Throne of Ruins Read online

  THRONE OF RUINS

  BOOK THREE OF

  TALES OF GORANIA

  KARIM SOLIMAN

  THRONE OF RUINS

  Copyright © 2018 by Karim Soliman.

  Cover art by Stefanie Saw

  Cover design by Stefanie Saw

  https://authorkarimsoliman.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental

  For my Baby Groot Mostafa, thanks for

  allowing me to use my laptop to finish the series. Hope Mom's iPad is still in one piece.

  Map of Gorania

  Map of Gorania

  PART 1 THE SEIGE OF PARIL

  1. MASOLON

  2. RONA

  3. MASOLON

  4. RONA

  5. MASOLON

  6. RONA

  7. MASOLON

  8. RONA

  9. MASOLON

  10. RONA

  11. ZIYAD

  12. RONA

  13. MASOLON

  14. MASOLON

  15. RONA

  16. MASOLON

  17. ANTRAM

  18. MASOLON

  19. BEN

  PART 2 THE TWO-HEADED LION

  20. POLAPOPOLOS

  21. MASOLON

  22. ANTRAM

  23. HALIN

  24. MASOLON

  25. LADY

  26. RONA

  27. SANIA

  28. BEN

  29. MASOLON

  30. ANTRAM

  31. MASOLON

  32. BEN

  33. MASOLON

  34. ANTRAM

  35. BEN

  36. MASOLON

  37. SANIA

  38. VIOLA

  39. SANIA

  40. BEN

  41. FRANKIL

  42. SANIA

  43. MASOLON

  44. RONA

  45. BEN

  46. SANIA

  47. MASOLON

  48. RONA

  49. HALIN

  50. BEN

  51. MASOLON

  52. SANIA

  53. VIOLA

  54. MASOLON

  EPILOGUE

  Don't miss

  KINGDOMS OF ASH

  Kingdoms and People of Gorania

  Bermania

  Murase

  Rusakia

  Byzonta

  Skandivia

  Mankola

  Koya

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  KINGDOMS OF ASH

  PART 1

  THE SEIGE OF PARIL

  1. MASOLON

  He could not help looking over his shoulder though he was sure he lost his followers, if he had any in the first place. None of his clansmen with enough sanity would set foot in Si'oli of his own will.

  Masolon had to slow his horse down as the sun grew more brutal, its light blazing his face and surely, the sand beneath the hooves of his poor beast. You had better be right, Obeira, Masolon thought, recalling all his grandfather's sessions with him. If there was no Gorania beyond Si'oli, then Masolon's father was right: the Honorable One was just a demented old man.

  The heat was getting worse with every step his horse made forward. Actually, the word forward had no meaning in this endless desert. The plain terrain looked the same everywhere around him, the sky so bright that it was impossible to look at it to find where the sun was exactly hanging. It will eventually go down. But Masolon and his horse might not survive until sunset if the rivers of sweat kept pouring off them. The day was not over, and yet his waterskin was almost empty.

  Masolon had never heard such silence before. Even in the most abandoned places, like the lands scorched by the Doom near his village, there was always the whispering breeze that might move some debris or a grain of sand. But here, the air was as still as the Moon Mountains. The only sound he heard was his cough when the steam he was inhaling irritated his lungs. It gave him some sort of relief to know that his ear had not melted yet. And where are those demons? Should not they greet their uninvited guest? Either they were too shy or all those tales about the cursed residents of this damned land were only myths, like his grandfather's delusions about the empire beyond Si'oli.

  The glow of the sky did not falter, not even a little bit. What is this? The longest day ever? When would the sun of this cursed place go down? The sun here is not the one shining over Ogono, he realized. If there was a sun at all. He could not look up to know if it still existed. He even struggled to keep his gaze ahead, all credit going to the steam that boiled his eyes as well as his skin and lungs. I should have brought a cart full of waterskins. He would consume half of them just to wet his parched throat, the rest to bathe his scorched skin. Yes, he forgot his horse. He had better take care of himself.

  The air kept getting steamier until he heard a sound like the hiss of boiling water. Fire. Masolon beheld that column of flames arising at his right from the ground. After you spent all these hours with nothing but the bright yellowish white color around you, the sight of something like red flames would lift your spirits beyond you could imagine.

  The core of the fire column was darkening, Masolon observed. And if his eyes did not play tricks on him, he would swear there was a dark shadow of a man inside this fire. Though Masolon had never seen that thing before, he knew what it was.

  Masolon nudged his horse to go the other way, but the same column with that very shadow was right in front of him. "This is not real," Masolon told himself loudly. "I am dreaming."

  "You are not." The demon's gravelly voice rang in Masolon's head, louder than any time else.

  That left Masolon one possibility. "What am I doing here? Am I dead?"

  "Not until we are one."

  "What do you mean? Are we not one yet?"

