The Shadow King Read online

  The Shadow King

  The Shadow King © 2019 by Alec Hutson

  Published by Alec Hutson

  Cover art by John Anthony di Giovanni

  Cover design by Shawn King

  Map by Sebastian Breit

  Edited by Laura Hughes

  Interior layout and design by Ampersand Book Interiors

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-7342574-0-3 (print)

  978-0-9982276-9-6 (ebook)

  Please visit Alec’s website at

  www.authoralechutson.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Maps

  Dedication

  What Came Before

  The Story So Far: The Crimson Queen

  The Story So Far: The Silver Sorceress

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my brothers, Justin and Silas

  The history of sorcery is scribed in blood.

  The seekers of the Reliquary say that the first men to draw power from the beyond were born in ancient Menekar, the Mother of Cities, in the years that its armies swept across the white plains. Most tribes knelt in fear before their glittering power, awed by this sign of the god Ama’s favor. Those who dared resist were consumed and left as ash to be trampled beneath the boots of the marching legions.

  For a time, the first sorcerers were content to serve Ama and the emperor. But the hunger for power that comes with a mastery of sorcery is insatiable, and when no more cities remained to conquer the sorcerers turned back towards Menekar. The emperor was cast down from the alabaster throne, his broken body hung above the Malachen Gates, and the Warlock King rose in terrible glory. In his court, those touched by sorcery were venerated as holy and those without the gift seen as barely more than animals. All manner of depravity was condoned.

  Ama was not so easily ousted, however. There arose during the darkest time a champion infused with the divine light of his lord – the monk Tethys, first of the Pure, bearer of a white-metal sword. Immune to the ravages of sorcery, he led a crusade that destroyed the Warlock King and his monstrous court and returned Menekar and her empire to the sheltering radiance of Ama.

  But the knowledge of sorcery could not be suppressed. Across the mountains of the Spine, in the shadow of the decaying wraith kingdoms, walls were being raised against the wilderness. In the fertile lowlands Kalyuni was founded, and soon the first Star Towers thrust towards the sky. Sorcerers now had a new sanctuary to pursue their art, and one by one the Mosaic Cities of the south were bound into a great Imperium. At the same time, in the far north, the holdfasts of Min-Ceruth emerged deep within the towering peaks of the Bones of the World. The wraiths were beaten back into their mountain sanctuaries, and the queens of Nes Vaneth ruled with a merciless splendor.

  For centuries the history of Araen was shaped by the rivalry between these three great powers: the holdfasts of Min-Ceruth, the Mosaic Cities of the Kalyuni Imperium, and the vast and etiolated empire of Menekar. The Pure – the paladins of Ama – had taken as their divine task the liberation of man from sorcery and all the evil it brought into the world, but the power of sorcerers was great as well, and for an age the strength of these three realms remained in balance.

  The Pure were right to warn against sorcery. When the princess of Nes Vaneth was murdered by a diplomat from Kalyuni, her grieving mother set in motion an ancient spell the sorcerers of the north had long ago constructed as a final devastating strike upon their rivals to the south. The waters of the Derravin Ocean surged over the western mountains and flooded the lands of the Mosaic Cities, creating the Broken Sea. Yet even as the churning water climbed the gleaming walls of their Star Towers, the wizards of the Kalyuni Imperium unleashed their own cataclysmic spell, bringing black ice and endless winter to the Min-Ceruthans.

  Two great empires perished that day, entombed within ice or drowned beneath the waves. Menekar wasted no time, dispatching its shining legions and the Pure over the Spine to restore order in the devastation and cleanse what remnants of sorcery remained. Treaties were signed at the point of a white-metal sword between Menekar and the kings and archons and padarashas of the western realms. Sorcery was renounced and any surviving practitioners given over to the paladins of Ama for swift and brutal judgment.

