Foundations Broken and Built Read online

  “Fly at Maze!” Silas ordered the knives as he waved his hand.

  The blades pirouetted, to point back at the leader of the Ivaric forces, then began to fly, posing an unexpected threat to Maze.

  “What is this?” Maze thundered angrily, and negligently flipped one hand upward, causing the knives to fly at a new angle that sent then all shooting above his head and beyond him.

  “Silas!” Lexy shouted, and he instinctively turned to see that one of the knives Maze had redirected had struck the girl in her chest.

  “Lexy!” Silas shouted in fear and anger.

  “Maze, you’ve hurt her!” his anger boiled over. He looked at a building, and he called the building to collapse downward onto Maze and his soldiers. He pulled his arms down as he shouted, “Bury him!”

  Stones and timbers creaked and groaned and snapped, then fell downward, provoking a wave of shouts and screams from the unfortunate men and women between the building and Maze.

  “What is this? Who are you?” Maze turned to look at Silas, then made a red protective dome of energy to protect him from the sudden avalanche of debris Silas called down upon him. The dome appeared just in time, as building rubble buried it quickly from sight.

  Without hesitation, Silas turned and ran back to where Lexy lay on the ground and he knelt beside her, then cradled her head in his lap as he began to examine her wound.

  “Silas, one more kiss, please?” she asked.

  “You hold on, and we’ll have more kisses, I promise,” Silas told her fervently. “You’re going to be alright.”

  “Stillwater!” he called. “Imps! Stillwater!” he felt full of energy, and he suddenly knew what to do in the moment of crisis.

  “You called for me, Silas friend?” Stillwater appeared, hovering just over Silas’s shoulder.

  “She’s dying, Stillwater! Lexy has a grave injury! Take us to the Healing Spring immediately!” Silas cried, tears welling in his eyes.

  “Silas!” Riesta recovered from the shock of being dragged across the street to his location. “Our poor girl! Will she be okay?” the short-haired Mover asked.

  Silas felt Lexy’s muscles relax suddenly, and he gripped her tighter.

  The story told herein is fictional. Any resemblance to past or present circumstances, persons, or places is entirely coincidental.

  Fantasy Series by Jeffrey Quyle

  The Wind Word Series

  The Mirror After the Cavern

  The Pearl Diver

  3.Amenozume, Heights and Depths

  4. Foundations, Broken and Built

  Memory Stones Series

  Journey Through the River Cities

  The Deadly Magician

  Unpredictable Fortunes

  Tangled Engagements

  The Inner Seas Kingdoms Series

  1. The Healing Spring

  2. The Yellow Palace

  3. Road of Shadows

  4. A Foreign Heart

  5. Journey to Uniontown

  6. The Guided Journey

  7. An Unexpected Deity

  8. A Marriage of Friends

  The Ingenairii Series

  Visions of Power

  2. At the Seat of Power

  3. The Loss of Power

  4. The Lifesaving Power

  5. Against the Empire

  6. Preserving the Ingenairii

  7. Rescuing the Captive

  8. Ajacii and Demons

  9. The Caravan Road

  10. The Journey Home

  11. The Cloud of Darkness

  12. The Past Revisited

  Alchemy’s Apprentice Series

  The Gorgon’s Blood Solution

  The Echidna’s Scale

  Scarlet from Gold

  The Southern Trail

  The Southern Continent Series

  The Elemental Jewels

  Perilous Travels

  The Greater Challenge

  Out of the Wilderness

  For more information, visit the Ingenairii Series on Facebook, www.facebook.com/ingenairiiseries

  Foundations, Broken and Built

  The Wind Word Series

  Book 4

  Jeffrey Quyle

  Index

  Chapter 1 Page 1

  Chapter 2 Page 12

  Chapter 3 Page 18

  Chapter 4 Page 31

  Chapter 5 Page 42

  Chapter 6 Page 48

  Chapter 7 Page 72

  Chapter 8 Page 78

  Chapter 9 Page 95

  Chapter 10 Page 99

  Chapter 11 Page 107

  Chapter 12 Page 114

  Chapter 13 Page 118

  Chapter 14 Page 133

  Chapter 15 Page 140

  Chapter 16 Page 144

  Chapter 17 Page 158

  Chapter 18 Page 162

  Chapter 19 Page 177

  Chapter 20 Page 184

  Chapter 21 Page 187

  Chapter 22 Page 201

  Chapter 23 Page 210

  Chapter 24 Page 230

  Chapter 25 Page 248

  Chapter 26 Page 253

  Chapter 27 Page 267

  Chapter 28 Page 272

  Chapter 29 Page 281

  Chapter 30 Page 319

  Chapter 31 Page 323

  Chapter 32 Page 332

  Chapter 33 Page 345

  Chapter 34 Page 349

  Chapter 35 Page 361

  List of Characters

  Brigamme

  Silas, hero boy

  Tagg, Silas’s friend

  Forna, Silas’s girl cousin, good tracker

  Wind Word Guide HQ - Heathrin

  Botton, abusive teacher

  Jimes, friends

  Cinda, administrator

  Sloeleen, female graduate

  Caravan

  Prima, leader

  Ruten, guard

  Minneota, Prima’s paramour

  Sareen, former member

  Ivaric

  Derith, dictator (Father of the Land)

