A Thirst for Vengeance (The Ashes Saga, Volume 1)
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Authors: Edward M. Knight
Tags: #General Fiction
A Thirst for Vengeance
The Ashes Saga, #1
By Edward M. Knight
© 2014 Edwards Publishing
Book Description:
My name is Dagan. There are few alive with more blood on their hands than me.
I have lived a life of degeneracy. I have studied the teachings of the dark mage Helosis and walked the path of the dead. I have been to the shadowrealm and emerged with my soul enact. I have challenged the Black Brotherhood and ridden with the Knights of Valamor as a brother-in-arms. I have spoken to Xune.
I've killed indiscriminately—for money, for fame. For vengeance.
When I was young, I fell in love with a princess and was punished by her death. I have scampered, begged, and thieved. I have been homeless. I have ruled the greatest city ever built.
I began a succession war. I alone know who lifted the Seals of Regor—and how. I was there when magic was restored to this world. If I'd been born in a different age, I would have been the greatest sorcerer known to man.
My name is Dagan. This is my tale.
Chapter One
My mother was a woman as wise as she was beautiful. She was not a whore, despite stories to the contrary.
She was the eldest of five sisters born of a lord. She renounced her claim to her father’s land and title when she was just sixteen. When a travelling troupe came through town, her heart was stolen by a young man with jet black hair and a singing voice that could make maidens weep.
He was my father.
My mother was a woman as wise as she was beautiful. That is why, when I was two, she tried to drive a blade of pure ivory into my heart.
But let’s back up for a moment to offer some perspective on this tale.
I was born on Harvest-Bane’s Eve, an ill omen if there ever was one. I was my mother’s third: her third child, her third boy. As you’ll soon see, the number three plays a pivotal role in my brief and miserable life.
My oldest brother, whose name need not be spoken, collapsed and died of a brain hemorrhage at age twelve. I do not know much about him, having never met him. All I know is that the blood that came from his ear made such a stain on the wood floorboards of our home that it was still there when I made my return sixteen years hence.
My middle brother, named Harry after our father, received an ill-aimed crossbow bolt through the gut when he strayed too close to a caravan fight. That was one year later. He was six. I was one.
So, perhaps it was grief that drove my mother to throw me on the table and reach for her knives. They were the only things she carried with her when she ran from home on the back of my father’s horse. The hilts were gilded gold. A third of each could feed one family for three years.
But, the true value lay in the blades.
Narwhal ivory, and centuries old, inlaid with magic to prevent them from ever snapping or growing dull. The knives were a relic from an older time, when magic had not yet been forgotten.
It always astounded me that my mother would waste one on a boy such as me.
When she raised the blade over her head and uttered the words of the profane ritual that would steer her hand straight and true, a brilliant gust of wind flung the door open. Maybe it was fate that saved me that day.
But even I like to think that fate would not be so cruel.
My mother gasped, and took her eyes off me just long enough to misplace the thrust. The knife lodged into my collarbone and shattered. I carry the scar to this day.
The shock of her knife breaking reduced my mother to tears. It was confirmation of her most dreaded fear about me. My father—
“
Come on
!” the old man’s voice rang out like the sound of tearing leather. “You expect us to believe your mother had
three
Narwhal ivory knives? Hoy! Who do you take us for?”
“I did not say she had three,” Dagan told him calmly. He wore a hood so that only the glint of his eyes showed from beyond the shadows.
“What then?
Six
?” The old man started to laugh. He cut off with a choking sound, then swept in to show his remaining teeth in a sickening grin. “You spin a tall tale, boy. Hoy! Barkeep! More ale, eh? Keep it flowing all night, that’s what I say.” Without warning, the old man drew into himself. He shuddered. “Ale’s the only thing keeping a man’s bones warm these days.”
The barkeeper was an elderly woman not unpleasant to the eye. She loaded her arms with two pitchers and carried them to the table where three men sat.
Earl, the oldest—and the drunkest—made a misguided attempt to pinch the woman’s ass. It earned him a slap that sent his teeth rattling.
“So then, go on,” Patch, the youngest of the group, urged. In truth, he was little more than a boy. In pleasanter times, he should have been outside chasing game or learning to ride ponies on his Da’s farm. But, war has a peculiar effect that even time does not: it can turn a boy into a grown man overnight. “What did your father do?”
The hooded man tilted his head back and tasted the air. His nostrils flared the way a dog’s do on the eve of a storm. “There’s going to be trouble,” he said, his voice flat and hollow. “You’d best get home, Patch. We’ll have time enough for stories later.”
Patch slouched in his seat. “It’s not my fault Earl’s an ass!” he sulked. “I didn’t interrupt your story. Besides,” his voice took on a hopeful tone, “you’ve been promising to tell us for weeks.”
“Lad’s got a point,” Earl offered, reaching across the table to ruffle his hair. Patch ducked away with a scowl.
The man in the hood put both hands on the table and leaned close. “You fools aren’t frightened yet, are you?” he breathed.
