As the dark ages fade, an ancient book is discovered and rescued from oblivion, and the Spirit of an ancient forsaken empire stirs.
sanctuary by the powerful and wealthy Valo-Treour family, he brings with him the very heart of a long-forgotten faith.
The Valo-Treours are irresistibly drawn to the book's forbidden scriptures, which threaten their rulers' claims to power.
Wealth, strength, and a long-revered name cannot save them from paying the price of their devotion.
Copyright
2019 by R. J. Larson
Researched
and written by R. J. Larson
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Cover design by: Kacy Barnett-Gramckow
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Chapter 1
Ceyfraland, Autumn 1125
A ferocious grasp
startled Brother Davin awake, even as Brother Gregaraii’s husk-dry old voice
pleaded, “Davin, help me save them!”
“Save
who?” Davin turned over on his thin, hard pallet, peering through the darkness
of their stark, narrow, stone cell.
Brother
Gregaraii didn’t answer. At least not with words. Robes rustling, he scooted
toward the doorway, his movements insubstantial as creeping, enfeebled shadows.
Gathering his senses from sleep, Davin listened hard in the nighttime gloom. No
sounds of mortal distress proclaimed the need to save anyone this instant. Had
Gregaraii finally lost his distracted wits?
Davin
sighed and ran one hand over his face, then sat up.
A tiny,
metallic click cut through the darkness, informing Davin that his elder had
lifted the cell door’s latch—strictly forbidden among the Religious during
their few mandated hours of sleep. Only illness or an act of the Eternal could
excuse this transgression. Yet Gregaraii had virtually ordered Davin to help
him with whatever jumbled task had overwhelmed his addled mind. How could Davin
at fifteen years, and newly ordained, argue with his revered elder? Indeed,
Gregaraii would bear any responsibility for the night’s forbidden excursion.
Though
the distraught old man might get lost in their own corridor. Davin tugged on
his thin, leather shoes, tightened his thin rope belt, then followed Gregaraii
out into the narrow, high-vaulted corridor that made echoes of the slightest
sounds.
A
young, fierce whisper beckoned from the tiny, barred window of an adjoining
cell’s door. “Davin! Where are you two going?”
Davin
halted, reining in his frustration. Trust his ever-zealous friend and fellow boyhood
pledge, Thomen, to be alert and awake tonight. Davin leaned toward Thomen’s
cell. “I don’t know. Brother Gregaraii’s in distress. Stay here. I’ll try to
guide him to the infirmary.”
“Oh.” Thomen
drew away from the tiny, barred window, clearly disinterested in Gregaraii’s plight.
But he recited by rote, “Go in peace. May Syphre guard your path.”
“And
yours.” Davin quickened his pace to catch up with Gregaraii’s thin, old form—hunched
and crabbed with the rheumatism that slowed his steps—as the old man led them
outside.
The
swift-setting moon threw silvering light among shadows along the flagstone
walkway, forcing Brother Davin to stare hard at the night-muted path before him—at
Brother Gregaraii’s scuffing feet and flapping black robes. Brother Gregaraii hissed
and muttered unintelligibly as he walked.
Sighing,
Davin rolled his gaze toward the chilly, star-scattered skies. Eternal, why was
he following an old man’s whims toward possible punishment?
He
ought to be asleep. His eyelids almost creaked their weariness as he opened
them wider to perceive the shadowed outlines of Gregaraii’s intended
destination, a vaulted stone archway. Irritated by Brother Gregaraii’s rasping,
indecipherable whispers, Davin groused beneath his breath, “What are you muttering?”
Gregaraii
halted and leaned toward Davin, his whisper becoming almost inaudible. “Our
verses.”
The
muddled old book they’d been translating in the library? “Impossible.” Davin
stared into the old man’s night-dimmed face. Was Gregaraii going insane? “You’ve
said yourself that your translation must be incorrect—that I was to ignore your
keyword chart. That the verses are nothing but gibberish!”
“They’re
not gibberish.” A guilty pause delayed Gregaraii’s shame-tinged explanation. “I
wanted them to be wrong. I fear I’ve understood them for the past five years.”
Davin sought
his addled mentor’s gaze. Why would Gregaraii risk soul-crushing forfeits over
an old book? “Good sir, forgive me—you must be going mad!”
“As
you ultimately will, young Davin.” Gregaraii pushed down the latch and leaned
into the door like a knight pressing against his shield as he lunged amid
battle, though he was merely entering the library’s hall.
Beneath
his breath, Davin grumbled, “If I’m following you, I’m already insane.”
