Oath Binder

By Edward Stone

Out of the madness of the Godflight rose the Scarlet Emperor, binding the bloodlines of the witches to himself and bringing the sinister peace of totalitarian rule. When the oath binders dared to rise and make a choice and freedom a reality again, they were crushed, along with the last hopes of a new golden age.

But now, an oath binder has been found after centuries, with the power to bend fate with his words alone. Such a power could be used to bring the world to heel forever under the Scarlet Emperor or free it.

But will one boy's power be enough to save the world from its fate or merely bind it to its destruction?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889609209

Book preview

cover.jpg

Oath Binder

Edward Stone

Copyright © 2023 Edward Stone

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88960-907-0 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88960-920-9 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapters 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

About the Author

Prologue

The night had been so cold that the water had frozen in the buckets while the wind whistled in the chinks of the castle wall. Alana Morister climbed out of her bed slowly, her joints protesting the chill by refusing to bend to her will. She used a knuckle to crack the skim of ice on top of the washbasin and splashed the breathtakingly cold water on her skin. Any sleep left in her was driven out by the shock of it. She pulled on a thick robe and walked over to the fireplace. Some servants had already set the fire high again, though the warmth it offered barely pushed back the killing cold. Darkhold was a drafty place, especially in the towers. Coins were fairly falling out of the coffers, but the emperor would do nothing to see that the repairs were done to the home place of the Iron Circle.

Waste for vanity's sake is a sin, he had said once, one of the few times she had ever heard him speak.

He was one to talk, she thought. He was draped from head to toe in scarlet flowing robes that covered even his face and crowned with a crown of Trajan Platinum that was decorated with rubies, one of which was the size of an apricot. Waste for vanity's sake, indeed. No one had ever seen his face in years, most likely due to his vanity. She figured he was old by now, even more so than her. He had to have seen at least seventy summers, maybe more. But the voice that came from behind those shrouds was rich and melodic.

She sat by the fire and held out her hands, chapped and rough from years of hard work and cold. Alana had lived in Nycht for almost two decades and had not traveled outside the borders in at least a decade and a half. Life was hard on the Taiga. Cold winds, snow, and sparse farming land made for a diet of root vegetables and fish for most witches, especially those not in the emperor's best graces. This diet disagreed with her. Her long hair had been once copper colored but now was the color of carrots shot through with smoky gray.

She knew she would not live another five years, but while she lived, she was still the Eye, the leader of the sect of Seers and a force with which to be reckoned. She had to admit her magic was slower now. It took her longer to call the unknown to her, but it was still deep and strong. She saw much more and much further than all but the best of her pupils.

She had already picked out her burial crypt in the catacombs for her burial because she had been Trajan before she had become a witch, and the practicality of preparing for her death never left her, but she still had some work left in her. She settled back into the chair and let her mind relax, reaching out. Out, she cast her mind into the places between places, cajoling the future to come to her.

Stubborn as a barn cat, it would come in snips and snaps, flickering and tantalizingly in front of her before finally conceding and letting her have it. Outside, the wind raged, pushing the first flakes of snow in front of a storm, but inside, she was dropping through time, echoing.

A vision came to her out of the depths, like a leviathan ascending. She saw a face. The face of a young man upturned into the sun someplace warm like Turuli or southern Rud. His face was alive with laughter. She saw him turn, and then the scene fell away to a battlefield where he wielded a bloody sword raised above his head, shouting. All that could hear him from where he stood were roared down, dropping like flies. The words came to her lips without her mind saying, Oath Binder.

The scene changed again, and she saw the doors to the throne rooms of the city after city being thrown open. The boy was carrying the emperor's scarlet standard, crushing liege after liege of soldiers, all in the name of the emperor.

She called out, not daring to stand until she was sure the vision was gone, yelling for the servants. They came to her call quickly, fearing she had fallen on some missed patch of ice on the floor. I need an audience with the emperor! she exclaimed. I have his future in my eyes.

