by Rex Jameson
Copyright 2018 by Rex Jameson
All rights reserved.
First Edition (2018)
ISBN (Electronic): 978-0-9989386-2-2
ISBN (Paperback): 978-0-9989386-1-5
This book is a work of fiction. Incidents, names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual locales, events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
To find out when Rex Jameson has a new release, sign up for his email newsletter at https://rex-jameson.com/new-releases-email-list/.
This book is dedicated to Grandpa Rey. You’ve inspired me in everything from engineering to love of mathematics, history and college football. For better or worse!
Table of Contents
Map of Surdel
Prologue: The End of the Age of Tranquility
1: Birth of a Necromancer
2: Nightmares Should Stay In Dreams
3: A Tale of Three Arrows
4: Two Parts from the Whole
5: Word Reaches the King
6: Gazing Upon Our Lord
7: The Lords Mallory
8: Lord Vossen’s Response
9: The Bandit Incursion
10: A Sight For Sore Eyes
11: The Rebirth of Perketh
12: A Tale of the Fallen
13: The Dark Knight of the Wood
14: The Dead Souvenir
15: The King Responds
16: The First Skirmishes
17: The Siege Begins
18: The Rule of Three
19: The Son Rises
20: The Dark Brotherhood
The Age of Magic Series
About the Author
Other Fiction by Rex Jameson
To find out when Rex Jameson has a new release, signup for his email newsletter at https://rex-jameson.com/new-releases-email-list/.
To download full-size maps from The Age of Magic series, please visit https://rex-jameson.com/maps.
Prologue
The End of the Age of Tranquility
For almost 1500 years, the humans in the Kingdom of Surdel managed to live in relative peace, free from the magics of the great empires to the south and without conflict from the dark elves in their last ancient city of Uxmal in the northeast. The monarchs in the family of Eldenwald still had to contend with civil wars and petty fights amongst the local nobles. They still had to repel the frequent invasions by orcish hordes from the southeast. So, the age had its share of bloodshed and sadness.
The period was not called Tranquility because it lacked death or conflict. It was called Tranquility because the Kingdom of Surdel was not plagued by what came before when the dark elves were numerous and aggressive or later when the mages, the warlocks, and the damned brought madness to the region.
War may bring death, but magic brings chaos. Dragons bring destruction. The undead bring befoulment. Gods bring combinations of hope, fear, and change.
And the demons? They bring Armageddon.
1
Birth of a Necromancer
Ashton Jeraldson waited outside Clayton’s home. Master Nathan had given him the day off. Clayton’s day. The funeral. Ashton hadn’t knocked on the apartment door. He didn’t want to rush Riley. He wouldn’t even breathe if it made her uncomfortable. So, he sat, and he waited.
Clayton’s parents had decided not to come to the funeral. His father had brought the news to Ashton the day before. Clayton’s mother Irma had been too distraught. She didn’t want to see the body. She didn’t want to watch her son being buried. Clayton’s father Earl had decided to stay in Shirun with Irma to comfort her.
Ashton respected their wishes. He would have given anything to not have seen Clayton’s body either. Unfortunately, he was there when it happened. Besides, Riley needed Ashton right now like Irma needed Earl back in Shirun. Clayton’s body would not be displayed today. He had already been placed in the grave the night before. Today was more of a formal procession and burial service, a tradition of the region.
Riley emerged from her gray home in a simple black dress. No lace. No hat. Her long black hair hung down past her shoulders. Her eyes never left the ground, never acknowledged him. Her face was painted white, as was the custom for widows. Her lips black. Gray around the eyes.
Ashton had never understood the custom. It seemed like a punishment, to paint yourself like the dead you were about to visit. Like a skeleton. He hadn’t expected her to look so oddly beautiful though. He wondered if it would be appropriate to tell her, but he thought better of it. Not the right time. Probably never the right time. She was Clayton’s wife, the other piece of the puzzle he wasn’t connected to anymore.
They didn’t talk once during the ten minute walk to the cemetery on the west side of Perketh, but in a way, they still communicated. Their shuffles were in lockstep. He drew immense comfort in the simple act. He wondered if she noticed. He wondered if it helped her like it did him.
When they came to a wall covered in morning glory vines, her legs faltered. He turned to her, confused. Her gray makeup began to drain down her face as her eyes watered. He realized his error in guiding her to this street. It wasn’t where Clayton had died, but he and his friend had come here often to find Riley some of her flowers.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
He moved along the vines quickly, pressing his face into the flowers like he and Clayton had always done each morning. A certain color strain caught his eye. Dark purple with a pink and white interior. It reminded him of her painted face. He breathed deeply. They smelled fine. He looked back at her as he held the vine that held the purple mutation, seeking her approval.
She smiled, and he felt his heart pump a hundred times faster. He broke three stems without thinking about the need for a variety. He panicked as he looked to her again for approval. She grinned so widely that teeth showed, parting the dark black with pearly whites. His heart slowed to a more appropriate rhythm as he approached her.
“He could have brought me three weeds,” she said, “and it still would have brightened my day.”
It was Ashton’s turn to tear up.
