The Forgotten Tribe

  Red Jade:

  Book 4

  The Forgotten Tribe

  Stephen J. Wolf

  Copyright © 2016 Stephen J. Wolf

  All rights reserved.

  Print Edition:

  ISBN : 0-9969846-7-4

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9969846-7-6

  ebook Edition:

  ISBN : 0-9969846-8-2

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9969846-8-3

  To Kim, without whom there could be no Kitalla.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: The Excited Child

  Chapter 1: Castle Hathreneir

  Chapter 2: Chancellor Kitalla

  Chapter 3: Ieran’s Allegiance

  Chapter 4: Reconstruction

  Chapter 5: The Bard Endured

  Chapter 6: The Chancellor Sings

  Chapter 7: Ieran’s Task

  Chapter 8: The Ambush

  Chapter 9: The Regent of Hathreneir

  Chapter 10: The Funeral

  Chapter 11: Convincing the Hathren King

  Chapter 12: A New Beginning

  Chapter 13: Urrith and Ordren

  Chapter 14: To Delminor’s House They Go

  Chapter 15: The Mage Underground

  Chapter 16: Carrus’ Support

  Chapter 17: Entrance to the Laboratory

  Chapter 18: Lica of the Mages

  Chapter 19: The Warrior and the Babe

  Chapter 20: In Support of Dariak’s Mission

  Chapter 21: Volumes of Lore

  Chapter 22: To Protect the Child

  Chapter 23: The Castle in Disarray

  Chapter 24: An Oversight

  Chapter 25: The Impact of Magic

  Chapter 26: The Ends of Kings

  Chapter 27: Magical Malcontent

  Chapter 28: Deception

  Chapter 29: The Last Book

  Chapter 30: Standing Before the Seven

  Chapter 31: The Gathering

  Chapter 32: The Grandmother

  Chapter 33: The Wrath of Prethos

  Chapter 34: The Outpost Revisited

  Chapter 35: Looking Ahead

  Chapter 36: Reconstruction of Marritosh

  Chapter 37: Empowering the Jades

  Chapter 38: Gabrion’s Return

  Chapter 39: King Kallion

  Chapter 40: The Catapult and the Mages

  Chapter 41: Ordren’s Strike

  Chapter 42: To Tame the King

  Chapter 43: The Mage’s Plight

  Chapter 44: Verna’s Reprieve

  Chapter 45: The Red Jade

  Chapter 46: To Start Anew

  Epilogue: The Path Revealed

  Acknowledgements

  Websites of Note

  About the Author

  Works by Stephen J. Wolf

  Prologue

  The Excited Child

  The winter ended prematurely and Meriad was grateful. As a child, she used to love the winters, though her hometown hadn’t seen much snow. The air had seemed crisper and cleaner in winter. But as she whiffed the wonderful scents of early spring, she remembered why this was her favorite season.

  As she had done for years, the old woman arrived at a stony keep to visit with her grandson, who anxiously awaited her arrivals. She tutored him in many things, but her recent visits had all focused on one task, the telling of the story of the Red Jade.

  The story itself was written in a careful script with a few drawings for emphasis and it was bound in a thick leather that had seen better days. The tale was nearing its conclusion and she believed that this trip would at last reveal to her grandson the end. She would miss the excitement in his eyes when it was over, for she knew few other sagas that were as entertaining to a young lad.

  She was greeted warmly by the boy and escorted as usual to his room. He had grown some since her last visit and he was clearly taking well to his training. She didn’t even feel the need to ask about it, but he updated her anyway and kept talking while she supped, as was their routine.

  “And I’ve been thinking a lot about the story,” he segued. “About all the things that have happened. Like there’s Dariak from Hathreneir, who finally got all eleven pieces of jade, but now they’re empty. And his boyfriend Randler from Kallisor who was badly hurt and Dariak abandoned him, but Randler still loves him. Of how Frast couldn’t get between them, even after all the things he did for Randler.