Someone ran to fetch another witch, one of the seer's pupils. A vision of the emperor's future was rare and needed meticulous documentation before it could fade or be misremembered. In the meantime, the Eye leaned back in her chair as the last shreds of her vision floated away. She thought of the opportunity she had been given and what best to do with it.

Chapter 1

The village of Heart Quench was perched on the Broken Coast, where it nudged its way back into the expanse of the lush green Demair Forest. Although it was known for its calm, shallow harbor and gentle winds, it was not a place where trade flourished but where the occasional light fishing vessel, blown off its course, might find a place to nestle for a few days to repair sails and hulls to the slow, steady rhythm of the Lalala trees shuffling in the warm coastal breeze. The village was small, and the buildings were done in stucco colors from the soft pink or greens of the shells gathered in the tide pools that were ground to a paste and mixed with the clay off the jungle floor.

It was a happy little place where the streets did not always meet at right angles. It was full of alleys, courtyards, and little marketplaces where vendors sold goods traded for in the big city of Nerriak two days' travel from there. The people themselves were tanned skin with hair and eyes running to the lighter side of both spectrums who dressed in white tunics trimmed green or pink. They were fishermen, weavers, cloth dyers, and artisans of crafts that used the birds' colorful feathers from the forest.

It was a good small town to grow up in as it had been sheltered from the ravages of the generation wars and their subsequent fallout. There were a few years when the witches of the Iron Circle had not come to the village, it being so small and there not being enough children to test. Heart Quench was so far from the Capital that, at times, it was easy to forget that the inhabitants of Darkhold were always watching.

The forest was a jade green dream soaked in the heat, with sunlight dancing in the leaves and on the pools of water all around. The three children on the trail knew the ways and paths of the forest as if they had been born to it instead of the village miles away that lay on the span of golden sanded beaches. They spent their days here, escaping their daily chores and gossip of the village, trading them instead for the jungle's warm, quiet, humid bowl.

Erumi splashed through the puddles soaking his legs as he ran to keep up with Kita and Thenam. They raced through the jungle, loping between thick-trunked trees under the emerald canopy as Falta birds cried in the distance, their plaintive call high and sweet. As they trailed each other along the path, their voices excited and high-pitched, scattered animals before them as they made their way to the Cliffs of the Moon. This path, made by the wild pigs of the jungle and worn by the children's feet as they made their journeys back and forth, was the most direct route to the cliffs from the village. They had left the village early that morning, wandering out into the crush of green after the fishermen had come in from their early morning trawling with stories that a ship with the Emperor's Crest, a large scarlet sun surrounded by a halo of flames, on its sails, had been spotted coming around the cliffs from the south was angling to the cove.

The three ran as fast as they could, silent with their exertion, until they spilled out onto the cliffs overlooking the cove. Kita knelt, and the boys followed, her fingers pushing back her hair as she looked. They sheltered behind a large fallen tree trunk, breath puffing in and out from the run with color high in their cheeks. Erumi looked out over the water, the white caps lapsing on soft satiny waves that drew the ship into the neck of the cove. The ship was much too large to dock, so it would have to anchor out in the cove and shuttle whoever was coming in on away rafts.

They are blocking the whole waterway. How are the rest of the fishermen supposed to get back in the harbor this evening? Thenam asked with disgust. He was two years younger, chubby, and his hair stuck out in clumps like a wild broom.

I do not think they care, Erumi answered in a quiet voice. That is the emperor's crest. They are from the Capital, or at least here on the Capital's business. There will be witches on that ship.

Kita pointed toward the prow of the ship and murmured. Those people are wearing setas and khoulis. Erumi is right. There are witches on that ship.

The boys' eyes darted to follow her pointing finger, confirming the presence of not one but three witches, all dressed in the tunics and cloaks of witches that were worn by all those of the Iron Circle. The setas were long and fell to the knees of the witches, white as chalk and decorated with black needlework. The khoulis the witches wore were hooded, all a different color to mark their rank in the Iron Circle. Each color represented different magic so that the children could identify that the witches were a war witch, a corpse witch, and a seer.

