Leiyatel's Embrace (Dica Series Book 1) Read online

  Leiyatel’s Embrace

  Book 1 of the Dica Series

  (Revised Edition)

  Clive S. Johnson

  Daisy Bank

  This eBook edition first published in 2011

  Minor revisions published in June of 2012

  Dica Series - Minor revisions published in July of 2012

  Paperback version published in December 2012

  Revised Edition for formatting changes published in May 2014

  All rights reserved

  © Clive S. Johnson, 2011 (2012) (2014)

  Ver 1010/1

  The right of Clive S. Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the author, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Also by Clive S. Johnson

  The Dica Series

  Of Weft and Weave (Book 2)

  Last True World (Book 3)

  Cold Angel Days (Book 4)

  An Artist’s Eye (Book 5)

  Starmaker Stella (Book 6)

  To my severest critic and valued editor Maureen (Kit) Medley, who also happens to be my treasured, lifelong companion. For your long sufferance of a ‘silly old fool’.

  i Maps

  Table of Contents

  Also by Clive S. Johnson

  i Maps

  1 Beginning of the End

  2 Wind of Change

  3 A Stallion Stare

  4 A Portent Witnessed

  5 Laixac

  6 A Short Audience with the King

  7 Pettar’s Loss

  8 Cat from the Bag

  9 A Rescue

  10 A History of Sorts

  11 A Call to the Lords Demesne

  12 Galgaverre

  13 An Inconclusive Reconnoitre

  14 The Blood Thins

  15 Truth be Told

  16 A Threat Proven Real

  17 Awakenings

  18 Time and Tide

  19 Of Myths

  20 The Past Returns

  21 And of Legends

  22 A Partnership Cemented

  23 From Without the Walls

  24 Parting of the Ways

  25 To a Lofty Tryst

  26 Leiyatel’s Embrace

  27 A Brief Return

  28 A Fledgling Freed

  29 A Descent Too Far

  30 Leiyatel’s Gaze

  31 Storbanther’s Found

  32 The Alarm is Raised

  33 To Strike a Deal

  34 Two’s Company

  35 More of the Same but Hard-Won

  36 A Soldier’s Glory

  37 Retreat to Encounter

  38 A Discovered Invitation

  39 Nephril’s Decision

  40 The Grit Learns of the Pearl

  41 Many Hands

  42 Preparations Apace

  43 Best Laid Plans

  44 Cat Gut

  45 A Gift Returned

  46 If at First

  47 Try, Try Again

  48 End of the Beginning

  About the Author

  1 Beginning of the End

  To the rose! The rose, with its ruby expanses furled to a terrain of inescapable crags and crannies, explored only by those black and yellow striped wanderers busy with its sweet delight of nectar. To the rose, its wilting edges yielding their essence limply to the warm and dusky air. To the rose set against a scarlet sky, its soft and sharp silhouette still proud against the fiery stain now seeping from the sun.

  Worthy protectors, sharp and fierce in their static defence, regimented thorns betokened bloody tears, tears that wept from that splendour-topped stem. To the rose reflecting the sombre hue now seeping along the horizon, as the sun’s imponderable weight slowly sinks beyond western hills blackened to card silhouettes. Suddenly, the sun’s quenched, soaked into the darkened earth as yet another day slowly draws to a close.

  A deeper black upon black, the rose is left cheated of its greatest joy, its effulgence of colour, lost as it is against the raven’s outspread wings. The air hangs with the aroma of myriad flowers whilst the all-pervading saw of crickets brings in, at the open window, the sounds of yet another summer’s eve.

  It hadn’t been more than two hours since Francis had said goodbye to his old friend, Aldous Cullingham. He was now standing tearfully at the open window, with its vase-held bloom, seeing all yet seeing naught, heedless of the traffic’s murmur, the cricket’s chorus or his face becoming coursed with tears. In his hand, he absently turned a leaden ring over and over but only saw his vivid memory of Aldous.

  His friend had lain for some weeks with his old frame slowly yielding to the ravages of time. He’d mostly slept, but on occasions had awoken and motioned to the wireless. Once the valves had warmed, he’d only ever listened to some soft and soothing music for a short while before again drifting off.

  However, in that final hour Aldous had awoken with a start. He’d stared at Francis and then, with difficulty, brought his hand from beneath the bedclothes. Beckoning him near, Aldous had reached out and grasped Francis’s hand with surprising strength. He’d then felt something small, hard and circular between their hands, but Aldous had only smiled and quietly passed into his final slumber, his hand slowly relaxing its grip.

  Francis had held it tenderly for a while before finally bowing his head and weeping. Very softly, he’d implored Charon to take his friend’s freed soul mercifully beyond the Styx.

  Francis could still see Aldous’s waxen face, framed by cascading leaden hair, a mane richer yet than the ring’s strangely dull sheen. Now, though, alone in his own home he stared through a blur of tears at Aldous’s parting gift.

  It had been mentioned a number of times towards the end, but somehow, try as he might, Francis could recall little. It was as though he’d heard the words in a dream, a dream too long passed to remember.

