The Eight Walls of Rogar: An Epic Fantasy Adventure Series! (The Lost Kingdoms of Laotswend Trilogy--Book One)

The Eight Walls of Rogar

By William Woodward

Acknowledgments

There are many people, both family and friends, I would like to acknowledge for helping to make this novel possible.  First and foremost, I want to thank my mother.  She never stopped believing…or encouraging.  I would also like to thank, in no particular order, the following:

Brad Lindsey—editing, artwork, and poetry

Clint Hayes—editing

Becky Coury—editing

Deborah Voorhees—editing

Ashley MkNight—artwork

Heather Caronna—editing

Shana Coury—editing, artwork

Contents

1)
    
The Crooked Path

2)
  
Shelter from the Storm

3)
   
Lost in Darkness

4)
  
Going Home

5)
  
The Old Man’s Cottage

6)
   
New Friends

7)
   
Change of Direction

8)
  
Tearful Goodbye

9)
  
The King

10)
The Bony Man

11)
Homesick

12)
Talk of War

13)
Lost Friends

14)
Desert Scout

15)
Dark Dreams

16)
Voice from the Grave

17)
Catacombs

18)
The Blue Bottle

19)
The Crypt

20)
 
Remorse

21)
Unwelcome Guest

22)
Tinar!

23)
 
The Amulet

24)
Sokerra

25)
The Disguise

26)
 
Wedding Bells

27)
 
Betrayal

28)
Rogar

29)
The Speech

30)
 
An Ill omen

31)
Braced for the Attack

32)
 
Concentric Circles

33)
 
Anthem

34)
Parting Ways

35)
 
Monstrosities

36)
 
Marla

37)
 
The Journal

38)
The Skeleton

39)
 
Call for Aid

40)
Sarsallis Bush

41)
The Keyhole

42)
The Lost One

43)
Reunion

44)
The Portal

45)
Inferno

46)
Forbidden Passage

47)
Minorian

48)
Duty-Bound

49)
The End of the Beginning

Light and shadow become one,

Mingling close beneath blood-red sun,

Clockwork toys begin to play,

A forgotten march from another day,

Towers stand on border sand,

Watchful eyes on troubled land,

Swords are drawn against the night,

Man and beast join the fight,

A stranger walks the chosen path,

Through dreaded storm and Lost One’s wrath,

The faithful heed the ancient call,

Stone and earth break and fall,

Bones will crack and spears will splinter,

As the world is cast into eternal winter,

Tears will fill a roiling sea,

Until the stranger comes and sets us free.

2:16 from the book of prophecy

The Crooked Path

Andaris Rocaren stood alone at the edge of a deep forest, peering into its dark, mist-shrouded hollows, searching its shadows for an answer.  What now? he wondered.  He had hoped he would know what to do when the time came, but even after many hours of walking, he couldn’t decide.  Should he go on…or should he go back?

Sturdy oaks, limbs laden with lichen and moss, spread in a thick green mantle across the tumbling shoulders of the Tertanian Mountains, the sheer peaks of which now loomed large before him, deceptively close, as daunting as they were beautiful.  He’d been taught that the mountains were the bones of the world, that they’d been hammered out on the anvil of creation in the great forge at the center of everything, and then thrust towards the heavens to hold up the sky.  He had always thought it a ridiculous story, and yet here, dwarfed by the explosions of rock and trees in front of him, he found the tale somewhat harder to deny.

A hawk screeched from above—head cocked at him, beady eyes challenging his intrusion into its domain.  Andaris watched the slender shape rise and fall against the blue sky, riding the waves of heat shimmering from the wide plain, watched as it wheeled about and headed east, soaring over the countryside it had taken him all afternoon to cross.

The land sloped away from Andaris gradually, offering a commanding view of the valley below; but no matter how he strained his eyes, he could see only the ocean of prairie and mountain chains that were its shores.  He had left everything and everyone he had ever known, and now there was only the tall grass mingling in the breeze, stretching into the distance.  It would take a seer to find him here, which was exactly what he wanted.

