Ken Scholes - Lamentation (Psalms of Isaak, Book 1)

Ken Scholes - (Psalms of Isaak Book 01) - Lamentation.html

11/20/10 5:59 PM

LAMENTATION

KEN SCHOLES

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

NEW YORK

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

Portions of this novel originally appeared in the short story Of Metal Men, Scarlet Thread and Dancing with the Sunrise, published in Realms of Fantasy, August 2006.

LAMENTATION

Copyright 2009 by Kenneth G. Scholes

All rights reserved.

Endpaper art, map, and chapter ornaments by David Cain

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

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Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Scholes, Ken.

Lamentation / Ken Scholes.1st ed.

p. cm.

A Tom Doherty Associates book.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-2127-5

ISBN-10: 0-7653-2127-0

I. Title.

PS3619.C45353 L36 2009

813'.6dc22

2008038024

First Edition: February 2009

Printed in the United States of Americ160tes of a

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Ken Scholes - (Psalms of Isaak Book 01) - Lamentation.html

11/20/10 6:00 PM

This book is brought to you by the letter J:

For Jen, Jay, John and Jerry.

Thanks for helping me roll the rock.

Windwir is a city of paper and robes and stone.

It crouches near a wide and slow-moving river at the edge of the Named Lands. Named for a poet turned Popethe first Pope in the New World. A village in the forest that became the center of the world. Home of the Androfrancine Order and their Great Library. Home of many wonders both scientific and magickal.

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One such wonder watches from high above.

It is a bird made of metal, a gold spark against the blue expanse that catches the afternoon sun. The bird circles and waits.

When the song begins below, the golden bird watches the melody unfold. A shadow falls across the city and the air becomes still. Tiny figures stop moving and look up. A flock of birds lifts and scatters. The sky is torn and fire rains down until only utter darkness remains. Darkness and heat.

The heat catches the bird and tosses it farther into the sky. A gear slips; the birds wings compensate, but a billowing, black cloud takes an eye as it passes.

The city screams and then sighs seven times, and ow,after the seventh sigh, sunlight returns briefly to the scorched land. The plain is blackened, the spires and walls and towers all brought down into craters where basements collapsed beneath the footprint of Desolation. A forest of bones, left whole by ancient blood magick, stands on the smoking, pockmarked plain.

Darkness swallows the light again as a pillar of smoke and ash blots out the sun. Finally, the golden bird flees southwest.

It easily overtakes the other birds, their wings smoking and beating furiously against the hot winds, messages tied to their feet with threads of white or red or black.

Sparking and popping, the golden bird speeds low across the landscape and dreams of its waiting cage.

Rudolfo

Wind swept the Prairie Sea and Rudolfo chased after it, laughing and riding low in the saddle as he raced his Gypsy Scouts. The afternoon sun glinted gold on the bending grass and the horses pounded out their file:///Users/mariann/Downloads/Scholes,%20Ken/Scholes,%20Ken/Kes%20-%20(Psalms%20of%20Isaak%20Book%2001)%20-%20Lamentation.html Page 5 of 287

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11/20/10 6:00 PM

song.

Rudolfo savored the wide yellow ocean of grass that separated the Ninefold Forest Houses from one another and from the rest of the Named Landsit was his freedom in the midst of duty, much as the oceans must have been for the seagoing lords of the Elder Days. He smiled and spurred his stallion.

It had been a fine time in Glimmerglam, his first Forest House. Rudolfo had arrived before dawn. Hed taken his breakfast of goat cheese, whole grain bread and chilled pear wine beneath a purple canopy that signified justice. While he ate, he heard petitions quietly as Glimmerglams steward brought the months criminals forward. Because he felt particularly benevolent, he sent two thieves into a years servitude to the shopkeepers theyd defiled, while sending the single murderer to his Physicians of Penitent Torture on Tormentors Row. He dismissed three cases of prostitution and then afterward, hired two of them onto his monthly rotation.

By lunchtime, Rudolfo had proven Aeteros Theory of Compensatory Seduction decidedly false and he celebrated with creamed pheasant served over brown rice and wild mushrooms.

Then with his belly full, hed ridden out with a shout, his Gypsy Scouts racing to keep up with him.

A good day indeed.

What now, the Captain of his Gypsy Scouts asked him, shouting above the pounding hooves.

Rudolfo grinned. What say you, Gregoric?

Gregoric returned the smile and it made his scar all the more ruthless. His black scarf of rank trailed out behind him, ribboning on the wind. Weve seen to Glimmerglam, Rudoheim and Friendslip. I think Paramo is the closest.

Then Paramo it is. That would be fitting, Rudolfo thought. It couldnt come close to Glimmerglams delights, but it had held on to its quaint, logging village atmosphere for at least a thousand years and that was an accomplishment. They floated their timber down the Rajblood River just as they had in the first days, retaining what they needed to build some of the worlds most intricately crafted woodwork. The lumber for Rudolfos manors came from the trees of Paramo. The furniture they made rolled out by the wagonload and the very best found its way into the homes of kings and priests and nobility from all over the Named Lands.

He would dine on roast boar tonight, listen to the boasting and flatulence of his best men, and sleep on the ground with a saddle beneath his headthe life of a Gypsy King. And tomorrow, hed sip chilled wine from the navel of a log camp dancer, listen to the frogs in the river shallows mingled with her sighs, and then sleep in the softest of beds on the summer balcony of his third forest manor.