appearing uncharacteristically rattled. But who could blame him, after all they had been through? “Azek, can’t you see I’m in the middl—”
 

“Now,” he repeated before lowering his head a bit.
 

She looked at him with frost in her eyes, but nodded agreement.
 

They walked off at a quick pace.
 

Just before approaching one of the many guest rooms, he added, “He won’t accept any medical attention until you speak with him. I suggest you hurry.” With that, he turned and marched off.
 

She glanced back in Azek’s direction with a look of concern before turning the knob. She entered slowly, wondering what this could possibly be about. There before her was a large man in a dark cloak, kneeling on assorted blankets someone was kind enough to provide. They had been placed there so he would not get blood on the floor from his many lacerations. The wounds did not appear fresh, but probably were constantly reopening due to improper stitching and constant movement.
 

“My lady,” he said in a deep, steady voice. “We have won the day, true, but yet another threat remains. We must prepare.”
 

She gazed a long time at the dark, hooded figure before speaking. “So I am to assume you are now completely committed to our cause?” she asked in a cool voice despite the unnerving sight.
 

“Make no mistake. I bring warning, but I do not serve you,” he boomed as those unnatural, eerie green eyes rose to meet hers from under his hood. “I am sworn only to the Gate Keeper.

Afterword

N
OTE
FROM
THE
AUTHOR
: I hope you’ve all enjoyed book 1 of the Legend of the Gate Keeper Series. If so, I ask that you take the time to leave a review or tell a friend about the series.
 

Thank you,

Feel free to contact me here:
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Continue the adventure!

Book 2: Siege of Night

Book 3: Lost Empire

Book 4: Reborn

Book 5: The Trials of Ashbarn

T
HE
W
HITE
T
REE
: T
HE
C
YCLE
OF
A
RAWN
, B
OOK
I

Edward W. Robertson

Chapter I

I
T
WAS
THE
DOG
’
S
FAULT
Dante was about to die. The ruins of the chapel hunched behind him, hiding the man who’d soon kill him. Because of the dog, he was thirty miles from Bressel, ten from the nearest farm, and a world away from help. Despite his isolation, he didn’t doubt his body would be found—corpses had gravity, as if the vapors released by death were starkly visible to the mind’s eye. If the man who’d attacked him didn’t find his body lying in the cold grass and colder wind, a farmer or a pilgrim would.

But they wouldn’t know who he was. He’d be a body. A nothing. Another lump on the surface of a world too large to understand.

He sat up in the grass, pain rushing down his side and thigh. The chapel was supposed to be abandoned. Instead, he’d found a guard waiting inside its walls. The man had cut him. Badly. He’d been lucky to escape into the fields with his life.

Blood gleamed dull black beneath the overcast sky. Dante’s stomach cramped. He fell back into the grass, panting, tears sliding down his temples into his hair. He caught his breath and shrugged off his cloak. It tore easily. Too easily. Would never have made it through the upcoming winter. He bound his wounds, tying them tight, grimacing against the dizziness and nausea. Wind hissed through the grass and pines.

He tested his leg and found that he could stand.

It would be stupid to go back inside. Dumb like a severed arm is dumb. But the man lurking in the temple wasn’t a looter or a squatter. He was a guard. Guards, by definition, guarded. The man wasn’t there to protect the chapel itself. That had been torched during the Third Scour. The following century of weather and vandals had ruined the rest of it. Stonework rubbled the field, cracked rocks fuzzy with moss. Holes spotted the pitched roof, darker than the clouds. This temple of Arawn was four generations and a hard day’s walk removed from the last time and place anyone had cared about its god. It was a cold night and the sporadic rain was colder still.

And yet there was a guard. Dante was onto something.

He drew his knife and crept toward the chapel, smelling the tall, wet grass as it soaked against his legs. Nothing moved except the wind-stirred trees. He touched the damp stone of the wall. He felt his way forward, fingers trailing the wall. After a few steps, they fell into empty space. He froze, breath catching in his chest. That moment of cowardice saved his life.

A man coughed from so close Dante could smell his breath. The guard emerged from the hole in the wall into the cloud-occluded starlight. His sword hung from his hip. He gazed into the bobbing pines, most likely imagining the boy he’d cut up not five minutes before curled beneath the cold boughs, heat and blood slowly ebbing from his body.

The man wandered into the grass. Dante pressed his back against the wall. He waited for the guard to take another step, then lunged forward and slashed at his hamstrings. The man screamed and fell. He rocked in the grass, clutching the backs of his legs. Dante danced back and wondered what the hell to do next.

“Get back!” the man yelled.

Dante found himself. He pressed his boot against the man’s ribs. “Where is the book?”

“What book?”

“I’ll cut your throat,” Dante said. His voice caught. He swallowed. “You’ll be a body in the woods. Eaten by badgers.”

“I don’t know of any book.” The guard pawed a bloody hand at Dante’s breeches. “If there was anything here, they took it back north long ago.”

“Then why are you here? Your health?”

