epic-fantasy-saga-book-fourth-age-shadow-wars

A Fantasy Saga

The Fourth Age Shadow Wars by David N. Pauly

Series Excerpt

King Creon looked around his Council table, noting that his twin sons, Alfrahil and Daerahil, were sitting upon opposite sides, directly across from each other. The meeting room was nearly fifty feet long and thirty feet wide, located in the citadel of Titania—capital city of Eldora. A dark wooden table ran down its center, its corners rounded in an attempt to soften its clear functionality. White marble veneers covered the dark granite under stones of the walls, and bright, ancient tapestries were hung from a ceiling over thirty feet high. Hundreds of oil lamps hung in clusters from silk ropes suspended from the ceiling, giving the impression of a single bright light. Deep-set windows on either side of the hall let in the mid-morning light.

The only sounds in the room besides the voices of the men gathered were the faint scratching of quill pens on parchment from the small group of scribes seated at a discrete distance behind the table. Servants were quietly setting down glasses of coffee and fruit juice on coasters to protect the surface of the table. The strong odor of coffee, with undercurrents of breakfast pastries and fruit, wafted through the room, competing with the sharp smoky smell of charcoal braziers glowing against the chill of a cold spring morning.

Creon knew that he cast an imposing figure upon the members of his Council, with the possible exception of his son, Daerahil, and for this there was good reason. Tall Creon was, tall as the ancient Kings from the earliest days of the realm, and as yet unbent from age. His hair was black and full, though streaked with silver these past fifteen years. His pale face still had that fair Elven countenance he had inherited from his mother, and the glow from his finely formed features was unworldly in its beauty. He had his father's eyes, however, and like polished chips of frozen sapphire they had the warmth of a shadow penetrating and piercing from beneath a craggy brow. His eyebrows had become a bit wild with age, and it was a look that served him well in these times. Strength of purpose was in his every fiber, and he carried his authority well.

Creon, nearing his two hundredth birthday, ruled from his throne in Titania, one of only two surviving Eldoran cities, the other being the northern city of Amadeus. The other main Eldoran cities had been destroyed in the Great War. Estrellius yet lay in ruins, its remnants bridging and spanning the river Aphon, an empty shell occupied only by its re-constructors. The fate of Hiberius had been even worse. Occupied during the Great War by Dark Elves and other creatures of Magnar, Hiberius had been transformed from a paradise of lush waterways and waterfalls into a dank, polluted ruin. The waters pouring from the city walls and surrounding valley were no longer crystal clear but ran foul and dark, toxic to most life, a breeding ground of deadly plagues that would occasionally spread into the rest of Nostraterra. Creon's only hope for reclaiming Hiberius in his lifetime lay with the Lesser Elves. Possessing magic still secret to the other races of Nostraterra, the Lesser Elves were slowly able to transform the most polluted of waters into clear streams and wells, and since the end of the Great War, two hundred some years before, they had made slow, steady progress in healing the accursed city.

Direct and revealing was Creon's stare, and few could abide his gaze if he fixed his mind upon them. There were none within the land who could lie to the King, and few who would even dare to try. Creon had been born with mental powers, unknown to Nostraterra, honed over a lifetime. Focusing his mind, he could compel all other Men, and even some Lesser Elves and Dwarves, to tell the truth. More importantly, he could read much of their thoughts, making intrigue in his court a very dangerous endeavor. Early in his reign, he had used these powers ruthlessly to expose the politics and plots of the royal court. Disloyal men had been quickly dispatched, their secrets revealed as they literally dug their own graves.

Nowadays, however, Creon rarely used his powers unless there was great need, having learned that some secrets were necessary for any government to function effectively. Yet even so, there were few in the kingdom who would dare oppose him either openly or in secret.

One of those few was present today. Daerahil, the younger of his sons, was certain to voice his opinions again on the Shardan campaign. His older brother, Alfrahil, would never contradict the King in public, and rarely did so even in private. Daerahil, unlike his brother, had inherited his father's unusual powers, and, like his father, rarely used them, preferring to rely on his intellect and problem-solving abilities.

His two sons were very different in appearance. Alfrahil was tall like his father, yet slender like his mother had been. His soft blond hair fell straight just past his shoulders; the soft blue-gray eyes of his Lesser Elven grandmother were clear and bright in his face, which was lined with the tiniest of wrinkles around his eyes, allowing the appearance of thoughtfulness to dominate his handsome, boyish face. Though he had recently celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday, he looked like a man less than half his age and could reasonably expect another century of life at least. Creon could see hints of his Creon's mother in his son, but the Elven heritage was thinner in him. Creon was glad of it as he rarely missed his mother Persephone, who, denying him her love after his father's untimely death in a hunting accident, returned to her own people, the Lesser Elves, refusing to speak with her son afterward. Seventy-one years later, when he ascended the throne, and even now, after one hundred twenty eight years, he still felt the pain of that abandonment.