  Jarvis, prince

  Amenozume island

  Queen Gracious

  Princess Lumene

  Gwen, bodyguard

  Jade, a maid-in-waiting, serving Lumene

  Mata, Silas’s companion

  Barnesnob, trader republic

  Vertuco, speaker for the palace

  Grecco, speaker for the healer academy

  Charms, speaker for the criminal gangs

  Stout & Dianu, head of healer academy & young wife

  Faralag, Kingdom of the South

  Riesta, powerful Mover

  Cover, Mover instructor

  Preeanne, Queen of the Land

  Kai, goddess of the air (married to) Growelf– god of fire

  Shaish, Goddess of water (married to) Krusima, god of earth

  L’Anvien, demi-god of the interior of Rolemica

  Kere, Elven goddess of fate

  Prologue

  Silas is born in the mountain village of Brigamme, where everyone who is born and exposed to the natural elements of the environment experiences a profound change at puberty – they gain the ability to track and hunt down any living person on earth. They are renowned as a special breed.

  All except Silas, who proves not to have the talent. His parents send him to an academy of the elite professional Speakers. The Speakers have the power of the Wind Words, communications that can travel hundreds of miles to convey the important information that rulers, traders, and others are willing to pay to transmit.

  But Silas runs afoul of an ill-tempered teacher at the Speakers Academy in Heathrin and is exiled. Silas is denied once again his opportunity to acquire a special talent that will set him apart.

&nbs
p; He begins to wander the continent, and experiences adventures that change him, giving him abilities beyond ordinary people. He makes new friends on the island nation of Amenozume, and later learns one of them is in trouble. Silas goes back to the island to help Mata escape from prison.

  Together, he and Mata flee from Amenozume, and cross the continent in search of safety. They arrive in Faralag, and discover that the hidden city is a wonderland of advancement, power, and culture. Silas undergoes instruction and learns to master the Mover power, but then he and Mata decide to return to Amenozume to help Mata’s sister Jade, held in the palace as the evil power of Ivaric stealthily takes control of the palace and the nation.

  Silas and Mata are separated on the journey, leaving to further adventures and battles for Silas, and increased grudges between him and the Ivaric leadership.

  When he arrives on Amenozume, he cannot stay with Mata for long, before he and the Princess Lumene take a fateful trip through the mountains to lead the Ivaric pursuit on a false trail. The battle for Amenozume culminates in a fantastic effort by Silas to exercise his powers to protect Amenozume from further invasion by Ivaric.

  Silas dangerously exercises his own powers and those he borrows from the Goddess Kai, and unleashes a storm that sinks the entire Ivaric invasion fleet, crippling Ivaric tremendously. And also crippling Silas, who exceeds his own limits in the desperate effort to save his adopted island home.

  Chapter 1

  Forna was in a panic.

  Silas had disappeared.

  He’d laid motionlessly in his bed for nearly a week, moving only when she turned him or diligently attended to his body’s needs. Visitors who wished to observe the great magician had flowed to the room constantly in the first days after his astonishing sea storm, but then the flow had diminished, just as the novelty of his powerful magic had diminished. As the traffic diminished, the two cousins had stayed in the room while Silas slept. Forna had been almost completely alone the day before Silas’s disappearance, then she had laid down in her trundle bed next to his bed and fallen asleep after nightfall.

  Now, when she awoke in the middle of the night, she found his bed dark, quiet, and empty. His sheets were neatly pulled back, showing a slight indentation where he had been lying, but he was gone. She’d checked the toilet facilities and the closets and the front room of his suite in the palace but found no sign of him.

  Facing her fears and knowing there was no other choice, she wrapped a robe around her frame and stepped out into the hallway, then wandered to where a guard stood outside the princess’s suite.

  “Silas is gone,” she reported to the man, who looked at her with confusion at first, and then with surprise.

  “Gone where?” he asked. “I thought he was unconscious.”

  “He was, last I saw a few hours ago. But I just woke up and he’s gone. You didn’t see him in the hall?” she asked the question though the answer seemed obvious.

  “No one’s been here since Gwen went in a couple of hours ago. You can go tell her. She’ll have the palace searched in no time. He probably just woke up hungry and decided to go to the kitchen,” the guard tried to offer an explanation, one that seemed nearly plausible to him.

  Forna nodded her thanks and slipped into the sitting room of the suite, then into the next room, then stopped suddenly when Gwen appeared with a sword, surprisingly close by.

  “What are you doing in here?” the body guard asked in a flat voice.

  “Silas is gone,” Forna answered steadily. She wouldn’t have been prepared to be confronted by an armed guard a month earlier, because Trackers were universally treated with respect and care. But her experiences since arriving on Amenozume had thrown all her earlier experiences and expectations out the door. The Ivaric forces had not treated her with great care, and during her single, short-lived expedition with them, one thug had tried to assault her in the darkened camp before Silas had rescued her. And since she’d been with Silas in the following weeks, life had been one adventure after another – many of them harrowing at times.