  “It just made me realize that maybe my situation here isn’t so bad.”

  Meriad looked up from her soup, stunned, but he waved his hands and continued.

  “You’ve also got Kitalla, who was attacked and lost her baby when she was younger, and then she became a thief to support herself. She only joined the quest to get stronger, but now she’s fighting for a better future. She has this amazing skill that can influence other people while she’s dancing, and that’s a skill no one else has. She concluded that the skill came from her baby. And then she came to the realization that her lost baby was one of the Forgotten Tribe.”

  “And who are they?” Meriad prompted.

  “Descendants from the original King Kallisor and Lady Hathreneir. There are few from that line left as far as anyone knows. Randler sings of them all the time. And there was an eerie book in the Hathren mage tower that Kitalla saw which had parts of the tale shown in pictures. The last one Kitalla saw showed everything going dark.” He shuddered.

  “Who else have we learned about?”

  “There’s Gabrion, of course. He’s a warrior from the village of Savvron and he joined Dariak’s quest accidentally. He quested after his sweetheart, who was kidnapped, and then when he met her…” His voice grew quiet and he shook his head, unable to finish the sentence. “He was lost for a while but he came back to the group and is fighting again.”

  “But not killing,” Meriad noted.

  “Right. In fact, none of them are anymore if they can help it.”

  Meriad set her food aside and asked, “And where did we leave off?”

  “Dariak’s army won a huge battle outside Castle Hathreneir. The jades were assembled and massive damage was done to the castle. Ervinor, who was leading Dariak’s army in his absence, left the fighting, and I don’t blame him. He lost a lot of things, including his arm. So now it’s Dariak, Randler, Kitalla, and Gabrion together again. They also have Lica, who’s a mage from Kallisor. Also Carrus and Verna are captains in the army. Carrus is a big burly guy who joined up in Kallisor but didn’t stand out as a fighter or leader until their time in Hathreneir. And Verna is from Marritosh, which burned to the ground, and she’s a bit unstable, but Kitalla helped set her right.”

  “So now?”

  “Now the jades are empty, the castle is ruined—I think—and Dariak still has to figure out how to bring the jades together properly to stop the Kallisorian king from keeping the war going. And he doesn’t want it to end like the War of the Colossus from twenty years earlier where so many people died, including the kings and his own father. No, Dariak just wants peace.”

  Meriad nodded slowly. “And so—?”

  “Oh!” he interrupted. “I forgot. There’s Ruhk, a commander from Hathreneir who sort of teamed up with Gabrion and was coming to help him fight. And then Urrith, whom Gabrion trained, who is taking one of the Kallisor king’s old commanders, Ordren, back to his homeland.”

  “Very good.”

  “Oh, Gran-mama?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Will we learn anything more about Randler’s mother? Or Gabrion’s father? Or that thief, Poltor, who trained Kitalla? Or are their stories done?”

  Meriad smiled. “I could tell you, but I would think it would be more interesting if we found out the long way…” With that she opened the tome and took some time thumbing through the
pages until she reached the next chapter. “Do you have any predictions?”

  He thought for a moment and bit his lip. “Just one.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think… I won’t want this story to end.” He grinned and hunkered down in his bed, waiting for her to continue the saga.

  “Some stories never really end, my dear.” She winked.

  Chapter 1

  Castle Hathreneir

  Dawn light slipped over the horizon, cascading across the desert sand, turning it a deep crimson. Amidst the blood-hued land, the walls of Castle Hathreneir lay in ruins. The cold gray stone rested in heaps of rubble upon the ground, dust wafting through the air, obscuring the view of the once magnificent palace. The main entrance to the castle lay buried and thus it was necessary for visitors to scale a crude set of rope ladders while the mess was cleared away.

  It was at this place that Dariak and his friends had gathered. Banding together as one unified force, they had pushed back against the king’s fighters and, after a wild call of magical force, they had succeeded. But there had been many casualties.

