Dragonoak: The Complete History of Kastelir Read online

  DRAGONOAK

  The Complete History of Kastelir

  Copyright 2015 Sam Farren

  Published by Sam Farren at Smashwords

  Cover art copyright 2015 Molly Gur

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favourite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  For my wonderful friends who have read my endless, typo-ridden drafts, endured me bouncing ideas off them at 3am, and have met me with enthusiasm, feedback, and book-altering suggestions; for those who have kept me motivated with art, fic, and rampant keysmashing; and for anyone who has delved into a fantasy novel and not seen themselves reflected in the world therein.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  PART I

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  PART II

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  PART III

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  About the author

  Upcoming titles in the Dragonoak series

  Connect with the author

  PROLOGUE

  She still went by Sir Ightham, back then. When she came to our village, no one suspected her to be in exile, or that exile was hardly the worst of it.

  I was a farmer, raised in a village that had been happily overlooked throughout much of history. We were nestled within a shallow valley, a thicket of trees growing tall on one side, and the only excitement that ever filtered through was the occasional wolf, hoping to make an easy meal of a stray sheep. The surrounding settlements considered ours to be cosy, and my life ought to have been pleasantly mundane.

  I shouldn't have had any tales to tell that would give a Knight reason to pause.

  Yet in the months leading up to Sir Ightham's arrival, I was facing an exile of my own. I already had a story to tell, one that could've breathed life into long volumes of texts. I thought that I had long since reached the conclusion of it all; that I was living in my own epilogue.

  Despite that, everything started with her arrival. I was twenty-three, and all the secrets I had striven to keep inside had slipped between my fingers and seeped into the dirt, poisoning the village.

  But as I said, she still went by Sir Ightham, in those days. We thought it was the start of better things for us all.

  PART I

  CHAPTER I

  The stubborn ground clung to the last of the cold, but clear skies and crisp air marked mid-Mersa and the timely arrival of spring.

  Newborn lambs gathered enough courage and coordination to leave their mothers' sides, and curiously nudged my knees as I kept watch, inevitably tumbling into my lap. They bleated – or at least tried to – and I helped them back onto twitchy legs, sending them on their way. Seconds later, convinced they'd never taken an unsteady step in their lives, they were bouncing in the long grass.

  The villagers didn't know I tended to the sheep. In their minds, I was confined to the farmhouse, locked in my room lest I so much as glance at any of food they'd purchased from my father.

  The hills where we kept our sheep were wide and open, and there was nowhere safer for me. From the top of a tree stump older than I was, I could see everything: the dirt path leading away from the rickety fence at the bottom of the hill, winding around our farmhouse, heading lower and lower into the village itself.

  I would've seen anyone approach from a mile away.

  More than once I'd imagined a mob coming my way. Not individual villagers, not people I recognised, people I'd grown up around; just a roiling mass, all anger and fear, grasping for simple, bloody solutions. I think I did it to entertain myself while the sheep slept under stars I'd charted a hundred times over.

  But as things were, no one ever wandered further than the farmhouse.

  “At least you're all adorable,” I murmured to another lamb who'd dared to wobble my way. He hopped on the spot and I offered him a handful of grass from between my bare feet. The lamb ate happily, wagging his stump of a tail as though the whole hillside wasn't covered in more of the same.

  I took what company I could get and fed the gathering crowd of curious lambs by hand, until something mercifully drew my attention. A figure in the distance ran up the dirt path, completely bypassing the farmhouse. I stood and the lambs scattered. For a moment, for one single, blissful moment, I was actually excited about something.

  Until I realised who it was.

  My brother. I sat back down, but didn't feel the sting of disappointment too strongly. Michael wasn't much of a farmer and never had been. He had a knack for handling financial matters; managing our accounts, keeping track of what we'd sold at market and how much crop we'd yielded from each field, and saw to personally paying the farm's few workers. It wasn't often he wandered out to the fields, much less the steep hills the sheep grazed upon.

  “Rowan!” he called, waving his hands above his head. His breath puffed out of him and his face was red, but his grin was unmissable. “Hurry it up, would you? The hill's working against me.”

  I did him the favour of jogging down to meet him, and he clasped my shoulders with both hands.

  “Has something happened?” I asked. The last time I'd seen him that happy, he'd just returned from a nearby town, dragging his weight in books behind him.

  “Has it ever!” he declared, shaking me. “You'll never guess what, though.”

  I waited for him to continue, but he stared down at me, brow raised, expecting me to guess at something I'd never get right. He shook me again and I shrugged, earning a sigh mixed with a laugh for my ignorance. Luckily for me, Michael had never been good at keeping anything remotely intriguing to himself.

