Aebeling

O'Neill Michael

Description

Major Conn MacLeod is no ordinary man. Decorated army officer, sportsman, academic and notorious millionaire playboy, he has more notches in his belt than ten men. He now plans to go to a place where the risks are unforeseeable and the outcomes inconceivable. Conn MacLeod has finally devised a key that will open a portal into a parallel world. Has he finally bitten off more than even he can chew?

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: First Edition Design Publishing
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781622876013
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE AEBELING

“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” Edmund Burke

Book 1 of “The Casere”

By

Michael O’Neill
The Aebeling
Copyright ©2014 Michael O’Neill

ISBN 978-1622-876-01-3 EBOOK

February 2014

December 2014 v.2

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com



ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .
thecasere.wordpress.com
for contact information, maps, family trees and extra ‘stuff’


© 2014, Michael O’Neill
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

Cover art by Darko Tomic.
All rights reserved.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Culture and society are bound into concepts embedded in language and to create something of a framework, the historic language that provided inspiration for words for this world is Anglo-Saxon, and the source of some of the words is the eBook “A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary; For the Use of Students” by J. R. Clark.

People names are Anglo Saxon or Viking in origin, and are inspired by names generated by the website www.gamedecor.com; there are a lot of names in the four books (and the thousand years of genealogy) and I’m truly grateful for its existence.

Place names are also inspired by history and positioned into time and space of my own imagination. A wonderful resource is the maps created by Thomas Lessman at www.worldhistorymaps.info. Again, thank you.
DEDICATION


For Di and Hollie with much love

And to those who provided suggestions and encouragement along the way; you have my sincerest gratitude

And finally to my readers; for somehow finding ‘my’ book in a tsunami of alternatives, and then for deciding to read it; and best of all, for enjoying the read.

Thank you.
VERSION 2

Following on from the constructive comments of my readers, I have decided to rewrite parts of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 to improve the background story of the book. I have also found and made some of the grammatical and typographical changes needed throughout the book – I’m sure there are still more – and made some other adjustments to make it easier to follow.

I think it is an improvement. I hope you do too.
GLOSSARY

I used lots of Anglo Saxon and Old English words within the text instead of using modern words. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I have replaced some to increase readability. The words that remain are genuine and can be found here: http://hord.ca/projects/eow/ or here: http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz/

