by J P Nelson
Winds of Torsham
The Kohrinju Tai Saga:
Book 2
J P Nelson
Copyright © 2015 by J P Nelson
All rights reserved.
The compass rose illustrated within this novel is an original piece of art created by J P Nelson and is protected by Copyright Law.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without express and notarized permission of the author and publisher.
Edited by Dale and Teresa Goodemote
Cover by Expert Subjects
DEDICATION
In memory of Louis Dearborn L’Amour;
A troubadour, village tale-teller, the man in the campfire shadows.
I shall always remember you as a storyteller ...
… as a good story teller.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Again, this work would not have been completed without my adopted sis, Teresa Goodemote, and her husband, Dale, who is collectively my computer technician, editor, and agent; Craig Morgan, Scottish Fencing Adept who helped me with technical terminology, chorography and listened to me read it out; Craig’s wife, Vicki, who let him put in the hours to do it while lending me encouragement; Chuck Garamond, retired Marine Mustang Major, who insists I should convert Timber Wolf from a Ranger Class character to a Forest Recon Marine; Edmund Wetmore, pilot, sailor, chef and inventor extraordinaire; Matthew Christian, who kept my chemistry from blowing up Orucean before I finish writing about it; Virginia Roseman of Wahoo’s Adventures in Boone, NC, who helped me get river rapid facts straight; martial arts instructors, Shidoshi Patrick Arnold and Sifu Charlie Ray Brown, of whom I based the characters Trap and Char’Li; the many fans who support me and my first novel with emails; my students at FSDC of Hickory who constantly encouraged me as I typed this story from 4.1.2014 – 3.21.2015; Barbara Baakalarr, my drama coach from Johnson County High, TN who taught me a person can influence folks more via entertainment than via pulpit; John Mast, my math teacher, who knew something was wrong that I couldn’t talk about, but believed in me anyway; Coach Arnold and his ever patient, guiding hand; Sgt Delinda Day, my Army D.I. (a woman) who taught me more about honor and integrity than my biological father ever dreamed of; and of course my black rescue kitty, Chazzy, who sat on my lap while I wrote most of this book.
A phonetic pronunciation guide
Has been provided on page 772
Prologue
I SAT SUDDENLY upright in my bed as I gasped for breath, my body drenched in an icy sweat. Disoriented, I looked around and realized I had been dreaming … a nightmare, actually… but couldn’t remember my dream.
Propping my elbows on my knees, I took my head in hands and tried to steady my breath. Gazing about I felt the heavy mist of a moonsless night surround me, making it hard to see. I felt it a curiosity my elvin vision, half-blooded as it might be, was not registering anything beyond the back of my own hand.
Were those the bars of a cage I saw, with an abundance of straw all about me? I lifted the edge of my old, tattered blanket to sit up … old and tattered? Where … when … was I not on the Lohra Lai?
Was I back on the fighting circuit?
Was the time in the Kohntia Mountains and at sea just a dream?
To my left I saw a sleeping form, partially under my own blanket, a feminine form ... Debohra?
Confused, inquisitively, I thought, ‘Are you not …’
Reaching to touch her, I gently placed my hand on her shoulder, that shoulder which I knew intimately, and which had held my head so many times after my pit-fighting engagements. I was so tired of the killing, of the blood. Not for the first time, I decided I would make the escape with her. Tonight, I decided, tonight we would go.
I whispered to her as I tried to ease her over to talk, “Hey, Debohr---”
In horror, I saw a bug, a … a maggot crawl onto my hand, then another. As she slowly turned, her empty eye sockets looked into my soul as my blood ran cold. A worm crawled out of her mouth as she seemed to hiss, “You waited too long …”
I jerked back my hand and leapt to my feet as I beheld her bloody torso filled with maggots, beetles and worms … then she reached for me with a mangled arm and mournfully begged, “Please … help me … don’t let them take me …”
Terror washed through me as I staggered backward and bumped into someone standing behind me. Turning I saw seventeen-year-old Tahnus, one of my soldiers, look at me with haunting eyes as he took a crossbow bolt to his belly. He began turning to ice as he clutched a wooden toy soldier to his chest … then fell over backward, over the top of a mountain ledge.