  “There's a Knight. Down in the village, in our village, there's a Knight—an actual, breathing, living Knight. In our village!” He brought his hands up, forming fists that near enough trembled with excitement. I tilted my head to the side, unable to parse what he'd said. He slammed his hands back down as though trying to drive me into the dirt. “Are you listening? A Knight! In the village! Isn't it amazing?”

  I opened my mouth, furrowing my brow. Michael was of the opinion that most of the things he said were amazing, but for once, he might've been selling the story short. A passing merchant drifting into our village would've been amazing; a traveller who'd lost their way and needed a place to stay for the night would've been amazing. We hadn't seen a stranger within our village for five gruelling months. A Knight's arrival was beyond anything most of the Kingdom could ever hope for.

  “Are you sure it's a Knight?” I asked. “I mean, thirteen Knights in the whole of Felheim; what's the chance of one coming this far south, and to our village?”

  Everyone knew that dragons didn't dare to venture too cl
ose to the sea, and we were only twenty miles from the coast.

  “Oh, she's a Knight alright. Not a soldier or a guard or a wandering mercenary. Nothing so mundane as that,” Michael said, nodding to himself. He stepped back, clapping his hands together. One of the lambs gave a start and I blinked. “I saw her armour for myself! It's nothing less than dragon-bone, there's no doubting that. It's as white as—” He paused, tilting his head back, but there wasn't a passing cloud in the sky worth comparing it to. “It's white. Not the white of bleached bones, it's something more than that. Well, come on! You've got to see her.”

  Michael grabbed my wrist before I could protest. He recovered from the journey up through sheer force of excitement, and had more than enough strength left to drag me down the hillside. I made it ten, maybe fifteen steps, reality trailing far behind.

  When else would I ever get the chance to see a Knight?

  The village thrummed with talk of her and everyone had poured from their homes. All two-hundred of the villagers were gathered in the square, ready to turn their eyes on me, their thoughts against me.

  I dug my heels into the dirt, skidding to a stop.

  “I can't go down to the village,” I reminded Michael.

  He stared at me like I was being a bore and threw his hands in the air.

  “Why not? Did anyone ever say you weren't allowed in the village? Have you tried going down there?”

  “Well—”

  Nobody had told me I wasn't welcome. They hadn't given voice to my banishment, though for a time, they enjoyed speaking about me when they knew I was within earshot. But their resentment quickly took on a new tone: doors slamming, windows latched from the inside. I hadn't dared to venture into the village for four months. Perhaps time had softened them...

  “We're just going to look! You don't need to be there for more than a few minutes. It'll be fine, Rowan.”

  I didn't budge. As scared as the villagers were of me, convinced I had caused last season's crops to fail, I couldn't bring myself to face them, either. Not when there were so many of them. Not when they knew. Michael's intentions were good, and at heart, he only ever wanted me to join in his enthusiasm for everything beyond village life, but I couldn't take a step forward.

  “You don't get it,” I said, and what I meant was please don't ask me to explain.

  Not again.

  “Oh, I get it, Rowan. I'm your brother—do you think I don't get it every time I go down into the village? I know how people look at me when they think my attention is elsewhere. I know that people say very different things behind my back than they do to me at market. So yes, Rowan, I get it. I get it more than you do, hiding away in the hills,” he said, arms folded across his chest. He looked away, scowling at a rock on the hillside.

  “That's not fair,” I mumbled.

  I didn't want to argue with him. Not here, not now. Not again.

  He sighed.

  “No, I supposed it isn't. Not on me, and least of all on you,” he said, scowl softening. “Just for a few minutes? You have to try going back eventually, and it's going to be easier to do it sooner, rather than later. Besides, they're all terrified of you—if anyone tries starting trouble, wave your hands in a menacing manner and they'll run for cover.”

  He made his case by waving his fingers in the air, and I supposed that I would like to see the Knight. It was as good an excuse to go back as I was going to get, and considering that no one had hunted me down in the four months I'd been pointedly absent, perhaps they'd leave me be. All I had to do was keep my head down and stay out of trouble.

  “Alright—a few minutes,” I said, sprinting off and jumping the fence. “But only because I'll never believe you if I don't see for myself!”

  The path had once been riddled with the track marks of carts brought to market from neighbouring towns and villages, but the wind had stolen them. Only footprints remained, footprints belonging to my brother and father; nobody came to our village, no one was willing to trade with us. Not anymore.

  The last time I'd gone into the village was a month before my birthday and already well into winter. The cobbled roads were icy, roofs dusted with a sprinkling of snow, but when I stepped in again, I expected the village to have changed in more substantial ways than the seasons' whims dictated. It hadn't, of course. The baker's hadn't moved and the butcher's hadn't closed down, but I looked around as if taking in my surroundings for the first time.

  The mismatched houses neatly packed together seemed remarkable. Picturesque, almost, as if people couldn't possibly live in them. I wanted to reach out and touch them. I wanted to reach out and touch everything – the street lamps that weren't due to be lit for hours, the flowers bursting from window boxes, the low benches and the shrine that was older than all else – so that I could believe that I wasn't trapped in the past, or in a dream.

