Epic Of Ahiram (Book 1) Read online

  Copyright © 2014 Michael J. Murano.

  Published in the United States by CandleBright Books in 2014.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, CandleBright Books, 1451 N. Ivy Street, Suite 201, Escondido, CA 92026.

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  Printed in the United States of America.

  Text set in Adobe Jenson.

  Book cover by Maria Bowman

  Weapon on cover crafted by Josh Bowman

  Murano, Michael (Michael Joseph) Age of the Seer / Michael J. Murano. – 1st American ed.

  p. cm. – (The Epic of Ahiram; bk. 1)

  Summary: Ahiram, a slave in the Kingdom of Tanniin, seeks to regain his freedom by winning the Games of the Mines. Little does he know the Temple of Baal would level the entire kingdom to kill him.

  ISBN: 978-0-9913200-2-8

  0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34

  To Anouk and the Gang

  May the flame of Truth burn true

  Always

  In your hearts and hearth

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Maps

  Part One: Festival of Light

  1. Twelve Pieces of Gold

  2. A Second Medallion

  3. The Feast of Light

  4. Kwadil’s Decision

  Part Two: Five Days to Freedom

  5. Farewell, My Prince

  6. Game of Bronze

  7. Baal in the Lead

  8. Game of Silver

  9. Fury Unleashed

  10. A Restless Night

  11. Game of Gold

  12. Two Drops of Blood

  13. Deepening Mystery

  14. The Lone Tower

  15. Bats and Boulders

  16. Game of Meyroon

  17. Queen Ramel

  18. A Dark Quest

  19. The Finish Line

  20. Eclipse

  21. Ithyl Shimea

  22. Wings of Fire

  Glossary

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To friends and early fans who kept me going.

  To the strangers who told me not to give up.

  To the shore of my homeland and my mother’s elfish gaze.

  To the league of editors, herders of the wild comma

  and grand masters of English grammar.

  Thank you.

  Twenty-two uncreated Letters of supernal power

  To free from the Bottomless Pit the Lords of Darkness.

  Their sleepless malice stirs beneath the mighty fallen tower,

  Yearning to fill the hearts of men with madness.

  In the raging Pit of Fire and everlasting darkness.

  Standing before the dawn of the second Age of Blood,

  Facing the terror of the Pit at the final hour,

  A Seer alone will rise to stem the raging flood,

  Commanding the twenty-two Letters of supernal power.

  In the raging Pit of Fire and everlasting darkness.

  MAPS

  1. A Brief Overview of the World of Ahiram

  2. Fineekia, the Land of Ahiram

  3. The Kingdom of Tanniin

  4. General Overview of Taniir-The-Strong and the Mines

  5. Taniir-The-Strong

  6. First Level of the Royal Castle

  7. Second Level of the Royal Castle

  8. Third Level of the Royal Castle

  “Baher-Ghafé, O slumbering giant, watchful day and night. Waiting. You who brought us glad tidings; a Seer, to see what we may not. How I wish I could gaze on your blessed shores again.”

  –Memoirs of Shalimar the Poet

  Behind a crumbling pillar, deep within the ruins of the temple to the unknown god, stood a man with an assassin’s dagger. His left hand toyed incessantly with two glass orbs. His eyes, steely and impatient, were locked on a brother and sister selling shark meat across the main plaza in the ancient city of Byblos. The young woman had a fair complexion with jet-black, curly hair which fell down in richly cascading locks, framing a serene face with two black eyes as tender as the dew, yet as strong as a tempest wind. Her brother’s auburn, curly hair was longer than customary for a fisherman’s child. The boy kept shifting his weight from one leg to another, while running his fingers on a wooden table.

  “Imagine that. A wiry child from Baher-Ghafé is the recipient of a Merilian medallion,” muttered the man. “How did my master find you, my young friend? How did he know you are a Merilian bearer?”

