Reign of Ash Read online

  BY GAIL Z. MARTIN

  The Chronicles of the Necromancer

  The Summoner

  The Blood King

  Dark Haven

  Dark Lady’s Chosen

  The Fallen Kings cycle

  The Sworn

  The Dread

  The Ascendant Kingdoms saga

  Ice Forged

  Reign of Ash

  War of Shadows

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Orbit

  978-0-7481-3410-6

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Gail Z. Martin

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Excerpt from A Dance of Cloaks by David Dalglish

  Copyright © 2013 by David Dalglish

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  ORBIT

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Reign of Ash

  Table of Contents

  By Gail Z. Martin

  COPYRIGHT

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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  if you enjoyed

  To Larry, Kyrie, Chandler, and Cody, with all my love

  “What tales did you hear?”

  Niklas shrugged. “Rumors that Pollard’s been hunting down former mages. Several have disappeared and never returned. There were dark stories about men in black clothing ransacking the mage libraries and universities, carrying off sacks of items, and torching what was left.” He grimaced. “Pollard seems to like setting fires. I’d heard the same about villages where he didn’t get the information he was seeking.” He snapped his fingers. “Went up in flames, and Raka take the survivors.”

  Outside, they heard a sudden crash. Horns sounded an alarm. Shouts and the sound of fighting filled the air. Niklas jumped to his feet, as did Blaine and the others. A guard appeared in the tent doorway.

  “Sir, we’re under attack.”

  “By whom?” Niklas had drawn his sword, and his eyes glinted with anger.

  The guard looked as if he was struggling against his own fear. “Talishte, sir. We’re being attacked by vampires.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  “W

  atch your back!” Blaine McFadden brought his sword down hard on his opponent’s blade, deflecting a killing blow.

  Piran Rowse wheeled at the warning, muttering curses under his breath. Two dark-clad men were heading his way, swords at the ready. Piran ran toward them with a battle cry, a sword gripped in each hand, driving his enemies back with the sheer ferocity of his onslaught.

  A force of at least twenty-five men, all dressed in black, had attacked them. Where their allegiance lay, Blaine could only guess. Why they had come was clear. Blaine had no doubt the fighters had been sent to track and kill them. To kill him.

  Their battleground was the deserted barnyard of a ruined farm. Not far away, Dawe Killick caught his breath in the shelter of a tumbledown chicken coop that barely held his tall, rangy form. He dodged out to fire his crossbow, taking advantage of its reach to fell one of the dark-clad men.

  Kestel Falke had grabbed the sword of one of the fallen attackers and pulled a dagger from the bandolier beneath her cloak. She circled one of the dead man’s comrades warily, holding him at bay. From the top floor of the rickety barn, Verran Danning, expert thief and sometime musician, lobbed anything he could find at his opponents, striking one of the men in the head with a chunk of wood.

  Four of the eleven guards they had brought with them were down, and while the remaining guards were fighting valiantly, Blaine knew the odds weren’t in their favor. After narrowly escaping death the night before, it seemed a mockery to die so needlessly come sunrise.

  Blaine’s opponent came at him again, sword raised shoulder-high for a death strike. Blaine brought his own blade up inside the strike as he stepped aside, dodging the blow and managing to score a gash on his attacker’s arm. At more than six feet tall with shoulders broadened from years of hard labor in the Velant prison colony, Lord Blaine McFadden could hold his own in a fight. Despite the cold late-autumn temperatures, the heat of the fight had plastered Blaine’s long, chestnut brown hair against his head. His sea-blue eyes glinted with anger, focused on the man he intended to kill.

  Blaine’s body protested every jarring parry. Just the previous night, the wild magic he had sought to bind had nearly killed him, nearly killed all of them with its unharnessed power. They had lived through the assault, wearied and bloody, only to face a new danger. It had been sheer luck that the old tunnels had not collapsed around them, that they had been able to evade the dark-clad warriors, at least for a while. Not long enough.

