City of Skies Read online

  Farah Cook

  Shadowislands - City of Skies

  Awakening of the Raider

  First published by Farah Cook in 2016

  Copyright © Farah Cook, 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  First Edition

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  Contents

  About City of Skies

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  End of Preview - City of Skies

  About the Author

  About City of Skies

  Nora Hunt has just joined the deadly quest to discover the ancient Viking legend of the hidden Shadowislands. Her post-apocalyptic world, the Triangle of Peace, is the only home she’s ever known. But at sixteen years old, the skilled young warrior joins an Elite band of Raiders called Jarl. Her mission? Merely to win the perilous battle for Shadowislands and avoid falling in love with the charming boy who just happens to be her worst enemy—and she’s not quite sure which task is more difficult…

  The battle for the Shadowislands stands between the Jarl and the Rognvald, a group of Dark Raiders led by Frederick Dahl, whom Nora can’t help but fall in love with. She does her best to keep her love a secret, and when Nora learns she is blessed with special powers by the Norse gods to unlock the Shadowislands, the stakes are higher than ever to claim the heavenly kingdom and crown.

  1

  THE FAMILIAR SMELL of moist pine wafts through the air as I move rapidly through the wilderness. Strident steps close in on me, crushing the leaves on the damp earth. Silently I take off my T-shirt, jeans and the only pair of leather boots I own, and dive into the cold lake. On second thoughts I don’t know what lives in these waters, a Nøkken could be in hiding in the lake, but it’s too late now. If there’s one I hope it doesn’t drown me.

  It’s nearly dawn, and there is no sun in sight, only a pearl-gray sky hanging above me. In the distance I see a big bear standing tall on the other side of the lake. Its fur is shaggy and cinnamon-red. I’ve never seen a bear this big and majestic, ordinary creatures in this part of the forest are rare. When I turn my head I see Gustav standing by the lake’s edge. He has stopped chasing me and is out of breath. His eyes catch mine in the reflection of the still waters. He appears undetermined to win the last chasing game before the recruitment assessment this afternoon. Maybe he doesn’t have what it takes to win after all.

  “You can’t escape now,” he says, his dark face slowly turning a burning red.

  “It’s not over yet, Gus,” I shout.

  Breathless, he drops into a pile of bark and moves on to his side, only to stare at me pointblank with his glowing eyes.

  “Why do you always have to win, Nora?” His voice is bitter and petulant. He’s is a firm believer in the Judith Law – a set of rules, which our division has followed for the past hundred years. The Judith Law teaches us to live unselfish and modest lives. Most importantly, it teaches us to live in peace and harmony among others and ourselves.

  “You think you’re better than the rest of us, don’t you?” he says.

  For a brief moment I turn my face away from Gustav. I then walk slowly in his direction. The water is dripping from my bare body. The only sound between us is Gustav’s palpitating breath. I gaze down at him, calm and motionless. The weapon clutched tightly in my hand loosens in my palm. It tumbles and lands between his feet.

  “You win now,” I say, and notice the surprise plastered all over his crimson face. He keeps his rigid stare locked on me. Mercy and kindness aren’t virtues I possess. Gustav knows that.

  “What’s gotten into you?” he demands and picks up the leather sheath that holds my bowie knife. “You never lose. Or should I say, you always prefer to win.” Gustav knows me too well by now, and his remark doesn’t bother me. Wild sounds roar through the forest. The others are getting closer. Nonchalant, I gather my things, my body still soaking. Losing this once will not change my fate, I remind myself.

  “Let’s get out of here and warn the others before the bear gets to our side of the lake” I say. I don’t want to kill it unless it poses a real danger to us all. Gustav reaches out his hand to me. I grab it, pull myself up and take back my knife.

  We walk briskly back to meet a crowd of young faces, almost savage. I see myself among these free-spirited tribal hippies, whose only ambition is to foster a natural and sustainable existence. After years of struggling to fit in, I’m beginning to feel like I could be one of them. I’ve always wanted to belong to their kind, even though I’ve felt excluded for years. It could all change – today’s recruitment assessment will judge our skills and determine each person’s calling. We don’t have a say. The process is an allocation with training, and no one knows what the recruiters will assess us in, as each assessment is individual. If I could decide, though, I know exactly what I would do.

  “What happened?” asks one of the others.

  “A bear is lurking on the other side of the lake” I say. “Why don’t we take the south route back? It’s the fastest way.”

  Gustav turns his head and looks straight at me. There is a tense expression in his beautiful big round eyes. He only looks at me this way when he disagrees.

  “We’re not supposed to go that way, Nora.” His glare grows more intense. If we take the south passage we’ll end up passing the Forbidden Areas. No one ever goes there except Raiders.

  The terrain and climate are dangerous, full of flesh-eating giant beasts and odd creatures. Some say the Forbidden Areas are cursed with monsters, trolls, dwarfs and large deadly serpents – so we are told. I once ventured to the border and went a little way into the Forbidden Areas. The premonition I had still burns my mind. I went in there looking for a clue about my dad.

