The Guard of Mending Keep
One Year After The Escape
The serving boy’s face was stained
green with disgust and horror. He looked about to be sick, about to flee, about
to weep. Rayph saw the trembling lip and the panic in the eyes, and he knew
what the boy was carrying. It was small, maybe a little over a foot wide,
spherical, and covered with a towel. The boy wove a path through the reclining
bathhouse patrons and made his slow, methodical way around the main tub to the
corner where Rayph sat with his good friend, playing crease and taking in the
steam.
As the boy drew closer, the dread that
rose up within Rayph prompted him to turn to Dova and grimace. Rayph moved his
tile, tapping it lightly with his finger, and shook his head.
“I’m afraid we are about to be
interrupted,” Rayph said.
The boy trembled beside the gaming
table. His white, sweating face held the world’s shock, and Rayph nodded at
him. “Set it down.” He waved his hand across the boy’s eye line and muttered
his spell’s incantation. The serving child’s face smoothed clear of all
trepidation, and he let out a long-held breath.
“Where did you get it?” Rayph asked.
The boy’s dark eyes looked troubled
even through the effects of the spell. “He hurt me,” the boy said.
“Hurt you how?” Rayph asked.
The boy pointed to his temple. “He got
in here. He burned me.”
Rayph clenched his fist and anger
bubbled deep within him. “What did he look like?”
“He was trimerian, but his third eye,”
the boy rubbed his forehead, “it seemed to be flaming. He stunk of sulfur.”
Rayph’s blood ran cold, and he stood.
“Watch the boy. Lock down the house. If he returns, do not engage, just defend,
Dova. He is beyond even you.”
He looked to his ethereal friend,
naught but churning wind where his body sat. The towel draped over Dova’s
shoulders and tied around his waist, the only indicator of his form.
Rayph grabbed the boy’s shoulders a
little too rough, just a little too hard. “Where did he go?” Rayph tried not to
let fear get the better of his voice, but it trembled. There are so many innocents here. If he unleashes, how much of the city
can I save? The answer was very little.
Dova exploded with a slight puff of
wind. The towels fell to the floor. Rayph could feel his friend fill the room,
warm air, fluttering and vibrant with life, swelled, blowing curtains in a
flurry. The doors to the bathhouse slammed shut.
“Where did he go, son?” Rayph asked the
boy.
“Who said he’s gone?” The voice held a
new lilt of arrogance to it, a soft tinkling, musical and filled with spite.
The boy leapt back. His forehead ripped open, betraying an eye. His back split
and out flapped two wings that bled greasy smoke.
“Clear the room,” Rayph commanded as he
loosed his spell. The power of the spell’s thrall was so great that every
reclined man leapt to his feet and rushed for the door. The doors flew open to
slam closed again. Every lamp in the room surged, hissing flame before dying
completely. The room was thrown into gloom, the only light issuing from the
great opening in the roof centered over them.
With a flick of his wrist and the
uttering of a command word, the air around Rayph’s right hand tore and his
sword dropped from the wound. The air zipped closed again, and Rayph turned to
the serving boy, who hovered before him.
“You harm that boy any further and I
will hunt you, Meric. I will plunge into that darkness you surround yourself in
and I will rip you from it.”
The boy tossed his head back and
unfurled a hideous laugh that trembled the ceramic tiles of the wall. “I have
not come to quarrel with you, old friend.”
“You and I were never friends,” Rayph
said. The sky above the opening darkened, and Rayph stepped closer. “Why have
you come here? Why show yourself now, after this many millennia?”
“The nation is wide open, dear friend.
No one is watching over Lorinth in your absence. You have forsaken your post.”
“I still guard this nation. I serve not
the throne, but this is still my home. I will return as court wizard one day.”
The boy’s head lobbed back, and he
poured out another hideous laugh, so violent the corners of the mouth split,
and the boy coughed blood. “Too late, Rayph, you will return too late.” The
head shook. “You have not yet looked at the present I left for you. How rude
you are, Ivoryfist.”
Rayph extended an arm toward the table
and muttered a word. His eyes stayed locked to Meric as the object floated the
room to hover before Rayph. With a jerk of the cloth, he unveiled the severed
head. Rayph looked in horror at the face, so contorted in pain from its last
moment he could not recognize it.
He stared at it. The left side of the
face was badly burned, the neck severed with some keen, hot blade that
cauterized the wound perfectly. Deep claw marks covered the right side of the
face and neck. Blood stained the chin and mouth.
Rayph’s heart broke out in a rampaging
rhythm, and his mind burst into flames as he recognized the face. “No.” He
looked away, but his eye was drawn to the head again as the identity of the
head locked in his mind. “It can’t be.”
A gurgling laugh filled the room, and
Rayph summoned forth the power to smite Meric.
