Ice Crown

by Kay L Moody

  Books by Kay L Moody

  TRUTH SEER TRILOGY

  Truth Seer Healer Truth Changer

  THE ELEMENTS OF KAMDARIA

  Ice Crown Wind Crown

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  Ice Crown

  The Elements of Kamdaria Episode 1

  The competition could save her life…

  But only if she wins.

  Talise can manipulate the elements with ease; water, air, earth, and fire all bend to her will. As a citizen of the Storm—a crime-laden land where death is the only constant—her only chance for a better life is to become Master Shaper.

  A competition for the position takes place at the end of her training years. If she wins, she would live in the palace, work for the emperor, and escape her inevitable death in the Storm. But she’s not the only one with a chance to win.

  Aaden is another talented student. As a citizen of the Crown, he was born with unlimited privilege and resources. When someone from the Crown wants to win, they do. End of story. And his shaping is unlike anything Talise has ever seen.

  Complicating matters, Talise’s loved one in the Storm gives her reason to abandon the competition altogether, forcing her to make an impossible choice.

  Torn between duty and freedom, she must learn that clinging to the past, might destroy her future.

  For fans of Red Queen, the Grishaverse, and Avatar the Last Airbender, this desperate fantasy world has elemental magic and tension you could cut with a knife.

  Publisher’s Note: This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, organizations, or locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business or government establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Ice Crown

  The Elements of Kamdaria Episode 1

  By Kay L Moody

  Published by Marten Press

  3731 W 10400 S, Ste 102 #205

  South Jordan, UT 84009

  www.MartenPress.com

  © 2019 Kay L Moody

  All Rights Reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

  help@martenpress.com

  Cover by Germancreative-fiverr

  Edited by Deborah Spencer

  ASIN: B07SQB9JB1

  The Elements of Kamdaria 1

  Ice Crown

  Kay L Moody

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  ONE

  IT WAS AN HONOR TO TRAIN AT the academy.

  Talise recited the words to herself over and over again as she stood stiff-backed in the crowded deck of the riverboat. If chosen, she’d be ripped away from the home and family she loved. She’d leave behind the life she knew. All to train at the academy. An honor.

  It didn’t seem so great to her.

  A stuffy, humid heat hung thick in the air of the lowest deck. The lowest deck had no windows, offering no sunlight and no view of the river to help with seasickness. Two small lanterns hung from the ceiling, each giving off a flickering glow. Whenever the boat jostled, several people were thrown off balance.

  Marmie gripped Talise by the shoulders, tucking her into the corner where no one could hurt her. The top of Talise’s head only barely reached Marmie’s elbow, which meant she couldn’t do much to free herself from the corner. Instead, she folded her arms over her chest and pouted. They’d been saving for this trip for months. Two years really. They had always known it would lead here. She always imagined it would be less stuffy and more exciting.

  Most people from the outer ring of the continent—or the Storm as it was usually called—couldn’t shape. Talise had the ability to mold and manipulate elements while most of her neighbors in the Storm could only worry about their next meal.

  The academy would be safer than her harrowing and vicious life in the outer ring. She never wanted to live in the Storm, but she didn’t like the idea of being away from Marmie either.

  “Almost there,” Marmie said, her voice like honey and sparkles. She looked down at Talise and gave her a smile that was meant to ease fears. It helped a little but not enough.

  Especially because the riverboat jostled again, and a heavy-set man lost his balance, nearly toppling Marmie to the ground. Talise let herself be tucked behind Marmie’s skirts after that. This time with no complaint.

  She didn’t understand why they had to ride in the lowest deck at all when both the higher decks had plenty of room. At least up there she could feel a misty breeze on her face and smell the wet soil.

  Truthfully, she did know why they stood in the lowest deck. It was the same reason they didn’t have enough food and couldn’t learn to read. They were from the Storm. They were the lowliest members of the continent of Kamdaria: criminals, thieves, murderers.

  Once people were sent to the Storm, they never left. Even if the original crimes had been committed ten generations earlier, people still never left the Storm. They never left because life in the Storm required crime.

  It required stealing from trade wagons just so there would be a slice of bread for dinner. It required threatening guards so they wouldn’t torment a neighbor. It required saving rainwater just so there would be something to drink after a day of labor.

  Why it was illegal to save rainwater didn’t make any sense to Talise. No one from the Storm could shape the water, so it was far from dangerous. It just seemed like another way to control the people. Another way to force people to commit crimes, which then forced them to stay in the Storm. Where they belonged.

  People never left the Storm. Never. Especially not children who were seven years old.

  Unless they got into the academy.

  Talise sighed. Marmie had been saying they were almost there for the last twenty minutes. Maybe she’d be right at some point.

