Rising From the Ashes: The Chronicles of Caymin
Read Rising From the Ashes: The Chronicles of Caymin Online
Authors: Caren J. Werlinger
Tags: #Children's Books, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy & Magic, #Fantasy, #Epic, #Sword & Sorcery, #Children's eBooks, #Science Fiction; Fantasy & Scary Stories
THE DRAGONMAGE SAGA
BOOK 1
BOOKS BY CAREN J. WERLINGER
Novels:
Looking Through Windows
Miserere
In This Small Spot
Neither Present Time
Year of the Monsoon
She Sings of Old, Unhappy, Far-off Things
Turning for Home
Cast Me Gently
Short Stories:
Twist of the Magi
Just a Normal Christmas (part of Do You Feel What I Feel? Holiday Anthology)
The Dragonmage Saga:
Rising From the Ashes: The Chronicles of Caymin
Coming soon:
The Portal: The Chronicles of Caymin
The Standing Stones: The Chronicles of Caymin
Rising From the Ashes: The Chronicle
s
of Caymin
Published by Corgyn Publishing, LLC.
Copyright © 2016 by Caren J. Werlinger.
All rights reserved.
This work is copyrighted and is licensed only for use by the original purchaser and can be copied to the original purchaser’s electronic device and its memory card for your personal use. Modifying or making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, without limit, including by email, CD, DVD, memory cards, file transfer, paper printout or any other method, constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions.
e-Book ISBN: 978-0-9960368-3-2
Print ISBN: 978-0-9960368-4-9
E-mail:
[email protected]
Web site:
www.cjwerlinger.wordpress.com
Cover design by Patty G. Henderson
www.boulevardphotografica.yolasite.com
Cover photo: Jane Morrison
Questions of Light Photography
eBook formatting by Maureen Cutajar
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For all who still believe in magic…
and dragons
Contents
CHAPTER
6
:
Provocation and Promise
CHAPTER
8
:
An Arrow Through the Heart
CHAPTER
15
:
A Traitor Among Them
CHAPTER
21
:
The Traitor Revealed
CHAPTER
24
:
Over the Endless Water
PROLOGUE
The New Cub
B
roc lay still under a heavy thicket. Up in the sky, a ring surrounded the cold moon. Snow was coming. She could smell it. Normally, she didn’t venture so close to the two-legs, but this night she did. She’d felt a trembling and vibration in the earth that she’d felt before, and she knew what it meant.
The birds that flew near the edges of the land told tales of various bands of two-legs that came over the endless water in strange hollowed logs to their land. They said when the logs settled, out spilled more two-legs than they could count, and when the different bands met, they nearly always fought. Broc had never been so far from her sett as to see the water, but she remembered other days, when she was a cub and had unwisely ventured too close to a village and she had seen them fighting. She never forgot the screams and the fire, and the smell of blood and fear.
Now, she flattened her body even lower under the thicket, her bright eyes glittering as she watched a band of two-leg males stealthily approaching this village from the forest. The badger sow sniffed the air as they approached, all wearing tunics and cloaks bearing the same design, all carrying weapons of metal, and the scent of the animal skins that the two-legs wore in place of fur of their own came to her on the cold night air. She shivered and retreated deeper into her thicket, her smooth fur shielding her from the prick of the thorns. Silently, she turned and began to retrace her steps back to her own hunting.
She froze as sudden yells and screams rent the night air around her. Two-legs crashed through the underbrush near her. Digging quickly, she made a shallow hole under the tangled roots of a yew tree and burrowed into it, watching their heavy feet stomp the earth just beyond the roots where she hid. She preferred to hide, but if any of them saw her and tried to get to her, they would be sorry.
Broc stayed hidden for a long time as the sounds of their fighting filled the night – the blows, the sounds of bodies falling, and all the while, their voices raised. It went on and on until, at last, she heard the pounding of footsteps running away from her. It sounded as if the two-legs from the village who survived the attack had fled and were now being pursued by their attackers. She emerged from her tree roots, ready to scamper back to her sett. A new sound made her stop. Her keen ears and nose often picked up what her poor eyes could not, and now she heard a mewling cry, “
Mam! Help me.”
Startled, she paused. She shook her head as if ridding herself of an annoying fly.
“It is not to do with me.”
She turned again in the direction of her sett, but a renewed crying stopped her. Cautiously, she crept to the edge of the forest where she could see what remained of the village. She detected no movement of other two-legs, though many of them lay still on the ground. Shivering as she crawled among them, she followed the sounds of the cries to the burning remnants of one of their dwellings. She had never understood why the two-legs built their shelters aboveground instead of digging warm, safe setts as her kind did.
There, thrashing and crying in pain at the edge of the fire, was a two-leg cub. Broc warily crept nearer and grasped the cub by the cloth that covered it. She dragged it back out of the fire. Not much bigger than a badger, it whimpered pitifully. Sniffing, she curled her snout at the smell of burned flesh and hair. It was a girl-cub. She freshened her grip on its covering and, using her powerful legs and strong claws, she dragged it farther away from the heat. She waited to see if any other two-legs would come to care for it. None came. She dragged it closer to the forest.
“Broc?”