Call of the Kings

Chris Page

Description

The French and English kings are at war, the Viking invaders are still causing mayhem having integrated into the Wessex landscape, and local warlord's battle to gain a foothold on the Celts territory in any way they can. Twilight, the now old veneficus of Wessex, finds his replacement in Tara, a curly red-haired little girl from Ireland with special powers. As he trains Tara in the enchantments amidst the conflict raging around them, they must also maintain the crucial venefical presence at Stonehenge and Avebury. But while the old veneficus and his young novice attempt to deal with weak monarchs, a flesh-eating sorceress and three deviate and particularly evil Francian venefici, the Duke of Normandy invades England at the Battle of Hastings...

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 05 juin 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849898676
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page

CALL OF THE KINGS

Book three of
The Venefical Progressions






By
Chris Page




Publisher Information

Call Of The Kings 2 nd edition published in 2011 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

Copyright © Chris Page
The right of Chris Page to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.




Quote












Rex et bellum, etriam atque etriam
Kings and war, again and again




Dedication













To Olivia Lucy Page
Beata filiola




Veneficus

To walk among the medieval mist of an autumn equinox at Stonehenge is to progress through the remains of every bad life that ever lived before us in the region of Wessex. Each minute teardrop of floating humidity is the vaporized soul of a cowerer, a once-human inhabitant who lived out its term of prostrated avoidance in the vicinity wherein it now swirled and screamed in a silent, tortured cloud. A powerful legend of medieval Britain has it that only one type of live species can walk among these silently raging equinoctial mists and commune with the tortured souls therein. Such a communer is a very rare and special person described variously by deeply superstitious, sign-making Celtic and West Saxon folk as a hybrid of sorcerer, magician, alchemist, wizard, oracle, and wax-pale ghost.
A veneficus.




Introduction

Beneath the great Destiny Stones of Avebury the ten-thousand year-old collective venefical conscience stirred. Brought together by a Celtic past and shared occupancy of the Wessex enchantments, together with the duty of subduing the cowering mists and passing on the venefical gifts, the absence of the next-in-line was becoming, once again, a matter of concern.
An image of a tall, aging, but still handsome woman with silver-gray hair and piercing green eyes, called the Pale Sybil in her days as holder of the enchantments, and accompanied by a companion maid called Santa, walked slowly but regally to the top of the nearby Silbury Mound. Reaching the summit the two women looked for a while at the eighty-five-year-old new growth of the once mighty Savernake Forest to the north before turning their gaze to the southwest and the ring of Destiny Stones at Avebury. The tall one pointed her index finger in the direction of the Wessex heartland and uttered a single word.
‘Now.’
Then their image disappeared.
On a ruined castle rampart in the Summerland Levels, a powerful, long-limbed sorcerer from the previous age pointed to the northeast. The small, sharp-eyed hawk perched on his shoulder followed his long finger toward the horizon.
‘It is time,’ the long magus said quietly.
His task completed, he faded gradually into the high landscape with a sad smile on his bearded face.
An old but strong-voiced, black-eyed veneficus called Twilight leaned against the wind on the top of Glastonbury Tor. Looking down at the twin rivers below, he remained deep in thought for a long time as he remembered past deeds witnessed from this very spot.
The venefical call was once again being taken up as the resident and past holders enjoined in the search for the next holder. Somewhere, someone, perplexed perhaps, unknowing of the reasons behind the self-inflicted actions that caused such personal discomfort and pain, lived out a young but difficult life. As always time was of the essence. The paths that shape the direction taken by the next holder of the enchantments must be favourable and lead to the heart of Wessex. They must also be traversed soon, for Twilight was entering his sixty-eighth year, and no one knew better than he how important it was to complete a full term of learning the enchantments. The mere seven years of instruction he’d received at the side of the mighty Merlin had not been enough; too many mistakes had been made in the early years due to his inexperience. It must not happen again.
No man or woman, girl or boy, had come forward. There had not been any rumours of ‘odd’ happenings from the settlements and hamlets around Wessex and no one had been sent to him for correction because of behavioural problems .His own children did not manifest the traits required. His pica, skilled in the way of detection of the required abilities, had ranged far and wide throughout the Celtic lands and not found anyone with the required aura.
The dark figure of the current Wessex veneficus, remembering how the unbounded joy that his own boyhood presence had been greeted with by the mighty Merlin, known in those far-off days as the long magus due to his great height, raised his old but still deep black eyes to the horizon and slowly turned a full circle before speaking loudly.
‘Please come soon. Wessex and the Celtic nation need you . . . and so do I.’




