The Lost Tower

By Sean Van Damme

Fifty years have passed since the Long Night befell Hilltop and the lands around it. Life returned to normal with the stories of that terrible time starting to fade into myth. At the same time though magic is again becoming common place. Spells that once would befuddle the most confidant mage now come with ease, and it isn’t just spells but old items with magical enchantments are having their long dormant powers reawoken.

Far to the west the long quiet city of Tygosh is building an army, an army with a single purpose, to destroy their old rival Lysta. Radford a mage in the employ of Lysta’s richest lord has a plan, find the Star of Fla’net, a long lost object of mythic power from an Empire that faded from history thousands of years ago. To that end he sends out a trusted servant of his employer an outcast and Pathfinder by the name of Cor’lan. Her mission is to find anybody that knows anything about the Star.

Kiren and Jonah are two down on their luck treasure hunters, the market has dried up and they owe some very bad men a large sum of money, a sum of money that they cannot hope to repay, especially with the price that is now on their heads. Hiding from civilization they will take any job they can get, which is why they are in the cursed town of Hilltop. One of the Sisters of Tam, an order of crusaders, has hired them to find for her the lost sword of their order’s patron saint. The brother’s know that this is a fool hardy quest but what choice do they have, the Crusader is offering coin and no questions.

Together fate and a few scraps of paper will bring their quests into alignment as they set out in search of the lost tower.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sean Van Damme
• Release date: Nov 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311026002

Sean Van Damme

Sean Van Damme grew up all around the country as part of a military family, finally settling in the Richmond Virginia area. A love of stories and writing has been with him his entire life. A long fling with script writing and movies led Sean to try and major in film ending up instead with what turned out to be his second love, TV news. After graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University (go Rams) he started working at a local TV station as a video editor and photographer. Sean lives in a nice little house with his Fiancé Elizabeth their dog Gaius (Baltar not Creaser) and cat Gracie. Writing full time is his dream and hopefully this book will be the first step.

Book preview

Prologue

Faster, must go faster, he breathlessly said to himself, pushing his spurs harder into the already bloody flank of his horse. He had been at this for a week now, only stopping when both rider and mount couldn't go another step. He had gone four hundred leagues in the last week and the strain was starting to wear on him. This was not the first horse that Arthur had been on, and he was sure it wouldn't be the last.

A great army, mobilizing, massing, getting ready for war. He couldn't get the visions out of his head. Far to the west he had ridden, over the mountains past the twilight lands where evil had taken root. Far past the influence of Lysta. It had been an almost night and day change as he crossed the last foothills. The language that people spoke changed, the customs changed, everything changed.

He had been an outsider, and as such people didn't talk very much around him, but his gold was still good enough to buy rooms and drinks as he moved forward into lands that were thought long lost.

Lysta, as broken as it was, had recovered from the Long Night fifty years before. The question that now hung on everybody's minds was, had the city's arch rival Tygosh recovered as well? There had been no official communication from the great city to the west. None of the ancient beacons had been set alight, save the single one atop the silent mountain.

Finding an answer to this question had been Arthur's quest. Lord Hillock had sent him out half a year ago to plunge into the Tygoshi lands and see what had befallen them. At first his quest had yielded nothing but scraps of information and hearsay. The people in Farel, the farthest to the east that Tygosh traded with, knew nothing of the city's fate. Only the oldest of men even remembered the merchants that used to come through town every few years. Arthur had talked to an old man who had to have been close to eighty. He told stories of the expensive silks, and spices that delighted the tongue. Alas, the last caravan had departed the town two years before evil befell the world.

The trip had not been a complete wash though. The old man did have a small book with a long list of common phrases in the Tygoshi language. The great library in Lysta had a dictionary for the language of the west but there had been nothing on syntax or pronunciation of the words. These two books had given him something to do every night as he sat by his camp fire, or in the common rooms of small roadside inns.

His next stop had been the town of Hygast which sat at the foot of the Kontil mountain range. To the south of Hygast was the shattered town of Hilltop and the Twilight Lands, a place that he didn't dare go. The pass though the Kontil range was longer by Hygast but safer. To the south the shadow and taint of evil had become a permanent fixture.

