The Quintessence Cycle- The Complete Series

by Terry C. Simpson

  Dripping water echoed, the sound loud enough for its origins to be next to him. The wind moaned, a croon that rose and fell in pitch as it encountered outside surfaces. He cocked his head to one side and listened. Breathing. Not his. Low, yet excited. Distant.

  That bit should have brought a measure of fear crawling inside him, made his stomach clench. It did not. He was calm.

  The thing shifted beneath his skin. He glanced down. Along the back of his hand, under his skin, tiny ridges protruded. They pricked a memory. Armor. Finely crafted scale armor. The type he’d seen in books detailing the Kheridisian marauders during battles such as the Red Swamps.

  Why would there be armor beneath my skin?

  From instinct he touched his vital points. They were already open wide, soul gushing forth, his nimbus so thick it passed into the surrounding walls. He studied the passage of soul, eyes climbing his forehead.

  The luminous outer and median rings that housed their respective cycles were different. No longer were they wisps of white. They glowed and throbbed like a beating heart, and although circular in shape, the outer ring clearly had ten sides. Not only that, but he was now aware that similar rings made up his soul. Millions upon millions of them.

  After the initial shock wore off, he took in the cycles. Before today, his sight had been limited to the cycles of sintu , koren , tern , and hyzen He now discerned the two remaining median cycles, sera and shi . The inner ring still contained four unrecognizable cycles. A grin spread across his face. The activation of shi meant he had earned the right to be called a melder.

  It was time to leave.

  He surveyed the icy walls, slick from the low heat he generated when he thought of a fireplace and inadvertently melded. They were smooth, one complete dome, and had swallowed his three-foot stick. Digging out would be impossible even if his muscles still functioned normally.

  Keshka’s constant teachings repeated in his head. “When you’ve earned the title of melder, either you will be able to accomplish a thing or you will not. Effort, will, and a natural ability toward one type or another will make you what you are. You’ve already shown the power of a Magnifier, able to change your mass to strengthen your body, increase your speed, or replicate metals and stone and apply it to an item. Only through experimentation will you know what else you can achieve. Melding is not a finite science, it is a mystery, a power almost as unfathomable as the Gods themselves.”

  Recalling the Blades’ training sessions he had watched for years, Winslow decided to copy fire. Casters were able to fling it through the air in balls, or bars, or send it roaring across the ground. Alchemists possessed no Caster skills, but would summon flames around their fists or feet, multiplying the deadliness of their unarmed combat. That last echoed the natural meld he created to heat the shelter’s interior.

  Winslow concentrated on the feel of heat, thrusting the idea into his soul. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing. With the third effort, he clenched his fists and strained. His soul remained unchanged.

  On his next attempt, he did not only imagine heat, he pictured an actual fireplace. Again, he was unsuccessful. The next try brought a flicker of warmth into his toes and fingertips. Enthused, he tried for more, but to no avail. A dozen more tries brought a bit more progress, the heat increasing. Concerned, he pondered the effect and then created an additional layer of soul beneath his nimbus, augmenting it with tern . Several more attempts saw no further advancement in his manifestation of fire.

  Teeth gritted in frustration, he closed his eyes and imagined he was in a blacksmith’s forge. Flames roared from the stroke of the bellows. Sparks flew. A wavy haze rose from molten metal, liquid orange poured into a cast. The smith’s hammer beat against super-heated metal. Steam spilled from a blade as it was quenched. In his mind’s eye he was that steam, that metal, that flame, those sparks.

  A sizzling sound erupted all around him. When he opened his eyes, his nimbus was the hue of fire, licking out in every direction. The front of the dome was gone, melted. Steam rose from the opening.

  He took in deep gulps of sweet air. Stretching his legs out in front of him brought such intense agony that he had to scoot forward until he was outside. When he made to stand his legs failed him. He pitched onto his side, snow melting at his touch, the sound of it loud in his ears.

  Winslow rolled onto his back. As strong as he felt in his mind, his body had the weakness of a decrepit old man. He relaxed, ignoring the wetness seeping through his clothes. The sky was a white and grey soup above him, the wind a dirge that sighed through the trees. Sweat trickled down his face. He became acutely aware of the drip of water, the smell of animal droppings, and another squishing noise.

