Long ago, in the high hills outside of a thriving farm community, four young adventurers stumble upon a skeleton against a sloping cavern wall. With few clues to the skeleton's identity besides silver and gold coins and a mysterious tablet adorned with four stones, the adventurers, Garik, Kalus, Azure, and Trake, claim the treasure as their own. They create medallion necklaces from the jewels and proclaim their first expedition a smashing success. None of the boys has any idea that this unearthing will lead them on an incredible and dangerous coming-of-age journey. Years after their discovery, Azure is killed in a battle with an evil mage and Trake is attacked by men who want his medallion. Meanwhile, Kalus escapes a dungeon and Garik reaps the rewards of his talents as a hunter and trapper, oblivious to the fact that someone is willing to do anything to acquire the medallions that still hang around their necks. As the three remaining adventurers meet up once again, in a world full of war and mages that quest for ultimate power and never-ending life, they must battle to survive as they attempt to discover the origin of the infamous Stones of Creation.

Stones of Creation

By R. L. Freeman

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 R. L. Freeman
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-5458-9

Chapter One

The Beginning

Andaria was the richest kingdom in the entire world. The continent stretched from the southern plains, crossing two of the continent's greatest mountain ranges, and into the cold northern wastes. The country was teaming with crops from the southern plains and middle provinces, abundant wildlife, herd animals for domestication, exotic spices for foods, and medicinal herbs for healing as well as for inducing temporary intoxicants. Domesticated animals, several herbs, and certain spices that most Andarians took for granted sold for premium prices in other countries.

The southern regions didn't recognize a king since they have never needed ruling or protection from the threat of war. Being a member of the kingdom had its advantages when it came to trade, taxes and tariffs; it also had its advantages in times of war. It's much harder taking over a city with protection from a large army than it is to lay siege to a city that recognizes no higher law than its own local regime. A strong king—King Lazar, ruled the majority of Andaria.

Lazar ruled from the capital of Andaria, Castle Brammond, located on the eastern coast. He had been the king since his thirteenth birthday shortly after his father's death. His death was the result of an invasion of assassins at Castle Brammond—assassins rumored to have been hired by the warlord king that ruled Daurag. Lazar ruled with his mother, Queen Zaria, as his chief advisor. He would be known throughout the history of Andaria as the Child King.

Lazar's father started his rule of the kingdom from a voluntary submission pact with the nation's cities. If a city wanted to be under his rule and his protection, it would agree to the charters set forth long before by the first king of Andaria scribed the ancient texts. Lazar's father thought that strong loyalty bonds were earned—not forced. It wasn't until Lazar's father passed that his mother, Queen Zaria, proved to be phenomenal at rallying army recruits and promoting unity between the cities and loose domains. Many years of patience brought the northern regions of Andaria to this voluntary unity and a strong nation was made stronger.

The king's intention was to slowly move the kingdom away from the ancient texts by modifying them as needed. He wanted more modern laws but he knew that too much change and change too quickly might undermine his rule. A more important law that was intended to be removed with time was ruling heads. The ancient texts state that only a king can be king. Without the king, the queen cannot rule. Changing the conquest mandate to voluntary submission was the first great change and saved much bloodshed. Unfortunately, he didn't live long enough to make any other major changes to the mandates.

The only cities that remain independent are the ones south of the Kaliped Mountains. With the natural barriers that surrounded southern Andaria like the mountain range to the north, the Endless Sea to the east, and the Torrential Straight that separated the continents, the loose domains felt free to be independent. They paid higher embargoes to the north but made up for it in the coastal trades with exports and imports.

Brammond prospered and Andaria grew powerful for thirteen years after Lazar was born. Its only threat was from the warlord king from Daurag. The warlord tyrant, King Rechus, ran Daurag with an iron fist. His country was one of sweltering heat. His domain was the desert land.

King Rechus offered troops to Lazar for aid in keeping Andaria secure while the country morned the loss of the king; Lazar declined without consultation.

Not long after Lazar dispatched this Daurag aid, his chief advisor, was slain in her sleep. His mother was found with a pillow over her face and a dagger planted deeply between her ribs. The rumor was that Rechus' most trusted bodyguards and ambassadors were still in the city from delivering the previous offer of aid and had been seen wondering around the castle grounds.

Rechus had already placed agents in all of the southern Andarian cities. He watched closely and bided his time for the right moments to take calculated actions. He wanted the farmlands and plains. As Rechus saw things, his investments and trades with the major coastal cities, Thehdar and Verdarnis, made them the first targets of rule when his campaign got underway. He already commanded a great deal of authority from certain officials of these two towns. When the war begins for Andaria, he planned on having total control of these key cities.