  The atmosphere in the Forbidden Areas is different, and the air damp. There are endless green fields filled with memories of our past. But we don’t speak about that as it evokes anger. We don’t want to disturb the peace treaty. That could destroy our way of life and provoke another war.

  “Can’t we take the winding dirt path? It’s longer, but securer,” says Gustav who always likes to play it safe. He never has been very good at taking risks, and dislikes living life on the edge, but it’s the one thing to which I aspire. Maybe that’s the reason we’re just friends. Gustav understands me and is the only friend I have in the division. He’s not biased about my past. We do most things together – hunt, chase, explore – except we do not go near the Forbidden Areas.

  The girls in the East division don’t like me, “Why does Nora clutch on to the most eligible bachelor when they’re just friends?” I hear them whisper from a far distance. They think I can’t hear them, but I do. I hear most things from a far distance. Gustav is the only person I can be myself around, and it’s not in his nature to pass judgment, not like everyone else in the East who hide under their good Judith skin.

  I look around the worried faces of the others from the graduating class, covered in red dust, hiding their dark leathery skin. I nod and we all slowly make our way back, taking the longer, safer route. One of the others whispers in my direction.

  “Who won?”

  Gustav looks away, while I remain silent. There’s a reverent seriousness on his face. I can tell he’s uncomfortable. Winning is not something we celebrate or talk about. It’s taboo, and the chasing game is not about that. It’s only meant to enhance our survival skills in the wil
derness, which is part of the East’s teachings, a regime designed to help us subsist in our remote life.

  “Gus did,” I say. Some of the others begin to speak in hushed tones I hear them mutter like a swarm of bees gone wild.

  “But Nora always wins,” says Sasha in a low voice. Sasha is one of the smaller girls.

  Winning the final chasing game is important but I am past that point. Letting Gustav win the final game doesn’t change anything, I tell myself again. Recruiters might not even take note, and who knows what the allocation is like this year. In any case, Gustav stands a better chance of getting a good allocation for winning.

  I’m obsessed with – perhaps even addicted to – winning, and can’t help it. But I never speak about it. I am not allowed to. Our division rejects any flashiness, and it disapproves of snobbery, ostentation or showing off. It’s the law. The Judith Law of the East division. The only way of life I’ve ever known that values human equality above anything else.

  I drag myself toward the communal area of our village, Blossom Heights. This idyllic part of the East division is my home, and as I separate from the others Gustav looks at me wide-eyed, but I turn my head. I know guilt plagues him. He thinks he doesn’t deserve to win, and I wish I could tell him to enjoy his victory, but it wouldn’t make a difference. Not to him.

  Not far from the central hub of the commune is a big octagonal building filled with cardboard barrels. The barrels contain things like beans, flour and oats. This early it’s always swarming with men, women and children, also known as “rainbow people”, who sit at the long wooden table and benches outside the commune, having their meals together. The women wear headbands around their long hair, which is decorated with flowers. I don’t like anything in my hair. It’s too bushy and gets easily tangled.

  The men wear baggy jeans and oversized vests, and the prettier women are dressed in mini-skirts accessorized with chain belts, loose colorful tops and long leather boots. I stick to jeans, T-shirts and nothing with a heel on it. Something I can easily move around in when I’m out in the swamps, bogs and woods – the places where I spend most of my time with Gustav, learning and discovering new things. The occasional hunt happens, but we don’t tend to eat meat in our division. Most of us are vegetarian.

  I have cleaned a kill many times, as a part of my training in survival skills and we’re allowed to kill animals if they attack us – and we do get attacked, as our village is unprotected from the forest and wilderness. We don’t have any fences around the perimeter.

  I walk past the hub of our perfect little collective community, where we share everything with everyone else. People who live here have taken a vow of poverty and give everything they have to the community. All money and possessions are communal. The East is the only division that teaches a life of love and altruism – deeply bound by norms that underline our true abilities to please the common good. That’s how it’s always been around here.

  The West division is governed by the Dark Lumini Lords and a passive monarchy – they enslaved our own division after the wars, and reap from our farmlands. We’re the savages that feed them. We don’t have a say, as it’s not in our nature to rebel, not since we agreed to be a part of the Triangle of Peace – the treaty that keeps us from becoming embroiled in another war, such as the ones that still haunt the scattered memories of a beautiful and sophisticated world that no longer exists.

  One hundred years after the war, only three divisions managed to evolve, the rest remains a desert. We’ve rebuilt our civilizations and kept peace so we can practice our ancestors’ laws and beliefs in the East division, which is the only primitive division.

  The ruins from our past are spread across the Forbidden Areas to remind us of what we did to ourselves. Evil lurking creatures have taken over that land now and no human has ever returned from treasure hunting raiding expeditions in the Forbidden Areas – which hide endless riches, valuable artifacts and rare elements that unlock the ancient Viking legend of nine hidden Shadowislands – a heavenly Kingdom.

