The Mirror After the Cavern Read online

  “I know you’re the one who told Prima about my compartments on the wagon. What did you do? Go snooping around?” the man snarled.

  “I just saw it,” Silas squeaked in fear. His assailant held a long knife with a wicked blade, and he pointed it downward at Silas, who had become jammed in the narrow footwell of the driver’s bench. He couldn’t move in any direction to escape, while the knife wavered overhead.

  “You snitched to Prima, and he got all noble and said there would be no contraband in his caravan, as if we all don’t know that he carried a shady item or two of his own on most trips,” the exiled smuggler scathingly complained. “So now I’m left in some backwater no-place – that’s not right!” he rose up with emotion, and as he did, the wagon shivered slightly.

  “So I’m going to get revenge!” he looked down mercilessly at Silas.

  “Ruten!” Silas shouted for the caravan guard, knowing that the rest of the caravan had moved away from the trailing wagon.

  “There’s no Ruten coming to save you now, snitch!” the angry man shouted. “You’re going to pay right now.”

  The outraged criminal raised his deadly knife above his head, holding it in preparation for plunging it down into Silas.

  Frightened by the imminent attack, Silas tried to struggle upward into a sitting position. As he did, the mule suddenly brayed loudly and repeatedly.

  “What’s that fool doing?” the knife-wielder was momentarily distracted by the noise.

  And then the earth opened up beneath the wagon.

  Fantasy Series by Jeffrey Quyle

  The Wind Word Series

  The Mirror After the Cavern

  The Pearl Diver’s Flight

  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

  The Mirror After the Cavern

  The Wind Word Series

  Book 1

  Jeffrey Quyle

  Index

  Chapter 1 Page 1

  Chapter 2 Page 8

  Chapter 3 Page 13

  Chapter 4 Page 16

  Chapter 5 Page 26

  Chapter 6 Page 30

  Chapter 7 Page 37

  Chapter 8 Page 40

  Chapter 9 Page 43

  Chapter 10 Page 53

  Chapter 11 Page 58

  Chapter 12 Page 72

  Chapter 13 Page 74

  Chapter 14 Page 76

  Chapter 15 Page 90

  Chapter 16 Page 101

  Chapter 17 Page 110

  Chapter 18 Page 114

  Chapter 19 Page 120

  Chapter 20 Page 131

  Chapter 21 Page 140

  Chapter 22 Page 151

  Chapter 23 Page 158

  Chapter 24 Page 179

  Chapter 25 Page 207

  Chapter 26 Page 212

  Chapter 27 Page 230

  Chapter 28 Page 233

  List of Characters

  Village - Brigamme

  Silas, hero boy

  Tagg, male friend

  Forna, girl cousin, good tracker

  Tella, Silas’s father

  Rheme, Silas’s mother

  Phen, village council elder

  Wind (Word) Speaker Guide HQ - Heathrin

  Botton, mean teacher

  Brean, Jimes, friends

  Cinda, administrator

  Sloeleen, Lenee, girl student

  Caravan

  Prima, leader

  Hooves, animal handler

  Ruten, guard

  Moochie, smuggler

  Flames, cook

  Minneota, Prima’s paramour

  Sareen, girl in the caravan

  Ivaric

  Derith, dictator (Father of the Land)

  Jarvis, prince

  Mohr, steward of the palace

  Amenozume island

  Queen Gracious

  Princess Lumene

  Gwen, bodyguard

  Jade, a maid serving Lumene

  Mata, Jade’s sister, a pearl diver

  Jimes, Wind Word speaker for the palace

  Barnesnob, trader republic

  Vertuco, speaker for the palace

  Grecco, speaker for the healer academy

  Charms, speaker for the criminal gangs

  Stout & Picco, head of healer academy & young wife

  Kingdom (east of the mountains near Brigamme) – Shouldteen

  Dictatorship (west side of mountains near Brigamme) – Ivaric

  Matriarchy w/ pearl divers on island – Amenozume

  Trader Republic – Barnesnob

  Weakly ruled, anarchic kingdom – Faralag

  Council of Nobles – Avaleen

  Isle of Sprites, surrounded by clouds

  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

  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 and in demand from all nations as a special breed.

