The Bride of War

By Lee Edward McIlmoyle

Life in the Order of the Widowed Dragon has never been easy. For countless centuries, a lone Steward has protected and served the people of Aachen, living amongst and yet apart from them, never knowing kinship, gratitude or love. Martin had accepted this long before he took up the mantle himself.

However, his late mentor failed to warn him that preserving the Pact between Aachen and the Dragon would break his heart. For it was his duty, every handful of years, to escort the Bride of Winter Roses up to the Tree of Souls, to be devoured before his eyes. Duty warred with his growing sense of injustice, but the conflict had become more personal for him; the last woman he took to be wed to the Dragon had quietly stolen his heart, and he has lived with remorse these past five years. And now, as if the Maker were mocking him, he finds himself falling once more, for Cassandra, the newly chosen Bride.

With only the aid of Cassandra and her companion Leanne, the younger sibling of his ghostly love, Maria, and Bishop Vavers, a man whose faith in a loving creator is flagging, Martin has less than three days to end the Dragon’s reign, unaware that the stakes are higher than mere star-crossed love or the fate of a forsaken mountain village. For the first time in over a millennium, the magic sustaining the Dragon and the Pact is in flux, as the cycle of sacrifice has come around to completion once more. If Martin can learn the Dragon’s weakness, Aachen can be spared another millennium of bloody tyranny. However, forces eldritch and political are moving to abolish the Pact prematurely, which could unleash a greater evil upon an unsuspecting world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee Edward McIlmoyle
• Release date: Dec 17, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465731029

Lee Edward McIlmoyle

Writer/Artist/Musician/Cartoonist/activist.Canadian.Married to NYC book reviewer who won't review my books.Two cats, both insane.Help.

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THE BRIDE OF WAR

A Tale of Euroboros

a novel by Lee Edward McIlmoyle

© 2011 Lee Edward McIlmoyle

Published by Lee Edward McIlmoyle at Smashwords

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Table of Contents

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATIONS

Prologue: A Bride's Last Day

C01: A Steward's Progress

C02: The Procession of the Maidens in Waiting

C03: In the Crypt of the Brides

C04: Learning Truths in the Darkness

C05: The Warmth of a Ghost

C06: Secrets

C07: The Northern Road

C08: The Steward Descends

C09: The Ghost and the Soberwalled Wood

C10: An Onerous Task

C11: The Dream of Ages

C12: The Other Road

C13: The Ways of Mortal Men

C14: Declarations

C15: The Tomb of the Stewards

C16: Retribution

C17: Night Falls on Aachen

C18: In the Lair of the Dragon

C19: Leanna's Way

C20: Martin's Gambit

C21: The Dragon's Road

C22: The Sacrifice

C23: A Father's Fate

C24: The Importance of the Ritual

C25: The Greatest Reward

Epilogue: A Marriage of Destinies

AFTERWORD

DEDICATIONS

To my friends and colleagues at LiveJournal, who have been waiting for an entirely different novel.

To my mother, who likes when I write fantasy, though she too is waiting for a different novel.

To my darling beta reader crew, who weren't always there when I needed them, but then neither was I. Sorry for the wait, gang.

And to my darling and longsuffering wife, Dawn (Iwanowski) McIlmoyle, who read and edited more versions of this novel than anyone else I have ever known, and deserves a medal for patience and persistence, and a vacation from my books.

Prologue: A Bride’s Last Day

Maria hooded her eyes, more to keep strands of dark hair out of her face than to block the sun, of which there were none. She stood for a long moment looking west, taking in the village of Aachen from the heights of the Dragon’s Road. The leaning buildings with their steep, clay tile rooftops and timber frame walls had stood for centuries, patched up and passed down from generation to generation, along with everything else of worth in the village.

Beyond Aachen lay a pasture divided by a winding creek and surrounded by dense forest. Evidence of autumn was all around, fields and trees turning to golden hues, the smell of burnt leaves wafting on the breeze. The firs of the Soberwalled Wood rose to the tree line like a thick beard on the weathered face of the cliff that wrapped around either side of Aachen Valley.

This place was known historically as the Cloven Lands, nestled as it was in the northern crook of the Kymer Mountain Range. Old men told fireside stories of how the Dragon had carved out the entire valley with its claws, back when the Wystren Empire of Euroboros was yet young and potent.