Chapter 1

‘I will never forget you, young lady, but be careful, there are many out there who will not understand your gift.’

They were going to kill her beloved child. Katre Brogan had just been told by the abbot at the monastery and several village elders that her daughter was beyond all recall and would be thrown into the Devil’s Pit at first light the following morning. It was a certain death - no one had ever survived. The Devil’s Pit was a huge, high rocky bay on the West Atlantic coast of Ireland into which pagans, heretics, apostates, and nonbelievers of any and every sort were dispatched by the devoutly Christian community. With a sheer drop of seven hundred feet, the throwing was always done at low tide when the jagged rocks were most exposed. The dashed and shattered bodies were then washed out to sea, and the area was purged of whatever evil spirits had inhabited them.
Katre was in great distress, especially as she had no one to turn to because her husband and various other senior members of the family, including her own mother, were among the loudest voices for little Tara’s death. Her mother, indeed, had actually volunteered to do the throwing. Tara, a sweet, slight little girl with red curly hair, bright green eyes, freckles, and an impish smile, was Kate’s only child. Because of her actions, she was said to be inhabited by demons so pagan that she was, even at just eleven years of age, considered to be the very worst kind of witch.
The Ireland of the Dark Ages had gradually assumed the mantle of Christianity until those of any other religion, cult, or deity were considered heretics and pagans and dispatched without a second thought. Slaughter of nonbelievers abounded and was considered just.
Like sweet-looking little red-haired, green-eyed Tara Brogan.
With nowhere to go, having been cast out of their family home, Katre and Tara had been living for the past six months in old Jonnie Jump’s hovel, a run-down place on the edge of a particularly evil-smelling bog down the coast. Jonnie Jump, dead some three years now, had been a recluse and light-headed sort who had come close to getting cast into the Devil’s Pit himself. He lived by the evil-smelling bog because it kept people away from him. Called Jonnie Jump because every few steps he would give a whoop and a little jump in the air, he took a particular delight in setting fire to things, piles of mown hay being his favourite. Eventually the locals had got fed up with having their summer hay destroyed and decided to punish the recluse with a visit to the jagged rocks of the Devil’s Pit. When he heard them coming for him, Jonnie jumped into the stinking bog with a whoop and was never seen again.
It was said that on dark nights when there was a full moon, Jonnie Jump’s whoop could still be heard coming from the bog. It was also said that anyone living in his old hovel was doomed to the Pit, but Katre and Tara had nowhere else to go. At daybreak the following morning, Katre decided that she wasn’t just going to sit there until they came for her daughter, and so they set off along the windswept coast to try and put as much distance between them and the hamlet bordering the Devil’s Pit. Katre had no idea where they were going, having never left the area in all her twenty-seven years, but anything was better than sitting and waiting.
Only to find their way barred by village elders, her husband, mother, and three cloaked monks from the monastery with their cowls pulled well down over their eyes.
Kate’s mother was the first to speak.
‘So you’ve decided to make a bolt for it, eh, my girl? Well, no one can blame you for that, but she stays. It’s the Devil’s Pit for that one today and no mistake.’
She pointed a crooked index finger at Tara.
The pointing index finger was crooked because Tara had broken it. Of course, nobody but Katre had believed Tara’s story that she had caught her grandmother stealing Kate’s one and only item of jewellery, a small, golden neck clasp in the shape of a ring of four-leafed clovers that she had found when sitting in the meadow with the then eight-year-old Tara, who was actually looking for four-leafed clovers. Half buried in the