Rechus knew that at the right moment, he could take these cities in addition to Hondar and close up the mountain passes to keep Lazar from retaliation. It would be a fight that Lazar would have little success in winning. Without the pass at Verdarnis to the east and Hondar's Pass north of the city, Rechus would own and maintain southern Andaria for years to come. All of the cities to the south of the mountain range could remain independent and would still not want protection from Lazar or Rechus—in effect; they would eventually be ruled by Rechus. This appeared to be a fairly predictable outcome, or so the warlord king thought.

In the years to follow, every advisor assigned to Lazar died in unusual accidents or were murdered outright. Lazar himself would eventually dismiss the few advisors that did not perish just to keep anyone else from inexplicable demise. On Lazar's twenty-third birthday he named as his chief advisor Muras of Daxon, the same man that had saved his life as a child the night his father was killed. Muras was wise, a skilled warrior, and successfully guided Lazar to push Rechus out of Andaria's surrounding townships.

Trake's thoughts drifted to Garik and a time when they were younger. Garik always carried a fine longbow that his father helped him make at the trading post. His left arm was always red from the bowstring slapping as he shot the bow. Trake smiled at the memories. He and Garik were both about fourteen years old when they found a cave in the hills outside of town. Kalus had discovered the entrance in a thicket of briars.

There was a steep slope leading into the small cavern room barely lit from the sunshine outside. Some of the sun's rays penetrated cracks in the rocks above. Azure slid down into the cave behind everyone else still carrying a walking stick he picked up on the way into the woods. The stick proved unyielding when it jabbed into the wall and sent him tumbling; he broke his little finger. His finger never healed correctly and would not straighten out.

Garik carried his longbow knocked with an arrow and Trake wielded a long bladed butcher knife like an Andarian Shortsword. Trake remembered looking back at his friends with his blade out. "Follow me guys." Azure mumbled something and the end of a long stick burst into flame. It was the first time he remembered Azure ever conjuring a spell. The torchlight bounced all around the cavern shadows with a few shadowy bursts of color reflecting around the jagged walls of the cavern.

It was an odd thing to see at such a young age. A skeleton lying on the ground and against the slope of the cave wall. A marble tablet that was suspended from each corner to opposite walls and its bottom secured to the floor. The chain was a fine mesh that was similar to a silk rope yet it appeared as if it had been driven into the cavern wall like a spike. The head of the skeleton had a large crack running from the top to the side just above where the ear would have been. In the skeleton's loose grip was a piece of parchment that was brittle and withered away in places.

The skeleton must have been here for many years. Did he fall and hit his head or did someone bash his head with a weapon and rob him? The cloth garb had all but rotted away from the body. There was a mix of silver and gold coins on the ground at the skeleton's right side. Trake slowly knelt down to get the gold coins.

Azure touched the skeleton's rib cage. "When an evil wizard becomes a lich, his skin becomes more like leather. I've read they can extend their lives through the essence of their bloodline." His comments came out more like a question than a statement as he tried to recall writing on lichdom. He didn't realize that he made little sense but he knew a little about liches.

It is well known that magic is very harsh to the human body. Scholars and healers will tell you that it uses the body up to manipulate such power. Priests will say that magic is evil since most of its wielders turn evil themselves. The truth is magic creates a thirst for knowledge. It takes more than a single life time to study magic to any degree of note. Some believe that magic was left here by a stronger race of beings that could wield its power and some believe magic was left here by the gods that made this world.

The use of magic can take its toll; its use makes the body grow old. There are ways to offset the problem with the fast aging that wielding magic causes but it is very expensive and costs more in soul than gold. Magic can be like a drug to some, the more it is used the more someone has to use it and each use creates a state of euphoria. Most mages spend their lives in search of spells that alter the fast aging, some become liches. Liches live a long time but there are certain sacrifices that must be made. Liches require a bloodline's life essence. While loved ones have been known to willingly give this essence, others are not so willing. Each day that can be absorbed by a lich gives it ten fold the life span; so, one year can give the lich ten years of life.

The tablet was a flat piece of stone was shiny, smooth, and gray-blue; it had four perfect oval gemstones melded into it at each corner. Each stone ran diagonally from the center to the corner of the tablet. There was a deep groove separating each section with a gemstone in each section—a burning ruby sapphire, a refreshing diamond, a cool blue topaz, and an earthen brown/green emerald. Azure slowly moved his hand towards the tablet until his fingers made contact with it. As he rubbed his index finger across the blue stone, the tablet slackened in the fine chains' grip and then released from the wall. It simply slid to the floor of the cave as the chains were slowly purged from the stone and earth confines.

