The Sorcerer's Submarine

By Alyn W. Lewis

The cursed land of Urtal-Ir called him in his sleep. Santino woke with a start. Four grey walls surrounded him. His only comfort the glowing Eye of Correah above his bed. Come along on Santino, Herb, and Appleton's latest adventure. Santino builds a submarine! Above deck drama and below the waves adventures follow!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9780359448630

Book preview

The Sorcerer's Submarine

The Sorcerer’s Submarine

The Sorcerer’s Submarine

By

Alyn W. Lewis

Dorkhole Press

2018

Copyright © 2018 by Alyn W. Lewis

All rights reserved.  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book or journal.

Cover art by Alyn W. Lewis

First printing 2016

ISBN #: 978-0-359-44863-0

Dorkhole Press

100 Oakwood Ave 1st floor

Troy NY 12180

For Lisa, for always being by my side.

Thank you.

Chapter 1

The cooing love birds outside his window were the only sounds the young elf heard as he rolled over again. A squawking death interrupted their love making.

Appleton’s violet eyes popped open. Bolting upright he slung the ratty blanket off the straw bed. A cloud of feathers erupted outside the small round window. Bright silver scales turned the wrinkled glass into a mirror. His rumpled grey green hair flashed in the reflection of the small quarters of the window.

Herb, his friend Santino’s, tiny silver dragon was pressing himself against the outside of the window. The tiny dragon rained feathers and pigeon blood over the market below.

Herb had followed Appleton to every hostel since he had left the comfort of the Leefoot’s grand suite. Appleton looked around the sparse room. A small dresser doubled for a desk. Most of their stuff was in its neat bundle tucked under the bed. The rest of the month in this hovel had cost less than another week at the Leefoot’s inn.

Santino had signed the arrangements with the caravan’s leaders for their deluxe suite in the name of King Mophet. The King could afford it, but he could not, he thought. Appleton rolled over in the straw bed. Now that Santino was at the temple of Correah, the Leefoot's hospitality had run out quickly. He was not about to let them extort him.

It had been almost two months since Appleton had to carry Santino’s limp body to the temple of Correah. Her priests and priestesses had been trying to help Santino’s mind come back to reality. The young wizard lived but his mind had been scarred by visions from Correah. The secrets of the temple remained theirs.

He sat up on the coarse bed. Herb’s struggle with the pigeon, on the other side of the window, was not going to let him sleep.

Appleton had shown them the pages of the witch’s tome that Santino had been reading when he had found the young wizard collapsed on the floor. They had sent a portly old priestess to the Leefoot’s hostel. She had filled a small book with her notes about the wizard’s ritual to Correah. He had not let her take any of Santino’s things, other than his clothes.

Appleton wrapped the coarse blanket around his waist and stood in front of the window of the tiny room. His sleepy fingers worked at the coarse bronze latch. The dying pigeon’s wing slapped at the tiny silver dragon. Appleton reached through the open window to snatch at the bird in Herb’s bloody maw.

The tiny dragon bared black obsidian teeth. A thin gaseous mist swirled from Herb’s nostrils.

Appleton’s hand darted for the bird before Herb tore it too much for him to eat.

Go get the other one. He tugged at the bird’s wing with a quick swat at the tiny dragonet's nose. The mist that had been curling out, snorted back into his long thin face.

Herb's silver wire tongue flicked across the back of Appleton's hand. The tiny dragon released his death grip on the pigeon. His silver dog like head whipped around on his thin snake like neck in search of the other bird he had chased from the ledge. Herb leapt from the windowsill, without unfurling his wings, landing with a dull thump on the roof below.

Appleton watched him slither over the thick stone shingles. The lizard slipped quickly between the buildings. Appleton listened to Herb claw his way toward the nest with its light blue eggs on the neighbor’s ledge.

