by Robert Ryan
Sellic Neben: Hal. “East gate.” This gate bears a representation, crafted of silver and pearl, of the moon rising over the sea.
Sending: See Drùghoth.
Shadowed Lord: See Elùdrath.
Shazrahad: The Azan who commands an elug army, or serves as a lieutenant of an elùgroth.
Shorty: See Lornach.
Shuffa: A type of boat. Small, fast and ideal for travel by river. Favored by the villagers who dwell along the Careth Nien, and based on a design originating from ancient times when the Letharn fished the two rivers of the Angle. The same name is used in Cardoroth for a different kind of boat, slower and of a different shape. It’s unclear which version is closer to the original design.
Shurilgar: Hal. “Midnight star.” An elùgroth. Also called the betrayer of nations.
Sight: The ability to discern the intentions and even thoughts of another person. Not reliable, and yet effective at times.
Slithrest: One of the ancient names of the witch better known in present times as Durletha.
Spirit walk: Similar in process to foresight. It is deliberately sought by entering the realm between life and death where the spirit is released from the body to travel through space. To achieve this, the body must be brought to the very threshold of death. This is exceedingly dangerous and only attempted by those of paramount skill.
Sorcerer: See Elùgroth.
Sorcery: See elùgai.
Surcoat: An outer garment. Often worn over chain mail. The Durlin surcoat is unadorned white.
Taingern: Cam. A Durlin. Friend to Brand.
Tombs of the Letharn: The ancient burial place of the Letharn people. All members of the population, throughout the course of their long civilization, were laid to rest here. It was believed that to be interred elsewhere was to condemn the spirit to a true death, rather than an afterlife. The dead were preserved, and returned even from the far reaches of the empire. This was withheld from perpetrators of treason and heinous crimes. These were buried in special cemeteries near the river. Petty criminals were afforded an opportunity to redeem their place in the tombs on payment of a fine determined by the head-priest.
Tower of Halathgar: In life, the place of study of Queen Carnhaina. In death, her resting place. Somewhat unusually, her sarcophagus rests on the tower’s parapet beneath the stars.
Unlach Neben: Hal. “South gate.” This gate bears a representation of the sun, crafted of gold, beating down upon a desert land. Said by some to signify the homeland of the elugs, whence the gold of the sun was obtained by an adventurer of old.
War drums: Drums of the elug tribes. Used especially in times of war or ceremony. Rumored to carry hidden messages in their beat and also to invoke sorcery.
Wizard: See lòhren.
Wych-wood: A general description for a range of supple and springy timbers. Some hardy varieties are prevalent on the poisonous slopes of the Graèglin Dennath mountain range and are favored by elùgroths as instruments of sorcery.
VICTORIOUS SWORDS
BOOK THREE OF THE DURLINDRATH TRILOGY
Robert Ryan
1. Two Futures
Brand, his heart thrashing, ran to Kareste. Pain showed on her every feature, and tears of anguish glistened on her pale cheeks. She had fallen, and he went to help, as he knew he always would.
She trembled at his touch, but she was alive. And that thought nearly overwhelmed him, for he did not know what he would do if she died.
Her eyes, once green-gold, flickered open. There was now a shadow in them, and it was one of more than pain. The sorcery that she had invoked, the power that had run through her, had been beyond her strength to bear. But she had borne it, and such an act based on willpower alone, disregarding the weakness of the flesh, would have consequences.
He sensed the sorcery of the staff. Shurilgar’s staff. A thing of ancient power beyond comprehension. The remnant of its unleashing still charged the air. Its lingering force was everywhere. And he saw it even in her eyes. What had her use of it cost her?
She shuddered violently, and then stilled. With her eyes half lidded, she spoke in a ragged whisper.
“You turn your back on the beasts?”
“You need me,” he replied, “and I’m here.”
She opened her eyes wider. “Foolish boy. But it’s well for you,” she added, “that I kept to my word.”
She struggled to sit up a little higher. He helped her, and then she spoke more strongly.
“Behold! The Halathrin are free!”
For the first time, he turned to look. And what he saw amazed him.
They stood there, free of the forms of the beasts that had trapped them. They were gathered in a group, and a faint shimmer of white light was about them. Some were golden haired, but most had hair of a strange silver-white. It was more than blond. And the shimmer about them seemed as though the light of the full moon had been caught and refined, and it spilled from them in the same way that mist rose from the surface of a lake.
They were mostly men, but there were several women among them. One of these was the first that he had seen a little while ago. She looked back over her shoulder at him, but did not speak.
He turned to Kareste again. “Are you alright?”
She shifted position, trying to get comfortable. “I don’t know. I feel strange.”
He put his arm around her, helping her to sit upright. Shurilgar’s staff lay on the ground between them. They both saw it, but neither of them said anything.
“I’ll get you some water,” he offered.
He walked over to the horses. There, he retrieved a waterbag and brought it back. He helped her hold it in her trembling hands while she drank.
