Guardians of Magessa (The Birthright Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  Guardians

  of Magessa

  Peter Last

  © Copyright 2014

  Bluewater Publications

  Protected

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the Publisher.

  Published by:

  Bluewater Publications

  www.BluewaterPublications.com

  Credits

  Ø Robert Rausch artist with Gas Studio of Tuscumbia, AL for his extraordinary work on the book's cover.

  Ø Scott Campbell created illustration on the front cover

  Ø David Walker graphic artist that designed the map

  Ø Sheri Dee Developmental Editor

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone who helped make this book a reality. I would specifically like to thank the following individuals who made this book possible through their constant help, suggestions, and snide comments.

  v My mom and dad for bearing through eleven years of this. A special thanks to my father for his impossibly thorough proofreading eye. When he was grading my papers in school, it was the "evil eye." Now it's just plain useful.

  v My sister Rachel for her constant advice on revisions. Even the seven hundred and fifty thousandth time, when I bet she just wanted to strangle me with my own keyboard cord!

  v My family for the trial runs, suggestions, and critiques of my book. They also offered many encouraging comments like, "This actually isn't too bad!"

  v Ben for his suggested improvements to the story. Also for struggling through college alongside me while I wrote this. Your help with the book and in the classroom was invaluable.

  v The other Ben, for believing my work was good enough to publish, even before he read it. If you're seeing this, it means you're finally starting to read the book!

  v My girlfriend for sticking with me, even when I had to spend more time on the book than I had for her.

  v Robert Womack for his first sketch of the illustration on the front cover. His ability to capture my vision was impressive.

  v Tyler Yasaka for his work building my website. He also filmed and edited promotional pieces.

  v Ben Broyles for promotional filming and marketing assistance.

  v John Givens for allowing me access to his incredible medieval attire and battle accoutrements collection.

  v Sheri Dee for her fantastic editorial and proofreading skills; also, for all the marketing guidance.

  v Finally, and most importantly, God for giving me the ability and opportunity to do this. This book is all for you.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Jothnial brushed his shoulder-length, jet-black hair out of his eyes as he peered around the corner. At least the hair used to be jet-black; there were now strands of silver showing. He looked to be in his late forties or early fifties, but he had actually just turned forty-one. He still held his six-foot frame erect, but other signs of the stress of his job were evident in his looks and bearing. Even his elfish blood wasn't able to stave off the effects of the stress.

  The hallway was clear, so he stepped into it and dashed to the next corner. He looked both ways before consulting a map from his pocket. In his mind, he could still clearly hear his commander laying out the plan.

  “Jothnial, you will swim across the moat and enter the courtyard by means of the sewer grate. Our compatriot has removed it completely and replaced it with a weaker version; you should be able to break through it easily enough. You can’t teleport in, due to a detection spell that has been woven over the castle. That also means that if you use magic while inside, you'll be lit up like a beacon. You'll have to do this old school, at least until you're ready to leave.

  "Once inside the courtyard, you'll have to figure out a way to get into the castle. Our contact has suggested that you might try the eastern gate since the guards there are lax compared to the others. Given your abilities, you might also try scaling the walls. Once you get inside, make your way to the third floor. The entire south side is a laboratory for your target, Molkekk’s head magician. Getting inside the laboratory will be difficult since it is guarded inside and out by fifty of Molkekk’s best soldiers. Our contact has no advice for this part of the mission since no one is allowed near the laboratory except for a select few. Use whatever means necessary to get inside that laboratory and eliminate the magician.

  "Once the job is completed, you will have a few options for ex-filtration. If you have managed to remain undetected, it may be possible for you to leave quietly the way that you entered. This would be the optimal approach. If things heat up and you require our assistance to extract you, the roof of the castle is the best option. It provides a flat landing area for the dragons, as well as giving us a height advantage over the castle guards. Other than that, I can't offer much advice. You'll have to play this by ear and hope for the best.”

  Jothnial thought that he had detected something in the commander’s briefing, not in the words themselves, but in the tone that he used and the edge in his voice. It was almost as if this was personal for him. He didn’t think that before a mission was the time to bring it up, but he wondered about it just the same. What connection could the elf that led the squad of magicians have to the wizard Molkekk?

  Getting inside the castle had been easier than Jothnial had expected, but the halls were so confusing that he was having trouble just finding the stairs to the third floor.

  “Why they couldn’t have one staircase going from the bottom to the top is beyond me,” he thought. “It's almost like it was designed to confuse people who don't belong here." On second thought, that was probably not far from the truth. Wizards were notoriously suspicious and this was likely a precaution, one that was paying dividends right now. Absent-mindedly Jothnial fiddled with a pendant that hung from his neck. The silver bauble was circular in shape. Four, curved axe heads were equally spaced on a plain wreath, forming a sort of cross shape. Each axe head was emblazoned with an etching of a triangular, knotted rope. In the center of the pendant, a stylized dragon curled around itself so that it held its tail in its own mouth. The dragon’s visible eye, a tiny ruby chip, glimmered with unnerving depth against the dull silver.