· ~cuman = come, go, happen
· Æþeling = Aebeling – Prince
· An, Twa, Prie = One, two three
· Bedda – from ge-bedda, a bed fellow, consort
· Bocere = scribe, writer, scholar
· Ceorl = freeman
· Cirice = church
· Folctoga = commander of leader
· Folgere = follower, disciple
· Feorhhyrde = Life guardian, protector
· Feorrancund = having a distant origin
· Fryd = army
· Gyden = Goddess
· Healdend = one who rules, guardian (King)
· Tilia = cultivator of land, villein
· Theow -> þeów = a servant, slave, thrall
· Wealdend = controller, master (Queen)
· Wiga, folcwiga = warrior
Book 1 of “The Casere”
CHAPTER 01
The leaves, in their bright autumn colors, fluttered downwards as the wind successfully unseated them from their home of the past months. It was very cool, and then suddenly very quiet, in the ancient forest; as if everything had stopped for something, and when something did happen, the animals in the vicinity fled – except for a Green Jay that twittered in the branches of a large tree. Instead of flying away from the humanly unperceivable sound of the tearing of the supposedly indestructible fabric that separates one dimension from another, it stayed, until the event had concluded, and then left for parts unknown.
It saw, with definite interest, the glimmering light that suddenly appeared in mid-air, and then divided, each half glittering as it made its way to the ground. The result was an archway; from which it saw a man appear – tall, athletic, and blonde with a short, reddish beard; he looked about twenty, though in truth he was nearly forty.
It could have noted, if it had been so inclined, that the man was well dressed, black woolen trousers, high leather boots bound with crisscross leather strapping, a studded purple stained brigandine over a chainmail hauberk and a linen gambeson, and was also extremely well-armed – he carried two swords while the warhorse that followed was laden with a circular shield, two bows, a multitude of arrows and another sword; a two handed Claymore in a scabbard hanging on the side of the saddle.
The horse, a buckskin Lusitano stallion was tall, over seventeen hands, with a deep golden hide, and black legs, mane, and tail. The stallion stopped and sniffed the air as soon as he had all four feet on the forest floor, and sensing that he was in no immediate danger, he followed the man. Directly behind, four other animals quickly appeared, most burdened with packs, and one towing a travois. The last to arrive were two large white Maremmas.
With everything safely through the arch, the blond warrior mounted the stallion and rode around towards the faint shimmering light. He raised his hand to the source of the light, grasping as if it were an apple from a tree; and as he did so, the light flickered and suddenly went out. The rider cursed as he watched what appeared to be sand running through his fingers.
Conn MacLeod, late of England in the year 2060, had hoped that the object that had provided him with his way “in” would also provide the way “out” – but it appeared not to be the case. The eleven gemstones that once sat in the hand carved yew pendant were now scattered all over the ground, and the structure that had held them into place was now dust. He dismounted and collected the sapphires from the forest floor.
Where he was – he had no real idea. All he really understood was that he was now in a ‘world’ that he was able to access via a ‘doorway’ that he opened with a special ‘key’ – the very one that had just dissolved into dust. Of course, having a key to such a door is not a normal thing, and he had learnt how to access the doorway from instructions in a scroll that had been found in his mother’s belongings after her death and given to him when he was just ten.
For many years he considered that it was just something his mother had collected – and as the only thing of hers that he had, he treasured it. He also had studied it in great detail. It was of an unusual construct – a metre long, a continuous and complex illustration of historical objects so interwoven that it was as if a “Where’s Waldo?” picture was based on the Bayeux tapestry, the Codex Borgianus, and the Tale of Genji; only this time written in black ink on Japanese washi paper.
The more time he had spent on it, however, the more confused he became. He increasingly got the impression that his mother had drawn it but that didn’t seem realistic because of what he knew of her – after all, she was ‘just’ an entertainer who worked in nightclubs; a girl who had spent her youth in dancing, acting and singing classes, and had never even been to university. It was true that she was a gifted artist – but she drew pictures of flowers and animals – not the kind of items found on the scroll.
Illustrations in the scroll demonstrated such complexity and an understanding of history and science that it took Conn five university degrees and fifteen years to fully unravel. One of those degrees gave him the skills to prove that it had indeed been written by his mother. The scroll contained few words – and those that did appear were written, he discovered, in Latin using the Ogham script. Not only was it an incredibly unusual choice of script, but one sentence was a dedication, and it translated as: “For my beloved Connor. Search and you will find”.
Although he had no real idea what he was supposed to look for, he dutifully proceeded to decode the scroll, and as his knowledge increased the manuscript begrudgingly revealed its secrets. Everything learnt added to the mystery and the most startling discovery was that the main message contained in the scroll was that there was a doorway – some people would call it a Portal – into another “world”, and that he, and he alone, “should” pass through. What was on the other side was not clear, but again, it didn’t seem like a suggestion, and from that moment, he prepared for his “trip”. The question of why or how his mother knew anything about “portals” remained unanswered – or why she used such an elaborate method of informing him about it. Just in case, one of Conn’s last acts before entering the portal was to destroy the scroll; he stood and watch it burn until it had all blown away in a fine dust, and then turned and entered the glimmering doorway.
He was almost twenty five when he learnt of the Portal, and the following fifteen years had been used to get ready; and whilst he was meticulous in his planning there did not appear to be a need for urgency; which was lucky as Conn had a lot of interruptions to his preparations – like four wars in which he inadvertently became a major player.
Like his father, and his fore fathers before him, Conn had joined the British Army