  Footsteps.

  Winslow flopped over onto his belly. An attempt to push up onto his feet again failed. His legs and feet had forgotten how they worked. Panic set in. Perhaps if he remained still, he wouldn’t be noticed. Sure, a creature that sniffed you out, clawed all over your hiding place, is going to miss you now that you smell like a spoiled three course meal.

  A glance in the direction of the footsteps revealed a tall, hulking form. Its garb glistened. Armor of some sort, perhaps?

  Winslow managed to push up on his arms, and drag his knees under him. He heaved himself to a kneeling position, stretched his right arm out, palm down in the soggy snow, and settled on the side of his thigh and bottom, body crying out from the torturous effort. He had a good view now.

  The approaching form was a bald-headed man, swarthy, wearing bronze scale armor. He had overlong arms and hands tipped with claws. A length of hide covered his loins. Winslow frowned. Why would an armored man wear such a thing? He met the man’s gaze. Brilliant amber eyes with black, convex pupils, stared back at him. They reminded Winslow of a snake. As the man drew closer Winslow saw that the armor fit too snug, like a second skin. It even covered the eyelids, the ears, and the nose. Winslow froze, mouth open. This wasn’t armor. The scales were skin. The sight tried to prick a memory, but such was his shock that Winslow’s mind refused its normal work.

  Those amber eyes moved in a dozen different directions, but Winslow knew the stranger looked at him. He carried something in his hand. The hand flashed out, sending what it held through the air in an end over end arc. When it dropped next to Winslow, he caught a whiff of a familiar scent.

  Meat. Burned meat.

  Eat. The voice carried no tone or inflection.

  The sight of the food, however badly cooked, set Winslow’s belly growling. His pent-up hunger came crashing down. He snatched the meat and ripped off a chunk with his teeth. Despite the burned flavor, it was sweet, so sweet he thought it the best meal he ever tasted.

  As he ate, Winslow studied the man who had remained several feet away, watching him, lips slightly parted. Something was … off, something more than the skin and the eyes. Still chewing Winslow looked at his own arm. He saw his nimbus, clearly defined. The luminescent surface stretched to at least eight feet in every direction, except near the stranger. It spanned to only five feet in that direction before it halted, pressed up against a surface Winslow couldn’t see.

  Winslow recalled how the stranger had spoken to him. The man’s mouth hadn’t moved. The words had been inside Winslow’s head. Winslow stopped eating.

  The man had melded, but not once had his soul been revealed. The effect could be achieved through the use of koren , but this was not that. This was different. Even now, Winslow knew that what he felt pushing against his own nimbus belonged to the stranger, and that it had to be the man’s soul.

  “Wh-who are you,” Winslow managed, voice hoarse to his own ears, meat forgotten.

  Na-Rashim-ha-Den, your protector.

  “Protector? From what?”

  The forest. It is not done with you yet, but at least you followed the rules. Unlike the one before you who left the shelter too early and chose to do battle instead.

  Keedar, Winslow thought.

  Yes, that one.

 
; Winslow’s lips curved in a slight smile. Keedar had beaten this creature. He shook his head with the thought. Thought . His eyes narrowed. He hadn’t called Keedar’s name; it had been a thought, and still Na-Rashim had answered.

  Your brother did not defeat me. He survived. With his current skill he might need another fifty years to best one such as I.

  “Wh-What are you?” Winslow asked, dread balling in his chest.

  Na-Rashim’s eyes distended and flitted about several times, giving a distinct impression of confusion. You stand above us, but do not know us. Strange times, these. I am one of your distant cousins, an Aladar. Look at your skin, what lives beneath it.

  Winslow held out his arm. The thing beneath his skin shifted. “I want to see,” he whispered, hands shaking. A mass of ridges pushed against his skin until they imprinted themselves upon it, and then they pushed through. . He felt no pain and saw very little blood, and by the time the transformation finished, his forearms were completely covered in golden scales. That earlier prick of memory surged. Picture-filled pages flipped through his mind, pages from Ainslen’s books.

