The Chronicles of William Wilde Boxset 1

by Davis Ashura

  Hopefully, her sister would notice the ornate case standing open in a corner. The case that only the Servitor could unlock. The one he’d mistakenly left open when he had gone to take care of Village White Sun’s well. The case that held Shet’s Spear, the holy object carved with runes that glowed, and when touched led to a place of terror.

  After the Servitor had set off to cleanse Village White Sun’s well, Selene could have walked away. But she hadn’t. Instead, she’d glanced about the Servitor’s study, wondering if this might be some sort of test to see if she’d reach for the forbidden Spear.

  But there hadn’t been anyone around, and Selene had been unable to help herself. Curiosity had always been her great weakness, and she’d touched the Spear. Even worse, for some immensely stupid reason she’d sourced her nascent Spirit while doing so.

  Idiot. Why couldn’t she have left the Spear alone?

  Selene darted to a small alcove down the hall from the Servitor’s study and waited there.

  At least this way she could warn Serena if the Servitor came back early. He’d be furious if he found her sister alone in his study, since he’d never actually asked her to be there.

  Selene clearly meant for her to see something in the Servitor’s study, and after her sister left, Serena searched about, wondering what it might be. At once, she spotted Shet’s Spear standing upright in its case, which unaccountably stood open.

  Serena frowned.

  The Spear glowed. No. Not the spear itself. The small runes carved into it.

  Serena carefully approached the open case. Only the Servitor could open it, and only the Servitor was meant to handle the Spear. But Selene must have as well. The girl had curiosity carved into her bones like the runes cut into Shet’s Spear. But what had her sister discovered? Something terrible for her to have risked lying to bring Serena here.

  Serena carefully studied the Spear, while her instincts screamed at her to leave the study as swiftly as possible. The Servitor would be furious if he discovered her here without his consent, especially with the case open.

  Her heart pounded as she continued to study the Spear, trying to figure out what had spooked Selene so badly. Why was it glowing? Serena hesitantly reached out a hand, but paused with her fingers a paper’s thickness from the Spear’s haft.

  She really didn’t want to do this.

  Serena swallowed heavily before lightly gripping the Spear. She waited a beat for a reaction, but nothing. More seconds passed, and still nothing happened. She cracked open her eyes, having involuntarily pinched them shut. The study remained unchanged, and Serena tightened her grip on the Spear.

  “Source your Spirit when you touch it,” Selene whispered from the doorway.

  Serena almost shrieked as she snatched her hand from the Spear. Her attention had been so inwardly focused that she hadn’t heard the door open. Her heart thudded, and she shot a glare at Selene, but the girl had already scampered away, shutting the door behind her.

  Serena exhaled heavily, calming herself before doing as Selene suggested. She sourced her Spirit before reaching again for the Spear.

  This time when her hand touched the rune-carved wood, knowledge poured into her as a voice—ponderous, proud, and terrifying—laughed.

  A rainbow bridge—an anchor line wider than any she had ever heard of and leading into deepest night—opened in her mind rather than in the physical world. It drew her in, carrying her involuntarily forward before she could think to resist.

  She traveled a vast distance, but only her mind and Spirit, not her physical shell. Farther and farther she journeyed, pulled onward by a force like gravity. The journey appeared to have no end. She blurred along the bridge, and her mind stretched to fraying. An endless rush of noise filled her eyes, and Serena lost all sense of herself, her purpose, her very name. Emptiness clawed at her heart, but at her utter breaking point it ended with a jarring halt.

  Serena’s mind snapped back, annealing with a shuddering force as a world opened before her, one of long, lost fantastical creatures. She viewed this land as if from high above, but wherever she chose to focus her attention the world came into bright clarity.

  Proud elves strode forest empires while dwarves and gnomes contested for rule of the mountains amidst deep caves. And humans scurried about everywhere, fearful denizens of unlovely kingdoms of stone and metal, but more often as slaves to elves or other unknown species.

  And throughout the entire world, uncountable monsters existed. Rotting necrosed, shape-changing unformed, courtly yet sadistic vampires, and an entire mountain range with every dell and valley webbed by spiders the size of elephants. A dragon soared close by. Even more creatures out of antiquity and legend.

