by Mike Shelton
THE DRAGON ORB
The Alaris Chronicles Book I
By Mike Shelton
The Dragon Orb
Copyright © 2017 by Michael Shelton
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations included in critical articles and reviews. For information, please contact the author.
ISBN: 0-9971900-8-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-9971900-8-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016919677
Greenville, North Carolina
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Cover Illustration by Brooke Gillette
http://brookegillette.weebly.com
Map by Robert Altbauer
www.fantasy-map.net
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is dedicated to my dear mom, Suzi Lewis who passed away while I was finishing this book. Her influence, love, and encouragement have been a driving force in my writing and in my life. She has always been my number one fan!
As I grow as a writer there are so many people to thank. Of course my wife, Melissa, my children, and my extended family have always been there for me with tons of encouragement. I cannot say enough about my editors at Precision Editing, my wonderful beta readers, my illustrator and mapmaker. All have worked hard in helping me make my stories come to light.
The Dragon Orb is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of my imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. I alone take full responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book.
-Mike
BOOKS BY MIKE SHELTON
The Cremelino Prophecy:
The Path of Destiny
The Path of Decisions
The Path of Peace
The Blade and the Bow (prequel novella to The Cremelino Prophecy)
The Alaris Chronicles:
The Dragon Orb
The Dragon Rider (Spring 2017)
The Dragon King (Summer 2017)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Books By Mike Shelton
Map
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
About the Author
Other Books By Mike Shelton
MAP
CHAPTER ONE
Allison Stenos, wizard apprentice, walked with guarded steps down the main road leading into the city of Orr. Her shoulder-length black hair, bangs falling over one eye, framed her youthful, pale face. A small smile tugged at her lips as she surveyed the quiet street around her.
Gorn Mahron, her mentor, strode next to her. His hardened, battle-ready body belied his years. Only the graying hair indicated that his age was past what most people would call his prime. However, as a wizard, he could live close to one hundred years. Battle wizards often lived shorter lives, however, due to their dangerous professions.
“Stay alert, Alli,” Gorn whispered without turning his head.
“Always, Mentor.” She skipped forward a step, as she spun a foot-long knife in her right hand.
“They’re here. I can sense them.” Gorn peered down a small alley to his right.
The hot desert air stilled, and this usually bustling city, at the southernmost point of the kingdom of Alaris, sat too quiet for the middle of the day. Alli glimpsed a few women peering out of the corners of their windows, pulling their heads back when she glanced their way.
“Why don’t these King-men attack in a cooler place?” Alli wiped the sweat from her forehead.
Gorn glanced her way and motioned her over to the side of the street. “I don’t think these rebels care about the heat. They only care about disrupting the Chief Judge’s government.”
Alli nodded, her eyes darting from building to building. She and Gorn were leading a battalion of the Chief Judge’s soldiers. They had heard about a group of rebels planning an attack on the governor’s mansion in Orr. The King-men, called such for their desire to have a king rather than a system of judges ruling the kingdom, had become more bold lately.
Gorn looked back and signaled for the rest of the battalion to proceed.
Alli and Gorn turned a corner, walking toward the main city square. Two men jumped down from a window, swords in hand, and attacked the two wizards. Dozens of others appeared in the town square and with yells ran toward the wizards and their battalion of men.
With her knife still in one hand, Alli used her other hand to pull her silver sword from the leather scabbard at her waist. She swung purposefully around her in a broad arc, widening the circle of attackers near her. The hot orange sun sat directly behind her, sending out long shadows from the tan stone buildings bordering the town square. The two battle wizards pushed through the attackers, Gorn moving off to Alli’s right. They used their physical weapons now, saving their magic for when they would need it the most.
The determined men opposite Alli growled at being beaten back by a mere slip of a teenage girl. Embarrassment and frustration clouded their red faces, and they pushed forward with renewed determination.
With no warning, a young boy ran out of one of the town’s buildings, his mother chasing after him. Alli turned toward him, even though she knew she shouldn’t fall prey to the distraction. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that fighting had erupted in the town square and was spreading down the side streets of Orr. If the boy didn’t get back inside, he would not survive.
The men used her distraction with the boy to press home their advantage. Alli grabbed one man’s head and pushed him to the ground. Jumping up onto his back, she flipped over another attacker, reaching down to scoop up the boy with a well-toned arm. At the same time, she gathered her magical power and pushed it out from her hand with brutal force. The magic ran along the edge of her polished sword and out the end of the blade in a bright yellow flame.