  Menekar was not long without a rival, however. For decades the Shan and their Empire of Wind and Salt had wandered upon the waves, fleeing a devastation in their own lost homeland. Now, even as the north convulsed in the aftermath of the cataclysms, the Shan set about recreating their glorious empire in the lands south of the newly formed Broken Sea. They erected towers for their warlocks from the bones of the turtles that had ferried them across the ocean, built mighty cities in the ruins of the Imperium, and once again their brilliant culture flourished as they sought to forget the Raveling that had devoured their ancient lands. An age ended for the Shan, and The Empire of Wind and Salt gave way to the Empire of Swords and Flowers.

  For a thousand years afterwards the pulse of magic faded like the heartbeat of a dying man. Until once more it began to quicken . . .

  Keilan is the son of a fisherman from a tiny village on the shore of the Broken Sea. His mother, who had been plucked from the sea during a storm, was accused of sorcery and put to death by the frightened villagers. His father was nearly broken by this tragedy, numbing his sorrow and rage with drink. Keilan’s own power begins to awaken during this time, and while using his sorcery to hunt for fish he accidentally brushes against a vast and terrible presence slumbering beneath the waves. His brief disturbance of this creature brings him to the attention of Dymoria’s Crimson Queen, who is the first great sorceress born since the cataclysms. She dispatches her servants to claim him, but a paladin of Ama, Senacus, discovers Keilan first and takes him from his village. Like all children found with the taint of sorcery, Keilan will be brought to Menekar to be cleansed, in the hope that he will rise again filled with the holy light of Ama.

  But the queen’s magister, Vhelan, and his knife, Nel, rescue Keilan from the Pure and flee. After a harrowing escape from dark sorceries that still lurk in one of Kalyuni’s ruined cities, they join a caravan traveling along the ancient northern road. Among their fellow travelers is the seeker Garmond, a scholar of the Reliquary, and his Fist guardsmen. One of the Fist brothers, Xin, becomes friends with Nel and Keilan, and begins to teach them the secrets of his sword fighting. Also among the caravan is a Shan by the name of Cho Yuan. He claims to be searching for something important that was recently stolen from the Empire of Swords and Flowers.

  The caravan is attacked by wraiths under the command of a shape-changing monster. Cho Yuan is slain, and Keilan unleashes sorcery th
at wounds the monster badly enough that it is forced to flee. In order to discover more about the demon that attacked them they descend into the Barrow of Vis, one of the world’s great libraries. There the spirit of the Barrow bequeaths several ancient tomes to Keilan, though at the time he does not understand their importance.

  With a Visani escort they soon arrive in Herath, the largest city of Dymoria and the seat of Cein d’Kara, the Crimson Queen. Keilan pledges himself to her and joins the Scholia, her school for sorcery. When the queen realizes the depth of Keilan’s power she enlists his aid in unlocking the memories of the sorcerer Jan, who has recently arrived in her court and claims to be the last of the vanished Min-Ceruthans. With Keilan’s help, Cein passes through the barriers in Jan’s mind and discovers he was part of a mysterious cabal of sorcerers who orchestrated the cataclysms that destroyed the old world – all so they could use these deaths to power a spell that would render them immortal.

  Even as these truths are laid bare a trap nested by the sorceress Alyanna within Jan’s mind is tripped, and a surge of sorcery nearly kills Keilan and the queen. When Keilan awakens soon after, he discovers the queen barely alive and goes to find aid, only to be captured by another of the ancient sorcerers, the swordsinger Demian, and Senacus, the paladin who first took him from his village. While Demian stays behind to interrogate Xin and Nel, Senacus takes Keilan from the palace. Before they can flee the city, however, Keilan reveals that he saw Demian in the memories of Jan, and that the swordsinger is in fact a sorcerer. Shaken by this revelation – though it does confirm his own suspicions about Demian – Senacus abandons Keilan at the gates of Herath.

  The next day Keilan discovers that Xin is dead, slain by Demian, who has now disappeared. Nel and Keilan intend to chase after the paladin in the hopes that Senacus can lead them to the vanished swordsinger.

