Tales from the Circle Volume 1: Rise of the Sorcerer King

By Noor Al-Shanti

...a sinister power was growing on the border between the High Kingdoms and the Giant Lands.
Soon, the world would put a name to this horror: The Mad Sorcerer… Immerse yourself in an epic journey across all the lands touched by the twisted magic of the Mad Sorcerer. Follow in the footsteps of those whose lives were changed by the Mad Sorcerer and those who sought to change the world by fighting him. Stories in this volume: Wanderer, Nyarai: Traveler of the Circle, A Kingly Sword, The Renegade King, and Wandering Storm. Also included: over 2000 words of bonus material about the Sorcerer King.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Noor Al-Shanti
• Release date: Jun 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9780995264663

Book preview

Tales from the Circle Volume 1:

Rise of the Sorcerer King

BY

Noor Al-Shanti

Copyright © Noor Al-Shanti 2017

ISBN 978-0-9952646-6-3 

Cover Art by: Bayan Al-Shanti

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All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted without prior permission of the author.

Table of Contents

Rise of the Sorcerer King

A Kingly Sword

Flight of the Wanderers

Wanderer

The Travelers’ Circle

Nyarai: Traveler of the Circle

Swift Sailing

The Renegade King

A Throne atop the World

Wandering Storm

Map

Rise of the Sorcerer King

When the Giant Wars began the Circle of the World was in shock. The last of the Great Kingdoms of the Ancients had fallen without warning, leaving those who looked to the Giant Lands for wisdom and justice lost without anywhere to turn.

As the Giant Lands consumed themselves in an incomprehensible and seemingly endless warfare, as the rest of the circle learned to live without the protective shadows of the Giant Heroes of old, a sinister power was growing on the border between the High Kingdoms and the Giant Lands. A sorcerous power that only a few Giant villagers knew, but did not understand. They knew it as a creeping fear, a rising horror even more frightening than the destructive wars. Disappearances, shadows, twisted bodies stumbled upon in the rubble.

Soon, the world would put a name to this horror: The Mad Sorcerer. He was the cause of the Traveler Ban on the Giant Lands, a ban which cut the Giant Lands off from the aid of the rest of the circle and cut the rest of the Circle off from news of the Giant Lands. No one knows what happened in the Giant Lands after the ban, no one knows why, but eventually the Mad Sorcerer left and returned to the High Kingdoms, who refused to see him as a threat, leaving behind untold nightmares in that war-torn land that no one in the rest of the circle could imagine.

But one piece of that horror would be felt outside the Giant Lands. They say power breeds more power. The Mad Sorcerer’s experiments stirred something along the Grakish Coast, something that had been deep and dormant in those waters: the shape shifters.

A Kingly Sword

The drums had stopped. Now only screams and sobs could be heard over the sounds of destruction. The city had been built to withstand attack, but nothing could withstand the wrath of the shape-shifters. Tyree jumped back to avoid a falling rock twice the size of her head. She watched it collide with the stone steps and roll down, leaving a path of destruction in its wake.

Cailean! she called, Taggart!

An echoing silence fell across the battlefield that had been her home. She ran down the crumpled stairs, past bloodstains and bodies. Tyree wound her way between desperate magicians and fire and ash. Healers all around were trying to work their spells against the chaos and the pain. Father! She heard a small voice say. Father... Ailish... Tyree had five brothers - all of them unarmed. Her own father was somewhere out there in this madness. But she could not ignore the tiny, frightened voice.

Shhhh... she stooped and picked up the little boy, mumbling nonsense as she went. He wore a fine tunic, a lord's son. Was Ailish a sister then, or a servant? Would he grow up to laugh at young men like her brother Beagan when they tried to join the King's Guard?

Will you grow to tell my little Taggart that he cannot take a sword with him when he travels the wilderness because he is not of noble blood? Tyree had not meant to say it aloud, but the little boy looked up at her, eyes wide and confused. Afraid.

Greer! she called, as she neared the blacksmith's shop. What used to be the blacksmith's shop – it was unrecognizable now. It was a mass of rock and dust and fire, the beautiful carvings and the large windows and pillars all gone. When the smoke of battle settled no one looking at it would be able to tell that human hands had once carved this stone painstakingly into one of the most beautiful buildings in the city.

