Sunmaster, p.1
Sunmaster, page 1
SUNMASTER
BOOK FOUR OF THE GUILDMASTER SAGA
C.E. MURPHY
SUNMASTER
ISBN-13: 978-1-61317-188-2 (ebook)
ISBN 13: 978-1-61317-189-9 (print)
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Copyright © 2022 by C.E. Murphy
All rights reserved.
Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilisation of this work in whole or in part in any form by any means, now known or heater invented, is forbidden without the express written permission of the author, cemurphyauthor@gmail.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Editor: K.B. Spangler / kbspangler.com
Cover Design: Tara O'Shea / fringe-element.net
Cover Art: Aleksandar Sotirovski
Created with Vellum
for the clever boys, and the ruthless girls
and everyone who isn't either of those
CONTENTS
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
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by C.E. Murphy
CHAPTER 1
The river, Bayar said, was called 'The Crack in the Bowl.'
Rasim had imagined it as a wide crack. A crack that split the mountains which rose along the Shenryalan coast. A crack that allowed a river to pour into the Northern Sea. A crack that a tall-masted ship like the Waifia could sail through.
"It's more like a hole in the bowl," Desimi said critically from where he leaned against the ship's rail. Half the ship's crew was pressed against the rail, jostling for position so they could see the river's mouth more clearly. Even Captain Nasira stood with them, grimly examining the soaring mountains and the narrow passage where the river cut through them.
"It's a crack elsewhere," Bayar replied with dignity.
"Well, that doesn't do us any good here, does it?" Desimi demanded. The river had bored a hole through the mountains, but hadn't made a canyon, at least not there. Rasim supposed there must have been a lot of very soft stone at the base of this particular mountain, making it easier for the river to dig its way through there, without ever having to cut away the height. It was a large tunnel—light could be seen on its far end, and the river didn't reach the top curve of the bore—but it wasn't nearly large enough for the Waifia's masts. They could row against the current with the shoreboats lashed to the Waifia's deck and go upstream that way, but that wasn't exactly the triumphant arrival in Shenryal that Rasim had expected.
"This can't be the way we've sent diplomats to Shenryal," he said uncertainly. The river's entrance was beautiful, water reflecting brilliantly off the top of the pale limestone tunnel it had carved, but it wasn't practical for the great ships used by most of the sailing nations.
Bayar grinned up at him. Although he was a few years older than Rasim, the Shenryalan prince would never be as tall as even Rasim's modest height. He had shorter arms and legs than most, although no one knew why, except he'd been born that way. He was golden-skinned, with warm red in his cheeks whether he'd been out in the sun and wind or not, and black hair, although it was straighter than even Nasira's. "There are harbors and wider rivers farther north, beyond the Jagged Tooth, but the Crack leads most quickly to where my people will be coming together for the Gathering."
"It won't be quickest if we can't get through!"
"You can go through," Bayar promised. "The small boats will fit, and you can paddle far inland before the Crack rises to be level with the steppes. There, Shenryalans will meet you with blade and bow. Or," he said cheerfully, pointing upward, "we can climb, and from a watchtower, proclaim our presence and my return."
The crew's gazes followed Bayar's gesture to what Rasim gradually realized was a path up a mountain with a remarkably flat top. Maybe. If he was generous about what defined a pathway. It looked like something a goat might consider but then reject as too difficult, for not enough reward. It went up a very long way, reminding Rasim of the Northern mountains to the east. Those rose straight out of the water and reached for the stars like they might find Tilarea, the sky goddess, bending to greet them.
Captain Nasira cursed under her breath, then cursed again more loudly. She was thin as a ship's rope, and stretched as taut. Her hair was very straight for an Ilyaran, and its short black length was tucked behind her ears, where bright gold earrings glimmered against it and her umber skin. It had been a narrow braid that swung between her shoulder blades a month or two ago, before an explosion had burned most of it away. Everywhere Rasim looked, there were signs of what they'd been through over the past few months. Bayar's wasn't the only new face on board, nor the only non-Ilyaran one. Lorens, the Northern prince, looked practically like a pale ghost among the dark-skinned Ilyarans, his yellow hair and blue eyes unlike anyone else's.
Some of their new crew carried scars from the chains they'd worn before being freed from the slave city of Moran. Others weren't scarred, but tattooed with necklaces of chain to indicate they had once been—and in Moranese eyes, would always be—slaves.
And that didn't take into consideration the faces that were no longer with them, people who had died in the explosion that burned away Nasira's hair, or had been lost months earlier in a sea serpent attack. The past year had been all chaos and upheaval, and nothing Rasim did seemed to move him any farther away from the center of it. They'd left Moran almost two weeks earlier, and although the daily tasks of keeping the ship sailing smoothly helped a little, every day they'd come closer to Shenryal, Rasim felt a little worse. Twitchy, uncertain, afraid of what was to come, and maybe more.
Nasira barked, "Fine! We'll go over your mountain, Bayar, but I don't like it."