  Jan is a farmer in the Shattered Kingdoms. He is plunged into grief after his wife dies of a sickness, and in the depths of his sorrow something happens that awakens long-suppressed memories. To his shock, he realizes he is in fact an immortal sorcerer, though most of his past still remains lost. The incident that triggered this revelation was a murder committed by some sort of supernatural creature near his farm, and Jan comes to believe this was done to wake him. He follows the creature’s trail, until he arrives in the pleasure gardens of the Menekarian Empire. There he meets Alyanna, who claims to know him, though his own memories of her are indistinct. She tells him magic is returning to the world, and that a great sorceress has arisen in the far west: Cein d’Kara of Dymoria. Alyanna promises to restore his lost memories if he investigates this Crimson Queen for her. Jan asks about the creatures he has chased across the plains, and Alyanna tells him they are her new servants, recently freed from imprisonment in Shan. Despite his wariness, Alyanna convinces him that they are firmly under her control.

  Jan travels to the kingdom of Dymoria, and Cein d’Kara quickly unmasks him as a powerful sorcerer. Curious about his missing past, she agrees to try and break through the barriers in Jan’s mind. During the ceremony, a magical trap laid by Alyanna is triggered and the queen and Keilan are nearly killed. In her anger, Cein decides to imprison Jan until she can be sure that he is no longer a pawn of Alyanna.

  Alyanna is an immortal sorceress who has lurked in the shadows for over a thousand years. It was her magical brilliance that crafted the spell that rendered a secret group of wizards immortal, including Jan and Demian. To her distress, she finds that the potency of this spell is fading, and she has begun to age again.

  In recent years, Alyanna has posed as a concubine in the pleasure gardens of the Menekarian emperor, hoping to unravel the mysteries of the Pure, though she has become intrigued by her new servants, the Shan demon-children that call themselves the Chosen. She heard them calling from their prison inside the bone-shard towers of Tsai Yin and freed them in return for their servitude. Alyanna learns from the Chosen that a demon hunter from Shan is searching for them, and that he wields a weapon capable of imprisoning their spirits again. She dispatches another of her servants, the shape-changing genthyaki, to slay the demon hunter Cho Yuan. He is traveling with a merchant caravan to Dymoria because he believes it was Cein d’Kara who liberated the demons. During an assault on the caravan Cho Yuan is slain, but the genthyaki is badly wounded by the sorcery of the boy Keilan. Alyanna learns from the dying genthyaki that Keilan is a Talent, a rare and powerful breed of sorcerer. Hoping to use Keilan to recreate the spell that granted her immortality she sends Demian west to capture the boy.

  Meanwhile, Alyanna forges an alliance with the dreaded kith’ketan shadowblades, enlisting their aid to destroy the Crimson Queen before Cein can become a true rival to her power. Alyanna’s web of plots comes together on a single night, as the trap she laid within Jan’s mind is triggered by Cein just as Demian and the shadowblades invade the queen’s fortress in search of Keilan. Alyanna transports herself inside the palace and challenges the weakened queen, but is defeated when the Chosen refuse to obey her commands. She is forced to flee back to Menekar, where she is captured by the genthyaki she thought had perished. Now the creature serves the Chosen, having been succored back to health through their dark magics. He is consumed by the desire to inflict suffering upon his former mistress.

  Cho Lin is the daughter of the Shan demon hunter Cho Yuan. While training on Red Fang Mountain, she is brought word that her father has been slain in the barbarian lands when hunting the Betrayers – the demons that ushered in the Raveling that destroyed the ancient homeland of the Shan. Shocked to hear that her father is dead and that the demons are loose again in the world, she travels to her family’s compound and is told by her crippled brother about the shape-changing monster who slew their father. He gives her the famed sword of her family – the weapon that bound the Betrayers a thousand years ago – and she departs for the northern lands to find the demons and avenge her father.

