The Book of Fate’s Desire by Ryan S. Hampton

Title: The Book of Fate’s Desire
Author: Ryan S. Hampton
Publisher: Milham Books
ISBN: 979-8988552802
eBook ISBN: 978-1088221891
Genre: Fantasy, Action/Adventure,
Availability: Paperback or eBook
Language: ‎ English
Paperback: 430 pages
Item Weight: 1.39 pounds
Dimensions:
6 x 0.96 x 9 inches

 

Explore Authors Mini Review:

“A powerful sorcerer-king discovers a magical book, one that talks and will help his people prepare for the upcoming war in this epic fantasy adventure.” ★★★★★ – Explore Authors Magazine

Explore Authors Review:

“The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom, for we are willing to risk pain to make a boring life interesting.” – Peter Kreeft

Varz, a powerful and glorious nation, and its leader Dranus, a powerful sorcerer-king, share a problem that many spartan-like nations deal with during times of peace, and that’s stagnation. However, after a failed assassination attempt, a strange book emerges to awaken a sleeping foe in Ryan S. Hampton’s The Book of Fate’s Desire.  (Full Review Here)

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About the Book:

First Movement

“It is an inescapable truth that mortals must strive relentlessly to meet their Fate, and yet in fear of what it may bring, seek to avoid its fulfillment. It is an exceedingly rare occurrence when they are successful at both.”

-King Baklar of Varz

Chapter 1

The King of Varz

 

They are distinctive, the eyes of a sorcerer. Their sclerae are fully black, the irises purest white.

These are the eyes of the citizens of the Varz nation, for they are sorcerers to the last.

Two such eyes stared, unfocused, at a legion of armored men and women from within a face of gaunt pallor.

“Your assessment, my king?” A gruff, aged voice stirred the eyes and they lolled, as if awoken from a deep sleep.

“Assessment? What am I assessing today?” King Dranus VIII turned his head from side to side, gathering himself. Orbs of haloed night quickly scanned the helmeted faces of his troops arrayed in polished armor of painted metal, each color corresponding to their branch and each tint demarcating their division. Among this kaleidoscope of martial finery, Dranus lingered on the gray space that existed between the countless ranks.

“Have they always been this dull, General?” His gaze went skyward to gathering storm clouds where the gray of the dirt was reflected in the heavens.

“Dull, my king?” The old general raised a brow and shifted uneasily in his saddle. He wiped his wrinkled forehead more out of habit than anything.

“Maybe it’s the…clouds…” The king said to no one in particular. “I hate clouds.”

“With respect, my king, the assessment must—.”

“If it rains, Armodus, I swear on my father’s grave…!” Dranus’s mounting fury was cut short by a staccato drip, drip, drip thumping as if from within his skull. The feeling of trickling moisture on his scalp made him cringe, his teeth grinding. “Why are we out in this, Armodus?” he asked through clenched jaw.

“The Lunar Assessment, King Dranus. You may not like it, but it is your duty, I’m afraid.” General Armodus brushed a growing number of raindrops from the white stubble that topped his head.

Dranus slumped in his saddle as a rider approached from behind him bearing a long pole that stretched flat like rolled out dough at the wielder’s behest. The light tin shield protected the king, and only the king, from the rain. Dranus’s frown turned sideways, his best impression of a smile.

“King Roboris the Thick-Hearted thought it pertinent, Dranus. You should honor his wishes and take this seriously,” a new voice called from behind him.

The young king did not need to turn to know this reprimand came from the aging lips of Commander Ven. Were it another so insolent as to refer to him by name alone, they would already have been dead, but Ven…he did not despise her so much as the rest. He hung his head, turning black eyes first to his general and then to his venerated commander before kicking his heels vengefully into his mount’s sides.

“My father was a fool…wasting my time with this nonsense…time enough for a useless army but not a moment for…” Dranus muttered beneath his breath, his painted purple and black lips moving only enough that he might hear his own words and be self-vindicated.

He raised his head high as he came close to the statuesque rank and file. The constant pitter-patter that had resumed on his head made him steam in the heat of the afternoon while his shield-bearer caught up with panic in his eyes.

Dranus cast his eyes down before him to peer at the officer leading the soldiers. The little man shook. Was he cold? In this unseasonable heat? Baffling.

Irrelevant, but baffling.

“M…My king, we are ready for your assessment!” the officer shouted. Why did they always shout? Another of his father’s ludicrous decrees?

