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    The Forge of the Covenant
    The Forge of the Covenant
    The Forge of the Covenant
    Ebook104 pages1 hourRaven Son

    The Forge of the Covenant

    By Nicholas Kotar

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    The sea swallowed her city. An enchantment stole her family. Now a dark god offers her salvation... for a terrible price.


    Lebía lives in paradise. Her husband and four children are her pride and joy. Years of war and plague have finally given way to peace and prosperity. Except her paradise is nothing but a lie, created by a dark Power who makes false worlds for his own insidious purposes.


    The World-maker gives Lebía one chance to save her family and her people. Thrust into a parallel world outside time, Lebía must find an ancient magic and unlock its power. But things are not as they seem in this strange world filled with walking nightmares and heroes from deepest legend. Whom can she trust? Who is her ally and who her hidden enemy?


    Finally she is faced with an impossible choice. To unlock the god's magic, she'll have to choose between herself and the life of her family.


    The Forge of the Covenant is the fourth book in the Raven Son epic fantasy series, a retelling of the dark Russian version of Sleeping Beauty and the ancient legend of Atlantis. If you like complex characters, gorgeous world-building, and creative twists on mythology, you'll love The Forge of the Covenant.


    Buy The Forge of the Covenant to continue the journey today!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWaystone Press
    Release dateMar 19, 2019
    ISBN9780998847986
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      Book preview

      The Forge of the Covenant - Nicholas Kotar

      Daniel

      Chapter 1

      The Dead Sirin

      Lebía didn’t realize how tense she was until the whispering intimacy of the beech grove enveloped her. Her shoulders melted like hot wax, and the pleasure of the release continued all the way to her toes. She almost sighed aloud, but stopped herself in time. Appearances, she reminded herself, even when picking mushrooms.

      A Dar’s wife must always preserve appearances. If she didn’t, her daughters certainly would remind her of it.

      Mama, what about this one? asked Zabían, her five-year-old son, his voice rising to the last syllable as though he wasn’t asking a question, but demanding why there was so much injustice in the world. Everything he said had that intense inflection. He showed her a lovely brown mushroom with a cap like a perfect cloud, white gills underneath, not a spot marring their perfection. Their deadly perfection, that is.

      You see that? she showed him the top of the cap. Honey mushrooms have brown spots there, darker than the rest of the cap. That’s a rotter, that is.

      And you forgot to look for the black ring, added Adelaida, her eldest, her face mostly hidden behind a stiff red-gold headscarf. She still managed to glower at Zabían. Honey mushrooms have a black ring under the cap, remember? What she didn’t say aloud, but what seemed to echo through the sun-dappled grove anyway, was something like, how many times have I told you that? Five thousand?

      Lebía smiled. She didn’t fault Adelaida for her seriousness. She was the eldest and most burdened with the care of the other children. To her surprise, Lebía felt a twinge of guilt. She really shouldn’t spoil Zabían so much. Poor Adelaida always had the hardest of it, because Zabían knew how to press every one of her buttons. Even the secret, hidden ones.

      You remember how to distinguish beech trees from black birches ? she asked Zabían, who nodded with excitement. Find me some chanterelles, little fox. His eyes lit up, and he scampered off.

      Mother, I think we’re low on chaga, said Adelaida, her mouth unconsciously curling with distaste merely at the thought of the bitter, but very healthy, fungus. Cook will never let me hear the end of it if I don’t find some.

      There was more tiredness in her tone than Lebía would have liked. Oh, don’t worry about that, love. I know you wanted time to yourself today. There’s a lovely, low branch on that oak over there. Go ahead, I know you want to climb it. Just keep half an eye out for your brother.

      Adelaida’s face lit up, though she tried very hard to prevent that light from spilling into a smile. There is so much of Voran in her. But that was a dark thought, so Lebía carefully stowed it in a shadowy corner of her heart, to examine later.

      Thank you, Mother, Adelaida said, already skipping away. She was still a girl, for all the terrible seriousness of her nineteen years.