  I almost forgot I was there to see a Knight. The sight of the tavern alone was incredible.

  Whatever hazy quality my return brought with it was soon dispelled. I'd only seen the village gather in such force once before, and the sight made me tense. But they didn't see me, not at first. They were turned towards Marmalade Lodge, the only inn our village could boast of, unoccupied for the last five months. Still, the owners could hardly spare a thought for their past misfortunes, now that a Knight was staying with them.

  Michael's shoulder bumped against mine. He kept close, and I pushed myself onto my tiptoes, as though it might help me see through the wall of the inn. While I was busy trying to catch a glimpse of a Knight-shaped blur at one of the windows, someone in the crowd happened to glance my way.

  Not just someone; Thane, the head of the village elders. He caught my eye and I sunk flat on my feet, hoping I might sink further still. He didn't have to say a word. The villagers looked to him every so often, as if he had the power to summon the Knight out into the open, and they followed his gaze.

  What should've been familiar faces were no longer how I remembered them; they despised me and it darkened their eyes. Made them all look the same, somehow.

  Thane stepped towards us. Just enough to break from the crowd, for even he didn't dare come too close. Over his shoulder, I saw the apothecary’s. The door was boarded shut, and the windows had been covered. They feared some remnant of me would leak out.

  The apothecary himself had never returned.

  “Northwood,” Thane began, speaking to Michael and Michael alone. His voice was quiet, controlled. He would've resorted to shouting, had the Knight not been within earshot. “What are you doing, lad? Surely you of all people realise how important this is to us. Run her back to the farmhouse and nothing more'll be said on the matter.”

  “She only wants to see the Knight. What's wrong with that?” Michael asked, as though he genuinely didn't know.

  Thane pinched the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath.

  “Thirty years I've been elder here, and never have I—” He clenched his jaw. Behind him, a woman ushered one of the children I'd saved back into their house. “You know what they do to those sorts up in Thule. Now, we've been plenty lenient thus far, despite having no reason to be. Should a Knight find out about this it's going to be a different story indeed.”

  Isolation wasn't the villagers' idea of justice, and it certainly wasn't Thane's. Anger had burnt in his eyes when he first found out what I was, embers of utter resentment, and I felt it more now than ever in the way he refused to look at me. He'd do worse than they did up in Thule, if only he knew how. If only he felt a sense of bravery as keenly as he did betrayal.

  “Happily, this isn't Thule,” Michael pointed out.

  “All the more reason why we have to stay in the Knight's favour. It's for the good of the village, lad.” How many times had Thane kept me bound to the apothecary's by telling me it was for the good of the village? “Go on. I'm only being generous because your father's a good man and so are you, and I know neither of you asked for this. Get her out of here before she ruins us again.”

/>   I stepped forward. Thane didn't inch back, but the villagers behind him flinched. I wondered what would happen if I took another step, whether they'd scatter or surge towards me. Not daring to move any closer, I never found out.

  “I still have a name, you know,” was all I managed to murmur, shoulders up by my ears as I turned, hands balled into fists.

  “Rowan!” Michael called out after me. He grabbed my elbow, convinced he could make the villagers to see sense, but I kept on walking.

  “It's alright,” I said, staring straight ahead. “I know you were telling the truth about the Knight—that's why I came down, remember?”

  Even with the steep relief, I fled the village faster than Michael and I had charged towards it, legs and back aching, chest tight. Breath coming easily, despite that. No more than twenty minutes had ticked by, but I'd left the sheep alone for too long; I was almost too late.

  The lambs bleated in confusion, distress, and the sheep circled them, trying to herd the flock to safety, just as startled themselves. A wolf had got in. Wolves always got in, no matter what we did to reinforce the fence. It crept in from the tangle of woodland beyond the farm and crouched low, ready to strike.

  The journey back to the hill hadn't done anything to burn off the frustration coursing through me, and I was glad to see the wolf. I bolted towards it, ducking down to grab the crook I'd left rested against the tree stump, and it rose to its full height, considering its options.

  The wolf chose not to flee and took its chances. It leapt at me but I'd fought off wolves before and it probably hadn't so much as seen a human up close. I swung out with all the force in my body, cracking the wolf around the side of its skull.

  It yelped, knocked to the side but far from defeated. It made ready to strike again, but unfortunately for the wolf, I didn't care what it did to me. I didn't care, I didn't care, I didn't care. I struck it over and over, blindly lashing out until I could get my arms around its neck. I pulled a knife from my pocket, the one Michael had given me for my twentieth birthday, and folded it open in one hand. Bringing it to the wolf's throat, I drove it in as quickly as I could, as cleanly as I could.