  All except Silas, who proves not to have the talent. Even his parents believe that he cannot remain in the village, so they 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 to ride with a caravan of itinerant traders who are riding among the villages and cities of the continent of Ellan Sheeant. Silas is denied once again his opportunity to acquire a special talent that will set him apart.

  And it is during that journey that Silas discovers the truly amazing adventures that await him.

  Join Silas as he travels with Prima, Minneota, Ruten, and Hron, through the dictatorship of Ivaric, the matriarchy of Amenozume, the unknown caverns of the Granite Range, and many adventures that mystify, challenge, and change him.

  Chapter 1

  Tella stood on the rustic covered porch of his family’s cabin, watching a cove
y of laughing children run in and out of the forest trees that surrounded the mountain village. It was a peaceful scene, a welcome change from the last scenes he had observed in the outside world, before he’d returned to the village of Brigamme.

  He watched his own son Silas flit between two of the tall pines that surrounded the village. Silas showed promise; he picked up and used innumerable practical parts of the business of tracking. It was what the village was renowned for, and Silas was on his way to becoming one of the best of the precocious youths who mastered the art. Tella watched as Silas stooped to examine some clue on the forest floor, then resume his hunt, drifting purposefully into the dim shadows of the forest.

  Once Silas reached puberty and went through the change, he’d be in high demand, Tella had no doubt.

  That was all a few years away though, and in the meantime Silas was just a boy, still innocent and fortunate to be born and raised in the idyllic village of Brigamme, high in the mountains. It was a village with few neighbors, long winters, and remarkable geology around it. The water in the village came from a number of springs, and each spring provided water with a different taste and different odor and even different shades of color. But they all were drinkable, and they all flowed, even in the winter.

  And they – undoubtedly – were why the children were so unique. Those springs were why the people who were born and raised in the village almost always developed their unique abilities when they left childhood behind, and their bodies began to turn to adulthood.

  Brigamme. The name was universally known throughout the continent of Ellan Sheeant. It was even known on the far off, giant western continent of Rolemica too, for that matter. Brigamme was the name that struck fear in the hearts of criminals on the run, spouses who abandoned families, traitors trying to evade capture. Brigamme meant tracking – hunting and following and chasing quarry until the target was captured. And it never ended in anything less.

  The people of Brigamme – virtually all the people, Tella mechanically corrected himself, though it was only a technicality to recall the few people in the village who had not inherited the gift – the people of the village felt, tasted, experienced, sensed, knew – there were numerous words that tried to describe the ability of the villagers, but none really fit. The villagers said that they experienced their quarry, but it only made sense to one another.

  The Brigamme trackers knew, they just knew. They knew where their targets had been. There were no false leads, no feints, no lost trails that sufficed to throw a Brigamme tracker off the trail of his quarry. The fleeing target might be on a horse, while the tracker might be on foot, so that the quarry could increase the distance between them for a while, but ultimately, the tracker would be in the steps of the person they pursued.

  And they would reach them.

  No one ever escaped. The only way for prey to avoid capture was to die on a sinking ship in the deep parts of the ocean blue. A few were desperate enough to do that, but not many. One legendary pursuit had lasted three years, but in the end, an embezzler had been brought to justice. Tella himself had taken on a case at a younger age, one that had sent him to the continent of Rolemica for the most adventuresome pursuit he had ever carried out.

  And the most disturbing.

  Tella’s vision blurred, as his mind ceased to pay attention to the children in front of him, and instead dredged up the haunting memory of Seemla. The small nation was called a princely state, one that resided inland on the Rolemica continent.

  Tella wasn’t sure why it was called a princely state, because the ruler was called a king. But it was a nation rich in princes, with brothers, cousins, and children of the king all called and treated as princes. There had been at least two dozen, Tella was sure. He had worked for one, though he’d never known how Prince Jerred had earned the title of prince, whether as a cousin or a son or even a young brother of the king.

  Jerred kept a harem, and a woman from his harem had fled.

  Tella had accepted the contract to chase the woman. And a contract accepted was a contract to be completed. The Brigamme Code required a satisfactory conclusion to the pursuit. There were no exceptions, except for declared loss at sea. It sounded simple, and it offered a long journey away from Brigamme, which was appealing to the younger Tella. He wanted to see the world.

