The Blood Prince by Jeff Wilson - HTML preview

An Innis

Obscured by steady rain and dark evening skies, a cloaked figure quietly moved along the deteriorating causeway.  The tide was out, but substantial portions of the crumbling stone works remained submerged, and the figure, seen from afar, appeared to be an otherworldly apparition, crossing over to the tidal island by walking upon the surface of the sea.

It hesitated upon reaching the island, taking a moment to evaluate the footing.  In that pause, the figure appeared to grow more solid, becoming nothing more than the simple and plainly dressed young man that he was.  His coarse leather boots were entirely soaked through, and with the land before him drenched by the unrelenting weather, the shallow depth of water above the bed of stone and gravel in which he now stood, might well have seemed a preferable surface to the muddy earth along the shoreline.  He was determined to continue onward though, and as the man resumed his stealthy passage, he ignored the dark grey clay collecting on his feet.

Broken walls and left over remnants from the foundations of ancient, ruined buildings lined the shore.  Stones had been pillaged from these structures, but enough remained in places to give cover.  No one lived on this edge of the island.  It was too close to the forests that had grown over a much older civilization, one that had once flourished in a past age throughout the expansive lands to the east, of which this rediscovered island had only been a small part.  The mainland, where all attempts to revive any lasting settlements had ended badly, was a dark wilderness, avoided entirely by the current population living on the island.

The man glanced nervously towards some of the crumbling walls as he travelled, concerned that someone could be watching from concealment.  He could not spare too much of his attention, though.  In the near darkness, it took considerable concentration to hold to the little used trail he was following.  Occasionally, paved stones broke to the surface, but before long the path would revert back to its usual condition, which was nothing more than a narrow band of loosely packed mud.  The intermittent exceptional areas, which suggested that the trail might once have been a well maintained roadway, were but tired echoes of a time now long forgotten.

The unmaintained path continued on around the southern edge of the island, skirting its central feature, a steeply sloping uplift of rock and earth, which extended to the north before it ended in a precipitous drop.   A palatial stone structure, more an enormous home than a castle or fortress, crowned the peak of the mountain.

Over the course the evening the man passed by a few damaged buildings, and a single isolated cottage, but he saw little else until he arrived at the top of a hill near the edges of a settlement on the western edge of the island.  He could vaguely see from here, the position of the setting sun, and in the diminishing light that it imparted across the turbulent sky, he surveyed a continuous collection of buildings built upon a graduated slope, which rose up from the western shoreline, climbing in stages to the island’s mountainous peak.  Several broad structures dominated the shore beside two stone piers, which projected straight out into the waters beyond the island.  A number of other large buildings dotted the curving paths that headed up the mountain.

Less impressive dwellings haphazardly crowded the intervening areas.  These smaller homes looked recently built and poorly constructed.  Most of them, judging by their appearance, had been recently abandoned and were rapidly falling apart.   The buildings that were inhabited could easily be differentiated from the others, by the light that escaped through the cracks in their shuttered windows, which were all closed tight against the ongoing storm.

Because of the late hour and the poor weather, the streets were empty and the cloaked figure met no other travelers on his way through the town.  Eventually, as he neared the shoreline, he found himself on a wide, open street in what appeared to be the town’s commercial section.  It was lined with shops and other business establishments, but only a handful showed signs of use, and only one of what had once been several large inns and taverns, remained open.  A sign board, affixed beneath the overhanging second floor of the inn, displayed a carved and decorated image of a tarnished sword hilt.

Stepping onto the porch of the inn, he tried to find a place to scrape his boots, but there wasn’t a section of the paving that was free of mud.  It took some determined digging with the toe of his boot to expose the top of the stone surface that lay buried beneath the grime in the entryway.  Giving up, he took a quick look inside the establishment, and saw that his efforts had been pointless.  The floors were already covered in layers of wet earth and old dirt throughout.  There was more filth trailing out than there was being tracked in.

Upon entering, he was assaulted by a collection of odors: mold, tobacco smoke, and alcohol, all mixed in with the pungent smell of rendered animal fat.  None of these, taken alone, would have been terrible, and a couple would even have been quite welcoming, but when experienced in combination, it was very unpleasant.  Two drinking rooms were situated to his left, one empty and the other occupied by a group of ragged looking men immersed in a game of dice.  They gambled with piles of pale white oblong shells that were used for money.   He watched them for a moment, observing their game as one of the men replenished his dwindling pile or shells, pulling more of them a couple at a time, from a string that was secured to his belt and threaded into a pouch at his side.

The entrance to a kitchen could be seen at the back of the inn, and the rest of the lower floor was taken up by the large hearth hall.  Men, some of them young and others old, were conversing with each other as they relaxed around the fireplace.  If any of the men took an interest in the stranger and his late evening arrival, they gave no outward indication.  He lowered the hood of his cloak, unfastened a brass clasp, and then removed the woolen overcoat from where it hung upon his shoulders, and shook it free of the beads of water that had collected on its surface.  A number of small emblems pinned along the edge of the cloak, disappeared into the folds of the damp cloth as he arranged and neatly divided it over his arm.  He stood for a moment in the doorway, a dimly lit figure against the backdrop of the darkened rain soaked street.  The doorframe serving as reference, measured him a man of a less than average height, slender to a degree, but physically strong in appearance.

He took deliberate steps inside, and made his way to the back of the inn where he draped his cloak over a chair in a dark corner of the hearth hall.  A couple of the silver emblems, which were pinned upon the coat, made a muffled metallic sound as they struck against the others, serving as an unintentional but audible claim being made to the table he had selected.

The stranger had intense grey eyes, which were the color of spent charcoal, and a dark sun weathered complexion.  His calm resolute expression carried echoes of a hardness that came from defeat, causing him to seem older and possessed of more experience than his otherwise youthful appearance would have suggested.  Sweeping stiff fingers through his dark damp hair, he eased himself into a chair, and took silent stock of the interior surroundings.  Lacking any semblance of appropriately deferential behavior, he began to study the other men in the room.

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This is an excerpt from the first chapter of, The Sigil Blade, a full length novel which will be published in early spring 2015.  You can discover more on my website JeffWilsonBooks.com where you will find a sample of the entire first chapter of The Sigil Blade.

Thank you for reading!

Jeff Wilson