Gregaraii
waved him through the library’s entrance. “Obviously—by all your babbling.
Let’s hurry.”
Punctuated
streams of moonlight slid through the ancient, polished-stone library, shining
against pale marble columns, dark wooden shelves, and tables boasting centuries-worth
of routine waxing and oiling. Gregaraii’s fluttering form faded in and out of
sight as he passed through successive patches of silvery moonlight, his
shambling pace carrying him inexorably toward the far door—the rare-manuscripts
collection.
Two
thin streams of light gleamed from a pair of high windows, illuminating the
old-parchment-scented room, overpowering the central night lamp’s modest glow. Gregaraii
shuffled over to a cave-like niche that sheltered his obsession, the ancient
manuscript clasped between two leather-clad wooden covers—a rarity he’d
studied, by his own count, for more than twenty years. Gregaraii hefted the massive
tome over to the nearest table and set it down gently, as if it were made of
glass. Exhaling, he tucked a clutch of folded notes inside the book’s cover,
then muttered to Davin, “I cannot do this alone. You will help me.”
“Help
you do what?”
“Save
this book. This evening, the abbot borrowed all my translations—except
for these few notes. Most likely he intends to claim glory for my life’s work. But
when he reads my translations and identifies this book and its threat to the
power of the Religious, my life will be forfeited.” Gregaraii continued,
distracted as if thinking aloud. “I’m old. I need only die. But what will they
do with you, young Davin, when they finally understand these words? When they
believe you know them because you’ve sketched and decorated the imagery I
described?”
A
chill lifted all the hairs over Davin’s arms and along the fringe of his shaven
scalp. Could merely sketching, painting, and gilding the book’s imagery—the
illuminations he’d deduced from Gregaraii’s descriptions—threaten his life? “What
are you saying?”
“You’re
holding the Rone’en.”
The Rone’en?
The fabled, nonexistent Sacred Word of the ancient Syvlande Empire? “You’re
certain?”
“Yes,
and I’ve repented to my very soul! Think about your work, young Davin! Consider
all those illuminations you’ve been crafting as a single work. You’re holding
the actual Rone’en! If we don’t escape, we’ll be silenced—burned with these
verses, and they must be saved!”
He’d
be condemned for illuminating the laborious translation of an old book? And for
being randomly assigned to the cell of an addle-pated old scholar? Davin shook
his head. “Sir, granted, this might be the Rone’en, but who’d condemn us for
merely—”
His
protest dried and died in his throat, silenced by Gregaraii’s knife-sharp glare.
The old man’s pale amber eyes glittered like molten gold amid the gloom. “Do
you know everything, young Davin? No! How easy your life is, boy, when an elder
carries your burdens!”
What
in the rotted world did the old man mean? Burdens? Who was guarding whom
tonight? And yet... Gregaraii’s glance was suddenly young. Acute and warrior
fierce. Commanding respect.
The
old man shoved the heavy book at him, knocking the breath from Davin’s lungs.
“Follow me, if you wish to survive a while longer, you condemned fool of a boy!”
Gregaraii
lifted the night lamp from its wrought-iron stand and tottered off to the far
corner of the rare-manuscripts room. He halted before a locked door, produced
his prized iron ring of master keys from a cord on his belt, and shook one
discolored key from the others. Fumbling at the lock, he finally worked it
open, then exhaled his relief as Davin followed him into the passage beyond. “We’ll
gain enough time to complete a translation, using my notes.”
He
closed the door behind them, then turned the key in the lock, sending the
tumblers rattling through the lock’s rusty box, which was undoubtedly older
than Gregaraii. A musty stone hallway gave way to narrow, downward-winding
steps, and several more doors. As Gregaraii lifted the lamp to light their way,
Davin shivered, eyeing the lumpy, filmy shadows clinging to the grimy walls.
Was that moss? What part of the abbey was this? According to the floor plans
offered to the novices for inspection upon acceptance to the abbey, no hallways
or rooms existed on this side of the library. Only walls.
What
else did the abbey conceal? Certainly, it concealed this hallway, and those
stone steps leading down to the narrow doorway that Gregaraii was unlocking.
Old
Gregaraii nudged Davin through the narrow doorway, onto uneven steps of
dirt-rimmed stones that merged into a clay path within a dank stonework tunnel.
As Davin blinked, willing his eyes to adjust, the old man closed the narrow
door and locked himself and Davin firmly outside. Or were they still inside or
beneath the abbey? From what he could discern within the lantern’s light, ancient
ages-worth of soil and roots had oozed and crept through the tunnel’s stonework,
with chunks of stone resting here and there along the tunnel’s dirt-strewn stone
floor. “Sir, where are we, precisely?”