“Frightened?” Earl repeated. “Frightened of
what
?” He hawked up a ball of phlegm and spat it over his shoulder. “I’ve been on this land for nearly seventy years. I’ve seen war and famine. Plague and illness—the sort that come with the wind from the south. Nay, I ain’t frightened of another bloody succession war. It don’t concern me. Stick to your land, that’s what I say. I’ve got no business in the realm of kings and nobility.” He gave a low grunt that showed his opinion of them.
“I stay on my farm,” he continued, “and ain’t nobody that will bother me. The land might be a harsh mistress, but she’s always given me enough to survive. Treat her well, and she won’t get angry—and that’s the best you can hope for from any woman, eh?” Earl chuckled and flashed his teeth at Patch. “There’s some sound advice for ya. Never rouse a woman’s anger. Keep that in mind, and you’ll survive longer than the best sell-sword.” Earl picked up his mug and took a generous swig. “Now, what do you say, Dagan?”
“I say you’re a bloody fool for not being frightened.” Dagan opened his eyes and turned them on Earl. The old man was no coward, but even he could not stop the unnatural chill that those eyes evoked in whoever saw them. “This is not just a succession war. When Zander moved to lift the Seals of Regor, he released things much worse than demons into this world.
Older
things.”
“Like the Nehym?”
Patch asked, excited. “You mean they’re
real
?”
Earl reached over and clubbed Patch on the side of the head. The boy looked at him bashfully. “What was that for?”
“For believing stories your Na told you when you were suckling at her teat,” Earl countered, with a lot more conviction than he felt. “Everyone knows the Nehym don’t exist. Zander opened the seals half a decade ago, and I ain’t seen a glimmer of difference one way or the other.” He glared at the hooded man. “And you ain’t either. You can go fill the boy’s head with stories of riches or make-believe, but don’t start pretending you know something the rest of us don’t.”
The hooded man’s lips curled up in a rare smile. “Why, Earl,” he said. “You might be a smarter man than I’ve given you credit for.”
Earl eyed Dagan with suspicion. “Don’t be mocking, now,” he warned.
“I was sincere.” Dagan looked at Patch. “You want a story, do you?”
“Yes, sir,” Patch answered, his voice full of admiration. Remembering his manners, he added, “Please?”
“Very well,” Dagan nodded. “It’s not often I get a captive audience. Most people who learn my name prefer to run rather than listen.” He glanced at Patch. “That should concern you.”
The boy swung his head and edged closer. “Nope.”
“My tale serves only one purpose,” Dagan said. “And that is to teach you the folly of being a hero. My father…”
Chapter Two
My father was a simple, God-fearing man. Age had robbed him of his vitality, and more recently, his hair. Patches of it still hung around his skull in long, scraggly clumps that he oiled every night. A bought of pneumonia had left his voice hoarse and cracked.
He thought it was God punishing him for absconding with my mother. I knew it was just bad luck.
My screams must have woken him that night, for there he was, standing in the gaping mouth of the farm doors like a reaper out of hell.
For all his faults, he had a practical mind. When he saw the scene before him, he threw a cloak over the table to hide me from my mother’s eyes. She wept and collapsed into his arms. Together, they retreated from the room.
Like I said, my father was a simple man. He had the type of blind cunning that came up behind you and slit your throat when you were dozing off in a brothel after paying for the finest girl. It was the type of cunning that raised no qualms over stripping you bare and taking your purse after. Because, after all, dead is dead.
That is to say, he very nearly succeeded where my mother failed. When the cloak fell over my head, I could not breathe. I almost suffocated.
I do not hate him for it, for I do not think his actions came from a place of malice. They came from pervasive absent-mindedness.
Nor do I hate my mother, though I have every reason to. She was frightened. And fear can make people do desperate things.
So there I was, beneath cover on the wooden table. The cloak was cutting off my air supply, and I was squealing and paroxysizing like a gutted pig. Eventually, I exhausted myself with vain kicks and useless cries. The oxygen in my brain already low, I succumbed to a deep, coma-like sleep.
I awoke the next day in a ditch by the side of a road. My mother had had a change of heart: instead of killing me herself, she decided to let nature do it for her.
Where I lived, rabid dogs patrol the countryside. A child my size, alone and unprotected, would have made for a tasty morsel. If not the dogs, exposure would have killed me.
But I have found in myself a remarkable trait that is rare in this world. I am capable of hanging on to the edge of life for far longer than any sane man should. It is a trait that I have made use of multiple times.
I would not advise you to try.
Countless days of rolling around in the mud, crying, and being generally useless came to a blessed end when a gypsy caravan rolled by. I was picked up by an old woman closer to death than even me. Her skin was deep brown from the sun. Cracks ran along her face like fissures in the earth. The mark of gypsies in those days had been their reluctance to don clothing above their hips. Her breasts hung limp and flat all the way to her waist. Her hair had frizzled and dried ages ago. She rarely bathed.
A more foul-smelling, unpleasant woman could not be found.
Yet, I adored her as my savior. She gave me food and drink and nursed me back to health. My primitive, underdeveloped mind knew I had found a home.
My primitive, underdeveloped mind was wrong.
Two weeks later, I was handed over to a tall, thewy slaver named Three-Grin. In later years, I have heard it said that his name came from his ability to smile three times while flogging a man to death.
That was not true. His name came from the deep welts he had carved in his cheeks, giving him the impression of three grim, smiling lips.