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  A BRIGHT POWER RISING

  VOLUME 1 OF THE GOLDEN RULE

  NOEL COUGHLAN

  CONTENTS

  The Stretches

  Sunrest

  Or Legions

  Prologue

  I. Grael

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  II. Ascendantsun

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  III. Garscap

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  A Word From The Author

  Acknowledgments

  About Noel Coughlan

  A BRIGHT POWER RISING

  Copyright © 2014 Noel Coughlan

  * * *

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

  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 actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Illustration by MiblArt

  Maps © Rob Antonishen

  Morpheus Font was used with the permission of Eric Oehler

  Edited by Finish The Story

  Additional proofreading by Proofed to Perfection

  Published by Photocosmological Press

  Epub Edition 2014: ISBN:978-1-910206-01-0

  For my wife, Colette,

  who made this book possible.

  THE STRETCHES

  SUNREST

  OR LEGIONS

  PROLOGUE

  Never enter the forest.

  The Gilt Spider, the Elfin hunter of men, waited there with webs of silken gold to catch naughty little boys. Granyr had warned her son many times. Why had he not listened?

  Because he was too young, still clumsy at speaking, grasping only half of what was said to him. The fault was hers. She should have kept a better eye on him. A moment of distraction had robbed Granyr of her reason for living.

  Stifling her sobs, trying to rub away the tremble in her hands on her skirt, she stared helplessly at the wood encircling her farm. There was no time to search the house and shed again, not if he had blundered into the forest.

  The sensible course, however demeaning, was to summon help from Pigsknuckle. If she raised the alarm, the villagers would form search parties and cover a lot more ground than she could alone. But her heart screamed otherwise. If they had let her settle in the village instead of this wild, lonely place, her child would be safe. If her husband was still alive, things would be different. She fought unwanted images of a great, y-shaped cross drenched in his blood. This was his family’s reward for his sacrifice: his wife made a pariah; the son he had never seen lost and perhaps dead.

  May the Forelight damn the Pigsknucklers for their conceit. She had to find her boy.

  Instinct, primal and desperate, swept her forward, her son’s pet name bursting from her chest. “Lilak, where are you?”

  As she punched her way into the monster that had swallowed her child, briars mauled her face and hands, tugged and tore at her dress. Her gaze sifted the sun-dappled gloom. Any glimmer of movement might be her son. She tried to steady her rasping breath to hear his plaintive whimper.

  Soon, she was adrift in the monotony of the forest, as lost as the child she sought. She shivered at the prospect of the approaching night, an inevitable pall declaring all hope dead.

  A howl filled the forest and reverberated through her. Other wails rose up in answer. Her fingers sought her knife, but the scabbard was empty. She groaned at her stupidity. The blade lay in the hut, forgotten in her panic to find her child. She could only guess at the proximity of the wolf pack, but if they found her unarmed and alone, they would kill her.

  Granyr searched the forest floor for a fallen branch to use as a club. Most were too rotten, too flimsy, or too unwieldy, but she eventually found a suitable one. The rough bark of her makeshift weapon chafed against her calloused palms. Its heft was reassuring, though it would be no match for a wolf pack.

  A high-pitched squeal tore through the wolves’ madrigal. Her terror forgotten, she rushed toward the cry, her cudgel cradled in her arms. It had to be her son.

  The howling ceased. Barking and snarling tore apart the silence. A lupine yelp was cut short by the sound of a heavy blow.

  She veered toward the noise. Hunters must have happened upon the wolves’ trail. Help was nearby.

  She heard the whisper of the stream before she stumbled upon it. Blood tinged its trickling waters. Shivering at the prospect of what she might find, she headed upstream. A lupine corpse bled into the brook—its body twisted awkwardly, the skull crushed in and its lower jaw unhinged and hanging in an incongruous grin.

  Another yelp alerted her that the wolf’s slayer had struck again.

  Granyr rushed toward the cry. Beneath a broken tree stump lay another dead wolf. Rivulets of blood flowed down its muzzle from a single puncture wound between its eyes.

  A soft whine drew her attention to the bushes to her right. She cautiously probed the foliage with the club. The stick brushed through the leaves unharmed. Raising her weapon above her shoulder, she stepped into the thicket.

  A snarling frenzy of fur, legs, and jaws writhed in mid-air in front of her. She brought her cudgel down on the beast, delivering a glancing blow that sent it into a convulsion of rabid barks. Unnerved by the futility of her strike, Granyr stared uselessly at the creature as it swayed from side to side. It took time to gather her thoughts. The wolf posed no threat. Hanging upside down by one paw, it could not reach her.

  She glanced up at the rope from which it dangled. It was a light yellow-green cord, surprisingly slender given its obvious strength. No mortal hand could make a rope so fine. The maker of the trap was not a Stretcher, like her, or even human. It had to be the Gilt Spider. The trap holding the wolf had been intended for unwitting trespassers in the Elf’s domain.

