It's OUT NOW and it's FREE to READ on AMAZON BOOKS - "Storm" - Book 10 in the Epic Fantasy Series - "Realms of Kyre"

Who is Kyre?

Found badly injured in the Acon forest swamp, speaking an unknown language, Kyre is thought to be from The Pit – the fiery hell below.

A secret sisterhood, the Rua, initially helps him to recover from wounds and burns that would be fatal to others, but also endeavours to control him with potions and incantations that deeply instil him with loyalty to the realm and to the sisters.

Displaying astonishing speed and demonic brutality, he is forced to fight for his life, and is torn by opposing, but compelling drives by the Sisters, and by Lord Rogor and his family; and by what he believes to be his destiny. Trusting entirely in his guiding star, Syrtius, he finds himself taking on the avowed intentions and aims of the Sisterhood – first aiming to bring peace, unity and strength to the Lordlands; and then to partner the realm with their neighbours; and then to bring about the unity of the Five Realms.

Driven, lured and guided, he fights brutal skirmishes with hill bandits; river brigands and sea pirates – all being major threats to peace in their barbaric ways, besieging of towns and roadways, mass robberies of ships and trader karavans. Events periodically escalate with rebellions by provincial lords and independence-minded estates and regions. In increasingly massed and violent conflicts, he takes on incursions, infiltrations and invasions by neighbouring realms, most notably Aitierra and Broganta.

In winning, he rarely receives payment, other than what he decides to confiscate or steal for himself. He amasses vast wealth, and forms a tight, and secret brotherhood with three men who have well-fitting skills and powers in areas of high finance and document “retruthing”.

Through all of his struggles, he finds as much strife from the mounting treachery from supposed friends and allies from all quarters of the Lordlands Realm, as he does from outsiders.  What he also finds is that, despite frequent serious injuries and long-lasting scars, many ladies are attracted to him, and seek to become his lover. Some revel in his naive, uncultured charm; or his strength and physique; or even a desire for the seed of a man with such preternatural inner power.

Although he defeated the lord’s enemies, Rogor condemned him to be tortured, and flogged to death. Barely surviving, he recovers slowly in the realms of Broganta, where he replaces the warlike Lord with the more amiable “King” Drerrielda, formerly a vineyard owner.

Fighting his way back to the Lordlands, he is separated from Katena – the lord’s daughter; and betrayed by Jorris, the lord’s son. He finds that his refuge “family” at the Rinjee Forest have been killed by Aitierran forces, and he takes revenge, slaughtering his way through their valleys, army camps and troop trains, returning to Lordstown with two women half-willing prisoners.

In Lordstown, he finds that Lord Rogor is about to surrender, and is ready to sacrifice Katena to save his own life. Kyre stealthily arranges Rogor and Jorris’ “suicide”, he installs Katena as Great Lady of the Realm, with his new travel companions, Peerlee and Caila, as her supreme aides.

Organising the defeat of the besieging forces, Kyre finds that Katena has discovered that he killed her father and brother, and turns against him. In compromise, he takes the northward roads, where Kima, his one-time lover, is governor of the northern provinces of the Lordlands. Finding that she has been imprisoned and nearly killed in an invasion from the adjacent realm of Treming, he slaughters their leaders in fury; takes Johns, a high-born lover from among the Treming elite, and installs her and Kima as joint Great Ladies of what he declares to be the Great Unified Province either side of the Ragged River.

Not being one to settle, he seeks to go further north yet, through Treming, picking up a young companion girl on the way, Graggy. She is an apprentice apothecary, and they explore the moors all the way to the northern port-town of Adam’s Landing.

Graggy is captured, tortured and dismembered by the Hunelsh – the barbaric peoples who populate and dominate Central Treming. In all-consuming rage, Kyre takes them on, and massacres the whole Hunelsh nation in a protracted, ultra-violent campaign that frees up the whole central region of Treming – its mines, forests, farms, rivers and roadways open after a groze years of Hunelsh close-down.

Devastated at the loss of Graggy, Kyre retreats to himself, inconsolable in Adam’s Landing, until his slow, miserable recovery is threatened by the increasing menace of the sea-brigands at Fort Breganna – the pirate stronghold a day’s sail along the coast. Feeling obliged to involve himself in the town’s defence, he decides that a lone, suicidal attack on the fort would be decisive, one way or another. Standing on the fort’s outer rampway, he issues a loud, bellowing challenge to, ‘Come out and frugging-well fight, you pack of craven bast— Ughh!’

Child's Play

‘I’ll show you night sailing, at sea. Y’re not nervous, are y’? Come on, kids.’

He peered into the Pitsian darkness, ‘Terrified. Nobody sea-sails at night by choice; with two young children? You’re mad.’ Maybe just my sort…?

‘Bermy, Posy. Come and hold his hand; we’ll get the boat.’ Insy was surefooted along the beach paths; the two children the same. A boat became illuminated as she lit four lamps along the launching ramp and began to winch a rounded little craft down to the water. A single mast, with fore and aft sails. ‘Always calm here; sheltered, bit of a back-eddy. Bermy – the lights – you shouldn’t need telling every time. That’s it Posy, keep her at that.’

As the stern and bow lights brightened, Kyre watched the tiny girl on the tiller, bending a wagon’s weight of boat to her will; slowly easing the tiller away as the eddy swung them out and Insy raised the sail just as they cleared the jetty. Tall and slim like a chamber’s sword, it was catching the night breeze, heeling a fraction. The head swung downwind for two beats before Posy had her tight again, and the boat slipped forward, the water hissing beneath the keels, and they sped into the darkness.

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