Forest For The Trees (Book 3)
Read Forest For The Trees (Book 3) Online
Authors: Damien Lake
Forest For the Trees
Book Three of
The Chronicles of
the Crimson Kings
By
Damien Lake
FOREST FOR THE TREES
Copyright © 2014 by Damien Lake
Written by Damien Lake
Cover and maps created by Kryslin Franks
First Publication 2014
Version 1.2
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review,
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places
and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Thank you for purchasing an authorized copy of this
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Dedication
This novel, the final of the first Folcrist trilogy,
is dedicated to my 6
th
grade English teacher. When I broke my leg
trying to slide into home plate during P.E. class, I missed the final month of
school thanks to four weeks in traction in a hospital bed. My English teacher
visited me in my ordeal. Having noticed that I spent more time in his class
reading Greek mythology books from the school library rather than learning to
diagram a sentence, he brought me a trilogy of fantasy books from the
Dragonlance series. Had he not gone out of his way for me then, my tastes in
literature might have followed entirely different paths.
Thanks, Mr. I.
The city never fell into a complete sleep. Cityguard
patrols ceaselessly roamed the nighttime streets, their complaints regarding
the cold that froze their hardworking arses off the only warmth to enwrap
them. They barely turned their gazes off the beaten path to ensure the peace.
Once they passed the tar-black alleys, those skilled at defeating locks
continued to ply their trade.
Dogs could be heard barking from every district. Many
were tethered outside residences, providing a greater nuisance than the
scoffed-at iron locks. Perpetually open taverns hosted bleary-eyed men with
cherry noses as well as the odd night watchman slipped off for a hot meal or a
wet tankard. Men either stumbled where they walked or kept to the shadows
until they returned to their guard post at their employer’s premises.
Most legitimate businesses were closed until the next
dawn. People slumbered. Whether they wandered the half-world from atop
feather-stuffed mattresses or wadded piles of rags, they each waited for the
new day.
Thoenar claimed a higher number of shabby districts
than those that sparkled with the pride of the upper-classes. The worst were
in the western reaches, near the outermost defensive walls and within the Outer
City. Districts where chemical fumes and slaughtering pen aromas drifted to
the nose on the slightest breeze. Old buildings were missing half their slate
roofing tiles. Numerous walls canted at alarming angles, the derelicts
sheltered in city pockets tucked away from sight. Hard eyes gazed at strangers
from harder people who scratched out their living with no idea what the next
day would bring.
Deep in the night, light shone without warning against
a crumbling brick wall. It came from across a dirty alley, apparently
originating from a splintery post supporting a sagging balcony. Rainbow
luminescence emanated from behind the thin column, shining from nowhere at all,
casting hues in brilliant reds, greens, yellows, pinks and purples across the
rusty bricks.
A shadow of a man appeared in the glow shining on the
building’s backside. Fingers closed around the post to grip it in a drunkard’s
queasy wobble. The hand pulled against the leverage until Rail Drakkson
pitched forward, emerging from behind a post no thicker than his arm as if he
had exited from a door in an unseen wall.
Rail tumbled to the ground. He thudded hard into the
ancient paving stones under their layer of dirt. His sword clattered loudly
off the stone before coming to a rest several feet away. He gasped for air,
his heart hammering wildly, his body quivering in involuntary muscle spasms.
Shivers wracked him as if he were a man exposed to a raging blizzard.
Behind him, the Red Man exited from behind the post
with greater dignity. His hands emerged, followed slowly by the rest of him
coming into view from behind the narrow span. Far too narrow to have hidden
the amount of body stepping into the alley.
The Red Man spared a single glance for Rail quivering
on the ground before turning back to the post. He raised one wine-colored
glove to the space he had emerged from. Behind him, the multi-hued light cast
against the wall began shrinking, contracting to a pinpoint of oyster shell
brilliance. It finally winked out.
He stepped beside Rail. The hanging end of his long
coat brushed over the prostrate man’s knuckles, satin interior flashing in the
gloom. “You push your body harder than the situation strictly demands,
friend. The
kkan’edom
is drain enough on your life as it stands. You
need not contribute to the toll without just cause.”
Rail struggled to his knees in order to glare
unobstructed at the Red Man. “Just bloody cause, is it? At the current rate
you’re slogging along, I’ll be dust in the copping wind before you and he meet
for the catch-all!”