The man started to speak, then took a long, shuddery breath, squinting at Dante’s face. “How old are you?”

“Would you ask death his age?” Dante said, and felt immediately foolish.

“I’d say he looks about fourteen.”

“I’m sixteen. My name is Dante Galand. And if you don’t tell me where you keep the book, I’m the last man you’ll ever see.”

“I’m telling you. It’s gone. Returned to Narashtovik where men don’t want to burn it.”

Dante knelt and dug his knife into the guard’s smooth-worn leather shirt. The iron tip clicked against the man’s breastbone. The guard sucked air between his teeth, eyes white and watery. Dante gulped down a retch, withdrew the knife, and hovered it over the man’s heart.

“I hope its secrets are worth your life.”

“Stop!” The man wriggled his shoulders, pushing himself into the sodden grass. “It’s in the basement. Downstairs.”

“I didn’t see any stairs.”

“Third row of the graveyard. Fourth stone. There’s a ladder underneath it. I haven’t seen anything down there but candles and prayer books. I drank all the wine. But if there’s a book, it’s down there.”

They stared at each other in the damp autumn air. Dante couldn’t leave the man here. It would be like cleaning a deer. Focus on the knife’s edge. Keep your fingers out of the way. Work fast, concentrate on the cut. Wash up when you’re done.

But deer didn’t talk back. They couldn’t call you a murderer. Dante steeled himself and poked the blade between the man’s ribs.

“You promised!” he gasped.

“And you tried to kill me.”

Dante drove down hard on the hilt. The guard bucked, legs thrashing, knocking Dante off balance. He grabbed the knife’s handle again and leaned on it with all his weight. The man went as slack as a summer pond. Dante’s stomach spasmed. He felt a thousand feet tall. He wanted to die. He was frozen, stunned, waiting to be smited by the man’s god. The wind whispered to him through the needles of the pines.

All this for a dog.

He’d seen it just that summer. Its body lay on the bank of the creek miles upstream from his village. Short, skinny trees grew so thick around the stream that you could barely see the sky. One of the dog’s paws dangled in the water. Its fur was clumped with blood, its eyes shut, legs rigid. Flies whirled around its nose and lips. A noose trailed from its neck.

Its death was a stain on the face of innocence. Dante shrank behind a birch, gripping its smooth, papery bark. This was his place. There was nothing between it and the village but marshes and ponds. A few hills with grass on their crowns and trees in their folds. A couple of shacks, too, but their roofs were staved in, homes to no one. You could hunt it, perhaps—it was common ground—but it was otherwise useless land. Unless, like Dante, you had a thing for exploring. He spent whole days following the creek, turning stones over in its quiet pools, throwing pebbles at waterstriders, poking at snails to watch them suck into their shells. He was too old for such things. He knew that. He just didn’t know where else to go.

Leaves crackled thirty yards upstream from the dog. A man in a bright mail shirt stepped out from the trees and knelt beside the water. He cupped his hand, drank, and flopped back on the bank to pluck burrs from his black cloak. A silver icon clasped it around his throat, the emblem rayed like a tree or a star.

Finished, the man stood, stretched, and started downstream toward Dante. The man’s hand whipped for his sword. Dante breathed through his mouth, rooted in place. The man stalked forward and stopped over the dog.

He hunkered down and prodded its throat. The stream splashed along beneath the clouds. The man drew a knife, put it to the dog’s throat, and sawed briskly. Dante tasted bile. The man pulled the now-severed noose from the animal’s neck and tossed it into the creek.

He then touched his knife to his left hand. Blood winked from his palm. The air blurred around his hands. Small dark things flocked to his fingers, moths or horseflies or bad ideas, black motes that clung to the blood sliding down his wrist. They congealed into something round and semitranslucent. The man lowered his hands to the dog’s ribs. The ball of shadows flowed into the motionless body.

He fell back, smirking, and pressed his bleeding palm to his mouth. The dog kicked its legs.

The man in the mail shirt got to his feet. After a faltering, stiff-limbed try, so did the dog. The man scratched its ears; it whined; the man laughed. Still whining, the dog backed up the bank and limped into the trees. The man belted his knife, glanced downcreek, and followed it into the woods.

Through all of it, Dante could sense what was happening the way he could smell cold or feel a shadow on his skin. When the dog shivered up to its feet, that was the world showing him just how big it really was, and that if he wanted it—if he wanted to wield what the man in the bright mail had drawn from the air—he would have to come find it.

Half-dazed, Dante ran back to the village. No one there had seen the man come through. When Dante turned and gazed at the creek winding its way out of town, the woods and fields looked pale and common. The snails and waterstriders were just bugs. Dante went to bed and couldn’t sleep. When he was a child, his dad had made lights dance in his hands. Told stories of playing bodyguards for dukes. Of hiring on with ships and using his talents as a soldier-doctor. That route was technically illegal—only royals and the church could employ the ether-users—but it wasn’t the law that had taken his father away. Nine years ago, the man had sailed west. He’d stayed there. Perhaps he’d died along the way.