….Or so he had thought.  As he closed his eyes, the lean, sun-darkened contours of his face tightened.  Visualizing the squat houses and tree-lined streets of his home, he could almost hear the cheerful laughter of children, and clacking of hooves against the cobblestones.  It was there, somewhere beyond the horizon and already several leagues away—Fairhaven.  He had been so ready to leave….

With a sigh, Andaris ran his fingers through his lank brown hair.  Caught between the memories behind and the path ahead, he now had to admit to some doubt whispering through him.  He was journeying to a region that had been steeped in legend and myth for centuries.  His people worshiped the Tertanians as gods, believing they had the power to protect and to heal.

At night, those who dwelled in the valley said prayers to the Watcher within the Stone.  In the springtime, they came from miles around, piling offerings of seeds and fruit atop the golden altar in the temple at the center of town.  If the Watcher were pleased with their gifts, he would grant them a bountiful crop for the coming year.  If not, well…most folks agreed it was best to not even speak of such things.

The Rocaren clan had known the Valley of Plenty as home for fourteen generations, and Andaris was its youngest.  He had been named for an older brother who had died at birth, and for the last seventeen years had lived under the shadow of that loss, feeling most at ease when he was alone, free from all the hopes and expectations of his parents, free to be himself.

As a boy, he had dreamt of adventure and far-off lands.  It was difficult not to, what with the unbroken line of peaks ringing the expansive valley.  Omnipresent, they defined the town’s world—his world—the known and the unknown.  How many afternoons had he spent behind the rusted plow, thudding absently over the packed red earth of his father’s fields, squinting under the hot sun and hanging dust at the hazy range in the blue distance?  He couldn’t begin to count.

It wasn’t that Andaris hated or even disliked Fairhaven.  If he had, leaving would not have been so painful.  Neighbors waving from fences, the smell of cook fires drifting on the wind, the glow of windows at night across the fields—the pleasure of it at times had quickened his breath.

But even so, with each passing day, he’d grown more restless.  During the weeks leading up to his departure, the dinner bell had often reached him as nothing more than a faint echo as he wistfully wandered the limits of his father’s land.  There was something important lacking from his life, something that he had finally come to accept he was not going to find in Fairhaven.

It was not until the evening of his seventeenth name day, however, sitting on the woven stool by the ceremonial bonfire, that he realized what that something was.  With his family gathered round to hear his granduncle repeat yet another of his many longwinded tales, it had struck him like the morning sunlight through his window—it was the comfort itself that needled him.

The old men’s stories all spoke of one world.  Andaris had heard them his entire life, every variation from every gray-bearded elder of every clan.  Entire lives, whole generations, passed through time in the valley, lived and died, and nothing changed.  Sons became fathers, daughters became mothers, apprentices became masters, and still everything remained as it had always been, the seasons drifting by like clouds across a summer sky.  The truth was plain and much too simple: Life in Fairhaven was a mere role to be filled.

If he returned, he knew what would be waiting.  He could see his future coalescing in front of him, the map of his life drawing itself in straight, unalterable lines.  Each day would be the same, from the next to the last, until the day that he died.

My path is here,
he thought.
  I need only take the first step.
  His life had to be his, not one predetermined for him.  To eat and sleep and breathe simply wasn’t enough—he had to live.  Without risk there is only stagnation.  With stagnation there is only death. 
Truly live,
he thought. 
Truly live!
  The words resonated through him, infusing his limbs with new strength.

And so it was, just as the sun was dipping behind the broken spine of the mountains that Andaris stepped into the dense wall of trees, raising his newfound conviction before him like a shield.
One night,
he promised himself. 
I can at least do that much.  Tomorrow will take care of itself.

Suffocating and old, the forest closed behind him, heavy with the musty scent of damp soil and rotting wood.  The woven branches of the canopy blocked most of the evening light, leaving everything beneath smudgy and gray.  The animal trail he followed wound in and out of the foliage, twisting and turning as though directed by a deranged will.  Indeed, at times it vanished altogether, only to reappear again in a totally different spot, as broken and crooked as Old Man Tucker’s back. 
Perhaps Grandfather was right
, he thought.