  A toddler’s sharp shriek broke through humid air of the deck. The mother looked mortified as she tried to appease her child with promises of what they would see when the riverboat stopped. Cherry tree blossoms and green-tiled buildings. Fresh air and gravel on the streets. Only small glimpses of mud instead of big mounds of it.

  The toddler didn’t find any of these satisfactory. The heavy-set man gave the mother a hard glance, and he wasn’t the only one. Everyone shifted to move away from the child, but that only made him more upset. One man put his palms over his ears looking pointedly at the mother.

  “Please Terreth. Please,” the mother begged. “We are almost there.”

  The child looked more terrified by the minute as the bodies around him became angrier. His shrieking bounced from wall to wall while his little eyes filled with a well of tears.

  As Talise watched the child, she tried to think of a way to help. Not for the sake of the other passengers. They could jump into the river for all she cared. But the child looked so frightened. He needed a distraction. Something fun.

  Talise lowered her body until her hand hovered just above the floor of the deck. She’d been practicing hard, but even
a little shaping still required her absolute attention. With narrowed eyes and a clenched jaw, she willed the dirt on the floor to rise into the air.

  It took a minute, but soon, little dust particles rose up in a cloud. She clenched her jaw tighter. A cloud wouldn’t do her any good. She needed enough dirt to make something the boy could see easily in the flickering light. Something he couldn’t miss.

  She narrowed her eyes even more. Her stomach tightened with anticipation. Finally, a solid clump of dirt broke apart, and the little dirt pieces flew up toward her hand. Now she had something she could work with.

  Taking a tentative step out from Marmie’s skirts, Talise shaped the dirt so it would hover above her palm. She turned her back to the other passengers and bounced her eyebrows up and down until she caught the boy’s eyes.

  When he finally looked at her, he was still shrieking. She gave him a crooked smile and looked down at the hovering dirt. Then, she bounced the dirt until it hovered as high as her head before it fell back down only a few inches above her palm.

  The sour expression on the boy’s face hadn’t relaxed, but the volume of his shrieking had lowered. She did it again. This time she wore an expression of surprise as if the dirt bounced of its own accord, and she hadn’t shaped it at all.

  The boy quieted mid-shriek as his eyes opened wide. Now that she had his full attention, she shaped the dirt until it formed a long line. It didn’t look much like the snake she was going for, but it was close enough.

  She had to pull her stomach muscles in tight as she moved the line of dirt to look like a snake slithering. Again, it didn’t look as neat as she wanted, but this was probably the first time in his life the boy had seen a citizen of the Storm shaping. He was more than mesmerized.

  After the snake, Talise tried a bird. Her epic failure of that produced a giggle from the boy, who then clapped his hands and said, “More!”

  Before she could think of something else to make, the riverboat floated to a stop. Talise made the clump of dirt bounce a few more times while the other passengers unloaded. When no one was left in the lowest deck besides her, Marmie, the boy, and his mother, Talise finally let the dirt fall to the floor.

  “Thank you,” the mother said, lowering her head so she could be eye level with Talise.

  After Marmie poked her in the back, Talise remembered to respect her elder. Lowering her head in a short bow, she said, “You’re welcome, ma’am, but it was nothing.”

  “Are you going to be tested for the academy?” the woman asked.

  After Talise nodded, the woman gave a smile so genuine it didn’t seem possible for someone from the Storm. She wiped a bead of sweat off her forehead, leaving behind a short streak of dirt. “A shaper from the Storm,” she said, shaking her head with disbelief. “I never could have dreamed of something so wild.”

  Marmie nodded to the woman and started nudging Talise forward. “Come. The testing begins soon.”

  “Wait,” the woman said. “I just wanted to say how special you are. You made my son laugh when everyone else just scowled. And you’re a shaper from the Storm. You’ll change Kamdaria for the better, my dear. I’m sure of it.”

  TWO

  TALISE’S HEAD BOUNCED RIGHT TO LEFT AS she tried to soak up her surroundings. They had arrived in the middle ring of Kamdaria—better known as the Gate.

  The streets were gravel just like the woman on the riverboat said they would be. There were no clouds of dust as people jogged past. A few people pulled wagons, but many of them had horses. Horses! Every so often, a stagecoach would fly past, and Talise’s mouth would drop all over again.

  The stores looked bigger than they did in the Storm as well. Shop keepers in the Storm were terrified of risk, so they only stocked the absolute necessities. Sometimes they didn’t even have those, which meant their stores were even tinier and emptier than the ones here in the Gate. These stores had all sorts of items.

  And everything was so clean. Marmie had scrubbed Talise’s face a thousand times that morning and brushed her hair until her scalp seemed raw. Now Talise was grateful for the effort. She only wished her cotton dress were a little less weathered. The ugly patch near her hem seemed infinitely brighter in this light. At least it was clean.

