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    Among the Ruins
    Among the Ruins
    Among the Ruins
    Ebook47 pages37 minutes

    Among the Ruins

    By AJ Cooper

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    About this ebook

    A desert tale. Court cartographer Alessandro finds himself assigned to discover new routes to the East, new ways to resume the trade of spices for the empire he serves. But in the desert lie dangers; in the midst of the sands are the ruins of a great city, which natives dare not disturb. A woman of the night, a dead king’s gold, and an ancient curse — all these await Alessandro AMONG THE RUINS.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRealms of Varda
    Release dateJan 14, 2021
    ISBN9781005261184
    Among the Ruins
    Author

    AJ Cooper

    Cursed at birth with a wild imagination, AJ Cooper spent his youth dreaming of worlds more exciting than Earth. He is a native Midwesterner and loves writing fantasy, especially epic fantasy set in his own created worlds.He is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and the author of numerous fantasy novels and novellas. His short stories have appeared in Morpheus Tales, Fear and Trembling, Residential Aliens and Mindflights, among others.

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      Book preview

      Among the Ruins - AJ Cooper

      Among the Ruins

      Copyright © 2021 Andrew James Cooper

      Published by Realms of Varda

      www.vardabooks.com

      All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any print or electronic form without permission.

      All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Among the Ruins

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      Among the Ruins

      A Desert Tale

      AJ Cooper

      A Report from Alessandro Severus, court cartographer

      I.

      The letter arrived from a far country, and when I saw it, I despaired.

      I must leave immediately, it said, depart from the city… I must board a ship, and I—with only a small crew—must find a new route to the East.

      In my home, I bade farewell to my wife, my children. I told them I did not know when I would be back. But I told them I would be gone a long time, and as I stared into my wife’s eyes, I had an unshakeable feeling that this was the last I would see of her.

      I left our country house, and I departed the next day.

      ~

      The seas in the south of the world are fierce, fiercer than the ones I knew as a child. Ships may be seaworthy, but if the gods are not with you, if the sea-god Lorenus frowns on you, and sends upon you a gale, if the storms arise from a foul wind, there is only so much you can do. And I am no sailor, just a servant of the emperor, only a patriot, one who is well acquainted with maps, who knows how to work a compass, who has traveled to the barbarian north, and dwelt in the desert southern lands. In the midst of a storm, when towers of water surround you, and the winds howl like ghosts, when all sign of the stars and the moon above are veiled in clouds, a man such as I can only fall to my knees and pray.

      Three days after we rounded the cape and entered the South Seas, such a storm took shape. At dusk, it swept upon us suddenly, towers of water, walls of water hemming us in, rain pouring down and soaking the deck of our caravel, and the wood of the ship groaning at the weight.

      I was on the deck, refusing to leave, and knowing nothing about the wind and water or the craft of sailing, I took stock of the sailors’ faces, and read in them terror and despair, a belief that the storm would overcome them, a belief that someone in our ship had offended the sea-god, and that we would soon be destroyed.

      The moon was veiled and unveiled by the dark grey storm clouds, and amid the raging of the waves, as our ship dipped and rose and buckled and groaned, I had a feeling, a thought I couldn’t shake—that our journey

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