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Dayraven shook his head and smiled. “It was not to you that I swore it.” Now he was in truth a soldier.
After some time, however, nervousness about his first day as a fully equipped soldier in the Mercenary Company of Etinstone crept into his thoughts.
The man had a story, and now it was over.
With a spark of memory, he recalled the strange level of perception that opened him to the timeless realm when he freed Rudumanu and Hraedflyht from the priest back in Wolvendon.
In a subtle balancing act, Dayraven kept the elf-state from severing him from his body, but he allowed enough of it to flow into him to keep sensing the thoughts of the man before him.
The four companions laughed. Dayraven grinned as he recalled how he had controlled the elf-state while facing Orvandil, even used it for his own purpose. Much had changed this day, and he was almost dizzy with it all. He had real hope that he could learn to wield the power within him, and he was a soldier on his way to war.
The ship’s home port lay on the isolated western coast of the kingdom of Caergilion. The men on the first vessel from the town of Farwick had brought her from the western edge of the Mark to a small trading port on Caergilion’s coast. There, after a couple days, she found a merchant ship full of the famed wool from Caergilion’s remote northwestern hills bound for Asdralad.
But now she was in a hurry, and being cooped up on this ship gnawed at her patience.
She walked aft until, passing by the tiller on the starboard side, she reached the ship’s stern, where she was out of the sailors’ way. Staring at the ship’s wake for some time, she gazed north. Her thoughts reached out, and she pondered where her grandnephew and Imharr had gone.
A seagull’s cry far above the ship broke into her thoughts. She looked up and scanned the blue sky, squinting and shielding her eyes from the bright sun.
The witch ignored them as she imparted her message. “Go to Kiriath, to the palace on the hill, and tell the queen. All must be ready when I arrive. There’s no time to spare.”
A moment later, the seagull cried once and spread its wings so that the breeze bore it back up into the air behind the ship. The witch, the merchant, and the sailors all watched it flap up into the air currents, which carried it ahead of them due south for a while. Before long it disappeared from view.
The seagull continued its flight south over shimmering waters. For miles it flew until the sea far below it changed from dark greyish-blue to a translucent azure like sapphire. Soon after, waves broke in white lines one after another on a sandy beach beneath craggy cliffsides. The seagull kept its course, and before long the coast expanded into land fertile and brown with the southern sun’s heat. Olive trees grew on rocky hillsides, and the bird passed over a few small villages of square-shaped homes wrought of the tan limestone predominating in that soil. After some time, its shadow winked
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The elder smiled. “Urd. She arrives shortly in a merchant vessel from Caergilion. Our lesson for today is finished. You will go to the docks to meet her. Her journey has been long, but I sense her impatience. Try to convince her to rest for a while, Sequara. Then bring her to me.”
The memory of killing Aravh along with the priest of the Way and the Torrlonder soldiers who had attacked her and her men was as strong and fresh as ever. The scene had revisited her in nightmares since. Even now it flashed before her: The bright, terrible almakhti she had called forth rent the air. Their cries and the smell of their burnt flesh were as vivid as on the day it happened. Their agony and sudden knowledge of death screamed in her mind. Suppressing a shudder, she reminded herself of her present purpose and walked on.
A buzz of recognition followed in their wake, but Sequara was long accustomed to that. Since the day more than a decade ago when Faldira had named her successor in accordance with the ancient custom of the Andumae, the people of Kiriath and all of Asdralad had held Sequara in great honor and esteem.
He frowned at her. The veteran did not like leaving her side when they were outside the palace, but she had always insisted that the temples were sacred spaces where she must appear like all others in communion with the Mother and Father. He knew her well enough not to argue. “Very well, my lady.”
She neared the back wall of the temple. A sorceress was chanting up ahead. Even before an infant began to mewl, she recognized the rite of welcoming a child into the world. It was auspicious to come to the temple at such a time. While Sequara would never have a child of her own, she always felt the presence of the Mother was strongest in her place of worship when the birth rites were being performed.
She found herself gazing at the young mother and wondering what it was like. It was not envy or even regret she felt, exactly. But she was witnessing something holy. Something belonging to a realm she would never explore.
The little one decided it was indeed time for a cry.
Sequara recalled her purpose. She turned away and walked back out of the temple, leaving behind all the emotions in the darkness of that sacred space.
Glancing down and pretending not to hear, Sequara suppressed her emotions – both joy at the praise and anxiety at the weight of expectations – to embrace the equanimity that should be hers at all times.
Over the waves she gazed, and her thoughts reached out. She closed her eyes and let her consciousness expand. Her mind pulsed along with the repetitive hush of the waves, and soon she hearkened to the timeless voice of the island.
It was no accident that the common Andumaic spoken in Asdralad was most like the High Andumaic of old. They were the upholders of the ancient ways and laws handed down from Oruma and Anghara, and they fulfilled their calling with a special sense of and devotion to beauty.
After Torrlond finished with the south, the eastern kingdoms would be next. Alone, Asdralad was too small to make a difference, and at length its time too would come. The peace and stillness of the small island offered no defense against such a powerful force.
“Beauty shines from you, Urd. Only a fool could not see it. But you must be weary from your voyage. Shall I ask Karad to find a carriage?”
