Page 1 of The Sundered Blade

PROLOGUE

It was exactly the kind of day Captain Voorley liked best—warm and sunny, but not too bright, with an assortment of fluffy white clouds casting shadows on the water and a brisk wind to fill the sails. TheCrimson Ladywas but two days off shore and soon to be bearing in a westerly direction, her destination the trading ports of Katal. The clipper’s hold was filled with grain, fabric, crates of dried herbs, and several dozen bushels of walnuts—an expensive delicacy in the desert kingdom.

The captain expected to turn a neat profit and—with fair weather—be back in port in little more than a month. He’d been promised a bonus if this trip proved to be successful, and was but six months or so from having saved enough to purchase his own ship.

A smile creased his bearded lips as he considered the glorious vision. Her name would beMarlen’s Dream, and she would be fast and sleek—designed to outrun the competition. He would have the fastest ship on the western trade route, and no one…

“Sails to the south, Captain!” the lookout in the crow’s nest called down, and Voorley abandoned his pleasant daydreams with a regretful sigh.

All in good time.

“Merchants?” he called back up. It had been many years since privateers prowled the waters so close to the Abreian coast, but theLadywas fast and nimble, and well able to outpace a larger ship laden with crew and heavy guns.

“Frigates,” the sailor replied, his spyglass trained on the still distant ships. “Three of ‘em with guns, and a fourth with empty ports. Riding low in the water, bearing north by northwest.”

Coming from the south, they were likely to be Zulleri, but Zulleri traders tended to use faster ships, and they did not sail into Abreian harbors with a full military escort.

It was just as well to be wary. Their own path led dead west, so they could add a bit more sail and be out of the way shortly. Unless the unknown vessels chose to give chase—in which case their purpose would be obvious—but the escort formation seemed unlikely to belong to privateers.

Captain Voorley turned to his quartermaster, intending to give the order to increase sail. But the man had gone ashen beneath his tan, and his mouth hung open as he gazed not out across the water, but up.

“Captain!” The lookout’s scream echoed with shock, terror, and warning. Every eye turned up just as a gargantuan winged shape plummeted from the clouds, swooped low, and snatched the man off the crow’s nest with wickedly fanged jaws.

The dragon hovered for a moment, beating the air with wide, leathery wings. Then, with a quick twist of his serpentine neck, he threw the luckless man skyward, snapped once more, and… The sailor was gone.

There was no escape. Captain Voorley knew this as surely as he knew how to read the wind and the waves, but he screamed at his crew anyway, and they lurched into motion, as if by some miracle they might manage to avoid this unlikely death that had fallen from the sky.

At first, the creature merely watched as they scrambled to adjust the sails and alter course and pretend there was a chance they could get away.

And as the sailors worked at a frenzied pace, each with the skill and discipline of hard-won experience, the captain realized that he had never been more proud.

Turning his gaze to the hovering serpent, he prepared to spit his defiance into the creature’s face, but something odd caught his eye.

A harness.

As the monster finally turned in the air, descending towards the doomed ship, the captain saw a human figure clinging to its back.

“What in the name of all…”

His final words ended in a scream as flames engulfed the quarterdeck.

Within less than an hour, the last of theCrimson Ladysank beneath the waves, and there was no one to mark her passing but the fish.

CHAPTER1

Prince Vaniell of Garimore plucked at a loose string on the edge of his sleeve and asked himself for perhaps the millionth time where he had first gone wrong.

His intentions had been entirely good. Well,mostlygood.

After all, someone had to be responsible for determining the identity of the mage who’d stolen his father’s throne, and once that was done, someone had to stop that same mage from destroying the world.

But after those two simple tasks were finally complete, Vaniell had always imagined himself running away. Leaving all of those pesky responsibilities behind and studying enchanting in a place where there was nothing to remind him of his family history. Where his identity could be safely concealed and no one would ask him to save anything ever again.

He’d managed the first, but that was when everything started to fall apart.

“And how certain are you that your contact received your message?”

The deep, rumbling voice jolted him out of his thoughts and back to the present. Back to the creaking, uneven deck of the ramshackle ferry making its ponderous, lurching way across the narrow gulf that separated the Irian peninsula from Garimore.

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