Prisoner of Fate Read online

  For everyone who has ever felt that we are not the masters of our destinies, but prisoners of fate.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Dedication

  Maps

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Two

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part Three

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Part Four

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Part Five

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Part Six

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Part Seven

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Appendix

  Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  Books by Tony Shillitoe

  Copyright

  About The Publisher

  MAPS

  PROLOGUE

  A ball of blue flame erupted before he reached the entrance and only sharp reflexes saved him from immolation. He dived to dodge a shaft of blue lightning, but it singed his right wrist before it exploded against the wall. Stone debris clattered across the floor and a choking cloud of dust enveloped him. Scrambling to his feet, coughing, he charged into the corridor and sprang for the steps, anticipating a fierce jolt of energy searing into his back. It didn’t come. Up the steps into the bright daylight, he bolted onto the plain, but the grey dust grabbed his ankles and with a desperate cry he pitched forward, thrashing his arms and legs like a drowning man, until exhausted, beaten, he stopped struggling and accepted his fate.

  He stayed face down for a long time, breathing shallowly to keep the dust from his lungs. His heart thudded against his ribs. Nausea bubbled in his stomach and throat. When the anticipated deathblow did not fall, he lifted his head and rolled onto his side, and listened. The world of Se’Treya was silent and still.

  Slowly he got up, the grey dust sliding from his garments, and stared at the opening he’d run from. The dark hole was empty. He scanned the surrounding area and then the horizon, until he was satisfied the Demon Horsemen were not playing a cruel cat-and-mouse game, before he walked briskly towards a stark white tree. At the tree, he paused, covered his brow with his hand and looked up. The sky was bright blue and cloudless, and in every direction was flat, featureless dust, and scattered dead trees with stark white limbs reaching to pluck at the sky like skeletal fingers. A thousand years ago, he had faced Mareg the Dragonlord in combat on this spot, confident that he was destined to inherit the mantle of Dragonlord, but he underestimated his enemy and overestimated the power of Dylan’s magic sword. Defeated, brutally wounded, Mareg entombed him in a magical prison beneath the surface of this harsh setting. He was lucky to be alive.

  He glanced down at his hand and toyed with the stub of the severed finger where he had once worn an Aelendyell Lore-bearer’s ring. Carved from amber, the ring was a tiny piece of the Genesis Stone that, according to Aelendyell and Elvenaar legend, fell from the sky. He had also owned a pendant in the image of the Ranu goddess Fareeka, which also contained a fragment of the Genesis Stone. The ring and the stone were his sources of magical ability. Through all the time and effort that he had committed to increasing his power, he believed he had to learn the five Ki of magic. Everybody believed in the Ki. They were wrong. He was wrong. All he had ever needed was a piece of the amber embedded in his skin. The Genesis Stone amber was the source of magic and he simply had to summon its power through his psychic will. Mareg the Dragonlord knew the secret because he took all of A Ahmud Ki’s amber relics before entrapping him in a glyph beneath the grey dust of Se’Treya. A Ahmud Ki was back in Se’Treya to find his possessions.

  An image of the red-haired woman who had saved his life by releasing him from Mareg’s cruel prison formed in his thoughts. He already missed Meg. The decision to leave her in the strange new Andrak world so that he could pursue his power wasn’t easy. He loved her, more than he had ever loved any human, but he had to leave her world—at least until he found his amber relics, restored his magical power and became what he was always destined to become. When he resurrected his true self he would return to her, reveal himself in his glory and together they would be omnipotent rulers.

  He wiped tiny beads of sweat from his high forehead and searched the grey dusty plain again for the Demon Horsemen. They had stumbled upon him as he was searching his former tomb and he was fortunate to escape. If Mareg had hidden his ring and pendant in the underground chamber, he was especially clever, because A Ahmud Ki could find no places that might contain his possessions, not even a suggestion of a hidden alcove. It was possible they were locked in a chamber where the Demon Horsemen resided, but when he had searched the corridors out of which the Horsemen habitually came he discovered the corridors ended at blank granite walls. And then he was pursued. And now he was here. He looked up at the sunless blue sky.

  Going back into the underground chamber was far too dangerous. He knew the Horsemen wouldn’t pursue him above ground because Se’Treya was designed to nullify magic and they were magical constructs, unable to set foot on the grey dust, but underground, where magic still functioned, they were potent and he was mortal. What he did know was that they came and went from the chamber, somehow. Perhaps they used a portal. Perhaps there were craftily hidden connecting tunnels to other chambers.

