DRAKON OMNIBUS
Book I: THE SIEVE
Book II: UNCARVED
Book III: FIRSTBLADE
Book IV: BUTTERFLY
C.A. CASKABEL
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DRAKON
Book I
THE SIEVE
Copyright © 2016 C.A. CASKABEL
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1533476784 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-9906150-0-2 (e-book)
Second Edition: July 2017
This is a work of fiction
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
www.caskabel.com
BOOK I: THE SIEVE
“I am Da-Ren, the First Blade of the Devil.”
I.
Jar of Honey
Island of the Holy Monastery, Thirty-Second Summer.
According to the Monk Eusebius
“I am here to redeem the lives of my wife and daughter. I’ve brought the offering.”
Those were the first words of Da-Ren, the man who would become my brother, hero, nightmare, savior, and my life’s only story. He knelt and offered me an earthenware jar. Only moments earlier, he had crashed through the main cedar gate of our monastery, hurling his body against it. He had the eyes of an infidel, one whom God had not allowed to sleep for many nights. No one like him had ever set foot on our remote island of Hieros in the middle of the sky-blue sea.
Many a disheartened soul had climbed the thirty-eight and thousand more steps that led to the Castlemonastery. They came proud and strong on fast-moving triremes; they came humble and desperate on wave-ravaged fishing boats. They moored their vessels, whether great or small, in the eastern harbor and ascended to seek mercy or plead for a miracle. Cure for the incurable. Resurrection. Eternal life. God’s kingdom is so often misinterpreted by the desperate.
Almost all descended the same steps one or two days later, some swiftly with wings of hope lifting their heels, others slowly with the look of a doom foretold in their eyes. And then there were those few who stayed at the monastery for a long time. They had found the strength to climb up but had lost what little was needed to climb down again.
On the day Da-Ren arrived, I was the novice monk in charge of the cleaning chores. I was airing the First Elder’s chamber to rid it of the stench of the linseed-oil-burning lamps. A flash of movement caught my eye, and I looked out of the window through the spider web clinging to the limestone wall and the wooden shutters. A penteconter was slicing through the calm blue waters like a giant serpent, approaching the harbor’s entrance. It was not a pirate ship; the swan carved on its stern was the mark of a merchant fifty-oared vessel.
A hide-clad man jumped into the sea with his boots still on before the ship was even moored. I clutched the wooden cross hanging around my neck. The man came ashore holding what looked like a jar with both hands above water, making his way across the razor-edged rocks. Biting my lower lip, I waited to see how many of his crewmates would follow. But none did. The man clambered over the salt-eaten stones without ever looking back.
I had counted several times, in the middle of a quiet day, how quickly someone could climb the narrow steps that led to our monastery. The young fisherman who often brought us fresh mackerel could climb the slippery steps barefoot before I counted five times a hundred. The barbarian was at the southwest bend, more than halfway from the shore, and I hadn’t even reached twice a hundred.
As he approached, I could see the cross-shaped hilt of his sword, tied to his back. He was undoubtedly a man of the blade. One barbarian alone was enough to massacre the few aging monks of our commune, just as the searing wind had ravaged the last yellow flowers of spring.
This season full of earthly smells, the onset of summer, is often deceiving, for it is a season of raid and slaughter, the one that pirates choose to rip through both seas and virgins. Only one thing about this barbarian gave me the slightest bit of hope: the jar he carried with both hands as gently as if it were an infant.
I descended the coiled stone staircase from the second floor of the main building, with my long robe slowing my progress, and entered the courtyard. “The gate, shut the gate,” I shouted.
My brothers were breaking their fast in the dining hall after the Morning Prayer, and the only one in the courtyard was deaf Elder Marcus, weeding the vegetable garden. I reached the gate just in time to meet eyes with the intruder, who was but five strides away. I managed to lock him out by securing the rusty latch, but there was no one to help me lift the wooden beam to seal the gate. Again and again came the thundering blows from the other side. The rotting wood shattered as his body crashed through, and his boot hit me high in the chest. I fell backward and hit the ground hard. Half hoping to ward him off, half making the sign of the cross across my chest, I raised an arm and begged, “Have mercy, in the name of God!”
He had the stature and the long, wavy brown hair of the Archangel, but he was dressed in the hides and boots of the pagan invaders, the barbarians of the northern steppe. The sharp lines of his face were forged as if the Devil himself had stretched a sheet of wheat-colored skin over bones of steel. It was the face of those bloodthirsty dogs sent by Satan and halted by God just above the Great River that, for centuries now, marked the natural borders of the Holy Eastern Empire. But not everyone found his face as terrifying as I did that day. In the villagers’ settlement, beyond the Castlemonastery, many women would whisper his name for years to come when cold nights embraced them.
The man fell to his knees, his eyes watery, his brow sweating; he raised the jar and extended it toward me. To my surprise, he spoke his words in my tongue, that of Almighty God and his servants the Emperors: “Mercy. In the name of God. I am here…to redeem the life of my wife and daughter.”