  The column of flames bent and hissed as it revolved around Masolon and his horse, its head fusing with its tail like a wide ring of fire. Panicked, the horse moved in circles, as if trying to find a way out of the demonic trap. "Easy." Masolon patted the horse's neck and pressed with his knees, urging it to run through the ring of fire, but the beast refused to respond. What is he afraid of? The fire? Or the creature inside it? he wondered before he held his bow, drew an arrow, and aimed. With the lightning speed of the flames twirling around Masolon, he could not spot that dark frame, so he decided to shoot anyway. The moment he pulled the bowstring, the fire suddenly changed its course, breaking the ring it was making, and struck him right in the chest in a speed impossible to evade. The agonizing burn stung Masolon in every part in his body, his toes included. He could not tell how long he went through this horrendous pain—it was something between a second and an hour—but it ended when he opened his eyes.

  The air he sucked in when he gasped was way colder now. From the dim light, he could tell that sunset was coming at last. A few seconds later, he realized he was in a torchlit room, the matrix of the bed he lay on softer than his in the castle of Subrel. His eyes kept wandering right and left, but no, the column of flames was not here. His visit to Si'oli was over. For a nightmare, that one was. . .

  What is that exactly? Masolon pulled his chained arms, but those chains tying him to the bed were real. His legs were bound by cold steel as well. This is not a cell, he thought, contemplating the oaken door of his chamber and the large arch
ed window supported by plate tracery. And he was wrong; it was a candlestick that lit the chamber, not a torch. Where on earth was he? Was that another dream?

  Masolon's memories before his journey to the Great Desert were a bit blurred. Yesterday he had plunged his sword into his father's blade and right after that he had slain those soldiers besieging Subrel. Masolon was sober enough to be sure that the two events had happened on two different days separated by a two-year-gap, though. That demon knew how to choose the nightmares that would muddle his mind.

  That was not a nightmare; that was a memory, Masolon reflected. A memory he had never been able to recall until. . . his demon grew stronger. Though Masolon had no idea how he came up with such an explanation, he found himself satisfied with it.

  The doorknob turned before the door itself was slightly pushed, but Masolon did not hear any entering footsteps. "Who is there?" he asked. After receiving no answer, he repeated his question not so nicely this time.

  When the door creaked open, Masolon remembered the last face he had seen before he went asleep—to Si'oli. I knew it. Father was dead long before that.

  "Payton?" Masolon asked his new friend, who stood closer to the door than to the bed. "Payton, what is wrong? What are these cursed chains doing on my arms?"

  Payton stared at him, as if he was eyeing some wild beast in the forest. "Who are you?"

  Not quite the answer Masolon was expecting. "What is this nonsense, Payton? Have you lost your mind? Cut me loose now!"

  "Who are you?" Payton clenched his jaw.

  "Find me someone who knows me and they will tell you. Where is Rona? Where is Edmond? Ah, Gramus. If he is sound enough to walk and come here, he will definitely recognize me."

  "You remember everything then." Payton dragged a chair and turned it so that its back faced the bed. He sat leaning forward on the wooden back of the chair. "Do you remember our raid on Di Galio's camp in the woods?"

  "Is this a silly joke? Release me, I say!"

  "What is the last thing you remember, Masolon, if you are still there, of course?"

  If he was still there? What was this bastard blathering about? Had he received a heavy blow on the head when the soldiers charged at them and. . .

  Wait. What was the last thing he remembered again? He tried to collect his thoughts about this particular fight. Strangely enough, he did not recall fighting. Surely those hundred roaring soldiers had not just changed their minds and walked away from him and Payton.

  Do not do it for yourself. For him.

  Alright. There was one more thing he recalled now about that last moment. It was the realization of one fact that had no other possibilities: no matter how brave Masolon and Payton had fought, death was inevitable. Payton's death, mind you. Yes, that was the very last thing Masolon could remember: the certainty of surviving a hundred blades.

  If you are still there. Obviously, someone else had rescued Payton's life.

  "How did we survive the woods?" Masolon cautiously asked, afraid to hear the answer.

  "You fought them and won."

  Masolon was anticipating a more detailed answer. "That simple?"

  "Nothing is that simple," Payton snapped. "You wielded your sword like a maniac, slaying three or four men in less than a couple of seconds. You were stabbed and slashed like a hundred times. Sometimes you stood your ground, sometimes you fell before you rose again and slay more soldiers. I didn't dare to come forward and join the fight, and nobody paid me heed. To them, I was as harmless as one of those trees."

  Masolon shook his head. "I remember nothing of this." The chains restrained him from raising his head to check on his wounds. "Those stabs should be hurting me right now." It was really horrifying that the only pain Masolon still remembered was the agonizing burn of the fire column that had struck him right in the chest.

  "But they don't, do they?" Payton simpered. "Because after you killed the last soldier and decided to lose consciousness, I checked on you. I would say I had gone insane if it were not for the others who had examined your clean, unscathed body."

  Someday you and I will be one.

  "You were afraid I would resume killing people when I woke up?" Masolon asked.

  "I didn't know who was going to wake up." Payton nervously chuckled. "I didn't know if those chains would restrain you in the first place. The cleric himself was not so sure."