He listened closely for the words of magic Herb used all of the time. He listened for the whispers and hisses of the spell that turned the sneaking dragon invisible. He heard them. He recognized them. He practiced them. Santino had promised to teach him some ancient elven magic when they had reached Sor-Ronis. Now he taught himself.

He slipped into his rickety chair at the desk. Appleton attempted to write the words he had just heard. The elven letters he used only represented the sounds the tiny dragon had made. Appleton did not understand many of the words that he wrote, but he wrote them anyway.

Appleton had been studying Santino’s extra tomes by himself for weeks now. He was beginning to understand the arcane writings he was making from listening to the eldritch speech of the tiny dragon. If he could not learn from a person he might as well learn from one of the dragons themselves.

He watched the nest wiggle. First one egg disappeared then the other as the invisible dragon snapped them into his gullet. Appleton chuckled as he realized Herb was squatting invisibly, in the nest waiting for the other bird to return.

Appleton mindlessly cleaned the dead pigeon. It rained more feathers into the market below. The head he twisted off. With a whistle to Herb, he tossed it toward the nest. The rest of the bird he would bring down to the restaurant with him for breakfast. He left the window unlatched for the little dragon to let himself in later. The noise of the opening of the market below lulled him back to sleep.

The creak of the window opening, woke him with a start. Appleton’s dagger was in his hand. Herb’s long silver face, covered in blood and feathers, poked into the room. Coin like eyes reflected the bright afternoon sun. Herb's sleek silver form slipped through the open window. There was a soft bump as he dropped the other pigeon on the floor.

Appleton pulled the dirty blanket over his head to block out the mid-day sun. The little silver dragon pulled himself onto the bed next to Appleton. The elf let out an unhappy groan as the cold lizard tried to burrow under the blankets.

How is he? Appleton asked sleepily.

The dragon hissed. He nuzzled his chilly, sharp featured face into Appleton's bare shoulder.

The sleepy elf reached out from under the warm blankets. He scratched Herb along the spikes of the dragonet’s eyebrows. The little dragon cooed and flicked his tongue at Appleton's face.

Appleton missed his friend too. He looked over at the neat pile of Santino's books, clothes and burnt pack. Appleton had moved them into every hovel he had stayed at. He had yet to get all of the wizard’s belongings back into Santino’s bag.

He looked at the basin and pitcher. Appleton missed the hot baths he had gotten used to while traveling with a wizard. Draconic words rattled in his mind, he tried to pull them together but failed. His sleepy lips stumbled over what to say. The water remained a little grey as he washed his face. Appleton cursed the greedy Leefoot Company.

The Leefoot Caravan Company had taken over the clearing of the dwarven pass. The caravan company had paid them handsomely after Appleton had taken them to see the terrible lizard Santino had encased in stone in the middle of the pass.

Fear had swept the dwarven kingdom with the confirmation that the tolec had returned. Tolec bodies were displayed in every city along the entire length of the pass. The corpse of the Shadow Witch had still been tied to the tolec’s altar to Meklavek. Her body had been eaten by rats and other creatures by the time Appleton had led Kalnu Deurnof, the blind head of security for the Leefoot Caravan Company, deep under the city of Estonia, to prove that the pass was free of the witch and her Shadows.

The dwarven governor, Frin Daloin had decreed that Santino Corvana’s inscription at the base of the living statue was to be kept. The great beast was a living testament that the dreaded tolec had indeed returned. The ancient lizard was to be kept alive and free from harm until King Mophet’s wizard, Santino Corvana, returned to deal with it. The great lizard was reviled by the living inhabitants of the dwarven pass.

According to Frin Daloin’s decree the beast was to be fed twice a week. It was to be unmolested. The dwarves that had lost loved ones in the massacres cut and slashed the beast in the middle of the night. Its exposed skin was a lacerated mess. Scars crisscrossed fresh gashes over its rough scales. It was missing all but three of its taloned fingers.