  Dariak’s father had once served the old king as advisor and court magician. Delminor had been a prominent mage, whose research into the shards of the Red Jade helped push magical knowledge further ahead than any other single mage had ever achieved. Yet in the War of the Colossus, the mage had given his life to put an end to the fighting by uniting the jades and unintentionally wreaking havoc on the battlefield. And there, he had died.

  The jades were carried away by both sides of the war and it took time for Dariak to grow strong enough to pursue them. His quest had brought him to the land of Kallisor, where he made a handful of unlikely friends without whom he could never have reached this point of his journey. The jades were reassembled and once again they were called upon to put an end to the fighting.

  It hadn’t gone as planned. Dariak, who was connected to all the jades through his father’s blood, could have channeled the energy more efficiently, more precisely—at least he believed so. Instead, Frast had knocked him out and substituted himself into the reaction. Summoning the power of the jades had worked, and Frast had become the manifestation of a giant magical eagle, and his flight had decimated the entire front half of Hathreneir Castle. As with Dariak’s father, the act had cost Frast his life.

  Now Dariak entered the demolished throne room of the Hathren king. There were blood stains everywhere on the polished marble. He knew Frast’s attack had killed a number of men and women within the castle, but the man they needed was nowhere to be found.

  He had taken this path before, but Dariak stepped to the back of the throne room to a door on the western side. Passing through it led to a number of personal chambers for the king and his family, but as with every other search, the hallways were empty.

  Dariak sighed, running his hand through his jet black hair and shaking his head in confusion. There were no signs of other exits, except the one Kitalla had mentioned in the king’s bedchamber. Stepping toward the lavishly decorated room, Dariak located the secret catch and slid the door open.

  But it was useless because debris was piled up outside the hidden exit. The king could not have had time to run down the hall, open the doorway, and escape before the damage blocked the egress. From all the information Dariak had gathered, the magical avian beast had crashed into the throne room, where the king was in attendance, and then dissipated. By then, all the damage had been done and the king’s chancellor, Ieran, had ordered a surrender so they could assess the damage.

  The king wasn’t the only person of interest who was missing. His son and heir, Perrios, was also gone. Dariak headed toward the nursery and saw signs of a hasty retreat. The infant had been there when the walls came tumbling down, yet he had been swept away, presumably by the king himself.

  Two weeks had passed since the major incursion and though a tremendous amount of work was needed, things were starting to settle down. Dariak was the de facto leader now and he found Ieran to be a willing servant. His intuition suggested that the angular man was a bit too servile, but there were too many things to worry about for the moment. His primary goal was the safety of the people.

  A chill ran down Dariak’s back as he looked around the baby’s room. On the floor was a deep blood stain that the king had not been able to remove ever since it had marred the floor. The mage knelt beside the darkened blotch and shook his head sadly.

  He had been separated from his friends for a long time but since the battle’s conclusion, he had caught up on all the major events. He knew that this blood was Mira’s, a simple girl from Savvron. Dariak had joined the party that invaded the village, though he had not known that the purpose was to capture the girl, who had been having secret dalliances with the Hathren king. It was in Savvron that Dariak met his warrior friend, Gabrion, though it had taken some time for them to work toward a common goal. Gabrion’s quest had been the pursuit of Mira, but when he found her safe and content in the king’s court, complete with betrothal to the king himself and an infant child, Gabrion’s quest had come to a bitter and devastating end. The jade in his possession had channeled his pain and this long-dried splotch of blood was all that remained of the woman he had quested after.

  With a heavy sigh, Dariak made his way out of the king’s personal wing, his mind turning over the other events that needed tending. The people of the castle and its surrounding town were terrified of Dariak’s small army. Even the soldiers bowed their heads in Dariak’s presence, and it was unnerving. Sure, his forces had proven themselves superior, but he expected more resistance than this.

