Blessings Of A Curse - 2012 USA Edition (The Nexus of Kellaran Series) Read online

  Blessings of a Curse

  Book One

  of

  The Nexus Of Kellaran

  By

  Wayne Edward Clarke

  2012 Edition

  With American Imperial measurement units.

  CopyrightÓ2012

  By

  Wayne Edward Clarke

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between the characters and any real persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  The purchaser of this ebook may copy this ebook to any computers, ebook reading devices, or backup digital storage media that the purchaser personally owns. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people by the purchaser. This ebook may not be loaned by the purchaser to other people unless the purchaser is also loaning the ebook reading device that this ebook will be read on. This ebook may not be copied to any device or media that is not personally owned by the purchaser. The purchaser must delete this ebook from any devices or media that the purchaser is selling, giving away, or disposing of. For the purposes of this statement of rights; corporations are not people. Corporations must purchase one copy of each eBook for each human person associated with the company who will read them.

  Books By Wayne Edward Clarke:

  The Rational Future Series:

  People Of The Tiger

  Hunters In The Sky

  The Nexus Of Kellaran Series:

  Blessings Of A Curse

  The Fire And The Storm

  These novels are available in every ebook format at my website:

  http://wayneedwardclarke.jigsy.com/

  And at leading ebook retailers

  And on popular ebook apps for Apple and Android devices.

  Contents

  Map of Debivin

  Map of Felion

  Map of Serminak and Xervia

  Map of Kletiuk

  Foreword

  Story

  The fact that this book is not divided into chapters in not an omission, it’s a carefully considered stylistic choice.

  Maps

  Foreword to the 2012 revision.

  This is a very big book, bigger than most three-book trilogies, yet most of my readers tended to blast through it in the shortest time possible, and then plead for the sequel. (Which is finally available!) Many who read it in earlier editions have complimented me on the rich detail, as well as the compelling action. However, a few with less patience had pointed out that there were four conversations that; while revealing interesting information, could still be removed without impacting the storyline any. Therefore, in previously published editions of this book, those four conversations were removed from the main text and placed at the end as excerpts.

  Since then, the majority of my fans have vindicated my original editing and recommended that the exerpts be put back into the main text. With this edition I have done so.

  Many who liked the book otherwise complained that there was too much detail, but just as many complimented me for including as much rich detail as I have, so I haven't changed that.

  Whenever I release a new book in a series, I always go over the previous books in that series and check them again for editing and consistency, and re-issue them. No matter how many times I re-edit a novel, it seems there are always a few more tiny puntuation or sentence structure improvements to be made, and my fans sometimes point out small inconsistencies that I also correct at the next revision. Therefore this revision is a little different from the last, but beyond having replaced the exerpts it would take a sharp eye to find the differences. One of them is a more modern version of the Times New Roman font.

  The fact that this book is not divided into chapters in not an omission, it’s a carefully considered stylistic choice.

  Other elements of my style that the reader should note are my use of italics to indicate quoted sentences that are telepathically or psionicly communicated. For example;

  “It’s wonderful to be able to think with you, mind-to-mind.” she responded.

  I use the same MS Word files for both eBooks and paper books, and paper book printers don’t like bold or underlined text, so I also use italics occasionally to indicate words that are spoken with intensity. For example;

  “You are absolutely out of your mind!” he growled.

  If a sentence is already italicized bcause it’s a telepathic communication, any words in that sentence that are communicated with extra intensity will be indicated by being non-italicized, for example;

  “That’s all a bunch of crap, and you know it.” she psionically repremanded him.

  I use ALL CAPITALS occasionally to indicate yelling or great loudness, whether the words are spoken or telepathic; volume and intensity being distinct qualities.

  In this story, many common words are also the names of magic spells, such as Sending, Flight, and Speaking, or have traditionally had highly religious connotations like The Source, and those words are capitalized to indicate this.

  Since languages began, they have constantly changed and evolved. The advents of written language and printing both slowed language evolution, but it still goes on. Sometimes the resulting conventions that make up ‘proper English’ don’t make a lot of sense, and they are slightly different in every English-speaking country. In most of these cases I’ve caved and used the conventions anyway in order to avoid irritating my readers who are sensitive about these things, like writing ‘seven thousand, three hundred and fifty-five’. It makes no sense that the compound words for numbers up to one hundred are hyphenated, like fifty-five, and the others aren’t, like three thousand. But I go with it anyway.

  However, there are some English conventions that I absolutely refuse to follow because they distort the emotional connotations of the writing. I’ll point out the most common one here so that you’ll know that it’s not a mistake; I’m doing it on purpose. If a quoted sentence is a question or an exclamation, it is conventionally written as a complete sentence within quotations, for example;

  “Get down!” she yelled. Or;

  “Is that right?” he asked.

  However if a sentence that would normally end in a period is a quotation, correct English says that it should be ended with a comma. For example;

  “I live here,” he said.