  “Who sent you?” Blaine shouted as his attacker came at him again, raining down a series of two-handed blows that nearly drove Blaine to his knees. Blaine knew he couldn’t take much more – none of them could. Not after the toll the magic had taken last night. Their attackers were fresh to the fight. He’d traveled half the world to die here, in the middle of nowhere, without even coming close to achieving his task.

  “Lord Pollard wants you dead,” the black-clad man replied through gritted teeth. “Thought you’d have figured that out by now.”

  “Tell Lord Pollard he can —” Blaine’s words died in his throat as an arrow zipped past him, narrowly missing his shoulder, and thudded into the rotted wood of the barn behind him.

  “Incoming!” Dawe shouted, dragging a hand back through his straight, dark hair. He looked like a scarecrow, all angles and bones. “We’ve got new players.” A hail of arrows fell, and several of the black-clad fighters went down, shot in the back. Kestel cried out as an arrow grazed her arm, but she kept on fighting, though blood colored the sleeve of her tunic.

  “I think you and your men might want to run,” Blaine said, a cold smile crossing his features. “Seems to me whoever’s out there is aiming for your people, not mine.”

  For just an in
stant, Blaine took his eyes off his attacker to confirm the new threat. The yard was ringed with archers, all within bow range, but too far away from Blaine to make out any markings on their gray uniforms. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Blaine thought. And other times, he’s just a bigger, badder son of a bitch.

  Blaine’s opponent spared no glance toward the archers. He came at Blaine ferociously, teeth bared and eyes wild. Blaine parried the first of the man’s powerful strikes, but the second blow crashed down on his sword with enough force to numb his sword arm and send him staggering backward. The tip of his attacker’s sword sliced into his right shoulder, and Blaine’s sword fell from his numb hand. His enemy reared back, sword at chest height, to drive the point home, aiming for Blaine’s heart.

  An arrow sang through the air and Blaine’s opponent stiffened, his face drawn in a ghastly mask of pain and fury. He lumbered forward, intent on his quarry, but the delay was just enough. Blaine dove for his sword, grasping it in his left hand, and lunged forward, ducking under his opponent’s blade, expecting to feel the bite of steel against his neck at any moment. His sword plunged deep into the man’s belly and his opponent fell forward, dropping his sword to the ground. Pinned under the man’s body, Blaine felt hot blood seep over him as it poured from the dying man’s wounds.

  It took all of Blaine’s waning strength to throw the man off, and more resolve still to make it as far as his knees before he saw that the battle had turned. Most of the black-clad fighters lay skewered by arrows, and the rest had run for their lives. Only six of his own guards remained standing, along with Dawe, Piran, Verran, and Kestel. But the soldiers who ringed the yard had not moved, nor had they lowered their bows.

  “Surrender. Throw down your weapons. You can’t win but you can die, and you surely will unless you drop your weapons now and raise your hands,” a man’s voice called from the line of archers.

  Piran let out a barrage of creatively vulgar curses, but he let his swords fall. Dawe tossed his unloaded crossbow out into the open and emerged, his hands behind his head. Kestel dropped her sword and dagger, looking toward the archers with a baleful expression.

  “You in the barn. Come out, or so help me Torven, we’ll shoot the others,” the voice called.

  “Hold your fire! I’m coming down,” Verran shouted, contempt thick in his voice.

  “Let’s stick to our story and see if they go for it,” Blaine replied under his breath, just loud enough for his friends to hear.

  “We mean you no harm,” he called out to the archers. “We’re tinkers and peddlers. We took shelter overnight and woke to find ourselves under attack. We’ll be on our way, and no bother to you.”

  A half dozen men from the line of archers were moving toward them now, bows drawn and arrows at the ready. The archers still on the edge of the yard quashed any thoughts Blaine’s group might have had of fighting their way free.

  “You look well armed for tinkers,” one of the archers replied. “Your bodyguards outnumber the rest of you,” he said, with a nod to the Glenreith guards who, though wearing neither insignia nor rank, were conspicuous in their military appearance. “That’s suspicious.”

  “These are dangerous times,” Blaine replied. “We hired guards to protect us. We mean no harm. Just let us be on our way.”