The ancient remains of the Tree of Souls rose up in the middle of the road behind Maria, like the Grim Reaper wading through fields of rye in search of prey. The hollow, crownless hulk of dead elm loomed over her, menacing with thick, twisted branches. The blackened bark had fallen away in places, exposing the wood beneath, leeched to the color of old bones. She believed she could feel the essence of evil radiating from its decaying trunk.

Maria was unsettled, unsure of how much time had passed since she had last stood in this valley. There were gaps in her recollection that refused to fill, however much she labored to rejoin the frayed edges. She believed she’d left Aachen many months ago, and though she couldn’t recall where she’d gone, she felt certain that it hadn’t been far. She also had a strong premonition that she wasn’t home to stay. Something important had changed, though the truth ever skittered just out of sight.

She gazed eastward past the Tree of Souls to the mouth of the Dragon’s lair with a growing sense of apprehension. The front gate and walls of the once-great castle fortress had lain in ruins for countless centuries; an enormous hole stood open where the Dragon had fashioned Its own entrance. She thought she might learn something important inside the blasted remains, but the storytellers said that none who entered there had ever returned. If the answers she sought were within those walls, she hadn’t the courage to find them.

How did I come to be here? she wondered aloud. She startled at the sound of her own voice, as if it belonged to someone she hadn’t heard speak for years. The strangeness was magnified by the inexplicable expectation of a reply that never came.

Something is missing, she realized.

She started looking all around for signs of anything lurking in the shadows, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. After a moment, she understood: she wasn’t being watched. People grew up in the valley sensing the eyes of the Dragon upon them from cradle to grave.

I’ve been away too long, she reasoned. It just feels like stuff and nonsense now. Mayhap ‘twas always thus. Mayhap there never was a Dragon looking down on me…

Maria gasped with fright as her thoughts became flooded with impressions both strange and horrifying. It felt as though something was trying to find her. She reflexively made the sign of the encircled quadrangle, but the gesture did little to ease the painful probing in her head. An unearthly eye, wreathed in ultraviolet smoke, winked open inside her mind. She tried to scream, but her throat was constricted past the point of making sound.

In the depths of her panic, she almost failed to hear a nearby woman’s voice reciting, softly, three words like raindrops falling into a puddle.

Casting about, Maria saw no one on the road. The beastly invader in her mind sought, with screeching and roaring, to mask these repeating words, but their persistent rhythm pricked at her attention. Stilling herself and listening carefully through the growling and lashing, Maria finally understood.

Close your eyes.

Unsure of herself, heart pounding, she nevertheless heeded the instruction. Suddenly, there was a harsh scraping sensation, as of talons raking at her eyelids. She screamed and balled up her fists, pressed them to her eyes, forcing them shut. The beast raged, scrabbling at her mind with unseen claws, but she held fast.

The quiet woman’s voice was speaking new words, which the beast screamed to drown out. She focused intently between the bursts of guttural bellowing, and the words became clear:

Sing it away.

What?! she spat incredulously.

The voice continued heedlessly, not acknowledging her outburst, refusing to clarify. It was almost a chant, no more emphatic than a nun’s prayers, but just as assured. The idea was preposterous, and yet the more she listened, the more it seemed correct to her, as of something she had merely forgotten. She had a sense that she once knew this simple truth: to silence the beast within, you must raise your voice in song.

She began humming softly, and then gradually raised her voice, the melody coming to her unbidden. There was a peculiar quality to her voice, as though the song wasn’t so much coming from her as through her. She had a fine singing voice, but this felt different, magickal. Defying her sense of reason, the hauntingly familiar melody indeed began to soothe the beast.

A compulsion came over her, and she began moving her hands and feet in patterns which, like the song, came from some hidden alcove in her mind. She focused on the song, on the dance, not understanding, knowing only that something powerful was happening. The beast’s great, terrible eye began to slide shut. When at last the beast ceased raging, the pressure eased in her skull, and the inspirations ceased.

Thank the Maker, she sighed.

Remember to forget, the kind voice began chanting, startling her even as it trailed off into nothingness.

More nonsense, she thought, but suspected they were important. She wondered how she could forget such a happenstance whilst trying to recall so many other things.

