The Rising of Kedtair

The Enchanter’s Web, Book III

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When all the pieces come together, what if it was always to another’s plan?

Arshal counts on many things. He must master god-granted powers to defeat the Enchanter Ghyldus to end Minaria’s brutal occupation of Shande. He must evade elite Minarian warriors pursuing him. He must unite allies and rival tribes and sustain a Minarian rebellion. He needs his sister Resala, a spy now captive in Ghyldus’s thrall, to goad the god into facing Arshal at the rising of the star Kedtair, when Arshal will be at his strongest. He needs his healing warrior Khoti and his counselor Nali to build armies in far regions and meet him on that final battlefield under Kedtair. If Arshal fails the world will never know peace again. Yet in succeeding, he could destroy it.

Book III of The Enchanter’s Web, an epic fantasy of intrigue and sorcery, finds our heroes desperately gathering armies in an occupied land controlled by a better-armed and better-trained enemy. They must meet an impossible timeline. They count on many pieces falling into place. They didn’t count on the Enchanter’s web.

Cover art by Ingrid Kallick

For a larger color map of Ea, click on the map image.  To view the maps as they appeared in the book: Black and white map of The West (of Ea)  and Black and white map of The East (of Ea)

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of The Rising of Kedtair

1. From the Dead

Someone pounding on the door of his tiny shack brought Ramel to his feet. Likely a neighbor child buzzed around again, looking for him to perform some sleight of hand. Certainly not his purpose on Ea, to entertain imps, but it seemed little else occupied his time these days. If he ignored it, perhaps the child would leave. He glared at the door less than a pace from him, silently daring the child to knock again.
The entire shack – four walls, packed-sand floor, and a flat roof – barely held his narrow bed, a stool, a few shelves crammed with oddments and a wash basin. He needed nothing more than this portable abode that moved with the village. He had no desire to live in the flimsy, impersonal tents others called home.
The knock again shook his walls; a jar shimmied toward the lip of a shelf. He resettled it and yanked the door open, prepared to send the imp running with his testiest growl. The sunlight glared off the sand, burning his eyes as it flooded his dim shack.
“Ramel!” urged a silhouette in the doorway. “We found a dead man in the dunes.”
“What do I care for dead men?” he said with a growl, forcing his bushy eyebrows up into a sinister slant that usually sent visitors away. He made a shooing motion with his hand, preparing to shut the door again.
The distraught man dared grab the sleeve of Ramel’s white robes. Ramel stiffened.
“Shawnsi,” the man insisted.
“Who?” Ramel demanded. The man shrugged, motioning Ramel to follow.
“We wanted the finer sands the storm left, for a special glass order from Loch Asmodiel up in Sihmad Shal,” the man explained as Ramel pulled his hood up to shield the top of his sparsely covered head from the sun. “My boy found some strange dried plants, started poking around, and there he was.”
“Lost on the road,” Ramel said.
“No, a good hour south of it, and a day west of here. Maybe he lost his way in the storm and wandered off the track.”
Unlikely, he thought. The road, like Hainad, lay on one side of a rift valley cutting through the Jashiho Desert, thus protected from the shifting dunes and sheltered from the wind. While in this location Hainad used a natural spring that fed a few trees and grasses, the wells the length of the road at past sites where the mobile village had stood drew from a river hidden beneath the valley. One couldn’t wander up the valley sides unwitting, even in a sand storm.
The man led Ramel to a wagon filled with buckets of sand of varying quality, color and consistency. The body lay tossed across the top like so much baggage.
“Don’t know how long he’s been dead,” the man said, biting into a hunk of bread. “Didn’t feel stiff.” The man continued to chew his bread as he hefted the body over the wagon side like a sack of feed.
“That is because he is not dead.”
“No lifebeat, no breath.”
“He is not dead.” Ramel glared at the man to silence him. “Help me get him inside.”
They lugged the body to the little bed in Ramel’s shack, Ramel studying him as a hawk to prey. The man bore the white hair of an older man, thick and curled about a face that appeared ashen despite the sunburn and wind-chafe deep enough that sections of his cheeks and brow had scabbed. Sand clung to the scabs. The sinewy muscles of intense labor and lean rations clung to his bones.
“No scepter, no crown. How does he convince them?” Ramel muttered to himself. Then the left hand fell open to reveal a large opal embedded in the palm. “Ah, Cree, you remembered.”
Ramel chuckled to himself as he lifted the head and pressed water to unresponsive lips. The Hainadan sand collector stared at Ramel as if he looked on a crazed mourner.
Fever burned like a furnace in the shawnsi. Ramel gestured at the sand collector. “He came to see Zel, best call him.”
One look at Ramel’s favorite stern visage sent the sand collector running the short distance to Hainad in search of the Joffan ruler.

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