The Realm Rift Saga
Books 1-3
James T Kelly
The Fey Man
Copyright © 2014 by James Kelly
Map illustrations copyright © 2015 by Howard Coates
The Unquiet Sword
Copyright © 2016 by James Kelly
Map illustrations copyright © 2016 by Howard Coates
The Northern Wastes
Copyright © 2019 by James Kelly
Map illustrations copyright © 2019 by Howard Coates
Cover Illustration copyright © 2019 by Felix Ortiz
Cover design by Shawn T King
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Skerry Books Ltd
www.skerrybooks.co.uk
Contents
World map
The Fey Man
Local map
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
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The Unquiet Sword
Local Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
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The Northern Wastes
Local map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Be the first to find about the final book of the Realm Rift Saga
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The Fey Man
The Realm Rift Saga: 1
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Chapter 1
The Eastern elfs were arriving that night but Thomas Rymour didn’t care. The castle had been abuzz, with everyone from maids to cooks to visiting dignitaries gossiping about the reason for the visit. The Privy Council had been no different. Tom had sat through countless hours while rich men extolled their theory and used it to push their own agenda. And when Duke Regent had heard them all, he would ask Tom what he thought.
It was moments like that when Tom wished he could tell lies.
But at the moment he had peace. He was sat in Cairnagan’s barest and least popular tower garden, where the plants wilted and the view was poor and he could relax with a bottle of mead and a friend. Of sorts.
“You should really go downstairs, Tom.” Glastyn stood at the wall, watching the sunset. Glastyn was tall, beautiful, with dark flowing locks and a charm that never slept. Only his long, pointed ears suggested he wasn’t human. “It will be diverting.”
Tom sipped his mead. Duke Regent had tasked his vintners with reproducing a hundred year old recipe to make Tom feel at home. It was a noble gesture and Tom was grateful for it. But the drink wasn’t quite right. It served only to remind Tom he was far from home. But he drank it anyway. It was better than the sickly sweet wines the court favoured. “Diverting for who?”
“Whom.” Glastyn grinned.
Tom ignored him. “If you want to chase daughters and wives, I’m not stopping you.”
“But you are our only friend here.” A reminder that the reverse was true as well. “Come, there hasn’t been anything so exciting since we arrived. A feast! It will be almost like Faerie.”
Tom shook his head. “Since you arrived.” Tom had been at Cairnagan a few months longer. “I’ve seen a feast here. They’re nothing like Faerie.”
“It will be more like Faerie than this,” the fay grumbled. As dashing as he looked watching the sunset, Glastyn looked bored. He seemed to live for the court; he relished the politics, the frippery, the danger.
Whereas Tom had no patience for it. “I’m not happy with second best,” he said.
“It’s all we have, Tom.”
“Don’t remind me.” He topped up his cup of mead. He wasn’t allowed a glass.
“What if we take that away? Hmm?” Glastyn marched across the garden and snatched at the bottle. Tom had to twist in his seat to keep hold of it.
“Stop it.”
The fay ignored him, getting a pale white hand around the bottle and tugging it.
“Glastyn, stop.”
“Come, Tom, tip this filth away. We give better to the dogs in Faerie.”
“Iron nails, stop it.” And then a foresight intruded on his senses. Like any other, it dissolved the world around him, like red wine mixing into water until it was all he could see and hear and smell. This time he saw red, sensual lips. There wasn’t often a lot of detail in his foresights.
“We are your beginning and your end, Thomas Rymour,” she said. Her voice was odd, as if both Maev and Mab were talking at the same time. But that was impossible.
The foresight began to fade away and his senses returned to the present. He blinked and looked down. He’d dropped the cup. That was why he wasn’t allowed glasses.
“Another foresight?” Glastyn was stood over him. The bottle was gone. Knowing Glastyn he’d probably tossed it over the wall.
Tom nodded and opened his mouth to speak when the world disappeared in an instant. An image of an old man stabbed at Tom’s eyes like knives, the sound of his whisper was like a bellow in Tom’s ears. “Quiet, Tom. Don’t tell him anything.”