  Outside the tent next to the communal hub, I drop my dirty clothes and scabbard belt. My mom takes them with her scraggy worn-out hands. She pounds the mud off and hangs them on the clothesline in the backyard with wooden pegs. Behind the clothesline, on the other side of the green fields down the path, is a large yard. It leads to a trail with rocks and tall weeds.

  When I was ten, I summoned up the courage to tiptoe past the green fields and explore the apart woods all by myself. Poking through the plants and wild hills, I fell deep into a valley and hit my head on a sharp rock, losing consciousness. It was pitch dark when I woke and my face was covered in blood. Two days later I had somehow found my way back home, having survived on unusual insects – the only time I’ve ever eaten animals.

  Everyone from our community had been out looking for me and they were shocked to discover I had survived my little adventure in the wilderness. “Peculiar child” they called me. That was the day I discovered my abilities – extraordinary abilities – that I keep sealed from people in the East division.

  Six years after the incident I still bear the scar, a deep cut on my forehead. I remember my mom’s eyes when she saw me – wide, red and puffy, like I had returned from the dead. That was the only time I’d ever seen her worry about me. Now when she sees me, half-naked, or covered in black mud, with new wounds on my body, she doesn’t bother to ask what I’ve been doing. She knows.

  My mom hands me a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt from an unsorted pile of clothes. Her rough hands brush mine. The expression on her face doesn’t change. It remains placid. She is a bony woman, but strong and independent, with a dark, dull face that was once beautiful. People in our community say she changed, became reserved, not because of my dad’s disappearance, but when I started to grow up. I have never seen her any different, and she rarely smiles, although she has a beautiful bright smile hidden under her lips. It lights up her face and feels like sunbeams – warm and tingly.

  “What time does the recruitment assessment begin today?” she asks tension in her voice.

  Her black eyes always look tired and baggy, as if someone has sucked the joy out of them.

  Sadness is marked all over her face, and she clearly lives in a deep and forsaken inner world that doesn’t move with my reality. I used to look at her, longing for a cuddle, to feel the warmth she gave me as a child. Now, I mostly just feel angry when I see her, and there are moments when I wish she’d come back to reality and back to me, but she’s distant, miles away. If only she knew how much I miss her, but I rarely speak to her about my emotions.

  “In the afternoon,” I reply, and drop onto my mat in the lotus position.

  She’s quiet for a while. Her lips move, but the words fail to come out. I can see she’s worried, so am I, and I hope she’ll say something to calm me down. But she doesn’t. It’s not in her nature. Instead she arranges her features in her usual indifferent mask and walks out of the tent.

  Today I graduate from our community school. It’s customary for recruiters from the West to show up on graduation day and to allocate us. They are the division’s gatekeepers: they make all the rules and hold all the keys. We conform to the West year after year, allowing ourselves to be allocated after the recruitment assessments, usually within our divisions. Rarely we get “unplugged.”

  Some years back they allocated a boy, Allan, from our division, as Raider. He was my age when they took him – sixteen. They said he was gifted with skills suited for raiding forbidden territories. After his allocator disowned him, Allan failed to complete his allocation. He never joined one of the three Raider Dynasties or made it to the search expedition looking for the Shadowislands. The ancient Viking legend of the Shadowislands is said to possess supernatural powers beyond imagination that only Raiders can unlock collecting rare artifacts lost in the Forbidden Areas. Most Raiders bring back treasures, like the famous Ruhni diamond set in queen Benedikte’s crown.

  Allan is now separated
from the divisions and is what we call a “drifter”.

  The West is a very different place from the East. Especially City of Skies – or skies city as some call it – a glowing urban hotspot with an old fairytale part of the city still in existence called Slotsplads where the monarchy live. The name was given to the city because people live in towers that reach above the sky. How can such a place even exist? It all sounds like a fantasy to me. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to see the place with my own eyes and not through the oculus of the television that’s tucked away in our communal hub.

  After the graduation ceremony, the rigorous assessment will begin. On rare occasions the highly gifted ones like Allan are appointed as Raiders, given a quest to search for the artifacts that unlock the Shadowislands. It’s a death wish really, and Raiders rarely come out alive or sane from the expeditions unless they have extraordinary skills. Elite skills. Although one Raider Niels, from the Orkeney Dynasty has done well. He leads Raiders through secret passages to the Forbidden Areas. The only reason he’s still alive, and the reason why Orkeney Raiders don’t compete against Raiders from Jarls and Rognvald – they’re only interesting in seeking alliances that spares them from entering the Forbidden Areas.

  No one in the East is ambitious or determined about much. The division doesn’t have the kind of pressure they foster in the West. There’s no need, considering we live in a rural division, secluded from the modern world. My mom used to tell me off. “They will take you away, Nora, you’ve got to start losing the chasing game,” she’d cry, but I couldn’t help myself. Even when I’d try not to win, I just always ended up winning.

  The East is a powerless engine. Secluded, silent, submissive. It has no power against the West. No one knows much about the past, except that the aftermath of the wars was disturbing and lies buried in the Forbidden Areas where dangerous creatures and beasts now rule.