“In a
place that doesn’t exist.”
Davin flinched,
avoiding a clump of roots that extended, claw-like, downward from the tunnel’s
ceiling, just skimming his razor-shorn scalp. “How did you find this place?”
“Young
Davin…” Clearly summoning patience, Gregaraii paused, then shifted the lamp
away from another clump of roots, “You seem to think I was never a pledge your
age, full of high spirits and inclined to adventure. My cellmate and I found
this tunnel long ago, before locks were placed on these lower doors. We came
down here a few times, searching for gauatchen.”
The legendary nighthound of Vrydn Abbey? Davin
suppressed a snort. He might be young, but at least he’d never wasted time
searching for a freakish ghostly hound imagined by some long-buried monk who’d
probably intended to merely frighten gullible novices. “Obviously you didn’t
find the nighthound.”
“A time or two we thought we’d heard him,”
Gregaraii mused. “We were probably listening to our own footsteps echoing back
to us. This tunnel was in better shape then, and so was I.” He ducked away from
another scraggly hand-like extension of clawing roots, then crept forward in
the tunnel. “We’ll request hospitality of my cousin in the Vales.”
“Your cousin is a freedman in the Vales?”
Mild-voiced Gregaraii said, “My cousin is earl of
the Vales.”
The Jareth
Valo-Treor of the Vales? That proud old warrior descended from long-forgotten kings?
Impossible. Or was it? Despite Gregaraii’s humility, only noble blood could
cause Vrydn Abbey to overlook Gregaraii’s quirks and grant him that ring of
master-keys. Battling astonishment, Davin followed Gregaraii. Only silence
could pay his mentor appropriate respect.
As they approached the next clump of roots dangling
from the ceiling, Gregaraii lifted his lamp and scooted around an odd
pearlescent curtain that dangled in wide, loose twists from the knotted roots.
Following his master’s example, Davin sidestepped the big, shimmering coils,
eyeing their peculiar pattern. Those scales, that sheen … it could only be a
snake skin.
A giant snake’s skin.
Davin swallowed and allowed his gaze to follow the
skin’s lowermost loop, which trailed along the passage ahead in an endless
glowing and ghostly swath. For the first time, Gregaraii faltered. “Na’khesh.”
The giant snake of ancient local lore? Davin shook
his head. It couldn’t be. All na’khesh vanished centuries ago, if they’d ever
existed. Gregaraii exhaled a perilously direct prayer to their Creator. “Let
this creature of the Adversary, the Soul Hunter, be far from us, oh Endless Liege!”
Liege? What was the old man babbling?
Gregaraii led Davin slowly, both of them eyeing the
skin, which trailed onward, finally ending in the ghastly replica of a giant serpent’s
monstrous, wide-open mouth.
As Gregaraii froze, Davin choked out, “Who needs a
gauatchen! We’ve this beast nearby. Shouldn’t we go back, sir?”
Gregaraii’s golden eyes widened in the lamplight,
his olive face ghastly as a wax sculpture. “Oh, Eternal, where’s this na’khesh?”
A
subdued creaking behind them made Gregaraii turn. Davin glanced over his
shoulder and stared hard into the darkness. The tangle of skin-draped roots
shifted in the shadows, and one particularly large root unfurled from the
broken ceiling and descended in monstrous sinuous coils. Gregaraii shoved the
lantern and keys at Davin. “Take these!”
Davin
grabbed the lamp and keys, clutching the heavy book closer, gawping as more
shadowed coils slipped from the roots above. Serpentine scales shimmered,
pearlescent in the wan lamplight. Davin shoved at his mentor. “Sir! Hurry! Let’s
run!”
Gregaraii
flapped one aged, gnarled hand at Davin. “Go, or we’ll both die!”
Behind
them in the tunnel, the gleaming-pale sinuous serpent reared its massive head
and hissed, its fangs glistening white in the lamp’s flickering light.
Gregaraii screamed. “Save the book! Run! Don’t look back! Run!”
Davin
fled, his robes flapping. Talon-like roots clawed toward his scalp and face,
drawing blood as he ran.
Gregaraii’s
agonized scream echoed behind him, then ceased.
