Uncrowned (Cradle Book 7) Read online

  Contents

  [Title Page]

  [Dedication]

  [Copyright]

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  [Sequel Page]

  Bloopers

  Uncrowned

  Cradle - Book Seven

  Will Wight

  www.WillWight.com

  To Travis Baldree, the voice of Cradle.

  Copyright © 2019 Hidden Gnome Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design by Patrick Foster Design (www.patrickfoster.net)

  Cover Illustration by Patrick Foster

  Prologue

  “Something is wrong with your home,” Orthos rumbled.

  “It’s not my home,” Kelsa said.

  As the sun rose over Sacred Valley, Samara’s ring faded away to a dusty arc of white around the eastern mountain’s peak. A bag of fruit over her shoulder, Kelsa led Orthos to the base of a different mountain. She had found a hidden grove tucked away between hills, surrounded by wilderness and far from the nearest road.

  It was there that she’d hidden her father.

  “I don’t mean this…hatchling’s cave.” The sacred turtle snorted smoke. “I mean your whole valley. My power has leaked away day by day since I arrived, and now I am no higher than a Jade.”

  They crested a hill, looking down onto thickly clustered trees and a creek trickling from a nearby spring. Tents, huts, and lean-tos surrounded many of the trees, and perhaps half a dozen people looked up as she approached. Other exiles.

  Kelsa reached out to a nearby boulder, letting her madra activate a security script etched into the stone. It shone briefly purple, the color of her White Fox madra, disabling the boundary field that would send out alarms if the wrong sacred artist entered.

  She gestured Orthos forward, but his words had caught her attention. “You were stronger before?” When she thought back to how he had destroyed that detachment of Fallen Leaf artists only hours earlier, she couldn’t hold back her excitement. “How much stronger?”

  The turtle lifted his black, leathery head in pride, his eyes shining circles of crimson. “I was a Truegold before your grandparents were born.”

  “Gold?” Kelsa exclaimed.

  Orthos’ chuckle shook the ground as he lumbered forward. “You should see your brother.”

  They descended the hill into camp together, but Kelsa still hadn’t contained her shock. She had known her brother was dead. She was certain of it. Or she had been yesterday.

  Kelsa caught the sentry, a Kazan clan man she knew who stared at Orthos with eyes wide as fists. She explained that Orthos was an ally.

  Though she didn’t explain why she was leaving the turtle with him. Just because he had fought the Fallen Leaf School didn’t mean she could trust her father’s safety to him.

  When the sentry finally understood, she turned back to Orthos and lowered her voice. “Stay here. I have an errand to run, but I’ll have more questions about Lindon when I return.”

  Orthos examined her with black-and-red eyes, smoke drifting from his shell, but eventually he nodded.

  She left in the wrong direction, and when she had put enough trees and tents between her and the turtle, she looped back around to go see her father.

  Wei Shi Jaran was right where she had left him, as expected. He crouched on a stool beneath a roof of oiled canvas stretched between two pale branches of an orus tree. Their belongings were organized into boxes around him—Kelsa liked to be neat, and her father tolerated that—and his cane leaned up against the tree trunk. A large boulder blocked the wind from one side.

  He had a gameboard spread out on a makeshift table in front of him, running his fingers over the pieces so he could tell one from the other. Occasionally he reached up to scratch at the wrappings around his ruined eyes.

  At first, every glimpse she caught of her twice-crippled father had filled her with pain and righteous rage. Now, after almost three years, the wrath had faded, leaving hollow sadness.

  She let none of that into her voice as she spoke—loudly, in case he had missed her footsteps. “Sixteen orus fruits!” she declared. “One of them lit up the detector. I think it’s on the verge of becoming a spirit-fruit.”

  Jaran moved one piece forward then reached out to the other side, feeling the opponent’s piece as he played both sides of the board. “Trouble?” His voice was rusty with disuse; he probably hadn’t spoken with anyone all day. He liked to share stories with some other old men in the camp, but they didn’t gather until evening.

  “Fallen Leaf artists,” she admitted. She didn’t want him to worry, but her fight could jeopardize the safety of the entire camp. “I’ll spread the word tonight.”

  He straightened, and now his voice sounded more like the father she’d grown up with. “Did you kill them?”

  “Not me, Father. I found an ally.”

  Something heavy slapped the ground behind her, and she whirled around.

  Orthos stood behind her, examining Jaran with scarlet eyes. “I am your ally,” he said. “I will not harm you.”

  “How did you find me?” she demanded.

  “No one in this camp is even Jade. You might as well all be blind.” He examined Jaran. “At least he has an excuse.”

  Jaran rocked back as though slapped, and the breath froze in Kelsa’s chest. The despair could catch her father like a flood, and if this was the stone that finally dragged him under…

  Her father began to laugh. It was a weak chuckle, but that was the most she’d heard out of him in months. “This one is Wei Shi Jaran.” He gave a slight seated bow. “It sounds as though you saved my daughter’s life.”