Daerahil was shorter and stockier than Alfrahil. His hair was dark and his eyes brown. His face was tanned darkly and deeply from his time in the Shardan wastes.

'Yet another reason that he irks me,' thought Creon now, regarding his younger son in brooding silence. 'He looks too much like those foul rebels and upstarts that he was supposed to suppress. Everyone believes him to be so brilliant, and he himself believes it, yet if he were even half as clever as people say, Shardan would be pacified by now.'

After Creon called the Council to order, Lord Zarthir, foreign trade minister of Eldora, went on at length about a recent treaty that allowed some goods from a Frostfields village to pass through the interwoven territories and be subjected to a slightly lower import duty due to the distance that they traveled. Barely stifling a yawn, Daerahil glanced around the table and saw the usual crowd of ministers and their sycophants standing behind them, eagerly refilling wine glasses and placing succulent tidbits on their master's plates.

'Old, dull, and fat,' thought Daerahil. 'Only concerned with their profits and their immediate pleasures.' Daerahil did not include his best friend, Zarthir, in this mix, but even friends could drone on and on.

'Few of them care for the realm,' Daerahil continued to muse, 'except for my brother and my father. Yet my father has been seduced by limitless power and now seeks only to subject all of Shardan—no, all of Nostraterra—to his will. If he could only see the people of Shardan objectively rather than colored by his hate and loathing, he would understand that nearly all those in Shardan will not accept a foreign overlord. There are those who fight Eldora tooth and nail, fighting with anything and everything to oppose an occupying army. The country of Shardan, however, can be made peaceful and profitable, with little loss of life. Trade and respect for their local customs would bring much of the populace around in renouncing violence. Even where violence continues, rich local merchants would gladly trade in the names of the rebels and collect a reward. Yet Father refuses to listen to my counsel.'

Daerahil had proved that this tactic worked in the Shardan provinces directly under his command, reducing the violence against coalition soldiers by nearly ninety percent. This, however, was regarded as placating the rebels, and his father demanded all violence stop before trade began. 'How incredibly foolish,' thought Daerahil. 'It is difficult to be peaceful and happy when you are starving and faced with the physical oppression of foreign soldiers day after day. Still, if it were not for my father's counselor, Mergin, I might have enjoyed better success here in the Council.'

Shorter than most men, barely reaching five and a half feet, but lean and wiry, Mergin sat silently regarding everyone at the table with a calm but predatory gaze. His dark eyes glittered from beneath gray shaggy curls that were receding rapidly now in his middle age. A large hooked nose dominated a face that generally frowned and bore latent marks of terrible cruelty. A sallow complexion belied a Shardan grandmother, a fact that Mergin had buried early in his career, as nothing would be allowed to stand in his way as the King's First Minister. Anyone foolish enough to ask about his antecedents was swiftly and completely discouraged. His cunning mind constantly churned plots and ideas—thoughts he revealed only to a carefully chosen few. Despite his low-born status and lack of formal education, he had proved his worth in a low-level administrative post, and promotion had followed promotion until now he had the King's ear at all times. His ideas and recommendations were taken very seriously by the King and his other Ministers, leading them to be carried out swiftly.

Early on, Mergin and Daerahil had taken an immediate dislike to each other, which had rapidly escalated into a quiet hatred that soon spilled out publicly. Unfortunately for Daerahil, Mergin had first taken over the position of junior minister to the King by extorting and then exposing the larcenous activities of the unfortunate junior minister above him. Within two years, another series of revelations into the personal and public lives of one of the least popular full ministers had allowed Mergin to replace that man, and there had been no stopping him after that. First, he had assumed the tedious yet important task of assistant minister to the messenger corps, allowing him access to the private messengers that flowed through the realm. Then, after exposing a plot among Shardan sympathizers, he had been rewarded with the position of Creon's First Minister. It was only a matter of time before he had the Messenger Corps report directly to him, so now he was privy to all of the secrets of the land that flowed in from the various intelligence-gathering services. Soon afterward, he was appointed commander of the Shadows, the legendary messenger assassins. This gave him yet another tool with which to gather information and a small but extremely deadly cadre of men who could and would enforce his will without question.