Lover, Destroyer Read online

  Lover, Destroyer:

  A Grandimanderian Tale

  Sionnach Wintergreen

  Sionnach Wintergreen © 2017

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by law.

  Please feel free to contact Sionnach Wintergreen via email at: [email protected].

  Visit Sionnach Wintergreen at SionnachWintergreen.com, or on Facebook and @everwintergreen on Twitter.

  Check out these other exciting titles by Sionnach Wintergreen!

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  Epic Fantasy:

  Another World’s Song: Book 1 of the Astralasphere Spiral

  Under the Shadow: Book 2 of the Astralasphere Spiral

  Fantasy Short Reads:

  Albynon the Dragon Hunter: Or Searching for Anodyne

  Evening’s Secret

  Here Be Dragons: A Firelighter’s Tale

  Istadnya’s Vow: A Prologue to the Astralasphere Spiral

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to next_hub for the sexy book cover. You can contact her through Fiverr.

  A special thank you to my keen beta readers!

  Dedicated with love and gratitude to all subs everywhere. You guys make the world a better place. Thank you!

  Table of 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 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  A Guide to the Magery of Grandimanderia: The Seven Aspects

  Glossary of Characters

  Chapter 1

  The double lines of carriages stopped. Cinder frowned as his carriage’s abrupt halt swept a curtain of unruly black locks over his eyes. He brushed the hair out of his face and peered out the window at the boy sitting alone in the carriage next to his. “Why is he all alone?” he asked the other three mages with him.

  Hinge, his yellow waistcoat signaling his yellow power, sneered, his chins wobbling. “Who would want to ride with him?”

  Torrent, the only other blue mage in the carriage besides Cinder, glared out the window with a slight movement that caused the golden tail of her tightly-pulled back hair to lick her shoulder. “He’s a demon.”

  “He’s a thirteen-year-old boy,” Cinder scoffed, pulling at the sleeve of his sky blue waistcoat. They never got the arms long enough. “And he’s just a mage.”

  “But not like us,” said Stem, the gravel in his gentle voice somehow making it seem even gentler. The elder mage sat beside Cinder with his deep blue cloak pulled around him despite the day’s heat. He was an indigo mage, rare and powerful. “Our powers are graced by color and light. His power is nothing but darkness.”

  Cinder stared into Stem’s rheumy eyes with disappointment; he expected more from his mentor than aphorisms and condemnation. But when he looked past Stem, out the window, past the carriage where the boy sat alone, the hill’s height allowed a view of the horror the boy’s magic had wrought.

  Where once had been a verdant plain and an ancient thriving city, there was nothing. Not even a baby’s shoe nor a single blade of grass. A putrid-smelling black ooze coagulated in a massive cavity where a kingdom had once been.

  And yet, Cinder couldn’t help thinking that the boy was still a boy—a child burdened with a power that would have daunted men, a child deserving of their pity if not their empathy. “He did the Overfather’s bidding. Why are we blaming a child for an emperor’s designs?”

  Stem turned a grave face to him. “I know that isn’t what you meant to say,” he said, his voice as quiet as it was firm. “The Overfather does not make mistakes. All hail the Overfather’s wisdom.”

  “All hail the Overfather,” swore Torrent and Hinge.

  Cinder followed them, but found the words more difficult to form than usual. “What I meant to say,” said Cinder carefully, “is that the boy did what the Overfather intended—”

  “The Overfather intended to conquer Lilitine, not destroy it,” said Stem. “The boy’s powers are wrong. They are dangerous.”

  “He’s stronger than any one of us alone,” said Hinge, porcine face slick with fear. “He’s even stronger than the indigoes. That much power in one child—one strange boy….” He dragged his lace handkerchief across his forehead. “That isn’t supposed to be.”

  “We should have killed him while he was sick,” said Torrent, irate blue sparks of power flicking off the top of her head.

  She had flirted with Cinder the entire way there, and he had enjoyed the attention. Her attitude since they had found the boy, however, disgusted him. “Saying things like that,” he told her, “doesn’t make you seem strong; it makes you seem cruel.”

  Torrent smiled crisply. “I’d rather sound cruel than weak.”

  Stem laughed. He leaned toward Hinge. “See what happens when you share a carriage with two blue mages? They always speak their minds. They never know when to be quiet.”

  “Torrent’s right,” said Hinge, eager, Cinder thought, to score a point with the attractive blue mage. “At the very least, we should have chained him. That boy looks like he needs a set of manacles.”

  “He looks like he needs a friend,” said Cinder. “He shouldn’t be alone. Someone should have been appointed to ride with him.”

  Torrent scoffed. “Maybe someone should have been appointed to hold his hand and massage his temples.”

  Cinder gathered his pack and cloak and pushed out the door of the carriage. Hinge gasped. Torrent laughed. Stem said, “What do you think you’re doing?” Cinder was already on the ground on his way to the boy’s carriage.

  “Get back here this instant!” barked Hinge, hanging out the carriage door.