“No, Rayph, you mustn’t!” Dova
screamed. He threw his whistling form before Rayph, and two thrumming hands
landed on his shoulders. The air that comprised Dova’s body filled with the
water of the tub they stood in, making a figure of rampaging moisture. “If you
engage him here, you will destroy my city. You must not.”
“Listen to Dova, Rayph. He always was
one for caution,” Meric said. “Caution and cowardice looking so much alike and
all.”
“Rayph, who is it?” Dova motioned
toward the head.
“Stoic,” Rayph breathed. “He has killed
Stoic.” Saying it aloud let the words take on meaning. His friend was gone, his
guard, dead. What would become of Mending Keep? Had they all fled? Had the
world’s unkillable fiends made good an escape?
He knew the futility of the words
before he spoke them but felt helpless to say anything else. “I will make you
hurt for this, Meric. In this one act, you have killed yourself.” Rayph felt
nauseous.
“Step aside, Dova,” he said.
“Oh, my dear Rayph, please do keep
tight check on that temper of yours. I would hate to reduce this city to rubble
because you threw a fit,” Meric said. The black smoke issuing from the flapping
wings filled the room with unbreathable air. “Stoic is gone, as are his
charges, but that does not mean we need come to blows. I was not the one that
killed your boy.”
“This head was severed with your blade.
Do not try to deny it.”
“Yes, for easier transportation, I
assure you. He was dead long before I got there.”
Was Meric lying? Did he have any reason
to? Why bring the head at all? Meric was not one to gloat. It was not his way.
Why alert Rayph the prison had been broken in to? There was an element to this
Rayph could not see, something big moving powerful pieces about the board.
“Who did this?” Rayph asked.
The boy laughed again, weaker this
time. He doesn’t have much time. I have
to get Meric out of that boy as soon as possible.
“I won’t do all of your work for you,
Ivoryfist,” Meric said. Lightning flashed outside, the inky clouds that
followed Meric everywhere boiling in the sky above them.
“Does this mean you’re coming off
sabbatical?” Meric asked.
“I will find out who did this and why,
and when I do, if your name comes up at all…”
The boy laughed again, a hissing wheeze
that scared Rayph.
“Remember who helped you when it all
comes out, Rayph. Remember who alerted you to the break. You owe me now,” Meric
said.
“I owe you nothing. You did not do this
for anyone’s reasons but your own.” It’s
big. It’s really big, but I can’t see it.
Meric laughed again. The wings pumped,
throwing blood through the air, and the boy’s body lifted.
“Leave the boy!” Rayph said.
“You don’t give me orders any more,
Rayph. Those days are over.” The boy’s body lifted high above the bathhouse, and
Rayph splashed into the center of the tub to stare up at darkened skies. With a
deafening explosion, Meric broke loose of the boy’s body, and the child
dropped. Rayph set his feet and watched as the body tumbled. The boy dropped
through the opening in the ceiling, and Rayph caught him in his arms. The sky
opened and rain hammered the city. Rayph looked up at his friend and grimaced.
“I must leave, Dova,” Rayph said. “But
first I have to know what happened to Stoic. Can I use your lab and summoning
room?”
“Everything I own is at your command,
Ivoryfist, you know that.”
The boy woke up screaming.
Song
The Manhunters Book One
Release Date: October
5, 2017
Some of the darkest minds in Perilisc
attacked Mending Keep, releasing all its prisoners. Despite his strained
relationship with the crown, Rayph Ivoryfist calls old friends to his aid in a
subversive attempt to protect King Nardoc and thwart terrorist plots to ruin
the Festival of Blossoms. But someone else is targeting Rayph, and even his
fellow Manhunters might not be enough to save him.
About the Author
Jesse
Teller fell in love with fantasy when he was five years old and played his
first game of Dungeons & Dragons. The game gave him the ability to create
stories and characters from a young age. He started consuming fantasy in every
form and, by nine, was obsessed with the genre. As a young adult, he knew he
wanted to make his life about fantasy. From exploring the relationship between
man and woman, to studying the qualities of a leader or a tyrant, Jesse Teller
uses his stories and settings to study real-world themes and issues.
He lives with his supportive wife, Rebekah, and his two inspiring children,
Rayph and Tobin.
Recognition
SPFBO
2017 entrant
Literary Titan Gold Book Award Winner, April 2017
Drunken Druid Editor’s Choice, March 2017
Drunken Druid 2016 Book of the Year Short List
Hungry Monster Gold Book Award Winner, September 2016
“Jesse Teller is a talented author with
the future in his hands.” —Peter Tr, booknest.eu
“A
very strong author who boldly builds the world he has created with strong
themes and no apologies.” —Dianne Bylo, Tome Tender Book Blog
“Jesse’s newest project, Song, is part of his Perilisc fantasy
world: a richly detailed setting, ripe with legends, magic, and secrets
whispered but not yet explored.”
—Bookwraiths.com
