Souls of Aredyrah 3 - The Taking of the Dawn Read online

  Book Three of The Souls of Aredyrah Series

  The Taking of the Dawn

  by

  Tracy A. Akers

  The Taking of the Dawn

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2010, 2011 by Tracy A. Akers

  All rights reserved under United States, International and

  Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Smashwords Edition

  License Notes

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system -except for brief quotes used in reviews- without the written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Ruadora Publishing

  P.O. Box 3212

  Zephyrhills, FL 33539

  [email protected]

  Front Cover and Interior Art: Annah Hutchings; copyright © Tracy A. Akers

  MAP OF AREDRYAH

  Table of Contents

  Map of Aredyrah

  Part One: Into the Fire

  Chapter 1. Oblivion

  Chapter 2. Jewel of the Valley

  Chapter 3. Darkening Shadows

  Chapter 4. Eye to Eye

  Chapter 5. Hope Springs Eternal

  Chapter 6. Sins of the Father

  Chapter 7. Affairs of the Heart

  Chapter 8. Great Expectations

  Part Two: Parting Seas

  Chapter 9. The Big Shell

  Chapter 10. Guilty Secrets

  Chapter 11. The Torch

  Chapter 12. Concerns of the World

  Chapter 13. Muddy Waters

  Chapter 14. Open Wounds

  Chapter 15. Wading In

  Chapter 16. Three Days

  Chapter 17. Dual Identities

  Chapter 18. United We Stand, United We Fall

  Chapter 19. War Play

  Part Three: Quickenings

  Chapter 20. The Writing on the Walls

  Chapter 21. The Gathering

  Chapter 22. Circle of Stones

  Chapter 23. The Plenum of Four

  Chapter 24. The Dance

  Chapter 25. Against the Wall

  Chapter 26. Divination

  Chapter 27. Grounded

  Part Four: The Edge of the Abyss

  Chapter 28. Into the Black

  Chapter 29. Inch by Inch

  Chapter 30. Dark Savior

  Chapter 31. Passage

  Chapter 32. Peaks and Valleys

  Part Five: Penance

  Chapter 33. Into the Pit

  Chapter 34. Betrayal

  Chapter 35. Across the Divide

  Chapter 36. Trials and Tribulations

  Chapter 37. Dangers in the Night

  Chapter 38. Demon on the Mountain

  Chapter 39. Seeing the Light

  Chapter 40. Race for Time

  Chapter 41. Fire and Brimstone

  Chapter 42. Lost

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Part One: Facing the Fire

  Chapter 1: Oblivion

  Dayn stood atop a rocky outcrop, silhouetted against an iridescent palette of molten fire. As far as he could see, a mesmerizing splendor stretched, a great river of lava from which sparkling channels crept down the mountainside in brightly braided patterns. Trees in the paths of melted rock ignited like thousands of flaming candles. Some evaporated into white-hot oblivion; others were turned to ebonized shapes, gruesomely posed.

  Dayn reached for his sister’s hand, squeezing it so tight the tips of her fingers turned white. But she didn’t complain. She probably didn’t even notice.

  “Have you ever seen such a thing,” Alicine whispered.

  “I’m not sure I’m seeing it now,” Dayn replied.

  Alicine frowned. “Now what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I took us the wrong way.” Dayn shook his head. “We’ll have to go back.”

  “You don’t mean all the way back.”

  “No…I don’t know. But we sure can’t go this way.”

  “But Reiv said—”

  “Well, he obviously didn’t know about this…or maybe I misunderstood him. Don’t worry, we’ll get home. I probably just didn’t take us far enough north or something.”

  Dayn pulled in a breath, then released it slowly. It didn’t matter whether his cousin Reiv had told them wrong. It didn’t matter whether they had gone too far one way or the other. The vale before them was impassable, or would be by the time they reached it. Turning back was not a difficult decision. Where they went next was.

  The wind shifted in their direction, wrapping them in a veil of vapor that reeked of sulfur and smoke. Dayn covered his nose with his free hand and pulled his sister along with the other.

  “Come on,” he said. “The horses are getting nervous, and we can’t afford to lose them.”

  Dayn scrambled down the slope, but a stab to his heel suddenly sent him hopping. He cursed the ground, the rocks, and everything else he could think of at the moment. His feet were already aching, and this was yet another in a long series of attacks upon them. It was time to put his boots back on, and he dreaded it.

  Where he and his sister were from, no one ever went without their boots. And for most of the past fifteen and a half of Dayn’s sixteen-year-old life, he hadn’t either. The terrain in Kirador was mountainous and the temperatures almost always cool, if not downright frigid. To go with bare feet was something no sensible Kiradyn would do. But Dayn had not worn his boots for months now, preferring to go barefoot. That was what the Jecta of Tearia did. And that was what he considered himself now—Jecta.

  He pulled up his foot to inspect it, finding an indention with a tiny white pebble lodged within. He picked it out, then limped to the horse, grumbling as he yanked a bundle from its back.

