SNEAK PEAK BONUS CHAPTERS
ANDALON AWAKENS
PROLOGUE
A small man stood on the deck of a creaking frigate. Unable to sleep, he kept first watch listening to the nighttime waves lapping the hull. The ship stood on the open sea, stranded and thirsting for air that had remained strangely still for an entire day and night. He watched as the lack of wind seemingly laughed at the impotent sails hanging on their masts.
Complete lack of movement is rare at sea and the eerie calm had already worked on the imaginations of the crew. Fear had slowly built within each man, and the abrupt appearance of eighteen sails sent panic through every topside sailor. The little man pushed back his spectacles and sounded the alarm. Then he dropped through a hatch to wake the captain.
Inside the main quarters, a large man opened his eyes and groaned. The noise grew louder at his door, a rhythmic thumping that wrenched him from his dream. He fought back a euphoric shudder as the memory of his lover’s embrace faded into the pounding of reality.
He only held her briefly in his youth and would only ever do so in this recurring fantasy.
Her warm scent of spring lilac lingered momentarily, as did the soft caress of her lips. Braen Braston groaned as he awakened, fighting against the urge to draw his knife against the neck of whoever pounded on his door. Tears squeezed from his eyelids as he tightly closed them against the waking world.
If only he could return to the world where sweet Hester waited. He yearned to rejoin her warm bed and to feel her silky skin against his rough hands. Having once been a nightly occurrence, Braen had languished without the dream for more than a span. His wish every evening was that slumber would transport him to her realm. Now that she had again visited, he worried he would not remember her touch after he fully awakened. Faded love and death are the only promises time gives to mortal men, and Braen secretly hoped for the second. Does death include dreams? He was almost willing to find out when the waking world shook him violently.
The heavy door to his cabin nearly splintered, keeping time with the pain between his temples. Panicked fists beat upon its planks as he briefly considered death once more. His eyes shot open with alarm. Somewhere nearby men shouted, and a feeling of urgency rocked the ship. The pounding that drew him back to reality had nearly broken the oak from its iron hinges. The shouting that accompanied the beating came from topside as men ran to battle stations.
He furiously threw the wool blanket from his body, sweating from the adrenaline of either passion or terror, whichever his faded dream had held. Wincing, he realized her face had completely gone from his mind. Awakening had also robbed him of her scent. Wasn’t it lilac? He could not remember. Reality and rational thought drew him out of bed. He would face the unknown foe who had attacked his ship while he dreamed of impossible fancies.
His boots slipped on easily enough and Braen did not bother replacing his shirt. Running bare-chested he emerged from his cabin and collided with Sippen Yurik, his engineer and first mate, lifelong friend, and make-shift cabin steward. The small man stopped beating down Braen’s door when it suddenly opened inward.
“What is it?” Braen shouted over the sounds from above.
“Lady E-e-e-sterling’s main fleet has found us.” Sippen stuttered as he spat out the words.
The captain ran past the impish smithy and raced topside. As he emerged from the hatch, the icy wind met his muscled chest. The blast nearly took away his voice. His long blonde beard kept most of the gust from off his face and he turned to see that Sippen had followed. The small man held out a thick coat. Thoughtful Sippen, he thought and surveyed the scene.
Across the choppy, greyish water he spotted the faint white of sails against the dawn. He quickly counted the masts while Gunnery Sergeant Krill relayed a signal to ready the guns. While the cannons were loaded and range elevated, Braen looked for a target. Four large galleons loomed between him and a large fleet of eight cargo ships accompanied by six smaller escorts. Two fleets closed on his with vengeance. He stroked his chest-long beard. How do they have wind and we don’t? He glanced at his now raised battle sails, dangling limp and useless.
Braen had expected to cross the trade convoy in the night before. When he had lost the wind, he assumed that they would suffer the same hindrance as Wench’s Daughter. He had not expected the main fleet to be so close. But it had appeared, oddly timing the arrival with the cargo ships. How had they coordinated pursuit in open waters?
“Get us some wind!” He shouted at the helmsman. “Hard to port! Drop those battle sails and put up the mains! We need speed!” Braen had not yet fought atop Wench’s Daughter and wished for his own Ice Prince. Suddenly, Braen remembered that Wench’s Daughter promised bigger fire power. “Belay my last! Keep the battle sails,” he ordered, “hard to starboard and all guns to port!”