Run, Alistair, run! she heard. Her head whipped around and, sure enough, a large ball of flame was headed their way. A young man was struggling to get his injured grandfather out from under the rubble. They would both be killed.

Tyree ran as fast as her legs could carry her and thrust the child into the boy's arms. She closed her eyes, the vibrations of the battle shaking her bones. She let the chaos and urgency feed her power and began to sing, moving aside crumbling rock as she spoke. A clear pool swam before her eyes. Green danced among the flame and blood and death. Her body was moving unconsciously, as if to dance.

Tyree closed her eyes, letting the image overwhelm her for a single moment. When she opened them again the old man and the two boys were gone. She leapt aside, but the fire caught at her skirt.

Uisce! she heard from behind her.

A jet of freezing water engulfed her. She turned to thank her savior, but he waved her away. Run, you fool, run!

Ceilidh! Tyree called. Cei...hhhh...

She fell and shook the prone form of her brother. She could not hear a heartbeat if she wanted to in this chaos. She closed her eyes against the despair that threatened to crush her. She had to be strong enough to perform the healing spell she needed.

He had to be alive. Beagan! she yelled, Beagan, look at me!

A horse galloped by, a severed leg dangling from the tangled mass of saddle and rope and sword on its back. Tyree looked around in horror, her lips moving desperately to recite the forbidden spell. Her eyes lighted on a green traveling tunic. She had made that tunic. She crept towards it, crawling now. Ta-Taggart, she sobbed, Ceilidh, no...

Desperately, she recited the spells she knew, moving back and forth between her three brothers. Her hearing and vision had sharpened all of a sudden; the sights and sounds of the battle hitting her like a great wave. Crushing her.

A man lay on his back, his handsome face looking up at the sky, a huge gash in his side. Greer, she pushed her hand against the spilling blood, ripping at her skirts and trying to stem the endless flow. I'll take care of you, Greer.

As she said it she knew that she could not. In a quiet healer's home where remedies and potions stood waiting in jars on organized shelves, where the air was clean and trained healers walked to and fro, constantly checking on their charges it would be possible to save him, to save all of them.

But here – now – four of her brothers were dead. And Cailean could not be far away. They would have found each other, tried to find her and her father. Someone ran past, swinging a heavy sword and in her heart she cursed him. It did not matter who he was. He had a sword and her brothers did not. He had life and magic and a cold blade and to her brothers that had been forbidden.

Still, Tyree's lips moved in spell and her hands worked desperately against reason or hope. Suddenly, a deafening silence fell and she could hear her own whispered spells. Mamaaaaa! a child cried from somewhere nearby. A man with a horse picked his way through the bodies around her looking for his own loved ones. His face was covered in soot and blood. His horse was strong, young. He could flee... should flee.

Her heartbeat suddenly sped up. It pounded an urgent rhythm against her throat, choking her. She could feel their approach – the raw, uncontrolled power. Fiend magic.

Coming! someone wailed, They are coming!

Fleee! a familiar voice called. Shape-shifters!

Someone tried to pull her up, but Tyree pushed them away. She could not flee and leave her brother's bodies here for the shape-shifters and the crows. She would not let them be mutilated and defiled. Her hands shook and she began to weave the image of that shining pool with her words and her body. She drew the shapes of the trees and whispered the spell, leaning towards Greer and watching him disappear. He would have a quiet place, a beautiful place to rest. She transported Ceilidh and Taggart and then, running, she went back to Beagan and sent him off. Cailean! She yelled, scanning the bodies, hoping that he was not one of the dead, hoping she had one brother left.

She pushed past rock and stone and picked through the half-familiar faces of the dead. Cailean! Something stopped her. A young, handsome lord lay dead, his sword sheathed and lying on his chest, grasped tightly in both hands.

Tyree climbed down the rocks slowly until she found the same comfortable space between the branches of the large tree. She settled into it and watched the water falling off the cliff into the darkness. It was beautiful at night.