  Gwen slipped her sword into the scabbard on her hip. It was an incongruous appearance when compared to the relative state of undress of the guard’s sleeping attire, but the contrast was of no matter at the moment.

  “What do you mean? Is he dead or did he wake up and walk away?” to Forna’s keen ear, Gwen’s voice seemed to have a catch as it asked if he was dead.

  “I don’t think he’s dead, but I just woke up, and he’s not in his bed. The guard outside said he didn’t see Silas in the hallway. I didn’t hear anything. Can I use your restroom?” Forna asked at last as she realized how uncomfortable her bladder felt, the bladder that had caused her to awaken in the first place.

  “Through that door. I’ll tell the Princess, then start a search. He better be in trouble – I don’t want to wake up a squad just to find him having a snack in the kitchen,” Gwen grumbled.

  An hour later a meeting room in the official working wing of the palace heard Princess Lumene, Gwen, and Forna receive a series of reports from guards who had searched the palace and the grounds without any luck in finding Silas or any signs of him.

  “Did you check the sewer pipes?” Gwen asked one sleepy guardsman, who looked at her in confusion. “Never mind, it was just a joke,” she set his mind at ease.

  “There’s nothing more we can do for the moment,” Gwen stated. Lumene looked upset, Forna thought – sleepy, beautiful even when roused out of bed, and upset. The Princess dismissed the guards from the room.

  “You were sleeping right there beside him. How did you miss him leaving?” Lumene turned on Forna.

  “Majesty, with all due respect, the girl is his cousin and has watched out for him diligently for days and days. She did nothing wrong,” Gwen unexpectedly spoke up in defense of the shocked Forna.

  Lumene pursed her lips. “I know. I’m sorry,” she apologized to Forna. “I just hate to think that something bad may have happened to him. He’s been through a great deal, and done even more, and he doesn’t even,” she paused. “Well, we’ll press a fuller search tomorrow. Let’s go back to bed, and perhaps get a little bit more sleep before dawn.”

  Chapter 2

  Two days later, Silas had still not re-appeared. Forna, though, had experienced two events that troubled her almost as much as Silas’s disappearance.

  First had come the arrival of a visitor, a new visitor, one who had been expected much earlier. Tagg escorted Mata and Jade to Silas’s empty room.

  “You’re his cousin, I understand?” Jade had asked kindly when the trio had entered the room after being announced by a maid. Forna had chosen to remain in the room that Silas had vacated, not knowing where else she could go that might produce any better chance of seeing Silas.

  “I am,” Forna agree. Jade extended a hand in friendship, a hand that felt warm as her palm clasped Forna’s.

  “You know me,” Tagg said with a hint of embarrassment. “And this is Mata,” he introduced the other girl, a young woman with shoulder-length wavy hair and a lovely face, not to mention a slight bulge in her abdomen.

  “I saw you with Silas on top of the tower when Silas was creating that storm,” Mata told Forna. “I didn’t realize who you were immediately, but Tagg told me. I’m glad you’ve been taking care of him before he disappeared.”

  “And why weren’t you here taking care of him?” Forna desperately wanted to ask. She’d heard others ask the question, principally Gwen and the Princess. It seemed like an obvious question to ask of the woman who was carrying Silas’s child.

  “He’s going to be okay, I’m sure he is,” Mata said, as she sat down on the edge of his empty bed, showing obvious relief in taking a seat. “That boy has come through more impossible adventures than any ten or twenty other people will ever survive. He’ll turn up soon and do something amazing, then need to sail away to some foreign land and do something else.”

  “It sounds as if that all he’s been doing in recent months,” Forna
agreed.

  “No one has any idea, do they?” Jade asked. “The guards haven’t found any sign of him or any signs of tracks. He just vanished.”

  Forna nodded her head with a bit lip.

  “If there’s anything we can do for you, please send a note. I’m in the hall where the Princess’s suite is located. And Mata and Tagg have rooms in the palace too,” Jade noted.

  “What are your plans?” Forna asked Tagg.

  “About what?” he was caught off-guard by the question.

  “We’re Trackers. Our contracts appear to have been disrupted at best,” Forna pointed out. “What are you going to do?”

  Tagg shrugged. “Everything’s up in the air right now, and I can’t decide. What are you going to do?” he asked Forna but glanced over at Mata.

  “I would have planned to do whatever Silas asked, but right now, it’s just as you said, everything’s up in the air. I’ll keep waiting to see what happens when he comes back, and what he needs me to do,” she replied. “At worst, I don’t want to carry out any further contracts with Ivaric.”

  Tagg nodded in agreement.

  After a few more moments of awkward conversation and then awkward silence, the visitors left the room, and Forna sat back to think about the visit. Mata had seemed like a nice girl, but her heart hadn’t seemed broken by Silas’s disappearance. Perhaps it was as Lumene had tried to quietly speculate to Gwen, the pregnant girl’s heart and soul were too confused by the labors of the growing baby inside her to clearly show her love for Silas.