  “Dracodar,” he mouthed.

  That is what you are, Na-Rashim answered. A Pure son of a broodmother.

  Winslow found the words hard to comprehend despite the evidence before him. “What is it you want from me?” he asked in an effort to settle his racing thoughts.

  Nothing. It is my task to protect you for two days, feeding you that which will return a portion of your strength. Afterward, you go back the way you came. Then your test will be complete.

  “You claim I stand above you. Why?”

  Na-Rashim shrugged. It is the way of things. Now, less talk and more eating.

  Winslow spent the next two days beside the solitary tree. The Aladar said nothing more in his head. Na-Rashim brought meat, most times raw, and Winslow would practice his new meld to provide a cooking fire. On the first day, he’d stopped calling upon his flame nimbus, no longer needing it for heat as the clearing had taken on the Treskelin’s normal humidity. By the end of the second day Winslow had gained enough strength and control to be able to run, but he was still skin and bones.

  Na-Rashim pointed out into the forest. The worst is over. Now that you have some semblance of strength, the forest creatures will give you a wide berth. Show weakness, though, and they will strike. Now, return the way you came.

  “Thank you,” Winslow said.

  The Aladar nodded once. Winslow set off, jogging at first, and then picked up speed. Before long he was darting through the forest.

  A M essage

  “H ow long does it last?” A wisp of a smile on his face, Keedar marveled at the colors that swathed the distant western skies. The horizon was a crystal held up to the sun and tilted to refract its light. At night the phenomenon was nothing short of spectacular. For three months the colors had waxed and waned. Today they seemed at their most radiant, helped along by skies finally freed of their cloudy prison.

  “I don’t know.” Keshka said. He’d kept to his study in the basement, only coming up to eat or to poke his head out to make certain Keedar was practicing. “Although she spoke about it often enough, your mother never mentioned how long it lasted.”

  “Did she ever say how it came to be?” Keedar liked to hear about his mother. The stories made him feel closer to Keshka. And to her. His memories of Lys were a blur of amber eyes with hints of green, dark hair, and a smile that would make him reach for that face. His questions were also another way to prevent thoughts of Winslow from occupying his mind.

  “She said it’s caused by the release of magics when the Pillars of Dissolution are opened. And, that it is a herald of war,” Keshka said, voice grim.

  Keedar stopped gazing at the sky to regard his father. Face twisted into a scowl, the old man was still focused on the Crystal Skies. A strand of white hair blew across Keshka’s face before it stuck to the sweat trickling down his forehead. “The Pillars of Dissolution.” Keedar returned his attention to the sky. “Delisar mentioned them when he was teaching me about soul. Our people called them the Dragon Gates, didn’t they? Supposedly the Dominion entered the world through them. Some say they lead to the Ten Hells and the banished Angels.”

  “Banished Dracodar, if the Order tells it.”

  Keedar frowned. “Why would some of us be banished. Weren’t we the Dominion’s chosen warriors?”

  “We have nothing but stories to rely on for any of this, but the Order’s Word claims a faction among us slew Hazline and Rendorta during that time.”

  Keedar shook his head. Some books claimed the Dominion took the form of gigantic scaled beasts, wings wide enough to span a field. Others said they were creatures in the form of mountains and earth. Why would they have needed warriors to protect them if they possessed near limitless power? And why would the ones they’d chosen betray them? Better yet, how could a mortal kill a God?

  “One thing cannot be disputed: the Dracodar and the Aladar arrived with the Dominion,” Keshka added. “And then, one by one, the Dominion disappeared from the world.”

  Still studying the sky, Keedar frowned. “Didn’t Etien venture to the east to find the Pillars, out into the Farlands?”

  “There’s more than one set of Pillars.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Those to the east, beyond the Farlands, are the ones through which our forefathers came. Those to the west, in the Fringes—the wastes in the land of Aladel—are the ones through which the brunt of our people fled or were thrown.”

