The Book of Deacon Anthology Read online

  The Book of Deacon Anthology

  Joseph R. Lallo

  Copyright © 2015 Joseph R. Lallo

  Cover By Nick Deligaris

  http://www.deligaris.com

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  A Message from the Curator

  The Book of Deacon

  The Great Convergence

  The Battle of Verril

  Jade

  The Rise of the Red Shadow

  Entwell Origins: Ayna

  The Stump and the Spire

  From the Author

  A Message from the Curator

  Greetings, reader. If you are reading this, you may already be familiar with a man by the name of Deacon. If not, you shall soon learn of him, as this collection bears his name with good reason. Though he is not without his flaws, the man has been tireless in his chronicling of what he rightly identified as the most important moments of his times. Through his efforts both mundane and mystical he has dredged up endless information that would have otherwise been lost to the ages. This is by no measure the whole of his writings, which reach far beyond the lifetime and perception of any normal man. However, some years ago it struck me that as comprehensive as his record has become, it has also become untenably diffuse. Beyond the books which he himself keeps and guards, tomes I have come to call The Memoire and The Grimoire, the written histories he’s worked so hard to assemble have become exceedingly difficult to find. They have followed him to places which others cannot go, and thus might never have been seen by the greater world he has so fervently served. He would be the first to observe that such an outcome is precisely the opposite of his intention in creating these records. And so, it has fallen to me to gather them.

  Who I am is inconsequential. You have read of me, or will read of me, in the pages that follow. I am privy to all Deacon has seen and much he has not. We have what I am comfortable calling a mutual respect. It is out of that respect that I have begun to gather his key records. Admittedly, my selections may seem haphazard. The same can be said of their ordering. Both Deacon and I share, among other things, a distinctive relationship with chronology that has led us to think in ways far less linear than most.

  For your benefit, the tales have been gathered into a specific order. This order is not according to any clock or calendar. It is not the order in which they occurred, nor is it the order in which they were written. It is, as best as one can determine from a man’s intention, the order in which they were meant to be read. If you are new to this story, it is my recommendation that you read this message no further and instead begin where Deacon intended, a story aptly named The Book of Deacon. The information below may introduce you to things better revealed in their due course.

  Those already familiar with the tales, on the other hand, may be curious how exactly each tale fits into the flow of time. As such, for your benefit, I shall below arrange them into an informal ordering I’ve developed to help one understand their place in the grander scheme. All years are measured from a point in time that shaped the world irrevocably, the beginning of The Perpetual War.

  The Age of the Shadow: Year 0 - 155

  This era is so named because it was during these years that a being known as The Red Shadow was shaped into the figure he would be when fate called upon him to make his greatest contribution. It begins with his birth, an event which occurred just days before the Perpetual War began.

  The Rise of the Red Shadow

  Entwell Origins: Ayna

  The Age of the Chosen: Year 155 – ~250

  This era begins with the moment fate saw fit to begin making its selections of what warriors would rise to its defense in its greatest time of need.

  The Book of Deacon

  The Great Convergence

  The Battle of Verril

  The Age of Ignorance: Year ~250 - ~1250

  A dark time in the history of the world, its exact start and end at best uncertain and at worst unknowable. During this time the people of the world grew distrustful of the teachings of old and allowed themselves to slip into darkness.

  Jade

  The Stump and the Spire

  I hope this information has been enlightening, and likewise do I hope that the lessons of the pages below do not fall upon deaf ears. A world is shaped by the scars of its mistakes, and though those scars are necessary and proper, there is nothing to be gained by blindly repeating those same mistakes. Read, learn, and enjoy. It may well keep you and your children from facing the same trials that very nearly brought a noble world to ruin.

  -The Curator

  The Book of Deacon

  Book One

  Joseph R. Lallo

  Foreword

  The Book of Deacon is the first book I wrote, but interestingly, not the first one I intended to write. When I was a little kid some friends and I dreamed up this silly story, largely inspired by a series of games known as either Dragon Warrior or Dragon Quest depending on your region and era. This was the book I had intended to write. In it, I would tell of the exciting tale of a group of warriors descended from great warriors of the past. I started and abandoned that story a number of times, but eventually I realized it seemed silly to tell a story about descendants without first establishing who the ancestors were. Since by this time I was a bit older and a bit better at storytelling, this new story became more interesting to me, and it eventually filled a stack of spiral notebooks. After trimming it as much as I could, it was still over one thousand pages long, so I decided to split it into parts.

  My original intension was to traditionally publish. Actually, that’s not true. My original intention was to let it sit on a shelf and never even tell most of my family members that I’d ever written it. A few friends gently, then aggressively, suggested I do otherwise. I’ve got a low tolerance for rejection, though. After a few dozen agents either ignored me or rejected me, all but one having done so without even asking to see a sample of the book, I was ready to give up. Those same friends convinced me to take the indie author route. The rest is history. I hope you enjoy the story. My new life began with these words.