  Absently, he ran his nail along the ring’s band but then felt a slight indentation. It was really nothing more than a scratch but it somehow held his finger’s idle curiosity. Without quite knowing how, the ring slipped mercurially onto his finger.

  Something subtly yet insistently began to drag him from reflection. It urged his eyes irresistibly down. There, before the heavy summer’s evening sky, before the sombre rose, he looked closely at the ring.

  The scratch was steadily widening to a groove and from which a green light seeped into the very air about, bathing his startled eyes in its eerily soft glow. He held it before him, at arm’s length, and was suddenly engulfed in an almost painful brilliance before all once more swiftly became dark. In the murmur of the night insects, and the drone of far off traffic, all was as it had been save that Francis and the ring were no more.

  2 Wind of Change

  Still and cold and dark, not a mote of light could be found to alleviate the eternal depth of the blackness, nor the buzz of gossamer wings or the scrape of sharp clawed feet to scratch at the dead silence that lay so still within. Time itself seemed frozen, and with it, all knowing of life, or thought, or hope.

  Time, however, can never be suppressed, is ever there, even when hidden behind oppressive familiarity. Its march be ineluctable enough to bring change of some kind, even if only the eternal cycle of day and night, of s
unrise and sunset. In the slow stirring of that static space, a moment grew that began to dissolve the immutable now and lend to it a future embellished with a fine dusting of almost imperceptible dawn light.

  At first, it revealed only indistinct patches of rough, grey surfaces. They were all too faint to give much away, not until more light was carried in, until the abstract patterns could slowly become weathered stone walls. Their expanses were largely blank and reached high into what was becoming a slate grey sky.

  Those further away, and the roofs atop them, still swept down to languish in obscurity, the lightening sky overpowering their meagre reflection. Before long a vast expanse of roofs, of walls, turrets and towers all began to appear. They jutted above the general grey melee of the castle’s sloping body as it fell away down the mountainside.

  Further and further it spread as the sky brightened until the sun’s sudden appearance in the northeast, above the distant mountain range, sprung the whole of The Upper Reaches into stark relief. Against its glare, all below once more diminished.

  Above, the mountain had begun to erupt with the sun’s striking rays, and like lava, sunlight slowly cascaded down its flanks. After it passed by and below, it was soon chased on by the ensuing shadow of mantle cloud, turning the castle over to the dull, grey mass it would adopt for the rest of the day.

  That brief, tumbling illumination had thrown the vast bulk of Dica into sharp and overpowering relief. It had briefly exposed a plethora of piled masonry the ages had long seen encase Mount Esnadac.

  Far below, out into the further distance, the castle’s mass fell like a vast, grey cloak, tumbling into haze where outer walls buttressed it from the spreading vales beyond. Barely visible, as a leaden expanse, the Forest of Belforas hemmed in those vales, with the Strawbac Hills lofting above. Rearing above all, despite their distance, the Gray Mountains wrought the whole northern horizon to an anonymous slate-grey silhouette.

  Much nearer to, the dawn light had revealed a terrace, small and stone-flagged, littered with weeds and bushes and backed by a high stone wall. Contained by a low bordering parapet, it now held the newly gathered dawn chorus. In the main, it was sparrows that flitted here and there, testing for grub or worm, or flapped about their brothers in mock fight. There they were safe in their numbers from the harrying hawks hovering high above, at liberty to celebrate the dawning of a new day.

  A young sparrow, its plumage still darkly puffed and juvenile buff, hopped to the threshold of a doorway set within the plain rear wall. Through the opening, drifting out from its hoarded chill night air, a soft and erratic sound could be heard. It was a quiet sound, low enough not to scare the fledgling and so left it easy in its quest for food. The little light within was enough to reveal a haze of insects emerging from the straw of a mattress, and so draw the mite to the bed that bore it.

  A flurry of wings and it was perched on the footboard, sorting grub and fly in its fancy, when a low and muffled snore again came from the bed. The fledgling looked uncertain but then, when an almighty snort rattled out, it finally took flight and fled.

  The eyes above the offending nose, of the head now resting on the pillow, slowly prised open and sought the door. They blinked, myopically, at the leaden sky and its wan light. For some moments they stared at the dull clouds as the dream they’d been seeing slowly seeped away. They would without doubt have closed again in search of more dreams had a bloated bladder not objected.

  A body was forced into the chill morning air, a man’s body, its feet soon slapping onto frozen flags. Those feet carried him stiffly to the doorway where he then looked out at the grey expanse of his world. He breathed in deeply, of its cold, damp air, and there, somewhat groggy and woolly-headed, Falmeard finally welcomed-in yet another new day.

  At the end of the terrace, where its parapet wall curved to abut his chamber, there was a recess for a stone basin and into which water trickled from a small spout. In the opposite corner, at the terrace’s precipitous edge, a privy stood; small and stone built, its open side giving access to a simple hole.

  There, he slowly relieved his night’s burden and soon moved on to the basin, where he washed in its icy charge. When he drank from its spout, the water’s sharp-edged volume may have satisfied his thirst but only heightened his hunger. He dried himself on his robe as he hurried to a nearby flight of steps and quickly descended.