  “Fled? Were thrown?” Keedar grimaced as he considered the words. “Why would—”

  Keshka finally stopped looking up at the sky and faced Keedar. His eyes were tight. “Nightmares of the old days haunted your mother. First came the Blight, the disease begun by Kasinians, curtailing our ability to breed. To escape it, some fled through the Pillars. Others thought it the final part of a curse leveled against us for our predecessors’ betrayal, and flung their own through the Pillars as sacrifices to appease the Gods. The practice continued when men rose to power.

  “It was all an early part of the Thousand Year War that followed, and then came the Culling. The guisers’ tales and minstrels’ songs mostly speak of the glory men earned during those days. The horrific details are overlooked, seen as the great Cortens Kasandar driving the tyrannical, genocidal Dracodar from the world.” Keshka shook his head and let out a breath. “There is some truth to the stories. Emperor Ilsindin was a tyrant, but worse than that, he was a desperate man who allowed his panic to overcome reason. He tried to justify a heinous decision, and thus deserved to be overthrown, but the persecution our people suffered afterward, herded like pack animals, the stockades …”

  “The beginnings of the Smear, the Day of Accolades, Far’an Senjin,” Keedar said, voice soft.

  “Yes, but before that time, the Game of Souls was not about stealing another person’s soul. It was a duel, fought between nobles and common folk alike, for a chance to win the hand of a Dracodarian prince or princess. It was a thing of honor.” Keshka stressed those last words, expression earnest.

  Keedar understood the old man’s feelings. He fingered his shirt as he recalled the clothing he once wore every Day of Accolades, the discarded bits left after a child was taken to be indoctrinated into the Blades, a parent killed for resisting. Many of those children would become heroes of the Empire’s stories: Gothien the Shadow Blade, Myron the Sun Blade, Tharkensen the Lightning Blade, Roslav Quickthrust the Dagger Blade, and so the names went. Despite the status they gained, they were still of the Smear, ripped from their rightful homes. Not once was their heritage celebrated. In truth, many of the Smear’s people had more right to rule than the nobles.

  Others might forget, but he would not. The nobility had created the monster that was the Smear, the beast that ate people up, swallowed them whole, left them mangled in gutters, or spilling their lifeblood on a sword’s edge. They had done it to his mother. For all of it, they would pay.
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  “Have you ever considered asking the old Blades to join our cause?” Keedar asked.

  “We did seek them out, only to discover that most of them died soon after retirement. Some say the lack of action stilled their hearts. Others died from years spent abusing their souls. A few had children, but preferred to remain on the fiefs and estates given them by the kings. A few simply disappeared.”

  “Too bad,” Keedar said, “we could use them.”

  “Yes, we could.”

  Another colorful swath caught Keedar’s eye. “Why did you say the Crystal Skies were a herald of war?”

  Keshka peered off into the sky again. “Because Elysse would say it, almost like a promise, and she always kept her promises. I told you how we met, how she had gathered many others like herself—Dracodar women proven to be at the height of fertility, to replenish our people, to orchestrate the fall of the Kasinian Empire. But not only that, she was also preparing for a threat against those who wield soul, a threat from the Farlands. According to her, that was the Blight’s origin. I’ve seen enough to believe a lot of the things she said. Some may not understand it yet, but the war is already here.” Keshka strode away, heading toward the cottage, leaving Keedar to ponder his words.

  Some time later, Keedar was rubbing Snow’s head when her ears pricked up. The derin stared off into the woods before settling back down. Keedar regarded the man who stepped from the tree line. He hadn’t seen Martel since Succession Day.

  Draped in a hooded cloak with thick woolens underneath, Martel the Sword was a mix of Farish Islander and Thelusian, not quite as dark as the latter, larger across the back and shoulders and taller than the former. Sweat poured down his face and beaded his baldhead. His expression was one of disgust as he repeatedly blew air out his nose, failing to clear whatever it was that bothered him.

  Keedar fought back a smile. Trekking from the Parmien Forest’s frigid air and down into the Treskelin’s humidity and reek of leafy detritus had taken a toll on Martel. Such drastic changes would have that effect on anyone not accustomed to them.