The Heretic's Song (The Song's Of Aarda Book 1) Read online

  The Warrior’s Song

  (Excerpt)

  “Good work Ogun. Now we can do some damage to them,” Laakea said, once he arrived at Ogun’s position.

  “How do we rescue Pa and the rest without exposing ourselves to their attack?”

  “We do expose ourselves to attack— somewhat.”

  Ogun looked puzzled, but waited for Laakea to finish.

  “That’s where I come in,” Kyonna beamed at both men. “It’s time for Dragan’s Wall, right?”

  Laakea nodded. “Ogun, take Ky and several slingers. Go out there. Make plenty of noise. You can’t use the slings from behind Kyonna’s wall, but our enemies don’t know that,” Laakea grinned.

  “Pretend to rush their position. When they come out to share in the festivities, I’ll play a sharp little dance tune on my harp.” Laakea stroked his bow.

  “I’m sure they won’t enjoy the melody, but they’ll dance to it none the less. While they are dancing, Isil’s helpers will bring back the wounded.”

  “Isil, you stay with me and hand me an arrow whenever I release one.”

  “Aye, lad. Business as usual that’s duh ticket.”

  “Ogun, pick your party. Start whenever you’re ready.”

  Laakea strode back to the defile and waited for Ogun and the rest to join him.

  “It be a good plan, Laakea, don’t fret over duh details.”

  “I know it’s the best we can do, but my father’s words haunt me.”

  “What words?”

  “Your battle plan is the first casualty in any engagement.”

  “Optimistic sort o’ fella, yer Pa,” Isil said with her usual grim humor.

  The Songs of Aarda Series

  The Heretic’s Song

  The Warrior’s Song

  (Forthcoming)

  The Healer’s Song

  The Redeemer’s Song

  Other Books by K.R. Schultz

  The Best Man

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  The

  Heretic’s

  Song

  By

  K. R. Schultz

  © 2016 by K. R. Schultz

  All rights reserved.

  The Heretic’s Song is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 10: 1539340465

  ISBN 13: 9781539340461

  Printed in the United States of America

  Western Khel Braah.

  Eastern Khel Braah.

  Prolog

  Along the sharp spine of the ridge, the trunks of the trees leaned into the wind and braced against its force. Their coats of twigs and leaves streamed behind them in the moonlight, struggling to keep up with the branches that bore them. It was a trick of the light and the wind, but the trees appeared to race toward a destination on the valley floor.

  A lone figure picked his way through the trees in the shadows below the ridge. His name was Laakea and his name meant ‘light’ in the ancient tongue. Although he did not know it, he stumbled toward his destiny.

  The jagged edges of the night wind pierced his clothing. It slashed at his face and ears as his heart pumped warmth from exposed flesh with every beat. Laakea shivered, pulled his cloak tighter, and tucked numb fingers inside his cloak, to warm them. The soft white light of the moon gave no heat.

  The moon’s pale light, painted everything in shades of gray and silver, ghostly, insubstantial, and colorless in the darkness. The wind in the trees drowned out everything but his footsteps as he picked his way through the forest. He glanced up at the trees silhouetted along the ridge, to keep his bearings. Laakea found it easy enough to lose his way in daylight, but the darkness disoriented him. He had lost the game trail he followed earlier in the evening.

  Laakea’s spirits sank after the first night alone in the forest. On this third night of walking away from his mountain valley home, panic filled his mind, but nothing filled his stomach. Laakea had walked day and night with short naps and an occasional stop to drink from puddles and hollow tree stumps. It was a hell of a night. A hell of a night, far from shelter, without a destination.

  “At least it’s not raining,”

  His father had driven him from the comfort of his home. Laakea had no time for reflection, since there were more pressing problems tonight. The most pressing issue being survival, because he should have reached the village of Dun Dale days ago.

  His stomach screamed for food. Bouts of shivering from the damp spring air subsided but hunger, exertion and frigid temperatures numbed his mind and body. Laakea needed rest and warmth.

  Sleep called, and tugged at his tired limbs like a lover.

  “It must be near freezing,”

  Each step became a battle, every obstacle in his path an ominous challenge. The forest closed in around him. Wet branches slapped and stung his cold skin. A dark thought beckoned.

  “Stop fighting — sleep — rest — stay.

  Laakea heard a voice that reminded him of the color of gold and triggered memories of his mother. It was brilliant and beautiful. It’s bright melodic power urged him to continue.

  The warm glow of those memories kept him from succumbing to the forest’s icy embrace. Laakea remembered hot summer days in the garden with his mother, weeding vegetables, in the humid air. He remembered a similar golden power in Shelhera’s songs before the shadow overtook her, and she grew frail and wan.

  Laakea remembered winters in the forge with his father, suppers at the kitchen table where the family laughed, joked, and sang. The memories fortified him.

  He tripped over a root and it jarred him out of his reverie. Laakea struggled to his feet and brushed away the detritus and leaf mold, his clothing damp and dirty.

  He carried on, stumbling from tree to tree. The light disappeared and darkness enveloped him. The walk seemed endless. Although Laakea hoped for dawn, the night darkened. At first, he suspected his eyesight had failed, because of fatigue and hypothermia but something blotted out the moon and stars. He looked up at the sky.