  “Don’t tell me,” Alicine said with amusement, “you’re actually putting your boots on.”

  “Well, I have to some time, don’t I? I’m tired of having to dance around every time I get off the horse. It’s a lot rockier here than back home—I mean, back in Tearia.”

  “A lot rockier and a lot colder. I’m surprised your feet aren’t blue.” Alicine scolded him with her eyes, once again acting as if she were the older, then pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. It was the last defense she had against the decreasing temperatures, other than the ratty blanket she had been using as a bedroll.

  Dayn glanced at his sister, noting the cold-swept features of her face and the stiffness of her body. The dress she wore should have been warmer; it was long sleeved and high collared, its full skirt reaching to her ankles in yards of gold-colored material. But the fabric had been selected for its beauty, not its practicality. It was a dress embroidered with hundreds of tiny white flowers, a dress for a Summer Maiden, not a girl trudging through the mountains. No, its weave wasn’t enough to stave off this kind of cold. Even the molten fire on the other side of the ridge did little to warm the environment.

  “Where’s your coat?” Alicine asked.

  “In my pack. But one thing at a time. Boots first…coat later,” Dayn said.

  Alicine sighed. “Suit yourself, but that tunic of yours is not going to keep you warm for long.”

  Dayn shrugged his shoulders against the rough, green wool of his tunic. At one time he had worn it in comfort, but it felt itchy to him now. For too man
y months in Tearia he had gone bare-chested, with nothing against his skin but a kilt around his hips. Now he had on long sleeves and thick trousers, the scratchy material pressed against every part of his body.

  He pulled the boots from his pack and plopped to the ground, frowning with annoyance at his feet. They were stained with dirt and rough with calluses from months of going barefoot. But the boots, he knew, would bring blisters to his toes no matter how tough his feet had become. He scowled and yanked on his socks, then the brown leather boots, shiny new when he had left Kirador, now scuffed and worn with travel. He snaked the long laces up his calves without regard to pattern and tied them in a knot, then stood up and groaned. The things were miserable.

  Alicine laughed. “You loved those boots when you first got them. Couldn’t wait to wear them as I recall. Worked extra chores at home and helped Jorge at the smithy to earn the coin to buy them. And now…”

  Dayn cocked his brow. “And who is it that keeps tugging at her collar? Hmmm?”

  Alicine arched her neck and ran a finger beneath the lace of the collar that stopped just below her jaw line. Ever since she had donned the dress for the return trip home, she had tugged and fidgeted at the material almost as much as Dayn had his.

  “I don’t know how I ever thought this dress was comfortable,” she said. “But I guess we’d better get used to dressing like Kiradyns again. I doubt the climate or our neighbors' icy attitudes will allow us to go around showing our arms and legs.”

  Dayn turned away and checked the strapping of the packs on the back of his horse. “There’s a lot of things we won’t be allowed,” he muttered.

  “What’d you say?” Alicine asked.

  “I said, won’t Father and Mother be pleased that we’re bringing two horses back with us?” He stepped over to his sister and lifted her onto one of the horses. “Come on. There isn’t much daylight left, and I want us to get as far away from here as possible before we set up camp for the night. I’d hate to wake up and find us in the path of that,” he said, motioning to the glow of roiling fire on the other side of the ridge.

  Dayn mounted his horse, a broad-backed chestnut with a patch of black on its face. It was a beautiful animal, nothing like the old hag of a horse their father owned. But then again, their father probably didn’t own a horse anymore. Alicine had ridden out of Kirador with the only one he had when she’d gone looking for Dayn the day he ran away. They’d left the animal grazing near the cave that had taken them to the other side of the world, and it was doubtful the old gray had found its way home. The poor beast was probably still wandering the mountains somewhere, or else dead by now. Regardless, Father would be pleased to see his children riding home after all these months. Perhaps the new horses would settle his temper, once the happy emotions of the reunion faded and the reality of what Dayn and Alicine had put him through set in. But it wasn’t likely.

  Dayn took the lead and urged his horse down the embankment to an open space near the trees below. There wasn’t exactly a path to follow, no humans had been there for centuries, but he and his sister had learned to navigate the rugged terrain by working their way through only the barest patches of landscape. The going had been slow, and they’d oftentimes found themselves having to retrace their steps. As a result, it was taking much longer than expected to make their way to the other side of the mountain range. The shortcut through the cave that had taken them to Tearia was no longer an option. It was destroyed by the violence of an angry mountain, taking evidence of Kiradyn and Tearian history with it.

  It had been several days since they had left Tearia, a great region with a namesake city in the southeastern region of their island world. It was a place Dayn and Alicine had not known existed until recently. The eastern side of the mountains was supposed to have been destroyed long ago, plunged into the sea by an angry god, or so the Kiradyns believed. But now Dayn and Alicine knew the truth of it, though the people of Kirador would not likely welcome that truth. Of even more concern was the fact that they would not likely welcome Dayn either.