It was gone as quickly as it arrived and Tom was on his back, his chair upended. The back of his head throbbed and his lungs burned. He gasped like a man drowning.
Glastyn looked almost concerned. “Rather dramatic.”
“You might help me,” Tom managed, pulling his l
egs free of the chair.
“We’ve been trying to.”
He clambered to his hands and knees. Was he going to vomit? No. No, it was just a shock. He’d never had a foresight like that before. Sudden. Almost painful. And the old man. It had felt like he was talking to him, a message for the here and now. That was new.
“Too much mead, Tom?”
He shook his head, clambered to his feet.
“What did you see?”
For some reason he felt he should do as the old man bid: don’t tell him anything.
“I’m not sure,” he replied. Which was true. To an extent.
Glastyn wasn’t convinced. “You must know some-thing. Was it your future? Someone else’s?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were we there?”
“No.”
“Was Maev?”
“Will you stop pestering me?”
Glastyn grinned as if he’d won a prize. “If you go to the feast.”
He should just tell him. What did it matter if Glastyn knew? And yet. “Fine.”
The hall was dark and smoky and full of the stench of perfumes over the stench of the people beneath them. In a way, it was like Faerie, with laughing and dancing and drinking. Some stood in shadows, discussing plots and schemes under the cover of the music that filled the air. Servants wove between all with trays of food and drink, both delicacies and heartier fare. But that smell was not like Faerie at all. In Faerie it smelt of strange and wonderful flowers and it was always a warm evening with a fresh breeze. That night was hot and close.
“Does it make you homesick, Glastyn?” Tom asked.
“Yes,” he replied. He hadn’t changed outfits. But he didn’t need to; only Tom had the Second Sight with which to see him. “But then, most things do.”
Tom, on the other hand, had changed into one of the outfits Regent had ordered made for him. Cut to be fashionable, not comfortable, they were as brightly coloured as everyone else at court. Rather than the simple browns and reds Tom preferred, he was in yellow and blue, Regent’s colours. Worse, these clothes pushed and pulled at him in unnatural places. He felt silly, even though everyone looked as he did.
Glastyn smirked. “You seem uncomfortable, Tom?”
“You know I am.” Like all fay, Glastyn’s sense of humour often seemed cruel or mocking. Tom knew in truth that they laughed more at mortal customs and rules.
“Yet you do not tell your new lord and master.”
“He’s not my lord and master,” he replied. “You of all people know that.”
“Ah yes.” Glastyn raised his cup. “To our lord and master. May she welcome us back to the fold one day.”
Tom lifted his glass too and drank. He tried not to think of her.
“Do you think you’ll be allowed to return?” he said.
“Oh yes.” There was no hesitation. “One day our queen will let us return. We have no doubts about that.”
“I envy you that.”
“Sir Rymour.”
Tom fought to keep his expression under control, forcing a gracious smile as he turned to the voice. “Good evening,” he said.
“Good evening, sir.” The man was a young knight, dressed in even more ridiculous clothes than Tom. Another knight and a few ladies followed in his wake. The knight sketched a bow and the others followed.
“Please,” Tom said. He couldn’t stand the scraping and bowing. “I am no knight.”
They did not apologise. They were not showing him respect. They were showing everyone else that they were showing him respect. “Sir Rymour, you must know why the Easterners are here,” the knight said.
He swallowed a sigh. “I am as much in the dark as you.”
The man frowned. “But you see the things to come, do you not?”
“I do.”
“Then you must have seen something.”
Glastyn leant closer and whispered, “Yes, Tom, you must. Stands to reason.”
As tiring as the prospect of the conversation was, Tom had to smile. “Stands to reason,” he replied. “But I have seen nothing of the Easterners, young sir. I do not know why they are coming nor what they want.”
“And you still don’t care, do you?” Glastyn didn’t have to whisper; no-one else could hear him either.
“No, I don’t.”
His visitors were growing uncomfortable; no-one liked it when Tom spoke to people they couldn’t see or hear.
Glastyn sighed. “How uncurious of you, Tom.”
“I am curious about many things,” Tom countered. “A way to Faerie, for instance. And you could satisfy that curiosity, couldn’t you, Glastyn?”