In Hygast he had learned that the Tygoshi didn't trade with people outside their own sphere of influence. Other rumors told of how the already militant city had turned into a dictatorship run by a warlord. There wasn't much to learn here just like in Farel. Nobody here had seen a Tygoshi in over fifty years. Another old man told Arthur that he would know them when he saw them, giving him a description of two wandering knights he had known as a child. They were black of hair, with oval eyes and darker skin. He stressed that they were not as different as dwarfs or some of the hill tribes that lived to the far north but different enough not to look Lysten.

With this knowledge Arthur had set off again over the mountain pass into lands that had not seen men from Lysta in over half a century. This was where people had stopped talking to him. But since his ears were as good as his gold, Arthur sat and listened as best he could. He picked out words from their conversations that he remembered reading from his dictionary. Some nights he would copy things down as best he could and stay up until dawn trying to translate.

Most of what he was hearing was common gossip about crops and who was sleeping with whom. Through all of this talk there was a strange undercurrent that he was detecting, fear. Fear that a shadow was marching their way.

A great army, mobilizing, massing, getting ready for war. Two women had been talking about how they were going to miss their second and third sons. Arthur knew enough about pressing men into service from small towns to know what that meant. Somebody was building an army. The question was why?

Another week of slowly working his way down the roads and Arthur had gotten his answer. Still two hundred miles from where Tygosh sat along the coast he had stumbled across their army's encampment. It stretched as far as the eye could see. Hundreds of thousands of men milling around, training, marching in formation.

Arthur had camped on the small ridge for two days watching them. Most of the men, from what he could see through his weak viewing glass, were armed only with sticks and wooden weapons. They were drilling for the day when they would be armed with steel. Behind the drilling fields he could see the smoke coming from the smiths, and hear the clang of their hammers being carried on the wind.

Sprinkled throughout the massive military camp were permanent buildings where men in true armor were living. Each one had its own flag flying from the top. These were the regulars, the men that would form the core of this great army. The men that would lead the young boys once this great monster of war started marching toward wherever it was going. He knew that marching had to start soon, probably in the spring. No city had the resources to keep an army of this size fed and clothed for years without having an idea of where they were going to send it.

It was the third day of his watching when they discovered him.

Arthur had been hiding in the brush when he heard the sound behind him. Spinning around he saw the three Tygoshi sentinels standing over him. They were clad in red splint mail, with the green dragon that he had seen on so many flags emblazoned across their chest. Each man had on a large helmet. There was no armor in the front, but a sweeping wave of segmented plates on the back. Across the men's faces where the helmet wasn't providing protection, they had a metal face mask that was jet black, and had a grimacing visage forged into it.

Arthur rolled to the side as the first spear came down, then rolled again into the underbrush to avoid the second. It was there in the thick brambles that were pulling on his doublet that he was able to get to his feet and start running. The three Tygoshi were hot on his tail screaming a phrase that his brain quickly translated as Kill him, Kill him. Arthur wasn't planning to let them get away with that.

Pulling out his short sword, he kept running, not wanting to get into a fight with armored opponents, but willing to fight if that was what it came down to. Twisting his head back he saw all three of them draw their own swords as they came after him-- long slightly curved blades. They left the scabbards without a sound, and he wouldn't have even known about them if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. The armor was slowing them down. That was going to be his only advantage.

Diving into another thicket, Arthur hugged the ground as he slowly crawled forward. The three men ran past him. Good, that was what he needed. If he was going to get away, Arthur was going to need a horse. He had left his horse at the last inn ten miles from here. There was no way he was going to get that far on foot without them catching him.

Damn it, all of this will have been for nothing if they catch you. Arthur thought to himself as he lay quietly in the brambles, the scent of honeysuckle tickling his nose. As time passed (he wasn't sure how much), the bushes above blocked his view of the sun. It was still light out though. The three men walked by again, no longer running. They were on the hunt. The swords had been put away and they had their spears again, poking and prodding at each and every hunk of bush and shrub.