“Let us be done with it.” The king’s lethargy made the climb down from his saddle harder than it should have been. The clouds themselves could have been balanced on his shoulders for all that he struggled.

A peculiar rug, designed in a time long before Dranus’s, was rolled out in front of him. Thus, he tread along a seemingly lush carpet that held firm its form despite the loose, wet mud beneath it. In fact, the rug didn’t so much as touch the mud beneath through ages-old sorcery. A royal trinket devised to keep his boots clean as so many others squished unpleasantly about him. The wetness of footsteps, the plink-plink-plink of a midday drizzle on his tin rain-shield; it was enough to drive a king to madness.

He stopped before a tall soldier, his heels clicking together as he turned to face the frozen image of a man. He could have been asleep for all the king knew. Sleeping with his eyes open! That would have been a good skill for a father to teach his son.

His face contorted to the bitter taste the thought left in his mouth.

Dranus continued down the line step by step, balancing for a moment on one foot as he thought he spotted movement in the ranks and froze, as if to mimic them. He did not waver or teeter on the floating fabric, though this was not for the surface being firm or stable, but that the king’s understanding that he should not fall if he did not believe it possible was enough to suspend this as a version of reality for a few brief moments.

It was by a similar twisting in logic that the varying colors of the soldiers’ armor turned a uniform blue to his eyes and his eyes alone. He stood still, his left foot mid-step, waiting for someone to move, begging what forces that might be to give him an outlet for his flickering rage.

After a few minutes in this realm of blue dolls standing amidst a gray backdrop, a flicker of red appeared two columns forward and eight rows back. A knee had moved to the side and the slight creaking sound emitted a mist of orange emanating from the joint. A serpent’s grin took over the king’s countenance.

Dranus moved with hurried steps, his vision returned to normal, towards the doomed man. Guards sprinted through the mud, kicking the stuff up on the soldiers but always in the direction away from the King of Varz himself. The ever-extending rug had a limited range but more importantly, it had to be guided. So it was that they hurried about, trying to predict the path their king would take and allowing for multiple possibilities. Oh how they scurried, like mice before the mighty hawk.

He stopped parallel to the man he had spotted and turned on his heel.

“Your name?” The king asked in a sweet, tender voice. “No. Your rank, if you please,” the mockery continued.

“No, no never mind.” Dranus paced back and forth by the soldier and then stopped to clear his throat. “Nameless, rankless, bodiless suit of armor,” he addressed the man, “if you were to describe the Varz army in a single word, what word would you choose?” Dranus held black leather gloves to his ear, his thumb cusped so that he would not miss a word.

The young soldier’s quivering eyes looked first to his commanding officer and then to the King of Varz’s before darting back to look straight ahead. Of course the young man understood his predicament and it was because of that understanding that he would, doubtless, meet the end he imagined.

“Apologies Mr. Armor, I must have missed it. In one word, the Varz army?” He leaned closer towards the boy whose lip quivered. He relished that look of terror in the soldier’s sorcerous eyes. He could see the thoughts racing across the boy’s cheeks! Think! Say a sentence! A word! A letter! A few last words if nothing else!

“V…” the soldier started, but he would get only the letter before the king cut in.

“In-con-se-quen-tial.” Every individual syllable dripped from the king’s painted lips like the rain that clattered on a thousand polished helms. “Inconsequential,” he repeated. “So why do we continue this charade? Why the Lunar Assessment each time the moon passes through a phase? Do you know?” He moved down the line, inquiring into each young face. “Do you? Or you? Please enlighten me.” As the fear became almost an aura as real as the light fog that rose from the mud, a strong, unnamable feeling welled in his gut for a moment, but vanished as quickly as it had come.

He stopped and turned back the way he had come, tapping his chin. The edges of his lips turned down once more. “Discipline.” His mouth almost touched the boy’s nose as he spoke the word into the mover’s face, letting him feel his warm breath, giving him at least that honor.

Without another word Dranus lifted his right hand, examining his pointer finger carefully. He considered it and its many properties, some of which it had not had mere moments before. “Hmmm…” he tilted his head as the finger came to rest on the soldier’s shoulder then traced down his arm. He wondered, momentarily, if his choice were fitting for a soldier, but hardly had the attention to finish the thought before he made the slightest pinch about the gauntleted wrist of his victim. With a crunch that shattered the stillness, the armor folded and gave way so that ragged steel edges pressed like needles into the boy’s skin. Dranus continued back up, tapping at points along the way, and everywhere that he tapped the armor crumpled like paper thought it stabbed like steel until blood dripped out of the soldier’s swollen glove.

