Sins of a Sovereignty (Amernia Fallen Book 1) Read online

  Copyright © 2014 by Plague Jack

  ISBN-13:978-1494735074

  All rights reserved

  Texts and illustrations: copyright © 2014 by Plague Jack

  Copy editing provided by Eliza Dee at Clio Editing Services

  Clioediting.com

  Cover art by mkw-no-ossan

  mkw-no-ossan.deviantart.com

  Sins of a

  Sovereignty

  Written by Plague Jack

  To my wonderful Wife, my Parents, Keith, Altman,

  Durso, and all those who dared encourage.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  The lighthouse towers some hundred and fifty feet above the ocean’s waters in the dead center of the Mono Sea. It sits roughly at an equal distance from all six continents of Archipelago, which is why it makes such an ideal spot for the annual meeting of the World Congress. Perhaps the lighthouse’s most interesting feature is its flame, which burns endlessly at the top of the obsidian tower. The color of its beacon shifts depending upon which direction it is approached from. As to who built the lighthouse I cannot say, but it serves as a constant reminder of distant and forgotten ages.

  —Harold Thule, Archipelago and Its Conjoined Past

  The stumps of the Spider Witch’s legs, long since amputated by a long-dead torturer, soaked in the warm waters of the Bysmal Swamp. She was naked as she rested on the smelly peat. Clothes became a superficial thing after centuries of life. Her breasts hung wrinkled and dry on her chest and rested along top of her bloated and distended belly. She scratched her belly button with her three-fingered hands. The pinky and ring fingers had been cut off at the knuckle ages ago. She no longer mourned them and was instead content to listen to the crickets chirp and the gators growl.

  The old crone could feel the magic in the air, and it made her shriveled heart flutter with excitement. One by one the crickets went silent and the frogs ceased their croaking. Above her in the night sky a dark cloud was billowing, but there was no thunder nor hint of rain. The cloud parted and the stars came alive with a cackling laugh. A spectral rider emerged from the blackness, his horse skeletal and armored with the bones and leather of dead men. The flesh on the Wild Huntsman’s face was sunken and gaunt, giving him a skull-like appearance. He laughed and plunged towards the earth. Chains rattled behind the Wild Huntsman as he rode, and with the rattles came the screams. The Spider Witch saw him, though she had no eyes.

  Enchained behind the Wild Huntsman were the cursed souls of wicked nobility. Royals wailed in agony and sorrow as the Huntsman dragged them through the air. Fondly remembered kings were enchained next to long forgotten queens. After centuries of harvesting wretched souls the Huntsman now had a collection that numbered in the hundreds. The Huntsman’s steed stormed forward across the night sky, pulling his grisly chain behind him.

  The Spider Witch listened keenly to the chorus of feverishly muttered confessions and miserable cries of pain. She smiled as the Huntsman flew out of sight, the last of his chain vanishing into the whitewood, which loomed along the northern horizon. “Husband!” called the Spider Witch. There was no sign of him. She called again, “Husband!”

  He heard her this time. There was a sloshing as a lithe body slithered through the reeds. Husband stretched all eight of his legs as he climbed from the swamp’s brackish waters. His head was still vaguely humanoid, even though it had been centuries since his mutation. Eight iridescent spider eyes gazed blankly at the Witch, and his set of truly monstrous jaws twitched as he tasted the water. “You called for me, Wife?” he asked, his long purple tongue darting in and out as he spoke.

  “Yes, deary,” said the crone, laying a wet kiss on his forehead. “I saw the most intriguing sight tonight.”

  “The Wild Huntsssman?” asked Husband. “I know, I sssaw it too.”

  “Would you carry me back to the hut?” asked the Spider Witch. “I think we’ll be getting a visitor soon.”

  “Asss you wisssh, my love,” said Husband as he put his wife on his back and carried her through the swamp. Husband’s long, stilted legs carefully pushed through murky waters and over fallen logs.