They are going to find me. They are going to find me and that is going to be it, he thought, trying to regulate his breathing. He needed to keep quiet. He needed to think. They were still far enough away that he had time to try to escape. Try and probably fail. Negativity wasn't going to help him, but Arthur couldn't banish it from his mind. The bunch of brambles that he was hiding in was barely enough to keep him covered. Any move Arthur made was going to expose him to the world instantly. There was no choice though, he couldn't remain here. If he stayed they would spear him, and even if that didn't kill him, they would see the blood and then the game would be up.

There is no time like the present, he thought, taking one last deep breath and then scooting as quietly as he could backwards. This was the key; if he could get out of the brambles quietly then maybe he could slip away. There was a snap. Arthur's heart jumped into his throat as he stopped what he was doing and looked over toward where the three soldiers were standing. They didn't move, didn't seem to hear the snapping twig under his chest. Well thank Hyack for small miracles.

Gripping his sword tighter, Arthur started backing up again. Moving slower this time, so that he would feel any sticks under him, so that he could stop them from snapping. Time still wasn't on his side though, the slower he moved the closer they got to him. He was running out of time. His feet were out of the bramble bush. He was exposed. It was now or never.

Arthur stood. There, was too much noise. He started running back the way that he had come, turning his head. They had seen him. Shit, shit, shit, Arthur thought. They were gaining on him. A short spear flew past his head. Flipping his head back he saw another one of them pulling his arm back ready to throw again. Arthur turned again.

In front of him was another armored man, this one on horseback. Where did he come from? Arthur tried to stop in his tracks but couldn't, he back peddled then fell to the ground. The horse reared up, both his feet in the air. The Tygoshi who was on the horse's back lowered his spear ready to run him through just in case the two hooves coming down at Arthur's head didn't kill him.

There was a moment of clarity. Time seemed to slow down, the light of the sun cresting behind the snorting black horse that was about to rob him of his life. Arthur rolled to his right, just as the hooves came crashing down. They smashed into the ground with enough force that he still felt them, and it hurt. Good job but you're not out of the woods yet, he thought looking over. The spear was coming toward him. Arthur threw his arms up rolling again. The point went past him, and his hands grabbed the wooden shaft. He rolled again. The rider was off balance and not strapped in. Arthur pushed again. The Tygoshi made the wrong call to hold on to the spear as he fell from his horse, hitting the ground with a thud.

Now is my chance. Arthur jumped to his feet just as the first sword from the three men chasing him was coming down toward his head. Without thinking, his short sword went up over his head. The clang of steel rang out over the whinnying of the riderless horse. The second man started running forward; Arthur kicked forward hitting him in chest sending him flying back. Arthur didn't see the third man behind him until the blade cut across his back. The sword's razor edge cut through his doublet into the flesh. Pain washed across his back. Pain he could deal with.

Pushing forward he broke the sword lock he was in with the first Tygoshi, pushing him back then quickly drawing back with his small sword and shoving the blade between two of the plates on the man's breast plate. He could feel the sharp point find home in the man's flesh, blood pulsed from the entry wound and the man grunted under the permanently etched steel scowl that was across his face.

Quickly he pulled the blade out and ducked as the sword from the attack behind him flew over his head, sliding across the face of the man he had just stabbed. A long streak of blood followed the tip of the sword. Arthur, now on the ground, spun around the sharp edge of his small sword hitting the calf of the man behind him, cutting halfway through, only being stopped by the bone. Still off balance from the swing that had only found his comrade, the man fell to the ground, his leg spurting crimson.

The third Tygoshi took a step back, and Arthur took that as his opportunity to grab the nearby horse. He threw himself over into the saddle and with the flat of his sword he hit the horse's flank causing the massive creature to take off at full speed, almost running down the astonished Tygoshi. He was away, but for how long. They would come for him. He had to keep going or all of this was going to be for naught. The wound on his back was killing him, the pain was fire washing across his body, and he could feel the blood flowing down his back. If they didn't kill him then this would.

Arthur rode the stolen Tygoshi horse into the ground. The moon was on its way down in the sky when the beast crashed under him. Arthur went flying hitting the hard ground, rolling. Dirt went into his mouth; he could taste it mixing with blood. Now it was more than his back that hurt, the side of his face where he had run along the ground was throbbing.