  Chapter 1

  The end of an era is always a time of great importance. Sweeping change. Advancing into a new age. These are surely things worthy of a place in the memory of a people. Too often, though, it is a single event that brings about the most direct change that receives the attention. The blow that ends the battle, the last brick to fall. In our worship of these moments, these endings, we neglect the journeys, the trials, the hardships, and the battles endured to make them possible.

  Whosoever is fortunate enough to find this book shall finally hear the greatest of these tales. I have spent much of my life piecing together the words that follow. Most of what you shall read comes from the mouths of the people who lived it. It is my hope, in recording the path taken by these heroes, that those in the years to come will not be blind to the dangers that threatened this world once before. If the unthinkable is once again allowed to come to pass, perhaps the knowledge and the deeds of the heroes of old will stir others to their greatness.

  The tale you shall read is of the Perpetual War. If you live in a time or a place that has allowed you to forget this dark era, consider yourself fortunate. To be ignor
ant of these events is a blessing. However, knowledge of the evils of old is the only protection against their return.

  The Perpetual War, at the start of our tale, had been plaguing the world for one and a half centuries. It was a conflict that divided our people. The large farming kingdom, Tressor, formed half of the conflict. It was a land of fertile fields, a land of plenty, that covered most of the southern part of the continent and was home to more than half of the people of the world. They opposed a union of the three remaining kingdoms--Kenvard, Ulvard, and Vulcrest--that had come to be known to its people as the Northern Alliance, and by its enemies as the Nameless Empire. This was a land of snowy fields, dense forests, and icy mountains. Despite a vast disadvantage in strength and size, this Alliance had managed to withstand decade after decade of battle. This conflict was a constant part of the lives of all, and is the reason that what follows must be told.

  My place in this tale is small. There are others better suited to put to words what came to pass, but most have taken their final steps down their own paths. Thus it falls to me, lest the tale go untold. I shall endeavor to recount the events in as straightforward and impersonal a manner as possible. Do not imagine this as a tale told by a man. It is merely a record. Words on a page. Words that tell of the most unlikely of events, beginning in the most unlikely of places . . .

  #

  The end of the fall had only just come, and already the air could chill one to the bone. Of course, this far north, one could seldom expect anything else. It was not the cold that bothered her, though. She'd dealt with that all of her life. Pulling the tattered remnants of her uncle's old cloak closer about her, she pressed on.

  As Myranda strained her eyes against the blistering wind, she saw nothing more than horizon. It would likely be another full day of walking before she saw anything but the unbroken field ahead of her. She shook her head, a faint frown cracking her dry lips.

  "I should have known," she said aloud to herself. "He seemed a shade too eager to give me directions."

  Myranda had taken to talking to herself to fill the long, lonely, and all too frequent trips like these. With no companion, the only thing likely to interrupt the ceaseless howl of the wind was the periodic noisy complaints from her stomach. That much concerned her. She could afford to buy no supplies in the last town, and no tavern or inn had been willing to serve her thanks to a simple yet disastrous slip of the tongue. Anyone could have made the same mistake. In another time, it might have gone unnoticed--or, at least, unchallenged--but in the world of her birth it was inexcusable.

  Two older women had been standing in the street, discussing the most recent news of the war. These days one would be hard-pressed to find a different topic of discussion. In this instance, it seemed that the Northern Alliance had pushed back a rather sizable advance. After three long, bloody days of battle, the Alliance troops had managed to take back the very same piece of land that they had started on. The cost of this maintenance of status quo was the lives of the better half of the troops in the area. In and of itself, such a tale was anything but notable. Indeed, a day without such a battle was rarer than a day with one. The difference on this day was that the Tresson army had lost even more.

  The two women cackled and bragged over the victory, each telling exaggerated tales of their nearest war-going relative. "My boy promised to kill three of those swine just for me," one would say. Another would respond triumphantly that all four of her children had made the same promise. It was during this exchange that Myranda made her fateful slip.

  "All of those lives . . . wasted," she had said with sorrow.

  Wasted! Having your child give his or her life for the cause was the greatest honor a mother could hope for. To speak of such noble efforts as a waste was tantamount to treason. How dare this wandering woman speak ill of the war! After countless generations, it had ceased to be a simple struggle between two lands and had become a way of life. Those who opposed this sacred tradition of noble battle were unwelcome. That one word--wasted--may as well have sealed the poor girl's doom. It had kept her from filling her pack and from filling her belly. Worse still, it had led a seemingly good man to send her through this frozen waste, claiming it to be the fastest way to the next town.

