CLOAK - Lost Son of the Crested Folk (The Wish trilogy) Read online

  CLOAK

  The Lost Son of the Crested Folk

  Book One of the Wish Trilogy

  J Russell Thomson

  Monstrous Shell Publications, Perth, Scotland

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © 2013 J Russell Thomson

  eBook Produced by – Monstrous Shell Publications, Perth, Scotland

  The moral right of J R Thomson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than in which it is published and without a similar condition

  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorised editions

  Visit Russell Thomson’s blog at http://monstrousshell.blogspot.co.uk/

  Cover Design – J Russell Thomson

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  COPYRIGHT

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  MAP

  PROLOGUE

  ONE: The Moonhead Boy

  TWO: Black Stain Nest

  THREE: The Teller

  FOUR: The Second Tell

  FIVE: The Maiming

  SIX: First Brother, Younger Brother

  SEVEN: The Cresting

  EIGHT: The Wish Walker

  NINE: Escape from Delta Crossing

  TEN: The Journey Begins

  ELEVEN: The South Troll’s Midden

  TWELVE: No Marrow

  THIRTEEN: Echo Grave

  FOURTEEN: Shiver Cauldron

  FIFTEEN: Mangler's Oar

  SIXTEEN: Flatstone Hinge

  SEVENTEEN: The Ferry to Flick’s Pier

  EIGHTEEN: Cold Choke

  NINETEEN: Needle Cliff

  TWENTY: Jump Off

  TWENTY ONE: Escape from Cold Choke

  TWENTY TWO: GOOSE BEAM

  TWENTY THREE: Return to Delta Crossing

  TWENTY FOUR: Kidnap

  TWENTY FIVE: Clemency

  TWENTY SIX: The Mist Fishers

  DEDICATION

  With love to my wonderful mum Eleanor Thomson.

  MAP

  PROLOGUE

  CRESTS, MAJIC AND TELLING

  In the Crested Lands, The Book of God and King is read as truth, its veracity unchallenged and its heritage unquestioned. It is a book both definitive and divine and to exist beyond its tenets is both corrupt and unimaginable.

  CRESTS

  In the crested kingdom, the cast and grandeur of your crest determines both your future role and status in society. For the young approaching their cresting year it is a time full of angst, excitement, surprise and for some, disappointment. By the grace of god, most stand proud, thankful to be touched by his hand and accepting his gift with good grace. A small few are not blessed, they grow no crest, the skin on their heads remaining smooth. In the Book of God and King, those denied god’s mark are as chaff, fit for nothing but casting to the winds. It is one of many lies.

  In the Book of God and King the progression from Common Clan to High Royal is clearly defined, six steps, each crest progressively grander and rarer. The Book of God and King records that with god’s grace the six steps on the stairway from commoner to king can be achieved in less than a score generations. Whilst the good book does not lie, neither is this gospel truth. The path to power is protected from above. Those with merit who rise quickly through the ranks are seldom welcomed into the high hallowed ranks. For such folk the threat of their line silently ending taints god’s great gift, his blessing a curse.

  As there are six steps on the stairway to high status, so there are six sects, each with their own academies and guilds where the talent of their charges can be honed. It is said that god is all seeing and that the veil of time is his creation. In the Book of God and King it is written that god protects the good folk of the Crested Lands. He scans the far horizon of time, readying the nation for what waits ahead, his will altering the balance between the sects to ensure that when called on, the talents needed are ready for the king’s call. If true, then the near future is grim. In the kingdom of the crested folk warriors and mages abound, their academies full their guilds demanding, powerful and influential. Those who watch and read the signs fret and pray............war approaches.

  MAJIC

  In the kingdom of the Crested Folk, threads of coloured majic flow freely through the earth’s many layers. Only those who have been touched by god can tap the colours, each and every man and woman welcome to draw freely on Mother Earth’s bountiful majic, their sect and status ultimately determining the depth to which they can delve. For those with high talent who delve deep for dark shades, the risks are high but the rewards are higher, their ability to shape, wield, bind and cast bringing them power, gold and influence.