To his credit, the boy did not so much as wince. He had some talent at sorcery, the king suspected. Perhaps this punishment would suffice.

“General,” Dranus began, speaking over his shoulder, “what did my father decree as punishment for moving out of turn at the Lunar Assessment?” His apparent curiosity belied the absolute knowledge the king held of Varz’s laws, both old and new.

“Expulsion, my king.” Armodus was ever one to show mercy, even if that mercy was a well-placed euphemism.

“Expulsion,” Dranus repeated to himself. On the one hand, he was obligated to obey the laws of Varz as were all her citizenry. On the other hand, he was presented with reason enough to spite his deceased progenitor. But this quandary, too, soon bored the King of Varz and his finger moved swiftly to the boy’s head, the horror peaking in his eyes.

“Expulsion it is.” His finger tapped once, altering the properties of the helm it touched, and his palm followed suit, a subtle pat that could as easily have been a mother’s loving grace upon her oft-forgotten son’s head. The body crumpled into the mud as Dranus turned to leave the scene.

Three-hundred and sixty-two thousand, five hundred and eighty-one rain drops had fallen within earshot since the first drips hit his head. The number came to him from some habit he had developed as a child; less so by counting, more so by sorcery he had over-practiced, alone, throughout his childhood.

Dranus hated the rain.

The king mounted his horse once more and rode back towards Armodus and Ven.

“Appropriately handled, my king,” they white-haired general spoke first.

“I believe the lesson was well received,” Ven echoed with a wry smile.

The King of Varz moved once more into line with his mounted retinue.

“Well,” he growled, “I do so love the Lunar Assessment.”

Then, without another word, he headed towards his castle to change into dry clothes. He had survived the droll of the Lunar Assessment where at least he could ‘expel’ those that bothered him too much. Where he headed next was the realm of the truly wicked: he must hold court.

*          *          *

“Inconsequential,” the king said in a mockery of the day’s earlier discussion. His voice echoed through the lavishly decorated throne room of his castle. Here were the trophies of a thousand years of Varz conquest: the original golden crown of Myrendel, the last barrel of a lost Shieran brandy, a four-foot tall hour glass filled with Urhyllian blue sand that was said to take over a hundred years underground in cavernous lakes to attain its signature color. These trinkets stood alone or on mounting platforms between massive violet-tinted windows that stretched almost from floor to ceiling that were more like stone than a non-sorcerer might think possible. These lined the entire eastern wall of the throne room and with every strike of lightning from the storm painted the gathered nobles in malicious purple light.

“My king?” One of these nobles quivered in his overflowing robes, his fat cheeks reddening at the suggestion. “The army of Varz has been feared for a thousand years.”

Dranus sat at the northern end of the room on a massive dais of polished black marble in a throne of midnight obsidian that was veined by streaks of gold and silver and studded with small precious gems to resemble the heavens on an empty moon. It was a gaudy thing to try and recreate the splendor of a million stars and the dust that flitted between them, but in Varz there were few ambitions too great.

From the rather uncomfortable solid throne, Dranus imagined the noble below as a hog, squealing for his slop and the vision raised his mood briefly. Compared to these nobles, Dranus was the figure of perfect fitness, and though his own skin seemed a sickly pale it was practically bronze compared to his lunar court, their hair righteous black to the last. Were it not for the duties of a king, Dranus might share their complexion, if not their skill-less frame.

“General Armodus,” the king waved his hand, ivory armored sleeves of off-white shifting in his wake, “when was the last time the Varz army waged war?” Dranus slouched in his throne, sliding this way and that, trying to get comfortable to no avail.

“In the thirty-second year of the rule of King Vulcan the Rock, my king, amidst the Night Season at the head of Urhyll.” The old general recited from memory; so complete was his knowledge.

“And the time that has passed since?” Dranus tilted his head subtly, trying to move the heavy black iron crown on his head to itch a spot near his right ear. Without thought he silently mouthed the words ‘two-hundred and twelve years, eight moons, and seven days.’

“Two-hundred and twelve years, eight moons, and seven days.” Armodus’s voice boomed through the quiet hall.