  She shook her head again. It was one lesson that she could not bring herself to learn. If someone was going to tell a lie, they would tell it with a smile. Now she found no less than a day of solid travel between herself and another human being. The cold was tightening its grip on the icy field with each passing moment. In perhaps an hour, the last glow of the sun would leave the sky, taking with it the meager warmth it had cast upon the world. The cold of the day was unbearable, but the night was unlivable. Worse, there was a darkness due to the impenetrable sheet of clouds overhead that warned of a snowfall in the coming hours. She had yet to find a replacement for her thin summer blanket, and she could neither afford nor carry a tent. If Myranda was to survive this night, she would need a fire.

  Alas, there were but three types of terrain in this land: vast, treeless fields; dense, forbidding forests; and rocky, impassable mountains. She found herself in the first, an icy, barren stretch of land with not a plant to burn for warmth save some sparse grass and tough lichens. Neither would be good for producing anything more than smoke and ash. She scanned the endless horizon for a tree, a bush, anything that could yield a flame. Finding none, she made ready to bed down where she was and hope for the best.

  Just as she stopped, the last rays of the setting sun peeking through a rare break in the cloud cover reflected their crimson radiance back from the east. After squinting, rubbing her eyes, and blinking only to find the fading twinkle still present in the distance, she was convinced that whatever it was, it was real.

  "It was probably nothing," she said. She glanced back in the direction she'd come, then in the direction she'd been heading. "Which beats every other direction, where there is certainly nothing."

  To fill the time as she approached the mystery object, and to take her mind off of the rather dire position she found herself in, she busied her imagination with thoughts of what it might be.

  "Shiny . . . a mirror. Perhaps a caravan of nomads came by and dropped wares. Or perhaps it is a jewel. A dozen or a hundred jewels. And gold, too. A king's ransom left behind by some daring thief where no one would ever find it, in no man's land. Ha, that would be my luck. To find a pile of treasure when all I need is a pile of wood," she said to herself.

  The time passed quickly as she dreamed up objects and ways to explain them. She'd not yet reached the object when the sun's rays failed, leaving her without a reflection to guide her. Her sense of direction was nearly flawless--a fortunate fact, as it was all she had left to lead her to the mysterious object. The sunset-painted clouds gave little in the way of light, but night brought utter darkness. Neither moon nor stars could hope to break through the solid sheet of gray overhead. That was no different from any other night, though. Even without the stars to follow, one found ways to stay on course in this land.

  In the thick blackness that surrounded her, she literally stumbled over what she was looking for. There was what seemed to be a large mound of rocks surrounded by a liquid that was sticky, despite the cold that would have frozen most things. There was also a bundle of irregular metal plates that she heard clang and crunch as she stepped on them.

  "What happened here?" she asked no one in particular as she tripped blindly through the obstacle course she'd found. Two more steps, though, brought a squeaky crunch that made her heart skip a beat. It was the sound of icy wood. She must have stumbled into the remains of a camp site, and now stood ankle-deep in her salvation.

  She knelt by the fireplace and began to pull away the icy crust that eventually formed over anything that remained outside long enough. Soon all that remained was the powdery remains of the fire that had occupied this place not long before. It was bone dry and better than kindling. A single spark and she would have a fire in no time. The overjoyed young
lady pulled her flint from one of her tattered pockets and reached blindly for one of the metal plates she'd heard clang free when she'd nearly tripped over it. She struck the flint to the metal and in moments had a warm bed of embers. A few moments more and the largest of the charred pieces of wood had caught, casting a delicious warmth and light on her immediate surroundings.

  Now, with light enough to see what she held in her hand, she looked over the piece of metal. It was oddly shaped and not nearly polished enough to have caused the reflection that had led her here. On the curved interior of the metal plate, she found a few torn leather straps bolted to it. The outside bore an embossed symbol that looked to be a crest--one that she did not recognize.

  "It must be a piece of armor," she decided, turning it about one last time.

  Satisfied that the fire was in no danger of going out, Myranda stood to inspect the strange place she'd wandered into. She found the bundle she'd stepped on and could now clearly see that it was indeed a full suit of plate armor. It appeared to be badly damaged and fairly frozen to the ground.

  "Why would an empty suit of armor be in the middle of a field?" she wondered aloud. The answer came quickly and brought a chill to her spine that the iciest of wind never could. It was not empty.

  She backed slowly away, dropping the piece she held. Myranda hated death above all else, a fact that had made her life a good deal more miserable than those of the war-hardened villagers who shunned her. They saw death not only as a necessary part of life, but a positive one, a source of glory, respect, and honor. They heaped more praise upon a fallen soldier than the poor man or woman could ever have hoped for in life, a fact that bothered Myranda all the more.