For a long minute he laid there, not wanting to get up, just wanting to give up. The long minute turned into a long string of minutes, how many he couldn't say. Get up Hyack damn you, get up, he thought to himself.  He laid his hands flat on the hard ground, the pebbles dug into his palms as he put pressure down on them. Arthur didn't know if there was more blood or if it was perspiration, but his hands felt wet.

His arms wobbled and then gave out on him. Arthur fell to the ground again. He had failed, and was only now beginning to accept the fact. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He saw Lysta, the large white city against the mountain. He saw his family, his wife, his children, his parents both long dead, standing outside their apartment on the upper levels. He saw himself riding across the vast brown and gold planes of Farel. Then he saw that massive army marching across the mountains. All of the men were armored and geared, marching in perfect formation. The very foundation of the earth trembled under their footfalls.

Arthur opened his eyes again. He couldn't fail, he couldn't die, there was still too much to get done. Putting his hands on the ground again he pushed himself up to his feet, took two steps and stumbled, falling against the dead body of his horse. It's a start, he thought and leaned against the still warm beast.

Falling upon the horse corpse turned out to be the first stroke of good luck in a while. His hand landed on a field kit. Arthur wasn't sure if he would have had the presence of mind to go looking through the saddle bags if they hadn't been right in front of him. His shaking hands undid the clasps, only falling off three times in an effort to get the bag open. Inside he found a bundle of linen cloth, a waterskin and some dried red meat. He wasn't sure what the jerky was but he wolfed it down. The meat was dry and over salted.  He didn't care. Next Arthur pulled the cork out of the skin and downed half of the water in a single gulp. Coming up for air he blinked and started to feel better. His head was starting to clear as the stale warm water went down his throat and sat in his gut that was empty except for the jerky.

Setting the waterskin down, Arthur carefully pulled off his doublet and set it aside. On the back of his leathers he could see the long cut and the dried blood. Next he peeled off his white undershirt which was in even worse condition. The large loose shirt was similarly cut, but covered in far more blood. It looked to Arthur like it had pooled in the folds of the fabric that were pressed under the boiled leather of the doublet.  Picking up the waterskin again, he poured it over his back. He could feel the water mixing with the gore running down his back. It stung and reignited the fire that was pulsing across his torso. Reaching his hand back, it returned with fresh blood. He was still bleeding. Maybe not as fast as before but he couldn't let that keep up. Arthur knew that he wasn't going to be able to close the wound completely on his own. It was too long and probably too deep, but he could hopefully stem the flow.

Next Arthur pulled out the roll of linen and started wrapping it around himself making sure that it was tight, almost to the point that he couldn't breathe. That was what would save him, the pressure of a nice clean cloth. Looking at the white shirt that was more red than white, Arthur stuffed it into the saddle bag. Picking up his doublet he struggled back into it, his body stiff and weak. Pawing through the second saddle bag, he found some flint and steel, and a dagger. Pocketing the flint and steel, Arthur pushed himself to his feet again and started walking down the road.

You need to do something about the dead horse, he thought. What could he do though? He was barely strong enough to walk himself, let alone drag the dead animal into the woods or off the road. It would just have to be a clue on his trail for the people that were following him. Looking at the road and the trees Arthur vaguely remembered where he was. This was the main road; there was an inn maybe ten miles from here. That would be a long walk but he had to make it there. Otherwise he would die out here far from home.

If they are already there I'm done for, he thought, placing his hand on the hilt of his short sword, not wanting to draw the weapon just yet in case he was wrong about the Tygoshi having beaten him there. One foot in front of the other, over and over. That was all that he could think about now, as the pain kept racking through his body driving him to keep walking forward, to keep fighting to stay on course.

The inn came into better view, there were a few horses tied up outside but none of them were very large, in fact one might have been an ass, he wasn't sure anymore. The inn was two stories tall with a red roof covered in layered looping tiles. Complementing the roof were the red window panes that were open letting the early morning light shine into the building. Sitting outside along the road was a small booth and a man selling something from a steaming pot. It smelled good and Arthur's mouth watered, but he couldn't stop now, he had to make it inside, had to know if there was anybody waiting for him.

