Rythe Falls Read online

  ©Craig Saunders 2014

  All rights pertaining to this work belong to Craig Saunders and Craig R. Saunders Publications. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Rythe Falls

  by

  Craig R. Saunders

  (The Rythe Quadrilogy/Book III)

  Also by Craig Saunders:

  Novels

  The Estate

  A Home by the Sea

  Rain

  The Noose and Gibbet

  A Stranger's Grave

  The Love of the Dead

  Spiggot

  The Seven Point Star

  The Gold Ring

  Novellas

  Deadlift

  Scarecrow – Scarecrow by Craig Saunders and The Madness by Robert Essig

  The Walls of Madness

  The Dead Boy: A Dead Days Novella (# 1)

  Short Story Collections

  Dead in the Trunk

  The Black and White Box

  Dark Words and Black Deeds

  Writing as C. R. Saunders:

  The Evolution War

  Vigil

  Writing as Craig R. Saunders:

  The Outlaw King (The Line of Kings Trilogy Book One)

  The Thief King (The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Two)

  The Queen of Thieves (The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three)

  Rythe Awakes (The Rythe Quadrilogy Book One)

  The Tides of Rythe (The Rythe Quadrilogy Book Two)

  Rythe Falls (The Rythe Quadrilogy Book Three)

  Coming Soon:

  The Setting Sky

  Masters of Blood and Bone

  Bloodeye

  Flesh and Coin

  731

  Beneath Rythe (The Rythe Quadrilogy Book Four)

  The Warrior's Soul

  The story so far...

  The world of Rythe is rather vast, as are the stories set therein. Unwieldy, even for me, and I write it. With that in mind, I thought I'd take a moment to present to you, the reader, a short recap, in the form of a foreword and a few thoughts from me. Hopefully this will help set things in your mind as we embark upon this, the third instalment (yes, yes, overdue!) in the Rythe saga.

  In Rythe Awakes, the first book of the quadrilogy, we are introduced to Renir Esyn, a rather ordinary man with a harridan of a wife. Renir finds himself drawn into the battle for the fate of the world of Rythe, and at the behest of the powerful wizard Drun Sard, he saves the life of Shorn, a mercenary warrior with a dark past.

  Across this vast world, a woman (a politician, I suppose) called as Tirielle A'm Dralorn, is in a protracted battle of wills against an organisation known as the Protectorate. The Protectorate, inhuman overlords to the human denizens of her land (Lianthre), have a dark design for the future - they are working to bring about a fate that would mean the extinction of human life on Rythe - the return of the Sun Destroyers.

  Drun Sard, Shorn, Renir, Tirielle and her bodyguard, a beast named Roth, eventually join forces to oppose the Protectorate, once their design becomes clear.

  Only one, however, can truly defeat the Protectorate - a relic of an age past, a man they know only as 'The Red Wizard'.

  *

  That is, by and large, the crux of Rythe Awakes. For those familiar with superhero tales, with fantasy and its somewhat flexible conventions...it is an origins story. It concerns the growth of Renir Esyn, a man of lacklustre ambitions, to a man to walk the mountains with (thanks, David Gemmell, for that phrase).

  In Book Two, Tides of Rythe, Renir Esyn, Shorn, Drun, have become friends. They are warring against the Protectorate's plans in the country called Sturma, while across Rythe's wide seas, Tirielle and Drun Sard's compatriots, the Order of Sard (a mystical group of warriors) battle the Protectorate there.

  During their adventures and their trials, Tirielle, Roth and the Sard discover a young girl with tremendous power, a seer. They save her, and eventually fight their way through a portal to a frozen wasteland known as Teryithyr, where the Red Wizard (named Caeus) is said to reside.

  Renir and his friends, too, find passage to the snow-bound wastes aboard a ship belonging to the Feewar, a seafaring people cursed to never know the feel of land beneath their feet.