  “You are her father?” When Jaran nodded, Orthos hesitated, and Kelsa begged the heavens that he wouldn’t mention Lindon’s name. At least not before Kelsa got the truth out of him.

  Finally, the turtle said, “I am Orthos.”

  “You have quite the voice, Orthos. Forgiveness, but are you not human?”

  Orthos straightened. “I am a majestic turtle and a descendant of the black dragons of the Blackflame Empire.”

  Jaran bowed more deeply than before. “Gratitude, Orthos. I am ashamed that I can’t see you myself. I would love to hear the story of how you came to save Kelsa.”

  “I will tell you,” the turtle said gravely. “But first I believe I should speak with your daughter alone. She has questions that I must answer.”

  Jaran was visibly confused, but he nodded, and Orthos began to walk away without any further discussion. Kelsa dropped her bag of orus fruits near her father and hurried after the sacred beast, reaching out to grab his leathery skin and pull him forward.

  He was hot. She snatched her fingers away and shook them out. It seemed the smoke rising from his shell wasn’t just for show.

  “Lindon never mentioned that his father was blind,” Orthos muttered, too softly for his words to carry.

  That stirred up too many emotions in Kelsa for her to sort through. She was impatient for him to tell her more about her brother, angry on her father’s behalf, and adrift in half a dozen other emotions she couldn’t name. But she decided to answer the implicit question.

  “He wasn’t,” she said bitterly. “The Heaven’s Glo
ry School came to the Wei clan looking for a girl. ‘The disciple of the Sword Sage,’ they called her, said she had killed a bunch of them. They said Lindon had taken her home.”

  She relaxed her hands, which had tightened into fists. “Obviously it wasn’t true. You can blame whatever you want on an Unsouled.”

  Orthos grunted as he walked, tilting his head to watch her out of the corner of one eye.

  “The clan elders immediately gave us up to Heaven’s Glory,” she whispered. “They didn’t even hesitate. All three of us were taken for questioning, and I went along. I thought they would let us go once they knew we had nothing to do with it. I didn’t realize my parents had resisted. The School blinded my father as a punishment, but my mother is a Soulsmith. She was taken.”

  She spoke through a tight throat. “When I got an opportunity, I ran with my father. They didn’t leave much of a watch on us, but they suddenly cared about us once we ran. They’ve been looking for us ever since…and I haven’t seen my mother in years.”

  Kelsa had intended to trade that story for Orthos’ story about her brother, but she didn’t trust her voice anymore. While she took deep breaths, cycling her madra and getting control of herself, Orthos spoke.

  “He isn’t Unsouled,” the turtle said.

  Kelsa’s heart was still in turmoil, but somehow hearing that Lindon wasn’t Unsouled was stranger than hearing he might be alive.

  She had already accepted his death. She and her father had dreamed of other possibilities, but they both knew it was true. As soon as the Heaven’s Glory School had decided he was an enemy, he was dead.

  It relieved her to hear that he was alive, of course, but if that were true, then why hadn’t he come home? Did he really rebel against Heaven’s Glory and escape? Or did he give in to them to save himself?

  “He made it to Copper?” she asked quietly. That would help explain how he had survived.

  Orthos reached out and uprooted a small, dry bush with his mouth. He began to chew, speaking around a mouthful of splinters. “He was Iron when I met him.”

  “Iron?” That was difficult to believe. “How did he make it so high?”

  The turtle stopped chewing and gave her a strange look. “Outside of this…death-trap…Iron is nothing. If he had stopped at Iron, I would not be here.”

  She wanted to hear the full story, but this was such an absurd claim that she had to hear the end of it. “You’re saying he’s Jade?”

  “Jade…If Lindon returned today and saw what I’ve seen, he would leave every Jade in the Heaven’s Glory School as a pile of ashes.”

  Kelsa’s hopes receded. She had somewhat believed him at first, but this was too ridiculous. To begin with, his claim contradicted itself. “You said that entering the Valley made your spirit weaker. If that’s true, he couldn’t be any stronger than a Jade.”

  Red-and-black eyes met hers. “I said what I said.”

  He was a confident liar, she had to give him that. But he had known her name. She settled onto the ground, leaning her back against a nearby tree. “All right, Orthos. I think you owe me a story.”

  Chapter 1

  Outpost 01: Oversight

  Makiel, the Hound, stood at the center of creation and watched the past. He had finally caught his prey.

  He drifted in the arctic air, surrounded by the home he had carved in the north pole of the planet he'd created. Every atom and idea in this place was focused on enhancing his sight, like a great telescope at the heart of existence.

  There were only a few criminals in all existence that could steal from him. He knew exactly who to look for. He just hadn't known where.

  Until this morning, when Suriel reported a world missing.

  That was the thread he followed backward in Fate. Back, to find where he'd failed.

  He reached out, tapping into the Way Between Worlds, and opened a celestial lens. It formed into a rectangular screen of purple-tinted light only a few feet from him, but the image was fuzzy and indistinct. Her wards, veils, and shields, protecting her from detection. The same ones that had stopped him from seeing her in the future.

