Ambition and Alavidha Read online

  AMBITION AND ALAVIDHA

  Candy Rae

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  SMASHWORDS EDITION

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  Ambition and Alavidha

  Copyright © 2011 Candy Rae

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead; is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Ambition and Alavidha is dedicated to Nancy, my mother and my friend.

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  Artwork Copyright © 2011 Jennifer Johnson

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  AMBITION AND ALAVIDHA

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  PROLOGUE

  It lay on the shelf.

  It was dusty.

  It was inanimate.

  It was inert.

  It didn’t know how dangerous it was. It had been manufactured, not to hurt, but for the good of all.

  It could never realise that its very existence would cause such concern and would lead to a crisis; caused by its existence and the ambition of one man.

  Few ever knew of this crisis, few ever will, because the crisis emerged at a time of great change on Planet Wolf, during a time when the planet changed again and forever.

  * * * * *

  -1-

  AL 648

  THE OUTSKIRTS OF TALASTOWN – DAGAN - THE WESTERN NORTHERN CONTINENT

  Hans and his Lind Davanya were on a visit to see Hans’s stepfather; that was what Hans called Niaill but that wasn’t, of course, entirely accurate. Niaill was his adoptive father, the man who had when serving in the mountains of Argyll, saved him from a band of bandits. Hans had been thirteen at the time.

  Niaill and Taraya had later served in the capacity of 21C Vada. They were retired now and had been for a number of years.

  Hans and Davanya were still serving vadeln in the Vada, having attained the rank of Ryzcka of the Eighteenth Ryzck some years before this visit.

  “Good to see you Hans,” rasped Niaill, his voice cracking with effort, “such a long way.”

  “No distance is too far to see you Father,” answered Hans in a voice meant to cheer but the distress on his face belying his words. Thank the Lai I got here in time.

  : Yes : Davanya, Hans’s Lind ‘said’ in his mind : Taraya too, she is very weak :

  Hans wondered which of the two would pass on to the Blue Pastures first, it would be, he rather thought, instantaneous. Neither Taraya nor Niaill had hearts strong enough to bear the shock of their life-partner’s departure.

  : Does it matter? : asked Davanya in a ‘voice’ both gentle and sad : one does not wish to live beyond the other anyway. We vadeln all know this. It is a part of the bond we share :

  Hans knew it too. He sat down on the bed beside his father’s wasted body and took hold of the knurled and skeletal hand; it was so thin he could see the veins.

  “We got here as soon as we could. Haru sent word.”

  Niaill smiled. His Lind, Taraya might be his mind-mate, his life-mate, his friend but Haru the Lai ran her a close second. Hans noted that Niaill’s face was stark white, bloodless, the only colour two reddish spots heightening his cheeks.

  He wants to go.

  Niaill’s other hand was lying over the bedside, towards Taraya who was sleeping on the walda mattress divan set close to his bed.

  Her breathing, like Niaill’s, was laboured as she fought to stay alive long enough to stay with her Niaill during his last bells of life, their last bells together.

  “Father,” added Hans, “I love you. You’ve always been there for me, ever since that day you and Taraya rescued me and took me back with you to Vada. Remember?”

  “Best thing I ever did,” Niaill whispered, looked at Hans out of rheumy eyes. They lingered for a moment then his head turned once more towards Taraya.

  Hans rambled on, talking about his first tendays, then months at Vada, of how he had met and vadeln-paired with Davanya, that same day as the Ryzcks had run out to meet the fearsome Dglai in battle. Of the day when Niaill and Taraya had returned, when so many had not, the day when Niaill’s parenting proper had begun, the beginning of the years of guidance and mentoring, of fathering. It had continued until Niaill and Taraya, retiring from Vada service, had left for the continent of Dagan, to spend what years remained to them with their friend Haru the Lai.

  And contact had never really been severed. The Lind were telepathic and never a tenday had passed without some sort of contact between them, at least until recent months, when Taraya had become too weak to form the telepathic link.

  Now at last the time of final severance was apaw. Niaill and Taraya were dying. There was and never had been a cure for old age.

  Hans stopped talking and sat by the bed, holding Niaill’s hand and listening to his breathing.

  Niaill began whispering to himself and Hans leant closer to listen. It was one word, repeated over and over again.

  Core?

  Hans was mystified.

  Core of what?

  “What is it Father? What is it you are trying to say?”

  “Shouldn’t have moved it,” Niaill fretted.

  He didn’t speak again, lapsing into an unconscious stupor.

  * * * * *

  Taraya died first. One moment Hans could hear her laboured breathing, almost exactly synchronised with Niaill’s, the next, nothing.

  Niaill took a breath in and out, then another. There was no third. Hans leant over to close his eyes.