  And in the finale, they find Caeus. He is their only hope in the battle against the Protectorate and, at a remove, the Sun Destroyers.

  Caeus, they discover, is a being more terrible than anything on Rythe. The Red Wizard is the last of the Sun Destroyers remaining on Rythe.

  And so, that takes us rather neatly to this, the third instalment of the Rythe saga...or does it?

  Please, allow me a moment for a small digression. There is no need to read this, but if you want a hint or two...read on.

  Caeus himself isn't, as some readers know by now, first introduced in Tides of Rythe. Caeus is older than these books - he is first introduced in The Outlaw King - book one of The Line of Kings Trilogy. As I said at the beginning of this little preamble, the world of Rythe is vast, as is the history of the world and its peoples.

  I try to add an enlightening short tale to each novel, too. The Martyr's Tale, The House of Broken Dreams, The Witch's Cauldron, The Unknown Warrior...there are more - you may or may not have read them, but they all concern the wider world of Rythe.

  The Line of Kings Trilogy and The Rythe Saga are intertwined. They are part of a large body of work that has taken, to date, ten years or more. All books concern the Sun Destroyers, Caeus, and the Line of Kings. I'm not sure any reader is ever as invested in a world as the author, but this body of work is...kind of like knitting a jumper.

  Yes, a jumper.

  In The Outlaw King, a seer named Jenin tries to discern all the threads of fate, and ultimately the fate of the Line of Kings. He could not.

  But then he wasn't very good at knitting.

  April 2014

  Craig R. Saunders

  The Shed.

  Rythe Falls

  Dedication

  This book is, by and large, for me. But I do not write in a vacuum, and this book came about through the love of this series from fans.

  So I'd like to dedicate this story to Jami Hamilton and John C. Hoddy, for their fervent and belligerent belief that I not only should finish this series, but could.

  I write alone, but it is the belief of fans and friends and family that keep me going.

  Thank you.

  Craig

  Prologue

  The darkness of the void spreads between worlds and moons and stars. Not a true void, but close enough to the purest blackness that man could ever know. Light was there, yes, but distant. Like the black was a room, and the light was nothing more substantial than cobwebs high up in the corners.

  There was motion in the dark reaches of space, but on a scale of movement so slow that to a human it seemed eternal and utterly still.

  The sun and stars, the constellations, the world, all were turning. The moons Hren and Gern spun, too, about Rythe. The sight of the moons alone was more than a man could bear.

  Carious, the largest of the twin suns; unimaginable.

  Even in the vast distances of space, the giant sun left the man who saw these sights breathless. But then, of course he was breathless. For here, looking out at the never-ending stars and down upon his world, there was no air.

  It should, perhaps, have been cold, or hot, or he should feel something...but Renir Esyn was not uncomfortable. At least not physically. He was aware of no sensation in his battered body. He had no wounds, nor bruising. A man should hurt, after fighting a creature such as the Revenant, a beast that he'd thought beyond imagining...a man should know some kind of suffering, surely, after fighting his way through countless battles, across a continent, through snow higher than a man. A
nd what strange creatures he had seen...the revenant itself, and the hath'ku'atch, and even the white beasts of the frozen wastes. Such sights...

  Surely a man should break from wonder, if not pain?

  But Renir could not move, weep, yell. His breath stuck in his chest, his heart unbroken and unbreakable. Suspended in a single moment in time, perhaps, where there was nothing but thought and the sight of the suns, the world, the moons, the stars like markers against the dark that went on forever into the yawing black void of time and space and...

  It is...nothing...

  Llike drowning in black oil with your eyes open.

  Renir recognised that thought as his own.

  He forced himself to think. He might not be able to close his eyes, but he could still think, could he not?

  Renir remembered some of what passed before, though not all. But he did remember the thing they'd found within the beast at the heart of the volcano.

  Caeus.

  A man should be able to weep, surely, after finding the Red Wizard? A man should hurt, shouldn't he?