  The hut was a simple thing, built into the roots of a mangrove tree with packed mud and web. Husband carried the Spider Witch inside and placed her in her old wicker wheelchair. “Thank you, dear,” she said. “Our visitor will be here soon.” Soon was relative, and the pair of them waited patiently as the moon inched across the sky. After hours had passed a heavy knock rang out against the bark door.

  “Our visssitor,” said Husband, his mandibles dripping spit and venom. “It’sss been decadesss sssince we had a visssitor.”

  “Oh yes, I’m so very excited. Let him in!” said the Spider Witch, clapping as Husband reached forward a long, hairy arm and pulled open the door. A figure stood in the doorway, his tall, slender frame outlined by moonlight. “Adan!” said the Spider Witch. “So glad you remembered your promise.”

  Adan stepped forward, revealing a receding line of black hair atop a sharp, high brow. A quiver filled with black feathered arrows was slung over his back along with a thick wooden bow. Despite being in his fifties, the elf had aged well. “Of course I remembered,” said Adan with harsh eyes that never seemed to soften. “I came as soon as I saw the rider.”

  “The rider?” laughed Husband. “Not jussst any rider. The Wild Hunssstman. Do you know hisss sssignificance, child?”

  Adan moved his hand to the sword at his side. “I’ve heard legends, here and there. Some say he puts down young men so they’ll be spared the horror of war. The gilnoids say he heralds war. Others claim he is merely death incarnate. I have little patience for legends.”

  “Fool,” snapped the Spider Witch, wheeling forward in her chair slowly. “You’re right, Husband. He is still a child.”

  “Child?” said Adan, gritting his teeth. “I could have this hovel burnt to the ground in an hour.”

  The Spider Witch cackled. “Everyone’s a child when you’re as old as me. Stop with the threats—they won’t do you any good, Adan. Calm down. You’re only embarrassing yourself.”

  “He’sss asss much of a child as he wasss the day we ressscued him, isssn’t he?” said Husband dryly. “Ssseemsss like only yesssterday he wasss running through our ssswamp with three arrowsss in hisss back and hungry houndsss at hisss heelsss. We sssaved him, didn’t we? Fed the houndsss to our children and sssent him on hisss way.”

  “With only the promise to return when a certain rider streaked across the night sky. More than a fair deal.”

  “But what hasss he done with the gift of life?” asked Husband. “He’sss ssspent it robbing humansss, and dealing cryssstal to lossst sssoulsss desssperate for comfort.”

  “Not to mention his failures as a father,” said the Spider Witch, smiling a crooked smile. “His elf pups could have used a father’s guidance. They could have used someone to teach them right from wrong... or at least how to treat each other.”

  There was a twitch in Adan’s temple, and he did his best to remain stoic. “How do you know so much?” he asked. “For years the pair of you have haunted me. Who are you?”

  “You ssshould asssk, what?” said Husband, stretching his eight limbs.

  “What are you, then? Why did you call
me here?”

  The Spider Witch wheeled backwards and over to an old chest of hardened spider silk. “Patience will get you answers, though perhaps not the answers you seek,” she said, opening the chest. Inside were two remembering stones, each a crystal ball no bigger than a chicken egg. With a chipped fingernail she pulled at the stitches which kept her eyelids sewn shut. She loosened them enough to expose the black holes where her eyes had once been and stretched her eyelids open as wide as she could. The remembering stones crackled with a cold lightning as she slid them in, and her eyes leaked tears of black smoke. “Come closer, Adan,” she commanded, and the elf stepped forward hesitantly.

  “Down on one knee,” ordered Husband. “You want anssswersss, then you’ll have to obey.”

  “And if I don’t?” asked Adan.

  “You will,” said the Spider Witch as the crystal in her eye sockets crackled and smoked. “If you want the truth.”

  Adan knelt before the old crone’s wheelchair. Three-fingered hands reached forward and grabbed him with surprising strength. He gazed into the Spider Witch’s eyes, mesmerized. Then his brain began to burn as electricity struck him and a deep, blinding pain tore at his nerves. Everything went white.