She took the flowers from his hand. She nodded to him, and they resumed their wake across the village. He could smell the morning glories, and his brain flooded with a thousand memories a minute. Clayton and he picking flowers for Riley. Clayton and he skipping rocks across King’s Lake. Catching crayfish in the black stream behind the mill. Sitting on the strange, glowing blue rocks in farmer Albertson’s fields.
Most of the village turned up for the funeral. Maybe four hundred people. Riley choked up when she saw them. Ashton didn’t try to hold her hand. He figured the flowers gave her enough comfort.
He knelt at the foot of the grave. A place of honor. Riley knelt across the grave, behind where Clayton’s head laid under the dirt. Hers was the most important position.
Ashton didn’t catch a word of the eulogy. He just stared at the dirt mound. Someone had put golden morning glories on Clayton’s grave, which wasn’t too surprising. Everyone in town knew about their morning ritual.
Riley’s black eyeshadow leaked down her face and off her chin, blending in with the black dress. He watched her for a while, a flower as pretty as the morning glories on his friend’s grave and just as heartbreaking.
If only he had called out to Clayton sooner. If only they had turned down a different street to hunt for morning glories. Lord Mallory couldn’t have possibly gone down every street. There was only the one that headed to Mallory Manor, and Clayton and he had gone down that one because it was so close to the smithy.
He wondered what could have possibly been so important that the Lord had needed to move at such haste
. Not that a Lord ever needed a reason. Not that Lord Mallory ever needed to slow down for anyone.
He stared at Riley, and she stared back. He noticed movement in his periphery, but he never evaded her eyes. The villagers were filing out. Mr. Merkins and his brood each patted him on the shoulder. Mrs. Selena. A dozen people he didn’t know, probably from the north side where the more affluent lived. People he had played with in nearby fields when he was a kid, some of them from even before he met Clayton, but none of them anywhere near as important to him.
The women filed in line to kiss the widow on the cheek. She didn’t acknowledge any of them. She looked like she might fall over at any moment. The females left with black and white makeup on their lips, tokens of the bride of death. She took it as well as could be expected. Dozens bent down to kiss her. Then over a hundred. After an hour, Riley’s natural color was showing through the smeared makeup on either cheek.
Eventually, there was no more movement in Ashton’s periphery. There was only her and the mound of earth between them. Daylight was waning. She smiled slightly at him before standing up.
“I’m going home,” she said.
He nodded. “I’ll try to come by later.”
He meant it at the time.
She walked past him, back the way they had come from. He looked at the grave and the morning glories that someone had put atop his friend. He pulled one of the glowing blue stones that he and Clayton had collected from Albertson’s fields from his pocket. Mr. Albertson claimed they were from leylines, whatever those were. Before Clayton and Ashton began apprenticing under Nathan five years ago at the age of fifteen, they had spent days lounging atop the strange fingers of rock that snaked in and out of the earth. They each had dozens of fragments lining their window sills, believing the stones would bring them luck.
Even though everyone had left, Ashton didn’t feel alone. He felt like Clayton was there beside him, hovering over the grave. Ashton wanted so badly to talk to him.
“You weren’t supposed to leave me,” Ashton said as he placed one stone after another on the grave in a circle around the swath of morning glories. “We made a promise when we were kids. You made me make the promise. Do you remember?”
He completed the circle with an eleventh stone.
“It’s not your time,” Ashton joked. “You and I are supposed to grow old together. You and Riley are supposed to grow old together. You didn’t just make promises to me, Clayton. You made promises to her, too.”
He grinned at his old friend through the mound. He imagined Clayton sitting up, wiping the dirt from his face like this had all been a game. “Surprise!” Clayton would say. “I was only fooling!”
Ashton knew this fantasy was silly, but it resembled so many other games they had played together as kids. Hide and seek. Knights and bandits. Playing dead didn’t seem so different.
“Come back to us,” Ashton said, patting the dirt and smiling to his dead friend. “Come back to your wife. Come back to me.”
Daylight retreated across the cemetery. A few stars peaked through the darkening sky.
“Clayton,” Ashton said, this time more forcefully. “I can’t do this by myself. I’m a shit blacksmith. Master Nathan needs iron spikes that are straight. Horses can’t walk with the shoes I give ‘em. The town needs you more than it needs me. You can’t die here. You hear me?”
Tears welled at the corners of his eyes.
“You hear me, Clayton?!” he yelled into the dirt, his hands flat on the mound.
He imagined his friend’s face directly underneath him as he peered into the ground.
“Sit up!” Ashton commanded. “Your wife needs you! I need you!”
The breeze must have picked up because he felt tall grass brushing against him, tickling his chest and sides. He brushed against the weeds but felt something solid and gritty squirming against his hand.
He scrambled backward, gawking at the mound. The circle of stones had been broken and the morning glories disturbed. Ashton’s mouth gaped as the confusion ebbed away into realization. There was no tall grass in the cemetery. There had been nothing next to the grave of his friend Clayton. He hadn’t imagined the sensation. He had just misinterpreted the source.
