Who are the Kallanon?

Find out who or what the Kallanon are right now! Here is the prologue for The Kallanon Scales - have a read or listen to my narration, and when you have your copy, you may go direct to chapter one for an epic tale. Promise, this book has it all: great fantasy, some sci-fi, loads of emotion, intricate relationships, huge battles, destiny, runes and a ruined city that will have you sitting on the edge of your seat!!!!

Prologue

Iridescent, strong, with huge taloned hind legs, clawed forelegs and powerful tails, breathing fire, they were Dragons. Evolving a pair of leathery wings they mastered flight before they mastered speech. As flying Dragons they were unstoppable, but with speech and intellect they were conquering royalty. They were territorial, but their realm was limitless.

Down the evolutionary passages, mates to the royal Dragons drew breath. It transpired a female could fly from birth, while a male’s wings developed with maturity. This bred envy and distrust and led to the enslavement of the Dragonnes, female of the species.

Territories once believed sufficiently large for co-existence shrank with every male born. A Dragon was as nothing if not king of his domain. Brothers sparked the first skirmish and others noticed one brother gained what the other lost in death. Clashes erupted, escalated into battles and resulted in war. Greed overcame reason.

The Dragonnes advocated peace; it meant less than nothing. They went to war also and were victorious. The Dragonnes assumed power and engendered a sensible hierarchy. The Queen would have no territory; she would oversee the welfare of all. The males became the enslaved, although that was a state of mind for the Dragonnes treated them with respect.

The land renewed and life settled. Underneath resentment simmered and conflict loomed anew and came to pass, a bitter struggle. The Dragonnes won and adopted a new policy. One male in every five female births lived. Ruthless, but successful. Peace returned.

As time wore on the Dragons did not forget. They hankered after the kingdoms of old.

Other races were ignored. Where Dragons claimed territories not theirs, those races erred on the side of life and fled to undisputed regions, but they held in their grasp the means Dragons sought to rule. Sorcery. Dragons belched fire in glee and sobered to plan. They needed to learn this strange power, and strike.

The Dragonnes made it possible. They invited sorcerers to court, entranced by the spectacle of magic. Court was a graceful centre of learning and culture and the last war fled living memory; the sorcerers were wooed, among them the ever-curious Q’lin’la.

Mysteriously they began to disappear without a trace, one by one, without a whiff of foul play. They simply did not return to court. Dragonnes shrugged their gigantic shoulders and continued with the business of life. When the court emptied of all foreigners, they knew something was wrong.

The Dragons spent generations building a stronghold deep in the mountains of the homeworld, where a tiny fort was the only evidence. The rest was an intricate network in the bowels of the earth. There the kidnapped sorcerers were brought, one by one, and with rock between them and freedom, were effectively bound. To see again the sworn light of suns they agreed to train the Dragons.

Thus began the next phase in the turbulent history of the Dragon species.

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Sorcery is a double-edged sword; it can never be wholly held. After immersion in the base principles, the acolyte attains the point of choice. Lumin or Darak. The Dragons chose the darak path. The bound sorcerers knew they would not again see the light.

The teachers died and their great cries pierced the bindings of the stronghold to be heard by their brethren elsewhere, before those cries were eternally silenced.

The Q’lin’la hastened to the court of Queen Abdiah, eighth of the title, to make her aware of the monstrous threat. Two Dragons crawled into her presence one morning, severely beaten, and told the tale of an underground fortress. She instituted an intense programme of sorcerical training, hastening it along despite Q’lin’la warnings about severity of pace.

The males amassed at their stronghold, from there to swoop across the plains. Initial attacks brought victory to the Dragons and they moved world to world strengthening their hold. The Q’lin’la fled to watch from a distance. As time passed the Dragonnes caught up in knowledge and began to fight back. Gradually the Dragonnes gained the upper hand … and then it changed.

In the Dragonne ranks the day of choice arrived and many set foot to the darak path. War erupted between them at a crucial time; the way lay open for the Dragons.

From afar the Q’lin’la cursed themselves and those like them; they engendered this war of sorcery. Worlds folded and nothing was held sacred. It was only a matter of time before nobility achieved in the past would forever be obliterated.

The Q’lin’la left that universe and consciously put aside knowledge of the doorway. They sealed the Dragon species in and left them to their fate, to remain warring in the dark, and chose life in a new realm.

They named the great reptiles the Kallanon. The Glittering Darkness.

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