  Mother Earth’s majic touches the hearts of all who draw on it but for the many, the majic they feel is invisible to their eyes. Only when cast by a crest of high talent can the coloured threads be seen in all their glory, the fluid lines of yellow and green outshining the more powerful and rigid darker shades of blue and red.

  Majic when cast can be as light as a butterfly’s touch or as dark as a thunderstorm. It does not care or judge the purpose it is used for nor is it protective and loyal, it does however demand respect. Freely given, it can be wielded for good or evil but draw too deep and the errant caster, whatever their motive, will be turned to dust. Whilst the coloured majics of the folk are powerful, they are only as potent as the talent who calls it forth. It is a flaw in god’s plan that is exploited by others. The southern enemies of the crested folk know well that culling the king’s high talents will blunt his blade and gift them victory.

  In a land awash with majic, shades of grey do not exist. The wielding of majic from the core, pure black and blinding white are recorded in the good book but are thought of as naught but myth. The white, the preserve of the Troll, the black, the majic of old, its power to render spoken of only in whispers. The Book of God and King records that both lie well beyond the call of the crested folk. This too is one of many lies.

  TELLING

  In the crested kingdom, there exist men and women with unique talents. Their majic is colourless and scentless and is viewed with suspicion and fear by the common folk, a suspicion fuelled by the temple sermons. Nevertheless, for those in high stations the value of such rarities does not go unnoticed.

  The children’s game of ‘touch and tell’, takes innocent humour from a ‘tell’. It is a game designed to poke fun at others; you will be eaten by Troll, your head will grow hair, you will marry a pig. The jests may hurt but they do no great ill. But the touch of a true Teller robs the mark of their true future and to claim a vision from beyond the veil or to willingly submit to a tell is both a king’s crime and a sin against god. Telling is a rare talent, but not as rare as some might think. Those with true talent conceal their skill, most selling their ill-gotten secrets to the highest bidder. Most work alone, but for some, a Shill is used to stroke the crowd, detect the favoured marks, stalk the quarry and thieve from them. A Teller and their Shill are seldom without gold, seldom without custom and with knowledge of the future at their fingertips, seldom caught.

  In the book of God and King, the telling of a future is said to change the future. It turns a person’s head, inducing fear and suspicion, creating false loyalties and b
ad marriages. It is true. A charlatan who fabricates such lies can change the future, influence the choices made and in doing so change the very course of history. In the kingdom of the crested folk, a Teller is a dangerous mercenary, a compulsive liar, a cheat and an outlaw who warrants the cropping of their crest and the splitting of their tongue. Such is the punishment prescribed in God’s book and cruel though this may be, it is a fitting punishment in the eyes of the common folk.

  It is of course another lie, a hypocrisy perpetuated by those on high. The truth is a secret known to only a few...........the word of god and the rules of law do not apply equally to all. Some, mostly those of high station who seek to shape the world and steer a path to power choose otherwise. As they say, why discard well honed weapon if it can be used to slay your enemies.

  TROLL

  The mighty Troll; massive, feral and feared. To the crested folk living south of the Inner Sea, they were but beasts of legend, creatures from faerie stories, their kind not seen in the crested lands for centuries past. The tales about their ferocity were true, so too their size but the faerie tales were just that, tall tales to incite fear and loathing, stories to scare children, writings without basis in fact.

  No Troll had lived south of the Blue Cut for over four hundred years yet their legacy remained. Many of their abandoned nests and middens still lay hidden deep in the black forests and high up in the mountains. The tales claimed such places were haunted, the majic protecting them still potent and the treasures within still unclaimed. Over the centuries the foolish, the desperate and the arrogant searched them out, folk lured into the wild places by tales of unfound riches.........most were never seen again. A handful succeeded but of these brave, wise and talented folk more later.