A seer, Erumi said, voice tight. They have come to test us.

That's ridiculous, Kita stated. How would they know that we were even here?

They keep records, Erumi interjected. My mother said that when I was born, she was required to provide a letter to the Capital confirming my birth with a drop of my blood on it so that a seer could find me when the time was right. She said that the midwives do it for all the children when they are born and send the letters so that the witches know when to come.

Kita and Thenam looked at him, not offering any argument. They knew nothing to the contrary, so they took it for truth. Silence fell between them as they watched the ship slide silently into the cove, a shadow on the water. The three huddled by the tree trunk, none of them brave enough to speak, as if to do so might draw the witch's attention and bring the wrath of the Iron Circle down on them. The sun shone brightly on the water, and the birds sang cheerfully, but there was a sense of foreboding that was undeniable. The presence of witches in a town was always a big event, and when they came unannounced, it was rarely a good thing.

People made their way down to the beach. The curiosity of the emperor's standard brought them down to the shallows to meet the ship. It was customary for the people of the city, when visited by the emperor's witches, to come with offerings of food, drink, and bed and board for the witches. The witches, in turn, would accept lodging amongst those offers while they were in the village.

The children watched the ship anchor in the calm water as the witches were lowered onto an away boat accompanied by six black-dressed garbed guards who bristled with swords and knives that glinted in the early afternoon sunlight. Guards of the Silent Order were the deadliest nonwitch warriors alive. It was said that they trained to be nearly as dangerous as the witches themselves. There were stories about guards fighting hellcats as their final task. Erumi shivered as he watched them survey the crowd, their hands never leaving the hilt of their swords. Thenam slapped them on the back, making both Kita and Erumi jump. Come on, he prompted them. If we hurry, maybe we can sneak a peek at them up close.

Why would I want to do that? Erumi questioned. I'm sure we will all meet up with them soon enough. Is it true that they do not even let you go back home if you prove to have magic?

Yes, Kita spoke softly. They do not risk losing a candidate. Long ago, when conscriptions first began, parents could take their children home to prepare them for the trip, but some parents let their children escape or even tried to help them. The rules changed after witches had to hunt down whole families. So now all children are taken at the time of their testing. She brushed her hands together, and with an ice-irritated voice, she spoke quietly, Why would they want to run away? Being a witch lets you see the world and have adventures.

And never see home again, Erumi could not comprehend that.

What's to see? Kita retorted. We are very familiar with every inch of the forest to the Chalice River, and we know everyone that lives here. If I do not test as a witch, I will never leave here. I will probably end up a fishwife married to Thenam and mother to half a dozen squalling babies. What kind of life is that? She turned to look at the crowd forming again. Thenam's face flushed as if he thought that that might be a very good life indeed, but he said nothing while Erumi pretended not to notice.

Have there ever been times when they did not find any witches among the tested? Erumi wanted to know.

Secretly, he hoped that none of them were witches, and they could live out their lives as they had until now, doing everything together, enjoying the long evenings in the lagoons gathering rock crabs and the soft breezes of the ocean. Erumi could not imagine a life he'd want more than one like that reaching out in front of him. Witches lived on the road, carrying out the emperor's will, crushing rebellions, policing the lands, and living by sword and spell. It sounded like a life that was lonely and uncomfortable, and he had no interest in it.

I'm sure there have been, Kita answered. But who knows? Witches are easy enough for them to find.

How do they know? Erumi asked. If we ourselves don't even know when they test us.

That's why they bring a seer with them, Kita said. That's what the seer does on these trips. We need to go. They will be looking for us eventually. Kita continued. Her excitement was barely hidden. She wanted to test, everyone knew that. Kita had made a bowl fall off a table a few weeks ago, at least according to her. Neither of the boys had seen it, and Kita tended to make a bigger deal of things than was necessary. Almost no one got their magic before twelve or thirteen, which is why they tested at eleven so that you did not even know you were a witch when they tested you.

