Eulogy Read online

  Eulogy

  A novel by

  D.T. Conklin

  Amazon Edition.

  Published by Evolved Publishing

  Copyright 2012 D.T. Conklin

  Cover Art Copyright 2012 Michael Brown

  Map Art Copyright 2012 Sarah Shaw

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Thanks to my comrades at Evolved Publishing, including Lane Diamond and John Anthony Allen, for their fine editing work. Thanks to my many beta readers, who provided invaluable feedback and helped me make this a better book.

  eBook License Notes:

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only; it may not be resold 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, please return to your eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Disclaimer:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or the author has used them fictitiously.

  You may not use, reproduce or transmit in any manner, any part of this book without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews, or in accordance with federal Fair Use laws. All rights are reserved.

  Dedication:

  Dedicated to Lane Diamond, who taught me everything I know; and to my family, who has supported me throughout it. Final thanks to my brother, who has read this book almost as many times as I have. The poor bastard.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Map

  Part One

  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

  Part Two

  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

  Part Three

  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

  Chapter Forty

  Part Four

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Part Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Part Six

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  More From D.T. Conklin

  Recommended Reading:

  The Black God's War by Moses Siregar III (Epic Fantasy)

  Forgive Me, Alex by Lane Diamond (Psychological Thriller)

  Prologue

  Villeen's father might as well have murdered her eldest brother—now she was forced to finish it. She clenched her eyes shut, unable to look at a heap of rags in the cavern's corner. Pale flesh peeked from her brother's half-shredded, brown robes. A book's corner dug into her breast, but she ignored the pain, only clutching it tighter, wishing she'd found it earlier.

  The heap, once her eldest brother, Torden, breathed in with a haggard burst.

  His chest rose. It fell.

  Why didn't father kill him? Why this?

  Gravel and moss skittered toward him, sucked in by some strange power. Stones, dust, and tiny leaves of greenish-brown mold—all were dissolved into his flesh, into his unseeing eyes, into his gaping mouth.

  Those fragments ceased to exist.

  Years ago, her father had discovered a power that he'd called gentahl, but what had happened to Torden was more than simple gentahl.

  Fier, her younger brother, pulled her into a hug. "Maybe Torden will hear us—"

  "Torden isn't there."

  She'd growled the words more fiercely than she'd intended, and she reached up to clasp Fier's arm. What else could she say? She couldn’t tell him everything would end perfectly, that the birds would sing, that sunlight would shine warm against their skin.

  She knew better.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean…."

  She turned to him, to the tattoos—twisting, twining, ugly things—that covered his face and body, and pressed her forehead against his shoulder. She'd etched the tattoos two days earlier, only hours after they'd discovered their father's treachery. In return, Fier had pierced her own skin with a needle and ink—hours of pain and determination.

  They needed to hide.

  Of course, neither knew if it would actually work. Their father could've found them so many ways, gentahl at the top of the list, and now the idea of a simple tattoo seemed absurd.

  But she and Fier had been terrified. They hadn't known what to do. They'd panicked.

  They stood in an empty room, no more than a cave, deep beneath the Kurin Mountains. Firelight danced across stone walls, and their shadows, so deep and long and black, wavered in rhythm with the flames. Dusty mold invaded her nostrils until only bitterness remained. In a way, that scent was a blessing. It helped her remember, helped her forget.

  Her new tattoos burned, but the discomfort did little to dampen her sorrow. This place, their home, felt foreign and distant. Narrow walls pressed against her. The door stood open to prying eyes, allowing anyone to witness her pain.

  Not that anyone could see; no one els
e lived here.

  She plunged an invisible thread of gentahl into Fier, slid it into his mind like a needle through a single layer of cloth. Forced it deeper. The door stood open, but gentahl could shift reality. She nudged the thread, yanked and twisted it to change her brother's mind. In that same heartbeat she shifted her own thoughts.

  The door closed. Not a swing or a creak, like a normal door. One moment it was opened, the next its edges pressed tight against the cavern's stone.

  She hadn't needed to alter Torden's thoughts. He had none.