Holding the boy with her left arm, she held the sword’s grip tightly with her right hand and turned in a circle. The flame shot out toward the remaining men in the area. Six men fell instantly, three stumbled and tried to regroup, and two ran off screaming toward a trough of water, trying to put out their burning clothes.
The terrified mother of the boy grabbed him back with a tearful thank you. Alli refocused on the fight. Turning, she saw Gorn a few yards away, shaking his head at her in bewilderment. She shrugged and then plowed into a group of fighting men gathering in the far side of the square. Her battle moves were more a melodic dance than practiced motions. She flowed over the battlefield, barely touching the ground. Betwee
n the thrusts of her sword and the fire flaming from it, she took care of another dozen men.
Eventually, she found herself back to back with her mentor. Extinguishing the flames and returning to her knife and sword, she swatted away a new round of rebels.
“Allison, why did you do that?” Gorn shouted over his shoulder as he fought off a few of the more brave renegades.
“Do what?” Alli jumped up in the air and kicked a large bearded man to the ground.
“Save that little boy. He almost got you killed.”
“But he didn’t.” She turned to her right and parried the blade of a man twice her size. He mistook her size for inexperience, and she jumped into the air while spinning and came around, kicking him hard in the gut. She turned to face her mentor, the sounds of the man, groaning on the ground, fading from her ears.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Gorn said, wiping the blood from his sword onto a cloth hanging from his belt. “The boy was stupid for leaving the buildings.”
Alli needed to concentrate, but she couldn’t let this go. “Gorn, most of these people are innocent. They don’t deserve to die.”
Gorn only grunted. A large, dirty man tried to sneak up behind Alli, but Gorn brought his hand up and released a straight line of fire from his extended fingertips.
“Thanks.” Alli smiled sweetly. Her youthful eyes and pale-skinned face stood out in innocent contrast to the bloody battle.
She brushed her dark bangs out of her eyes and took a deep breath to calm her nerves. The heat of the desert city was affecting her more than had the exertion of the battle.
Gorn grunted again, but this time with less care. Alli knew she infuriated him. Gorn had been in charge of her training since she had left the Citadel a year before, at age fourteen, and she loved him like a grandfather.
No one could beat Alli in hand-to-hand combat or with weapons of any kind. Her powers far exceeded her rank of apprentice, and many men underestimated her and mistook her youth and her slight build as weaknesses. This usually happened to be the last mistake they made. However, she really would like to be treated as a wizard rather than as an apprentice that many thought they could push around.
Alli spied a young man moving on the other side of the courtyard, trying not to be seen. Before she could do anything, she felt the heat of magic shoot out from Gorn’s fingers, racing toward the man. Throwing out her own hands, Alli drew on the power of wind and pushed the wizard’s flame back. Continuing on, the wind blew into a couple of old crates, knocking them down on top of the man, stopping him in his tracks, while protecting him from the heat of Gorn’s magic flame.
“You don’t need to kill everyone, Gorn! There are other ways to take a man down.”
“But I am a battle wizard, and so will you be someday, Alli. You must learn that, in war, everyone is a potential threat.”
“So I shouldn’t help you out, then?”
“What?” Gorn’s eyebrows shot up.
“See you later,” Alli said and walked away from Gorn as a man tackled him from behind. She glanced back and grinned at Gorn, lying on the ground. She knew he could take care of himself.
The captain of the battalion called out for assistance. Alli ran over to where another pocket of fighting had broken out, on the other side of the large town square. She pulled out two knives from the tops of her soft leather boots and threw them at the legs of two men, who were about to take the captain down. They went down instead, holding their thighs and screaming in pain.
The dry wind picked up. Her heightened sense of smell caught the odor of blood and sweat on its hot breeze. This heat washed over her for a moment until she pushed it from her thoughts. She thought instead of the forests farther north, near the magical barrier, where she had grown up. She wished she was there and not on the edge of this forsaken desert.
The people of Orr lived in the middle of the great desert, in the far southern region of Alaris. The Mahli River, running south along the western barrier, here flowed down through the canyons of the great divide toward the southeast, eventually joining the Dunn River to the east. The only water around for miles, the Mahli did little to alleviate the heat. Rumors held that the desert continued for miles south of the barrier, giving way ultimately to more fertile farmlands. But, of course, the barrier of magic around Alaris blocked anyone from confirming the fact.