Screaming, I tried to reach him but my legs wouldn’t move. I jumped, but it seemed I was moving in slow motion as I landed on my belly on the ledge, my hand scarcely touching his foot as he slid from my grasp. All the way down I could hear him calling my name.
Just barely, I managed to look over the edge of the mountain, but instead of Tahnus I saw the rapids of the Sahnuck River. Below me, just far enough away so I couldn’t reach him was Jared, my best friend … my brother of chain, sweat and blood … and he was hanging onto a root.
In desperation, I yelled at him, “Hang on Jared, I’m coming!”
He looked at me with a condemning glare and said, “You coward … live with who you are!” then he pushed off into the rapids.
“No!” I cried, “I’m not a …”
And then something grabbed my ankle and yanked me away. I thought, ‘The Drake, the drake has me in its mouth …’ But it was not the drake, it was Karthanook, only this time his eyes were glowing red with fire and smoke enveloped his body. Against a wall of rock I was smashed, then he jumped into the air and drop-kicked me with those horrendous hooves.
‘But, how …’ I thought, ‘… he doesn’t move that way?’
Karthanook stood and swung back to deliver a blow with his clubbed fist. But as he hit me, I saw it belonged to a burly human, a human with haunting embers where his eyes should be. ‘The eyes,’ I thought, ‘the eyes of all who have died because of me.’
I fell to the rocky ground in a pile as yet another person, an eight-foot-tall female giant with rotting teeth and a face half beaten from her skull, lifted me high into the air and said in a haunting voice, “Do you remember me?”
“You are dead,” I choked the words, “you are all dead … I killed you …”
Then she laughed with a demonic timbre, and with a casual twist hefted me higher still and slammed me onto my neck and shoulders into a river of blood.
I came up on my hands and knees and felt a sword handle. Standing, I brandished my weapon only to find it was constructed of rotting wood.
From behind I felt teeth sink into my neck and I slashed with my weapon. I could not see my adversary and could not tell where I was. I slashed again and again against innumerable foes, none of whom would stay down when I killed them … all the while I began to plead to anyone who would listen, “I … don’t … want … to do … this … any … more!”
From my right side I saw a figure loom with a mug in one hand and a sword in the other. A skeletal face took a deep drink from the mug and blood poured through his boney throat as he demanded, yelled, then baited me, “More! More! Fight, damn you! FIGHT!”
“No! PLEASE!” I yelled, “Not YOU, Hoscoe … you CAN’T be here …”
His eyes … his eyes … hollow and dark, bored into my own and what was left of his facial skin sneered as he said, “You disgust me …” then he turned his back and walked into the ghoulish hoard.
My sword crumbled from my hand as I tried to run to Hoscoe, but someone grabbed by the hair from behind and yanked me back and off
of my feet. Forcing me over and onto my knees, they held me fast and made me to see … made me to see two brave lads drag a woman from a door which opened from within a smoky haze … an elvin woman who was fighting ineffectively as they tore her clothes from her body.
From behind her I saw the grinning face of Lexin, a naked Lexin, as he stood behind the woman and grabbed her from the waist. I could not see the exactness of the act, but I knew … in a rage born of anguish and panic I screamed, “NO-O-O!”
As Lexin laughed and violated my momma, I saw her eyes sink into the back of her head and her skin shrivel into a boney cover. Her voice became an echo in my mind as she cried, “Help me, Komain, ple-e-ea-ease … HE-E-ELP Me … do not leave me like this …”
The voice behind me chuckled and said into my ear, “She likes it, don’t she? You’re gonna be next.”