Relief surged through Rasim. Maybe getting off the Waifia for a little while would help settle his nerves, even if the flagship was his favorite place in the world. He turned hopefully toward the captain, who tried very hard not to glance his way, then did, and groaned. "All right, all of you journeymen, go on ahead. This ship is too full and there's not a soul on it who doesn't need some space. Hassin!"
The handsome first mate stepped forward, a grin flashing across his dark features. "Aye, Captain?"
"I suppose I'm going up a mountain," Nasira muttered. "You have the bridge."
Someone blasted a shrill whistle and seamasters burst into activity, dropping anchor and unlashing the shoreboats. The Waifia's regular crew didn't need them for a journey of a few hundred meters to the shore, but not everyone aboard was a sea witch, and some of them—the old beggar woman who had come with them from Moran, for example—absolutely refused to ride a funnel of water. Besides, it was easier to bring food back and forth in a boat.
Rasim looked hopefully at Bayar. "We could just swim over."
"Shenryalans," Bayar muttered, "don't swim."
"Don't worry." Kisia, a year older and visibly taller than Rasim, wormed her way up to Bayar's side. Her hair, cropped journeyman-short, stood out in short tight curls around her head, and the darkness of her brown skin made Bayar's golden tones look sunshine-bright next to her. She got a silly smile nearly every time she looked at him, and had one now, as she said, "I won't let you drown."
"Let's go," Rasim said eagerly. "The captain said we could."
"You just want to get off the ship because there's no chance for heroics here," Desimi said with a snort. The big journeyman's attitude toward Rasim had mellowed considerably, but he could never resist the chance to poke at him.
Rasim sighed. "Yes, Desimi. That's right. I'm itching for a chance to fight another horrible monster and carve my name in the Seamasters' lore. It sounds fun." Heroics, in his experience, were terrifying and miserable, not fun at all. He dove over the Waifia's railing without waiting for an answer, and after a moment felt the disturbances of other witches joining him in the water. They all came to shore a minute later, safely dry thanks to witchery. Even Bayar wasn't so much as damp, although his expression suggested he'd rather not do that again.
The healer's apprentice, Sesin, had joined them, and grinned when she saw Rasim's glance of surprise. "Captain said journeymen, and I'm not going to stay on board hauling ropes if I can be out here climbing a mountain!" Her enthusiasm faltered a little as they all looked up. "Although that's really high. Heights didn't used to bother me before I fell."
Rasim had fallen recently, too, and nodded sympathetically. "Just keep looking up."
"That doesn't do us any good getting back down!"
"Let's furl one sail at a time," Rasim said wryly. Bayar went ahead, climbing the narrow pathway easily. The steady upward climb gave Rasim something to concentrate on enough that his feeling of worry faded, although when they stopped to eat and drink, it got worse again almost immediately. He shook his head, trying to push it away, and heard Se
They fell guiltily silent until they were climbing again, when Sesin, maybe thinking she was too far back to be heard, murmured something about Rasim having been under pressure, and recently enslaved.
"For a few days, weeks ago!" Desimi said impatiently. "Bayar was enslaved longer than that and he's fine!"
"Bayar is not fine," the Shenryalan boy said with soft severity. He stopped, looking back down the mountain at the rest of them, and Rasim dared glance back to see discomfort and surprise lining Desimi's face. "I am not well at all," Bayar went on. "I am heartsick and afraid, and my dreams trouble me. It is my dearest hope that returning home will heal my soul. Rasim may well need the same, but I've drawn him off-course."
"No," Rasim protested. "I wanted to come to Shenryal. I really think we need to know if your people have been suffering from things like our Great Fire and the salt-poisoned lakes in the Northlands for the past decade. Moran's right there at the middle of it all, with the unrest in the Islands, and Shenryal is the last point on the compass if they're reaching all over the continent. And someone did kidnap you. That's obviously a sign something is wrong. Even if trouble is only on its way, I want your people to be warned. It's hot," he added abruptly, wiping his arm across his forehead. "I didn't expect it to be so hot, this far north."
"It's not that hot," Desimi said. "You're just sweating from climbing a mountain. We all are."
"I don't know." Sesin frowned past Desimi at Rasim. "He's almost as red-cheeked as Bayar."
"Well, they're the only two who get red-faced, except Prince Lorens!"
That was true, and despite feeling woozy, it made Rasim smile. One of his parents had probably been Northern, because he had lighter brown skin than most Ilyarans, green eyes, and the loose curls of his hair, when bleached as they currently were, went yellow, not red. And he did blush sometimes, although not nearly as brightly as Lorens did. He smiled again at the thought.
Sesin, though, wasn't smiling. "You look like you're burning up, Rasi."
"It's not that bad. Desi's probably right. I'm not used to climbing mountains. I just need some air."
"We've been in the air for weeks! What do you call sailing? All it is, is air and water!" Desimi flapped his hands at them. "Go, can you go, I don't want to stand here on a mountainside all day."