  Gentahl was new, unknown, dangerous. It altered thoughts, and those thoughts then changed reality. Red became blue. Chairs became tables. Iron became copper. In theory, the power should've been able to change anything. In theory, it could've returned her brother, their father before he'd become insane, their lives.

  If only it were so easy.

  A failed attempt—trying to convince someone without the strength to do so, or attempting to convince too many people—led to pain, confusion, dizziness, and a headache to pierce stones.

  The more firm the thought, the more difficult it is to shift. The dead can't live, and nothing can return Torden's mind. A shiver swept across her, and she caressed the tattoos on her arm. How a man or woman looks… ah, that's the strongest of all.

  Thus the tattoos. They weren't gentahl, but they might be enough.

  Torden twitched.

  "It's dangerous to leave him here," she said, and hugged Fier tighter. "Four days is too long, and Father might return."

  "So?"

  "We have no way to know what he'll do. I'm sorry, but we must kill—"

  "No!" Fier shoved her hands away. He knelt beside Torden and brushed the hair from his brother's face. "Let Father study him. Prophet! Let him come back, and we'll stop him. He's nothing but a self-centered fool."

  Her father had discovered gentahl long ago, and perhaps the power itself had driven him insane. He'd sunk into darkness like the dust and moss sank into Torden. He'd murdered his eldest son—or near enough that it no longer mattered—then he'd fled the cavern, losing himself amongst the island's populace.

  Father was but one man within a vast sea of others.

  Fier rubbed his forehead. The days since they'd lost Torden had proven hard on him. He was younger than her, but gray strands littered his otherwise red hair. He gazed at her with green eyes—intelligent, introspective, wise.

  "We can't leave him," she muttered. "This is a mercy, and one he deserves. His life would be worse than death."

  It would be a rat in the cage, but how to tell Fier that?

  "Our father would return for him," she said. "We can't let that happen, but we're too weak to stop it, and our brother doesn't deserve Father's tests. You know it as well as I. Father is too dangerous."

  And he was. He understood more of gentahl than she could ever imagine—how to twist a mind, to alter it so reality changed. She could accomplish minor things: close a door, conjure a spoon or a knife.

  Her father could accomplish far, far more.

  Fier shrugged, but he clenched his fist. "Then what do you suggest?"

  "I'll put our brother to rest, and—"

  "No!" He pulled the book from her hands, flipped to one of the earliest pages, and read it aloud. "'I'll bring fury upon them, but I'll have a reason. I want them to feel. I've never felt, but I've wished for it. How do I wish for a wish?'"

  She nodded once, hard.

  "A dead man can't feel, Vill. Father must have a reason for this, but—"

  She yanked the book from him. Its crinkled pages and loose binding contained their father's notes. Thousands of pages. Torden must've found it.

  Is that why Father did this to him? Too many unanswered questions.

  "The world will change," she murmured. "You know it as I do. He's planned this too thoroughly, and we can't stop it with a word or fist or sword. It will take manipulation, and we must stand at the heart of that. Torden began the change."

  "So we'll be the end." He swallowed hard. "But I don't understand why we must kill him."

  "A week ago, Father strapped a man to a chair and, for two days, he observed. You think that village will miss their man? The wife her husband? I'd bet so. Ah, but father watched the man's expression, the man's eyes. What was he looking for?"

  "I don't want to hear this. You can't be sure that happened—"

  "I can, because I saw it. Father doesn't care about you. He doesn't care for me, and he certainly doesn't care for our brother. To him, we're the man in the chair. We're children of the Prophet, nothing more."

  Tears tickled her eyes. One dripped to her cheek, and she wiped it away. She knew she was right; her father would use Torden, just as he'd used that villager. He'd grow more powerful.

  Torden wouldn't get better. It was too late for that. His mind had already become like a soft butter.

  "What do we do?" Fier demanded, as if she could answer all his questions, as if she could twist and twirl their island until it was right.

  Nothing could do that.

  Their island would sink beneath their father's madness. It would bob and tumble, but how to steady it? Neither she nor her brother held the power to change their faces, their bodies, but she suspected her father did. He could be anyone, anywhere—a whisper in the night, a voice on the wind.

  And the whisper could be a maze, the voice a puzzle.

