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  A Clash of Fates

  The Echoes Saga: Book Nine

  Philip C. Quaintrell

  Also by Philip C. Quaintrell

  THE ECHOES SAGA: (9 Book Series)

  1. Rise of the Ranger

  2. Empire of Dirt

  3. Relic of the Gods

  4. The Fall of Neverdark

  5. Kingdom of Bones

  6. Age of the King

  7. The Knights of Erador

  8. Last of the Dragorn

  9. A Clash of Fates

  THE TERRAN CYCLE: (4 Book Series)

  1. Intrinsic

  2. Tempest

  3. Heretic

  4. Legacy

  For John and Wendy, thank you for always being there…

  Dramatis Personae

  Adan’Karth (Adan)

  A Drake

  Adilandra Sevari

  The late elven queen of Elandril and mother of Reyna Galfrey

  Alijah Galfrey

  Half-elf and self-proclaimed king of Verda

  Asher

  Human ranger

  Athis

  Red dragon, bonded with Inara

  Doran Heavybelly

  Dwarven Ranger/Prince and War Mason of clan Heavybelly

  Ellöria Sevari

  The late Lady of Ilythyra

  Faylen Haldör

  An elf and High Guardian of Elandril

  Galanör Reveeri

  Elven ranger

  Gideon Thorn

  Master Dragorn

  Gondrith

  Reaver - bonded with the dragon Yillir.

  Ilargo

  Green dragon, bonded with Gideon

  Inara Galfrey

  Half-elf Dragorn/Guardian of the Realm

  Lord Kraiden

  Late Reaver - bonded with the dragon Morgorth.

  Kassian Kantaris

  A previous Keeper of Valatos

  Nathaniel Galfrey

  An ambassador and previous knight of the Graycoats

  Reyna Galfrey

  Elven princess of Elandril and Illian ambassador

  Rengyr

  Late Reaver - bonded with the dragon Karsak.

  Sir Ruban Dardaris

  Captain of the King’s Guard

  The Crow (Sarkas)

  Late Leader of The Black Hand

  Veda Malmagol

  The Father of Nightfall

  Vighon Draqaro

  The usurped king of Illian

  Vilyra

  Reaver - bonded with the dragon Godrad.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I

  1. Home

  2. Northman

  3. Instincts

  4. Heavy is the Head…

  5. What Defines Us

  6. The Dawn of a New Day

  7. A Royal Gathering

  8. Face to Face

  9. I Am Ranger

  10. Together Again

  11. The March to War

  12. Introductions

  13. Finding Harbour in the Storm

  14. Not Forgotten

  15. Farewells

  Part II

  16. A Night on the Plains

  17. A Rogue Memory

  18. Battle of The Moonlit Plains

  19. A Larger Tapestry

  20. Crosshairs

  21. Off the Beaten Path

  22. Where Worlds Collide

  23. Cursed

  24. Aftermath

  25. Survivors

  26. Familiar Faces

  27. First Contact

  28. On the Hunt

  29. Inside the Cage

  30. Old Friends

  Part III

  31. Bending the Knee

  32. A Heart of Three

  33. Why We’re Here

  34. King to King

  35. An Intimation of Hope

  36. Messenger

  37. Hard Truths

  38. The Future Lies in the Past

  39. An Alliance of Two Shores

  40. Out of Time

  41. Cast Out of the Heavens

  42. Preparations

  43. End of the Road

  44. Those Below

  45. ’Tis Life

  46. Eternal Companions

  Part IV

  47. A Master’s Wrath

  48. Thorgen’s Blood

  49. Palios

  50. Endings and Beginnings

  51. Home is Where the Heart Is

  52. Feeling It

  53. The Beginning of Something Beautiful

  54. Choosing Joy

  55. The Valley of Death

  56. Where it all Began

  57. A Clash of Fates

  58. Keeping the Hope Alive

  59. New Beginnings

  60. Through Shadow

  61. Legacy

  62. The Blood of Erador

  63. Creed

  64. A New World

  Epilogue

  Author Page

  Author Notes

  Appendices

  Prologue

  This is the end.

  How could it not be? The world had been set alight, the sky blackened with ash, and the earth torn asunder. Civilisation was falling into ruin. Dragons, bereft of their murdered Riders, melted the stone with their righteous fire, torching the streets of Ak-Tor, Illian’s doomed capital.

  Sarkas watched it all like a god, removed from the carnage and death. The winds of time battered him, threatening to hurl him into the bleak future he now witnessed. With bloodshot eyes, he willed himself to keep watching, to observe the world to come.

  Despite those ethereal winds, tearing at his clothes and pummelling his pale body, Sarkas wore the grin of a very satisfied man. For all the madness and sheer terror of such destruction, it was indescribably beautiful.