The witch’s lava had burnt deep into the dwarves’ sacred mountains. By order of Frin Dolan, her sacrificial lava pit in Estonia had been dug from the street and the souls that were encased in the cooled lava were laid to rest. They made sure every piece of the fouled stone was crushed to dust and sent to the bottom of the lake under Bellows Falls.

A shrine had been set up around the gaping hole in the cobbled pass. Slowly the hole had filled with warm water seeping up from the steaming river that roared under the pass. Worshipers had taken to bathing in the waters of their loved ones’ grave.

Santino’s trapped tolec had become a pilgrimage for the dwarves of the cities along the pass. Most of the clans had lost at least some family or friends to the scourge of the Shadow Witch and her tolec army. They left heaps of offerings to their dead. Food was left on an ornate altar in front of the raging tolec. Most of the food was left just out of the beast’s reach, from within its thick prison of melted stone that Santino had encased it in. The rotten offerings were often thrown in fits of rage at the cursing lizard’s face.

Appleton had never heard of any captured tolec, even in the ancient legends of the war before the Rain of Fire. Though those records could have been lost along with the continent of Urtal-Ir.

Great sages of Gaeron had been sent by King Mophet, to study the ancient beast. Surely they were feeding it, trying to keep it alive for study, Appleton mused as he tried to fall back to sleep.

Appleton laid in bed petting Herb’s eye ridges. He fretted about Santino laying Correah’s temple. The acolytes that watched the gates turned him away whenever he went to see Santino. They explained it was because he was not a tested wizard or a priest of Correah, Mistress of Mages. The young lady who always greeted him at the temple door assured him that Santino would live. That was all she would ever tell him. Appleton finally drifted into a fitful afternoon nap.

He awoke to the pink rays of the setting sun bouncing off the open window. Herb was gone. Appleton figured he had gone to the temple to be with Santino. He dressed in his tight brown breaches and tall boots. Appleton tied his shirt and donned his blue-felt ladies hat with its orange plume. The local milliner had cleaned the hat of the dust and ash from the burned out pass where he had found it. The young ruffian liked the hat even though he got strange looks on the rough streets of Sor-Ronis.

Again first thing upon dressing, Appleton studied Santino's books. His notes about Herb’s use of magic covered the small desk. The minutia of magic that he read seldom made sense to him but, he hoped he would soon be able to impress the priests of Correah enough that they would let him see his friend. 

The orange feather of his fine hat rubbed an ooze into Appleton’s scalp. Unfelt, the tendril from his hat slipped under his skin and tickled his brain. His notes about Herb’s invisibility spell from this morning, now made a bit more sense after he had slept. He read the little that he could decipher from Santino's books.

The lifeform that posed for a hat understood more and more every day of what Appleton read and wrote.

Appleton muttered the words he had heard Herb crackle this morning. The tingle of the forces he was trying to wield touched his mind. A light flashed in his brain as he tried to wrap his mind around the ability to warp light around him. His hands wavered and he felt the magic course through him. Then it was gone. The spell fizzled on his lips. Appleton shook his head in despair. He really wanted to see his friend but the only way to get into the temple was to be able to bend the forces of nature to his will.

Carefully Appleton packed away Santino’s books and locked the window. He took Herb's cleaned squabs downstairs to the small cafe around the corner. He waited for his breakfast and for Meredad Kimech.

Meredad arrived just as Appleton was putting the first bite of his roasted squab into his mouth. The big dwarf straddled a chair. He helped himself to some of Appleton’s steaming food. Wach’ ya got fer me? he asked around a mouthful of Appleton’s breakfast.                                                                 

Chapter 2

Santino's vision was a blur of blue. Tinkling shards of glass rained down on him from the clear tropical sky. His white robes were torn to bloody shreds. Tolec ran through the streets or huddled under archways. The great lizards cowered in fear. The crowd swept the young wizard toward the blue glass walls of Meklavec’s temple.