Something groped within the darkness. A hand protruding from the freshly dug grave. It pushed the morning glories aside and clawed and pushed the earth.
Ashton scrambled backward until he found his feet. He ran as fast as he could. Down the same road that Lord Mallory had run over his friend. South and then southeast. Through farmer Albertson’s fields and over the leyline veins. Past the cows and horses. Through the manicured lines of barley. He ran hard and fast until his legs could move no longer. He crawled into a stranger’s barn, miles away from the village of Perketh. His throat was so parched that he happily lapped water from a pig trough. When he had his fill, he crashed face first into the hay beside a fat sow feeding a dozen piglets.
He dreamt of days spent with his friend Clayton in farmer Albertson’s fields. He dreamt of picking flowers for Riley. He didn’t dream of cemeteries or carriages on the King’s Road. Those nightmares would come later.
2
Nightmares Should Stay In Dreams
Ashton was aware of grunting noises and the smell of dusty hay bales and fresh decomposition when he woke. His parched lips thirsted for water, and he quickly remembered where he was and more importantly, where the pig’s trough was. He crawled over to it and pushed a large sow over to give him room. He scooped the water into his mouth, trying not to gag at the slick surface and the sticky slobber that coated the lip of the manger shared between the two horses and family of pigs in the barn.
Ashton groaned as he rolled to his side and backed into a hay bale along the wall. He rubbed his fists into his eyes, remembering the strange hallucinations at the burial. The hand from the grave couldn’t have been there. Clayton was dead. Ashton had seen the crushed jaw and the gashes across his friend’s side and chest. Ashton just hadn’t slept. He would walk back to Perketh, apologize to Master Nathan for being late, and pretend he hadn’t just freaked out.
Everyone would understand. He was stressed. He hadn’t slept the night Clayton had died, and he was obviously exhausted. Master Nathan had probably already started the chainmail order for the local guards. He would of course pick up on that order when he arrived, and Master Nathan could get back to the soft copper bolts and the iron vambraces, which took more skill to produce the delicate curves at the necessary thickness.
A pig grunted from across the barn as Ashton continued to rub his eyes and adjust to the thin beams of light that punctured the barn. As was typical of the area, a craftsman had not been contracted for the job. The farmer and his family and maybe a neighbor or two had pitched in. Nearly every juncture wasn’t flush. Light came in from every direction.
Behind him was a window that illuminated the majority of the dirt floor and the center of the room. He realized he must be facing west, since the light from the morning was shining through the window and projecting onto the mess in front of him. The door to the barn was creaking slightly as the breeze moved it back and forth. Birds chirped from outdoors. It was a day like any other, but this time with pigs for company and horses in their stalls, munching on hay and loud, clumsy defecations clopping down the far wall and onto the floor.
Again, a grunt sounded from across the room, but Ashton realized the pigs were near him and around the trough. A sow was now plopped on her side, nursing six piglets. She seemed to be smiling, like pigs often do when they’re snorting and nursing. His eyes adjusted to the blinding light from the window behind him, and a darker outline appeared on the far side. A man was there, sitting on a stool.
“Oh geez!” Ashton exclaimed, panicked. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m having a rough couple of days. I ran all night… You see, my friend died. He was my best friend, and I was at his funeral and I—I guess I saw something or thought I saw something. I’ll be leaving now. Sorry for the—”
T
he man grunted again and lurched to his feet. He shuffled forward.
“I didn’t touch nothing,” Ashton said, standing up and brushing hay from his brown pants with his hands. “I drank some water from the trough, but the pigs didn’t seem to mind. I work at a smithy in Perketh. If you need me to pay room and board for the night, I have a coin or two in my pocket.”
The man shook his head as he entered the light. Brown, matted hair. He was favoring his jaw with his hand. Ashton knew these facial features. He knew this man. He just couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Dirt covered most of the man’s body. The left side of his jaw was caved in, and there was a smell about him that wasn’t good.
“You’re…” Ashton said, stumbling over words. “You’re not… You’re supposed to be dead.”
The creature closed the distance between them, and Ashton shuffled toward the open, creaking barn door. The corpse stumbled forward, tripping over its own legs and hitting the ground hard. It barfed up a vile, putrid liquid that smelled like sheep gizzards. As it coughed and cried out in pain, Ashton bolted for the barn door.
He could hear it spitting back in the barn. It yelled out, and a chill traveled down Ashton’s spine, despite his adrenaline and sweat. He cleared the door and slammed it behind him before heading east and then north. He briefly glimpsed along the outside of the barn for a pitchfork, scythe or weapon of some sort, but all he saw was green grass and a fence where a horse whinnied and darted around the enclosure, obviously at least as upset as Ashton was.
Ashton ran north without looking back. He had to put as much distance between him and that thing as possible. Even if that thing was actually his friend, what had happened was an abomination out of his village’s worst fables. Common folk were pretty tolerant in Perketh and in the neighboring areas. There hadn’t been a witch burning in a hundred years. But a woman with higher farm yield for three straight years was different than raising the dead. There wouldn’t be a trial. There would be an execution and a burning at the stake. Maybe both at the same time.
