The Good King Read online

  ‘Father!’ the boy screamed again. ‘Father, where are you?’

  As before, Bril’s voice echoed weakly against the high salt crags that ranged before him, though this time his shouts also provoked a mooncat to growl from one of the lower ridges so that the boy shut up quickly, seized by a surging dread.

  Bril hated mooncats. He had seen what they did to weakened zels and even to people. No bigger than normal house cats, and striped black and white to blend in with the two-tone volcanic landscape of this small world, a lone mooncat was no threat to a solitary person. Only when the animals gathered in packs to hunt did they become a dangerous threat to humans, and that didn't happen all that often - only on nights precisely like this one, with a string of full moons in the sky and a golden Particle Falls to light their prey.

  Unable to see anything through the blindfold, except for a sliver of a gap at the bottom where it curved over his nose, Bril held his breath for a long moment, feeling sick in his stomach as he imagined a whole tribe of the creatures gathering on the nearby salt crags. If they came at him in numbers, what would he do?

  But no, thankfully nothing answered the lone mooncat’s cry, and Bril spat the dust from his mouth nervously and gripped himself and his pathetic stick and tried to calm down by swiping it a few times through the turbulent air; not that it helped much, but it was better than nothing, and even warmed him a little.

  There was little point in yelling angrily anyway, even if he was utterly displeased with his father and the plight he had placed him in . Bril wasn’t a child any longer. Nothing was going to change the situation now no matter how much he cried about it.

  He knew what this was now. Clearly, it was nothing more than his first initiation rite into manhood, the first of a series of tests to be held over the next four years of his upraising. Brill had known for a long time this night was coming some time during his tenth year. He just hadn’t known exactly when, or where, it would happen. Surprise was the nature of this initial rite of passage, the Long Night. Undertaken by Shal youths all across the system of Shalos - a long night staked and blindfolded in the wilds alone - it marked the beginning of their spiritual path in this life. Or so the rap went. In the unceasingly bitter winds of Gale, Bril was fairly certain that come morning, the only thing this rite was going to mark was his death.

  Hopping up and down to generate some warmth, he took a step too far from the post he was chained to and almost tripped as the manacle snapped tight around his ankle. Bril swore and yanked at the chain in some hope of breaking it in his mounting rage. But all it did was rattle in the gale, a near-unbreakable length of ironwood links carved from a single length of wood.

  ‘Aaaarrhhh!’ he hollered. ‘Aaaarrhhh! Aaaarrhhh! Aaaarrhhh!'

  The boy felt better for his exertions, standing there panting and slobbering in the gritty winds with his heart clattering away like the heat pump that it was. So good that he did it again.

  ‘Aaaarrhhh!’

  Calmer now, his will focused into a dagger of vengeful intent, young Bril cursed his father with every swear word he had ever heard in his short life, even the Humani ones he'd overheard from Quinn, their House Blade, and wished with all his heart that the old man was dead.

  ---

  Several million hours later, Bril was still shivering uncontrollably from the cold with only the loincloth and blindfold to shelter him, wiping snot from his nose and trying to keep his thoughts on anything that would take his mind from the pains of his body. At least his shivering muscles showed that he wasn't quite freezing to death just yet.

  If only his mind would cooperate, rather than turning to the darkest of thoughts and outcome. Sometimes, it really did seem as though your own head was set firmly against you. Even against your own survival. How did that work, Bril wondered – were Shadows really running amok behind your thoughts and desires, like the Sky Prophets of Jih sometimes claimed?

  As though by way of an example, right at that moment an old conversation came to his mind that he’d once had with Helee - his tutor and wily mentor. Helee had just returned from a neighbouring farmstead where he was trying to court one of the daughters without much success, and where one of the farmhands had just been found dead up in the surrounding hills, after being hunted down and slain by a pack of mooncats. Heelee made a big deal about certain choice parts of his body having been eaten away.