  Withdrawing to the cold northern lands, their boundary with the crested folk was clearly marked, a vast gash, a canyon called the Blue Cut that ran east west from sea to sea. North of this line their nest lay hidden, their discrete maws masking deep holes that penetrated the earth for miles. Nest fought rival nest for power, the dead of their enemies consumed, their hides staked out along disputed boundaries as a warning to others. Hunters of musk ox, bear and elk they culled the great herds in summer and retired to the safety and warmth of their nests in winter to feast and breed. Such was true, facts that the ancient texts of the crested folk all endorsed; the Troll were beasts, ferocious giants quick to anger, cruel, bloodthirsty, irrational.....and insane. Yet this was not always so.

  The Troll had been cursed, a spell cast over all their kind, a spell that had lasted for seven hundred years and had rendered them feral. With the aid of others the ancient curse has slowly being countered and as their minds clear, the sanity of the Troll returns. Seventy five years have now passed since the discovery of the ‘cure’, many Troll now hold their own minds and their blood is now cool. Their majical abilities have returned, as have the other talents long suppressed by the curse. Once more their high shaman now call and cast the majic of the core, white majic, a force of nature more powerful than any wielded by the crested folk. Called forth from the rock, the white is the sole preserve of the Troll, a majic beyond the reach of the crested folk and fatal to those who mine the ground for lesser colours.....or so it was written.

  ONE: The Moonhead Boy

  Unable to elude the taunting pack Cloak slipped into the narrow path between Clover’s Warehouse and the old timber tower owned by Landlord Glass. The narrow curving passage was no wider than a horse’s hind, a convenient shortcut providing the old master’s dogs did not give away his presence. From the end of the passage Cloak turned left then right before entering the small stable yard of the Fluky Eel Inn. Crouching low under a cart he peered out into the lane and was relieved to see the hunting pack of ruddy boys pass by at a run. Ever cautious he remained hidden and waited. The early evening air was spring cool but the tension of the chase had left him bathed in sweat. Pulling back his hood Cloak willed himself to stop sweating........sweating made his head itch and scratching the skin on his bare dome only made matters worse.

  Cloak unconsciously raised his hand, scolding himself as he self-consciously pulled it away from his head. More and more his lack of a crest ate at him, more and more he was openly taunted and more and more of late he had sought solitude, either the sanctuary of Mad Crook's Barn or the islets of the delta flats. He was becoming a loner, a despised moonhead boy, a shame on his family and his guardians. Cloak felt irked, his brother Fortune had crested well, a proud warrior’s crown the lines of which were clearly High Clan. As a result, Fortune had worth, status and respect. As for himself, he was worthless, a boy with no status, a moonhead who was too ashamed to stand up for himself.

  Whilst his crest itch drove him to distraction, Cloak resisted the draw, hooking his thumbs tightly into his belt. The persistent prickling may have been a torture but in comparison to the professed cure, the curse was at least sufferable. He never ever scratched at home, a lesson learnt from his elder brother. As far as Cloak could tell, humiliation was the main ingredient of the curative, a salve cap made from honey herb balm, a coating of gunge as thick as sugar icing that in the warmer months, attracted flies and fleas to feast on his head, their feet and wings sticking fast until the wee beasties died of exhaustion. He could of course wear a hood or scarf to shade his scalp, a preference of many younger boys and girls but the fabric only seemed to make the itch worse and tall as he was, a hood or scarf worn over the head on a warm day only attracted unwanted attention. A late forming crest was a curse that he would wish on no one, but opinions varied………… ‘A late crest means you are not praying enough, a late crest means god does not know what to do with you, a late crest means a poor crest, a late crest means you have no skills’ or rarely, ‘a late crest means a special crest.’ Each new day brought more insults. He had heard them all before, little cuts rubbed with salt that only the solitude of the delta provided relief.