  Even the people seemed different. They didn’t look so worn. So tired. They looked like they could think about something other than the hunger creeping at them from every side.

  A man bumped into Marmie as they crossed the street. He looked apologetic at first until he saw the state of their clothes. He bared his teeth as he jumped away from them. A sharp intake of breath went through his teeth like a hiss.

  He muttered under his breath, but the only word Talise could make out was vermin. Nobody liked people from the Storm. Even people in the Storm didn’t like people from the Storm. Now that they had traveled to the Gate, everyone shot them angry glares and suspicious glances.

  Marmie seemed oblivious to the entire interaction. Her eyes were set on a nearby building with unpainted walls and a gabled roof with cypress bark shingles.

  When they arrived, Talise was ordered to sit on a nearby bench outside the building while Marmie went in and did the paperwork. Not that Talise minded. She was too busy soaking in more of the Gate. They weren’t even in the inner circle of Kamdaria—also called the Crown—but everything already seemed a thousand times better than the Storm. There was so much water, so much vegetation, so much life.

  Her eyes wandered when the sound of a wooden hammer rippled through the air. She took a few steps down the cobblestone path until she could see inside a courtyard that stood next to the building where Marmie was.

  She recognized the scene at once, even though she had never seen anything like it in the Storm. A wooden podium stood at the back of the courtyard with an orange tree on the right and a cherry tree on the left. A man stood behind the podium wearing a red silk hat with a ball and tassel at the top. A judge. A woman sat on a chair next to the podium.

  This was a trial. But not a regular trial, a card-marking trial.

  The judge had two stamps on the wooden podium in front of him. Talise knew one of the stamps would be of a silver crescent moon and one would be a black X. Judging by the woman’s face, the moon stamp wouldn’t be used today.

  The woman clawed at her tunic hem as she chewed her bottom lip. She kept nodding and shaking her head in answer to someone’s questions. Talise was too far away to hear the questions, and she couldn’t even tell who was talking.

  The woman began gulping and didn’t seem to notice when her chewing teeth drew blood from her lips. All at once, she let out a gasp and her hands flew over her open mouth.

  “Guilty!” The judge’s booming voice erupted through the courtyard.

  Jumping to her feet, the woman screamed, “NO!”

  The judge sneered at her and glanced toward a wooden platform where a dozen people sat. The woman’s family. It seemed the woman had five generations with her. Talise picked out a couple who must have been the woman’s parents. Another man and woman who must have been grandparents. There were also a few people the woman’s age, probably her siblings. And then, three adults who must have been the woman’s children.

  A son and his wife and then a daughter who looked barely eighteen. Most concerning of all was the baby, quietly sleeping in the son’s arms. Since ID cards weren’t given out until a child turned eighteen, any of the woman’s children under eighteen wouldn’t be present.

  “ID cards out,” the judge said, pulling one of the stamps off the podium. He held an ink pad in his palm, which must have been black.

  “No!” the woman shouted again. “Please don’t. Punish me. Punish me instead.”

  The judge turned on her as his eyebrows furrowed together. He spoke in a tight voice that was just loud enough for Talise to hear. “You dare question the laws of Kamdaria?” he asked. “It has always been obvious that we care for our children better than we care for ourselves. It is only fitting then, that our punishments shoul
d pass to our children as well.”

  “But they did nothing wrong.” The woman had lunged from her chair and reached so desperately for the judge that two guards had to hold her back. “My son’s baby is just a newborn. She won’t survive winter in the Storm.”

  The judge whirled around to face the woman. “Then you will suffer knowing what fate awaits them and knowing your actions brought them there. That is the greatest punishment there is.”

  “Please, she’s just a baby. Please. I beg you.” The woman’s face had been pressed into the gravel by one of the guards, but it did nothing to stop the words spewing from her mouth.

  The judge ignored the woman as he traipsed over to the wooden platform where the family members sat. They all had tears streaming down their cheeks. One of the older women was convulsing as her body shook with sobs.

  But none of them protested. They knew the laws of Kamdaria. The card system had been implemented centuries ago and since then, crime was almost non-existent except in the Storm. People could hurt themselves easily, but no one wanted to force their children and children’s children to bear a punishment they themselves deserved.

  A perfect system. Supposedly.

  The son clutched his baby closer as he held his ID card out to the judge. A look of resignation paired with his dwindling tears. His wife wore no resignation. Instead she buried her face in a handkerchief and couldn’t look as the judge stamped her card with a black X.

  The barely eighteen-year-old daughter had eyes so wide someone could walk straight through her irises. She gasped when the judge stamped her card, as if it wasn’t real until that moment.

  When the son, his wife, and the daughter all had their ID cards marked, the judge waved at a nearby guard. “Take them to the docks immediately. A riverboat will be leaving for the Storm soon.”