Ascending Shadows

  ASCENDING SHADOWS

  Book 6 of The Age of Dawn

  EVERET MARTINS

  Contents

  DRM

  Zoria Map

  Newsletter

  1. Prologue

  2. Senka Graves

  3. Isa Dodred

  4. The Test of Stones

  5. Old Friends

  6. Shadow Rising

  7. New Horizons

  8. The Far Sea

  9. Tigeria

  10. The Long Road

  11. Savages

  12. Debts

  13. Death March

  14. Dark Touch

  15. Ashrath

  16. The Dread Temple

  17. Prodal

  18. A Fair Trade

  19. A Grudge

  20. Dark Tidings

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  DRM

  The author has provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management (DRM) software applied so you can read it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices. Copyright infringement is against the law.

  For you and for reading. Thank you.

  Zoria Map

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  ONE

  Prologue

  She was given many names.

  Although only in her late twenties, the Chronicles had already bestowed her with more titles than she could have ever imagined. She was the Shield of Zoria to the Death Spawn who had once ravaged the lands. The Ruler of Nightmares for the watch she kept on the Shadow Realm. Paragon of the Damned to her enemies. And, as she would learn much later, the Scourge of Midgaard.

  Her people only openly referred to her by one name. This was the name they would call out as she passed them by on the streets of New Breden: Arch Wizard. Most would bow or nod with respect. Some thought they had remained hidden behind their drawn curtains, stealing furtive glances. Children would squeal with excitement and others with terror.

  Three years had passed since Walter, her love, had sacrificed himself to the Dragon and the Phoenix to slay the Shadow god and her kin. He had been successful and reached his long sought after goal. The Shadow Realm was now a place where the soul of man could go to rest. It was a world of brilliant colors and thriving life. However, no great conquest ever came to fruition without a great price.

  She paid Walter’s price in cloistered silence. She often spent days in her office, ignoring the world, throwing herself into the task of recording the history of the realm’s war against the Shadow. She was on her ninth version now, finding each that came before it severely lacking and incinerating her work in Dragon fire. She would account for all the details even if it killed her in the process.

  Her frame had taken on the leanness of a beggar’s in recent months, but she still held herself with the poise of a queen. She was taller than most women, a height that matched her station. Time had not been kind to her. The grief she endured after Walter’s loss carved deep furrows in the crow’s feet that edged her eyes and mouth. She still glowed with a youthful countenance, eyes sharp and bright, but appeared worn for a woman of her years.

  Some said her eyes could penetrate your mind and hear your every thought. It wasn’t true, but she wasn’t about the dash apart the allure. She knew that mystique granted power, and power was respected. Reputation was everything. Being the last dual-wielder, she had no need for the guise of power. Nyset was the most powerful human alive by her scholar’s accounts.

  Nyset Camfield, Arch Wizard of the Silver Tower, stared east through the perfect curve of the dark archway. Behind the archway, the sky settled with a globe of amber hovering over the Far Sea’s horizon. Gradients of blues, purples, and reds stretched up to infinity, framed in by shredded strings of clouds spiraling and twisting away as if terrified of the sun. The faint squawking of gulls was carried on the breeze.

  A gust of salt-tanged air whipped through her office, twitching undulating curtains and sending scrolls pattering to the ground. She closed her eyes and deeply inhaled. The air chilled her narrow cheeks and made gooseflesh crawl up her lithe arms. Her silken robes were red as freshly spilled blood, flapping against her bony ribs. The wind relented, and the heavy curtains around her windows settled. Remnants of volcanic dust from the last eruption burrowed into nooks.

  Her office was perched within the top floor of the tallest spire of the Silver Tower, giving her a glorious view of the world through the four arched windows surrounding it. To the east was the Far Sea, and to the south lay New Breden, the name she had given to the rebuilt town. To the west, the trackless plains sprawled to the puffing volcano and to the Lich’s River. Midgaard was a shimmering speck of sand in the distance and could only be seen on the most crystalline of days. To the north, the Plains of Dressna were bathed in shadow, trapped by the sands of the Nether and the boundless wall of the Mountains of Misery. The mountains were permanently frosted with snow, their tips piercing through the smudge of gray clouds above.

  The room felt cramped, ornamented with neat piles of parchment and pillars of books crammed into every corner, as the bottoms of her bookshelves were already bowing with the burden of carrying her tomes. There were thousands of books in the rectangular room, shrouding the polished marble walls with the swathes of prismatic colors that marked their spines. If you looked hard enough between the pillars of books, mounted against the wall you would find slivers of priceless paintings depicting images of Zoria’s battles against the Shadow Realm. Some she had commissioned, others taken out of storage. She liked being reminded that peace was transitory.

