Circle of Reign
Authors: Jacob Cooper
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Epic
CIRCLE OF REIGN
Book 1 Of The Dying Lands Chronicle
J
ACOB
C
OOPER
Copyright © 2014 Jacob Cooper
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0692246738
ISBN 13: 9780692246733
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
IN ANY LARGE ENDEAVOR
of the heart and mind, there are often many contributors that helped bring the project to life. I hope I catch all of you, and know I thank all of you who were part of the journey so far. To my parents, Michael and Beverly, who taught me something worth doing is worth doing right, not fast. To brothers, Jared, Jason, and Jed, whose enthusiasm early and throughout the writing process was bolstering and energizing, providing much of the stamina to carry through to the end. To Seth, for your unyielding excitement and encouragement. Your excitement was contagious. To Lathe, for your sincere efforts in guidance and editing, all of which was edifying. To Jordan, for tearing apart early renditions, causing me to refocus my efforts. To Nate, for enduring hours of self-recorded audio on our road trips and endless optimism about the story, even when I’m sure it was tough. To Tasha, for challenging me to grow the world with history and depth. To Mike Sirota and Michele Scott, accomplished authors and mentors, for bringing my efforts to a whole new level and challenging my ideas and writing. Mike, I hope your eyes have stopped burning! To John Avon, for bringing the fullness of his legendary artistic talents to bear. To Michael Kramer, for giving the story and characters life in the audiobook in only the way he can. To Bauer, my Akita, who kept me company during the long hours of writing
through the night. To my wonderful daughters for always insisting on an original bedtime story, planting the seeds for many of the storylines herein.
Finally, to my wife Kristen, who endured endless discussions about the story with grace and patience, excitedly reading every new scene I put in front of her. Your belief in me is what I continue to stand upon.
DEDICATION
For McKayla, Haley, Kelsi, and Adelyn
.
May you always walk in the Living Light
.
PART 1: THE FALL OF HOUSE KERR
CHAPTER FOUR: General Antious Roan
CHAPTER SIX: High Duke Emeron Wellyn
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Molina Albrung
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Lord Thannuel Kerr
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: High Duke Emeron Wellyn
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: High Duke Emeron Wellyn
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Lord Calder Hoyt
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Holden and Ryall
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: Lord Calder Hoyt
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: Prime Lord Banner Therrium
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: Rembbran
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: Prime Lord Banner Therrium
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: High Duke Emeron Wellyn
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: High Duke Emeron Wellyn
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR: Lord Hedron Kerr
PROLOGUE
Day 11 of the 2
nd
High Cycle of the Moons
403 Years After Unification (A.U.)
IT SEEMED AN ODD THING
to Rehum to lie dying from dehydration in the clutches of a rain forest. Shouldn’t he just need to open his mouth and let the water find him? Haunted or not, it was still a
rain
forest; but precipitation somehow constantly eluded him…almost as if it consciously fled from him. Ancients, could even the waters be sentient? So much effulgent life around him and yet his slipped away. He had survived all manner of misfortune in his eclectic life, constantly reinventing himself, evolving, becoming whoever was needed. He had started to feel almost immortal…almost. But that was why, in part, he now searched for
them
, wasn’t it?
This time, however, he feared there would be no survival.
He lay on his back looking up at the tall trees with the blazing sun piercing through. These trees were “fluent,” the Arlethians claimed, but he could not experience this for himself. He was not a wood-dweller, although some of his findings suggested that this should not matter. There was a copse of Triarch trees that stood like sentinels in front of him, mocking him as they stood with their strength, undaunted by the long ages of their life. Somehow they were vibrant despite his withering, as if they were what withheld the moisture of this cursed forest. He had seen the veins of the three-pronged Triarch leaves glow at night on occasion in his earlier days when he would spend hours studying and contemplating
in the Arlethian forests, their bluish-tint masquerading as an odd species of firefly—perhaps a cousin to the more common yellow-glowing variety. Smooth tan bark ascended up for some hundreds of feet before the Triarch branches sprawled out, joining the thick canopy of umbrage that hid large swaths of the sky. The Arlethians claimed they felt safe under the sentient canopy, but to him, it felt like a net cast by misfortune that he could not escape.