When she was done, she gazed at him silently. He still saw pain in her eyes, and anguish. There was uncertainty too, and then, as though she cast a veil over her face, it was all gone. The lòhren inscrutability had returned, and she showed nothing of how she felt. So it always was with her. She hid her emotions out of habit, and he only caught glimpses at unguarded moments. Now, it seemed, she wished to hide them more than ever.
The staff remained between them, the unspoken question of what they each wanted to do with it hung in the air. And they both ignored it for the moment. Neither of them was ready to raise that subject.
There was a stir behind them. The Halathrin appeared to have come to a decision about something, and the girl he had seen before came over to him. He saw relief on her face.
It was no surprise that she also seemed buoyant with a great joy. She was freed from the sorcery that had trapped her in the form of a beast. But then he remembered that Kareste had said the beasts were real as well, that the Halathrin had been joined to them.
His gaze darted around, and it quickly found what he sought. There were some twenty bodies beyond the Halathrin, back near the trees. They were misshapen things, twisted and fur clad, and he could only see them dimly. He was glad of that. But even as he watched, their dark forms faded into greasy smoke that drifted sluggishly away.
The girl stood before him. “Who are you?” she asked.
“My name’s Brand. I’m bodyguard to the king of Cardoroth.”
She looked with her clear-sighted gaze into his eyes, and then slowly shook her head.
“Nay, gentle Brand. “That’s merely your name and one of your tasks. It’s not who you are.”
He felt uncomfortable, for he had a sense that her mind perceived more of him than his could of her. She looked at him, but she saw more than was visible to the eye.
“Then, lady, who am I?”
She shook her head once more and there was a little shimmer of light as though a candle wavered in an otherwise unfelt breeze.
“Much I could say, but I will say naught. It is for you to discover, and the discovering will shape you. I dare not interfere.”
“I’ve had many foretell my future,” he answered. “Some with accuracy, but not yet has one with foresight not told me what they saw, accurate or otherwise.
”
“Foresight?” she said, with a little tilt of her head. “I don’t know what you mean. I cannot see the future. I have not that power, else the elùgroth would not have caught me in his sorcery.”
She shuddered, and a darkness dimmed her beautiful features.
“I see only the present,” she continued, “but mayhap I see it clearly, and the present casts a shadow forward in time. You don’t need to see the full length of a late afternoon tree-shadow to know the tree’s shape – the living thing itself tells you that.”
Brand did not understand, but he had no opportunity to question her because the other Halathrin were coming over.
They gave graceful bows, but did not speak. It seemed the girl was their spokesperson. She gave him her own little curtsey, and then straightened.
“My name is Harlinlanloth.”
She turned her gaze away from Brand, and he saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes.
“Who is the girl that freed us? I would speak with her.”
“Kareste,” Brand answered. He turned around to look at his companion. She seemed to be recovering, but only a very little. It would take her days, perhaps weeks, to recuperate fully.
The girl curtseyed once again. It was a deft movement of sublime grace.
“You chose wisely,” she said.
Brand could not decide if her voice was like velvet or steel.
Kareste answered, her own voice weak but edged with a curt tone that he knew well.
“How so?”
“If you had used the power of the staff for domination, to turn us into your slaves and to usurp the control of the elùgroths with your own, the power within the staff would instead own you. You mastered temptation, and therefore mastered the staff, at least this once. But the question has become this. What will you do now?”
Brand thought it was a good question. But it was not the only one. Now that the Halathrin were free, would they not wish to preserve the staff whose timber was sacred to them? And if so, what was he to do? He had no heart to fight them, or to fight Kareste. And yet he must destroy the staff.
Also, what of the power within him? He had freed it, and in doing so it lit up the path laid out ahead of him. To be sure, he did not seem to see his future as clearly as the Halathrin girl had done, but he saw it nonetheless.
His destiny was to become a lòhren. To serve the land. The magic inside him made it so, and he felt the connection. Yet magic was a thing that he distrusted, and all the more so now.
These matters were not all, either. Over and above them, calling to him from his childhood, was the voice of his own people. His responsibility as a lòhren would be to the whole land and not just a small and faraway community of little consequence to others. Even if it was everything to him.
He saw before him two futures, two separate paths. He wanted one, and not the other. But would fate allow him to choose?
He did not think so. He had been put on the path of a lòhren at every step of this quest, since perhaps even long before. Every move he had made, though he had not had any alternative, had brought him to this point. He had a feeling that it would continue, and that troubled him. It troubled him more than even an elùgroth, for the thought of becoming a lòhren scared him.
2. The Call to Serve
They were all gathered around Kareste. Harlinlanloth’s words hung in the air, but whether or not Kareste believed them was another matter.
Slowly, Kareste reached for the staff. Brand wondered if he should have taken it before, while he could. Kareste had been true to her word and freed the Halathrin from the sorcery that bound them to the beasts, but did she have the strength to destroy the thing that gave her so much power?
She clasped the staff and used it to help her stand. Brand wanted to help, but he knew that reaching out toward her could be seen as an attempt to take the staff itself. That might be all that was needed to tip her thoughts in the wrong direction.
Kareste stood on wobbly legs, and she leaned on the broken staff. Unexpectedly, Brand thought of Aranloth. How many times had he seen the lòhren stand just so? But Aranloth’s choices were made long ago. With Kareste, anything was still possible.