  Nyset opened her eyes with a long exhale. She stood over her enormous oaken desk, fingers steepled and pressing together so hard it made her fingers quiver. Along the edges of her desk were countless scrolls, shining cut ribbons, and a few melting candles surrounding a map whose ends draped and curled over the desk’s edge. A pair of fireballs floated above her head, crackling in the breeze and casting their flickering glow on the sea of books. She always kept her fire close by, aware of the inherent danger with so much combustible material. There was something incredibly comforting about having so much knowledge at her fingertips. She could have made her way to the library and studied there, but she did not have time to wait.

  She forced her hands down, flexed her fingers to work out the soreness, and looked at the map again. Her dry, red-rimmed eyes traced the path she marked. A golden thread of hair interspersed with wisps of silver fell in front of her face. She sighed as she tucked it behind her ear and brushed off a dusting of dried hibiscus flowers from the center of the map. A series of red X’s marched along the coast of the map, four in all. The last mark’s ink was still drying. They marked where her scouts reported new incidences of plague, except this was no ordinary plague.

  This was dark magic. Death Spawn magic. According to the reports, which were all mostly consistent with each other, those suffering from the curse were afflicted with pustules that would burst forth from the flesh and with them came snakes. That wasn’t the most alarming detail of the reports. What was most concerning was that the snakes had violet eyes. It wasn’t
that they were only violet but that they glowed with it. She wanted to deny it, write it off as simply a different breed but knew only beasts of Shadow had glowing violet eyes. She knew it in her gut.

  The Shadow has returned.

  Her hand reached for her throat and scratched, remembering how it felt to be choking on one of the vile creatures. She remembered Walter jerking the snake free from her torn lips and Isa, her loyal assassin, killing it. She remembered the burning of blood in her eyes and the world painted in shades of red misery. She could almost feel the weight of all that congealing blood now, dragging her down into a bed of bones. Dragging her down to bow before the Shadow’s awful power.

  “No.” Nyset shook her head and started pacing, tapping a finger on her pillowy lips. She furrowed her brow, watching the mortared veins pass under her bare feet. “Focus,” she hissed.

  She had almost forgotten about the Shadow princess. The dark form had escaped through the portal Nyset wove as she and her friends had exited the Shadow Realm. For the last two years, she couldn’t go a day without feeling like her stomach contained a smoldering coal. Burning acid would crawl up her throat when she tried to sleep, feeling as if it intended to carve a hole through her chest. It burned now. To distract herself, around and around her table she went, avoiding stepping on scrolls and kicking over neatly piled books. Her room was cluttered but ordered.

  Nyset had scoured the realm. She sent every assassin, diplomat, and spy she had at her disposal to search for the Shadow princess. She found nothing but the hollow stories constructed by men who yearned for a greater sense of significance. She put a bounty of one thousand marks for anyone who could provide verifiable information regarding her whereabouts. That was a mistake that had cost her precious time.

  A farmer claimed he’d seen Death Spawn around his plantation, and they’d killed his sheep. She saw through the lie easily enough, as Death Spawn only care for the taste of men. Another said she saw the Princess in the streets of New Breden, even named the wine red color of her armor. It seemed like a lead. It was discovered that a teenager was merely trying to frighten his sister, and the color of the armor was coincidental. And so the fabricated stories went until she implemented a penalty of twenty marks for falsehoods. The lies slowed to a trickle then, and even the most determined of conmen quaked before Nyset’s anger. Fire would flare in her eyes and the air around her would shimmer with heat, dispelling even the most hardened deceits from the liar’s lips.

  Time passed, and the world was peaceful. The realm was quiet, for a time. Life had almost started to feel easy. The burning coal in her gut had been put out, and the acid in her gut receded to a dull ache. She was able to direct her full attention into the Tower’s reconstruction and raising necessary funds for rebuilding the village the Death Spawn had burned. Then the first report arrived from the Tigerian continent.

  She had never been to Tigeria. To her knowledge, no one in Zoria had been there since the Trial of Devastation, well over five-hundred years ago. The Tigerians once poured in from the south near the mouth of the Lich’s River and marched upon Midgaard, hoping to take the capital upon their terrible mounts. They rode enormous cats the size of horses with fangs as long and sharp as swords. The Tigerians were fearsome fighters, agile, swift, and as fast as a Blood Eater.

  They were no match for the Midgaard Falcon. They were slaughtered from the city’s impregnable walls and deadly archer’s towers. Since then, they had been a mortal enemy to Zoria, though they had never clashed again, their feud forgotten in the sands of time. Their arrival brought the Milvorian artifacts that the realm holds so precious today. Many held strange powers. The Tower had made feeble attempts artificing, but the results were less than impressive.

  Nyset would never forget that first letter. She slipped it from her scroll bag, tattered at the edges, and re-read it for what must have been the hundredth time.