  But the comma makes it a sentence fragment rather than a complete sentence, and leaves the reader hanging, giving a different emotional feel to the writing compared to the way I would write it, which is;

  “I live here.” he said.

  I only use a comma to end a quotation if it truly is a sentence fragment, because the sentence was interupted where a comma would normally go. For example;

  “I live here,” he said, “And you’re not welcome.”

  I suppose in that case I shouldn’t capitalize the word ‘and’, since it’s not really the first word in a sentence, but it bugs me if I don’t.

  There are a few other conventions that I don’t follow, so if you see what would normally be considered a writing mistake that is repeated consistently in every possible instance in the book, you’ll know that I’m doing that on purpose too.

  It’s hard to change what is considered Correct English, but I hope that other writers who read my books will agree with me about these points and do the same in their own writing, and that eventually doing it our way will be correct.

  Coming this spring to my website!

  *A new rotatable 3D map of the globe of Kellaran with much more detail and showing every place that is mentioned in the series.

/>   *A complete list of major characters with descriptions.

  *A timeline of major Kellarani historical events.

  *And an appendix of encyclopedic facts and figures about Kellaran.

  Wayne Edward Clarke, January 20, 2012.

  Blessings Of A Curse

  (If you are reading this account in a language other than Grand High Draconian, you might consider making a contribution to the Translation section of your local Magic Users Guild. XVD)

  Yazadril watched the huge human walk blithely through the border Wards of The Nine Valleys like they weren’t even there, and his breath hissed in between his teeth. The ancient mountain elf was stunned with surprise for the first time in decades, and he nervously tugged his long white beard in consternation. Nothing could pass the Wards unless a Warder had admitted it, nothing! And since he was one of the Warders, he knew with certainty that no such admission had occurred! He felt a moment of fear, an emotion he had not experienced for centuries, and quickly cast Unseen upon himself with a quietly hummed note and a practiced gesture.

  Then his intellect re-asserted itself. He reasoned that since the human had been completely unaffected by the Illusions, Force Barriers, and other magic defenses of the border Wards, he may also be unaffected by the Unseen spell. That thought gave him another fright, and he carefully moved behind a tree, then peered around it at the human.

  ‘By the Source, it is the biggest one I have ever beheld with these eyes!’ he thought to himself. ‘He is the size of a great plains bear, and just as shaggy as one!’

  He forced himself to calm, and considered what he knew that was pertinent.

  Only fourteen times had human wizards managed to see through the Illusions of the Wards in Yazadril’s exceedingly long lifetime. Five of them had openly camped before the Wards, since they had come to speak to the mountain elves, to peacefully trade in knowledge and goods. Six wizards had sought to sneak into The Nine Valleys to steal objects of power, and only two of those had passed the Wards. And three wizards had come with armies, and had attacked the barriers seeking to conquer the valleys beyond, and usurp the more concentrated power available there.

  They had all failed. The High People did not trade with human wizards, neither for knowledge nor for goods. The two thieves who made it past the Wards had used masterfully subtle spells of disguise and distraction to pose as resident High People, only to be caught by the hidden Sentries at the top of the pass. And none of the three would-be conquerors had survived their attempts, since all three were brute-force types, and the defensive spells of the Wards had transduced the massive power of their attacks and sent it back at them in unexpected forms.

  They had all obviously been human Master Wizards, gray or white of hair, wrinkled of face, clad in ornate clothing and festooned with signs and objects of power.

  This huge human was another matter entirely. His long black hair and beard covered most of his face and stuck out in all directions, making it hard to judge his age, but his muscles bulged beneath the bushy hair on his chest and along his arms and legs, and his movements were smooth. He wore a tattered kilt of dark gray plaid, the remains of a gray cotton shirt with the sleeves ripped off that hung open and untucked, and he carried the remnants of a black cloak gathered as a bag and slung over his shoulder, stuffed with unknown items. Crude leather sandals whisked quietly through the deep grass as his long and seemingly slow stride carried him upslope almost as fast as Yazadril could run.

  He appeared to be a simple peasant, and for him to have simply walked through the Wards, apparently without even realizing they existed, was almost inconceivable! He walked with his head down, watching the ground, and there was a slump to his shoulders.

  As he passed within twenty feet of Yazadril’s hiding spot the elven wizard caught his scent, and realized that the human was surprisingly clean, given his generally unkempt state. Which might indicate that his appearance was a disguise.

  As Yazadril began stealthily following the human upslope another thrill of rare emotion raced through his old heart, this one composed equally of fear and a burning intellectual curiosity.

  A moment later his quarry stopped beside the path to dig a wild onion with a small knife, scrubbed most of the dirt off with a handful of dry grass, and stood to stow it in his cloak. He stretched hugely, then looked to the right of the path. He noticed the Clearing of Contemplation where Yazadril had been meditating until he’d heard the human’s distant approach up the scree slope outside the Wards.