With or without wind, his heavy ship would not outrun the swift imperial galleons. The large captain cursed as he remembered how he had been talked into leaving his own sleek-lined vessel at Pirate’s Cove. Worse, the belly of Wench’s Daughter brimmed with heavy stores stolen from Esterling’s winter warehouses.
Wench’s Daughter drifted where the larger warships preferred. He would have to fight on their waters with reef shoals directly south. He carefully chose and called out his first target, hoping a hit below waterline would drag the lead galleon in front of the other vessels. However, such a first volley would be a marvel of the gods if it actually found wood to splinter. For that task, Braen Braston trusted his loyal friend Sippen.
The little weaponsmith was not much to look at. Small framed, he was slightly larger than a ten-year-old boy. His head was too large for his body and his arms were twigs. Sippen Yurik was useless in a fist fight, and deathly afraid of sharp blades. He preferred mathematical equations over human interaction. Other than remembering small things like coats during a cold morning battle, the man appeared worthless on a war-going vessel. That is, until you witnessed him sighting weapons.
He had been the royal engineer at Fjorik and designed and oversaw the building of Ice Prince. Even earlier than that, a close friendship bonded the two men from boyhood. When Braen fled the city two years earlier, Sippen had been waiting on the docks with his tools and the ship, refusing to allow his friend to flee into exile without him. For all of this, Braen was eternally grateful.
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From the corner of his eye Braen saw the unassuming man help the gunners make final adjustments for windage, furiously scribbling with chalk on a slate. Sergeant Krill called out distances, bearings and speed while Sippen calculated. “Guns readied,” bellowed Krill, after Sippen had nodded to the one-eyed man. Braen briefly considered how a one-eyed gunner judged distance with such accuracy, but, as always, he did not openly question Krill’s knack for timing and range.
“Stand by to fire!” The captain gave the preparatory. “Make your mark. Now, batteries release!” On Braen’s command the cannons exploded toward the largest of the galleons. Perhaps a lucky shot, Braen halfway smiled as most of the projectiles struck below the waterline. The large foe listed as a sudden rush of seawater entered its hold. It semi-capsized as he had hoped, and it listed before drifting with the current toward the trailing fleet. As he had hoped, the sinking vessel briefly blocked the passage of the other warships. Braen finally enjoyed time to think the battle over.
Oddly, he noticed a sudden coldness pass through his body. Most likely the retreat of adrenaline after the initial chaos, he tried to dismiss the chill until it had grown into a storm on a mountain summit. Braen felt his skin raise into bumps such as you would find on a freshly plucked fowl. Chicken-skin, his mother had called the sensation when he was young. It radiated from within, almost as if his blood had cooled several degrees during the time to aim the guns and fire upon the other vessel. Braen pulled the collar of the heavy coat up against his neck.
While he pondered his next movement, three massive dark shapes rushed beneath his keel toward the wounded galley. At precisely the moment the shapes passed underneath, Braen saw sails flutter. Gods be praised, the pirate captain thought as the breeze caught. “Full to port. Ready the guns at starboard and prepare to take wind!” The dark shapes continued to speed toward the other vessels, and he briefly glimpsed long, trailing tentacles on the water.
Braen blinked as his eyes played tricks. They’re only mythological creatures, he assured himself, but Artema Horn’s prophetic words resounded through his memory. He grew colder. Everything was colder. Even the wood of the railing had grown icy.
Through the smoke and early morning haze, Braen spotted more sails on the horizon. Hurried calculations revealed at least twenty more of Esterling’s fleet, at least five of them flagships. Those, along with the six escorts, would make for overwhelming odds.
He signaled for Krill to lob the next volley over the wounded ship. Just as he called for the second attack, three large monsters emerged from the water.
“Kraken!”
Braen did not know who screamed the word. His only assurance was that it might not have been him. He watched helplessly as large tentacles reached out of the water and grabbed all three of the enemy galleons. Huge suction cups curled around the warships as desperate cries for mercy reached his ears. Then, the hardwood splintered as all three ships shattered like glass ornaments against stone. Stunned, the pirate captain prayed to the gods for the first time in two years.