  Jothnial tried once again to locate his position on the map but for naught. It appeared as though the scrap that he held had no real resemblance to the system of halls that confronted him. By turning the map ninety degrees, he was able to locate an area that looked somewhat like his current position, but it wasn't a perfect match. It looked like this diagram was of a different building entirely; the hall that he was currently standing in didn't actually exist according to it. He shook his head in confusion and glared at the map one last time before folding and placing it back into his pocket. If he was correct in his assumption that the confusion here was one of the wizard's defenses, it was probable that many, if not all, of the walls were magical in nature and probably rearranged periodically. Whatever the case, the map was useless to him. Jothnial flexed his left hand and rubbed the leather of his half-finger glove against the wall. He carefully sniffed each hall before choosing the one to the left
.

  After a quick look to make sure that the hall was clear, he dashed to the next corner and glanced around it. A group of twenty soldiers was coming straight toward him so noisily that he wondered how he could have possibly not heard them before. He ran back the way he had come, but came face to face with a group of soldiers as soon as he rounded the corner. For a moment they stared at each other, neither making a move. The elf recovered first and sprinted back down the hall.

  Jothnial rushed around the corner and headed for one of the many doors that lined the hall. He dove inside and pulled the door closed after him, keeping it open a crack so as to be able to see through it. The soldiers who were chasing him rounded the corner, and he closed the door all the way to escape detection. The interior of the room was dark, and he bumped into things as he tried to find a suitable place to hide. A large unlit fireplace occupied most of one wall, and Jothnial lost no time in sliding into it and up the chimney. In this face down position, the blood rushed to his head, but he could keep an eye on the room this way. He pressed his thighs into the sides of the flue, shifting his weight to his legs.

  Almost immediately the room's door opened and one of the groups of soldiers entered. Most of them stood by the door, while five of them continued toward the back wall, a torch lighting their way. At the back of the room, the small circle of light cast by the torch exposed a cradle containing a small baby girl. The baby was dressed in a simple white dress which the soldiers wasted no time in replacing with one of blood-red. One of them picked the baby up, and the soldiers left the room.

  Jothnial waited for a few moments after they were gone before sliding out of the chimney and running to the door. The soldiers with the baby were just rounding a corner in the hall, but the other group was nowhere to be seen. After a careful check in both directions, Jothnial sprinted down the hall just catching the last soldier before he disappeared around the corner. He had to stop himself from using magic to dispatch the man, opting for a more conventional method. He covered the man's mouth with his left hand and stabbed a long, sharp dagger into his heart with the other. The soldier thrashed around frantically for a short time, trying to warn his comrades, but Jothnial's grip was too strong. He dragged the dispatched soldier into a nearby room, removed the dagger, and quickly cleaned it. Though it would have been a fantastic disguise, he didn't have time to strip the soldier and put on his armor; however, all of the castle guards wore large, billowy capes. Jothnial wasted no time in taking the oversized piece of cloth from the dead man and fastening it to his own shoulders. He also took the soldier's helmet and placed it on his own head. The fit wasn't perfect, but it would be good enough to disguise him from the back.

  With the cape and helmet secured, Jothnial silently slipped back into the hall and sprinted back to the corner that he had caught the soldier going around. The hall branched several times to either side along its length, and Jothnial's sharp eyes saw the cloak of a soldier disappear around the corner of one of these branches. He sprinted down the hall, careful to keep his steps light and thankful for the soft leather boots on his feet. He hurried to the back of the procession and fell in step with the other soldiers; he didn’t know where they were going, but hoped they would lead him somewhere useful.

  The soldiers wound through the hallways of the castle following a long and confusing path that Jothnial couldn't have memorized, even if he had wanted to. They finally stopped in front of two massive doors and the group's leader provided a password to the two sentries. The doors swung inward, and the column of soldiers filed through them, entering a massive gothic-style room. The ceiling extended upward for at least fifty feet and grotesque statues filled the place; Jothnial’s attention was drawn to the biggest object in the room: a large, stone altar located at the room's center. The structure was massive, standing at least twenty-five feet high and had been formed completely out of a solid block of some sort of black stone. Stairs were cut into all four sides and every available surface was covered in relief carvings. A smaller altar stood on top of the large one, and Jothnial guessed that it was here that the offerings would be placed. It was to here that the soldier carrying the baby walked.

  Jothnial realized what was happening and slunk back into the shadows. He silently strung his bow and nocked an arrow. He watched as the soldier scaled the side of the stone edifice and placed the baby on the smaller altar. The soldier now retreated back to his companions while from the other side of the room, a man dressed in black and blood-red robes swooped up onto the altar. He was sharpening a knife on a whetstone, as he slowly climbed the many steps. Once on top, he placed the stone on the edge of the smaller altar and turned his gaze to the baby. He gave a ghastly, evil-looking smile and raised the knife.