Thunder rumbled in the sky outside as the four boys circled around the tablet that rested on the floor. Trake divided what little money was laying in the dirt beside the skeleton. After Kalus mentioned that the stones must be worth a fortune and Azure said they must have had some magical properties or importance, Garik and Trake decided to try and break the stones away. This didn't work; however, the tablet broke perfectly into four even pieces and each with a stone in it. Each of the four stones was still mounted in its own corner of this mottled tablet with a chain that had suspended its corner to the ceiling or floor.

Trake used his knife to pry apart the last link in each chain and then connected to the second link from the corner of each piece of the small tablet. He used some rocks and the knife handle to mash the chain link back together the make a large looping necklace for the stones.

After breaking apart the tablet, Kalus took the emerald token, Trake took the sapphire, Azure took the topaz, and Garik took the diamond. In a single glance of silent agreement, the four boys donned their new medallions as a symbol of completion for their first expedition, each vowing secretly that this would be the beginning of a way of life. It felt like a lifetime ago.

Trake had been in the small town of Hebron for two weeks and there hadn't been the slightest rumor of work guarding a caravan or even helping the local baker. Not that he needed the coin, but the inactivity was beginning to bother him. He had never been one to stay long in one place since he left his home village of Daxon about seven years ago.

He missed his family and his friends but the urge for adventure was always too great to stay any place too long. Now, here he sat watching a man amaze the tavern's crowd with cheap slight-of-hand tricks pretending to be magician. He thought to himself how Azure would have been quick to show what a real mage could do as opposed to performing cheap parlor tricks. Azure was a childhood friend that had passed away a little over two years ago during a battle with a superior mage. Trake was not able to make the memorial service; he didn't even know where his friend was buried. He was on the other side of the world selling his sword arm out to King Lazar in the war that pushed the warlord King Rechus out of Andaria. He had often wondered if the other two of his childhood friends, Garik and Kalus, had made it to the memorial of their old friend.

Trake sort of chuckled at the irony of him wanting a sorcerer around. Save for Azure, he had never had much use for sorcerers at all. Magical weapons or magical healers didn't bother him, but sorcerers were different. He had good reason to feel that way. Trake had lost his mother when he was three years old, due to a sorcerer. His mother, Tessa, had not been able to bare her husband a child in the first three years of their marriage. She had been to all the great healers of Brammond and none of them where able to help her. Knowing that her husband Muras wanted a son to carry on his family name she turned to one of her own countrymen.

Tessa was from the dark continent of Vasnia where most Vasnians where sorcerers. It was where all the great sorcerers went to study. In desperation Tessa contacted the sorcerer Zetalis to see if he could help her conceive. Zetalis had been Tessa's teacher as a young child and had always said she was destined to be a great sorceress. He was very disappointed when she ran from what he believed to be her true calling but, as a young woman, she did not want to be a sorceress.

Zetalis told her that he could help her to conceive, he even guaranteed a son. The payment he would demand would come at a later date. Tessa hastily accepted without even asking what the payment would be. Trake was conceived and born nine months later.

It was on Trake's third birthday that Tessa learned the price she would have to pay. Zetalis showed up in astral form and told her that she must leave her life behind and return to her studies. Zetalis said if Tessa did not live up to her part of the bargain, he would take Trake in lieu of payment and train him in the ways of sorcery. Trake's father, Muras, overheard this conversation and tried to protect his family. He attacked the astral form of Zetalis but to no avail. His huge axe blade went straight through the Astral form and in to the wall. With a wave of his astral hand, Zetalis put Muras to sleep.

Tessa, seeing she had no choice, left with Zetalis leaving Trake behind. When he awoke, Muras was outraged at Tessa's departure. Gathering his supplies, he left Trake with his sister. Four long seasons Muras searched for Tessa and Zetalis. In Brammond he found a bill of divorcement that Tessa had signed. It had been pushed through the courts in record time. He also found the port where they had boarded a ship to Vasnia, but the ship never made it to the Vasnian coast. It was reported that the boat sank during a storm and that no one survived. Muras returned home to raise his son and remarried two years later.

It was sorcery that gave Trake life, but cost him his mother. His stepmother had loved him and raised him as her own; however, Trake could never forget his real mother or what caused her to abandon him. As a constant reminder, every time he saw his reflection, he would see the difference between himself and a normal child. His eyes were a very light blue, so light they resembled ice. Every child in Daxon made fun of him, all save his three closest friends. When Trake got older he realized his eyes gave him the night vision that some people train a lifetime to develop.

Abruptly, Trake was brought out of his deep thoughts by the tavern door opening. In walked three men clad in various types of armor. Other than his own armor, this was the most he had seen on anyone in weeks. These men were different; they had a look of hunger in their eyes. Yes, they were looking for something or someone and nothing would stand in the way.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Stones of Creation by R. L. Freeman Copyright © 2011 by R. L. Freeman. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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