  A sense of unreality filled Serena, but she knew this world she gazed upon hadn’t been dredged from her nightmares or fantasies. This world was as real as her Spirit, and as Serena studied it more closely, she noticed titanic statues standing in forlorn majesty, lost, fallen over, or broken, in fields, forests, and seas. Thick chains were wrapped about their torsos, arms, and legs.

  A few she recognized from ancient stories. Verde the Valiant. Duval of the Lightning. Tomag Shield-Render.

  Titans all. Gods and demigods in the service of Lord Shet. His mightiest generals.

  The voice from earlier laughed again, and Serena sought its source.

  In the shadow of a lonely peak, a cavern opened into the heart of the mountain. There another titanic figure waited. This one still lived. The right side of his face contained a horrible burn, a still seeping wound. He stood within the eaves of the cave, straining against smoke-black chains binding him to the deepest stone. He must have sensed Serena’s regard because he paused in his exertions.

  “I see you, child,” the titan said. “I have already greeted your sister, and now I greet you. I will greet you both in the flesh soon enough.”

  Serena shuddered. This was a being of power and malice, a creature who could tear apart suns as easily as a child might snuff out a firefly. Lorasra poured off of him like smoke from a forest fire, traveling to where Serena watched. It passed through her, along the anchor line in her mind, all the way back to Sinskrill.

  “You have many questions,” the titan said.

  Fresh terror seized Serena. The being’s words grated against her mind like razors.

  “I will answer them anon,” the titan continued. His good eye twitched, and a glow ignited in his burned-out socket. “For now, understand that I am your lord, and I will rule you with a firm but gentle hand when I resume my rightful place.”

  “Who are you?” Serena asked, her voice reflecting the panic coursing through her.

  The titan cast her a disbelieving gaze. “You don’t know me? Truly?” He sneered, a grotesque twisting of his face as it crossed to the burned right side. “Then know that I am Lord Shet, and this world is Seminal.”

  No. Shet might be true, but the world of Seminal was a story, a myth. It couldn’t be real.

  “And yet it is,” the titan answered Serena’s unspoken thoughts.

  A whiplash of pain bloomed within her mind, and Serena screamed. She fled back along the anchor line.

  Shet’s voice chased her. “Five years, child. Five years, and these chains break. A half a decade, as you measure time, and I travel back to the world where I was birthed. Mark my coming, for on this occasion there will be no Befouler and His Bride to save the world!”

  Along the north shore of an island in the Norwegian Sea stood an empty, shingle beach within a darkened, sheltered cove. The sun had yet to fully rise, and mist softened the features of the lichen-covered boulders and the scree littering the shore. A rugged escarpment, made mystical by a wreath of early morning fog, loomed over both beach and water. Farther inland, a range of tall, granite-shouldered hills marched south. An eagle cried out from high above.

  Sinskrill.

  Jason imagined menace emanating off the island, with hidden warriors ready to strike them down the moment they reached shore.
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  Sinskrill.

  The name itself evoked fear and excitement. This was the home of the mahavans, the legendary enemy of Arylyn’s magi. This was the home of Shet’s followers, still active all these thousands of years later. This was where they would—God willing—find William and Jake and escape home.

  “We’ll drop anchor here and take the canoe in the rest of the way,” Mr. Zeus announced.

  The sailing yacht they’d rented couldn’t approach closer than fifty yards from shore, and Jason, Daniel, and Julius got to work readying the canoe.

  While they transferred their backpacks into the small boat, Rukh and Jessira had binoculars to their eyes. The two of them studied the cliffs with youthful faces furrowed with frowns.

  Jason scoffed. Rukh and Jessira might appear young, but they didn’t act young. In fact, they didn’t even look like freshmen anymore. They looked like seniors, or even older.

  He’d mentioned his observations to Mr. Zeus, but his grandfather had brushed him off. “I took their measure, and I trust them. Trust that, if you trust nothing else.”

  “You saw them?” Jessira asked Rukh, interrupting Jason’s thoughts.

  “I only caught a flash.”

  “But they’re up there,” Jessira said, sounding sure of herself.