A giant tolec’s thick leg blocked his path. Its dagger sharp teeth poked from behind its pebbled lips. It nodded its scaly head at the young wizard as he ran past. The sun erupted in the sky. Santino ran toward the back of the temple. Great lizards in their long green robes ushered him and the other refugees toward a shimmering white wall.

Burning skies above drove the tolec through the streets. Santino fled with them. He glimpsed his reflection in a crumbling pane of glass.

Santino snapped from his nightmare at the look of terror that crossed the reflected young tolec’s face. He had seen these slight features before.

A girl's face swam in his vision. The background went grey, eclipsed by her loveliness and tight brown curls.

Where am I? Santino’s head spun as he looked around.

You're in Sor-Ronis, at the temple of Correah, with a roll of her bright green eyes, the curly haired young lady explained again.

Santino’s hand brushed his own brown curls away from his eyes, and he drifted back to sleep. His mind sailed through a floating world. He passed a flying boulder. He flew past the glowing white wall of his previous dream. It was surrounded by runes he could not read. The young wizard became an old woman sitting in a rocker knitting a woolen cover.

Objects floated through his tortured mind; a pipe, some herbs, small bits of paper that he could not read, flickering fatty candles with runes carved into them. He then sat on a gilt throne. Santino now beat on a monstrous set of skull drums.

He awoke with a start to the rhythmic beating of a heart. It was his own. Santino was in a soft down bed, veiled faces swirled around him. A glint of silver touched his fevered mind.

Herb? hissed from behind his clenched teeth. A quill scratched nearby. Followed by the soft thump of a book on a desk.

Shh, a spoon touched his lips. He choked on the warm broth. The rest spilled down the fine hairs on his chin.

More objects poured through his mind as the soup dribbled from the spoon. Now the objects were punctuated with faces and scents. Words of an unknown song babbled in his ears. Santino’s lips mumbled along with the melody. His eyes snapped open. Mindlessly his fingers tapped to the distant tune.

Andrea had sat with the broken young wizard day in and day out. If he garbled in his sleep she wrote down the phonetics of what she could hear. She made notes about the things the young man saw. At times she would question him. He spoke of strange places, and things.

Good you can move your hands, she said. Making a note of his tapping fingers in her journal.

He felt a light touch brush the back of his hand. In the fading sunlight streaming through the one small window Andrea’s brown curls glowed in a halo around her head. What's your name? the wan wizard asked.

Andrea, she said for the third time today, what's yours?

I don't know. I can't remember. Tears rolled down Santino’s cheeks.

Can you drink this? She helped him with the bowl of warm broth.

He tried to take the bowl on his own. She supported the soup for him as the weight quickly became too much for the weakened wizard. His hands shook so badly that Santino slopped the thin warm soup into the bed clothes.

She brushed her slender fingers across his hand.

The thin gold ring on her finger grabbed Santino’s attention. The image of a set of ancient rings around skeletal fingers flashed through his mind. In his delusion, a golden ring on a pale pudgy finger replaced Andrea’s. Pain wracked his weakened body. His eyes rolled wildly in his head.

Andrea moved the bowl before the flailing mage made more of a mess. She fumed that she would have to clean the up after the broken mage again today. Sister Nora never helped with the cleaning and there was always so much of it. She prayed Santino would keep his broth down this morning. Carefully she wiped the dribble from his chin. He mumbled through the towel. She leaned closer but could only pick out a few of the words he stumbled over. He drifted back into fitful sleep.

Andrea fretted and consulted her notes as she walked to the Mother's office.

He's still delirious, Mam. He mumbles and screams. He can barely sit up. Andrea looked across the Matron’s vast desk. He hasn't eaten solid food since he arrived.

Has he said anything today? the High Mother asked.

Not much, he was singing a song I’ve never heard, she hummed the few bars she could remember. Whatever he sees I have only been able to understand a little bit of it. Her fingers drummed nervously on the notes she held across her lap. He rambles about places I've never heard of. The tortured wizard speaks of islands and seas that are leagues to the south as if he has been there. She consulted her notes. He spoke of a white wall and a flying boulder. He also mentioned the land of Urtal-Ir.