There was determination on her face that Brand had not seen before. She had always been strong willed, but a decision of one kind or another now seemed graven on her face as an image was onto stone.
She looked at them all, and though she was travel stained and dirty, though she was spent from their long journey and exhausted from the latest fight, he had never seen her look more beautiful. But the shadow was still in her eyes, and they seemed dark to him. He could not glimpse even a fraction of what she thought.
Then she turned her gaze directly on him as though the Halathrin were not there. She blinked a few times, and then she shrugged.
Brand watched her, uncertain. The Halathrin seemed calm, but underneath their exterior he sensed enormous tension.
Kareste stirred, and then spoke. “My choice is made. I promised Brand that I would destroy the staff, and I don’t care what Durletha thought,” she pointed at the witch’s body, “I have power, and I will have more, for there are many things wrong in the land that need righting. But I will not achieve it with Shurilgar’s staff. Even now, I fight its lure. If it isn’t destroyed, and destroyed soon, I’ll succumb.”
The Halathrin looked at her gravely. After a few moments, Harlinlanloth spoke.
“It is so with you and your kind. But it is not so with us. The staff is a sacred thing. Long we protected its other half, hid it from the world, revered the memory of who once, long ago even to us, was lost. We could do so again, for we seek not to use its powers. We are not tempted.”
Brand turned to the Halathrin girl.
“You know that there’s another half, but do you know how it’s used? How it’s used even as we speak?”
Harlinlanloth looked at him with troubled eyes.
“Nay,” she answered. “Only that the elùgroths possess it.”
“Then I shall tell you. It’s used in a siege. The enemy encircles Cardoroth City. Elugs, and all manner of other dark things, including elùgroths, draw on its dark power. The staff that is sacred to you is used by them to break down the city’s defenses. Brave soldiers, and brave lòhrens, die to protect what they love. And though they fight, though they fight to their last breath, yet still the enemy will overcome them. At least, while the enemy wields the power of the staff.”
He paused, allowing an opportunity for consideration of his words, before he went on.
“Even Aranloth cannot defy such power forever. It may already be too late, for long have Kareste and I tarried when we could have destroyed the staff earlier. And as you no doubt know, to destroy the one half is to destroy the other, for the power that infused it, when it was one, binds it still as two. Cardoroth may so be saved, and not only that, but great evil could be prevented that otherwise would follow as surely you know it must, so long as the power remains in the possession of the elùgroths. I don’t wish to cause you, you who have been through so much, distress. But the staff must be destroyed. Not just for the sake of Kareste, not just for my sake, not just for Cardoroth, but for the whole land.”
When Brand ceased speaking, there was silence. It was perhaps the longest speech he had ever made, and he thought he could have done better. But at least his thoughts were in the open. But how the Halathrin would react to them, he did not know.
The bulk of the Halathrin seemed ready to speak, but the girl silenced them with a slight gesture of her hand. She, it appeared, was their leader.
“This is no small thing for us,” Harlinlanloth said. “We must speak amongst ourselves for a while.”
She looked at Brand, and though he could not read her intentions, he saw sympathy in her eyes.
“Yet I hear you,” she continued. “There’s truth in your heart, and I sense it in your words. But this is a choice as even the wise should dread to make. On the one hand is the risk to Alithoras – on the other the
veneration of one who is no longer alive, and yet who, while he lived, gave all he had, even the ultimate sacrifice, to protect the land.”
She shook her head slowly. “To destroy the last remembrance of him is a dishonor beyond endurance to those who saw his deeds and heard his words. And most of my kind are accounted among that number. To them, in the end, I must justify my actions.”
Brand did not answer. Instead, he gave a small bow. He understood what she said, and she understood the argument he had made. Nothing else needed saying, not yet, at least. And he hoped it never would.
The Halathrin withdrew. They gathered beneath the shadows of the nearby fringe of trees. They were close enough that Brand could hear the murmur of their voices, but not so close that he could understand them. But he did not wish to listen in anyway; theirs was a private conversation about things that he would never be able to truly understand.
He mused on his feelings. The power that was in him had been woken, and there was no way to cause it to slumber again. It was like a fire; having been sparked to life it must burn. He could not turn it back any more than a flower could refuse to bloom when the heat of approaching summer warmed the earth. Its time had come.
He closed his eyes and felt what he had sensed for some time: the need of the land. The land, from whence all power and life ultimately came. It called to him. He felt its demand to serve. It was the call that rumor and legend from everywhere in Alithoras claimed lòhrens heard. He knew it now for the truth.
But what of the Duthenor? What of the usurper who ruled in place of his father? Small things perhaps in the greater scheme of the world, in the face of the vast threat to Alithoras. But not to him. Could he heed a call, no matter how just and right, when his heart yearned for something else, equally just and right in its own way? Did he have the power to refuse the call? If he did, should he?
These also were questions that even the wise would dread to make. To serve without belief, without power of will and conviction of heart, was not to serve at all. It would only open the door to defeat, for the enemy would take such weakness and use it ruthlessly as a tool for their victory.