  They turned their horses northward, neither of them saying a word for quite some time. There wasn’t much to talk about; all best and worst case scenarios regarding the reunion with their parents had already been discussed. Dayn felt certain the homecoming would be an unpleasant one, at least for him, but Alicine refused to see it that way. As a result, their conversations had begun to end in more and more arguments. Father will be so glad to see you he won’t even care that you ran away or that I left with his horse, Alicine said over and over. But Dayn knew there was more to the issue than that. While his sister imagined hugs and kisses upon their arrival, Dayn expected only angry words and accusations. Someone would be storming out of the house when all was said and done, and it would probably be him. His father owed him an explanation, as did his mother, but there weren’t enough words in the world to explain it all to him. What words could explain why a man would steal a child and claim it as his own? What words could justify why two people would lie to that child and everyone else about who he really was?

  “What are you thinking?” Alicine asked.

  Her question yanked Dayn back to the present. His mouth compressed, then he said, “I was thinking about what I’m going to say to Father and Mother when I get home.”

  Alicine turned her attention to the path in front of her. “Do you have to hang onto all this anger, Dayn? Can’t you just start over? I mean—”

  “No. I can’t just start over. It’ll never be right for me there and you know it.”

  “It could get better. When we tell them what we know and…” Alicine paused, the scowl on Dayn’s face a clear indication that he was not receptive to her suggestions. “Well, there’s always Falyn to look forward to,” she offered cheerfully.

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Dayn grumbled. He kicked his heels into the horse’s ribs, urging it ahead.

  “I’m sorry, Dayn. I won’t mention it again,” Alicine said to his back.

  “Good,” he retorted.

  That night they camped in a gully beneath an overhang of willows. Bright moonlight distorted the surrounding landscape into patterns of black and silver and gray. Trees creaked and swayed, morphing from ghostly shadows to skeletal shapes. At one time, Dayn would have been terrified to be in a place like this after dark. He had been raised to believe demons lived in the mountains and that they would make a meal out of a man if so inclined. But now Dayn knew the truth of things, and he wasn’t afraid anymore. There were no demons, at least not the kind he had read about in the Written Word. That was another thing he looked forward to telling his parents.

  Dayn strolled over to Alicine who was sitting and staring into the campfire. He sat down cross-legged next to her, but she didn’t acknowledge his presence and continued to stare at the fire.

  Dayn stabbed at the coals with a stick. He shifted his gaze to her. “So…” he said, waiting for a reaction. But there was none coming. “So…” he repeated slowly. “Do you think Reiv has—”

  “I miss him,” Alicine said.

  “We’ll see him again.”

  “No we won’t.”

  Dayn stiffened his spine. “Yes we will. I will anyway.”

  Alicine flashed her eyes at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Listen, I don’t want to argue anymore, but you know full well I’ll be going back to Tearia eventually.”

  “If you hate it so much in Kirador, then you shouldn’t have come,” Alicine snapped. “You’ve done nothing but complain ever since we left Tearia. Why didn’t you just stay there?” She turned her eyes back to the fire and wrapped her arms around her bent knees.

  “Because I promised to get you back home, that’s why. And because—”

  “And because you want to make a play for Falyn. What do you think is going to happen when you do, Dayn? Do you think she’ll leave Kirador for you? I wouldn’t put my hopes there if I were you.”

  Dayn felt the heat rise to his
cheeks. She’s baiting you for another fight. Don’t fall for it. He forced a look of indifference and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, if she doesn’t want to go back with me, then I’ll go without her.”

  Alicine snorted. “You mean to say that even if Falyn said she loved you, you’d go back to Tearia without her? Ha! That I’d like to see.”

  Dayn glowered in Alicine’s direction. She knew as well as he did that he would never leave Falyn behind, certainly not if the girl told him she loved him and wanted him in her life. He would suffer in Kirador for the rest of his days if Falyn would only say the words. But he also knew that wasn’t likely to happen. Her father would never allow it. Lorcan, as well as all the other Kiradyn fathers, had already decided no daughter of theirs would ever court him. Dayn was strange, they said, too different, too dangerous, too demon-like in his appearance. His hair was pale and his eyes piercing blue; nothing like the swarthy Kiradyns; nothing like the girl Dayn called sister who sat beside him now, her brown eyes studying him, her thick, black hair plaited down her back.

  “You heard me,” Dayn said in a lame attempt to convince his sister as well as himself. “I’ll go back without her if I have to.”

  “I heard you, but did you hear yourself? You know what Falyn said, what she told me at the festival. You’ve only asked me to repeat it a hundred times. No, I don’t think you’ll be leaving Kirador—not with Falyn feeling the way she does about you.”

  Dayn jumped up and kicked the fire with his foot, sending white-hot sticks and orange sparks flying. “It doesn’t matter what she thinks of me!” he shouted. “Her father won’t allow her to see me anyway, so there’s no sense in arguing about it!”

  “Things could change,” Alicine said, rising to face him.