Ryslad
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The plot was decades in the making. Then the final piece came into play …
Ryslad is an epic dark fantasy of political intrigue, magic and manipulation. It’s a story of lost Lore and broken Law, and in the end a tale of Love.
Generations of petty hatred fractured Ryslad into seven lands. Only the Pinnacle’s wizards maintain a tenuous peace, and ensure daemons exiled in the world’s making can’t breach the walls of the Without.
But when the three sons of the ailing King of Suterlad are mysteriously lost, a succession war brews. Then, a young Pinnacle scholar, Val, is taken captive in the slums of Marhamere, unaware he is the last piece in a game of conquest that could destroy the Pinnacle and open the walls of the Without.
Val needs his wizard friends, a barmaid who sacrifices everything to help him, a woolherd possessed by a dead wizard, and support from all the lands to save them from rogue wizardry and daemons.
To succeed, Val must become everything he despises, just as his enemy planned.
Cover art and map by Jeff Sturgeon
Cover design by Ingrid Kallick
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1. Tempest on a Calm Sea
A light swell muttered beneath the keel as the soft snores of half a dozen men whispered from below decks, undisturbed by the furtive scuffles above. As a gray dawn advanced over the near-calm sea, blood from the night watch crept along the deck seams with each gentle swell.
Even the gulls remained silent.
His calloused bare feet padded the deck to the three tiny wood-and-canvas boats slung from the vessel’s sides. It would take a sound louder than footfalls or the death throes of his mates on watch to wake those below decks. None of those sleeping so soundly had noticed the wilderberry-laced wine he’d served with the chowder for the evening meal. The night helmsman had held the course he needed, assured they all worked together to win a princely ransom. This was too easy.
Tarps, nets and other gear fluttered to the sea’s smooth surface in his wake as he padded along the rail. The sailor’s bloody knife, gripped by coarse, sun-browned fingers, delved deep into the canvas boat bottoms. He wrenched apart the narrow staves and brittle planks, sparing only one dinghy at the stern.
Peering into the growing morning, he sought the markers for the submerged reef, behind which the sea reared in a curl of surf. No other relief marked the horizon south, east, or west. The land to the north would remain a hesitant dark line even in full day. There, most of the smaller fishing vessels had yet to clear port headed for the safer grounds near shore. He opened the hatch to the shallow hold where the stench of pickling brine and fish gasped out at him, even though the crew never intended to set nets. During his work, the vessel slid off what little wind pre-dawn gave him, the sails falling limp and luffing as the vessel slowed. He quickly adjusted the point of sail to face the markers dead on.
As the waking hour neared, he felt his heart rate quickening. He hurried through the galley, which still stunk of chowder in unwashed bowls and the wine staining empty flagons, to the tiny cabins tucked up against the stern. There, their three bound captives—each brazenly snatched during unguarded moments from inns and even a privy—now awaited him.
He eased open a cabin door. Faint light filtered through a slit of porthole to outline the three men sleeping within. His hand covered the mouth of the nearest and slit his victim’s throat with less emotion than if eviscerating a fish.
Fitting, he thought, that the king’s firstborn should be the first Kael to fall. The prince struggled only feebly against his bonds, choking gasps muted by the snores of his brothers. He made a lousy prince anyway.
“Ah, Drester,” the sailor whispered when, in turn, he reached the king’s second son. “Now join your brother Priran. I know how stuck together y’are. Hope you enjoyed your little expedition among us workin’ folk.”
With a triumphant sneer, he slashed Drester, who fought premature death more ably than his brother. The sailor’s grin broadened as he clamped Drester’s mouth shut. The prince had but a minute to regret an arrogant life.
Glancing through the porthole, he startled at the nearness of the reef markers and the expanding morning. In his rush, he nearly slipped in the blood now staining the cabin floor. He scrambled to the last bunk to reach Tylen, the king’s third son, who stirred as if dawn and premonition unsettled his dreams. Tylen’s edge gave him no more than a few breaths of agony when his executioner bade him join his brothers.
The sailor wiped his knife on Drester’s pillow then tucked the blade in a sheath at his belt. He gave a good-luck squeeze to the pouch of pinnars earned for this simple crime, unexpected, undared before, so much better than haggling for a measly ransom he’d have to share. And no witnesses would remain to yield up accomplices if caught. A simple man, a galleyjack, sometime dockworker, low-born, brought down the heirs to Suterlad. He chuckled to himself, certain the King of Suterlad would choke if he knew his sons’ deaths were at the hands of a Sutteran from the slums of Dockside, the very place the king thought would cease to exist if he ignored it.
Three crewmen remained, perhaps already waking from their wilderberry-laced sleep. He soaked the princes’ cabin with lamp oil—from the blankets to the thirsty planks—then touched a candle to the bed linens, tossing it in and closing the door behind him before climbing the gangway into the brightening square of morning.
The small dinghy had barely dropped from the vessel’s stern when the ship ground onto the submerged reef with a spine-crawling scream of wood. Muffled shouts of surprise rose as fire crept up through the gangway and hatch to feed on sail, line and pitch. He leaned into the oars to escape the downward drag of the foundering vessel as the stern sank and fire roiled up from the open hatch.
A smudge of smoke on the horizon might give some landsman pause to wonder if tragedy befell a trade ship or some Sutteran fishing vessel. By the time anyone could investigate, the boat would be beaten from the reef into the depths, its tale hidden. Meantime, the lone survivor of the terrible wreck, press ganged to work the galley—the prisoners on board unknown to him until well underway—would straggle ashore to report fire consuming all but this lifeboat he swam to. Who could challenge such a tragic tale?
He watched the vessel burn. The sails flew up in tatters to greet morning. No heads popped up. No figures stood silhouetted in the flames. The light swell rolled against the boat, sending sputters of steam and ash skyward, each swell pushing the unjointed staves deeper. At last, he began the long pull toward the distant shores of Suterlad. As he rowed, his voice rose in a tavern song of the treasures and pleasures he’d purchase with the pinnars weighting his purse.