  He guessed there would be more underground chambers in the bleak, forbidding landscape. Logically, there had to be. Mareg was not the only Dragonlord of his time. He had had brothers—before the coming of their nemesis, the legendary Aian Abreotan. Six brothers. Abreotan slew five in the Dragon Wars two thousand years ago and entombed two—Mareg and Andrakis—whose prisons A Ahmud Ki had found in his personal quest for Dragonlord power. All seven had used Se’Treya as a playground, a place to resolve brotherly differences, according to what Mareg once told A Ahmud Ki, so if one chamber belonged to Mareg there could well be six more. The longer he pondered the concept, the more obvious it seemed. One more time he scanned the landscape. Then he began his search.

  He was unbearably thirsty. There was no real sun in the burning blue sky, no heat like that of a desert, but he was sweating heavily and he felt the exhaustion of a lost soul.
r />   Se’Treya had no day or night. The light was constant, unchanging, like the ubiquitous dust. Sometimes, mirage-like, he imagined a distant discolouration on the horizon suggesting a mountain range or hills. Se’Treya reminded him of the Dragon Breath Plains of the old Andrakis, as if this magical Dragonlord construction was a replica of the real world—at least of the world that existed a thousand years ago. I have lived a millennium, A Ahmud Ki mused as he sank against the smooth white trunk of a leafless tree. He scooped a handful of grey dust and let it sift through his long, elegant fingers. Everyone I ever knew is dust. He chuckled and threw the dust at the silence. ‘I am immortal!’ he yelled. There was no comforting echo from the dead landscape.

  Time was meaningless in this awful place. He had no idea how long he wandered across the endless grey. He had no idea of the direction he had taken. I could be walking in circles, he admitted, but there was no way of telling where he’d been because the moment he lifted his foot the fine dust filled the hollow of his footprint, settling as if a foot had never marred its surface. The only measures of time passing at all were his insatiable thirst and compelling hunger. He hadn’t found other entrances. His theory was wrong.

  Frustrated, he stumbled through the dust from tree to tree, scratching a mark on each with his belt buckle. He wouldn’t senselessly retrace his passage. Se’Treya was designed to foil anyone except the immortal Dragonlords—but he had lived a thousand years and the Dragonlords were dead. Who is smarter? he posed. ‘You didn’t want me to be a Dragonlord, did you?’ he shouted at the emptiness. ‘But I am one! Do you hear me, Mareg? I am one!’

  Stumbling blindly through the haze of exhaustion and thirst, the darkness swallowed him before he comprehended its existence beneath his feet. He fell, crashing down stone steps, and landed crumpled in an ungainly heap at the bottom. He lay on the hard floor for what seemed a long time before he rolled onto his side and blinked. The daylight filtering from the surface affected his Aelendyell night vision, so he wobbled onto all fours and crawled away from the light.

  At first he thought he’d blundered back into his prison, but the chamber he discovered at the end of the corridor, though circular, was empty. Only one other corridor led out. He forced himself upright, using the rough wall as a prop, and tried unsuccessfully to lick his parched lips, his swollen tongue sticking to the dry skin. He edged around the wall towards the corridor, surprised at how weak he felt, as if he hadn’t eaten or slept for a long time. Why the malaise? he wondered. I haven’t been in Se’Treya for days. It can only be hours, surely. But a voice within argued otherwise—that he’d wandered the grey plain until fatigue, thirst and hunger had finally caught up with him. He listened to the oppressive silence before he entered the corridor. He had found a new chamber. I was right, he decided as he crept forward, following the corridor around a steady curve to the left.

  Twenty paces along, he froze. At the periphery of his night vision was light—a dull blue haze further around the curving corridor. His heart raced. He stumbled back a step, rising terror threatening to cripple his exhausted body. If the Horsemen came now, he had no strength left to fight or escape. He crept back further, his knees trembling, his ankles feeling like marshy peat, his temples thudding with fear, glancing behind in case he was trapped. When he reached the first chamber and the light was no longer visible, he held his breath and listened. Then he crept across the chamber to the steps, climbed and emerged in the false daylight.

  I have nowhere to go, he lamented silently. I chose to come back to the place where I was meant to die a thousand years ago. What a cruel irony. He slumped into the grey dust, sitting cross-legged as he’d trained his apprentices to sit to show patience. I was once omnipotent, he reminded himself. Now I am a student again. He laughed quietly. I am going mad.

  He stared at the descending steps, his eyes sticky and dry. How long have I been here? he wondered. Sitting before the entrance, he must have slept at some point, but he had no recollection of when he went to sleep or for how long he had been asleep. His exhaustion was less, but his thirst and hunger were stronger. The Horsemen hadn’t pursued him this time, oblivious to his presence in the new chamber, but he knew he could not survive in the dust for much longer. If he couldn’t find an amber relic, he would die. That was inevitable. Whether it was wise or suicidal, he had to go down into the new chamber and follow the corridor. There will be an end to it, he decided, recognising the double meaning, and smiled grimly. Perhaps he could sneak by the Horsemen. Perhaps they had already moved on. How many Demon Horsemen are there? he wondered. It no longer mattered. I can either die out here doing nothing or I might die down there trying to find the amber. He coughed, the dry rasp hurting his parched throat, stood and approached the entrance, resolved to whatever fate awaited him.