Each r rolled off his tongue like a boulder off a cliff. He grabbed me with his right hand, and my mind went blank from the pain as he pleaded, “Young man. Sorcerer of the Cross. Save us!”
Despite the strength of his hands and legs, he would be one of the few who had lost the will to ever leave this place again. He would stay with us until the very end. Forever is a word that I will not use, because I am a man of God, and it means other things to me. I dare not even utter the word, for that would imply that he failed in his mission. I never witnessed the end of his story. All I know is that he was the last to remain on Hieros many years later, that last summer morn when I and the rest of my fellow monks and villagers abandoned the island to save our lives and the silver and gold heirlooms from the pirates.
That first night, after the Compline Prayer, I brought the dark-green jar of his offering into my cell. Over the low heat of the candle, I burned the rope and removed the sailcloth that sealed the wide mouth of the urn tightly. I dipped my finger into the jar timidly, before curiosity became sin. Its taste was sweet but oddly foul on my tongue.
It was honey.
Sweet nectar of the immortal Satans from the dawn of time.
A chilling breeze whispered into my ear and crawled down my spine, the same way it does every time I read the Dark Book of Our Faith and the Last Angels. My eyes caught shadows crawling on the wall in the scant moonlight. The night birds, the dem
ongirls. They disappeared as they came, diving in the lightless corners of the cell. I put my ear closer to the jar. I could hear them. The long, inconsolable wails of mourning emanating like fumes. It could have been just an aberration from my fiveandtenmore-day fast.
I placed the jar under the small shrine of the Holy Savior Maiden, our Mother of the Son. Her painted wooden icon was the most powerful amulet against all evil. Or so I thought back then. At dawn, they took the jar away from my cell.
This is the story of Da-Ren as I wrote it with my reed pen dipped in the ink, the black and the red. I buried it in a trunk in the dungeons of the closest monastery, on Foleron Island, to where I escaped.
I never saw the jar again.
Though I dreamed of it. Just the night before last.
II.
Puppy
Thirteenth Winter. The Sieve. First Night.
I am Da-Ren, the First Blade of the Devil.
I was born one night in the thirteenth winter of my life in Sirol, the big camp of the Tribe. Of the othertribal mother who bore me first, I will not say a word. It was fortunate for both of us that she died in childbirth.
On the rooster’s second crow, the sound of a child’s scream ended my sleep, and a sphere of light appeared through the horse hides that covered the tent’s entrance. A monstrous shape entered with the torchlight. I could make out four hands and four heads, growling and searching. A strong hand grabbed my hair and started pulling me away from the warmth of the tent and my last night of child sleep, as if ripping me from the womb.
My left leg got caught on the dry, smoldering horse dung that fed the fire, and I cried out in pain. A burn mark remains on my calf to remind me that I once lived in the orphans’ tents. The monster dragged me out of the tent and into the storm.
The first Demon of the world, Darhul the loathsome, spewed clouds of raven darkness from his nine heads, veiling the stars. Enaka, the One Goddess of the Unending Sky, cried rivers of tears that melted the earth below. She mourned her six sons, the six Suns who had perished during the ancient battle with the Demon. Selene, the shining silver heart of Enaka, was broken in half that night, cloaked with the cloudbreaths. Enaka hid her seventh son, her last precious Sun, for days, and at night she fought with her thunderbolts, flaming arrows of light, to drive the Demon back into his lair.
These were the Legends the old women of the Tribe poured into our heads every rainy, merciless winter. It was such a night, a night born of Legends, when the cowards pray for death and the brave rise fearless.
I crawled to get up, found my step, and then lost it again. The rain had started to fall at dusk, as sad and gray as the slobber of Darhul; the soil was kneaded into mud. I tried to slip away from the dark monster dragging me, but his fingers were coiled in my long hair. Just before my heart flew out of my throat, he shouted to me, “Shut up! Get up!”
He let my hair free, and I turned to face him. He was not a monster; he didn’t have two heads. He wore a gray fur hat with black wolf ears. And there was a second man next to him. Both from my Tribe. I found hope. Old Man and Murky Eyes. Those were the names I gave them under the torch’s light before I learned their real ones.
“In there, now!” Old Man shouted, showing me the wooden cage.
I turned to my right and broke into a run to escape. I hardly managed two steps before he kicked my foot. I lost my ground and splattered into the mud on my back. It was soft and cold, like defeat. He grabbed my head as if it were an apple and turned it to face him. I couldn’t see the white of his eyes.
“You remember me, boy?” he asked.
I didn’t make a sound.
“You’re thirteen winters old. I spared you last winter. You weren’t ready.”
Old Man shoved me into the cage, head first. It was low, even for boys. I pushed the door with both hands, but it was too late. Old Man was locking the cage, and the other one was hitting the side poles with his club. Another pair of hands grabbed me from inside the cage.
“Da-Ren.”