  Now she must finish what her father started. She forced herself to look at Torden, at the dust and moss skipping across the floor. His chest rose. It fell.

  She'd find her father, her vengeance. The bastard would taste it, wallow in it.

  "We burn our brother," she whispered, and her voice trembled as she continued. "We lay him to rest in a way that no one—not our father or even a rat—can hurt him."

  Fier paled. "And then? How do we find Father? What do we do if we find him?"

  "We'll study his notes and do as we must." She lifted the book, allowed a hint of iron into her tone as she glared at its cover. It would take months, perhaps years. "We don't have a choice."

  The key to the Prophet's mind lay within.

  Part One

  'They’ll stand amongst the corpses of the beloved.' That's what he said at the end, though I never considered myself one of the beloved, not at the beginning. I was simply a terrified woman then, but now... now I understand. Maybe I wish I didn't.

  Void take me, this is so demon-damned hard.

  In the beginning, he loved me. Irony, it twists and twirls like a lover's song, but this is hardly a lover's tale. It's one of blades and blood. I wish I could've seen it sooner, but that would've been too easy. I wouldn't have learned to love him.

  Love. That's all he wanted.

  In the beginning, he adored his father. Oh, how quickly that was snatched away. But it's different, because he took his father from himself. He had to teach his own lessons, just as he had to teach us ours. If only they hadn't ended with so much bloodshed. If only it would've stopped there, but he never admitted how much the death of his father devastated him. Maybe things would've been different if he had. Maybe, ah, I don't know. Maybe it's pointless to think about. I couldn't have done anything to change it, anyways. I doubt he would've let me.

  In the beginning, he was a Kilnsman like his father. No, he'd never stepped inside the village, and no, he'd never met a Kilnsman besides his father, but that didn't change who or what he was. He was a Kilnsman, and that meant something to him. The honor of it. See, these things were at the core of who he was. In the end, he was more than his true father. That's why he never relented. That's why he's dead.

  In the beginning, none of you understood this.

  I didn't either.

  Chapter One

  Far in the distance a child shrieked, but Irreor Ark ignored it. He panted beneath his father's critical stare, then heaved his longsword into an offensive angle and planted his feet wide.

  Offense. Offense.

  He pivoted as his father circled.<
br />
  High stone walls surrounded the barrack's courtyard, and wooden overhangs provided some shade. Sand crunched beneath their boots, dust puffed at their ankles, and the scent of their own sweat filled the area. Racks lined the walls, holding an assortment of pikes and blades and cudgels.

  The older man clenched two matching blades, with a patterned guardsman's tunic covering his chest—the same as Irreor's, though his father also wore a captain's badge.

  Eenan Ark growled and leapt forward.

  Irreor skipped to the side, blocked his father's attack with his dagger, then lashed his longsword out in an angled riposte. Twist and step, step and twist—a dance they both knew well. Back and forth they wove, blades sparkling in the morning.

  Eenan, a skilled blademaster, blocked each strike and returned a riposte of his own.

  Irreor parried them, twisted and rolled, never stopped moving. A speck of frustration built within, for he'd never beaten his father in training. Indeed, he'd never come close, not against a fully-trained Kilnsman. His father slid to the side and Irreor followed.

  They’d begun to train before dawn, just as they had for years, and now Irreor's arms ached as the sun crested the city of Farren’s skyline. This weariness didn't matter; he needed to win, especially today, on his twentieth birthday.

  Just once.

  Sure, it was a childish fancy, but what man didn't dream of besting his father?

  He grinned as a flash of sparks struck the ground, then swept his dagger in a wide, erratic arc. Too wide. Too slow and unskilled. His father's longsword intercepted the dagger in a precise, steadied motion, and Irreor's weapon cracked and shattered.

  Steel fragments littered the ground and, with it, his dreams of victory. And now... now came the punishment. His father wasn't a harsh man—far from it—but he believed in discipline.

  "Demon-damn, but what was that?" Eenan spat.

  Irreor dropped his gaze.

  "Birthdays mean nothing, Irreor," his father said. "Not your twentieth and not my fortieth. You know this, and you must train. But, void take me, you also need to relax. Control the anger instead of allowing it the path to your body."