Traitor’s Tome: Death’s Disciple: Book 2, page 1
This book was written, produced and edited in the UK, where some spelling, grammar and word usage will vary from US English.
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No part of this book was written by AI. This project was completely written, edited, and proofread by humans.
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Copyright © 2023 Emma L. Adams
All rights reserved.
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Edited by Sarah Chorn.
Proofread by Patricia Long.
Cover art by Deranged Doctor Design.
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TRAITOR’S TOME
Several weeks have passed since the capital of Laria narrowly escaped destruction at the hands of the god of death and His followers. Former Captain Yala Palathar is attempting to lie low, but the dead no longer rest easily in their graves, and her role in the battle has drawn attention from potential allies and foes alike.
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Niema, too, has been profoundly changed by the choices she made during the battle of Dalathar, and journeying home to the Disciples of Life reveals the devastating consequences of her actions. Niema grapples with her desire to protect Yala’s secrets, but when monsters start appearing in the forest, she fears that she’s brought doom upon her own people.
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When the Disciples of the Flame come to Yala with the news that a dangerous book used by the god of death’s followers has gone missing, Yala is compelled to seek it out to avert further disaster. Her quest takes her to Setemar, home of the Disciples of the Earth, where her path soon crosses with Kelan and the Disciples of the Sky. It isn’t long before Kelan’s alliance with Yala puts him at odds with his fellow Disciples, and the closer Yala treads to the domain of the god of death, the louder Mekan’s voice whispers in her own ear.
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With threats stirring above and below ground, ally is set against ally, and not everyone will survive the calamity that will follow…
CONTENTS
The Story So Far…
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
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Thank you for reading!
Acknowledgments
About the Author
THE STORY SO FAR…
Seven years ago, Captain Yala led a squad of six fellow soldiers and their armoured war drakes as part of Laria’s army’s flight division. During a clash with the rival nation of Rafragoria over possession of an unmanned island, King Tharen, Laria’s monarch, called Yala’s squad to claim the island before their rivals could gain a foothold there. Yala agreed to take on this secret mission before the watchful eyes of the king and his trusted allies the Disciples of the Flame, little suspecting that the island in question would contain an abandoned temple to the god of death, Mekan.
When Yala’s squad landed on the island, they found Rafragoria’s soldiers had already infiltrated the temple and had met their deaths at the claws and teeth of Mekan’s monsters. Their actions ripped open an opening to Mekan’s realm, otherwise known as the Void, and Yala and her squad found themselves fighting for their lives. Yala managed to slay the monstrous void drake and sustained a life-changing stab wound to her leg as a result, while her squad-mate Dalem begged the god of the flames to help them escape the island alive. As a former Disciple of the Flame, Dalem was able to gain the god’s attention, but he paid the price for the destruction of the island with his own life.
When they returned to the mainland, Yala and her surviving squad-mates learned that King Tharen was assassinated by Rafragorian soldiers during their absence and that he told nobody else of the mission he gave her squad. While she’d hoped that her squad-mate’s sacrifice would help her gain the sympathy of the Disciples of the Flame, their leader Superior Datriem refused to believe Yala’s reports and warned her never to share the truth of what they saw on the island with anyone else. Shortly after, the new king disbanded the flight division of the army and Yala and her surviving squad members parted ways.
After years of living in seclusion in the deep jungle, Yala little expected anyone to disturb her early retirement, much less a war drake. The beast turned out to belong to a Disciple of Life called Niema who claimed to have been sent by her Superior to seek out Yala and to deliver a cryptic warning of danger. It emerged that Niema learned of her location from Vanat, Yala’s former squad-mate with whom she’d had a brief romantic entanglement after the war, but Yala’s refusal to leave her home came to an end with the arrival of a group of mercenaries who claimed to have been offered money to eliminate her.
Yala killed the mercenaries with the aid of a Disciple of the Sky, Kelan, who was pursuing them for his own reasons. As her house was destroyed in the process, Yala reluctantly joined forces with Niema to find Vanat and learn who was responsible for sending the mercenaries after her. Following Vanat’s tail to the capital, Yala and Niema once again clashed with Kelan, who revealed that he was sent by his own Superior to investigate the rumours of someone meddling with death magic in the capital and that he discovered that the mercenaries were allegedly working for a mysterious group called the Successors. Suspecting that Niema was also aware of this, Kelan pushed her into revealing that Yala in fact appeared in a vision experienced by the Disciples of Life that convinced them she would be a powerful ally against the rise of Mekan, the god of death.