  He took a red medallion out of a small pouch and slid it between the two glass orbs, which snapped against the metallic surface like iron to magnet. A flickering, red line shone inside the round objects, mist swirled from their surface, slithered like a snake and turned into a new, larger orb. A distorted face appeared on its hazy surface.

  “Have you found it?” a disembodied voice whispered.

  “You were right: it’s with the boy,” replied the man.

  “Do not come back without it. If they take gold, then all is well, otherwise, do what you must.”

  “Understood,” said the man, laughing sardonically. He waited for the face to fade before snatching the medallion from the grip of the glassy orbs. They shattered into a gray powder that fell heavily to his feet. Keeping his eyes on the young woman, he returned the red rondure to the pouch, grabbed two medallions—a silver and a rosewood—and hooked them to the gold chain under his shirt. A Control Spell to break the boy’s will, and a Rose Spell to enchant his companion and make her believe in love at first sight. He chuckled inwardly, already savoring what was about to happen.

  Hoda did not believe in love at first sight. Naturally, girls her age were wont to mention the names of young men they fancied, and naturally, Hoda could not help but wonder what her future husband might look like and where she would end up meeting him. But to be spellbound by a man at first sight? This was the exclusive province of wicked sorcerers, maladjusted gods, or impossibly beautiful women who did not have a younger brother to care for and shark meat to sell.

  “Ahiram,” she called to her brother, “I forgot the sharpener in the boat. Run and fetch it for me.”

  The young boy bolted, always happy to run. “Be back in one hundred heartbeats,” he yelled, before disappearing down Sunset Street, which led to the port.

  “Three pounds, if you please, Miss Hoda,” said Seamar, a shy slave from the Golden Oar, the main inn across the civilian section of the port of Byblos. He glanced at her and blushed. Seamar, a thirteen-year-old busboy, believed Jabbar’s daughter to be a goddess come to put men to the test, and he was not about to fail this time. Hoda gave him a passing glance. He thought the sun, moon, and stars had turned into a beautiful light, hidden in the young woman’s eyes.

  “That’ll be three silver pieces,” she told him as she handed the young boy the cut of shark meat. One silver coin was a port worker’s weekly wage, and only Tawr, the inn’s owner, could afford to buy so much meat every week. Seamar gave Hoda his most dazzling smile, and the goddess fell instantly in love with him, whisking him up into her heavenly chariot, to the acclaim of the citizens of Byblos, who chanted his name…

  “Seamar, Seamar?”

 
The young boy dropped abruptly from the chariot back into mundane reality. He saw the young woman handing him the meat, neatly packed inside a palm leaf. He took it from Hoda’s hands and blushed.

  “Do not lose it now, alright?” she added gently.

  Seamar’s complexion turned a bright red that would have awed the pack of lobsters gracing the Golden Oar’s kitchen this morning. He muttered a quick thank you, and convinced he had failed the test, hurried away disheartened.

  “Oh, was that Seamar?” asked Ahiram handing his sister the sharpener. “Did I just miss him? That’s too bad. I wanted to ask him if we could run together tomorrow. He is a good runner, he helps me stay focused. I like him.”

  Hoda smiled. Her soon-to-be twelve-year-old brother had never managed to tell a straight lie. Ahiram was the fastest young runner in Fineekia, whereas Seamar might be able to outrun a turtle, if someone bribed him with sweets. To hear Ahiram, Seamar was doing him a favor, when in fact, it was the other way around, as usual. Hoda tousled his curly hair and kissed him. He looked at her and smiled. His earliest memories were of his sister singing a lullaby and rocking him gently in his bed. Hoda meant the world to him, and he could not refuse her anything.

  “Oh, look at this boy,” said a dainty tourist from the Kingdom of Ophir. “Isn’t he a doll with that curly hair of his?”

  Her two friends giggled with glee. Realizing they were talking about him, Ahiram opened wide his eyes, then frowned. Hoda felt a knot in her stomach. She turned around and casually steered the three tourists toward the shark meat their father had caught this morning.

