Darkness

By Carrie Baize

Nordenn's new governor has changed everything, but just because Nordenn has changed doesn't mean the rest of the continent has...

While Nordenn has created a new culture for itself, her neighbors hold tightly to the feuds that have claimed more lives than anyone cares to remember, and Taya's job is far from over.

Neither is her story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carrie Baize
• Release date: Feb 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466088924

Carrie Baize

Carrie Baize was born in Santa Rosa, and has lived most of her life in California's Central San Joaquin Valley. She graduated from C.L. McLane High School and continued her education at Fresno City College. She is an avid role player and has spent a great deal of time in a number of fantasy worlds... some well-known, and some of her own design.She credits her parents with her love of the arts and her father, particularly, for her love of role playing and fantasy world creation.Carrie is blessed with a family who, although scattered across the United States, are incredibly supportive and truly believe in her ability to make her dreams come true. She lives in the foothills above Fresno with her husband, four daughters, and a mob of fuzzy four-legged feline children.

Book preview

Darkness

Book Three of the Scarred Sun Trilogy

By

Carrie Baize

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Published by

Carrie Baize on Smashwords

Dissension

Copyright © 2011 by Carrie Baize

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Dedication

My normally short and sometimes cryptic dedications may or may not convey all I feel to every reader, but I am confident that those people named in them know and understand all that is not said.

This one, obviously, is different.

I fall comfortably into the age category of old enough to know better and young enough not to care, and I have experienced a great deal in the time it took to grow old enough. Most things have been incredible – some, not so much.

As I was putting the finishing touches on the final pages of this story, my paternal grandmother was recovering from a stroke. She had given us all a proper scare with the whole thing, but she was a strong woman with a quick mind and iron will and a stubborn streak she passed on to her descendants (all but me, of course), and we knew she’d pull through.

As an author, she was one of my biggest fans and promoters. She gifted copies of different books to friends and family, cheered me through writer’s blocks, and gently (and repeatedly) urged me to complete the Scarred Sun Trilogy. She sent notes and e-mails about events in the first two books – expressing all the emotions I hoped those specific scenes would summon in readers.

The beginning of 2012 brought with it one of the darkest experiences I’ve ever faced.

I buried my beloved grandmother the first weekend of the new year and before I left Arizona to return home, I made one final stop at her grave. I knelt in the dry loose dirt and set my hands on the mound in front of me and told her she didn’t have to wait for the rest of the story any more. The book was done and she could read it whenever she wanted.

I spent the first hundred and fifty or so miles of my journey home with tears on my face. Just outside of Tonopah, where I had visited her when I was much younger, the wind coming through the windows shuffled through some papers on the passenger seat and it sounded like someone fanning the pages of a new book.

For my precious grandmother:

even though you’ve already read it,

here is the conclusion to the story you so much enjoyed.

with love to

Elinor Lucille Asdell

1931-2012

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Like the first two parts of the Scarred Sun Trilogy, this tale could never have been told without the inspiration provided by the art of Phillip Mullin.

The images in his Black Guard series built this world in my mind, and without his generous consent to tell my own very different version of the story, this book would not be in your hands.

You may view Mr. Mullin’s work at the Renderosity Digital Art Community.

Thank you, my friend.

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Darkness

Part I

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1 – Five Solar

It’s been five solar, now, since Kyle kicked open the doors of the audience chamber and I faced the governance commission from Central Command… five solar since I carried little sunsick Mar back to his mother and made the commission wait for me… five solar since Commissioner Octaviar hung the black sash over my shoulders and took my hand, leading me to the throne that had once been occupied by the brother of my father…

The throne of the Governor of the Nordenn Region.

Five solar is a long time. You’d think I’d have gotten used to it by now.

But I’m still not comfortable being Governor Ralidar.

Of course, what I’m comfortable with doesn’t mean a whole hell of lot.

Next to everything else, my comfort really doesn’t matter much at all.

What matters is that things are happening. I’m actually accomplishing something. I just wish my family and friends were here to see it.

That’s not a fair assessment…

I do have family and friends here to see it… just not all of them.

Not the way I wish they were…

After five solar, I still haven’t managed to get through all of the information Owen left for me but the letter that I found first – his introduction to the lot of it - is in my pocket. I know it’s a foolish thing… a simple sentimental scrap of paper… but it really does help me stay focused. Being able to pull that letter out and re-read it when I need to hear his voice – as strange as this all probably sounds – it helps me when I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

Yeah, I do pull that letter out and read it.

A lot.

But it doesn’t always work.

Like today.

Today, there are words jumping off the page at me that I just don’t want to see.

You're a hell of a commander, cousin. One I would have been proud and honored to serve under. Beyond that, though, you’re one hell of a young woman and I wish I was there to stand by your side when you take down the bastards that are responsible for everything our family has endured. I wish I could be there to see you take control of the army and rebuild the world.

After five solar, I can’t even begin to believe that I’ve grown into the woman he believed I would become.

Honestly... would he really have been proud to stand by my side when Commissioner Octaviar hung the new Ralidar sash over my shoulders and lead me to Nordenn’s throne? Would he have been proud to watch me push Varin Kallir off the wall with a noose around his neck?

Owen left me only one request...

Hit them once for me, Taya. Hit them hard.

After five solar, the only person I feel like I’ve hit at all is myself.