Shaken by this revelation and suspecting a connection with her experiences on the island, Yala explained to Niema that she and her squad members survived their clash with Mekan’s beast through Dalem’s sacrifice and not because Yala possessed any unique abilities. Niema’s faith refused to relent, not even when they found Vanat’s dead body on the road, murdered by the Successors. Furious at the loss of her friend, Yala parted ways with her companions upon reaching the capital and went to track down her surviving squad members. While Machit was willing to listen to her, Saren refused, while Viam was safely working within the royal palace and Temik’s whereabouts were unknown. Yala warned Machit of the mercenaries’ seeming intention of eliminating all the survivors from their squad and he agreed to help her find the truth about the Successors’ motives.
Yala and the others soon discovered that the Successors had indeed been meddling with death magic, and in the ensuing confrontation, the Successors’ leader Melian revealed her face. Claiming to be a Disciple of Death and a follower of Mekan, Melian attempted to sacrifice Yala and her friends to gain the favour of the god of death in order to overthrow the monarch and claim supremacy. While Machit was killed in the struggle, Yala managed to fend Melian off with the help of Niema, who called upon the war drake using her abilities as a Disciple of Life and ordered it to attack the mercenaries.
In the ensuing chaos, Melian escaped, while Kelan went to rejoin his fellow Disciples of the Sky and met with the unwelcome news that some of them believed Yala to be in league with the Successors herself. It soon transpired that the source of the rumours was none other than the Temple of the Flame, which Melian had infiltrated with the help of Yala’s former squad member Temik. When Yala tried to tell him the truth, Superior Datriem attempted to have Yala captured and sentenced to death.
With two groups of Disciples pursuing them and Melian’s whereabouts unknown, Yala was forced to accept Kelan’s offer to seek out shelter with the Disciples of the Sky. While Superior Sietra believed Yala’s innocence, she also revealed that Melian was right. Anyone who glimpsed Mekan’s realm had the potential to become a Disciple of Death—which thanks to their experiences on the island, included Yala and her squad—whether they acted on that potential or not. As a result, Superior Sietra decided to imprison Yala as a risk factor and sent a team of her own Disciples to the capital to deal with Melian.
Kelan disagreed with his Superior’s choice, but Niema’s horror at Yala’s connection to Mekan led to her turning her back on both of them. With help of some of his fellow Disciples of the Sky, Kelan helped Yala her escape captivity and returned to the capital, but they arrived too late. Temik, seeking revenge on the Disciples of the Flame for their role in his squad-mate’s death on the island, already killed Superior Datriem and drugged the other Disciples of the Flame, leaving the path wide open for Melian to enact her plan to claim supremacy. With the dead swarming the city at her command, Melian was waiting to slay Yala’s war drake and cut her throat in the city square.
Before Yala could bleed out, Niema returned, using the power of the god of life to rescue Yala from the brink of death. During her recovery, Yala reunited with her surviving squad-mates – including Viam, now working at the royal palace, who admitted that she was the one who found the books King Tharen used to learn of the island’s existence and handed them to Temik in the hopes of revealing the truth of what their squad experienced there. After Temik gave the books to Melian instead and enabled her to learn how to contact Mekan, Viam wanted to make amends by helping Yala.
Accepting that the only way to beat Melian was to call upon Mekan herself, Yala followed Viam’s instructions and raised the dead war drake that Melian slew, riding upon its back to interrupt Melian’s attempt to break into the palace and assassinate the king. However, Melian had already opened Mekan’s realm by slaughtering some of Kelan’s fellow Disciples. While Yala managed to kill Melian, she was unable to close the Void and the god of death refused to listen to her. At the last moment, Temik reappeared and gave his own life to the god of the flame in the same way Dalem did, closing Mekan’s realm and ending the slaughter.
As the city made its slow recovery from the devastation of Melian’s attack, Yala decided to stay with her surviving squad-mates to make sure nobody else attempted to follow in Melian’s footsteps. Death’s Disciple ends with Kelan and Niema leaving the city to return to their homes – and with Niema encountering the unexpected sight of the undead war drake sitting at the roadside outside the capital, as if waiting for someone.
PROLOGUE
Niema’s first vision from the god of life came on an ordinary afternoon in the rain-drenched jungle of southern Laria.
Dizziness struck, causing the basket she carried to slip from her hands. The supplies she’d gathered from the nearby village—fruits, nuts, and bread—scattered across the damp earthen path as a sudden clamour of emotions hit her like a thunderclap. Not from her five fellow enclave members and the invisible cord binding them together, but from a terrible fear that had no obvious source and which reminded her of the time she’d run into a wild drake and had simply frozen, unable to utter a sound.