With a violent lunge, I felt my hair tear at the scalp as I lunged to save my momma, then fell into the deep mud face first. As I staggered up, a figure in a cloak and hood casually stood in front of me. Behind him the old dwelling I grew up in was a grey shadow.
With a backhand motion, he struck me as my teeth broke away and I collapsed to the stone ground. As I tried to stand he struck me again in the same manner. Then he pressed a sword to my throat as I looked into the cinders of his eyes, my hands failing to rise in defense.
“I have to save my momma …” I began.
“You are a failure, Komain~Wolf, you have failed in all your endeavors.” He was speaking Gevardic, perfect Gevardic.
Desperately I tried to make my arms and hands work, then I reached down into So’Yeth, but she recoiled from my petition.
“I am tired of death, please … I only want to save my momma … to …”
“You whimper like a coward, as one who runs from those who call his name in hope and supplication.”
“Who … who are you?”
Sword still on my throat, he reaches up and pulls off his hood. I see my own face. But wait, not my own, but another. His eyes are green, and mine are blue.
In tormented defeat I ask, “My twin? You are my twin?”
With a whisper, he replies, “No-o-o …”
Then he leans closer to my face, and with an evil sneer he adds, “I am he who you left behind …” and as he voices his last words he slashes my throat, “… I am L’Sol.”
My voiceless cry of dismay sounds in my mind as the world fades into a gray mist, framing the face of my younger brother who was taken from my momma’s womb, as I feel myself fall back into a bottomless pit … deeper … deeper … deeper ……
Chapter 1
“YOUR MAMMY’S BELLY is stretchin’ again. You got any idea who the pappy might be? Nobody else knows …”
Those words have gone through my mind hundreds of thousands of times. The piece of human filth who spoke them has been long dead, by my own hand, yet they haunt me to this day.
It wasn’t just the thought of my beloved momma, Kelshinua Fhai’Tuhra, last of the Dsh’Tharr Tell Singers, being with child; it was the demeaning manner in which they were spoken. The slightest wisp of memory gives me cause to gnash my teeth, clinch my fist … Damn … and lust to bring him back to life so as to kill him once more. Even putting it to quill upon these scrolls which you are reading is difficult.
I have no knowledge who you may be, you, who are reading these accounts. But take note, I write not for your pleasure or entertainment. More than likely I, and those who I describe, are long returned to dust, these events a part of history. My way is that of fist, blade and bow, not eloquence and beauteous weaving of words.
This work is done by my hand in honor of my momma’s memory. For she taught me if the truth is not recorded, then it will be forgotten. She was the Tell Singer, I am not, but someone must write these things down, someone who has been there or who have spoken well with those who were. While there are some humans with the gift of words and weaving of tales, no one can capture the feel of pain such as I have felt, than one who has felt and lived through such pain.
My own actions have been deplored by some, exalted by others. Some I regret, other actions I wish I had taken when I didn’t, I bear them upward in evidence. You can decide for yourself whether I was right or wrong. But I warn you; do not pass judgment unless you have walked the way of my moccasins.
I have been called many things in my life; half-breed, mule, spike, spike-ears … I have been spit on, slapped, jeered just because I looked different, had things thrown at me, beaten with strap and cane. My first experience with a whip, however, was for the crime of wanting to find my momma.
For three years I had been separated from her side, herded as a drudgery beast from work place to work place in the seven counties of Fel’Caden Province.
In case you haven’t perused the first cluster of scrolls, the first tome of the complete story, I was a slave. But it would be easier for you to go back and read, rather than my trying to catch you up. There is just too much to say, and this all weaves in together.
Anyway, the human who spoke those words to me, his name was Cordis, he was the slave taskmaster of the province. I know he was just trying to get under my skin, and he did.
I was twenty-three at the time, but in human years I would be compared to a twelve, maybe thirteen-year-old. All I could think of was escaping to get to my momma. Now, I had attempted this many times since being separated from her, but this changed things.