***
Agony
jolted through Gregaraii with the giant serpent’s first strike. Paralysis
seized his limbs, trapping his final gasp in his lungs as he dropped to the
stone floor. Accepting the storm of searing pain in silence, Gregaraii Valo-Treor
sprawled on the stone floor as the serpent coiled around him. If Davin escaped
with the book, then these next few moments meant nothing. Nothing. …
Clenching
his teeth, Gregaraii prayed inwardly: Let
me enter the perfection of Your Presence! Let me see Your face and live
forever! Eternal Liege, all my trust is in You. Take my soul!
A cup
of celestial celebration would replace his pain. Soon—!
The
venom burned through his body, rendering him motionless, unable to breathe as
the monstrous serpent tightened its grip. Darkness closed Gregaraii’s eyes as his
heartbeat stopped.
***
Davin
staggered from the cave into the predawn air, tears and blood drying on his
face, his heart thudding an army’s worth of cadences. Where was he? A mighty
cliff stood behind him, housing the cave and supporting the ancient abbey
above. Around Davin, trees and tangled shrubs loomed, shadowed and bleak. He
must escape to the Vales. The snarled shrubs rattled their drying autumn leaves
and raked their harsh limbs over his torn face as he forged a path. But what
were mere branches and leaves? He’d seen a nonexistent na’khesh. Gauatchen must certainly be near. Neither
this huge book in his arms, nor the iron key-ring dangling from his wrist would
protect him from another such beast.
Davin
licked his split lower lip, tasting blood as he charged through the shadowed
woods.
***
Clutching
the huge book to his chest, Gregaraii’s iron key-ring dangling from his arm, Davin
knelt on the stone floor before the brawny, silver-bearded tawny Earl Jareth Valo-Treor
of the Vales. Seated in an oak chair on a dais in his banner-hung, blue-and-white
great hall, formidable as any despot king, Earl Jareth’s bright-amber gaze cut
through Davin, exactly like Gregaraii’s.
Davin fought
tears as he placed the ancient book on the stone floor. How could he have
doubted his mentor? He should have been stricken down, not Gregaraii. Daring
another look up at Earl Jareth, Davin begged, “Forgive me, my lord. I’m Davin
of Vrydn. Your cousin Gregaraii is dead. He sent me here to seek refuge.”
News
of his cousin’s death sent a flicker of surprise across the proud nobleman’s
bronzed, weathered, silver-bearded face. Taking a breath, the earl shook his
head as if reflecting upon some long-forgotten memory and then dismissing it
without sentiment. He straightened and spoke, his big voice grating like stone
raked against stone. “Dead? But then … I lost him years ago. So, after all
these years of silence, he’s sent you—a scrawny starveling—here? Why do you
need refuge?”
“From
destruction—of myself and of his life’s work.”
The
earl grimaced. “That dusty book is his life’s work? And who are you? His son?”
Son?
Among the Religious? Davin forced down scandalized outrage. “No. He was my
mentor until his last breath. May the Eternal forgive me for not appreciating
him as I should have.”
“Why
shouldn’t I return you to the Religious?”
“They
probably believe I’m dead.” Forcing strength into his plea, Davin said, “It was
Brother Gregaraii’s dying wish that I continue his work.”
“How
did my cousin die?”
Davin
winced, hearing Gregaraii’s final scream. “Of a na’khesh strike.”
“Na’khesh?
Impossible!”
“My
lord, as I live, it’s true. I saw the beast.”
The
earl’s amber eyes stared, huge and shocked, too much like Gregaraii’s for
comfort. But then he roared out a laugh that filled the empty, lamplit great
hall. “My Religious cousin, felled by a mythical serpent’s strike!” He
guffawed, then shook his head and caught his breath. “Ah, the irony! If only his
brothers were alive to hear this. Their deaths were nowhere near as glorious—our
faithful Gregaraii, taken down by the symbol of his adversary, the Soul Hunter!”
Unable
to laugh, and too scraped and journey-wearied to move, Davin sagged and lowered
his gaze to the book. The earl’s laughter faded. He sighed gustily, then wiped
his face. “I’m sorry. Poor Gregaraii—I respected his intellect and counsel.
Except for his youngest sister, he was the last of my extended family. How I wish
he were here.”
“As do
I, my lord.”
“Yes,”
The earl grumbled, “I’m sure you do. You stink of remorse. So, what am I to do
with you? It’s a fist in the eye of the Religious for me to keep you here, and
I’m not sure you’re worth the trouble—you younglings eat your weight in food
daily. Do you write? Read? Recite Religious principles? Decipher mathematics?”
“Yes,
my lord. All those. And I illuminate books.”