  The leader looked as if he was considering Blaine’s suggestion, then shook his head. “Not up to me. That’s for the captain to say.” He gestured, and more fighters joined him. “Get on your knees, and put your hands on top of your head. We’ll see what the captain makes of you.”

  For a moment, Blaine feared from the expression on Piran’s face that his friend might charge their captors. At a nod from Blaine, they knelt, hands on heads, and Blaine waited to feel a quarrel in the back.

  More fighters moved forward, binding the captives’ wrists with strips of leather. One of the fighters moved to bind Blaine’s wrists. He paused. “Sir,” he called to the leader. “You should see this.”

  The leader walked over and frowned when he saw the brand on the inside of Blaine’s left forearm, an “M” for murderer.

  “You’re a convict,” the leader said, eyeing Blaine.

  “I was a convict. Did my time in Velant. Earned my Ticket of Leave.”

  “Velant’s up in Edgeland, at the top of the world,” the leader said. “No one’s supposed to come back from there.”

  “Just like there’s supposed to be a king and magic’s supposed to work,” Blaine replied evenly. “Nothing’s the way it’s ‘supposed’ to be anymore.”

  “Got another one over here,” the soldier said, lifting Dawe’s arm to show the brand. Blaine sighed. He’d deserved his exile, but Dawe had been framed. And while the others bore no brands for their crimes, Verran for theft, Kestel for espionage, and Piran for court-martial-worthy insubordination, it wouldn’t take too much for the fighter to figure out they were likely all ‘escaped’ convicts.

  “Get on your feet,” the leader said. “You can explain it to the captain. You’re coming back to camp with us.”

  “What of our horses?” Blaine asked.

  “We’ll bring them,” the leader replied. “If you can convince the captain to let you go, you can take them with you. If not,” he said and shrugged, “we can put them to good use.”

  Blaine got to his feet, moving toward the barn’s wide door. The others fell in behind him, while several of their captors moved to secure the horses and wagons.

  “Who is your commander? What lord do you serve?” Blaine asked.

  A bitter smile touched at the corners of the leader’s mouth. Now that Blaine got a good look at the man, he saw he was in his late teens or early twenties. The face was youthful, but there was a world-weariness in the man’s eyes that seemed much older. “There are no lords left to serve,” he replied. “No lords, no law, no liege. The war’s over. Welcome to what’s left.”

  The archers commandeered one of Blaine’s group’s wagons and horses and directed Blaine and the others to climb in. Two of the archers drove, while more archers walked beside the wagon.

  “If I believed in the gods, I’d say now would be a good time to pray,” muttered Piran.

  “Our luck isn’t looking good,” Kestel replied with a sigh.

  Piran snorted. “What? Just because wild magic ripped through some old, forgotten chamber and laid us all out flat as corpses, you think we’re not ready for a good fight?” Piran probably would be up for a brawl, Blaine thought; at least, he had never shied away from one in the past. Shorter, stocky, with a bald head that Piran had kept shaved even in the bitter cold of the Edgeland wastes, Piran looked every bit the soldier he had been before his court-martial.

  Blaine rubbed his temples, trying in vain to ease the throbbing headache that had begun the night before. When the warring kingdoms of Donderath and Meroven destroyed each other, the Continent also lost its control over magic. Without king, law, or magic, chaos followed. Tracking a series of clues that suggested magic might be restored, Blaine and his friends had made a failed attempt to harness the wild magic, an effort that had left several of their party, including Blaine, badly bruised and battered.

  “Neither side was wearing any colors,” Kestel murmured. “But this group has some kind of uniform, although it’s hard to tell; they all look rather ragged.” She paused. “I heard what the man you were fighting said about Lord Pollard. If the archers aren’t Pollard’s men, who do they belong to?”

  Before her exile to the Velant prison colony in Edgeland, Kestel had been a sought-after courtesan, a spy in the court of King Merrill, and an assassin. Like the others, she’d followed Blaine back to Donderath on the scant hope that magic could be restored. Today, her red hair was bound up, and she wore a tunic, trews, and boots borrowed from Glenreith’s guardhouse. Anyone who had seen her gowned and bejeweled for high court would have had difficulty recognizing Kestel as the same woman.