Kisia muttered, "You're such a pain, Desimi. Why don't you just leave him alone?" and Rasim started climbing again, listening to them bicker and feeling better. They were his family, no matter how far they were from home. As long as they stayed together, things would be all right.
As long as he didn't look down, things would be all right. A sideways glimpse of the now-toy-sized Waifia made his head swim, and he focused on Bayar's feet, taking the mountain path a step at a time. They were probably a thousand meters above the sea now, having been following the rough trail upward for hours. Bayar said, "We're almost there," over his shoulder, and a few minutes later climbed over the last lip to reach the mountain top. Rasim scrambled up after him and scurried forward, well away from the edge before he really dared look around.
It was as flat as it looked from the sea, and wide enough for them to all lie down feet to head without reaching both sides. Rasim relaxed a little, feeling more sure of himself, although he was much too hot and his stomach roiled if he didn't breathe carefully. It was worse than it had been on the Waifia, but he didn't want to call attention to himself, so he made himself look around. The other journeymen did the same as they crested the flat peak, a brightness coming into all their eyes.
The Northern Sea stretched endlessly to one side, restless water breaking with faint whitecaps in the distance. Clouds skimmed the horizon, thickening in the middle distance and clearing again, with the ocean changing colors beneath them until it reached the shore. Above them, the sky stretched pale blue toward the other horizon as wind whipped by, Rasim saw the first hints of sunset as the light angled gently across plains that went on nearly as far as the ocean itself. Mountains shadowed the very farthest reaches of those steppes, and Rasim took a shallow breath as he suddenly understood why Bayar called the river the Crack in the Bowl. His homelands were the base of the bowl, and its sides were the mountains that surrounded Shenryal as far as Rasim could see. The river did make a crack, a canyon that was visible from this height, although it mended itself on the steppes side of the mountains, diving partially underground to reach that entrance the Waifia couldn't sail through. "Bayar," Rasim said reverently. "It's beautiful."
The Shenryalan boy smiled brilliantly and put his hand over his heart as he bowed, as if taking credit for the stunning view. "The watchtower is dug into the westward face of the mountain, just below us. The journey down to it is easier than the one to here. Come, if we set it quickly those who look east at sundown will see it, and know someone has come to Shenryal."
Moments later, all five of them scrambled over the side of the mountain into a hollow that hadn't been dug, Rasim thought. That did it no justice. It had been carved out of earth and stone into the shape of a giant's hands, in the middle of which sat a pile of well-dried wood that the mountain itself protected from the elements. Desimi muttered, "Why don't you just light it, Sunburn?" as he sat down with his back to the view, like there was too much of it for him to look at right now.
Rasim glared half-heartedly at him. Even if he thought he could work sun witchery—and he suspected he could, at this point, having learned to use three other magics—his stomach swam with sickness right now, and his head felt hot. It had been windy on the mountaintop, but the cave was still, and he missed the cooling breeze. "Why don't you?"
"I'm not the one with all the witchery!"
"Both of you be quiet and help me start a fire the way everybody who isn't a sun witch does," Sesin said irritably as she crouched beside Desimi and bent to the task. "Kisia, you too!"
"Just a minute. Bayar is showing me the rest of the cave." Kisia spoke from the back of the cave, and Rasim, squatting to help Sesin, glanced back.
It wasn't just the giant's hands that held the fire pit. The back of the hollow had been shaped into the lower part of a face, mouth pursed like it blew gently on the fire within its hands. Rasim shivered with awe, remembering the tremendous carvings that marked the entryways to Northern harbors. Stonemasters couldn't have done better work, in either case.
Red light glinted into the cave as the sun crashed behind the distant mountains. Rasim glanced forward, sweat beading on his forehead again as he squinted into the sunset. He felt like he might fall forward off the mountain face, even though he was nowhere near an edge. His stomach dipped and rose and dropped, though, like he was riding the swells of waves. The wind came up again in rhythmic sweeps, and he sat back, trying to catch his breath.
He was the only one looking out over the Bowl, so he was the only one who saw the cave mouth fill with a rising dragon.
CHAPTER 2
It was red, gold, and utterly enormous, blocking the entrance to the hollow with its chest and belly alone. Massive wings spread, their thin crimson membranes dimming the setting sun behind it. Earth rained off its body, flying in a fine spray as the massive beast shook its huge sleek head. A mane of spikes around the back of its head flexed and expanded, giving it the look of a violent, living sunrise. Then it inhaled deeply, like it would suck all the wind and air into it and release it—Rasim was sure—as fire.
He threw himself past Desimi and Sesin with an incoherent shout, knocking them both aside. Desimi began a yell of outrage that died in his throat as he saw the dragon. Sesin cried out, and the dragon, to Rasim's relief, roared instead of spitting fire. Heat blasted over him anyway, breaking the feverish warmth that had been bothering him. Somewhere in the background, Kisia, high-pitched with fear, shrieked, "I thought you were going to start a fire, not—!"