  “Fresh shark meat, m’ladies,” she said with a beaming smile, “the best you will find anywhere in Byblos.”

  “Ta, ta, ta, young lady, we care not for your meat, but I would love to buy this young boy over here and get him in my employ; he is so daaarling,” she said getting closer. “I’d love to pinch these ruddy cheeks.”

  Ahiram’s face hardened instantly. His eyes blazed with an otherworldly glow, warning Hoda that her little brother was about to charge the three ladies with the strength of an enraged bear. A few weeks ago, while running on the beach, he saw five boys tormenting a little girl. One of them took her tiny wooden doll and snapped it. Their laughter had not yet died when Ahiram came down on them like a wrathful storm. Nearby, a group of fishermen were tending their nets and they jumped at once when they heard the screams of terror and despair. What they saw defied their understanding: a wiry boy moving through air like a shark through water, pummeling five boys with such speed and power, such single-minded purpose that the fishermen feared for the lives of his victims. It took the combined strength of four strong men to subdue Ahiram before he had permanently maimed the boys.

  The tourists drew closer. Hoda nearly panicked. Bending down, she grasped him by the shoulders and forced her brother to face her. “Look at me, Ahiram,” she said, ignoring the three ladies who perked up, ready to turn an event into a gossip. “Do not lose your temper, and breathe deeply, like I showed you. Come on Ahiram, listen to my voice: breathe, breathe…”

  Ahiram closed his eyes and followed his sister’s directions, then whispered, “Hoda, make them go away. I don’t want to hurt them.”

  “M’ladies,” said Hoda standing back up, “I am so glad to know that you want to buy my brother. You see,” she added in a conspiratorial tone, “ten days ago, a shark-dog nipped him—”

  “A shark-dog?” exclaimed the woman who had wanted to buy Ahiram. Her consorts shrieked in chorus

  “A baby shark-dog,” added Hoda hastily. “Yes, it did. My brother contracted rabies.” Hoda barely managed to contain a smirk. Rich tourists from faraway kingdoms visited Fineekia with strange, preconceived ideas. Commonly, these tourists believed that Fineekians rode on sharks, kept them as pets, and they even believed that the god Yem had allowed Fineekian dogs to interbreed with sharks, and that the resulting animal was a formidable land-shark with four legs. This superstition was so strong that dogs were banned from Byblos to avoid scaring the rich visitors.

  “Rabies?” came the dramatic refrain.

  “Who?” asked one of the ladies confused.

  “My brother, of course,” replied Hoda quickly. “But you don’t have to worry: The high priestess healed him—well, mostly.”

  “Oh?” responded the women in chorus.

  “He confuses women’s hair with chicken’s feathers. My poor mother is now bald, I am wearing a wig, and our unfortunate neighbor Miss Mrad is convinced someone took her six girls away and left her with six balding boys.”

  “Well, daaarling,” said the woman who spoke first, “I think we shall pass then. We are already very late…” The women backed away and their chatter was soon lost in the crowd.

  Ahiram burst out laughing. Hoda relaxed; they had averted the storm. “Balding girls! The Mrad girls with no hair. Wait until I tell them. A bit of that solvent we use to clean the boats with, maybe…”

  “Ahiram, son of Jabbar,” chided his sister, “you’ll do nothing of the sort. Do you hear me young man?”

  “I was just kidding, Hoda,” replied Ahiram smiling. “But I do admit, it is very, very tempting. A bit of solvent with soap—”

  “Hoda; at last I found you.”

  Ahiram looked up and saw a young woman running toward them, and undisturbed by the smell of fish meat, she hugged his sister. How different she looks from Hoda, thought the young boy. The young woman had frizzy, dirty-blond hair, a freckled face with no visible cheek bones, and her light blue eyes contained the Great Sea in all its mysteries.

  “Syreen, is that you? I barely recognized you.”