  “What did you see?” Mr. Zeus asked.

  “Wolves,” Jessira answered. “Big ones. Two or three of them.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “I knew we should have brought some guns with us,” Daniel muttered.

  “I already told you why we couldn’t,” Mr. Zeus said. “Sinskrill is like Arylyn: anything entirely encased in metal is rendered inert. That includes the chemicals needed to fire a bullet.”

  “We still have our bows,” Rukh said. The tall Indian, or whatever he was, gestured to a recurved bow and a quiver full of arrows strapped his back. “We can take out the wolves if we have to, and no one will ever hear it.”

  Jason might have once doubted anyone’s ability to hit a running target with a bow, especially a wolf, but he’d seen Rukh shoot a mackerel swimming close to the water’s surface from a hundred feet away. This from the rolling deck of a yacht, with a slender fishing line tied to the arrow.

  “Let’s go,” Mr. Zeus said.

  They clambered aboard the canoe, and Jason smelled pineapple. Julius had sourced his lorethasra and reached for Sinskrill’s lorasra.

  “Gross,” the other man said with a scowl of disgust. “Do you feel that? It’s like the Elements are covered in a layer of slime.”

  Jason sourced his lorethasra and linked it to Sinskrill’s lorasra. Immediately, he understood what Julius meant. Every saha’asra had a different flavor to its lorasra. Arylyn’s was fruity with a touch of salt, but Sinskrill’s tasted foul as a sewer.

  “No wonder the mahavans are demented, feeding on this lorasra all their lives,” Julius said.

  “Nobody source the lorasra unless you absolutely have to,” Mr. Zeus ordered, his face tight with worry. “We get ashore, get our boys, and get the hell out of here.”

  Julius nodded, and the canoe darted forward under the impetus of his braid of rushing Water and pulsing Air. As soon as they reached the shingle beach, Jason jumped out and pulled the canoe the rest of the way in.

  When his feet hit the rocky beach, thoughts of wolves, disgusting lorasra, and mahavans left him. Instead, a sense of soaring accomplishment filled him.

  Sinskrill.

  Against all hope of success, they had found it.

  He grinned.

  “We need to get our bearings,” Mr. Zeus said.

  They’d taken a long, circuitous route to get to their current location. After weeks spent in the Faroes, they’d sailed toward Sinskrill. But, miles from shore, a village on the southern coast of the island became visible. As a result, they skirted west, passing through a sea littered with jagged reefs and needle-like rocks thrusting up from the water, before discovering this sheltered cove.

  “There’s a cut in the cliffs there,” Daniel said, marking a narrow pass leading through the escarpment.

  “It’s going the right direction,” Rukh noted.

  “We’ll take it,” Mr. Zeus said.

  They lugged their packs out of the canoe and began the ascent up the pass. All of them but Rukh and Jessira were huffing by the time they crested its lip. They paused at the top before slowly descending on the other side. Rocks slid out from beneath their feet, threatening to spill them down the hill.

  Strangely, Mr. Zeus deferred to Jessira, and allowed her to lead them. Hours later, they reached a long, north-south valley, forested and headed in the general direction of the village they’d seen from afar.

  Before continuing onward, Mr. Zeus called for a halt in a small glade. All of them—even Rukh—needed the break. The rugged terrain made traveling slow. The evergreen forest covering the valley appeared virgin and passage was difficult.

  Jason slipped off his backpack and slumped down next to Daniel and Julius with a relieved groan. The forest canopy hid the sun, but here sunbeams dappled the ground. Birdcalls filled the air.

  The three of them sat with their backs to a massive cedar, and Jason fanned his chest. Despite the cool weather, he sweated profusely.

  “That was one helluva walk,” Daniel said.

  “How much farther do you think it is?” Julius asked.

  Jason shrugged and took a long swig of cold water from his canteen. “No idea.”

  “Does anyone remember how to get back to the boat?” Daniel asked.

  “I’ve been leaving breadcrumbs,” Jason said.

  “Ha, ha.”

  “I left a nomasra in the yacht,” Mr. Zeus said. “I know the way back.”

  “Jessira can get us back, too,” Rukh said. “She never gets turned around.”