  They had done their job. She had slipped by unnoticed.

  But no one could defy the Hound once he caught their scent.

  Her wards crumbled, and the image snapped into focus. He could watch the image play out with nothing more than his eyes, but he needed as much information as possible. His attention sunk into the lens, and he became the criminal.

  [Target Found: the Angler of the Crystal Halls. Location: Iteration 002 Haven, approximately one standard year ago. Synchronize?]

  [Synchronization set at 99%]

  [Beginning synchronization...]

  Iri was robbing the Abidan.

  She stayed focused on her excitement to distract her from the fact that she was packed inside a box buried beneath one of the most secure Abidan facilities in their vault-world of Haven. The box was ten meters by ten—hardly a coffin—but it was so packed with shining amplification crystals, gold rune-boards, tubes of fluid, and matter condensers that she had almost no room to move.

  Not that she needed much room. She had always been small and skinny, and ascending out of her original world hadn't changed that about her. It had turned her hair a bright, electric blue—not the most subtle color—and marked each of her eyes with a shining blue triangle inside her irises. It was the stamp of the Endless Pyramid, the artifact that had made her who she was.

  The last thing she'd stolen as a mortal.

  Iri's bare feet stuck out from the end of frayed pants. She braced one foot against the cold metal, hauling on a lever in the ceiling with her whole body weight. She could have drawn it down easily with her will, but she was trying not to draw attention. That meant acting physically as much as possible. Lines of runes and symbols flared all over the ceiling, and a hologram bloomed in the center of the room.

  It was a map of the Way. It started as a single blue light in the middle, shining like the core of a galaxy. Rivers of sapphire light snaked out from it, forming branches, until it was a tangled nest of blue with little white spots hanging on it like berries. The Iterations.

  She waved her hand through the light on the outer edge of the orb of branching lines. A cluster of lights shone...and two of the Iterations darkened from white to a swirling gray. Corruption in Sector Seventy-two, and both worlds were still there. The Reaper hadn't come for them.

  Iri cackled to herself and swept the map away. As she'd suspected, Ozriel was gone. The Abidan were spread too thin.

  Her operation was a go.

  She reached out and grabbed Ziomachus, an obsidian wheel packed with the energy system of a long-dead world. It was with this artifact that she had earned her name and built her worlds-famous collection.

  She held her hands apart and the black wheel hovered between them. Gold symbols shone on both sides as it responded to her will, filling the room with another shade of light.

  Invisible, a strand of her authority slipped up through the soil. It slithered undetected past the detection-wards and patrolling energy constructs that protected against incursion from below.

  The line of power slid easily through the foundation, composed of an ore intended to disperse such power. It oozed up, past the Abidan Hounds and Spiders and Ghosts, guided by the force of Iri's intentions.

  The vault was a seamless cube of mirrored steel bigger than the box in which Iri waited. Suspended in the center of a sealed room, it floated in midair, guarded by such workings of the Way that even Iri and Ziomachus could never penetrate it.

  If the Abidan fell and the guards plundered the rest of the Iteration and returned home, Iri could spend a millennium trying and find no purchase. It was the perfect defense.

  So the Angler sat with her power extended like a fishing-line, dangling outside the impenetrable vault. Waiting.

  She knew what was locked in the vault, and she knew that with Ozriel dead or missing, the Hound would send for its contents. He would never come h
imself—that would leave too much of a trail—but this vault would soon open. She only had to be patient.

  For nine months, she waited.

  Finally, a lesser Hound arrived at the facility. She sat up, the triangles in her eyes burning. Through hundreds of meters of rock, she could see the authority of Makiel on this messenger.

  She summoned Ziomachus to her hands, sat down, and kept a tight rein on her excitement.

  The messenger passed through layer after layer of security, taking most of the day. Before sunset, he was allowed into the room with the vault. He waved a hand, and his Presence provided the key.

  The mirrored cube unfolded like a paper box spreading itself flat one facet at a time. As it unraveled itself, it drifted down until the polished metal sat on the floor, presenting its contents: a rack of weapons.

  Each was black and sleek and curved—bladed tools from a simpler age. To the mortal eye, there was nothing special about them. They would be neither effective weapons nor farming tools, these dozen scythes.

  The Angler flexed her will, and the obsidian wheel floating between her palms began to spin. Faster and faster it spun, filling her room with a shrill whine and casting off brighter golden light.

  She struck with the fullness of her power, and every alarm in the world of Haven went off at once.

  Doors snapped shut, sirens screamed, sentries snapped their heads in her direction, constructs took aim at the box buried beneath the ground that they had overlooked for months.

  The assistant of Makiel reacted appropriately for a man of his standing and skill. He projected a shell of Way-power around the scythes, lunging for the nearest weapon with his hand and with his mind.

  But the invisible line of Ziomachus had already touched them.

  With the authority of the Angler and the ancient artifact combined, they rewrote one property of the weapons: their position in space.