A short time later, Sequara led Urd to Queen Faldira in a private chamber. The room’s sparse furniture and decor lent it elegance and airiness.
“Of course. Sequara will make some herself. She’s skilled at all the healing arts.”
White-haired and fragile with many years, on the doorstep of old age, and in the full bloom of ripe youth — they brought together a balance of past wisdom, present power, and future promise.
The queen sighed, seeming to reconcile herself to a difficult course. “Asdralad can do little in the coming war, at least for the present. We lack the military power. Our strength has never been in arms, but we need to remedy this. In the short term, I have decided to send Sequara one last time to King Balch in Adanon and King Malruan in Caergilion. She will attempt to persuade them to see reason. If she is to replace me someday, there will be no greater testing ground than this. I only wish it had not come in her time.”
Urd’s forehead creased as she raised her eyebrows. “A foolish young man who’s probably found the quickest way to get himself killed.”
“In fact, he’s my grandnephew. Dayraven.” Urd’s eyes kindled as she smiled. “What would you say if a mortal survived an encounter with an elf, even came back from the elf-sleep with the gift so augmented in him that you fear to stand next to him?”
Waking from the elf-sleep might be taken to point to certain statements Aldmund made about the returning of his power.”
“From the Book of Aldmund,” said the old woman, switching back to High Andumaic. She turned to Queen Faldira. “Yes. If he were trained, Dayraven could wield the song of origin Sequara brought. He could rival and even overcome the Supreme Priest Bledla. None of us has this strength — not I, not you, not Tirgalan of Sundara, not even Galdor.”
Give Eormenlond a different Prophet of Edan, and Bledla’s cause is lost, and Earconwald’s along with it.”
The supreme priest sees himself as the prophesied heir to Aldmund’s power, but he could not fail to see what Dayraven’s awakening might mean. The boy’s life was at stake, so I sent him to the safest place I knew while I came here, hoping to draw attention away from him. He would have been in danger with me, and only you or Galdor could hope to train the boy. He’s too close to me, you see. Too dear.”
Faldira took a deep breath and let it out, never taking her eyes off her heir. “Very well. But do not risk your life without need, and the moment you’re in danger, you must return to Asdralad.”
Two young men appeared to her. One was handsome and dark, a man who often smiled but hid great pain beneath the surface. The other had a more serious face. He was light-skinned, like all the northern folk, and slender. He was hardly more man than boy. But there was a depth to him that astonished Sequara, a presence that suggested far more than his years should be able to bear. He was sad and mysterious, perhaps because of a keen awareness of life’s fleetingness, which gave it both beauty and tragedy that colored everything he saw and experienced. And though she could not feel the gift in this
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The old woman’s energy began a gentle retreat, and it seemed odd to Sequara to realize she was not Urd, but someone else. The two women separated, each caressing the other with her energy, like wisps of mist floating through one another. As the strands of her own identity returned to their places, Sequara remembered her body was in a room of Queen Faldira’s palace. Her sense of herself returned, and she smiled. Peace lingered for a long moment. Both women opened their eyes as if emerging from a calm meditation.
The three women — past, present, and future — wove their plans as the sunlight shining through the window moved across the room, grew dim, and yielded to darkness.
From what Dayraven had heard of aglaks, distant kin of trolls that dwelled in swamps, he had no desire to visit them. Though slightly smaller than their troll cousins, aglaks were said to be cleverer.
In spite of his weariness, he smiled. The Mercenary Company of Etinstone had reached the vast encampment of Torrlond’s army at Hasumere’s eastern end.
After a brief, satisfied nod, the shaper plucked the gut strings in a blur of his fingers and closed his eyes for a few moments. In those moments, all who hearkened to the interweaving notes entered another world, the ageless realm of tales. Then he leapt into song, letting the rhythm carry the story.
Towering over them at twelve feet, an aglak with legs and arms as thick as tree trunks let loose a deep and vast roar of defiance. Thick tendrils of viscous spittle flew from its huge maw.
Hlokk yelled beside him. A blur flew toward the aglak. When Hlokk’s axe ripped into the monster’s thigh with a wet thud, the aglak quivered and roared, but it kept its relentless grip on Orvandil, whose strong arms could not keep his face from inching closer to mutilation and death.
Focusing on the aglak, at once he grasped its being. Strong and proud, it was a lord of the fen. A predator to many, but a tender caretaker to its young. It delighted in dark, hidden places, grey mist, soothing mud, and slippery fish and eel. Earth and water were its ancient ancestors, and in its lineage was a special fear of one creature: the human. The human with its sharp, shiny sticks and its cruel flames.
When the sword slurped out with bloody cords of slime stretching from it, the monster winced but made no movement to harm the captain. The aglak stood still and stared at Dayraven. The remaining men all turned toward him with wide eyes and open mouths.
Sharp and terrible was its terror. So much anguish. This was the raw and tragic truth of existence. The fear underlying all life. All creatures spend their days finding ways not to feel it, but it screamed at Dayraven with full force.
“Goronae imdhugadon ulushar im dagodhin! Kharkunae vinduilanon brinunar ni shulokhin!” The song of origin came from somewhere behind Dayraven.
Those who ally themselves with the Way of Edan have much to gain. Much indeed.”