  But he was barely aware of his body at all. He felt no hunger, no need to breathe. Still he found that his heart was not stopped, because his heart urged him to cry.

  Should he even be able, here in this black vastness above the world, would his tears sit still on his face, unable to move from this...spell?

  Is this magic, or am I dead?

  He could not help but wonder.

  There are times in most men's lives that they wonder if they died. In war, to feel a mace on a helm and wake, head pounding and confused. For a moment, might not that man wonder if he crossed through Madal's Gate into the unknown? Might he not wonder if death itself was no more than a gateway to more pain?

  Sometimes, happiness, sadness, confusion...many things can make a man wonder if he died without even realising.

  Renir Esyn was not a complicated man, but he imagined Madal's Gates to be imposing, impressive...perhaps even difficult for a man to pass through. A man like him? With blood on his hands? Might be such a feat as passing the Gates would be impossible.

  Renir wondered these things while he hung, suspended, in the enormous blackness between the worlds.

  How long have I been here, floating in black air?

  Did it matter?

  Carious, gold, Dow, the red of sweet-maple in the autumn, their colour and beauty unhindered by the clouds and shimmering air of his native Sturma.

  I should burn to nothing before such glory, he thought. I should fry and smoke and char like a man on fire. My bones should roast, surely? My eyes should go blind...

  But he did not look away.

  Soon, he could see nothing but the sun, do nothing but float, and dream. Like a dead man, suspended in a single, endless moment of pure glory.

  All the while, a silent shadow waited behind him. A harbinger or a herald, none but the creature who made all this possible could ever know. In the darkness behind the King the Red Wizard stood, just as he had for two thousand years.

  *

  I.

  Builders' Folly

  Chapter One

  Sturma, the land of Renir's forefathers, was a whole ocean distant from the land that Reih Refren A’e Eril called home.

  Lianthre was a long, broad land. Long enough to know a different aspect of the suns. Far in the north of the Lianthrian continent (and now, far behind Reih) was the capital, and her home, the human symbol and seat of governance - the Kuh'taenium. Once, Reih had worn fine dresses and jewels and known power and strength and responsibility unrivalled. But her old home was a long way north, and many months behind.

  Distant, time, the road, the fates...things change. Reih, once, had understood this. Perhaps only when she had been a girl, playing. Time was different, then. The suns' light, dust on her knees and in her hair. Summers that seemed endless and short, wet winters when the dust on her knees and in her hair would be mud.

  Then she'd grown up, taken her birthright. Years inside, pale skin, the memory of the land all but forgotten and the suns a memory. Hours staring at scrawled messages upon parchment or fine paper. Cracking the wax seals of the wealthy or the important men and women of the world. She was Imperator of the Kuh'taenium...the most powerful woman in the land.

  So she had thought. But power was fleeting. Power was...nothing.

  She knew that now. All the while, they played at being lords and ladies. They feasted and drank wines and breathed the heady brews on the smoke wheels in beautifully ornamented rooms within the great building. They rode great horses that cost more than many villages. Ate meals of rare meats, while the people in those villages could have made a great horse last a season.

  All the words she read and spoke, her proclamations and the law over which she presided, the years of quiet deals made in the shady corners of the Kuh'taenium...it had been merely the illusion of power. Nothing more than a trick, a shiny thing dangled before a kitten to distract it, amuse it.

  The Protectorate were the power. They always had been. The Protectorate, creatures rather than men. All those hours of debates Reih had struggled through, long into the dark. Aching backbones and hips from standing in council, listening to fools blathering or the wise, it made no difference. The final argument would always be settled by the blade, and it was the Protectorate, not the humans, who held all the steel.

  And while she and her kind had been blind to the true danger to the land, the Kuh'taenium, a living building, invested with thoughts, memories...a soul...was dying.