  Ahiram’s eyes bulged like saucepans and his jaw dropped. Was this tall, young woman the scrawny, little, freckled girl he used to scare by getting spiders to crawl up her arms? Perhaps she remembers, he thought, guilty as a drunken sailor. What am I to do?

  Hoda and Syreen engaged in animated conversation while Ahiram manned the booth. He kept glancing nervously at Syreen, wondering if she remembered the spiders. Whenever she had visited with Hoda, his sister would shoo him away gently, and sit with her friend on his favorite branch atop his favorite oak. Deprived of his sister’s company, he would mope around, miserable and lonely; hence the spiders.

  Speaking with a voice as polite as a shining pair of boots in the Temple’s hall, he called out to Syreen, “Miss Syreen, please accept this morsel of shark meat in reparation for all the spiders I put on your arms.” He held the meat the way his mother held an offering in the Temple of Baal, as though Syreen were a goddess, and he a humble supplicant.

  Syreen looked at Ahiram, then at Hoda, and realizing who he was and what he had just said, burst out in laughter. “Is this Ahiram, Hoda? My goodness, he is so grown and so cute.” Before he could react, Syreen walked inside their booth, gave him a prolonged hug—she smelled of cinnamon and sweet oil—and a sonorous kiss.

  Nobody does this but Hoda, he thought, offended. Kisses were the privileged province of his sister—and his mother, of course—but no one else. Syreen, seeing him pouting, burst out laughing and tousled his hair.

  Why do they keep messing up my hair? he thought. Mother will have a fit when she sees me.

  “Hoda, I was so jealous of you growing up,” said Syreen. “I am an only child and your brother was so cuddly when he was a baby. I often imagined taking him home with me, you know.”

  Hoda smiled and winked at Ahiram. “Look at you now, Syreen, the second maid to the first priestess of the Temple of Baalbeck. I am so happy for you.”

  Syreen’s eyes clouded for a brief moment. “We work on rotation,” she replied evenly. “Three months in, three months out.”

  “That’s odd, why don’t they keep you all year round?”

  Syreen sighed. “Let’s just say that our load is unusually demanding.”

  Hoda gazed into her friend’s eyes, and knew not to ask more questions. What are you hiding from me, Syreen? wondered the young woman. You are so restrained right now, I fee
l I am talking to a shadow of you. What have they done to you at the Temple?

  “Morning of goodness,” said a young man, utilizing the traditional Fineekian greeting. “Syreen, I hope I am not interrupting.”

  “Oh, Hoda,” said Syreen with a twinkle in her eye, “I’d like you to meet my cousin, Karadon.”

  “Morning of light,” said Hoda, giving the usual response. She looked at Karadon, and with no prior warning, fell in love… just like that. Or rather, fell into eternity. The world came to a stand-still, and Karadon’s green eyes became the Great Sea carrying her to the ends of the earth. In that moment, Hoda knew all she needed to know about the world; it was passing away like grass, green today and burned tomorrow, but the surpassing power of love endures like an eternal river flowing from heart to heart. In that moment—that one perfect moment—Hoda found her center, the meaning of her life, and the purpose for which she was created: to love and be loved. Words, trivial and often destitute, shone with an everlasting light she had not known existed.

  Karadon, awestruck, knew then that all he had lost would be restored to him: his village razed and burned to the ground by the High Riders of the Temple of Baal, his parents and all his friends massacred by the soldiers, and his shattered childhood. All of it, one day, would be healed and restored. Unexpectedly, the pain he had endured all these years began to lift. Karadon had just found his anchor, his strength, the woman of his life, and he knew, with the certainty of the heavens, that they were destined to be together.

  On that bright, early morning of the month of Kislev, when the waning summer yearns to light up the forest with the mellifluous colors of fall, life in the eyes of Karadon and Hoda was a recollected lake beneath the heavens, and their gaze a fluttering sail tugging at a ship making ready for an unexpected journey to last a lifetime.