Utter gibberish, she intoned with disgust, but then had cause to reconsider. Nothing untoward had occurred until she had thought of the eyes of the Dragon. Even pondering this, she could sense something horrible starting to unfurl in the darkness of her mind, and so quickly schooled her thoughts.

Deciding not to dwell on imponderables, she started down the road at a brisk pace. She hoped there was time enough to reach the village before nightfall. Unfortunately, the cloud cover offered little hint as to the hour. The cool air lapped against her in waves, as though she were passing through sheets of drying linen wafting in a strong breeze.

There must be a storm approaching, she thought, but noted with concern that the leaves weren’t stirring.

She didn’t have the right word for it, but the world seemed somehow false to her then. She could hear her feet on the road and the rustling of her dress, but all else was muffled. She wondered if she might be dreaming, but she couldn’t recall a dream wherein she had been so self-aware.

Despite her misgivings, she walked on, becalming herself by breathing deeply of the the cool autumn air. In a moment, she was able to relax and take in her surroundings as she strode onward.

A low stone wall, stretched for miles from the promontory to the valley below, showed countless centuries of service as a barrier against the steep cliffside. Though the wall was overgrown and broken in several places, Maria thought it was yet an impressive edifice.

The road itself had borne aeons of neglect, the grey bricks worn down by myriad hooves or crushed under fallen rubble, and pigweed crept up everywhere. Maria recalled that talk of repairing the road had died out long before her time; the visibly treacherous path served as fair warning against unwelcome travelers.

The sky was slate grey, and Maria felt a chill in the air. The leaves on the Hawthorn trees along the road had turned russet, though many more had drifted to the grass below, piled amongst fallen haws and mayblossoms. She heard neither starling nor waxwing in the trees. Perhaps not uncommon on this road, but such silence from the valley below reignited her sense of unease.

I think winter is coming, she heard herself say. The words seemed portentous. Maria recalled that preparation for winter was especially important in Aachen, but she couldn’t remember why.

Maria was sure that it was just nerves, but she still felt the air buffeting against her dress, and the fallen rocks and potholes were becoming progressively larger the further she went. And yet the leaves remained still. She found herself climbing past new obstacles every few feet, trying not to trap her feet between rocks or stumble into one of the myriad pitfalls.

She caught herself peering into some of these jagged holes, unable to see the bottom. She could hear things hissing and thrashing about below her, and as she listened closely, the sounds became dreadful. The images these noises conjured up in her mind were worse than anything she had ever actually seen.

As well, the trees and shrubs seemed to be reaching for her, catching in her dress and hair, roots tripping her up endlessly. Though she was sure she could see the end of the road around each boulder, it always looked further away than it had moments before.

She was exhausted and sore, but pushed doggedly forward. She clutched at the raking branches, steadying herself against the monolithic stones, all the while trying to convince herself that the road must come to an end.

A dark thought slipped across the transom of her mind, insinuating itself in her bosom; she would never be allowed to reach the bottom.

This a day for improbable notions, she mused.

Strangely, these words comforted her, but the longer she walked and the harder she pushed, the more she grew to despair. Something was rearranging the very workings of reality to prevent her escaping whatever had drawn her up that hill.

Fearing another attack, Maria tried to calm herself. She began whispering the words ‘it must end’ over and over, until it built to a strident chant. Yet, no matter how loudly she recited, the aching in her limbs and the scrapes and gashes in her soft skin reminded her that she wasn’t free yet.

Maria came to a stop before a solid stone face that stretched from one side of the road to the other, rising several feet higher than her arms could reach. Casting about, she noted the gnarled branches of a tree that offered purchase to the top of the wall. Scurrying up the clutching branches, she clambered onto the top of the wall, and unintentionally looked down the sheer face of the mountainside. Panicking, she grasped at the branches to steady herself, and then began edging carefully along the top of the wall to reach the other side of the rock. Perversely, the rock was several yards long, and the winds were shoving her about haphazardly.

Fearing she would be blown off the wall, she began looking for handholds to climb up onto the rock. Spying some jagged flaws in the stony face, she wedged her fingers and toes into the rock and began climbing. The cracks were very coarse, and her fingers began to bleed. Her feet ached from being wedged at such a precarious angle to the rock face, and more than once her toes became stuck and ached painfully as she wrenched them free.