“I have seen plans by countless number fail when their
enactors proceeded without complete necessary information. The importance of—”
“Stuff it!” Rail snarled. The trip via the
kkan’korsa
had sheered away his tolerance and temper both. “I’m damned for knowing that
already. Taking down that black dog is more important than me, else I wouldn’t
have signed on for this journey.” He scowled balefully at his companion’s
fiery red hair and ruby-jewel eyes. “Not that you fully explained
what
I was signing on for beforehand.”
The Red Man returned the stare calmly. “Would you
that I had left you on your own? Living your mercenary ways as the likes of
Xenos grew into his power and midwifed a rebirth of history?”
Lilly. And Marik.
Rail hoisted himself to his feet with an angry sneer born from his
foul mood rather than any hatred for this…man. He did not need the Red Man to
remind him why he had embarked on this crusade without visible end. “Don’t
lecture me. How long were we in there? And where in the ninth hell are we?”
The Red Man lifted one hand high above him, his
fingers cupped as if to scoop out a portion of the alley’s air. He brought his
hand down and inhaled deeply from his palm through his mouth, exposing his
tongue fully. After a moment spent tasting whatever he had collected, he
answered, “Not longer than nine days, as I believed. Surly less, but six days
in the minimum.”
Rail spat. A moment later he collapsed back to his
knees. His heart hammered still within his chest in furious abandon. He
gritted his teeth while sweat dripped into his eyes from his brow, forcing his
body to calm, to relax, to be at ease…
“Shall I—”
“No!” Rail growled, annoyance and rage at life twisted
around each other. “I’ll hold on as long as I bleeding have to. I refuse to
blow out until then.”
“You will last all the longer if you limit your pace
until we need your strength in the full.”
“It didn’t work last time, did it? He sluffed me off
like a duck in the rain. I can’t surpass my limits unless I push myself. And
don’t start in on all that
theory
again. I know me better than some
thinker a thousand years dead.” Rail grabbed his sword’s tip and pulled it to
him. He used the blade to support his weight while he rose to his feet a
second time. Grasping the hilt tightly as the point ground between paving
stones, he demanded, “You haven’t told me where we popped out.”
“This is the capitol city of your homeland.”
“Thoenar? Why here? Why not in Tullainia close to
where he’ll land?”
The Red Man stroked the back of one gloved hand with
the fingers of the other, a habit he usually engaged in when deep in
consideration. “There remains too much in shadow to be certain of the best
path to choose.”
“As usual,” Rail quipped. He had long since grown
weary of his companion’s hesitancy to act directly against Xenos. The result
was that bloodthirsty murderer had grown too strong to deal with easily.
Rail noticed the Red Man’s eye tick slightly, and he
took pleasure in this small show of exasperation from the otherwise stolid
figure. “He has set his sight continually on this, the land of your birth.
Warfare and strife, the tools that do aid him best, could easily be
accomplished among the kingdoms on the far side of the ocean, yet he persists
in sending his strength to locales long forgotten by Arronath and its peoples.”
“He was probably after something here all along,” Rail
replied, restating a point they had touched on briefly before entering the
kkan’korsa
again. “We chased him to Arronath before he had the strength to face us.”
As before, the Red Man refused to commit. “That is a
possibility among the threads, I concur. Yet it feels too much the plan in
waiting that he fled to the Earthen Lands and discovered the ancient catacombs
of his god waiting for his hand to touch.”
“He had to run somewhere. But the cur’s too obsessed
with Merinor for it to amount to any good. Whatever he wants, it will probably
give him the strength he needs.”
“In that I agree, and so have I chosen to come to your
capitol. Within this, the heart-city of Galemar, must lie the answer to why
his eye persists in resting on these lands.”
Rail risked lessening his death-grip on the sword hilt
and found his legs capable of supporting him. “We’ve gotten ahead of the
bastard for once. We’ll be waiting in front of him while he’s still casting
his gaze back over his shoulder.”
“So do I hope,” the Red Man responded. “And yet time
is not a companionable ally in this engagement. We must discover with haste
what is it that draws him so surely as moth to flame.”
“We’re not going to do that freezing in an alley,”
Rail muttered. “Let’s find a decent inn worthy of your metal.”
They glanced about, looking for the best route to
escape the grimy alley. Rail limped along using his sword as a crutch,
refusing to accept help from the Red Man and pretending not to notice his
crimson companion’s slower walking pace.