  There were clouds. Rain began falling.

  Laakea pulled his hat tighter, wrapped his cloak closer to his body and struggled onward. The rain was light but it worked through his garments and the soles of his boots. It carried the chilling wind through his clothing.

  What was that? A light — or my imagination.

  Laakea dragged himself ahead, growing weaker with each step.

  “Over there, a yellow glow, winking. It may be a lantern or a campfire,”

  Laakea’s father had told him stories of rough men, human wolves, who preyed on weak and helpless people.

  If the fire belonged to the tattooed Abrhaani men, who lurked in this forest, they would gut him like a fish. The firelight lured him, like a moth drawn to a candle. He reminded himself that the moth perishes in the flame.

  The combat lessons, his father taught him were useless to Laakea, cold and tired, with a dagger as his only weapon. If he had planned this journey, he could have brought a bow and the practice sword Aelfric made him use daily.

  The relentless schedule of training appeared pointless to Laakea then. The Abrhaani farmers, gentle people of the land, avoided him and his family. Their children kept their distance from him, although he never understood why.

  Laakea and his parents were bigger than their Abrhaani neighbors. His blond hair and blue eyes set him apart from
the emerald-eyed, dark-haired, green-skinned children around him. Though he was thirteen summers, he towered above youngsters his own age, and he was a hand’s-breadth taller than the village’s adult men.

  There was the occasional bully among the older children. Raamya, the Sawyer’s three sons did not live in Dun Dale, but in the town of New Hope. They caused trouble for Laakea and others in the village, but Laakea, big for his age, settled most disputes with bluster. He resorted to throwing a punch, or scuffling and rolling in the dirt, until they sorted things out. Laakea never needed weapons, or weapons training for those skirmishes. His father ignored the bruises and scrapes that arose from those encounters.

  Laakea pestered his father with questions about his heritage and their presence on Khel Braah after his mother died, but Aelfric refused to answer.

  Shelhera, his mother, told him stories and legends about their gods, and taught vegetable gardening to her son. Shelhera’s forebears were bowyers and fletchers, and in keeping with family traditions, she passed those skills to Laakea. Shelhera explained that they lived on an island called Kel Braah, in the sea of Syn Gersuul. Laakea had never seen the sea; nor had he been beyond the village of Dun Dale. Laakea’s parents never allowed him far enough from the farm and the forge to see the outside world. That oversight contributed to his undoing tonight.

  Shelhera gave him bits of information about their people, the Eniila. Aelfric always looked displeased whenever he caught Shelhera telling Laakea her stories. In spite of those looks of disapproval, Aelfric never reprimanded Shelhera, at least not when Laakea heard it.

  Shelhera died too soon to answer all Laakea’s questions. Without her presence, Laakea had no outlet for his curiosity about the larger world and his mysterious heritage. The desire for answers drove him to risk his father’s rages.

  After Shelhera’s death, life at the forge became unbearable. Laakea remembered the old days, when Aelfric took the boy on his broad shoulders and ran around the yard, roaring with laughter. Aelfric ran so fast that Laakea’s hair streamed in the wind.

  Laakea helped his father in the forge sorting nails and bits of iron until he grew strong enough, to fetch water and work the bellows. Those were golden sunny days, but when Shelhera sickened and wasted away, things changed. A shadow fell on their lives.

  Shelhera weakened, but it seemed both Laakea’s parents were ill. Shelhera’s ailment drained the life out of Laakea’s father. Aelfric’s grief was a bleeding wound that never healed. The light in Aelfric’s eyes disappeared and laughter soon followed it. Sullen, silence replaced them both. When Shelhera died, only shadows of Aelfric’s former self remained.

  Laakea glimpsed the man his father had been, when they stood side by side with torches, watching Shelhera’s pyre brighten the night with flame. The breeze freshened and blew sparks into the night sky, like fireflies rushing toward the stars, until the darkness swallowed the tiny specks.

  They faced the flames together, and Aelfric put his large hand on Laakea’s shoulder, as if to comfort him. The comfort disappeared the next morning, like the sparks that flew into the night sky.

  After they surrendered Shelhera’s body to the flames of the funeral pyre, Aelfric’s long silences became more brooding and sullen, punctuated by outbursts of rage. The best the boy could expect of his father these days was a single word answer to a question; at worst, a tongue-lashing fit to blister the daub off the walls of their house. It was impossible to please him and Laakea tired of trying. Laakea’s own anger boiled hot within, until he rebelled, and his father drove him out.

  “Get out and never return. I never want to see you again. I wish you were never born, so I wouldn’t see your face and be reminded of — her.” Aelfric refused to speak Shelhera’s name.

  Laakea cursed his father; or rather, he cursed the man his father had become. He called down the wrath of the gods on Aelfric’s head.

  Laakea only wanted to stop his father’s belligerence, but by cursing his father he committed an unpardonable offense. That transgression provoked Aelfric to threaten Laakea with violence. Only bloodshed remedied such words. Insulting one’s father incurred a Blood Debt which required Laakea’s life-blood for repayment.