  And all it took was a handful of dragons. Mage knights, cloaked in red, launched all manner of spells into the air. For all their effort, they only succeeded in adding some colour to an otherwise bleak vista. Ballistas hurled bolts, hoping to reinforce the knights’ magic, and some even struck true, bringing down a dragon here and there.

  Ultimately, and inevitably, there was nothing to be done in the face of such raw power. If the dragons of Verda wanted to raze humanity to the ground, there was no one, no thing, and no spell to stop them.

  Doomed indeed.

  To the west, Atilan’s palace succumbed to the wrath of Garganafan, a dragon famed for his hulking size. Sarkas had heard of Garganafan, his name carried in the tales that breezed through The Citadel. Sarkas, however, had never seen the dragon before and attributed the knowledge he now possessed to the magic coursing through every fibre of his being - it whispered the truth into his mind.

  Without turning to look, Sarkas’s sight found another dragon to the south, clawing his way through one building after another. Just as he had known Garganafan when he saw him, Sarkas just knew that the black behemoth destroying Ak-Tor’s southern district was Malliath the voiceless.

  The black dragon rammed his way through an entire street of houses, his horns flinging people and debris high into the air. His tail always followed him through the chaos, swinging one way then the other to flatten anything that had survived.

  When Malliath finally unleashed his breath, the jet of fire engulfed half a battalion of mage knights standing their ground on the district boundary. The smoke would have blinded any who witnessed such a massacre, but Sarkas was granted a view of it all.

  The front four rows of mage knights had either failed to erect a shield or their magic had simply failed to hold up to Malliath’s might. Now, the scorched bodies formed a black line in the street, separating the surviving mage knights from the dragon.

  Sarkas fought against the winds of time to
widen his vision, but the spell had a life of its own, as if it was showing him only what it wanted him to see.

  Apparently, it wanted him to see death.

  The mage knights resisted with spells, poking holes in Malliath’s wings and chipping his armour-like scales. It only served to anger the beast all the more. His tail, lined with spikes, swung around in a wave of dirt and debris - a force no man could deny. Half lost their lives to the devastating retaliation, many of whom were thrown, like rag dolls, into the air. More spells followed, bombarding the black dragon until he staggered into the side of a building.

  Under a shower of falling bricks and tiles, Malliath inhaled a sharp breath. Sarkas knew what would follow. Another jet of dragon fire spread out amongst the mage knights, weakening any shields they might build. Then, with great savagery, Malliath leapt from the shattered building and used his gargantuan size to crush the remaining humans. His claws lashed out, raking those lucky enough to have avoided his sheer weight.

  None survived.

  Sarkas wanted to follow the dragon and watch the city’s ruination to its glorious end, but the magic he had conjured grew beyond his control. The young wizard, as he liked to consider himself, was violently pulled and pushed through the currents of time once more.

  The world around him blurred into streams of colour as Ak-Tor’s sharp edges vanished altogether. Stars shone through the myriad of colours, dazzling Sarkas into a disorientated state.

  When, at last, his vision calmed and the end of days was behind him, Sarkas found himself standing on a beach bathing in golden sunlight. Standing before him, oblivious to the wizard who watched from eons past, was a young man draped in a green cloak and tired leathers.

  As soon as Sarkas asked himself who this man was, a single name came to him with perfect clarity.

  Alijah Galfrey.

  He was treading through the soft sands of The Shining Coast, Sarkas knew, even though he had never visited Illian’s coastline or even laid eyes on The Adean.

  Alijah wasn’t alone. Not far behind him was another young man whose name was suddenly emblazoned in the wizard’s mind.

  Vighon Draqaro.

  The two were friends. No. Closer than friends. They were brothers in bond, if not blood. It felt familiar to Sarkas, who had considered the slaves in The Citadel his brothers.

  Through a halo of light, cast over Vighon by the sun, Sarkas caught glimpses of a crown on the northman’s head. His hair had lost some of its colour and, like the crown, it came and went with the vision, lending the man a beard before quickly returning to stubble.

  Then came another, behind the king-to-be. Her dark hair succumbed to the sea breeze and took off over her left shoulder. She was a vision of beauty and strength, a combination the young wizard had never come across before.

  Inara Galfrey.

  Her name hit Sarkas, adding a wave of heat to the ethereal winds that constantly blasted him. She was important to the world, just like the two men who had preceded her.

  Inara looked right through him with her startlingly blue eyes, the same shade as Alijah’s. Sarkas watched them ascend the cliffs and return to the green fields of Alborn. The wizard could see that all three of them were entwined, their destinies tied to the realm itself.

