Samples from books that we have published at Eartherean Books.
This is another in a series from the fourth book in the 4-book series The Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn: Darkbridge.
© 2009 by A. Adam Corby
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
Whispers
SOME WEEKS PASSED.
The few barbarians that remained South of Elna’s Sea were either sunk in pleasured Vapio or ruled their cities as independent fiefs, vainly dreaming of dynastic rule. From his strongholds in Fulmine and Belknule, Erion Sedeg sent armies to gather tribute in the name of the King, but these armies were little better than bands of thieves. They took the best houses wherever they went, and ate the food and used the women without repayment.
In name, almost all the lands and cities were loyal to the King; in truth, all was chaos. There was not industry or trade. The cities crawled with desperate poor. The rule of princes had become the exercise of axemen. Bands of robbers swarmed the South. Men looked back now on the rule of the Bordakasha as a golden age, forever lost.
Only Rukor was not yet in ruins, for Rukor had never been subdued. Even Erion Sedeg had overlooked Rukor, for she feigned docility, and Ara-Karn – perhaps he had forgotten Rukor too. But there Haspeth, Captain-General to the Divine Queen, High Charan of Rukor, Fulmine, the Eglands and Vapio, completed the mustering of his army of vengeance, and led them secretly aboard a fleet of ships.
From the Isles the dark fleet sailed along the coast past deserted headlands, toward the unwalled ruins and the undefended man. Something else went before it, from city to city in South and North alike, so that not even Erion Sedeg with all his men and arms could quench it. A single, dire rumor that ran like a bright evil upon men’s tongues, sometimes in malice, sometimes in pleasure, sometimes in dread:
‘Ara-Karn is mad.’