  The pain ceased and Adan’s blindness faded as an endless field of puffy clouds rippled before him. An invisible wind drove the clouds apart and revealed a planet below. A massive single continent sat green and brown in the middle of a deep blue ocean. “Where am I?” asked Adan, astounded.

  “In a dingy old hut, in the middle of a swamp,” replied the Spider Witch, her voice reverberating off everything and nothing. “What you see now is the beginning of all that is remembered.” The moon and the sun began to circle the planet as she spoke, and the sphere’s surface flashed rapidly from light to dark as the Spider Witch commanded time. Down below lights flashed across the land in bright blues and pinks, greens and violent reds.

  “What’s happening down there?” asked Adan as the lights raced and rippled.

  “The gods are having a tiff,” said the Spider Witch. The center of the earth began to glow a fiery orange, and crevices spread from its volcanic center. Like centipedes the fires wriggled their way toward the ocean until they were cooled by saltwater. A dark hurricane gathered over the central firestorm before an explosion from beneath the planet sent stone and lava flying. The debris hung midair for a moment before it was pulled back inwards by a dark, hungry vortex.

  The smoking crater in the center of the land was quickly filled with water as the ocean rushed in and the continent split into six pieces. They floated away from the planet’s center, forming a ring of fresh young continents. A blue vastness of waves spread between them. “Is it over?” asked Adan.

  “Be quiet, child,” said the Spider Witch as the sun and moon raced overhead. “Your answers are coming.”

  Their perspectives zipped north across the globe towards a triangular continent. “Amernia?” asked Adan.

  “Amernia, our home,” said the Spider Witch as they watched legions of elves and dwarfs mend their land after the great cataclysm. The two races sifted through the destruction and ashes to build gleaming white cities and cavernous halls lit by lava and living lights. Time was stretched before Adan and the witch like a book to explore.

  From the southeast an invasion force of black-sailed dreadnoughts crept across the sea. The humans of Vaetor came to conquer, and conquer was what they did. The men of Vaetor swept across Amernia in a black wave, leaving smoke and fire in their wake. Settlements sprouted across the land as the Vaetorians butchered the elves and the dwarfs. Vaetor ceased its campaign of carnage only when they held Amernia in an iron grasp sealed with blood.

  There was a blur as their focus shifted. Together they looked down upon a dark stone hall lined with riblike pillars. Beneath them a gray-haired king and queen lounged at a lavish table. “Who are they?” asked Adan as the King poured his Queen a glass of red wine.

  “Two of the most cunning and vicious Vaetorians that ever ruled,” replied the Spider Witch as the royals below downed their wine. “The first ever to rule Amernia, but they came long before your time.”

  The King clutched his throat with a ringed hand as spittle began to run down his lips and onto his beard. His Queen tumbled to the floor, and her silver hair came undone as she convulsed. “Poison is such an ugly thing,” said the Spider Witch as the King and Queen slowly ceased their twitching and their drool pooled in little puddles on the floor.

  The room darkened as the Wild Huntsman rode through one of the hall’s high windows. This time, Adan noticed, he was without his chains and prisoners. The Huntsman’s skeletal horse trotted downwards until it hung in the air over the dead monarchs. Coiling chains appeared in the Huntsman’s hand in a flash of black light. Like striking serpents they shot forward and penetrated the corpses of the poisoned royals. The Huntsman pulled his hand back in a sharp jerk and pulled forth the spectral souls of the King and Queen, naked and terrified. They flailed about as the rider dragged them from the hall.

  “Let us move forward in time,” said the Spider Witch as the world spun in a violent blur. “Three hundred years forward, after the expulsion of the Vaetorians from Amernia, to visit some kings you might recognize.”

  A woman wearing a black and red veil stared solemnly at a wooden coffin being carried by half a dozen knights. “King Gabriel Roselock’s funeral?” asked Adan as the hulking knight captain leading the procession shed a single tear behind his roaring dragon helmet.

  “Such a clever boy,” said the Spider Witch as the Wild Huntsman raced above the hall, invisible to the funeral’s guests. He didn’t stop as his chain penetrated the coffin and dragged King Gabriel’s scared and tired soul from his corpse.

