Category: Fantasy Publisher: Mark Brisby
ISBN-10: 0615750117
Type: Fiction
Pages: 488
Copyright: Jan 3, 2013
ISBN-13: 9780615750118
Turning 13 can be dangerous in a magical world.
Just before farm boy Daumis’ thirteenth birthday, his alcoholic, minstrel Uncle Jedric reappears after years of travel. In the middle of the night, he wakes his favorite nephew and secures him in a spot where they can watch the road past their fief. When three men go by, Jedric explains that those men are evil magicians who take children on their thirteenth birthdays. Daumis surmises that since they passed him by and it’s the morning of his birth that he’s safe. He and Jedric go into town on an errand for his father, unbeknownst to anyone that he wants to stop the Denizens from abducting someone else. When he stumbles into a botched rescue of Cewyn, the son of the local duke, he is also captured, starved, and tortured for his pluck.
Enter hero Tadrec, a graduate of a prestigious magical university, recently the only member of his party to survive a cursed artifact. He is stoned on witchreed and morning his friends with absolutely nothing to do. When he’s asked by the president of his alma mater to rescue Daumis and Cewyn because they’re the most powerful magicians to be born in a century, he agrees. For a price.
Rilliam is sick of his apprenticeship to Othan, because all he wants to do now was see the world on his own. The old man should retire, but instead he abducted two, frighteningly powerful teenagers, and he wants his help in breaking and training them.
Tadrec, Daumis, and Cewyn encounter golems, insane monks, cannibals, giant badgers, an undead army, and a demigod all just before they can reach the magical, floating city of Horizon. Not to mention the fact that they are in company that they do not necessarily like, trust, or can even stand in the form of a pompous Citizen who used to pick on Tadrec, an old, blind seer who likes to spit on people, a drunken minstrel, a homicidal metal shard, the sickeningly-perfect teacher and student combo, and a royal vizier who just doesn’t want to go bald.
With Rilliam gaining ground from behind them, no matter what all the three of them go through, it always seems to Tadrec and the boys that their destination moves ever-farther away from them.
In fact, it flies.
Excerpt
“So what is it?” I asked him, looking up and noticing just how hairy he was. The wispy white froth enveloped his entire head, growing shaggy due to the weight of it and the conditions of the road. There were parts of the mass that still looked golden, but not many.
“Ye wanna know what happened to me, Daumis?” Jedric asked him intently but also with a slight absentmindedness as he glanced about. “Ye wanna know where I been these last few suns?”
“Yes!”
“All right then,” my uncle coughed. “I was in a Corvan prison.”
I practically yelped I was so stirred-up. “Wherefore?!”
“Falsely accused, thank ye very much! An’ don’ go a-tellin’ no one else. I ain’ tellin’ them; I’m tellin’ ye.”
I gulped. “Very well, so what happened?”
“Let’s just say that there was a beautiful lady involved, an’ let it be.”
I grew indignant at the lack of knowledge he provided. “So if ye ain’ gonna talk about it, then why are ye tellin’ me?”
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“Shhh! Keep yer voice low.” There was another series of furtive glimpses about before he carried on. “Anyway, there are some men approachin’ from the woods, comin’ down the road at a swift pace. I saw ‘em from the roof.”
“What were ye doin’ up there?”
“Lookin’ for trouble. If’n they ain’ followed me, then ye’re in for a birthday treat. If’n they’re lookin’ for me, then I need my favorite nephew to vouch for what-so-ever I tell ‘em.”
“It’s my birthday right now,” I coldly spoke.
“I know, but I gotta use ye for a bit. Ye don’ want ‘em to take me away, now do ye?”
I sighed. “No, it’s fine. I’ve just always been able to tell when it’s my birthday, is all. I have this sickness in me. My heart and my stomach ache somethin’ awful. Not only that, but I can feel it deep down in my bones. Each sun I think it’s gonna be diff’rent, but it’s always the same.”
“It’s because of yer mother,” the minstrel spoke after a moment, dry but with a soft tough. “Just remember her, Daumis. Remember what she did for ye. She died to bring ye life.”
“I know that!” I snapped, tired of people reminding me how my birth had been the end of my own mother. I knew what I did without the need of those painful prompts. I felt rotten enow as it was.
“I just mean to say that it’s a large, powerful thing she did for ye. That’s gotta mean somethin’. No wonder ye can feel it.”
The silence between us that followed was filled by crickets as we marched down the trail, eventually arriving at a copse of oak trees that grew in a close-knit circle. We entered the scrub passing the large, bushy shrubs that surrounded it, providing ample coverage. My brothers and I had often used this spot to hide and spy on the road in case something interesting should ever come along. My uncle and I now both leaned against separate trees and watched the road that led from the southern forest, from the Enz Mountains and the country of Oliad. The road went right past our hiding place and continued on to Thesaale, the nearest town ruled by our local lord, Duke Shirad.
Suddenly three men emerged from the night, cresting a hill not too far down the road from us. They trotted upon black steeds, their hoof-falls a queer cadence. All three men wore black cloaks, boots, and breeches. The lead man was older and more distinguished than the other two. The stave he carried tucked under his arm was made of yew and had a crystal orb at its head, alight with blue fireflies. The other two were far younger, but they were also confident and proud. I could not see their faces due to the dark masks that they wore, but one could tell by their hair and hands the apparent difference in the ages of the leader from his followers.
Long after they had passed and could be seen cresting a distant hill, Uncle Jedric turned to me and beamed down a relieved grin.
I continually shifted my gaze from my uncle to where the men had disappeared down the road. “So – they um – ain’ after ye. So – who was they?”
The minstrel put on his “performance façade” and lowered his voice to an eerie whisper. “From the Halls of Desolation and Destruction, deep within the surface of Orfe, clawed up from the bowels of rottin’ morality and putridly wretched ideals – they be those cursed with wickedness and magic, my dear nephew. They be – the Deymen!”
“Horse frit!” I swore, not believing a word of it. “Who was they truly?”
My uncle’s face grew as dark as the Abyss, and a mighty frown conquered all other features on his wrinkled landscape. “Do no’ swear! ‘Less ye want to a-shame yer poor mother. She did no’ give her life for ye to become a fool with words. Honor her memory by stayin’ a good boy.” He quickly toasted his dead sister and took a giant swig from his bottle. Then he belched.
I decided to ignore his request since he didn’t want to hear about that again. “Are they truly Deymen?”
Uncle Jedric was so confident in his answer. “Would I lie?”
I felt it best to just shrug. “And where’s the Abyss?”
“Ye should know that,” the minstrel lightly chided me as he suddenly left the copse of trees behind – heading back to the house. “It’s ‘neath the ground, leagues below us. One don’ hope to see such a hideous thing, save for them Deymen. Some say that they’ve even perched their ugly city right on its edge, but ye canno’ believe aught that ye hear.”
“I mean to say, where’s the way in?”
Uncle Jedric was quite the performer, and with the aid of his libations, he became very theatrical with how he spoke. “Only those unfortunate enow to be taken by ‘em learn the answer to that. Pray that ye never learn!”
“Deymen only take children on the day they turn thirteen,” I informed him of what everyone already knew.
“Which is today for ye,” the minstrel commented. “I’d keep low and quiet all the day, were I ye.”
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