Some of the nobles snickered while most continued staring at their fingernails, feeling the size of their guts, or otherwise dreaming of more leisurely endeavors. They were decrepit wastes of space and yet, weren’t they all?

The lord who had previously spoken up retreated a few steps from the dais ashamed and found his place in the rows of nobles closed. With his spiral hog’s tail between his legs, he walked to the back of the chamber.

“In. Con. Se… Quential.” He repeated, being interrupted by a crack of thunder from the raging storm. There was an unpleasant moisture still lingering in the air and the king wanted nothing more than to be done with this day. “Anything else?”

The Barons and Lords of Varz looked up, anticipating their release from the court after so many hours of torrid rituals and tired scripts.

“Anything?” Dranus looked about him. In his mind the men and women of his court shifted into animals. A rat, a beetle, a hen, a boar, the bizarrely feathered cockatrice of the western coast. “Wonderful. Dismissed.”

The king stayed seated as the others trudged out of the throne room and back towards their towers, their homes, and their huddled excuses for lives.

What had happened? Had he misread the words of the Forbidden Texts? Every tome in the King’s Library depicted blood in the teeth of kings and nobles with claws, even a child without the Eyes started learning the sword before he could properly speak! If only he could ask Ven. Her family’s histories were the best kept, but to share with her the secrets of the Texts would be to dig her grave…or at least to order it dug. Their sorcery was great and their technologies unmatched, but the pictures of his texts were painted in vibrant cerulean and magenta! In goldenrod and viridian! In shimmering crimson red! And yet his life felt so gray and black. It was the mud he dared not trample through or the cold unfeeling obsidian of his throne. Varz was truly great in many ways, but had it not been greater? Couldn’t he, as king, be greater?

His back stiffened in his throne.

The world was moldable then, as it remained by ways of sorcery, but altogether different from the current world, he thought. It must still be now, that was obvious. But then why was it not molded? Or was it? Had the world simply changed around the people of Varz?

No. He would not accept that. A king had his pride; he would not defer responsibility to the whims of time. Who would mold the world to shape it to Varz liking if not he?

Dranus’s fingers clenched the smooth arms of his throne as he grit his teeth.

But how? What could he do? After all, Dranus was no great king. Not even as loved as his good-for-nothing father.

All that rage and anger that should have driven him to madness or to shed his king’s robes and lash out at the symbols that trapped him in this title, mounted to an impressive sigh that escaped tired lips. Such emotions were, at best, inconsequential.

The rain intensified. Without seeing the flashes of lightning, he heard distant thunder.

The hall was empty save for his attendants and the lingering General. It was quiet, peaceful even. He could sit there for a while longer, he thought. He pressed his fingers to the slanted V etched into his right cheek; Queen Luna the Mad’s idea, if he recalled correctly. He always did. The feeling of the rough skin comforted him for a reason beyond his conscious mind. Deep inside he yearned for some change to come about, but he had neither the energy nor the attention necessary to effect that change.

And so sat the King of Varz, echoing the distant thunder beneath his breath like a dog defending its home from the wind. His endeavor, perhaps, was equally pointless. How long had it been since he’d done something with a point? How long since Varz had? Two-hundred and twelve years, eight moons, and seven days?

A loud crash of thunder like steel on steel broke his train of thought, causing him to wince. The General silently but urgently left the room.

He hated the rain. At times he hated thunder less, at times more.

Another clash of violent sound, and shouting. Had the storm sundered a home? Struck the castle itself?

His attendants scattered to the side chambers; they were not meant as guards. Then again, why would the King of Varz need guards?

Once more: a clash and shouting.

Dranus moved to the edge of his throne, leaning as far forward as he dared without falling onto the steps of the dais. He struggled to hear a word break through the ruckus, the cacophonous clash of…what was it? Steel and bronze? Silver plating?

“Intruder!” The single dying shout of a woman’s pain-stricken breath came to him, and his cheeks curled upwards as his suspicions gained footing.

It was closer then. Still closer. He was practically balancing his weight on the balls of his feet. His mind was racing with hopes that Armodus had been dodged and the intruder’s way unbarred. His heart pounded heavily in his chest.

“How long has it been, I wonder,” he spoke aloud, “since someone was foolish enough to challenge a king of Varz?” King Dranus’s eyes narrowed, and his mind delighted in the perusal of his magical arsenal which might soon find some use for a change.

Finally, something new.

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