Adversaries Together Read online

  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 1103rd 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

  40th 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.

  Finding this particular Spire had been easy enough. It wasn’t the one gazing out over the huge lake void of any windows looking down into the city and marked with delicate looking balconies that stared out across the waters. It wasn’t any of the Spires near the gates significantly more soiled that the others, especially at the base due to market stalls and torch soot. No, he had to slog the entire length of the city, through trade districts, home districts, artisan alleys, worker dens, guild houses, and commoner neighborhoods to the Spire in the farthest corner. It stood with the hills to its back and the expanse of the city before it.

  He had picked the worst gate to enter spending nearly the whole day trying to make his way through to it. The entire time he could see it, seemingly always lying to him about how near he was. Just around the next corner, just over the next hill, or just beyond the horrid neighborhood he found himself in. Before he reached it, he found an inn where he let a room for the week. He soon discovered that the district was seeing less than its fair share of the spoils from The Blockade. Grey and dingy, not foul smelling but by no means rosy, the streets were wet, cluttered, and devoid of foot traffic that felt to any degree hospitable. Yet he hadn’t felt in danger nor had he worried about leaving his possessions in the room. It wasn’t a pleasant inn but it wasn’t dodgy, it would respect his purchase. Districts and neighborhoods like these were peopled more with sheep than jackals. Although, he couldn’t shake the tiny rumble of disgust that came up in his gut seeing the locals. They reminded him far too much of the county folk where he grew up—dirty, dimwitted, loud, and base. These people lived in a great city but they were no different from the rural rubes, they never ventured outside their neighborhoods and never thought much beyond them either.

  Since he had left his nameless hamlet as a boy, he’d made it a point to stand firm with an air of disinterested pride, one of the small ways he distinguished himself from the rabble. Though not tall, he was not short and his prideful stance was often enough to supply him with the deference he wanted and required from the common folk. Ghostly grey eyes sank deep into his beardless face and left many unnerved. His short silvery hair gave him a look that wavered between fierceness and detachment. Bartering with the inn keep for the room and board had gone smoothly most due to his own countenance and projected aura. When he got into his room and latched the door, he let it all fall from him as he collapsed onto the bed. For a moment, he had simply let himself soak in the comfort of a warm, private place. One never knew when one would have the chance to do so again.

  After stowing his packs away throughout the room to discourage any nosy inn staffers, he had changed out of his ranger gear into casual clothing. A deep gray long-sleeved tunic under his favorite rust colored jerkin sufficed, and although he didn’t change his knit trousers, he did make it a point to put on some black, soft leather chaps he’d had specially made with several pockets and slits sewn into them. Refreshed a bit, he had proceeded onward to the spire not more than ten minutes’ walk from the inn.

  His decision to change clothes was mooted, however, when he arrived as the guardsmen placed him in a holding room. Not a cell or a prison, just a bland empty room with a plain table and a single door with no handle on his side of it. He had been left in there for nearly an hour before a different guardsman had entered demanding he strip. He scoffed at first but there was no levity had from the guard, who took his clothes and left him naked in the room. Another hour passed as he waited on the wooden table keeping his temper in check by reminding himself that whoever sat at this table next would have the memory of his ass all over it. When they returned his clothes he immediately realized that the handful of small knives and trinkets he had hidden in his chaps were gone. He didn’t ask the guard about these and couldn’t tell if this yet again new guard could even tell him anything.

  When he was lead out he wasn’t taken through the customary halls but lead through some narrow and poorly lit passages. Every so often, he could catch the faint sound of people talking, laughing, or arguing through the stone and he realized that he was being taken through the spire via the servant routes. The fact annoyed and humored him, this was all a bit too clandestine for his taste and ridiculously so, he thought. Finally, he reached a tall, thin door. The guard stopped, said nothing, abruptly turned, and left the way they had come. Standing alone staring at a closed door, he let out a long sigh. Of course, he opened it and discovered an even narrower, even darker passage only this time it had thousands of tiny ascending stairs.

  The walk up the stairway that had dumped him into the library had taken him at least another hour. He was fit but the trek had required him to stop several times to
catch his breath. He had no idea how high up in the spire he was, but he was certain that it was no low elevation. He was impatient now staring out the window slit down the spire side. It confirmed his suspicions. He was too high up to make out any persons below beyond being mere ants and the light of the day was nearly gone. He realized he wouldn’t get back to his rented bed until late and probably miss any dinner as well. He was beginning to think that coming here was a poor decision.

  Finally, the heavy woodened main door of the library opened as two hooded men entered, each holding odd glaives whose edges shone like glass. The pole arm wasn’t their only weapon, both had a very plain falchion at their hip, and their attire was clearly different from the guards that he had encountered each in very plain leather brigandines. These men wore the black subarmalis of a clearly higher order of soldier. They walked to the center of the room facing him without expression. He raised an eyebrow sizing up the two. Neither sentry seemed more than twenty years old, if that, but they already had that empty-eyed certainty of an elite guard, crusader paladins perhaps.

  As the two took their positions, a rather soft looking blonde man with an unnaturally rosy complexion came in to stand between them dressed in a purple jerkin and a long black skirt. The fringe of the skirt and the man’s sleeves were embroidered with an intricate pattern of silver thread; this man was a Kyrio, a lord from one of the Spires. He was already talking when he came into the room.

  “…of course I apologize for the wait. This not being my own spire, of course, makes things a bit more…not difficult but sluggish if you will…”

  The Kyrio looked up and took a measure of the man. Noticing his pose, he said, “Yes, well. I suppose I should come to the point.” He tapped both sentries on the shoulder and they abruptly left.