  Dear Mistress,

  I recently left Dirihaven, hardly escaping with my life. I believe your suspicions have been proven true. There is a Shadow plague here. Beasts emerge from wounds and ruptured flesh. The first that I encountered was a viper, its eyes glowing like amethysts in the bright of the sun. There was no sun though, and the moon was blotted behind rain clouds.

  About half of the village is infected now. There doesn’t seem to be a known cure to the Tigerians. Tomorrow, we march south to Rookstead. There have been similar cases reported there. I will send word.

  Yours in service,

  Joras

  P.S. The infected have strange scars on their necks: a sideways “8.”

  She never heard from him again. She waited and waited, trying to turn off the screaming voice that drummed against her skull. “War comes. Death awaits,” it said. She tried to keep it quiet, tried to occupy herself with her work, but the voice always pushed through like a new shoot searching for light. One day, she awoke after dreaming of the letter, thinking for a moment that it was all a dream. She immediately re-read it again, reality striking like a smith’s hammer.

  “You chose this burden,” she reminded herself.

  What struck her most about Joras’ letter every time she read it was his mentioning of the figure eight scars. She reached for the back of her neck and ran her fingers along its raised edges. It was the mark given to all who had entered the Shadow Realm, branding them sustenance for the Shadow god’s twisted beasts. But the Shadow god was dead, and this wasn’t the Shadow Realm. How could this be happening? Could the Shadow princess be raising an army in this world? Asebor was significantly weaker than the Shadow god; she should be too. She needed to know more.

  She sent tens of other spies to Tigeria on merchant’s ships, and more reports came. The Tigerians were her enemies because they were the realm’s, but the enemy of her most hated enemy was her ally. She had no choice but to help the Tigerians. This was her mistake. This was her responsibility.

  She stopped pacing and paused before the map again. She licked her lips, her eyes scanning the jagged Tigerian coastline. It was a long trek to Tigeria, at least two weeks at sea. Merchants were arriving in greater frequency at the newly constructed port south of New Breden. Word had traveled that the Tower was once again a safe harbor and the gleam of coin could not be resisted.

  She put the letter back in the bag. It was time to send a more capable force, a subtle one. She would send those she could wholly trust. Perhaps she should go, make new discoveries, and see a new world. She felt a smile spreading across her cheeks and a new found energy filled her legs. Her fingers twiddled against her hips.

  She thought that maybe she was ready to go outside again. She remembered the last time she visited the courtyard. There were so many people, clashing sounds, and choking scents. Endless petitioners and endless groveling. Life in her office was easy. It was simple. Private.

  It took everything she had to endure their accusing eyes. Their dagger gazes said that she killed their husbands, mothers, and babies. People always wanted someone to blame, even knowing their evidence was made up of half-truths.

  Some accused her of not doing more to stop Asebor’s initial rise. They were unaware that she wasn’t even the Arch Wizard then. She was just another villager like them, trying to survive. She never asked for this station. She just did what needed to be done. Her pleas for understanding fell on deaf ears. Books never looked at her as if her hands were covered in the blood of their loved ones.

  Perhaps they feared her, being a dual-wielder. Perhaps she was losing her grip on reality. She knew that trauma could change a person in unimaginable ways. She remembered how Walter had changed after he came back from the Shadow Realm, his bouts of rage and all the mindless fury he unleashed upon their enemies. Was this a symptom of that? She pulled a finger from her mouth, the nail partly bitten through. “Damn it.” She clawed her hand through her hair.

  Laughter bubbled up the stairs leading to her office, muffled by the heavy banded door. Warmth flooded in her chest, and the creeping shadows of her mind were di
spelled. It was a boyish laugh she had come to love unlike no other.

  “Momma! Uncie?” Gaidal giggled.

  “I’m not your momma, you know that, Gaidal,” Claw said through laboring breath.

  “Papa?” Gaidal asked.

  “No,” Claw said flatly. “Uncle will do, but you know that.”

  “More sweets?”

  “Come on now, you know very well how to take stairs,” Claw said, sounding like his patience was frayed. “Your mother is waiting for you. One step at a time, go on. Go on, you can do it.”

  Nyset grinned even wider. She knew then that she could never leave again. Her place was here, in the Tower with her son, Walter’s son. She turned from the map, facing the door and planted her hands on her hips. She shook her head, pushing down the worries trying to rise up again.

  Claw rapped on the door. “Mistress?”

  “Come in. Could use a break.”

  The hinges creaked, and the door swung open. Claw ushered Gaidal through the door, one hand placed on his back. The boy’s dark hair was tussled about his shoulders, his brand new robe already torn near one knee.

  “Momma!” Gaidal stumbled over to her, arms outstretched. He lost his balance as his foot struck the corner of a book. For an instant, his eyes flickered with the fire of the Dragon as he recovered his footing. His big eyes danced along the floor, taking it all in as he navigated for her.