  In the Shan port city of Ras Ami, Cho Lin is recognized by a childhood friend and invited to her manse. While drinking wine, Cho Lin is poisoned, and she discovers that her old friend has been corrupted by the Raveling, the death cult that worships the Betrayers. Using her training to overcome the effects of the poison, Cho Lin slays her once-friend. Trusting no one, she leaves her family’s soldiers behind and sets sail for the northern city of Herath. According to her brother, a powerful northern sorcerer freed the Betrayers from their prison in the city of Tsai Yin, and the warlocks of Shan suspect it was the newly arisen Crimson Queen of Dymoria.

  After the long voyage to Herath, Cho Lin begins her investigations by sneaking inside the queen’s great fortress of Saltstone. Once inside, she discovers that her sword can sense the residue of the Betrayers, and she follows this trail to a locked room in a ruined tower. Inside she finds the sorcerer Jan, imprisoned for his accidental role in Alyanna’s attack on the queen and her Scholia. Cho Lin frees him after he claims to know the whereabouts of the Betrayers, and they flee the city, though the magister Vhelan catches up with them before they get too far. Realizing that any attempt to recapture Jan would end in bloodshed, and believing that this is something the queen would not want, Vhelan allows them to escape.

  While traveling along the Wending Way, Jan slips away from Cho Lin and journeys into the Frostlands. Incensed by his betrayal, and realizing that only he can help her find the Betrayers, Cho Lin follows him. She is saved from a pack of wraiths by a Skein warband, and she learns that Jan is traveling to Nes Vaneth, the ancient, ruined city of his people and now the seat of power of the barbarian Skein. Cho Lin also learns that a civil war has recently happened among the barbarians, with several tribes from the north overthrowing the Skein king because of his perceived weakness. She arrives in Nes Vaneth and finds Jan has become an honored guest of the new king.

  Jan tells her that after the attack on Saltstone his lost memories came flooding back, and he now remembers that beneath Nes Vaneth the Min-Ceruthan queen forged a great sorcery
to protect her child from the black ice called down by the southern sorcerers. This child may also be Jan’s child, as he was once the queen’s lover. The sorceress Alyanna had effaced these memories from his mind long ago when he came to her for help in freeing the child from its prison of ice.

  They descend beneath the city, and after discovering that the ice child is gone they are ambushed by the Betrayers and the Skein. One of the barbarians is revealed to be a powerful sorcerer, and Jan and Cho Lin are captured.

  The immortal sorceress Alyanna is languishing in the catacombs beneath the Selthari Palace, tortured by the inquisitors of Ama and the shape-changing genthyaki. Her old servant has taken the form of Menekar’s Black Vizier, and by his orders she was Cleansed: her sorcery has been cut away, and into the hollow left behind was poured the holy light of the Pure.

  After months of torture, her ancient ally Demian penetrates the catacombs and rescues her. They flee across the white plains, but are hunted down by paladins of Ama. Demian is badly wounded in the fight, and he convinces Alyanna that they should seek shelter with the kith’ketan, a mysterious order of assassins that dwells beneath a mountain in the range known as the Spine. He lived among them for centuries, and believes that their leader, the Daymo, will aid them. Alyanna is surprised to learn that the mountain fastness of the kith’ketan is the same place where she performed the ceremony that resulted in her immortality a thousand years ago.

  Demian recovers, and they are summoned by the creature worshipped by the kith’ketan, which dwells deep beneath the mountain. When they arrive in its presence, it offers to restore Alyanna’s sorcery if she can fulfill the promise she made that first secured their alliance against the Crimson Queen – bring a great Talent into its lair and sacrifice the sorcerer. Rather than leave to hunt down the boy Keilan, as Demian suggests, Alyanna stabs her old friend. The creature under the mountain inhabits his dying body, then restores Alyanna’s lost sorcery. Without allies, and fearing the threat of her old servants – the genthyaki and the Chosen – Alyanna reaches out to the Crimson Queen and offers a truce and an alliance.