When at last she heaved herself up onto the top of the rock, she looked along the craggy top and cried out in anguish. Picking herself up, she sucked at scraped knuckles for a moment and peered ahead. The rock now seemed to stretch on for miles, the end of the road disappearing from view.

Panic rose up in her, and before she could reason with herself, she began running. The rough top was riddled with crevices and jutting stone ledges, forcing her to skip and jump repeatedly, climbing over the hurdles she couldn't leap over. Her feet pounded and her legs ached, and still the rocky ledge seemed to go on forever. Tears streamed down her face, and she stumbled more than once, gashing her knees and elbows repeatedly.

All the while, she was aware that she would fall to her certain death if she drew too close to the edge of the rock. Perversely, the obstacles seemed to guide her ever closer to the ledge many times, forcing her to slow down and tread carefully. When her heart wasn’t pounding from sheer exertion, it redoubled its tempo and cadence out of sheer terror.

It was just when she had all but given up hope that she found herself tumbling forward onto the rock-strewn path of Mountain Road, at the foot of the hill. Her head was spinning, but the world seemed to have shrugged and reasserted its lawful self, and the winds ceased pressing against her in tireless waves.

Maria rose to her feet and looked up the way she had come. The road behind her was impossibly flat and clear, a mere handful of loose stones strewn about for several yards. Nowhere in sight were the great boulders and sinkholes that she had traversed. Her hands and feet were still sore, but she could no longer find the cuts and bruises she had suffered. She was dumbfounded, and, shaking, broke into heaving sobs.

Never had she been so afraid. She was sure that whatever had lead her to this place must be the most malevolent creature imaginable. And yet, her recollection of the events leading to her current situation refused to stir from whatever darkness it had retreated to. Surely nothing in this world could be so terrible as to inspire such dread.

After a time, the tears gave way, as she felt fatigue taking her. A fearful notion came upon her that, should she lay her head down now, she might never wake. Marshalling her strength once more, Maria took a long, ragged breath, brushed herself off, and, shaking her head in wonderment, started forth once more.

Mountain Road cut westward across open moors, standing level against the rising and falling of the land. The road effectively divided the two halves of the valley, for there was little in nature that could climb or rise to its height, which met smoothly with the Bospor Road in the distance.

The view from the Mountain Road was not so breathtaking as from the heights of the Dragon’s Road, but the one it did offer was nevertheless considerable. She could see clearly for miles in almost any direction. The rolling fields of grass and chunks of fieldstone were somewhat imposing in their grim roughness, but on the whole, a relief. What was most unsettling was that nary a creature stirred at her passing, for indeed, there were none to be seen. Maria heard nothing but her own footfalls on the stony earth. She felt reasonably certain that the eyes of the Dragon were no longer upon her, and yet a sense of eeriness lingered. Not even the pleasant stillness of the landscape could ease her mind.

The worst is surely passed, she reassured herself. There is little else to fear.

She steadied her nerves and pushed on, but found herself keeping a close eye on the clouds above, and hoped she found cover before nightfall. The clouds were growing dark, and the cold north winds were picking up.

Maria passed a road sign proclaiming her entry into South Aachen, but Aacheners simply called it the southern valley. The sign read ‘Founded in 1574, A.R.’, and looked to have weathered at least that quarter of a century. The land had been cleared to half the length of the south valley, but not so much as a marker had been set. She remembered that the people of Aachen feared incurring the Dragon’s wrath, and that many also believed the land to be haunted by the Bospor Woodsman. Good farmland remaining untilled after all this time persuaded her that the issue remained unresolved. Now the land was being reclaimed by the forest; bushes and saplings were shooting up sporadically across the rolling, gold-dappled fields.

Eventually she arrived at the crossroads, where she rested for a moment. The Bospor Road ran from the village to the southern mountain pass, which had been named after the legendary woodsman as well. Legend had it that Simon Bospor left Aachen village centuries ago to live alone within what had then been called Aachenwald. He had soon afterward hewn a broad path through the woods, in part to offer safe passage to villager and visitor alike, but mostly to keep them from passing too close to his home. There was no sign of that homestead from the road now, but most believed it to stand yet untouched. Maria wondered whether she might find her way there now, but a chill went through her at the thought. This seemed to be a perfect, though most undesirable, day for chance meeting the souls of the dead.