Thenam had told Erumi a few days ago that he thought Kita was so obsessed with the idea of being a witch because of what happened with her sister. Erumi was not sure, but he could understand how Thenam would think that.

Five years before, when they were just six, Kita's sister, Neeti, had been tested. She was found to have war magic and had been drafted into the war witches of the Iron Circle. She had been sent across the Farthing Sea to Karsa, where she had worked with diplomats from the capital of Nessa to keep trade open. She had sent a small fortune of fine clothes, spices, and jewelry home to her family from the strange city and sent letters that spoke of her life far away. Then one day, after not hearing from her for months, two black-dressed corpse witches showed up to deliver the news that Neeti had been killed in a fight between sand pirates and the diplomats' caravan. She had died a hero, defending the emperor's interest across the sea. Her body was never recovered; she was just gone. The corpse witches had returned her bloody khouli that Kita's mother now kept in a silver urn in her room.

Kita moved suddenly, like a big cat suddenly thrust into action, hurrying down the way they had come back to the path and presumably off to town. They traveled quickly on their way back to the village. They would not have been expected to be there when the ships arrived, but certainly, if they did not come at some point, it would be noted. All the children of age would be called before the witches eventually to be counted and tested. The tests were all done in private, with the three witches meeting with the children individually, testing them, and then telling them their magic type, but often, they would want the children lined up to take a measure of the offerings.

To serve the Iron Circle as a witch was a great honor. Witches were war heroes, and those who came home from service lived rich lives with fortunes to keep them comfortable until their death at very old age. Kita's mother was hoping that she would receive a dispensation for Kita since her sister had given her life for the Iron Circle and died at a young age in a foreign land, but the emperor gave none. All children were called to appear and be tested.

Magic ran in families, so Kita expected to be a war witch and to be on the front lines of battle slinging fire and force at the enemies of the emperor. Thenam's family was thin with magic, and no one could even remember the last time a witch had been called from his bloodline. Therefore, Thenam suspected, as did everyone else, that he would be a fisherman like his father and grandfather before him, and he would grow old in the village surrounded by grandchildren.

It was Erumi that was the wildcard among them. His father had been a crew member on a trading vessel and was killed by Erusian raiders when Erumi was still in the cradle. His mother had been an orphan of the last of the Generation War and was raised in an orphanage with no last name. She had married his father after he had seen her working on the docks mending nets. She was not even Turuli. She was Ta'avan, and her almost white-blonde hair and green eyes made her stand out in the village. She knew nothing of her family and had not been tested as a child because she had no birth letter. When they came to test her, she was already thirteen and showed no signs of magic that they could determine.

Maybe you will be a war witch like me, and we will train at the Citadel and cross the Farthing Sea to Nooma or Kithrracki to fight battles, and they will write songs about us, Kita said excitedly.

Or you will not be a witch at all and can fish with me, Thenam countered.

Don't worry. No matter what, you will be with one of us, Kita announced.

She was keenly aware that Erumi had no one but his mother and them in his life, and there was a very good chance that in a day or two, he would not see her for years, if ever. Kita did her best to assure him that he would not be alone.

Either way, Erumi offered in a hollow voice as he watched the witches' boat make its way to shore. He wanted to feel comforted, but the khoulis and seta of the witches made them look like what they were: alien, powerful, and deadly.

The beach was crowded with people when they arrived. The people were jostling and pushing each other to get closer to see the witches. Whispers ran through the crowd admiring their fine clothes. Erumi's eyes traced the hand and face tattoos that they wore on their skin. Each one did in the delicate scrawling script of the Iron Circle. They marked the witch as an adept, a master of one of the secret magics, but what they said was hidden from him.

Kita grabbed him and whispered in his ear, The seer is in charge. She just told Mirja to take them to the inn. They know about my father's inn!