  The memory of a thousand childish nightmares made her back away from the wolf. She turned and ran in no particular direction. The forest whirled dizzily about her. A gantlet of branches lacerated her face and hands.

  She burst from the oppressive gloom into the clearing around her home where she collapsed, weeping, and pounded the ground beneath her fists. Lilak was still lost somewhere in the maze of shadow behind her, perhaps already the Gilt Spider’s prey.

  “Forelight, I beg you. Protect my son,” she pleaded, but her heart cried otherwise. The saints claimed that the Forelight was love itself, but what love had he shown to her? He had stolen her husband and now her boy.

  She picked herself up. Her grubby fingers tried to brush away the blood, sweat, and dust caked to her face. The sun was already slipping behind the holy mountain called the Pig. Night was spreading over the valley. She couldn’t abandon her son to it. She needed a torch and her knife.

  Utterly spent, she trudged toward her home, dreading its chill emptiness.

  A healthy pillar of smoke rose from her home. Surely, by now, the fire should be
ash. A small figure stood at the entrance. She quickened her pace. Aching muscles strained as she ran to her son and clasped him to her bosom. Here was Lilak, alive and safe! Praise the Forelight! Someone must have found him—the same person who had tended the fire—but that mystery could wait. For this exquisite moment, it was enough to embrace her son, to feel his arms hugging her neck; to have his sweet, childish babble tickle her ear. The horrors of the forest no longer mattered now. She had Lilak again.

  Granyr gently held him at arm’s length. “Never wander off again,” she chided, attempting to conceal her relief with a frown. “Do you promise?”

  Lilak nodded with innocent solemnity. She pressed him to her once more. Something in his hair attracted her attention, an alien thread of gold among the black. Its significance squeezed her chest so tight she could hardly breathe. The real Lilak, her Lilak, was gone forever. The Gilt Spider had taken him and what stood before her was a cruel fraud.

  She shoved the sham boy away and screamed.

  PART I

  GRAEL

  1

  A beauty as proud as the sun,

  Are the tears of the Golden Light.

  Beware the eyes of the Fair One

  Lest those bright fires consume your sight.

  FROM ALACKALAS AND THE FAIR PRINCESS.

  Every step pulled the Pig a little more from the sky. Already, distance had reduced its snowy peak to just another crooked tooth in the jaw of the Stretches Mountains. Whenever the sight of his mountain folded into the winding terrain, Grael feared it lost forever.

  Before him, a rope stretched. One end was knotted around his wrists, the other tethered to a cart bloated with wares amassed by the Jinglemen on their trading expedition. No doubt some of these goods were ill-gotten, like Grael.

  From beneath the canopy stretching over the Jinglemen’s precarious pile, Harath Melkath glared, as cold and distant as the mountain that bred her. A purple bruise marred her left cheek. Her red hair was disheveled. Their captors had ripped her halo from her head and tied the circlet of twisted white and blue cloth across her mouth. The profane sight was so sickening that Grael struggled to look upon it. To her credit, the daughter of the most powerful man in Pigsknuckle maintained her customary haughtiness, even when bound and gagged. Grael wanted to offer her words of consolation, but the accusation in her stare kept him silent. She blamed him for their plight, and it was difficult to disagree. If he hadn’t attracted this scum to Pigsknuckle, she would still be safe there.

  His own halo clung to his head by a single braid. It danced a precarious jig against his temple with each step, threatening to forsake him at any moment. The prospect filled him with dread. It was all he was, all he believed in. A tangible statement that he was a Stretcher, a true worshiper of the Forelight. The colors even proclaimed him as a Pigsknuckler. What was he without it?

  He picked up his pace. If he could slacken the rope, he might be able to grab the halo before it fell off completely.

  A whip lacerated his shoulder with the force of lightning. His legs wilted, and he fell. The wagon dragged him along the grating earth, straining his shoulders and arms to the point of breaking.

  The air filled with the tinkle of dancing metal that gave the merchants their name. Their leader, Tarum Sire, halted his horse by the cart. He yelled to the driver, “Don’t pull him apart, Hackit. He’s no good damaged.” He looked down at Grael. His bearskin coat created the impression of great bulk. From a necklace of black feathers and shell beads hung a wooden fish. “Are you all right, boy?”

  “I am fine,” Grael said, ignoring his scrapes and pains as he quickly picked himself off the ground to prove his point. To say anything else put his value in question. Tarum’s concern was limited to his coin pouch, and he had no use for a cripple.

  Grael’s eyes sought Harath. Her wide-eyed concern salved his pain. For the first time that he could remember, she looked on him with sympathy.

  “He was trying to escape,” the grinning bundle of rags driving the cart slurred, directing a malign stare at Grael. “He was trying to reach the girl so he could free her.”