  Below, had he looked, he’d have seen the usual shamble of terraces and yards, of gardens and alleyways, innumerable paths, roads and buildings that had tumbled there the past few thousand years. As usual, his thoughts obscured not only the view but the long familiar stand of deserted and desolate buildings along the way.

  Their styles in those parts were mixed. Many were old and worn dwellings with simple square windows, long devoid of wooden-framed crystal. Others, though, were more ancient, even more sagging, and had simple slits for the ingress of light. The latter were largely fronted by doors set beneath low and heavy lintels, usually spilling straight into the street.

  Of those that didn’t, most tried hard to hide behind shallow front gardens, but all without exception stared out from bleakly blank faces. They had a hint of surprise, with their stout gutter walls raising eyebrows, beyond which shallow slate roofs curved to ornate stone ridges.

  Hilly streets and alleys were the order of the day, most with stepped crowns bordered by setts or cobbles. The few that ran flat across the mountain’s slope gave view for villas and manses, and a few balconied palaces once the preserve of the indolent. All were, irrespective of use, fashioned entirely from the same ubiquitous grey granite, cleanly cut from the distant Gray Mountains. However, every one was, and had long been, entirely empty.

  Through it all, Falmeard had steadily made his way down to the sparsely inhabited districts bordering the much lower Lords Demesne. Still far below, the Demesne spread out a vast expanse of green, of grass and copse, with here and there the blink of an occasional hall set within manicured lawns.

  It shouldered aside the usual sprawl of the castle and occupied the lower and less steep reaches, where it gently fell to the Great Wall at its north. It jealously hoarded a privileged intimacy with the Park of Forgiveness to its east, arrogantly claiming its singular natural sweep as its own close neighbour.

  Falmeard wasn’t going that far, not in the first instance, not that he was aware of. Where he was now making for would hold more folk than he was used to, for he dwelt all alone, not only in his own abode but entirely alone within his own high precinct. It suited him well enough for he was, when all was said and done, his own best company. However, occasionally he did have need of those more skilled in tasks he abhorred, such as tilling the earth or tending herd or flock. In fact, this very day was one such for his larder was now quite empty.

  Where the slopes allowed, thin strips of farmland had spread along narrow shelves, cracking open stridently wet colours from the castle’s dry skin. Small and irregular fields wove their way between cliffs and crags, between knots of houses and halls, of stores and mills alike. Oust houses and outhouses, byres and barns, sties, coups and runs all squeezed together within those few fertile tracts, like shards of emerald scattered over a grey mound of slag.

  Only an easy half hour’s walk yet, and some few hundred feet below, lay a particularly large farm of an ancient and persisting family. They did much business with the Royal Court and its entourage, as well as with those more distant. Unfortunately, and not at all unusual, none of them took easily to scripting and so Falmeard had found duty in setting their words to paper. What for him was a simple task gave generous return and so he’d little real want of fare. Although his needs were simple and few, when that arrangement fell short he’d similar elsewhere.

  So, Falmeard managed to keep most of his time selfishly for himself. He squandered a great deal of it on his only real interest, old inscriptions and long lost libraries. Those northern reaches were in fact almost overrun with them, making it the place he felt most at home in, and why he�
�d stayed there so very long.

  After a while, and by now on a narrow lane between irregular fields, he was dragged from his thoughts by the hailing of a familiar voice. “Good morning to you, Master Falmeard. Passing by are we, or are you short on supplies again?” It was Grub, the elder of the Sodbuster family and owner of Blisteraising Farm, to which he’d been heading.

  Falmeard absently turned into the potato field Grub was working. He made heavy weather of the uneven ground. “Ah, good … yes … good morning to you, Grub. And … how are you keeping, then?”

  Grub had to smile, as he always did, tickled by how Falmeard’s gaunt and scholarly figure so epitomised awkwardness, stumbling there across the furrows of his land. “I’m fine, thanks for asking, Master Falmeard.” Grub had paused in the vain hope Master Falmeard would broach the reason for his visit. He wasn’t at all surprised when Falmeard just stood mutely at his side, looking inquisitively at the rows of potatoes and weeds.

  “Well, Master Falmeard?”

  Falmeard looked blankly back at first. “Oh, yes, sorry! I was indeed bound for your farm, and yes, I’ve run out of pork and bacon, and I could do with a chicken or two, and wondered if you could fix my fire grate for it broke the other week, and…”

  “Very well, Master Falmeard, but I don’t think it’ll gain us much by your telling me all here, and I won’t be back at the house ‘til later. I tell you what, as I’ve got the rest of this field to weed, how about you carrying on to the house and seeing Geran, eh? She’ll be able to sort things out for you.”

  He cast Falmeard a knowing look. “I don’t suppose you’ve brought that broken grate with you then?”

  “Oh! Err, no, I didn’t think before I set out. Hmm! Should’ve brought it with me, I suppose.” He looked downcast until Grub laughed.

  “I tell you what, as we owe you still, ask Geran to send Grog up to bring it down for repair. You can then stuff your belly with some breakfast at the house. What, with that and the fare you need, how about we call it all quits, eh? How’s that sound?”