“Don’t ever step foot into Fingar, boy,” his grandfather had said not two weeks before.  “Not if you know what’s good for ya.  I’ve seen how you’ve been looking at those mountains.  I remember how it felt.  They’re pulling at you, aren’t they?  I was young once too, you know.  Believe me, I remember.  When you’re young your blood’s restless, sometimes feels like your skin’s going to crawl right off your bones.  I was tempted—sorely tempted—but I resisted, and now I thank the stars that I did.  We’ve lost too many of our young men to that forest.  Most who go in there never come back out.  It bewitches the mind, you know.

The few who do return babble on about shifting trails that snake around forever, and mythical creatures that only exist in storybooks, all of them mad as the day is long.  You mark my words, Andaris, there’s...evil in that forest.  You probably think you’re different, don’t ya?  Probably think you’re having thoughts no one’s ever had before—that you’re smarter and cleverer.  Well, trust me, boy, you’re not the first, and you won’t be the last.  I know your mind.  Your thoughts are written on your face for everyone to see.  But if you have the sense the Watcher gave a mule, you won’t go through with it.  You’ll stay as far away from there as you can.”

Of course his grandfather’s ominous warning had only made things worse.  Andaris, as the old man had rightly assumed,
had
been considering it.  All the warning had done was bring it to the front of his mind.  What’s more, even though his grandfather had tried to hide it, Andaris had seen the wistfulness in his eyes when he’d spoken of Fingar, as if despite everything, there was still a part of him that wished he had gone.

Andaris narrowed his eyes on the trail, pausing to wipe his brow.  This was going to be tougher than he’d thought.  The forest was just a forest—that he knew—and there was nothing magical about the trail either, but he could now see how people such as his grandfather, people already given to believing in such things, might think otherwise.

A rustling noise made him look up.

“Is there someone there?” he asked.  He’d never taken the tales seriously, and yet—there
was
something about the place.  All around him, amidst the solemn trunks, he imagined vague shapes staring from the shadows.

“Not real,” he whispered.  But his words were empty and he knew it.  The broad, open sky of the grasslands beckoned to him as never before, the gently rolling countryside and sweet, fragrant air.  If not for the promise he’d made to himself, the urge to turn back would have been too great to resist.

The moment stretched as he peered into the gathering dusk.  A hush fell over the forest.  He drew his knife from the leather sheath on his hip.  The muscles in his body tensed.  He could feel the elk bone handle cool against his palm.  An insect buzzed past his left ear.  A leaf fell from a tree.  And still there was no sign. 

Long seconds later, Andaris re-sheathed his knife. 
Just a rodent
, he told himself.  Trying to ignore the fear that both throbbed in his breast and danced down his spine, he again started forward, anxious to find a place to camp before it became too dark to see.

By the time he happened upon the circle of linberry bushes, the twilight gray of evening had deepened to a velvety black.  The sharply pointed leaves of the bushes grew together into a single hedge--four feet tall, two feet thick, and several feet around.  He didn’t look forward to what was certain to be a difficult crawl, but proceeded anyway, for even in the pale light of the crescent moon he could tell the ground inside the ring was springy and soft, a comfortable bed within a tangled wall of thorns.

The leaves scratched crimson designs on his face and snagged at his clothing as he lowered his head and burrowed in. 
Yes,
he thought, grimacing as he dragged himself along,
I should be safe enough in here.
  Another foot forward, with him pushing aside the branches of the hedge to avoid the more snarled patches, and he was inside.  Feeling quite pleased with himself, he sat up, wiped his face clean, opened his pack, and pulled out a skin of mead and a block of sharp yellow cheese.  It was a far cry from the home-cooked meals to which he was accustomed, but much better than nothing at all.

After taking a generous bite of the cheese, he picked a handful of purple berries from the s
ides of the bushes—linberries--and popped them one by one into his mouth.  Sweet and ripe to the point of bursting, they contrasted the bitterness of the cheese in delightful fashion. 
A room with
edible
walls,
he thought happily.

Appetite sated, he put on his woolen cloak, dug a few inches into the earth, situated his pack to serve as a pillow, and spread out his blankets, one beneath and one above.  The sounds of the forest were amplified by the night, the faintest movements echoing in the still dark around him.  Lying there, he pulled the blanket to his chin and, though he was frightened, smiled, for his adventure had now truly begun.