  The blue haze gradually brightened as he crept towards it. There was likely to be a Horseman on guard, given the static quality of the emanating light, and the thought gave him hope that the item being protected might belong to him. How he would get it from the Horsemen he could not comprehend. He simply had to know what was at the end of the corridor.

  The light’s intensity increased until he was bathed in its blue brilliance. He saw, not a Demon Horseman as he feared, but a shimmering portal, a magical doorway. He looked for signs of other doors, alcoves, any place wherein someone could shelter or hide, but the corridor was solid and the portal stretched across its width and height. A Ahmud Ki carefully approached the light, gazing into its depth in the hope of seeing to where it might lead, looking for images of the place beyond, but the light was too fierce. He stared at it, recalling how he used to have the power to generate magical doorways to wherever he chose, remembering how Meg used portals to escape her enemies. Where else do I go? he wondered. ‘I don’t know where you lead,’ he whispered hoarsely through his dry lips, ‘but if I stay here I will die.’ He snorted softly and a faint grin formed at the corners of his mouth. ‘I’ve been your prisoner far too long, Mareg. Time to say goodbye.’ He shrugged and stepped into the light.

  PART ONE

  ‘Hope is deceptive. While it protects the heart from the pain of loss and grief, it numbs the soul to reality. Those who live in hope live in illusion.’

  ARIK NE‘FAROOK, RANU PHILOSOPHER

  CHAPTER ONE

  They came out of the clouds like ghosts, drifting faster than the wind, a host of white dragon eggs flying towards the city. As Meg watched from a distance, as she often did in dreams that foretold events that she would not witness, the dragon eggs passed over the rooftops and fireball after fireball erupted, until the entire city was ablaze and the sky and the dragon eggs were consumed in a pall of black smoke. Then the scene changed and she was running towards her tiny cottage in Marella, screaming for her daughter to leave. The sky darkened, the mass of bright flowers wilted instantly and shadows enveloped the cottage. Meg was running, but she could get no closer. She was screaming, but her voice was silent.

  The images of her daughter struggling against the marauding shadows troubled her as she dressed in a dark-blue skirt and blouse, and descended to the stay-house’s common room. She had to go home.

  Six guests sat at the long table—four men, two women. The wood-panelled walls were decorated with three large period paintings, each of people strolling through a stylised city park with the city buildings screened by dense green trees. The painting opposite the entry depicted a multicoloured dragon egg hanging in a cloudy sky above the city. Broad-leaved plants were ranged along the walls in ceramic pots and the fourth wall had a wide bay window, curtained with white lacy muslin that let in light while muting the world beyond.

  Two men nodded as she entered and stood politely until she took her seat. One, tall and slim with a scant blond beard, smiled awkwardly, showing his youthfulness. The other was older, rounder and shorter, and his clean-shaven ruddy cheeks revealed a propensity to drinking. ‘Good sleep?’ he inquired as the waitress placed a white bowl of berries, yoghurt and nuts before Meg.
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  ‘Thank you, yes,’ she replied, but she avoided his gaze, not wanting to be drawn into conversation.

  ‘I heard the war is heating up,’ the young man offered.

  ‘You can’t believe what the newspapers say,’ chided the older man. ‘Sensationalism makes good headlines.’

  ‘What do you think?’ the young man asked.

  The silence following his question warned Meg that it was directed to her so she raised her head and met his dark-blue eyes. His thin and boyish face was bland in features, and she felt sorry for him because he wouldn’t appeal to many girls. ‘I don’t know much about it,’ she said quietly, and looked down again to scoop another spoonful of her breakfast.

  ‘My name is Andrew Lyon,’ the young man continued. ‘Where are you from?’

  Meg looked up. Even after fifteen years of living in Western Andrak she found Andrak names incomprehensible. In her homeland, names meant something—associated with the person’s trade or heritage, but in Andrak, names were meaningless—just names. ‘West,’ she said. ‘Marella.’Andrew’s right eyebrow rose. ‘Then you’d have to know about the war. The front-line is close to there, isn’t it, Raph?’ he argued, turning to the older man for support.

  Meg shrugged. ‘Soldiers come and go. I just don’t pay attention to it. The war has been going for as long as I’ve lived there.’

  ‘The war’s been going on for years, since before even I was born,’ the older man, Raph, said between mouthfuls of his warm drink. ‘The Ranu never seem strong enough to break through our lines and we never seem strong enough to drive them back.’

  ‘The governments deliberately keep it that way,’ declared the stout, brunette woman beside Andrew.

  ‘Why would they do that?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘Politics,’ Raph muttered. ‘War keeps people from complaining about the government. Good for the economy too. And invention.’