  What she hadn't realised was that she had been dying right along with it. What can a councillor know of the land she serves if she never feels that land beneath her feet? Never feels the dirt of it under her nails?

  She knelt in the dirt now. Reih had plenty of dirt on her. In the wrinkled skin at her knuckles. Under her nails. In her hair.

  She wore trousers, now, rather than fine dresses. Carried a short knife rather than the sceptre of office. Had aching hips and back, yes, but it was a good ache. An honest one. The ache of miles on horseback and on foot. It felt, to her, like the ache of honest work.

  She looked up from the dirt on her skin and clothes and parted the bushes and long, sharp grasses that hid her from the road ahead. Carefully, slowly, she looked at the dusty road, and there, atop his heavy warhorse, her guardian, Perr.

  Perr did not shine, like a bauble made to distract kittens might. The man's armour was scuffed, scraped, dented. A simple message, conveying the kind of honesty that Reih was growing to enjoy more each day.

  She watched the road ahead and behind her guard for treachery, but could see only the three bandits blocking the road. Dirty, hungry men...but with mean and hard faces.

  Honest, too, she thought. Yes, those bandits, too, wore their intention right there in their clothes and weapons and faces. As she'd learned over the last few months, many people were honest. Many people were hungry, desperate. But sometimes, some people just needed killing and it wasn't pretty and it didn't sit nicely in a woman's guts, but there it was and there was no changing it.

  These three weren't going to move, and Perr's armour spoke his intent well enough, even if he uttered no word.

  If they didn't understand that, then there wasn't anything she could do to help them.

  *

  Perr understood what the outcome must be, just the same as Reih.

  Some men fight like water flowing. Some, like an avalanche, all bluster and crushing speed.

  There was a sense of the mountains about Perr. Rock, letting men tire on him. In a way, men fought Perr and broke themselves, just like trying to climb a tall peak in a wide mountain range. They'd be thinking they'd reached the top, tired, muscle-sore and panting, only to crest a tricky outcropping and see nothing but more mountain ahead.

  A thing that like took the fight right out of a man.

  Perr wasn't fast, or even particularly strong. He was just a big man with a strong arm encased in good steel. But more than that. He was a man who w
ould never, ever, back down.

  And he'd made his horse stand for long enough. Gently, with his steel-boots, he nudged his horse to motion.

  'Whoa...hold on there, man-o'-steel. Three of us...'

  The man talking was grinning. Across his lap he carried a long, heavy axe. An un-pretty thing, made for hitting men and making them dead.

  And a poor weapon for a horseman.

  The axe man, the talker, held his horse steady with his knees in the centre of the three robbers. He looked ready enough to take up the axe.

  Perr's big horse began to trot, and while Perr rode, he figured the encounter in his head.

  The man on the right side would break first. He had a bow, strung, already in his hands. Perr looked the man in the eye through the narrow slit in his helm. Bright eyes. Man was afraid, flexing his fingers. Might be good with a bow. Didn't matter.

  Few were good enough, and the closer Perr got, the less it mattered.

  Perr was riding slow, but closing. Fifty yards.

  The man on the left had a heavy wooden shield strapped on his left arm, and a short, workman's axe in his right fist. Probably took the shield from some grave, looked old. Nicked and scarred wood, battered steel rim.

  Probably took up the axe from his father, maybe. Old thing, too. Good for cutting wood and good enough for cutting men who weren't encased head-to-toe in steel. Wrong side, too. Shield wasn't going to do him much good. Axe would swing, probably. But Perr didn't worry about axes, overly, especially old wooden-hafted axes in the hands of untrained, unarmoured men.

  'Don't want to talk, eh?' said the man in the centre. He spoke faster, now. Had too. Because Perr was closing faster. 'I can understand that. Hot as hells down here. 'Specially in steel. We'll go easy, you just...'

  Perr wasn't talking, nor did he need to. His drew his sword, rasping, loud even over the pounding of horse hooves on dirt.