Silence
followed. Davin glanced up. The earl wasn’t looking at him, but at an elegant,
veil-wreathed, olive-complexioned young woman, who stepped around the embroidered
hunting tapestries behind his great chair, her silken robes and jewels gleaming,
dazzling. Davin swallowed. How could she be real? More beautiful and regal than
any statue of Saint Syphre. As the young noblewoman’s magnificently sculpted
dark eyebrows drew together in a thoughtful frown over her brilliant amber eyes,
the earl lifted his silver-bearded chin at her. “Isolde, my girl, what say
you?”
The young
Lady Isolde smoothed her shimmering crimson gown, revealing her advanced
pregnancy. Her gaze rested upon the book. When she finally spoke, her voice was
as calm and cool as the earl’s was boisterous. “My lord-father, he’s bound to
our family through your cousin. If the Religious would truly kill Sir Davin,
then shouldn’t we keep him? Furthermore, you know how much I enjoy my books,
and we’ll need a trained clerk to keep accounts, since old Sir Reginald has
begged to be pensioned off.”
The
earl shrugged, then stood. “If Gregaraii valued this boy enough to become his mentor,
then he might be worth a bit of a scrimmage. Tell your lord-husband that I’ve
hired a new clerk for you while we’re gone. You’ll need someone to manage your
revenues if the two of us die in battle.”
Visibly
pained, her olive skin turning ashen, the young woman widened her golden eyes
at the earl. “Father, don’t say such a thing. I won’t lose you and Evard.
You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m
as much a realist as Gregaraii was a dreamer. We’ve an arrogant young fool as
king, and enemies on three borders, while all the lords in this kingdom battle
each other. No one is safe, girl. Not you, not me, not Evard, and not this meek
and beaten boy-clerk sent by my cousin.”
The
earl stepped off the dais and planted his booted feet before Davin as if he’d
step on him as readily as insult him. “Don’t presume you’ve found a permanent haven
here. You’re seeking refuge and peace from a family that’s known none since the
old empire unraveled a thousand years past. Nevertheless, serve us faithfully,
and we’ll shelter you. Cause one whiff of trouble, and you’ll be flung back at
the Religious to meet your fate—unless my daughter or I use you for target
practice first. Do you hear me?”
Dry-mouthed,
Davin nodded.
The
earl swaggered from the hall. As his footsteps faded, the Lady Isolde lifted
one hand and beckoned Davin—her poised elegance extraordinary and unnerving for
one so young. She was much his own age, between fifteen and twenty. As he
approached, she stared at the book in his arms, then smiled. “You’ll be known
as Sir Davin here, to hold respect among our villeins—they’re uncommonly
peevish over rights and ranks. I’ll have my servant Meriel assign you a chamber,
ointment for those cuts on your face, and whatever provisions you need for your
work. I appreciate books, by the way, so I’ll intercede for you when my
lord-father loses his temper with you. What’s written in your book, sir?”
“Ancient
legends, lady.” A chill ran over Davin as he spoke. Were they mere legends?
Hadn’t the na’khesh been a mere legend before it killed Gregaraii?
“Legends?”
The Lady Isolde shook her head. She gathered her rich, flowing garments and
stepped down from the dais, an aristocrat firmly in control of her domain. “I
doubt it. No man among the Valo-Treor would devote his life’s work to a mere
collection of legends, much less assure its safety with his dying wish. That
book’s obviously far more than dry old stories spun of ancient whispers, and if
I’m sheltering something extraordinarily important within the Vales, I will know what it is, sir.”
For
all her grace and civility, this young lady certainly commanded respect and everything
else within the Vales. Davin caught his breath. What if he failed to understand
Brother Gregaraii’s miniscule notes?
Davin
offered his fears aloud. “Lady Isolde, I’m more an artist and scribe than an
ancient language expert. If I fail to translate these verses, then perhaps it’s
for the best if the book remains as nothing but a collection of markings and
ancient paintings. According to Brother Gregaraii, true understanding of these
words will bring madness—the knowledge is dangerous.”
“Knowledge
is a weapon, Sir Davin, and I intend to be armed. I’ve always believed that certain
authorities strive to keep us ignorant, thus maintaining their supremacy over
our lives and souls.” Lady Isolde clasped her long hands together, the rings
glittering on her fingers in mute, dazzling testimony to her family’s astounding
wealth. “As for madness, sir,” she softened her voice to a well-bred murmur. “My
lord-father believes Ceyfraland is yet again descending toward war on all our
borders and within them. Madness is in the very air around us, so breathe deep!
The Vales can survive whatever’s in that book. Therefore, I command that you translate
and share it—madness and all.”
Was
she so confident of her sanity? Of his?
Syphre
save them all.
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