Erumi doubted they did because almost every town had an inn, and HeartQuench was no different. Kita's father, Kafjan owned the Dancing Bird Inn. It was good that the witches wanted to stay at the inn because it would guarantee that the inn would be packed with curious onlookers while the witches were in town and would afford her father additional much-needed funds. Erumi nudged his way past Kita to look for himself at the seer. He stepped out from the crowd onto the path that they had carved for the witches.

Immediately, a black-garbed guard pushed him back, drawing a wickedly curved blade.

Stay back, the guard barked in a dangerous voice. The seer stepped around the guard and looked at Erumi, her face full of interest. Erumi shivered as she regarded him with deep amber eyes, like a serpent watching a bird.

Hello, little one, she purred in a soft and whispery voice.

Her face was strikingly beautiful but hard, as if it were carved from polished wood. She held a hand out around the guard, as if she would help him up, but he skittered back into the crowd. Rather than the rancor he expected to see at his refusal to accept her hand, he saw her smile a wry smile. He was curious about her smile, but then the people crowded in, and he was lost in a forest of legs and dust.

Kita helped pull him free, and when they untangled him from the mob, she looked at him and exclaimed, She spoke right to you and reached out for you. Kita held him by the shoulders as she looked directly into his eyes. Erumi's heart was still racing like a runaway horse and his tongue seemed unable to loosen itself from the roof of his mouth.

Chapter 2

Erumi stood watching the crowd drift toward the Dancing Bird Inn, trailing the witches, and then turned to look at the ship. It sat high in the water, which was clear enough to see the bottom, bobbing gently in the waves. Would it be the ship that bore him away north along the Broken Coast past the twin cities of Vin and Vanam to the Iron River and finally to Darkhold, where the Iron Circle resided? Erumi truly knew nothing of what happened when you were chosen as a witch. Did you go to the Capital? Did they send you right to war? No, that did not seem right. He had heard more than once that you were taken somewhere for training. A place no one who was not a witch had ever seen, so it could not be Darkhold. There were paintings of it, and everyone that lived in the Capital could see the fortress perched on the mountainside above the city. The watchful eye of the Iron Circle was forever on the Capital and its people. It had to be someplace else.

But who could he ask? No one he knew would know. Kita might tell him what rumors she heard, but rumors were of little use to Erumi at this point. Nothing they could say would give him comfort about the situation. He watched the ship's crew unload box after box of supplies. Why? Were the witches staying for some time? There were more than enough supplies to last for weeks. Why had they brought supplies? The village people were not rich like those of the Capital, but they could get everything they needed. The whole thought made Erumi ill at ease, even as Kita chirped on about how exciting it was to have witches from the Capital in town. Thenam looked sick to his stomach the more Kita spoke, as if he felt the same way Erumi did, that the world was ending. He told them that he needed to go home to help his mother with the bread before his father returned from fishing, a weak excuse, but Kita just waved as Erumi watched him go, head down, eyes on the dirt. Thenam, it seemed, knew his fate and was already mourning the loss of what they had. Erumi agreed with him. A simple life was not something to be dismissed.

Erumi watched Thenam go as he trailed Kita, winding their way to Erumi's house, to ask his mother permission to go to the inn. They wanted to see if they could catch a glimpse of the witches again. Jaana, Erumi's mother, often let him go to the inn to spend his evenings playing bones with Kita or listening to the bards who traveled through singing songs about the rest of the country. A bard from Sillas had come through not even a month ago and had sung songs about the city of Michart to the north near the foothills of the Horns of Heaven Mountains where the Ta'avan people lived. The Ta'avan were his mother's people. They had white-blonde hair, aloof green-eyed people whose Common never seemed to be clean of the thick, hard accent of their native language. They were warrior people who had lived in the mountains forever. There were other towns further into the mountains along the Yana Pass that were tucked away in snowy valleys where foreigners rarely came. The bard had said that some of these towns had not been contacted since Ta'avan fell to the Scarlet Emperor during the generation wars.

Erumi sat at a little table with the bard at the inn and dreamily thought about traveling through snowy mountains. He had never seen snow, been wrapped in warm clothes, or been to the cities that were supposedly built all of