  "Cleric? What for?"

  "Well, she thought we might need one to help us understand what was wrong with you?"

  Blast! Rona knows now. "Why did you tell her?"

  "She was worried about you, lucky bastard. And she insisted on hearing an explanation for your queer condition. Hadn't she found me, I would have buried you with the rest of the dead soldiers."

  Payton did not seem to be jesting about the last part. "Will I be chained forever?”

  "Her Grace must give the order first." Payton rose to his feet. "I will let her know you are awake."

  She was here indeed. Good to know his suicide raid on Di Galio's camp had worked. "Has everybody made it safely to Kalhom?"

  "A lot has happened while you were sleeping for three days." A smile slipped over Payton's face. "We are in Ramos now."

  2. RONA

  The lord's seat in the great hall of the Ramosi palace was her temporary throne, rubies adorning its back and armrests. This is where Di Galio used to sit, she reminded herself. The dais the throne lay on made her tower over her seated lords, who were not so many after Darrison's betrayal to her. All the noble houses that had joined her at the beginning of her conquest left with her former senior lord save for the lesser house of Lord Jonson—a house whose status did not match its size. Even the few lesser Karuni lords who had declared their allegiance to her long before the arrival of their master, Lord Foubert, deserted her the very night Darrison fled to save his arse.

  Since the start of this meeting, she could not help fancying herself in the royal palace of Paril, the six-gemmed crown resting on her head. Lost in her daydream, she missed the statements of her arguing lords more than once. What ruined her daydream was the echo of their voices in this vast hall. It reminded her how short of vassals she was. The throne hall in Paril is vaster than this one. She would need more voices if she wanted to get rid of this echo.

  On the aisle seat of the first row sat Jonson, right behind him Norwell who had his uncle's blue eyes. On the opposite flank of seats were Foubert and his sons Yavier and Flebe. Because of Rona's poor participation, her vassals spent most of tonight's heated discussion facing each other instead of her.

  ". . . the easterners are best be led by easterners," Yavier was saying when she roused herself from another bout of daydreaming. The heir to Karun inherited his father's square face and long smooth hair, his stature three inches shorter, his shoulders broader. Flebe was more comely than his elder brother, his nose and eyebrows more delicate than many women she saw. He was slightly slimmer than his father, and might be overtopping him by half an inch. Twenty-one, and still no wife. Even if Jonson's tale about Foubert's undying love to her mother was true, that handsome son would make a stronger cause for the lord of Karun to join her. Poor Jonson. He shouldn't have given up after eight daughters.

  "Turncloaks shall not lead, no matter the odds." Jonson's face and body stiffened. They must be still arguing about the captured Karuni and Lapondian lords, Rona deduced.

  "All of us are turncloaks from someone else's perspective, and yet Queen Rona didn't bother when she sent for us." Yavier was nine years older than his brother, yet as dominating as his father, who was obviously satisfied with his heir's performance so far. "Milord, those hollow statements won't win us the war. Men and arms will. And that's what we should be doing: grow our army with more soldiers."

  "More loyal soldiers." And who else would preach loyalty better than Jonson? "Numbers won't mean anything if you don't know the number of men who would stand alongside you until death."

  "Loyalties are earned and sometimes bought, Lord Jonson."
<
br />   "We don't need to buy anybody else." Jonson glowered at Yavier.

  "Of course we do. We shouldn't let Di Galio's retreat to Paril trick us. In addition to the remnants of his troops and Wilander's elite royal guards there, his king still has vassals in the South to aid them."

  "Di Galio would have stayed and defended his city if he had known that southern reinforcements were on their way to him."

  "Perhaps he knows that they are coming," pointed out Foubert this time. "That's why he has left us something that will keep us busy for days until his reinforcements join forces with him."

  Jonson curled his forehead, exchanging a look with Norwell to see if he approved Foubert's point of view, but the nephew shook his head in silence. "A move too risky to be intentional."

  "That's why he is the Fox, Lord Jonson. He always sees beyond the horizon, not just beneath his feet."

  Rona had a faint hope that surrendering Ramos was a grave mistake from Di Galio's side, but he was named the Fox for a good reason. He has left us something that will keep us busy. That "something" was a city in turmoil, its people growing restless after their lord had taken all the supplies he could carry with him to Paril. Knowing that the meager amounts of food in their houses were all they could get for their children, the good Ramosi folks had pillaged every warehouse and shop in the market before the arrival of Queen Rona's troops. Three women, four men, and one little boy had been killed while defending their homes from burglars, Edmond had informed her. To restore order in this restless city, Rona spread a thousand patrolling soldier and commanded the merchants to open the market. The merchants had no option except to acquiesce, but opening the market without an abundant supply of goods was another source of tension. Buyers quarreled with merchants for their exaggerated prices and even quarreled together for the rare overpriced goods. She let Foubert's soldiers handle the townsfolk. Her men—those who remained after Subrel—needed to get little rest before their anticipated march to Paril for one last battle.