After five solar the words of the traitor whose actions lead to the deaths of my cousins and the extinction of our entire tribe still echo in my mind and, even though I know I’ve done some good, Varin Kallir’s taunting final words still haunt me.

Kiss your innocence goodbye, Taya, Varin Kallir had said. The child governor takes her first blood and becomes the creature she’s replaced. How poetic.

Kyle tells me that I’m too hard on myself... and he tells me often. He says I should be focusing on the progress Nordenn’s made and the changes I’ve initiated and all of the good that I’ve done... but like Owen was plagued with the blood of innocents he could never clean fully from his hands, my hands are stained by the blood of Varin Kallir and those who have followed in his wake to challenge me and try to stop me.

I am rebuilding the world... the Nordenn Region at the very least... and those that have continued to embrace the status quo of past generations have received one hell of a rude awakening. One only someone like me could have ever given them.

My name is Taya.

Governor Ralidar.

And the unified Nordenn Region is under my command.

2 – Borders

Though I wanted to believe that we had cultivated healthy friendships with our neighbors, it has become painfully clear that only one of my so-called peers has been honest with me regarding the nature of our relationship.

Their duplicity was to be expected and came as no surprise. I didn’t expect the peace to last, and Davlin Kallir has warned me so often of the treacherous natures of the other regional rulers that I have been able to echo his words to me for nearly a full solar... almost as if I had carefully studied whatever script he first wrote to warn me about them in the first place.

As of this morning, though, the potential danger posed by the armies of Nordenn has marched out of the realm of the theoretical – along with the army of the Erresene Coalition - and directly across the border into the harsh reality of the wasteland’s long scorching days. We can rely on the wasteland to provide some small measure of security, but the devastated landscape and the acid rain and the creatures that dwell there and feed on flesh and fuel alike will only hold their own for so long.

Kallir still doesn’t trust the news that comes in from the outposts, but I spent too much of my life relying on the unaffiliateds to fill in the blanks of my intel to discount their offerings.

I guess I can’t even call them unaffilateds anymore, though.

On the first anniversary of my coronation, delegates arrived from each of the unaffiliated tribes that circle No Man’s Land and swore their allegiance to the memory of Tombstone Formation, and to the spirit of my father they saw in my eyes, and to my rule. It was a strange moment, to say the least, but it was more important than even I realized at the time.

Commissioner Octaviar whispered in my ear that evening at the meal that, for the first time in her history, Nordenn was a united region.

Now, Nordenn Region… my united people… is facing the first real threat of their new existence. Davlin Kallir, the Minister of the Military, is beside himself. He’s not necessarily concerned with the fact that the Erresene Coalition is mounting an attack or the imminent military actions it requires, though. He’s beside himself because I, unlike my predecessor, am a military commander.

I have spent the last five solar in the governor’s mansion; doing nearly everything necessary with little more than a pen and a handful of advisors who deliver my orders to the people that make them happen.

Five solar is a long time, and I guess I’ve gotten used to it… to some extent. But there is an ancient saying, one Mother Kelle used to use often in regard to herself... one I truly only understood when I viewed it in the context of the headstrong old woman's refusal to compromise.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks, she would tell us.

Now, as the Erresene Coalition invades Nordenn, one thing is painfully clear.

Like Mother Kelle, I am an old dog.

My place is on the field.

With my men.

No amount of stress and bother and argument from Davlin Kallir will change that.

I understand his concerns, to a point, but I don't understand his frustration. It's not like I'm going out with a strike team to set up an ambush. While that situation would be my first choice, I am resigned to the fact that my command staff would never allow it.

My command staff... what a joke. I might as well just say my family.

Kyle, of course, will be at my side. Since we slipped out of Tombstone's south gate, he's never been away from me for long, and I could not have accomplished those things that have strengthened Nordenn without him.

Randick Gale will be there in Kallir's stead. Over the last six lunar, Davlin Kallir has groomed Mar's uncle to assume the office of the Minister of the Military... and it is a choice I whole-heartedly embrace. Randick Gale has served me with more honor and loyalty than I could ever deserve... and, far more important, he is a trusted friend.

Where Randick goes, little Mar will follow. How odd is it that when I think of him, I still think of Mar as the little boy I carried home under the poisoned sun. Five solar later, he stands half a head above me. Though he is just past twelve solar, he has already made perfectly clear his choice to follow in his uncle's footsteps and I am relieved at his decision for many reasons... the least of which is my own selfish need to keep him near me.

Lana will accompany me to care for Faith.

Kallir argued that my daughter would be safer here... left within the strength and security of the compound... but with Kyle's agreement to my wishes, Kallir lost the only ally he'd hoped to have in that argument.

It is the tragedy, I suppose, of our early lives. Never, since the day Commissioner Tallen laid her in my arms, have we been more than a few moments from our daughter. There are a few more lunar before her fourth birthday, and if that means her celebration takes place in a forward command post, then so be it.

Better that we are all together.

She will be governor someday. My one wish for her is that she know not only who she is... but what she is... and these are things she will never learn if she is sheltered in the ivory towers of this house and throne I have inherited. If she does not know the desert as Kyle and I do, then she will not truly know Nordenn. How could she possibly lead without knowing?

And if none of that eases Kallir's mind, he should take comfort in the fact that the Labidaars will be with us.

The Labidaars.

My elite