As if timed with the sinking of the third galleon, the sails on Wench’s Daughter’s again fluttered, then fully caught the wind. The ship lurched with a sudden jolt as the wind favored their escape. The captain smiled and gave the command to turn hard into the blessed current. Braen barked at his crew, “Square away these sails and get us away from this cinder cursed place!” Using the creatures and the wrecked galleons as cover, he silently hoped that the pursuers would remain distracted. He smiled and his crew let out a whoop as the now westerly blowing wind carried all of his vessels out to the safety of open sea.
*****
Ashima Nakala, the lead sister of the winter oracle in Astia, broke from her dream with a scream. Initiates clustered around her and helped to ease her onto the dais. She writhed in pain from the bead, feeling it loosen the grip on her muscles as it left her blood.
The worse part of the Da’ash’mael was the intensity of the release. In fact, most dreamers feared the deadly rush of endorphins that ended the dream state, brought on by large quantities of the oracle bead as the muscles absorbed its potency. Dreaming was a dangerous art that promised no result but always offered pain and the risk of death.
She arched her back and her white robe slipped, exposing her breast. The curve of the ribs beneath her bosom drew in an exaggerated collapse as she gasped for oxygen against a sea of air. Her muscles instantly knotted along her spine and she finally caught her breath. Her next came rapid and beat out a tempo with her racing heart.
Ashima was the most accurate oracle produced by the coven in generations. She had predicted twenty years of changing weather patterns, including two significant blizzards and three gripping winters that lasted into the late moon of planting. But aside from weather phenomena, she had never dreamed anything that compared to the vivid cold she felt inside the bearded captain.
Although the oracles were called dreamers, the Ash’mael was more than a sequence of patterns from the subconscious. The Da’ash’mael provided knowing that delved into the very existence of the dream state, often seeing current or future events from the perspective of another.
Indeed, Ashima had shared the pain of the sea captain as he had lain in his bed, smelling lilac, wishing for death, and remembering his lost love. Likewise, she had empathically enjoyed his surge of adrenaline as he raced topside to fight the imperial fleet. But the terror of watching the sea monsters rise from the depths had made her cry out in agony as a resurgence of the bead coursed through her blood. She convulsed as she watched the creatures tear apart the ships. Tears made pink trails as they mixed with the blood trickling from her cheek, bitten through by her contracting mouth.
The initiates fought to hold her on the raised platform as she entered the Ka’ash’mael, the dreaded second phase in the telling of Ash’mael. This stage rarely occurred, but when it did the oracle prophesied the connection of the Da’ash’mael and how the viewed events affected the future of her Astian people. The accuracy of the dream depended on the true strength of the oracle, and only occurred after the drug had finally released its hold on their body. Since this particular Ash’mael was so strongly woven into the future of mankind, the transition from Da’ to Ka’ was amplified beyond any she had ever known.
The change gripped her body and she shuddered in orgasm as the bead released her muscles. She drew in a deep breath as the pain turned into a physical pleasure that simultaneously stimulated every nerve stem. Ashima knew, as did all dreamers, that the euphoria was a chemical response to the drug. But she welcomed the change as an awakening of her mind as it freed itself from her body.
Her eyes flitted in euphoric rushes as the sensation grew inside her body. Slowly, almost rhythmically, the knowing occurred. Feeling as if she were floating above her body, she began to recite her experience in the language of the oracle. The initiates relaxed and loosened their grips on her body. Each leaned in to listen and record her revelations as Ashima began to speak with slow and deliberate speech.
Fatwana Nakala watched quietly as her sister breathed her final words. The tall raven- haired woman did not betray any expression as the initiates carefully transcribed the Ash’mael. In stunned silence she took every word to heart and was not surprised when she saw the attending priest draw the shroud over Ashima’s head. Her body surged up from the table and convulsed before settling onto the stone altar with a shudder, her final words spoken.
Ashima Nakala spoke her Ka’Ash’mael prophecy, proclaiming truth that transcended the physical plane. This particular Ash’mael held importance to all oracles and would shake the very core of their existence. Knowledge of the awakening threatened change that would challenge the existence of the Astian lifestyle. After she had collected the transcriptions, Fatwana walked to the altar and placed her hand on the husk that had once held her sister’s soul. She spoke softly, “Rest sister and join our brother. I shall carry this warning to all, so that they must heed.” Turning, she strode from the temple, ignoring the warm tears that slowly fell from her eyes.