Images of a tall stone building appeared in Niema’s mind, blurred at first, as though washed out by the rain. When she closed her eyes, the stone construction became clearer, as did its surroundings. Thick jungle circled a platform of paving stones, upon which stood a wide stairway leading to the gaping hole in the building that might have once been a door. Everything was age-worn, overgrown, and utterly unfamiliar to her.
What is this place? A memory? Not hers. She’d never seen a building like it, or the worn, ancient staircase…
Or the woman, standing on the stairs, looking directly at her.
Niema’s mouth parted in surprise, but before she could utter a word, the ground tore open, stones cracking as though wrenched apart by a being of impossible strength. From within came the shape of what she might have taken for a giant bird, but wrong, its features twisted and decaying. Feathers dripped from dead flesh, its skeletal wings oozed darkness with each beat, and viscous smoke ballooned outward from the gaping maw that covered the area in front of the stone construction. Revulsion rippled through Niema’s very being. What is that?
Rain splashed down the back of Niema’s tunic, shocking her back to the present. Gasping, she swayed. Those memories weren’t mine. She’d never seen that building before. Nor had she seen that woman. Yet the images were as clear as if they belonged to her.
She gripped the basket reflexively, a possibility tickling at the edges of her mind. She’d heard of other Disciples receiving insight directly from Yalet Herself—a great honour, but a rare one. Rare enough to be unheard of in recent years, at least according to Superior Kralia, but what other explanation was there? Niema had sometimes seen her fellow Disciples’ memories in her dreams, but she’d never seen such an apparition in the waking world.
“Yalet preserve me,” Niema murmured.
Superior Kralia alone was most favoured by the god of life. If anyone would know the truth, it would be her. Pulling herself upright, Niema ran in a zigzagging path towards home, raindrops falling off the branches on either side of her like pebbles. It never occurred to her to doubt what she’d seen. Yalet’s power manifested in every bird, every tree, every fragment of life in the sustaining forest in which Niema made her home—yet that terrible beast she’d seen in the vision had not been one of Yalet’s creations.
Minutes blurred into a single breathless span, and soon, Niema came upon familiar ground and the houses nestled within the trees where her enclave made their homes. She dropped the basket of supplies in front of a startled Hachim and then took off like a bird shaken into flight. When she reached the Superior’s clearing, she skidded to a halt. A monster looked down at her, its sharp teeth a mere finger span from her head.
The reptilian beast perched on claws that were each as long as one of Niema’s forearms; its wings were folded against its back, and teeth protruded from its mouth, stained with dark blood.
Next to the beast stood a figure dressed in a robe woven from flowers and reeds with a simple crown atop her coiled hair. Superior Kralia watched Niema approach, her expression strained with the effort of keeping the beast from escaping her control. She whistled between her red-painted lips, and the war drake growled in response, its claw raking through the soil.
“Niema.” Superior Kralia stepped forward to greet her Disciple. Belatedly Niema fell to her knees in the customary gesture of a Disciple to her Superior, but she found herself unable to drop her gaze from the monster standing at her side. Niema might hold reverence for all Yalet’s creations, but that didn’t mean she was unaware of how easily those claws might rip her open.
“Superior Kralia.” Niema rose to her feet. “Why … why is that creature here?”
Niema had never used her abilities on a beast of that size before, and while its large wings were tucked against its back, its huge form was ill suited to the jungle. When her Superior gave no answer, she asked, “Is … is it to do with that vision?”
Surprise flickered within Superior Kralia’s eyes. “You saw, too?”
“Yes—didn’t everyone?” She’d suspected otherwise, but a weight lifted from Niema’s mind at the knowledge that she hadn’t experienced those terrible images alone.
“No.” Superior Kralia let a moment lapse before speaking again. “Then it has to be you, Niema.”
Niema’s heart skipped. “I don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t expect you do.” Superior Kralia’s mouth pinched, an expression Niema had never seen before. It reminded her, with a jolt, of the way her mother had looked when she’d told Niema she didn’t expect to survive the sickness that had ultimately taken her life.
“What did I see?” Niema whispered. “I-I’ve heard Yalet gifting some Disciples with visions, but I never thought…”
“That was indeed a vision from Yalet Herself.” Superior Kralia extended a hand towards the still, formidable form of the war drake. “This beast was found wandering the eastern coast by another enclave leader. The vision he saw through its eyes caused him much distress, and he contacted the rest of the enclave leaders so that we might seek Yalet’s guidance.”
“You’re saying that beast … showed us the vision?” Niema faltered. “I thought it came from Yalet.”
“Do you forget that Yalet exists in all of nature, even a beast such as this?” Superior Kralia gestured to the war drake’s scaled form. “She guided this creature to our people to warn us of a terrible threat.”