  Cinder waved at him over his shoulder. “Keep at it, Hinge. She might suddenly develop a craving for old fat asshole.”

  He took a great breath, then opened the carriage door. “Can I sit with you?”

  The boy looked at him with wide pale eyes set in dark circles. “Yes.” His features were sharp and delicate with a suggestion of brittleness. As Cinder stepped up, the boy curled tighter into himself and pressed closer to the window with a stressed, anxious quality that reminded Cinder of a rabbit.

  Cinder settled into the seat beside him. He stretched his long legs and propped his feet on the seat opposite. He sighed. “Thanks. You saved my life. There was no legroom in that other carriage, and it smelled like sweaty ballsack and ox farts.”

  The boy snickered, his face turned to the window. His jaw-length ash brown hair nearly hid one side of his face. He had been an orphaned goatherd before he Became a mage and his powers attracted the attention of the Overfather, Grandimanderia’s emperor.

  “I’m Cinder, by the way.”

  The boy shot a shy smile over his shoulder.

  “And you’re…Kite, is it?”

  Ice blue eyes speared him throug
h. “Yes…. You took care of me when I was sick.”

  “I’m surprised you remember me. I was one of several people who attended you.”

  Kite looked away nervously. “I don’t remember other people. I only remember you.” He frowned at his hands. “I’ve never been that sick before. What was wrong with me?”

  “You were what we mages call overcast. You expended too much of your energy.”

  Kite turned his attention back to the window.

  “I don’t have much left, but do you want to share a smoke?”

  Kite nodded, shifting toward him with a sudden keen interest. “I used to smoke with Stoat. He was another goatherd. He always had good stuff—from his patch in a mountain meadow.” He watched Cinder load the pipe, seeming to scrutinize every movement of finger, every flex of joint.

  “This is feeble city stuff, but these carriages always unsettle my stomach,” Cinder told him. “This is about the only thing that helps.”

  “Maybe…you should save it.” Worry etched Kite’s fragile face. “This is all you have left.”

  His concern touched Cinder. “I can get more. I know someone.” He cast a flame on his finger and lit the pipe. He inhaled deeply and passed the pipe to Kite.

  As Kite handed the pipe back, he asked, “Can you blow smoke rings or shapes or anything?”

  “Oh, of course. Watch this.” He released a great gout of smoke.

  Kite frowned. “What is it?”

  “A cloud.” The straight face he had managed broke apart and laughter escaped him.

  Kite rolled his eyes, giggling. “You ass.”

  “Hey, it’s a perfectly realistic-looking cloud.”

  Kite shook his head, grinning hugely. They filled the box with smoke. After a few more giggle fits, they grew quiet. Kite’s small hand crept onto Cinder’s thigh and began hunting prey like a large white spider.

  Cinder grabbed his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said gently.

  Kite licked his lips, frowning. “Stoat and I—it feels really good.”

  “I know,” said Cinder, still holding the boy’s hand. “But I’m not gay.” He gave Kite’s hand a short squeeze. “I’m your friend. And I’ll be your advocate.” He set the hand down between them, carefully, as if it were a weapon. “And even if I were gay, you’re too young for me.”

  “You’re younger than Farmer Ant. A lot younger.”

  “Farmer Ant was wrong.” Anger crept through him, bitter as a frost. Cruelty so often ensnared those least able to defend against it.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s wrong for someone older to touch a child—someone younger like that.” He felt slightly nauseated despite the herb.

  “But it wasn’t wrong with Stoat?”

  “Stoat was your age, wasn’t he?”

  “He was a couple of years older than me.”

  Cinder took a relieved breath. “What you and Stoat did was fine.”

  “It’s only all right if people are about the same age?”

  “Not exactly. That’s true until you become my age.”

  Kite chewed his lower lip as he considered him for a moment. “It’s too bad you’re kind of old and not gay.”

  Cinder laughed. “You wound me, Kite. Seriously.”

  Kite grinned. They rode in silence for a while, the carriage clattering around them. “How old are you?” asked Kite finally, his anxious face serious again.

  “Eighteen.”

  “Do you like it?”

  He shrugged. “I like it better than being thirteen, if that’s why you’re asking. I hated being thirteen.”

  “Why?”

  “I Became at nine as a green.”

  “Red at thirteen is normal?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you passed up red, orange, and yellow and went straight to having green powers. At nine.”

  “Right. And then I shifted to blue at twelve. So I was blue at thirteen when all the other mages my age were red or orange. I hated it. I kept wondering if something was wrong with me. I kept trying to act like everything was fine, but I was terrified. And the loneliness—it was like having a stone in your chest. I didn’t think anyone understood how I felt.”

  Kite stared at his hands. “But you’re a blue now and being blue is good. You’re powerful, and it’s good.”

  “That’s true. Although it was frightening when I Became as a green, at least people knew what that was. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to Become and be the only one of your kind.”