      Draping her wicker basket over her left arm, Lebía wrapped herself in sunlight, loam-smell, and her shawl. They had passed a lovely stand of birches when they passed the river. There was sure to be chaga there.

      And so it was—a rock-sized explosion of dark brown. It was a bit high for Lebía, but she could just reach it if she stood on a rock. There was one just nearby, so she put her weight on it. At the very last moment, she noticed a strip of green, and her mind said algae, just as her legs flailed out from under her. Instinctively, she reached down with her hand to stop her fall, but it slipped too. She landed elbow-first on a jagged shard of shale. The pain lanced upward, and her head spun.

      Everything blurred in her vision, as though she were in two places at the same time. She closed her eyes, but that was worse. The ground spun underneath her. She snapped her eyes open, breathing deeply to prevent the wave of nausea from throttling her. Suddenly, she realized she was completely wet.

      She was no longer on the bank near the birches, but at the exact point where two rivers flowed into one. Awkwardly, she stood up, knee-deep in foaming, icy water. She recognized this place—it was on the other side of the island, where the two rivers of Ghavan Isle met and emptied into the sea. Ahead of her, the combined torrent roiled, pierced through with irregular boulders, crooked as a giant’s broken teeth.

      About half a good bowshot away, Lebía saw something impossible.

      The river simply ended, or melted away, or ceased to be, exactly at a point where the world itself seemed to bend upward and curve toward the sky. It was an almost transparent wall. Just as if Lebía were looking at a very large and transparent egg from the inside out. In the distance, at the far edge of the eggshell, where the blue of the sky darkened, something shimmered like waves.

      On the other side of the transparent eggshell lay a dead Sirin.

      Lebía half-crawled, half-trudged out of the water toward the left bank. She tripped every third step, but eventually came to the place where a shimmering, wave-like barrier stood between her and the dead Sirin. She reached out to touch it, but the Sirin’s face stopped her. Lebía knew her, but she had forgotten the Sirin’s name. Fair-haired, she was before. Not now. Now the gold was tainted with mud and blood. She had had gem-toned wings, like emerald with a light of its own, independent of the sun’s shining. But not now. Now it was as though the Sirin’s wings had wilted with the fall. And her face. Had it been beautiful? Surely it had. The stories were all of one accord—the Sirin were a beautiful race, their women’s faces like statues brought to life by a poet’s imagination.

      How sad that no Sirin ever visited Ghavan, thought Lebía.

      Lebía reeled. The world blinked out of existence, then reasserted itself. She was leaning against the birch again, reaching for the chaga.

      She turned around in a panic, but there was no sign of the eggshell or the dead Sirin.

      Something snapped in her mind, like a remembrance of a dream within a dream.

      Had she ever seen any Sirin? No, surely not. There were no Sirin on Ghavan Isle. There had never been Sirin on Ghavan Isle.

      Mother!

      Lebía turned around, smiling. She was still astounded at how Zabían’s squeaky five-year-old voice could force her to smile, even when she was tired and out of sorts.

      Look! he said, through a torrent of giggles. He held a full bucket of chanterelles, or so he thought they were. Even from this distance, she could see that most of them were poisonous faux-chanterelles. Little foxes, the locals called them.

      She turned back around again, expecting to see… Something. She had forgotten what. Had she seen something there just now? A creature of some kind? Something very sad? No. Just a remembrance of a dream within a dream. She turned back to her baby boy.

      Darling, I think you should let Adelaida check those for you first.

      His entire body sagged, and his eyes looked ready to burst into tears.

      Lebía laughed. We’ll make a mushroom-picker of you yet, my dear.

      That snapping again. She had forgotten something vitally important. But what was it?

      Lebía carried Zabían all the way back home for old times’ sake, with Adelaida tutting quietly behind them. He was getting heavier by the hour, not the day.

      At the threshold of their white-stone cottage—this was truly her home, not the three-story wooden monstrosity on the hill of the Dar—her other two daughters waited. The fourteen-year-old twins Marinka and Kachinka shone in

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