That night I broke away, but I’ve always thought Cordis had it planned, just so he could beat me again. Running barefoot toward where I believed the main keep to be, I found myself crossing an area laden with caltrops. Caltrops are hand-made little spikes with four or more points on them, and I was barefoot.
It wasn’t long before I heard horses coming after me. I was so predictable at the time; laughing humans lassoed me with a rope and yanked me off of my feet. Then they dragged me a little distance, let me fight my way up, then yanked me down again and drug me some more. This was a sport for them.
Cordis came outside of the bunkhouse with a teamster’s whip and a big smile on his face. All the slave boys came out, and damned if they weren’t having a good time. I was tied to a post, my clothes ripped from my body, and then whipped one … stroke … at … a … time as they yelled and made sport.
Twenty-nine, I will not forget … not even if I live another two or three hundred years, which isn’t likely considering the times and my chosen vocation … twenty-nine lashes later and they threw me into the sweat box.
Today I can heal, it is a talent I inherited from my momma, who called it our Family Secret when I was little, and I have worked hard to develop it as a skill. Over the years those scars went away, but I still feel them … every … damn … day.
Commander Lahrcus of the Keoghnariu Army once asked me if I believed in fate. He said, “I believe everyone has a destiny to fulfill, a purpose in life. It is our choice whether to fulfill that destiny, or abandon it, or even worse … misuse it.” At the time I didn’t know what to say.
Hoscoe’s first mentor and foster father believed in something he called the Kohrinju Principle, better represented in the old Elvish as Kohrinju Tai. It came from a term used in Elvish Music Theory, but his idea was that many of us are directly connected in ways we do not understand. It isn’t divine intervention, but something else, something hard to translate from Elvish thought into something humans can comprehend.
This much is for sure, while I was hating, hurting and hurling insults to any powers-that-be, something else was going on at that very moment, something I was very much a part of. But I would not know of it for a long time.
Maybe Lahrcus was right. Maybe there was such a thing as fate and destiny … maybe ……
___________________________
Have you ever beheld the rolling hills of Forosai? Located on the southwest shores of the Alburin Sea, these hills are adorned with forests of tall evergreens, oak and hickory and vast meadows of flowers in every color imaginable. The
fragrance is almost intoxicating as honeysuckle and laurel mingles with the flowers, carried by the wind into the trade city of Bli’ath.
Imagine with me a beautiful spring morning on the northwestern edge of this waking venue of mixed cultures, in a teahouse near the top of a small hill overlooking the crystal clear Alburin, six friends lounging around an outside table enjoying their morning tea. Candles of blue and pearl colored wax help to ease away the morning’s mist as a patio fire wards off the night’s chill.
The patio is empty, thus far this morning, save for the six. At one end of the spacious table sits a scholar, a well dressed man with a receding hairline and a book he browses as he reclines from the table, one hand around his cup. On the corner facing the door is a giant of a man, easily seven feet tall, straddling a stool with his arms crossed. At the other end sits a woman, clad in gray leggings and tunic, a slim sword slung upon her back, her eyes ever wandering about their surroundings. Between them sits another woman, also with a sword, but which leans against the table, and a man who is clearly an elf.
The sixth is an older man, perhaps in his fifties, who is pacing the patio, apparently impatient.
The pacing man is taller than most, standing about six feet and strong looking, but not nearly as big as the man at the corner. On his leather girdle hangs a gnarled wooden rod of about two feet in length, a rod which has seen much use as a weapon. His hair is long for a gentleman of the time and region, hanging full to his shoulders and giving him a rough appearance. In his right fringed buckskin boot is a long-bladed dagger. If one looks carefully, in his left boot looks to be a sword handle with a semi-curved guard, but the blade must be broken away. The goatee is apparently the pacing man’s vanity, as it is painstakingly neat and trim. He stops for a moment and inhales deeply of the morning breeze …