  He glanced at Davanya.

  : That’s it then, we’re on our own now. We’ll be retiring from the Vada too, one day soon. I’d always thought we might join them here in Dagan, thought we’d have a few more years :

  : We can still come here. You know this. Haru is growing old too. He might like the son of his friend to keep him company :

  “We might at that,” answered Hans aloud, warming to the idea. “I wonder what it’s like living for hundreds of years? He must have said farewells to many friends during that time. Niaill used to say that Haru actually knew the Tara and Kolyei.”

  “He did. Niaill and Taraya will lie sleeping in fine company. Tara and Kolyei’s bones lie within a small copse of trees not far from Haru’s daga. We will ask if Niaill and Taraya may join them.”

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  AL 654

  ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF TALASTOWN – DAGAN - THE WESTERN NORTHERN CONTINENT

  Six years had passed since the day when Niaill and Taraya had been interred close to where Tara and Kolyei, the first human and Lind to life-bond and mind-bond lay at rest. Hans and Davanya were living in the daga which had belonged to Niaill and Taraya. They had retired from the Vada, the previous summer, at the end of the season of rhedhrehl, the word being Lindish for summer.

  Now Hans was bored, bored and more than bored. From an active, often dangerous life serving with Davanya in the Vada, patrolling the coastlines (against sea-pirate attacks), patrolling in the northern mountains (where the gtran and the wral lived and who thought that anything walking on two legs or four was legitimate prey), or simply honing his weapons skill-set, he had become, as he com
plained at least a half dozen times every day, little more than a couch-potato.

  : And what exactly is a couch-potato? : Davanya asked with an exasperated amount of asperity in her telepathic ‘voice’ tone. She wasn’t finding retirement boring. She was enjoying her days, running and hunting in the nearby woods, or lian and meeting those Lind and Larg domiciled on the continent. Sometimes she spent her day just relaxing in the sunshine, enjoying the scenery, so different from what she knew from the rtathlians of her birth-pack, watching sunsets and sunrises cater-pulling up and down over the mountains and listening to stories of times past.

  : Never mind : snapped Hans, as usual these days, in no good humour.

  Davanya ignored his show of temper.

  : You need something to keep you occupied : she decided.

  : And what may I ask do you have in mind? : he queried, with a consummate lack of manners.

  : Write : was her simple suggestion : write about what has happened during our lives, about what is to be as one with me :

  Now, why hadn’t he thought of that? Probably because; if he was honest with himself; because of the two of them it was Davanya who had the more imagination; who was the more introspective.

  “No-one will ever read it,” he said aloud.

  “Does that really matter? But it is important that what has happened be recorded lest it be forgotten. Please Hans, do it, do it for me.”

  And what could Hans say after that? There was little he would consciously refuse to do for Davanya.

  He sighed and reached out for pen, ink and paper.

  “Where do I start?”

  “At the beginning of course. Now hurry up and get some of these squiggles you call words down on that paper and later we can go see Haru, tell him what we have been doing.”

  : I would like that : he dipped the pen into the ink : perhaps Haru might even tell me some stories I could include :

  Although not yet excited about the task Davanya had set him, he was finding himself pleasantly interested.

  He began to write.

  Davanya laid her wise old head down on to her paws and closed her eyes. She was having difficulty stopping her face from breaking into a grin which would be a dead giveaway. Sometimes Hans had to be manipulated into coming to the correct decisions. Another to me, she thought as she drifted into sleep, lulled by the scratching of nib on paper.

  However, Hans hadn’t been as preoccupied as she had thought.

  : Are we keeping score? : she ‘heard’ his amused comment as sleep took hold.

  * * * * *

  As time went on, Hans stopped feeling bored with life. He was far too busy.

  Hans wrote then wrote some more, filling page after page with a mix of his and Davanya’s life-stories, explaining in his own words, the events which had occurred during their life-times and some of their thoughts and dreams for the future. He wrote many paragraphs about Niaill and Taraya and about the Dglai War and the aftermath.

  Davanya sometimes wished she had thought of another pastime to keep him busy, so preoccupied had her vadeln become with getting the words (Davanya still called them squiggles) down, but not often. There were still plenty of bells in the day for them to do things together. All she had ever wanted was for him to be happy.

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  AL 665

  TALASTOWN - DAGAN AND BEYOND

  Twelve years later, when Hans and Davanya passed on to the Blue Pastures in their turn, his diaries lay untouched for some time; in the corner of their empty daga, a well built log cabin a mile or two south of Talastown.

  One day, in AL 674, a human family moved into the cabin, cleared out what they found there and sold the pile to a passing merchant for eleven pennies. Hidden among the bundle were the diaries.