The ground was hard-packed dirt; the buildings, a dull brown, all made from stone and clay; and the wind blew constantly. The only wood around was used for fires and pieces of furniture and most likely came from the southern end of the Elvyn Forest, to the east. Generations of desert living had made the skin of those in the southern region darker than that of the people farther north.
Orr was normally a peaceful city, but then someone in town recently invited a group of King-men to disrupt the peace and draw the Chief Judge’s main battalion into battle. The dreary wasteland got on Alli’s nerves, and she became tired of innocent people getting hurt and dying for no other fact than that they lived where the King-men had decided to attack.
During a brief respite from the fighting, she scanned the town square. Someone needed to end this fight. Looking at Gorn, she realized her mentor would disapprove. But she had been given her powers for a reason, and she would use them now to stop other innocents from dying.
Holding her sword high and straight in the air, she chanted a few words softly. White fire erupted out of the tip. She spun the pommel of the blade vertically in the palm of her hand, and the white-hot light ran out of the sword in a dozen separate tendrils.
“Protect the innocent,” she whispered to the flames.
The first man the flames hit fell in a startled heap on the ground. The next group tried to run, but the flames circled around their bodies, holding them tightly, until they, too, collapsed to the ground and gave up their weapons. Even the soldiers in her own company backed away, afraid of standing in the way of the wild wizard’s fire.
The fire raced through the crowd and down the dirt lanes, sparing some and taking others, until the tendrils joined again and raced toward one lone man. His long legs carried him into the center of the town square.
“I surrender!” the tall, unshaven man shouted as he threw his bloodied sword down and looked around wildly.
Alli swept her hand back toward herself, and immediately the flame extinguished. The captain and a few others rushed forward to grab the man in the center of the town square, the leader of the attack.
“Where did you learn that?” Gorn moved to her side.
Alli shrugged her shoulders. “It just felt right.”
“Felt right? You know the rules. You are only an apprentice,” he said. His thick gray eyebrows displayed his displeasure, and his forehead crinkled up in anger.
“It’s done, isn’t it? No one else needed to die on our side. We gave them enough chances to stop.” Alli glared up at Gorn in defiance. “The fight needed to end.”
“I don’t care,” his voice boomed, causing a few soldiers to turn toward the two wizards. “I am the master, and you are the apprentice.”
Alli pushed her sword roughly into her scabbard and tried not to clench her fists. Her heart beat fast with anger. Why shouldn’t she be allowed to use all her powers in a battle? She was a battle wizard, apprentice rank or not.
“This is only because I’m a young girl. I have trained for over five years at the Citadel and now, at your side, for the past year. Most men are only in training for three or four years, and I am more powerful than wizards at levels one and two— maybe even more powerful than you. You cannot control me forever, Gorn.”
“You are only fifteen, Allison!” Gorn shouted in exasperation. “You are not old enough to be a full wizard—that’s simply the way it is.”
“My age should not define my rank.” She stormed away, leaving Gorn standing alone. She approached the captain and the captured prisoner, pausing to listen to their conversation.
Even while on his knees, the rebel leader was
a tall man, his head almost coming up to Alli’s chin. Blood dripped down his arms: wounds from the battle.
“Why were you trying to take over the governor’s palace?” the captain asked. “What did you do with the southern judge, Azeem?”
“You can’t stop it from happening,” the man cried out. “We will have a king!”
The captain spat on the ground, his spittle soaking into the dry dirt. “Not this again. The Chief Judge has been lenient so far with this king thing, but he can charge you with treason for what you did here today. That would be along with arson, civil unrest, and murder of some of my men. Now, where are the southern judge and the governor?”
“It was not my job to take them; that was for others. I don’t know where he is.”
“And, what was your job?”
“To disrupt things as much as possible. We need a strong king to hold Alaris together. The Chief Judge is weak. We want someone more powerful, someone who can break through the magic barrier holding us apart from the other kingdoms. We want a king like the other lands have.”
His words sounded forced to Alli: memorized lines spewing forth from a small mind.
“What do you know of other lands, renegade?” the captain spat. “The barrier protects us from them, from the wars they would wage against us. Wise men put the barrier in place to save us from the other lands’ evils and ambitions. We don’t need a king. We have the judges. They have protected us for one hundred fifty years and will continue to do so. Do you deny the right of Chief Judge Daymian Khouri to rule this land?”
All of the captain’s remaining men gathered around them.
“The Chief Judges stole the kingship away from the rightful rulers. We need to restore the nobility.”