Sensing that it was growing late, Maria at last turned north. Bospor Road was broad enough for two wagons astride, but dropped off on either side into deep grassy ditches. She remembered that there had been a terrible accident on the road during the cold months of winter when she was a girl. Two wagons had tried to pass each other, but snow and ice had covered the road that year, and hard winds made travel on the high road dangerous for single carts.

Though they had each been driven quite slowly and expertly, they had nevertheless collided their wheels becoming entangled. They accidentally forced each other off the road in their attempts to separate. One wagon drifted into the ditch on the western edge of the road, killing one of the horses, and injuring the other badly enough that it too had to be put down by its driver, who soon after made the trek back to the village on a broken leg.

But the edge to the east dropped several feet to the barren ground below, and the wagon that tipped over that side was smashed to pieces, killing all, including the horses. The riders’ bodies were recovered after a long night’s hard work, but the wagons and dead horses couldn’t be cleared until the spring. A large rock had been moved into place at the site and marked to commemorate the tragic event. There were a goodly number of such markers along the Bospor Road.

After perhaps a hundred yards, Maria came to the old churchyard. The sight of graves and tombs filled her with fear, much as she had felt back at the Tree of Souls. Pushing back the hair blowing in her eyes, she could just make out ashen faces peering from behind weathered, hand-carved stones. A forlorn, lithesome woman stood beckoning, draped in diaphanous, moldering shreds of fabric twisting in the wind.

Thinking her imagination was running away with her, Maria shook her head violently. Looking once more, the apparitions had vanished, but she couldn’t entirely convince herself that they hadn’t merely abandoned her to some darker fate. Resisting the urge to enter the churchyard in search of them, she continued toward the village, still hidden behind rolling hills and the orchards that marked its southern extent.

She remembered helping harvest apples and pears from those orchards in the late summer heat, a few short years ago. They were owned by the Walls, good people, with two sons and five daughters, all of whom had worked alongside their parents. Maria had been friends with Millie and Ilona, the two daughters closest to her age. They had often teased her about their brother Edgar, whom all of the girls knew had been fond of Maria. That he only spoke with her in private had amused his family all the more.

Maria hadn’t really fancied Edgar, who had been too shy and uncertain of himself for her comfort. Maria was only a year older than Edgar, but that year had spanned a century. Still, she had cared for him in her way. They had talked privately many times, of poetry and magic and of the mysteries of The Soberwalled Wood, and about what it would be like if one of the Wall girls were forced to wed the Dragon one day. It was an oddly comforting friendship. Edgar had rarely shown her anything but respect and warm concern.

Maria‘s own father was a blacksmith, an important man in the village, and her mother worked hard to keep the home and the shop where her father’s wares were sold. Maria had spent much of her time working with her parents, while her younger sister Leanna spent the days with Aunt Lucinda, a village seamstress. Maria missed her family, but she missed her Leanna most of all.

Maria remembered then that she had only grown close to her sister in those last months before leaving Aachen. Her memories of that time were still scattered, but she remembered being terribly alone. Unmarried women in the village had few options, but Maria had been marked for a particular future that set her apart from her friends and neighbors. She remembered no enmity or jealousy, but she did recall that the villagers had become distant to her, save for her loving sister. In that time, she came to cherish Leanna as her dearest companion, spending every waking moment with her, as if they would never see each other again. Maria hoped Leanna was well, and couldn’t wait to see her again. It felt like a lifetime had passed.

Maria couldn’t recall having ever imagined leaving the village. She had long understood that she would marry some young Aachener when she became eligible, after her time as a maiden in waiting had passed. She couldn’t recall having been betrothed at all, either from within the village or beyond it. And yet, the only reasonable explanation for her having been away without her family would be if she had become someone’s wife.

Why can I not remember my own husband? How will I explain this to my family? she wondered, frowning deeply. No matter how she prodded, her memory offered up little more than trickles of pointless trivia, and nothing about what really mattered.

Maria recalled that marriages to outsiders were common enough, although the ceremonies never took place in the Cloven Lands. Young women went away to be married and lived outside of the valley, though many still returned to be buried with their families. Many young men in turn left the valley to find brides, bringing them to live and work in the village, bearing and raising future generations of Aachen. These women were made to feel welcome, but lived there quietly knowing that they would never be completely accepted into this strange world.

It seemed strange that she should have gone away to be someone’s wife and have no recollection of it. Marriages in Aachen were, of