The High Mother gave a small start at the ancient name of the shattered continent far to the south.

We all pray to Correah that he gets well. We need him, the Matron stated flatly. He's your responsibility. If there are more tolec on our continent we need to know what he knows.

Do you believe the rumors that there are tolec here? Andrea asked. She of course knew of the ancient race. She knew the terrible lizards had come eons ago to enslave the people of this world.

The tolec had gone to war against the dragons first. The ancient lizards had wanted to be the only ones with magic. The elves of the great jungles had been hunted to near extinction. Tarbatuim, First of the Mages, had brought the teaching of Correah to their land to stop the invasion of the dreaded lizards from the south.

With them the tolec had brought great magics and forces. Ships that sailed the oceans, clouds and even into the stars. Metal beasts that scoured the battlefield with fire. From where they actually had come from, no one knew. Some said they came from the seas some said the stars.

At the height of the devastating war, just over eight centuries ago, Correah and the elder Gods sent the Rain of Fire. The cataclysm had destroyed the brutal race of lizards, and most of the other life of the world. All that was left of Urtal-Ir were scattered islands, charred ruins and wild legends.

They aren't rumors, High Mother Shyat stated flatly, "I've seen the tolec that this young wizard encased in stone. I've also seen the corpses of the terrible lizards that the dwarves pulled from their pass. They are the ancient tolec." She rose from behind her desk.

Andrea knew Santino and his friend, the elf Appleton, had been the ones that had opened the pass across the dwarfs’ mountain kingdom. She also knew the answer to the question she was about to ask.

Why won't you let his friend Appleton see him? The young elf had been to the temple several times that she knew of.

To be able to tame the forces of nature without the help of the gods is what Correah strives for. You know only the ones who are willing to serve the Mother of Mages or are served by Her are welcome. We serve the wizards and witches so the powers of magic can blossom and grow. We ensure more mages and witches come into and stay, in this world. We are bound only to our own. She gave Andrea a harsh stare.

The young priestess knew the Codes of Correah. She thought they were being unfair. Appleton was an elf after all, the reluctant teachers of magic to mankind. Old hatreds run deep she thought. Andrea bowed her head. She left her journal on the High Mother’s desk.

Andrea returned to the shattered wizard's bedside day after day. Intently she listened to his fevered ramblings while he tossed in his sleep. Herb, the silver dragonet, came every day in the morning and evening. The little dragon would also come screeching whenever the young man’s fevered mind cried out in terror.

A silver flash had intervened when she had attempted to shave the new light beard from Santino’s boyish face. The little dragon had hissed and snapped at her until she put the razor away. Herb had sat on the mage's pillow kneading at Santino’s ragged curls. The tiny dragon hissed at Andrea. He snapped his teeth at her hand for the rest of the day, with an occasional curl of mist pouring from his nostrils.

The hours that she was not waiting on the broken young man she was reading about the places he mentioned. The temple of Correah had a vast library. She also had access to the histories in Izumo, the King’s library in the city of Gaeron. The histories of the temple went back to before the Rain of Death. Before the gods had struck with their wrath in the war against the tolec.

She spent weeks studying these ancient texts while Santino rested and babbled. Andrea read yellowed books and crumbling vellum scrolls. She was looking for references of Urtal-Ir in the temple’s chronicles of long forgotten battles against the tolec. She scoured ancient and new maps to find any of the places the broken wizard rambled about 

During the Rain of Fire mankind had sought sanctuary deep in the bowels of the world with the dwarves. The dwarves had helped them move their people on the surface to vast cities deep under the mountains.

The elves borrowed deep into the natural caverns under their burned forests. They held their secret cabals deep underground.

While the dwarven and human civilizations survived the confinement. Elven culture faltered. Clans crumbled. Deep evils had crept into their society. Warping their minds, bodies and their magic. Elves that lost their sanity in the darkness of their deep new home became the Whogul.