  But that was the very last thing Bril wanted to be thinking of right now, standing there naked save for a loin cloth barely big enough to wipe his nose.

  The boy focused hard, mentally forcing his thoughts onto another track entirely.

  He recalled the figure at the window of their manor house when they had been leaving earlier, standing there watching them go. Bril knew it must have been Sheya, Lady Jemmar, his father’s long-standing House Mistress. A kindly woman, and sharper than most, for all that Bril should have disapproved of her for taking the place of his mother. But then, Jemmar had never really done that anyway; his mother had died giving birth to Bril, and Jemmar, his mother’s oldest friend, had stepped in to raise him. Standing there at that window, knowing where he was being lead to, Jemmar would have been watching out for Bril fearfully, for she loved him as a mother, and he her.

  If I ever make it through this, Bril thought, I must tell her what she means to me.

  And if I don’t, if I freeze to death out here or get my dick eaten off by a pack of mooncats, then may she spit in my father’s eye for me ...

  It was a sharp lesson to wish upon your own father, and Bril might have felt something of shame at his thoughts if only Rheaf his father had ever shown him anything but a cold and distant detachment through all the years they had known each other. Sometimes, his father acted as though he could barely even look at Bril, and to such a degree that even Quinn would notice it, and Sheya would be heard whispering to his father harshly, saying it wasn’t Bril’s fault that his mother had died giving birth to his only son ...

  Suddenly the cry of a mooncat caused Bril to stop in his thoughts, and his blood to freeze like icy water. THe cry was close, even closer than the first one. He could only pray that it was the same animal as before.

  He had dropped the thorny branch hours ago, but now he stooped and fumbled through the dust until he found it again. By the time he straightened another mooncat cried out from his left, answering the first one, and Bril gagged with fear.

  Two does not make a hunting pack, he reminded himself.

  Even further to his left, a third cat called to the others. Then a fourth answered.

  In his terror, he started babbling a prayer to Jih.

  Surely there were easier Virtgio rites on other worlds than this one? How difficult could it be to survive a single night on one of the tame sub-tropical Garden worlds of Cheechi, for instance, instead of a frigid wildmoon like this one? This all seemed blatantly tilted against him, but then maybe that was the real point of it, after all. Life in this fallen cosmos was hardly fair, after all - a boy who had lost his own mother at birth was born knowing this truth most of all. Sensing the mooncats gathering around him, Bril was sorely tempted to remove the blindfold from his eyes - but the blindfold was a badge of courage that he must wear until morning, or so Rooster had instructed him. He already knew it was a large part of the initiation, and that to remove it prematurely would mark him as a coward, and even if no-one raised the matter again to his face, that mark of shame would last him for the rest of his life. Better to die, Bril told himself, than give his father the satisfaction of that.

  Young Bril heard them coming at him in a pack as their claws scrabbled over some sheet rock. With the terror squirting through his guts, he finally grew angry at himself and his own timidity. To hell with it, he thought - he'd been raised to be of sterner stuff than this! And so Bril brandished his thorny stick and backed up against the ironwood post - his only companion - with a hard thump, where he assumed a defensive position, and growled.

  'Come on then,' the boy h
ollered through the winds. 'I am Brilliant Brightmorning, son of Rheaf Brightmorning the Second, and I shall not fear you. Come on then you little bastards, bring it on!'

  ---

  In the first rays of dawn, still alive though feeling closer to death from exposure than not, young Brill finally removed the blindfold from his eyes and blinked, squinting, in the early daylight, barely believing he had made it.

  Tracks covered the dusty ground all about him, signs of the brief skirmishes throughout the Long Night. The cats had been driven away after enough thrashing and yelling, but for some reason they’d kept returning for more of the same, hour after hour. Maybe they had been truly starving and desperate. It had taken a miracle - and at some unacknowledged level, he sensed as much - that they had never once bit or cut him, never once drawn blood, in all that time. If they had, they would have been on him in a feeding frenzy.