  “I never thought much of Gabriel,” said Adan, “But things were better when he lived.”

  “Doubtlessly,” said the Witch. “But his death ushered forth a delicious age of chaos, did it not?”

  “Delicious? How can you speak of the Green War in such a way?” asked Adan as they left Gabriel’s funeral to find themselves in a regally decorated room. Through a narrow window Adan could see the white city of Capricorn, burning and drenched in a green fog that flooded its streets and choked its people. Beyond the city and moonlit lake an army of thousands began to retreat south, its work complete.

  Below them in a bed a concubine sobbed, hiding behind blue satin sheets. Her king ran to his bedroom door. He was an elf, old, bald, and as slender and lithe as all his people. “Harendiir was the last king I ever served,” said Adan as Harendiir pulled desperately at his chamber door. To his terror Harendiir found the door had been locked from the other side. Frantically the Elf King threw his weight against it, howling, crying, and tearing with bloody fingers at the wood. His struggle ceased when the gas crept under the door and silenced both king and sobbing whore alike.

  “The only king you ever served,” said the Spider Witch as the Huntsman claimed the Elf King from the shadows. “But you’re not the serving sort, are you, boy? Not like your daughter.”

  “Do not speak of my children,” hissed Adan. “They are no concern of yours.”

  “Nor yours,” said the Witch with a laugh. The sky opened and turned to shadow before closing in a ceiling of mountain stone lit by aqueducts of molten metal.

  “Morheim,” said Adan. “I never saw it in its prime.” A parade of armored dwarfs, each no more than four feet tall, marched through the city streets. Lining the many buildings and storefronts, the dwarf commoners cheered.

  “Oh, deary, you still aren’t,” said the Spider Witch as Adan noticed what the soldiers were carrying. Hoisted above them, and tied to his throne, the hundred-and-fifteen-year-old Dwarf King Edgar the Aged bled. His eyes were swollen from the beatings, and his once white and beautiful beard had been shaved off, leaving a patchy stubble. Someone from the crowd threw a brick that sailed over the marching dwarfs’ heads and smashed Edgar in his temple. The old King went limp as the Wild Huntsman claimed his
prize.

  Adan sighed. “Edgar was mad, and his ideologies toxic, but he was the last of the great elfkin. Now we are a shattered and lost people.”

  “Not for long,” said the Spider Witch as they left Morheim, trading it for a dark, windowless chamber containing only a bed and an armor rack. Darius the Usurper’s corpse was impaled upon a spear jammed through the bed. His skull was cloven open, and his brains were dripping onto the floor in soft clumps.

  “There’s the little bastard that started this all,” said Adan, anger welling in him upon seeing the Prince. “If he had let King Gabriel be, the elves would still have Capricorn, and the dwarfs Morheim.”

  “But that’s not what the gods had in mind for your people, was it?”

  “No,” said Adan as the Wild Huntsman and his bride phased through the wall. Chains pulled Darius’s soul from his red-stained and desecrated corpse. He was younger than Adan had imagined. How old is he? Fifteen? Sixteen? guessed Adan. “The Huntsman takes the souls of nobles, but why? Is it vengeance? Or is it a purgatory made by the gods as punishment for a life of wealth?”

  “Justice,” said the Spider Witch.

  Adan blinked and the smell of peat and swamp water filled his nostrils. He was once again in the Witch’s hut. Husband clicked his jaws eagerly.

  The Spider Witch popped the crystal eyes from her skull. “Justice, for every life unfairly touched by their careless decisions. The Huntsman’s appearance tonight was an omen of what’s to come, Adan. Amernia will soon run red with noble blood. There will be chaos, chaos the likes of which the world has never seen. You and I have a role to play.”

  “And what if I don’t want to help with whatever you’re planning?” said Adan, standing up and brushing himself off.

  “You will,” said Husband, his eight eyes gleaming. “You owe usss a life debt. And if you try and cheat usss we’ll find you and make you pay, boy.”

  “What do you want from me?” asked Adan.