  Kite gave him a rueful smile. Silence descended. Kite stared straight ahead. Cinder watched the scenery drift past. After a time, Kite asked, “How do I know my parents are in heaven?”

  Cinder stared at him, caught completely off guard. “I don’t know.”

  “The Overfather said my parents were in one of the seven hells, but if I did this, they would go to heaven. How do I know they’re in heaven?”

  “I’m not the best person to ask about this.”

  “Why?”

  He couldn’t help but answer honestly. “Because I don’t believe in heaven nor hells. I think they’re just ideas.”

  The boy sat with that a moment. “What do you think happens when we die?”

  “I don’t know. I would like to think we continue in some capacity, but I don’t know and nobody else does either. I think what happens here is more important. What we do here. How we live. How we treat each other.”

  “I just destroyed a city and all the land around it.”

  “I know.”

  “For an idea,” he said very softly.

  “I don’t think they’ll ever make you do this again.” Unleashing Kite’s power on the Eyerun Plain had caused shadows to be sucked from under the feet of the Overfather and everyone else in Grandimanderia while the attack occurred. Throughout the empire, babies died, four or five from each village, choking up black plasma like the ooze swimming in the crater that had once been Lilitine.

  “I don’t want to do it again. I won’t.”

  “Then you won’t.”

  Kite stared out the window. “Do you think I’m a monster?”

  “I think you’re a boy.”

  “I am death.”

  “So you’re also life.” He continued when Kite looked at him askance. “Life and death are the same thing in a way. It’s like a coin, if you think about it. There are two sides, but they’re part of the same coin.”

  “I haven’t thought of it that way,” said Kite very softly.

  Cinder opened his pack and showed it to the boy. “Would Death like half my lunch?”

  Kite blinked at him with those piercing ice blue eyes. He nodded shyly.

  “One thing I’ve discovered—nothing truly terrible happens if you’re eating bread and cheese.”

  Kite smiled. “Then we should always eat bread and cheese.”

  “Exactly. We should have jewelry made out of it. Toast necklaces, cheese amulets.”

  “Bread hats.”

  “Mmmm.... Fresh baked hats.”

  Kite snickered, and they chewed in silence for a while. After a time, Kite looked up at him and said quietly, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Cinder told him.

  “You’ll stay with me the rest of the way?”

  “Until you grow bored of my company and kick me out.”

  Chapter 2

  Sixteen years later

  As he climbed the steps to the Darelock Academy of Magery, Elarhe wondered, again, if he were in the right life. So many days seemed wrong, now. A stargazer in Old Ramshead had told him once that the life each person led was only one of many, that Elarhe and everyone he knew led myriad, simultaneous lives.

  So, maybe, in some other fragment of time, in some other reality, Aben had not died. Maybe the wound in that life had not festered, and that Aben had not gone mad with fever. Or maybe the gamekeeper had missed, or Aben had stayed behind in Ayklinn, was still safe there and had not followed Elarhe those long weeks ago. Or perhaps Abe
n lived and Elarhe lay dead, covered in leaves and straw, rotting beside the road between Nasktown and Adderly.

  The registrar, dressed in fine robes of white and gold, greeted him coolly. Behind him, a startlingly handsome brown-haired man cloaked in black brocade perused an enormous gilt-edged book. Elarhe, in homespun with holes in his shoes, settled his breath.

  “Show me your light,” the registrar ordered, his arms folded across his chest.

  Elarhe spread his palms open before him, allowing the energy to pool in his fingers. Green light, a fist-sized peridot star, glowed above his hands. The registrar’s brows rose. Behind him, the black-cloaked man looked up from his reading, his magnificent, dark brows arching like the wings of a predatory bird. His eyes, pale blue and well-deep, met Elarhe’s and held them for a heartbeat.

  Elarhe caught himself staring openly at that strong, sculptured visage and looked away, forcing his attention back to the much less attractive registrar. The folds of the registrar’s bland face shifted slightly. In the pall of Elarhe’s light, his features looked as if they were melting. “Odd to begin with green…. Still, it is vaguely yellow, and the shade is pale, but the clarity is impressive.” Yet the registrar frowned as he said this and did not seem impressed. “You said you had no previous training.”

  “Yes. That’s true.” Elarhe banished his light and bit his tongue. It was half-true. He had told them he had had no previous training. Deceit sickened him, but he had rejected his princely status, left his kingdom, and lost his best friend traveling here to enroll in the mage's academy. There was no other way….

  The black-cloaked man interjected. “Stop scaring the boy, Vole. A green beginner is not unheard of.” His voice was deeper than Elarhe had expected, smoky and dark like a cauldron. He turned to Elarhe. “Red or orange is more traditional. And progression takes time; Vole is still yellow.”

  Elarhe couldn't help blinking in surprise. Greens were more powerful than yellows; Elarhe was more powerful than the arrogant man judging him. When Vole rounded on the black-cloaked man, the handsome mage added with a slight bow to the registrar, “But his clarity is superlative.”