  Praise Jih, he thought with more meaning than ever before.

  At least the winds had diminished somewhat with the growing heat of dawn. Bril inhaled a relatively clear breath of air and turned about slowly, taking in the scene, the dusty floor and the surrounding salt crags rimmed by a lightening sky. And then he stopped dead, and made the strangest noise in his throat.

  Behind him, well beyond the wooden post, ran a flat bluff of salt for several dozen yards. On top of the bluff, watching him in his tightly fastened cloak and windhood, sat his father.

  In the man’s lap rested his long-nose stun pistol, ready to be used if necessary, whilst beside him he had staked a few prayer canes with silent windstrings blowing towards Bril. The side of his cloak was caked with a layer of dust, relaying the fact that he must have been sitting there all night long.

  With the sun rising behind him, Rheaf Brightmorning raised a hand to the boy, to his son, his only child, and smiled.

  Welcome

  In this gamebook, you will be playing the role of Rooster Quinn, personal blademaster to the House of Brightmorning. As their House Blade, you have sworn to protect this family-in-exile with your life, most of all the young heir, Brilliant Brightmorning.

  If young Bril dies the game is over, so keep him safe!

  BEGIN >>

  Reader Action >>

  REFerences Page

  Before you continue, you may look over your character scores @ >> REF Page.

  DEFAULT SCORES

  The default for each skill is underlined. If you are happy to accept these default scores, you need not do anything else.

  CHOOSING SCORES

  However, if you have played through this gamebook at least once before, you may instead assign these scores yourself. Simply reset all the player scores to 0 then spend 40 POINTS amongst all the skills (except SOUL and LIGHTBLADES) @ >> REF Page.

  PAPER SCORES

  Also, if you would prefer to use paper character sheets rather than the digital sheets in this gamebook, feel free to do so instead. Character Sheets for printing can be found here: thiswisefool.com/Downloads/

  >> When you are ready to begin the game as Rooster Quinn, go here 1

  REF

  CON

  RES

  PUR

  MAP

  SYS

  S O U L

  Shine

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  (spend 3 SHINE to increase any SCORE below by 1 / or reduce Blackmarks by 1)

  M I N D

  Smarts

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  Influence

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  Awareness

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  Covert

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  R E F L E X E S

  Agility

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  Unarmed

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  Lightblades

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  Shooting

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  S P E C I A L I S T

  Tech

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  Riding

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  Biogranging

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  Flying

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  Survival

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  Evasion

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  Skills: 0-2 = POOR / 3-5 = FAIR / 6-7 = EXPERT

  WEAPONS

  Lightsword

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  Charge Pistol

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  0

  Charge Rifle

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  Charge Grenade

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  0

  Zap Gloves

  0

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  MOUNTS

  Sure-footed Horse

  0

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  0

  Fast-Footed Horse

  0

  1

  0

  INFINITY POCKET

  Panic Bomb

  0

  1

  0

  Wingsuit

  0

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  0

  ARTIFACTS

  Star Gem

  0

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  Roleypoley

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  Rumbleskins

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  Skybook

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  SDREAMS

  Slate sdreams

&nbsp
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  Keypass sdreams

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  High Lee Keypass:

  run

  sky

  art

  tie

  dam

  flo

  med

  HOUSE SECURITY

  Whispermode

  OFF

  ON

  Being a combination of HEALTH plus any BODYSHIELDS/ARMOURS:

  YOUR CONDITION

  0

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  BRIL'S CONDITION

  0

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  >> GO HERE IF YOUR CON OR BRIL'S CON EVER REACHES 0 (!)

  STIMSTICKS

  0

  1

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  BODYSHIELD

  0

  +1

  +2

  +3

  +4

  * Spend a Stimstick to restore your or Bril's CON at any time *

  (even if CON has reached 0)

  * Or spend 1 SHINE POINT @ >> REF to restore 1 CON POINT *

  ENEMY CONDITION:

  0

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