About the Books
Book I “The Sieve” is Book I of the epic fantasy novel Drakon.
“I am here to redeem the lives of my wife and daughter. I’ve brought the offering.” Da-Ren, an infidel barbarian, arrives at the Castlemonastery, his only offering a jar of honey. Baagh, the Cross Sorcerer, follows him there under orders of the Emperor, demanding from the monks to transcribe the warrior’s story. Book I chronicles Da-Ren’s early years, growing up in a tribe of archer riders and pagan witches, camped north of the Blackvein River. He enters the Sieve, the forty-day initiation trial that determines the fate of every boy and girl. Many of his comrades will fall, the strong will join the warriors, and an elite few will be marked for leadership. Da-Ren learns to endure the elements, to obey the Truths, to keep standing when all hope is lost. He swallows the legends of the OunaMa witches, learns to hate all other tribes, and conquers fear. And yet there is one trial that will bring him to his knees. The Goddess’s favorite daughter. “Brown-haired, brown-eyed. Brown was the first color of the day.” The journey begins for the man who will become the First Blade of the Devil. A brutal, poetic, first-person narrative of war, death, and love. Book II
“Uncarved” is Book II of the epic fantasy novel Drakon.
“How do the Uncarved die? They bleed to death. Always.” Fourteen-winter-old Da-Ren joins the Uncarved, the chosen few destined to lead the Tribe. More than forty children train and compete for the next five springs; only one will become Khun and fulfill the Tribe’s destiny. Da-Ren’s ambition and strength will keep him alive but can he overcome his most powerful and cunning adversary, the one favored by witches and men? The Goddess and the Ouna-Mas will try to nest in his heart, but is he prepared for the one woman he is brought up to hate? As war and hunger strangle the Tribe, the stakes of love, duty, and betrayal are higher than ever. A young man’s first kill. A young man’s first kiss. A coming-of-age tale with non-stop action.
Drakon
Book I: The Sieve BOOK EXCERPT 2 FROM
CHAPTER “One will lead, all will fall”
“The what born? You have indeed grasped very little.”
“I too have never known my parents, but all the scriptures say family is sacred and parents should never abandon their—”
“No child knew their parents, Eusebius. There was no marriage in the Tribe.”
“How can that be? You said that Elbia’s mother—”
“The women and children stayed together until the child’s twelfth winter. That could have been Elbia’s mother raising her, then again it may not have been. Whoever she was, she was raising many other children from the same tent at the same time together with other mothers, whether they were hers or not. Any woman with a childless belly and on her feet, would do. If you were lucky enough to have the same woman as a mother for a long time, it simply meant that she was not getting pregnant. And then, barren and useless, she could end up floating face up in the Blackvein along the slave corpses, kissing the vultures.”
“Godless words.”
“Only few could be sure of their true mothers. And no one ever knew who fathered them. Each child had to make up a Legend about his father, a Legend that lifted our blades when our hands could not. No child, from any tent, ever knew who his father was. No woman belonged to one man. A man could have a child with any woman. He would fuck anyone, always from behind to give birth to boys.”
I made the sign of the cross.
…“Let me tell you about my mother, Eusebius. My mother was the horse dung fire of the tent. The fire nurtured me. And my father was a Legend. I will tell you his Legend someday, the Legend I made up for him. And that was the same for all of us, orphan or not.”
“That’s unspeakable cruelty.”
“No, it was very easy. This age-old agreement made my Tribe as hard as iron and as invincible as the wind.”
“To struggle in vain.”
“To struggle only for the glory of the Tribe. We had brothers. Thousands of brothers. All equal. What is cruel and difficult is having a family.”
“No mother waits for her child to return from the Sieve,” I answered.
“And no mother bade her child farewell. Even if it was of her blood when the child left for the Sieve, never to be seen again. Now do you understand, Eusebius, why…I never…”
Da-Ren faltered. Was it possible for one of these barbarians to weep?
Drakon
Book II: Uncarved BOOK EXCERPT 1 FROM
CHAPTER “STAKE AND LARD”
….
I have a strong preference of stopping this
Story here. I did so, the first and the second winter we came upon the events
of that night. But Eusebius would always ask me every time that we’d reach that
point: “But, what happened to Olian and Alian?”
The monks of the Cross have a craving for such tales of
torture and death. They blend well with their delusions of divine salvation of the
weak and the innocent. “I’ll tell you, Eusebius. It’s not hard to bring back
the images. The sounds…well, that’s much tougher.” But the ink is silent, and
we are thankful for it.
The four of Keral’s warriors who had been
captured alive were impaled outside of the new Khun’s temporary tent. And so
was Olian the Uncarved boy. Their screams, the stink of shit, mixed with the
lard slathered on the sharp, long stakes and the blood coming out of their
assholes, reminded us for the three days it took them to die that we had a new
Khun.
I found Alian looking up at the screaming stakes and the
trembling faces of unending pain on the second morning.“He still doesn’t die,” he said, staring at Olian, who would only mumble, pleading for death with the last of his strength.
“No, you see, they don’t pierce the guts, the pointy wood just passes next to the spine and out the shoulder. Skewered. It will take another couple of days.”
“Damn! Stupid choice,” he said looking straight at his brother’s body faintly twitching on the stake.
“Let’s go, Alian, you don’t have to see and hear this anymore. He was your brother.”
“He still is. One of my brothers. So are you.”
Alian had already turned his back on the identical twin whom he had just called stupid for the last time.
Author Bio
C.A. Caskabel started writing Drakon in 2013 and completed the 350,000-word epic series in 2016. He plans to release the books gradually in 2016 and 2017 while he researches and writes his next series. He also works with a passionate small team that publishes primarily children’s fiction and fantasy fiction.
Prior to 2013, Chris was a serial technology entrepreneur. He has founded and led a number of start-ups in businesses such as digital marketing and renewable energy. He has led creative departments, marketing, and software product organizations in New York, San Francisco, London, and Athens.
He holds a BSc and a BA from Brown University and a PhD in Engineering from Boston University.
Prior to 2013, Chris was a serial technology entrepreneur. He has founded and led a number of start-ups in businesses such as digital marketing and renewable energy. He has led creative departments, marketing, and software product organizations in New York, San Francisco, London, and Athens.
He holds a BSc and a BA from Brown University and a PhD in Engineering from Boston University.
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