  It occurred to Sarkas that he didn’t know when he was. There was nothing around him to help distinguish the year and certainly no one to ask. As with everything else, he plucked the knowledge from nowhere and knew he was witnessing events ten thousand years from what he considered to be the present day.

  The winds began to change again as time twisted and lurched. Illian’s coast was torn away, replaced by a nauseating swirl of colours and stars. Sarkas could feel his strength waning. For all the secrets he had unlocked from the forbidden books of the Jainus, he simply didn’t have experience or training on his side - just his will.

  He continued to defy those powerful winds and ride the spell to its conclusion. He needed to see what was to come. The future had to be better.

  The heat of Illian’s coastal sun was replaced by the icy cold of winter. Sarkas took in his new surroundings, desperate to grasp his environment as quickly as possible. He was in the woods, The Wild Moores to be exact. Snow coated everything and it was deathly still but for the sound of feet crunching through undisturbed powder.

  The young wizard turned to see Alijah Galfrey again, only this time he was older and more rugged in his appearance. He was ploughing through the snow, bow in hand, searching for something. Sarkas wanted to reach out and touch him but the winds kept his hands at bay.

  Then he was gone, flung forward in time again. The pain increased but it was nothing Sarkas hadn’t experienced at the cruel hands of his master. His will endured.

  Now, he stood in a damp cave beneath the school known as Korkanath. He looked up at the wet rock aware, without having witnessed the event, that the school above was naught but a charred husk.

  Growing comfortable with the nature of the Jainus’s magic, Sarkas stopped marvelling at his knowledge and focused on whatever significant moment was occurring around him before it was too late.

  Alijah Galfrey was once again standing before him inside the cave. He was looking up at something, though it was obscured by the torrent of ethereal winds. How long did he have left before he couldn’t see anything at all?

  Any question Sarkas might have attempted to answer was forgotten in the wake of the splitting headache that ripped through his mind. He closed his eyes but it made no difference to his vision.

  To his left, Alijah remained inside the cave beneath Korkanath but, to his right, was an entirely different environment.

  And an entirely different time…

  The contrast of both environment and time was difficult to comprehend for a mind so fragile as a human’s, but Sarkas did his best to piece it together without losing too much of his sanity.

  Scrutinising the new vision on his right, the young wizard laid weathered eyes on a single dragon egg. The shell was rough and easily mistaken for a lump of ancient stone. Deep purple in colour, it was set apart from the lush green vines and grey rock that surrounded it. Scattered around the egg, Sarkas discovered numerous scorch marks where other dragon hatchlings had been born.

  Sarkas’s eyes flittered between the two scenes, each more thousands of years apart than he could count, for the egg resided in the time of the great Leviathans, before man roamed the world.

  Alijah moved, snatching at Sarkas’s attention. “Things will be different now,” he promised, his voice reverberating throughout Sarkas’s mind. “Balance is the reason you and I have been brought together. But first, we must find harmony.”

  Who was he talking to? Displaying a will of its own again, the spell kept the answer from Sarkas.

  Instead, he looked back at the egg, his focus stolen by the cracks that began to appear up and down the shell.

  “I will take on your suffering as my own,” Alijah continued, his hand outstretched as if he could see the egg. “You don’t have to be alone anymore.”

  Unknown to Alijah, so far removed from events of ancient history, the egg was disintegrated by a furnace from within. A small dragon head emerged from the smoke and revealed its purple eyes and black scales.

  Sarkas couldn’t believe what was happening, and happening because of him. Whether he had meant to or not, his spell had bridged the timelines. Phenomenal as it was, a single tear escaped each eye and ran back across his temples under the pressure of the spell.

  These two beings were bonding across the ages, born into the world with only half of who they were meant to be. Sarkas felt a profound sadness for Malliath, who would be forced to endure eons without the one who coaxed him from his egg as the Dragon Riders did. The wizard already knew that the dragon would never speak to another soul until he met Alijah in Paldora’s Fall.

  Just thinking of that event collapsed the two worlds into nothingness. The blinding colours were brief, propelling Sarkas into yet another time and place b
eyond his control.

  All was quiet now, but for the sound of licking flames.

  The young wizard was suddenly spared the buffeting winds and the constant pain. He looked around, confused. This moment of clarity was unexpected with no mention of it in the Jainus’s spell book. It had spoken of the repercussions, the sacrifices that came with pushing against time, but not this.

  Turning on his heel, he was encircled by the sandy rock of The Undying Mountains, deep into Illian’s south. It was dark except for the torches that illuminated the elevated dais that had been carved out of the rock. A new sound reached his ears and Sarkas looked up to see the shattered remains of Paldora’s Star.