  The prince had paid for his passage aboard a suitable ship that had made the two-and-a-half-week journey across the ocean to the port city of Alleva. The prince had provided a carriage that had carried Tella across the farmland of the Rolemica plain for another week. And then Tella had met Jerred in the opulent palace of the king, and explained what Tella was to do – lead a squad to find and capture the woman, then bring her back to the palace for return to the harem.

  Tella has asked to visit her room, and to see and touch and feel the woman’s things. He laid upon her bed, sat at her desk, hovered in her room, examined a painting of her, and then felt the magical moment occur when he’d received a jolt of recognition and empowerment. He knew where to go to find the woman. Gravity seemed slightly altered and seemed to pull him to one side almost as much as it pulled him downward.

  He delayed the start of his pursuit for a few hours to be prepared even better. He’d looked at the prince’s records about the woman, and learned her age and her home village, as well as the color of her eyes, and some more intimate facts that the prince had recorded. Tella had blushed, and grasped that the prince was not a kind master. The woman might have had reason to flee.

  But he had no reason to delay, and he had a contract to fulfill, so he called upon his squad, and they set out on horseback, riding west, towards the location of Peyten, the woman he was following.

  The half dozen had left Seemla, the capital city, and left the opulent palace. They’d ridden across a dusty land, where farm fields appeared filled with limp, brown crops. The guards in the squad had been neutral towards Tella, listening to his directions about when to turn and where; but they hadn’t shown any desire to open small talk with him. That had bothered him at the time, though he gave it little though.

  Tella had followed his senses, and his squad moved purposefully for another few days, headed in the direction he had expected. They traveled further west, further inland, further from the ocean and Ellan Sheeant. He found himself further from his village of Brigamme than perhaps anyone else from the village had ever been. Mountains came into view on the western horizon, and his companions told him he was approaching the end of civilization,

  They reached a small village, one so small that there was no inn to stay in. Tella left his squad members in a camp outside the village while he walked in afoot. His sense of Peyten’s presence was strong, so strong he had no doubt that the woman was waiting in the village. He was noticed as a stranger as soon as he walked down the single street of the settlement, but he paid no attention until he came to a clapboard cabin where he heard a baby crying inside.

  He looked in through the window, and saw Peyten, sitting in a rocking chair, her blouse held open, with a small infant suckling at her chest. He had found his quarry. He watched without thinking, because the scene was one that reminded him of Brigamme. He had friends who were young women already enjoying motherhood, women he had seen complacently do the very same thing that Peyten was doing with a soft, contented smile.

  Tella no longer felt there was adventure in traveling so far from home. He suddenly felt his profound desire for adventure and travel and exotic tales reverse itself, and he longed to be back among the pines and the poplars of the mountains around his own home.

  “How’d you find me?” one of the village youth in Brigamme spoke loudly, close to Tella, and he was ripped from his reminiscing about the past. Silas was collaring his friend Tagg, bringing in a captured quarry.

  “When you went through the patch of gooseberry bushes, you broke some of the canes,” Silas told Tagg. “And after that, I found some of the gooseberry leaves that fell off you when you jumped off the yellow stones.”


  “Ah, I’ll remember that,” Tagg accepted the facts. He understood what had given him away, and he’d learned something new to look for when tracking a prey – not that a Brigamme hunter like Tagg or Silas would ultimately ever have to rely on such observations or keen insights to follow their leads. But the things a tracker found could tell useful information about the quarry, and those who might or might not be known to be fleeing with the person on the run.

  Silas was good at tracking. Tella looked forward to the boy reaching puberty when his body would change in so many ways, and he would advance into the ranks of village trackers for hire. The village elders would someday be able to assign Silas to the most difficult cases, and know that the boy would bring in the greatest revenues.

  Tella hoped that it would be a long time before the boy would have to learn the profound lessons of tracking, a lesson like the one that he had learned with Peyten.

  His mind floated from the present, back to the memories of Seemla, back to his youth.

  Peyten had glanced up and seen him in the window, then gestured for him to enter.

  He surprised himself by opening the door and stepping in.

  “Welcome stranger. How may I help you?” Peyten had asked in a kindly tone, in the rural accent that the backcountry of Rolemica used. Tella understood the accent, but only after several days of listening.

  “I’m a tracker, sent by Prince Jerred,” Tella hadn’t wanted to present a false front to the woman. Better that he be honest with her.