Something shiny caught her eye. It was the sword. Just like last night and the night before someone had left a sword on the edge of the path that led to the waterfall cave. She climbed down and stepped closer to it, her hands reaching out and tracing the markings on it. It was a beautiful sword, a kingly sword.

Tyree reached out and touched the markings again. She moved to stand, but something wild was in her now, something angry and rebellious. She reached out and pulled the sword from the dead man's grasp. He would not need it. Something like power coursed through her as she moved on calling for her last brother.

He was lying at an odd, unnatural angle. His hands lay near a large gaping wound in his side. His clothes were in tatters and his face covered in blood. Tyree closed her eyes, trying to recall the image of that peaceful place. Shape-Shifters! she heard. It would not come. She began to whisper the words anyway, calling on the names of the trees and the shining waters and the old, clean earth. She could not bear to look at his bloodied face so she turned her gaze to his hands, wiping the blood from his ring. Father had given him that ring only months ago as a sign of his passage into manhood. She remembered the trip they took that day to celebrate. She remembered racing him through the trees, the sunlight creeping through the leaves, wind in her hair. Laughter. That was a good place. She began to whisper the final words of the spell, looking up at his face one last time.

Cailean's head moved. His bloodied face contracted in pain as he spoke her name. Tyree...

And he was gone.

A wave of horror washed over her. Tyree had sent her youngest brother, half-alive, to a far away wood where no one would find him. Where she could not follow. She looked around wildly for the man with the horse. Cailean was alive. She could be there by nightfall on horseback.

She stood up and ran through the city past terrified people, the heavy sword hitting against her legs, scraping the ground. Incoherent screams rose up all around her. She did not need to look behind her to know what was coming. She could feel the same terror in her own heartbeat. She could feel their power with every gasping breath she took. Suddenly, she saw a young man with a horse. He began to run towards her, holding out the reins. Get on! he said, unsheathing his own sword as she climbed on the horse.

His deep voice rose loudly against the chaos; he swung his sword and wove an elegant dance around her and the horse, drawing pictures in the air of a mountainside cave. Vines grew all around it, just like the ones that grew on the outside of her small, stone home. She saw him turn to face the coming terror with his sword at the ready before she was transported to that quiet far-away cave.

***

Alistair swayed and stumbled. Through his lightheaded daze he heard his grandfather’s rasping and coughing. The child in his arms was screaming. He steadied himself against a rock and put the bundle down. Terrifying as his grandfather’s coughing was, it was still a sound of life.

Taking a deep breath Alistair ran towards the pool and ripped his cleaner sleeve right off. He dipped it in the water and ran back to where the only remaining member of his family lay. Grandfather closed his eyes and let the cool water trickle into his throat. After that, his coughing became a little less frequent, a little more bearable.

Alistair bent his head and began working on grandfather’s leg. He had learned enough, in secret, to heal this wound. What he could not heal was death. The faces of those he had lost swam before him and his eyes began to sting. It was only when grandfather spoke that he realized he was crying.

I’ll be alright, lad, grandfather said softly, tend to the others.

Others, Alistair turned wildly. Grandfather was right. Other refugees were appearing everywhere, but most of them looked to be either dead or on the brink of death. He moved dutifully from one to the other. He patched up their wounds with torn bits of his clothing, but he was not sure they would live through the day. All of them were still barely alive, but only two were conscious. The larger of the two was so torn and broken he was moaning constantly with the pain. The other one’s sharp, half-familiar eyes were watching Alistair.

Alistair looked around nervously. So far, all the refugees that had been transported here were peasants. He took a steadying breath and cast a spell for pain on the big man. A sharp gasp and then silence were his reward. Strengthened by the act he continued casting spells frantically, bringing all of the dying men to a somewhat stable condition.

Help me up lad! his grandfather called impatiently when he saw Alistair stand. With Alistair’s body as a support his grandfather limped around, checking on the injured, commenting on his grandson’s handiwork.

The child began to scream again.

We’ll need herbs to clean and rewrap the wounds with...

Alistair could not focus on his grandfather’s words. His heart had plunged down into his stomach. His hands were shaking with a fear he had not felt even during the battle. They’re coming, he whispered.

Shape-shifters? grandfather asked sharply, I don’t feel...

"No,