  The big human ambled into the small meadow and sat himself down on Yazadril’s favorite sitting log, and looked out on the great untenanted valley beyond the Wards, enjoying the very view the old elf so often enjoyed. Or so it seemed at first.

  He surprised Yazadril again when he put his head in his hands and began to cry, softly at first, then with great wracking sobs of utter despair. It sounded very strange, as his voice seemed unnaturally deep to elven ears.

  After ten minutes of that he seemed to have cried himself out, and gradually calmed. He looked to the setting sun, then began to set up a crude camp beside the log. Having finished that, he set up some small snares around the perimeter of the clearing, then returned to his camp to relax against the log and eat some wild berries and roots he withdrew from his cloak. After eating, he drank deeply from a waterskin, hid his possessions in the hollow end of the log, and rolled himself in his cloak before laying down in the grass beside the log. He soon appeared to be asleep.

  Yazadril watched all this from the cover of a clump of bushes ten yards beyond the clearing’s edge. He watched a half-hour longer to be sure the human truly slept, then silently made his way back to the path.

  He hiked halfway up to the top of the pass before he cast a careful Speaking to the sentinels there.

  “Dilimon, it is I, Yazadril! Bring three others of the Sentries, some food and drink, and a warm cloak. Meet with me on the pathway down to the border, move most silently, and do not cast the power in any way! As well, bring your hunting weapons! And before anything else is done, call to duty every Sentry we have available, have them equip themselves with every mundane weapon that they own, and post them in defensive formations about the top of the pass!”

  “I hear you Yazadril! Myself, three others, food and drink, a warm cloak, mundane weapons, in stealth down the path, all Sentries to defend the top of the pass! We follow your instructions!” Dilimon’s mind-voice rang in Yazadril’s head with youthful excitement, and Yazadril could tell that Dilimon was relaying the orders and taking efficient action to carry them out, even as he continued the mental conversation. “What is it Yazadril?! A basilisk?! A dark dragon?!”

  “It is a human, Dilimon. He is camped and sleeping in my Clearing of Contemplation, two hundred paces inside the Wards!”

  “By my soul! Shall I alert the other senior wizards?”

  “Do not wake them if they are already sleeping. This human does not appear to be a wizard. If any are still awake, have them informed, and tell them that I will speak with them about it in a few hours. Beyond them, and the eight members of your squad, none must know of this! Tell the extra Sentries that they are there on my order, as a precaution only, that there is quite likely no danger, and nothing else!”

  “Yes Yazadril. But… If he is not a wizard, how did he pass the Wards?”

  “I am not sure. He did not so much defeat the barriers, as simply ignore them! He did not appear to even realize that they were there! I have kept myself concealed from him, and I doubt that he even knows that he has trespassed onto our lands!”

  “By my soul! He must have elven blood in him, somehow!”

  “I doubt that such is the case!” Yazadril chuckled. “He is the biggest, hairiest human I have ever seen! He must be eight feet tall, and weigh as much as any six of us!”

  “He must be a giant, or partly one!” a female voice said.

  “No, Yalla.” Yazadril replied, recognizing the interjecting voice as that of the on-duty Sentry Wizard. “
I have had that thought as well, but there is no flavor of giant in his scent or his aura. I would certainly have sensed it. He is simply a very large human. I do not think he is very dangerous to us, but who can say?

  “However, he is definitely a heretofore unique magical anomaly, with unknown abilities, perhaps including the ability to detect us Speaking right now! So, we end this conversation, and hereafter none will cast the power in any way on this side of the pass, until we have learned all that we must know about him!”

  “We hear you Yazadril, no magic beyond the crest of the pass. We follow your instructions.” Yalla responded, seeming worried.

  “We see you, Yazadril. We will be with you in six minutes.” Dilimon reported.

  When they arrived, the four Sentries seemed to simply appear out of the darkness, exhibiting incredible stealth and woodscraft far beyond that shown by Yazadril, even when he’d had their youth.

  “Well done. You made good time.” he told them with quiet pride. “Give me the cloak, I am chilled to the bone. Thank you. Now food and drink. Thank you.” He wolfed down a few huge bites of sausage and cheese, then took smaller bites so he could talk with his mouth full. It was an unthinkable performance under most social circumstances, but standard procedure on military operations where time was of the essence.

  “I will need you to guard me while I perform a very deep Reading on him.” Yazadril continued. “You will take no action unless you are absolutely certain that he is attacking us! If he does attack, we will retreat if we can, and you may have to assist me. However, he may move very quickly, so retreat may not be practical, particularly if I am incapacitated.

  “Yalla, if you must defend against him, and your spells affect him, cast Binding and Sleep. If they do not affect him, cast Concussion on the ground in front of him. A few blasts of dirt in his face should discourage him. If it does not, tip a few trees down between him and us. Do not injure him unless absolutely necessary! Find a stone as large as your head, and if he is getting within fifteen feet from us, you can cast Movement on it and break his legs with it.