  Cloak left the shelter of the cart and took a winding route home careful to avoid the open courts and squares. Without a second thought he raised both hands and scratched his scalp, the relief was almost too good for words, so good that for some minutes the ability to stop scratching eluded him. As his peers developed their first signs of a crest, Cloak recalled how his prayers had evolved into open begging, pleading with god for the first signs of a crest to appear. His two best friends had both shown signs within a week of each other.......that was over a year ago, now, all his class had budding crests.

  His sixteenth birthday had passed four moons ago but as yet his skull was smooth as an egg. Fear of being a ‘moon cursed’ plagued his nights, his sleep blighted by terrors that woke him in a cold breathless sweat. He had asked his guardian-mother about the moon’s curse but had been fobbed of with the stock children’s tale, a faerie story he had last taken as true when he was ten. The tale was flawed……………. ‘Far, far away in the southlands an evil witch wife cast a spell on the wind. The curse sought out the newborn of the crested folk, its purpose to hide them from god, dooming the child to a life without a crest.’ The tale had variations and embellishments but the essence remained the same. It was a tale of how the witch’s spell had stolen a babe's first cry and how god, thinking the child dead, had turned away weeping. With the chance to be god blessed gone, the poor babe was doomed to be crestless and without talent forever. Or so the story goes. No one could explain why the witch wife sent the spell or why there were no wards to stop the spell but nevertheless, it was a good story.

  On days such as this Cloak missed his brother, his protector. Less than three years older than Cloak, Fortune had travelled to auction near on a year ago but with the exception of one short note confirming his acceptance into the ranks of the King’s Guard, the family had heard nothing since. Cloak recalled his older brothers swaggering walk, proud as a prize bull, his crest that of a warrior, a high clan crest, just like his father-guardian but with a distinctive and more aggressive sweep. Cloak smiled to himself. From the way his brother walked t
he town you would have thought that he had crested as the king’s own blade-master, his vanity a singular weaknesses in his character. He could also be cruel as only brothers could and his taunts always cut deep. ‘Scratching your moon will split the skin and let the feasting maggots in.’ Cloak heard himself chime the rhyme and, painful as the memory was, Cloak knew his brother loved him and it had all been done in jest. As the autumn cresting auctions grew closer Fortune had changed. As his crest profile sharpened so to did his warrior traits, his strength, stamina and his reflexes all markedly improving. In his opinion, and only his opinion, he was almost as sharp as The Sword himself. He could not however shed himself of his boyish dreaming, dreams of quests and adventures on the Southland coast, dreams of calling and casting majic and of course a pretty wife and several consorts. Fortune’s cresting had changed him, where once he would have coursed the fens in search of for duck eggs or fished the flats, now he choose to sweat away his hours wrestling and practicing with sword and spear.

  Whilst Cloak still dreamed of a fine high crest, the thought of being sold to the highest bidder at market made his guts twist. It was the law, but it was a stupid law, his friends were here and Delta Crossing was by far the best town in the crested world. Cloak sighed, he knew he was deluding himself, avoiding the law would only get him locked in chains and dragged behind the cart to the Crier’s Plinth where his guardian father The Sword of the Keep would have to watch on as he was publically birched. But, as his brother often noted, leaving home would only be an issue if he grew a high crest. Not true, without a crest he would have no home.

  ---

  The lands bordering the Inner Sea were the most beautiful in the crested world and Delta Crossing was not only his home town but one of the most prosperous towns in the kingdom, or so his schooling masters told him, ‘A land blessed with a fertile sea as well as fertile fields, it is a land full of peaceful folk loyal to the King. God bless the King………..’ but, the lands far beyond the delta were not so blessed, lands threatened by war, ancient animosities which had festered for nearly three hundred years. To become a high crest like his brother was a dream, if he was lucky, he would become clan stock; a warrior, or a fletcher, or a deck hand, a useful trade that would in some small way aid the king and help him conquer the devils from the south.