“Ughi.”
“Malan.”
Crawling. Touching. Feeling the cold hands and legs of the other children in there. A knee hit my jaw. I recognized their voices before their faces. Pale-faced Malan, Ughi the Puppy.
“Da-Ren, Da-Ren.” Ughi held my forearm with both hands. He was shaking. “What’s going on?”
I pulled away from him. I knelt and turned around, looking outside through the side wooden poles and the gray veil of rain. There she was. Her familiar eyes, fixed on me, gleamed outside the cage. She looked almost bald in the rain, the last wisps of white hair stuck on the wrinkled skin that covered her skull. Greentooth, the crone who raised me, was bidding us farewell.
“It’s the Sieve, you cursed orphans. You’ll be back here soon, scarred.”
“The Sieve…” Malan whispered his first words.
The Sieve. The trial where the twelve-wintered became warriors. Of those the Sieve took every winter no one came back. I had wondered many times how and when a boy like me entered the Sieve. Those my age didn’t know and the old crones would never say much about it.
“You don’t prepare for the Sieve. It comes one night. The weak perish and the brave join the warriors,” was all I had heard.
The Greentooth was humming: “Night’s the Sieve, winter’s Sieve…”
One of the men called, and the oxcart started moving through the mud, carrying the wooden cage with the three of us in it. I couldn’t hear her anymore. Never again would I hear her voice. The wheels were wobbling through the heavy soil, and I felt each rock and puddle in my spine. It was a while before I started hearing other screams, some fading, some approaching. We were looking outside, searching for the men and the children moving in shadows.
“Who are these men?” asked Ughi.
“Guides. They gather the children for the Sieve every winter,” said Malan.
“The one who grabbed me was so old,” I said.
“Are they going to kill us?” asked Ughi, shaking.
“No, stupid,” said Malan. He then turned to me and whispered: “Not yet. Not all of us.”
As he finished his words, Old Man opened the cage. I pushed myself away from the door on my palms and heels. The Guides didn’t take us out. Instead, they threw two more children inside.
“Atares of the Blades,” said the first one as he entered. I saw his teeth first. He was almost smiling, awake, and ready for the trial of his life. “Are you all twelve-wintered here?”
Everyone nodded, even me. Atares wanted to talk. He wouldn’t shut up for the rest of his life.
“Good. Everyone is twelve here; then this is the Sieve. Finally! You have names?”
“Yes. I am Da-Ren of the…” Orphans. I didn’t say the word.
The second boy was growling, low, as they put him in, his fists punching the air. One of the punches landed on my arm, and I kicked him back. Atares got in the middle.
“Leave him; he is stupid. Urak of the Blades, they call him.”
The boy was still growling, an ugly, drooling growl like a mauler, his eyes now wide open, now shut, as if he were waking in and out of a nightmare.
“Does he talk?”
“He is stupid even when he talks.”
The oxcart was moving again. Atares pressed his cheeks against the wooden poles trying to see outside, to find the shadows within the rain. After a while, he started singing, still looking outside, his fists clenching the wooden poles.
Night’s the Sieve, winter’s Sieve,
part the grain from the weed,
night’s the Sieve, winter’s Sieve,
part the warrior from the weak,
part the Archer from the meat.
“Never heard this song,” said Ughi.
“What? No mother to sing to you?” Atares mocked him.
“You know where we’re from?” I asked.
“You orphans stink three tents away,” he said, laughing. “Everyone knows where you’re from.”
I did
stink. The previous afternoon, before the rain set in, the Greentooth had sent me to fill wooden buckets with fresh horse piss. Tanners used it to get the stench out of the freshly skinned hides. Colt or stallion, she said, not mare. That was my usual chore up until that day, to carry horse dung and horse piss. At dusk’s light, as I was bringing in the last two pails, a war horse passing by me went into a panic. One step closer and it would have crushed me. The rider’s leg kicked me down and the horse piss tipped all over me. Despite the downpour afterward, the stench was still on my skin. In whatever Sieve I entered, surely a better fate awaited me. If I lived.
Urak started kicking at the bars of the cage, and Malan punched him to stop.
“Shhh, I see lights,” said Atares.
Tiny moons glowing brightly in the rain. As we got closer, I could see that they were torchlights under sheds circling a big clearing.
“That’s the Wolfhowl,” I heard Atares say. “Look around, see if there are any Witches. Look!”
The Wolfhowl of Sirol. The arena of the Ouna-Mas, the Tribe’s Witches. Everyone except Ughi shifted near Atares to see.
“Is this…where they’re taking us?” I asked.
Where the full-moon rituals took place. The sacrifices of the othertribers. I was not an othertriber. There was no full moon.
Atares broke the worried silence with a whisper: “Oh yeah, they take us to the firstborn servants of Darhul, the razortoothed Reekaal, as sacrifice. Those bloodeaters steal the weaklings and drown them in the night rains.”
“You try to scare us with this?” Malan said.
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