Andrea knew that there were still vast cities of Whogul that had not seen the sun or a tree for generations. She also knew that the elves’ vast libraries had all been destroyed by the tolec. Magic had been banned under the invaders rule.

Eventually after the sky had cleared and the forests returned. The elves that had kept the old ways crept back into the sylvan forests along the eastern coast. The Whogul were left to the darkness that had corrupted them.

Correah had made sure that magic would survive amongst the humans. She presented Her young witches with children that could bend reality from birth. Magic had been passed secretly during that terrible occupation from mothers to their children.

Correah had led them from the darkness. Magic had been persecuted and in the trimming of the weak, the wizards had blossomed. She had brought the elves to the humans when both cultures had needed it most.

A generation after the ash and fire had stopped, the ancient proud race of elves had stumbled from the caverns. They were lost and scared. Most went back to their stunted forests. Others joined humans in carving out the vast cities that they had left behind, from the ash.

Santino often woke in a fever. He writhed in his bed. Dreams of places and things he had never seen, tortured his shattered mind. Memories of people long dead flooded him. The dreams always slipped from him like the leaping Shadows of the witch’s tolec.

He never remembered who or where he was, but he always remembered Andy. She was now even in his dreams. Often she held his hand as they ran from the raining fire. He smiled at her as he drifted back to his terrors.

Andrea was reading the cartographer, Adyle Koexipyle's log from before the Rian of Fire. It chronicled a trading expedition to the eastern kingdom of Shanfar along the equator. The ancient land of Shanfar across the eastern ocean was now nothing but barren scared deserts and brackish seas. It had been lush tropical jungle stretching into fertile plains. Huge cites dotted the coastline on the detailed maps of the ancient explorer.

Santino sat up suddenly.

Where are we? he gasped through parched lips. Andrea’s studies had seeped into his open mind while he slept. Maps of ancient lands crisscrossed his vision.

She held a glass to his lips. Drink this. Andrea helped him drink the cool water. She propped him in the bed and pulled the atlas she had been studying onto the young mage's lap. She opened it to the section about their land, Iasaren. The dwarfs’ mountains covered the western coast of Iasaren. She traced her finger along the jagged western coastline. Andrea tried to find the river that marked the port of Sor-Ronis. The atlas was so old that the mark for this giant city was a small black dot, without even a name, at the end of a short river.

We're here, she pointed at the dot. There was not even the hint of the great dwarven pass that now cut across their kingdom.

His eyes widened. Santino began to hastily flip through the ancient book. Andrea had to slow his frantic search before he damaged the fragile pages. His eyes darted across each page as she turned them. Santino’s eyes twinkled with recognition when they reached pages depicting the continent of Urtal-Ir.

I need to go here. He jabbed emphatically at the map. He tried to rise and collapsed back into the bed under the weight of the blankets and the ancient atlas.

There was a settlement near where Santino had pointed. Andrea could not make out the name. The village was tucked between a forest and the edge of a mountain range. The tiny script was lost in the blurred details of the ancient map.

Santino screamed and started jabbing his finger again into the ancient book. Andrea carefully removed the atlas from the bed. Santino went into a fit. He banged his head into the wall. His eyes rolled back in his head. He gnashed his teeth and clawed at the bed clothes.

Correah says I must go! Santino croaked in a guttural voice that was not his own. He tried to fling himself from the bed. Andrea held his thin wrists. Santino screamed at her. His frail body shook with his rage.

Andrea held him firmly in the bed. I need some help! she yelled toward the door.

Boom!

The wooden door slammed into the wall with Matron Nora’s haste. The squat heavy woman pressed her body firmly against the struggling wizard.

Sleep quickly quieted his struggles. 

Chapter 3

Every time he tried to see his broken wizard friend, the young elf left the temple dejected and miserable. Andrea knew Appleton had