  “How?” Jason asked.

  “It’s a skill I learned,” Jessira answered.

  “When?” Jason asked. “When did you learn to find your way through the woods? And when you came to Arylyn, both of you looked younger than me, but now you look older. How?”

  “I learned what I know like everyone else. Those with the knowledge taught me,” Jessira said. “That is all I can tell you.”

  Jason eyed her with distrust.

  Rukh’s head snapped up. “Someone’s coming. Off the trail.”

  Jason hadn’t heard anything. He opened his mouth to ask what Rukh had heard, but the strange Indian had already vanished. So had Jessira. Both had darted out of the glade. He spotted Jessira behind a tree, an arrow nocked to her compound bow. Rukh stood close by, similarly ready.

  How the hell had they moved so fast?

  Hoofbeats, slow and steady, echoed toward them, and Jason shared a slack-jawed look of fear with Daniel.

  “Shit!” they said together before scrambling out of the glade. They concealed themselves behind rocks and trees. Mr. Zeus and Julius hid nearby, too.

  Muffled voices rose, and two riders—a man and a woman—came into view. Armed with swords at their hips and bows cased to their plain saddles, both appeared bored. They wore leather armor and chaps along with goofy hats with red plumes.

  “I heard one of those new raha’asras burned a bear last week,” the man said.

  Jason stiffened with excitement. William and Jake. It had to be them.

  “Which one?” the woman asked.

  “The dark one.”

  Jason grinned. It was William.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And I heard the Servitor wants a demonstration soon. If they don’t pass, one of them dies.”

  Both riders laughed at this and moved on down the trail. Their voices faded away.

  Jason’s heart soared. He wanted to shout in triumph and relief. “They’re alive!” he whispered to Daniel. He shared a grin with the others.

  “I told you they were,” Mr. Zeus said with an answering grin. “Let’s follow those riders. Maybe they’ll take use where we need to go.


  Half an hour later, Jessira signaled them off the trail. “What did you see?” she asked Rukh.

  “In the trees.” He pointed with his chin while puzzlement marred his features.

  Jason stared to where Rukh indicated. He squinted, straining to see. All he could make out was a dark bird.

  “What about it? It’s a bird,” Julius said, sounding as confused as Jason felt.

  “It’s a hawk,” Rukh said. “A moment before it was a wolf, big and lean. It might have been watching us, but I saw it slip behind a bush, but a hawk winged out the other side.”

  “You’re sure about this?” Mr. Zeus asked.

  Rukh nodded.

  “We’re in trouble,” Mr. Zeus said. “If it really was a wolf that became a bird, it means it was an unformed.”

  Jason paled. Unformed were only one step below necrosed in terms of deadliness.

  “It’ll track and attack us?” Rukh asked.

  “Worse,” Julius said. “It might tell the mahavans where we are.”

  “Not this one.” Rukh nocked an arrow. He barely took time to aim before he loosed a shaft. An instant later the hawk cried out, and a plume of feathers erupted from where it had perched as it fell from view.

  “Stay here,” Rukh said. “I’ll make sure it’s dead.” He set off into the trees, ghosting through them. A minute later he returned with a bloody arrow in hand. His eyes were red, and Jessira briefly squeezed his shoulder.

  Jason shook his head. It had only been an unformed.

  “We can’t go anywhere if unformed patrol the island,” Mr. Zeus said. “We should go back to the boat and figure out a better plan.”

  A howl rose from a nearby hill as if to underscore the danger all around them.

  William sourced his Spirit, and from it he carefully unbraided the other Elements. Four strands—hissing Fire and pulsing Air roped across his chest and torso while susurrating Water and slowly rustling Earth coiled down his arms and filled his hands. They threatened to re-twine around one another, and he pushed with tiny nudges of Spirit to keep them separate. A thrill of accomplishment coursed through him when they remained untangled.

  He took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of pine and heather. Travail’s meadow bloomed purple, and the forest stood dappled in the afternoon, summer sun. It was a beautiful, unseasonably warm day, and William had discarded his jacket. Jake concentrated on his own threads of lorethasra while Travail appeared to nap with his back against a boulder twice his standing height.