  Ever supportive, Randler encouraged Dariak to remain positive about these events. The refugees that had been escorted from Marritosh were now settling in with their fellows. The few prisoners Ervinor had been forced to take were released to the king’s guard as a sign of trust but many resigned from their posts, dishonored at being taken at all.

  Dariak considered Ervinor for a moment. The man from Kallisor had given up much in Dariak’s name, and after countless battles, the loss of his arm and dear friends, he had left the group, turning the army back over to Dariak.

  Too many ideas swept through the mage’s mind. He wanted to spend time with Randler and reconnect with the bard. They hadn’t had much of a chance for romance along the journey, and the recent events had put a serious strain on their relationship. After Randler’s legs were crushed in the northwest forest, Dariak had left him to pursue the final shard of jade, and though Randler said he understood, every time the mage looked at him, he could see the pain and distance he had created.

  There was also Kitalla, whose agility and drive were unparalleled, but she too had seen much on their journey and now carried a haunted look in her eyes that made Dariak wonder if she would soon follow Ervinor’s example and wander off on her own.

  The young warrior, Gabrion, was wounded inside, but his time at the eastern outpost had helped him to grow back into a semblance of himself. Master at swords, he was now spending his time shunning the blade and taking up hammer and wood, devoting his strength and stamina to clearing the damage their group had done.

  Dariak also had Ruhk to consider. The Hathren commander had defected, in a manner of speaking, and joined Gabrion’s team at the outpost. But Dariak wondered if the man’s loyalties would remain with his new allegiance or if, being back at the castle, he would try to reclaim his standing with the king and avoid the penalties of treason that would surely place his life and the lives of his family in jeopardy. For all appearances, it seemed as if he had indeed changed to a mindset of resolving the conflicts in the land, but the past two weeks had been so focused on repairs that few schemes surfaced anywhere.

  He knew Kitalla would be on alert for danger. She already had ears around the town, listening for whispers of rebellion against them, as well as for news on the whereabouts of the missing king. Yet she too was striving to restore the balance in the town in terms of trade agreements and property disputes. I
t was a task she had volunteered for, determined to use the time to keep active, while collecting information. Dariak hadn’t understood her reason for taking on such a role. It seemed far from her expertise, but he didn’t argue with anyone volunteering to step up and take on duties.

  Likewise, he was grateful that Carrus and Verna, captains in his army, took over training the fighters. Carrus took a hard-pressed approached, pushing the men and women through powerful exercises that honed their bodies in terms of strength and endurance. Short-fused Verna developed battle simulations where she instructed just a few of the fighters to engage in nonstandard formations to throw off the rest of the trainees and force them to adapt as they went.

  A unique issue, magic spells were inert after the energies consumed by the jades. Even simple spells faltered uselessly, and though that set the mages on edge, it also kept them from turning their powers against Dariak.

  All in all, things seemed almost tame and organized. After the trials he had endured thus far on his journey, the feeling left Dariak awake every night, peering out the window, and asking dozens of questions to the people around him to ensure that they were indeed keeping aware of everything.

  He climbed up to the room he had taken for himself, peering in first at Randler, who was already fast asleep. The bard had turned down his offer to share a room for now, saying that he woke up in pain all through the night and it would prevent Dariak from ever clearing his head and getting rest. The mage knew it was just an excuse, but he didn’t argue.

  Instead, he settled himself in his room and pulled open a pouch that he kept tucked underneath his cloak. Spilling the contents on his mattress, Dariak sifted through the eleven pieces of jade he had traveled through two kingdoms to claim. He could sense the innate abilities of each one even without touching them. They pulsed with his heartbeat, the earth jade more than the rest.

  He gently caressed the shards, feeling the odd texture of each one. The glass jade had a gritty surface like a fine coating of sand. The water jade was perpetually damp, though it wouldn’t sustain a thirsty man.