  Tarum Sire’s belly laugh brimmed with smug menace. He stroked the ends of the black mustache curving to his chin, his frosty blue eyes narrowing. “For your sake, I hope that was not your intention. Remember, boy, you are a long way from your village. This is the Gilt Spider’s land, and no place for solitary travel.”

  Grael glowered at the Jingleman. Threatening him with children’s tales! Despite what mothers told their innocent broods, the chances of being taken by the Gilt Spider were remote.

  Tarum Sire stared at him for a moment, then threw back his head and shook with laughter. “Besides, you wanted to go to the city of Formicary,” he sneered. “You are just entering through Shackle Gate.”

  “Aye, for you, it’s the wrong gate,” Hackit mocked. “But it’s the gate that pays us best.” He peered down at Harath. “Don’t worry, deary. I’m sure the Sire has finer things planned for you than working in the mines.”

  “No less back-breaking, though,” Tarum Sire quipped.

  Harath kicked against the side of the cart.

  Tarum Sire’s fat laugh lingered as he galloped away. Hackit’s wheezing cackle choked on a fit of coughing. He cracked his whip. Grael was thankful that it was directed at the hides of the draught animals and not his. The cart shuddered forward.

  Still smarting from his fall, Grael trudged behind. The gentle clapping of his halo was gone. He moaned. The final concession to his slavery had been made. Better to be the Gilt Spider’s victim than to suffer such humiliation.

  As the sun slipped behind the darkening mountains, the caravan halted by a small stream. Exhausted and aching, Grael plunked down on a tuft of grass and watched the Jinglemen set up camp. Soon they were all sprawled around the smoking campfire, waiting for their dinner. The smell of cooking meat made Grael’s mouth water.

  Hackit looked at him and smiled. The old Jingleman leapt up. He chuckled softly as he limped over to his cart. “Pardon, deary,” he said as he rummaged inside. His search terminated in a wheezy laugh. What was Hackit up to?

  Hackit carried a bag under his arm as he returned to the campfire. “Let’s see what treats the young lad has brought us.”

  Tethered like an animal, Grael listened to the Jinglemen as they divvied out the contents of his backpack.

  “Hey, Pigsknuckle boy,” Hackit quipped as he licked pastry off his fingers. “Your mother’s a good cook.”

  Another Jingleman sighed. “Pigsknuckle, where the streets, if there were any, would be paved with goat droppings.”

  Tarum stood up and puffed out his chest. In a baritone voice reminiscent of Widan Melkath, Pigsknuckle’s politician, he swung one arm wide and said, “Welcome to Pigsknuckle, at the foot of the Pig, the last place for pilgrims to have a dump without committing sacrilege on the holy mountain till they reach Pigsback.”

  The taunts lingered with Grael in the dark, cold night. It was hard to accept his squalid fate. There had to be some way to escape the horrors of Formicary's mines, and free Harath from a certainly despicable fate, but Grael couldn’t find it. The cord lashed around his wrists was too stout to break or chew through. Appeals to the Jinglemen's compassion were futile, and he had nothing with which to buy his freedom—his captors had already taken everything he possessed. Concocting some kind of hidden treasure to whet the Jinglemen's avarice and bargain for his release was a tempting gambit. Alone, he might have risked it, but he could not put Harath in even greater jeopardy. Nor could he abandon her if a chance for flight arose. They must escape together or not at all. But such an opportunity was unlikely. Her presence was a stronger fetter than any rope.

  “Are you all right?” Harath whispered.

  It was the first time she had ever spoken to him. Shyness had always made him avoid her. She had been like an Elfin maiden, a prize too great for a mere mortal like him.

  “I'm fine.” His answer was reflexive. “They didn'
t hurt you, did they?”

  “My honor is intact.”

  Grael's cheeks burned. The possibility had never entered his head. “How did they catch you?”

  “We had better be quiet in case they hear us. I’ve had enough of being gagged.”

  “I meant no offense.”

  She made no reply.

  “Harath, are you there? Say something.”

  The silence reproached his crassness. He had set out to Formicary partly to win her admiration. Long before he left Pigsknuckle, his imagination had mapped out his adventure as a series of simple steps. After a profitable stint as a mercenary, he could return home as a rich man like Garscap Torp and ask for Harath’s hand in marriage. Now, with his plans ruined by the Jinglemen’s treachery, his one guilty consolation was that circumstances had conspired to throw him together with Harath. And almost the first word out of his mouth had caused her to spurn him.

  The Pigshead was an ideal hiding place, secluded and forbidding. From an early age, Pigsknucklers learned to avoid the eerie geologic feature, a ridge protruding from the precipitous mountainside. The promontory's gentle slope terminated at another precipice and inclined inward, creating the impression of a giant snout. This, legend maintained, was the face of the mountain.