The old man at the booth gave him a strange wayward look as he stumbled past him. He didn't give him any sepal, or try to sell him what was in the pot. Instead he just stroked his long gray mustache and let him walk by.

Arthur took another step, his foot landing wrong on one of the cobblestones in the path. Falling forward twisting his ankle, the man from Lysta smacked into the inn's door. Leaning against it for a long beat Arthur took another deep breath compartmentalizing the pain from his ankle away with the pain from his hands and face. All of those were secondary hurts compared to his back. His back that was less in pain now and more on fire. The wound was starting to go sour. Arthur had seen enough fighting, war and death in his time to know when a wound had moved past the stage of bleeding to the stage of killing you with rot.

Pushing himself away from the door, Arthur put all of his weight on the handle, the cold copper a feeling of relief on his torn up hands. Pulling with everything that was left in his weakened body he managed to open the door and take two steps inside the inn before falling to the ground.

Chapter one

The road had been long. The noon day sun held weakly over the small party. If they had thought that the fog and gloom would have dissipated as they left the woods, Kiren Longstorm and his group were in for a surprise. During his research for this trip, Kiren had read that the haze of the Long Night, now fifty years past, had never left Hilltop. Reading about it in books didn't prepare him for the vision that was now sending shivers down his spine. The day wasn't overcast at all; it was as if the sun was just weaker in these lands that had been so completely tainted by evil.

Looking to his side Kiren saw that the rest of his party and their horses were as uneasy as he was by the look and feel of this place. Sitting on the horse next to him was his brother Jonah. Both men had jet black hair, though his older brother's wasn't flecked with gray like his. One hand was on the reins of his horse while the other was on the hilt of the massive claymore that Jonah carried on his back. Kiren had long ago learned to worry when his brother reached for his sword. Jonah might be slower in the head socially, but his warrior sense hadn't ever left him.

Next to Jonah was Sister Idona Korvossa, a tall strong woman who he suspected had once been beautiful before she started the life of a crusader. Choosing a life as one of the Hyacken faithful had never been easy, especially in these last five decades, as the world had been sent into such upheaval. The need for people of faith in a world whose faith had been rocked to the core was so great that they had begun to allow women to openly bear arms, a first for the church. Her nose was twitching and there was a glum look on her face as she pushed her horse past him and started down the road. She was not scared by the oppressive feeling of melancholy that permeated the land here.

If Idona wasn't scared, then the last member of their party, Llino the Purple, was scared enough for both of them. Llino was a slight man, with pale skin and a fading purple robe from which he derived his ridiculous title.  Everything about this mage seemed ridiculous to Kiren. Fool doesn't have the stones for this life, Kiren thought. Kiren didn't have to look long or deep to see that Llino lacked the confidence that ran through most spell casters. Kiren had met far too many mages in his line of work as a relic hunter, and Llino was by far the least impressive. Llino would not have been his first choice of caster to bring along on this expedition, but Idona had already hired him before she had hired Kiren and Jonah to round out her group.

Kiren was playing de facto leader only because he had a more world wary eye than the Crusader did. That, and he was well read in the legends of The Long Night and the tragedy that had befallen Hilltop. My brain full of old facts is all I bring to these groups, because it sure isn't my mediocre skills with the bow, Kiren thought.

Idona, tasked by her order the Sisterhood of Tam, had brought them together to find the lost blade of that same named long dead venerated warrior.  Kiren wasn't sure that the Blade of Tam existed as anything more than a rusty piece of steel by this point. He didn't care because he was going to get paid either way. Payment regardless of the outcome was a clause he had written into all his contracts after a less than stellar expedition two years ago. The locket they had spent considerable time and effort looking for turned out to not be at all magical. His employer had declined payment, and he had helped himself to a few trinkets on the way out the door.

Giving his horse a little kick, Kiren followed behind Idona as they trotted down the old Imperial highway. The road in this part of the world had seen better days; the stones were coming lose, where they had not