  Laakea could never go home. No — that was not true; he could never go home and survive, unless he bested his father in single combat. If Laakea defeated Aelfric, it was a sign that the gods judged Laakea and granted victory, but Laakea was guilty, so the gods could not judge otherwise. Shame branded his wrathful words into his memory.

  When Aelfric swung a piece of firewood like a club, Laakea fled into the night, snatching his cloak and hat from the peg by the door. He rushed into the darkening forest, leaving everything behind and faced the world alone, shamed and unloved.

  He missed his mother.

  In that moment of hatred, Laakea embodied all the worst failings he saw in his father, and multiplied those flaws. Worse than that, Laakea had dishonored himself and the memory of his mother.

  “I was stupid. I should have collected provisions and a bedroll,”

  Aelfric gave him no chance to prepare or plan for this journey. Once Laakea put distance between himself and his father, he had planned to make for Dun Dale, but in the dark, Laakea lost the trail. Fear, and haste, had put him in grave danger.

  Laakea’s mind wandered again. He rallied; realizing death awaited him if he allowed his mind to wander. There was no use thinking what he should have done. He was freezing and desperate. To stay where he was, or to continue in his present condition, assured death. The fire at least held the possibility of keeping him alive. It was the best choice left to him. Laakea set his course by the light, forcing his way through the wet undergrowth.

  Hope grew within him as the light grew brighter. The chill rain trickled down his neck, squelched inside his boots, and drew away the last of his body’s precious warmth. Each step demanded payment drawn from an internal account of willpower and energy with a balance near zero.

  Laakea tried to shout for aid, but little more than a groan issued from him. His jaw and his lips were as numb and sluggish as his arms and legs.

  It was a race now. Time became elastic, measured sodden footsteps. Seconds stretched and became hours. Laakea’s limbs belonged to someone else. He commanded them to cooperate and they grudgingly obeyed like unruly draft animals.

  Although he drew closer to it, the light seemed to grow dimmer. His eyelids grew heavy. His consciousness drifted, like the wind-driven clouds overhead. The fog that overtook his mind blurred what little he saw in the darkness. His knees buckled and he dropped onto the soggy litter of the forest floor and fell on his face, his outstretched hands barely slowed his fall.

  The golden voice spoke again, “It is not ended.”

  Blackness swallowed him in a single gulp.

  Chapter 1

  Rehaak awakened with a nagging headache over his right eye, sensing he had forgotten something important from his dreams. The morning sun outlined everything in gold, shredded the remains of the night, and cast long shrinking shadows. Tatters of darkness clung in isolated patches, where it still hid from the light, an omen, perhaps, but he was too tired to care.

  Though the day was fine and fair, he felt rough and foul. Rehaak felt dissolute in spite of working for The Creator’s cause again. He warned, cajoled, and outright threatened the citizens of Narragansett, without effect. No one heeded his ominous message. He was a failure — again.

  Perhaps he had sunk too far into rebellion and broken too many of his God’s laws. Perhaps his God had forsaken him. In spite of his renewed efforts to complete The Creator’s mission, his conscience plagued Rehaak this morning. Hope lay stillborn in the darkness of his heart, in spite of the bright new day being born around him.

  “Enough. I am sick of this life. I must find something else to do,” he said, and threw his bedding to the floor.

  The Creator had snared Rehaak in a net with no escape. Based on the last few days experience of rejection and derision, he was
equally convinced there was no hope for success.

  Rehaak came to the city of Narragansett, full of optimism. The scriptorium was the center of learning and knowledge in Kel Braah and the logical place to search for the Aetheriad. The ancient text had been the object of his quest and the center of Rehaak’s existence for most of his thirty years. He suspected it contained critical information to save his people from impending doom. The search was long — and fruitless.

  The hope that flooded him when he crossed the causeway into Narragansett seven years ago drained away, leaving him dry like the sunlit dust on his windowsill. Twelve years of ineffective searching through dusty books and forgotten ruins took their toll on his optimism and confidence.

  The sheer volume of material in the scriptorium intimidated Rehaak and he lost the will to continue his search, through the mountain of parchments and scrolls.

  In days past Rehaak anesthetized his failure by spending his time and money on pleasure, using and abusing others at his whim. He disobeyed the laws of decency and the laws of The Creator. Depression overtook him once those analgesics became ineffective.

  Rehaak’s dedication and devotion to his lengthy studies earned him a reputation. No one understood more of what lay in the most ancient texts. No one deciphered the arcane writings better. None of the Ecclesiarches matched his wit in debate, but his erudition did not bring him any closer to the legendary volume. Rehaak found clues and hints among the writings of long dead scholars, prophets and priests, but the evidence was cryptic and contradictory. Rehaak had lost hope and succumbed to the desires of the flesh.

  The change began innocently. One person of influence sought his advice, and soon others followed, then dozens came to him for counsel and prophetic insight. People sought him for his prophecies and paid him well for his advice. In the beginning, he told people what he believed The Creator wanted the Abrhaani to hear, but Rehaak soon found better commerce telling his customers what pleased them. He squandered his credibility, by filling their ears, and their hearts with words devoid of real insight or value.