  Jothnial's arrow was already drawn and aimed, and without a moment’s hesitation he let the barbed shaft fly. The arrow found its mark, burying itself in the throat of the priest. In the shocked silence that followed, the priest grabbed at his throat as he staggered around the altar. Jothnial sensed that he was trying to heal himself, but the arrow's tip had been silver. The priest staggered backwards, tripped over a carved gargoyle, and fell over the edge, plummeting the two and a half stories to the stone floor. Before anyone knew what was happening, Jothnial burst out of the shadows, scaled the altar's steps, and had the baby in one of his arms. With his free hand he drew a short sword and held it in a defensive position. It was clear that he was ready to take on anyone who approached, but the soldiers were still shaking off the shock of what had just happened. Jothnial backed off the altar and headed for the end of the room from which the priest had come. Before he had reached safety, the soldiers were after him. One of them loosed an arrow and with superhuman reflexes, Jothnial knocked it aside with his sword.

  Jothnial came to a pair of doors that were every bit as big as the ones on the other side of the room and leaned into them, pushing with all of his strength. They didn't even budge. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the soldiers were in full pursuit now. He knew that using magic would light him up like a firefly under the castle's detection spells, but he didn't have any other options. There were too many guards for him to fight while holding a baby and the doors were too heavy. Regretting the action as he performed it, he pressed his hand up against one of the doors and extended a tendril of magic. With a groan, the door swung outward, and Jothnial rushed through. He spun around and shoved another spell at it to close it. The door slammed shut just as one of the soldiers tried to dive through. The sharp edge of the door cut completely through the soldier’s body, but Jothnial was already moving forward. Now that he had tripped the detection spells, if he stopped moving, he would be dead in minutes. He spun on his heels and froze in his tracks.

  What he saw directly in front of him was impossible he knew, even for a skilled magic user. A marsh lay before him blocking his way for as far as he could see in either direction. The only way across was a solitary, rickety-looking bridge. A blood-red moon hung low in the sky and cast a red light on everything for miles around. Nothing before Jothnial matched with reality; he had been on the second floor of the castle, so the door couldn't have taken him outside. Not to mention that the moon, which had been yellow when he entered the castle, was now red. The only thing that coincided with reality was that there had been a marsh outside the castle, but it was separated from the actual building by a wall and moat.

  Jothnial knew what he was seeing and yet his brain told him that a spell of this magnitude would be impossible; but obviously it was magic that had somehow been used to make the inside of the castle bigger than it really was. The only way that he could think of for this to be possible was if the doors he had just entered had transported him to a different dimension; however, he hadn’t noticed any shift in dimensions so he eliminated that option immediately. In any case, the marsh stank of magic, and Jothnial knew that he had a better chance of escaping if he went back through the doors by which he had gained access to the marsh. He turned and for the second time in as man
y minutes was shocked by what he saw. The doors he had passed through to get to the marsh had been massive, but the doors he saw now were at least a hundred times taller. In that moment he realized how a marsh could fit inside a castle and berated himself for not figuring it out earlier. Everything here, including himself, had been shrunk—everything except for the doors.

  “I should have expected something like that,” Jothnial chided himself. “After all, I’m infiltrating Molkekk’s headquarters. This place was bound to stink of dark magic.”

  He extended another tendril of magic toward the doors, but stayed several feet away from them. He knew what was on the other side of those doors and would gladly have left it there if it weren’t for his current predicament. He slowly nudged one door open without any more effort than he had expended the first time. Clearly, being shrunk had not affected his ability to work magic. He waited for the soldiers to burst through the doors, but nothing happened. The seconds turned into minutes and still nothing. Jothnial slid his sword into the scabbard on his back, and using his free hand, formed a small ball of magic between his index finger and thumb and spread it on his eyes. Immediately, his surroundings took on a transparent form, showing all that was hidden. He looked toward the door and instead of seeing the temple on the other side he saw a hillside. With a snap of his fingers, his vision returned to normal. Moving cautiously, he walked toward the doors. He peeked through the open one and saw that his magic had not deceived him. On the other side was a sunny hillside with a stream running down it. A small cottage stood on top of the hill.

  Jothnial was bewildered by the change, but more frightened by the fact that he had no idea where he was. He took a slow, deep breath and let it out before comparing his options. On one side of the door was a marsh that stank of evil. It could easily hide enemies and would be difficult for him to traverse. On the other side of the door was a brightly lit hill. It did not seem evil in the least and was very open. If Jothnial were attacked, he would have plenty of time to react. He went over the decision in his head hundreds of times, knowing quite well that the wrong choice could cost him his life.