“I could.”
“But you never do.”
“No.” Glastyn’s face softened into a sad smile. “We never do.”
Was that pity? Tom wasn’t in the mood for pity. “Then forgive me for my lack of curiosity.”
The knights and ladies were finding excuses to move away. They bowed and wished Tom a good evening, pledged their service should he need it and so forth. Tom watched them go.
“You are well-respected here,” said Glastyn.
“I’m a curiosity.”
“Aren’t we all?” Two ladies walked past, dressed in pinks and silvers. One smiled at Tom, the other ignored him. Glastyn watched both with a predator’s grin. “You do not have to stay, Tom. Tir is a very big place. You could leave.”
The thought had crossed his mind before. This court was no place for him. But where was? His place was in a Tir a hundred years dead. Now he was an antique in a modern world. Like the tapestries on the wall, he was out of place. “Here is as good as anywhere,” he said. He looked at the dancers. Their steps were precise and careful, for display rather than enjoyment. It wasn’t dancing. It was peacocking. “I have a bed, a roof and hot food. Leaving is likely to deprive me of those things and I’m too old to go without them.”
Glastyn snorted. “How many summers have you seen? Thirty?”
“Thirty-one,” Tom replied. “But it has been over a hundred since I was born. That’s what matters, Glastyn.” He stared up at the tapestries, supposedly from the time of King Emyr. They were frayed and tattered, though the images they depicted were energetic and vibrant. “Time decides how old we are.”
Glastyn drained his cup. It was not one he’d taken from a server, but one of his own, plain and old but always full of Faerie wine. A clever trick. “Speaking as an immortal, I can tell you that’s nonsense.”
“Speaking as a mortal, I can tell you it isn’t.”
The music stopped and the dancers bowed. In the quiet a murmur rippled across the hall as Duke Regent stepped out onto the dais at the head of the hall, resplendent in blues and yellows that seemed regal on the duke yet juvenile on Tom. He bowed with the rest of the courtiers as Regent crossed to the gold throne.
Glastyn did not bow. “Oh look, he’s raided your wardrobe,” he murmured, and chuckled to himself.
But the rest of the hall was respectfully silent. Though not a tall man, Regent was imposing nonetheless. In his youth he had been strong and energetic, leading hunts, serving on the border, breaking many a heart. Now older, with the beginnings of grey in his beard and wrinkles at his eyes, he still burned with morality and chivalry. Some of the courtiers muttered that Regent would rather the duchy fall into ruin than break a promise. But Tom admired that. There seemed too few people these days who believed in anything.
Regent rested a hand on the throne and faced the hall. “Play on,” he said. Then he pointed a finger at Tom.
“Duty calls.” Glastyn sounded amused. “Maybe I’ll seduce some pretty young thing while you wait on this duke.”
Tom ignored the jibe. “Don’t break her heart.”
“My dear Tom.” Glastyn grinned. “You of all people must know: we break our own hearts.”
He thought of soft, white skin in a wooded grove.
Moving through the throngs took longer than he’d expected. Many moved aside and avoided
his eye, but some stopped him and asked him about his foresight. Had he seen what the Easterners wanted? Did he know what the harvest would be like? Would someone’s daughter recover from her summer sickness? He answered when he could, demurred when he could not. By the time he reached Regent’s side he was yearning for peace and solitude again.
But he bowed as best he could. “Your Grace.”
“Tom.” Regent was severe today. “I’ll have you at my side.”
“As you will.” There was no point in arguing.
“Would you sit?” Regent gestured to the second seat on the dais. This was Regent’s own seat, a wooden chair with intricate carvings inlaid with gold and richly furnished in soft cushions. Regent’s father had sat on Emyr’s throne whilst he’d ruled. But it was an unwritten rule in the family that the throne be preserved for Emyr exactly as it was. So, if the cushions were truly over nine hundred years old, it would make for a very hard seat. When Regent had assumed his father’s title, he had apparently said, ‘If I’m going to spend hours on my backside, it had better be in comfort’, before com-missioning this chair.
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