  They weren’t valuable in themselves, those tattered books filled with the spiky handwriting of Hans and the merchant wondered if there was any point in keeping them at all. However, there was ample space in his wagon so he tossed them inside. He took ship for what he called ‘the mainland’, the usual description for the larger northern continent on which sat the countries of Argyll, Vadath and the Rtathlians of the Lind.

  As with the nature of hard-to-sell goods they travelled with the merchant for a considerable time until at last, in a small town in the southerly part of Argyll the merchant found a buyer, selling them for a florin, a minimal profit and forgot all about them.

  They passed through various hands during the next few years; sometimes the purchaser read them but more often than not they were sold on unopened.

  In AL 704, another merchant traded a mardinare bauble for the battered diaries in a flea market, on the outskirts of Port Lutterell in Argyll. He originated from the Duchy of Duchesne in the southern Kingdom of Murdoch and his Duke was a learned and erudite man who was interested in history and all things pertaining to the past.

  Wrapped in oilskin, the diaries began their journey south to Duchesne by ship and were acquired there by a Duke William Duchesne who read them from cover to cover.

  “Very interesting indeed,” said the Duke to himself when he reached half-way through the final diary, “I wonder …”

  Long did Duke William wonder about the information he had gleaned from the diaries of Hans.

  Duke William was a clever man, he put two and two together and made four of it but he was also a very busy one and did not have the time to investigate. He went to his grave with his questions unanswered. He did however, put some notes he had made into the relevant diary before he put them away on top of one of the higher library shelves.

  There they would have lain forever and a day, unopened, unread, except for mischance and an ambitious visiting future king who bored and restless, started to look for something interesting to read.

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  -2-

  AL 804

  THE ISLAND KINGDOM OF LEITHE – THE GREAT EASTERN SEA

  With grim intent, King Cadan of Leithe studied the paper that lay on the hardwood desk in front of him, satisfaction on his narrow face. Six children, four boys and two girls, and all married advantageously into the most important royal and ducal houses of what he liked to call ‘his sphere of influence’. It was quite an achievement if he did say so himself. Prince Catar, his heir, had married the eldest daughter of the self-styled ‘King’ of R’sair. Prince Lars, the second son (the one to spare) was married into the family of the rulers of the Eastern Isles. His youngest, Rand had also married a girl from that area, to the daughter of the Duke of the Western Isles. These two last were important marriages as both these western and the eastern islands were traditionally the allies of the Kingdom of Murdoch on the southern continent. His two daughters had allied Leithe via marriage to Eilidon and Randall, two of the largest islands in the Great Eastern Sea. His planned system of alliances were thus bringing the islands together, tying them to Leithe.

  The piece de resistance however was the marriage of his third son, the one most like his father in character and ambition if Cadan was honest with himself. Prince Crispin had married the sixteen year old heir to the Kingdom of Murdoch, Crown-Princess Antoinette. One day therefore and as soon as possible if Cadan had anything to do with it, Crispin would become absolute ruler of that powerful southern country. He grinned, an evil grin. The negotiations for this marriage had taken years but King Cadan knew that all good things came to those who waited and planned. Cadan of Leithe was a very patient man.

  By rights, he, Cadan, shouldn’t be King of Leithe at all. He had not been the first-born son of his father.

  How fortunate that Atan died so conveniently.

  This time King Cadan’s smile was a triumphant smirk.

  “Wonderful stuff that Litjda and still no-one to this day has any idea that I did it.”

  He spoke aloud, there was no-one to hear his boast. He was after all ensconced in his own private rooms. No-one, not even his sons would dare place one foot upon the lower stair leading to the tower on pain of death.

  “I will
be Emperor of all the Great Eastern Sea before I die,” he exalted, “what a gift to hand down to the heirs of my body.” He raised his wine glass in a toast to his dream. “No my grandson, my Cadan. Cadan, Emperor of All.” His sons would have been most displeased and not a little scared to have heard his words with these hidden implications but Cadan would never have spoken about this in their hearing or anyone else’s hearing for that matter. Cadan intended that it be a grandson who would ascend the throne on his death, a grandson taught by his grandfather. King Cadan of Leithe was disappointed in his four sons.

  He cleared his throat. Enough of this. Thoughts of what was to be wouldn’t make them happen.

  Argyll might still prove troublesome, he was thinking, especially if its alliance with Murdoch remains strong. Now … what can I do to drive a wedge between them?

  King Cadan thought for a while then began making notes. He stayed up well into the night making plans from these notes. At last, they were finished and he sat back in satisfaction.

  They’ll do. Now for the second part of my grand plan.

  He drew a tattered book towards him, got up from his desk and settled himself in a comfy chair. He began to read certain pages again. These were the pages that looked well-thumbed, mute testimony to the hundreds of times, he, Cadan, had read them.