Holding the map in front of his face to block the blinding light, Rehum stared at it with an intensity that seemed to demand a response from the parchment itself. Intensity—or was it desperation? He was certain that he had copied it correctly from the crumbling parchment he had discovered, but how could any map be trusted when the land constantly changed?
A group of green and black butterflies swooped past him, struggling as if a great wind were present, causing them to swirl and spin in erratic flight patterns, dancing upon an invisible stage of effervescence. No wind was present, however. It might have been beautiful in another setting, rather than unsettling and chilling.
He would die like all the other fools who searched the Tavaniah Forest, though he had assumed himself so much more worthy than any before him. None had ever found what they sought here; and though Rehum had never believed the Tavaniah was haunted, he felt certain now that it was.
Ancients Come! I’m as deranged as a rabid dog, as much as they all said I was!
As he inhaled, his lower lip quivered with shame at the realization.
With his dry tongue, rough and cracking, he licked the leaves of a nearby bush. His taste buds were too numb to register the bitterness of the leaves, and the few drops of dew he was able to find stung his tongue.
“I know you’re here, blasted Night!” he yelled, still supine. Blood seeped from the dry, chapped corners of his mouth. “I know you’re here!”
One part of his mind told him to conserve energy, but another reminded him that it didn’t matter. He would be dead later today
or tomorrow. Two span of searching for the Gyldenal and he would die, painfully, like a slug that had fallen from a branch to a salt hollow of the Silver Pools in the Eastern Province. He was already an outcast, having been dishonorably discharged from the Changrual Order. Once a preceptor of the monastery and a revered high vicar with respect and clout, Rehum could no longer be where more than one hundred souls gathered or lived by royal decree.
I curse the name Parlan Wellyn!
Parlan’s son, Emeron, now ruled as High Duke of Senthara, but that did little to quiet his own shame. He did take a small morsel of pleasure in knowing that Parlan died in prolonged pain—a little parting gift Rehum had managed to bestow after his banishment.
Letting the map fall to his chest, he reached into his long pant pocket and gently caressed the scroll hidden there. It had been his greatest discovery and the most compelling evidence of what he sought. All other references to the Gyldenal had been from apocryphal stories or fables. Children’s tales used to put little ones to sleep at night. By and by however, amidst the scorn of his colleagues at the monastery, he discovered the truth. He had literally been on top of it for decades. With the knowledge he now possessed, he knew the Changrual Order to be a faint shadow of the truth, of pure Influence. Their knowledge was as shallow as a puddle after the rain on the streets of Erynx, the state city of the East and once his home. He knew why the lands cycled and died. He also knew that the Living Light was not the
only
Influence in this world of Våleira. Others existed and he found himself tempted by them as well. In truth, Rehum was tempted simply by power.
They selfishly keep the Influence of the Living Light to themselves!
He had planned to work himself in among the Gyldenal and steal the Lumenatis, the very Living Light, for himself.
He wept without tears. “It was all for naught!” Exhaustion threatened to take him but he feared to fall asleep lest the land change yet again while he dreamed. Or worse, he would just not wake up.
Is that really worse?
He saw the image from the corner of his eye. An outline that appeared to be a silhouette of a person. With a feeling of falling in his stomach, he snapped his head toward the personage but saw nothing save branches and shrubs. The arrangement did somewhat resemble a person as he squinted at it. Scuffling of some create found his ears next and chills ran up his spine. A forlorn feeling started to find its grip on him. He closed his eyes tight and reopened them, attempting to cast the building anxiety from him.
“How foolhardy I have been,” he whispered to himself.
Another specter teased his peripheral vision, much closer this time. He again turned his head quickly to capture the vision fully and discover his observer. Nothing.
“No! No, no, no!” Rehum tried to rebuff the madness that he knew was taking hold. Crushing his own proud image of himself was the realization that the madness had always been with him. This cursed forest was simply bringing it out in him, causing it to bloom as a poisonous flower in the early Rising Season. Trepidation expanded within him, forcing out beads of sweat that manifested on his brow and lips. This was the last of the perspiration his body could muster. He shook on the ground, not sure if the certainty of a long, drawn-out death by dehydration or the depths of madness his mind would spiral to before the end finally came scared him more.