Age of Swords

by Michael J. Sullivan

  “The only problem is that Raithe is convinced he can’t prevail,” Tegan added.

  “I’ll fight him,” Nyphron said.

  “We’ve already told you that’s not possible. A Fhrey can’t be keenig,” Tegan replied.

  “I don’t care about your silly laws!” Nyphron exploded. He threw up his hands and began to stalk about the hall. “This is war—war with my people—people who are superior to you in all ways except numbers. It isn’t some stupid inner-clan skirmish or a game. If we lose—we lose everything. We have no time for foolishness. The Fhrey are the best in the world. Estramnadon exacts tribute from the Dherg only because they chose not to extinguish them. They keep the goblins in their holes and the giants in their caves. What chance do you think you have without me?”

  He wiped a hand over his face, trying to calm down. He took a breath, let it out, and then drew another. “There’s no greater power in the world than he who sits on the Forest Throne. But we can win, and we can win for two reasons. First, because the fane doesn’t expect sheep to wage war. And second, because you have me. I can teach your people to fight, and I can lead your people to victory. Without me, without my leadership, all of you will die.”

  “My lord Nyphron,” Tegan intervened. “Even if all you say is true, consider this from our perspective. How can we place our people under the rule of a Fhrey when we are risking our lives to cast off the Fhrey’s influence? How could we even explain that to our people? I’m afraid that despite all your good intentions your role can never be more than as a valued adviser.”

  Nyphron gritted his teeth but said nothing else.

  “Which brings us back to who should answer the challenge,” Tegan went on, looking to all those in the ring. “One of us will need to step forward.”

  The Rhulyn chieftains faced one another in silence. For days, they had done nothing, but they still looked exhausted: shadows beneath their eyes, shoulders slumped, and dull expressions. Worry and fear had beaten them before the battle began. Still, they all had weapons. Belt daggers mostly, but Tegan had an ax next to his chair, and Harkon had his spear by the door. No one trusted the Gula-Rhunes not to attack without warning.

  Alward stood to speak. “Would it be such an awful thing to have a Gula keenig?”

  “The Gula are an unforgiving people,” Raithe said, “who have always hated the Rhulyn-Rhunes. If by some miracle you defeat the Fhrey, you may find life under the rule of the Gula is worse than you have now.”

  “And yet you doom us to this by your refusal to fight,” Krugen said.

  “I’m not dooming you to anything. I’m merely stating a fact. I can’t defeat Udgar. If you want victory, I’m not your man. You’ll have to choose someone else.”

  The chieftains looked around at one another. Resignation filled their faces, the bleak, joyless acceptance of inevitable defeat. Krugen looked down at his lush robe and his hands as if he would soon need to say goodbye to both.

  Krugen huffed, not having it in him to laugh. “Does anyone here honestly believe they can beat Udgar in battle?”

  No one spoke for a long time. Eyes shifted from face to face, but in the end, they all looked at the floor.

  Tegan leaned forward to the edge of his chair. The chieftain appeared to be the same age as Raithe’s father had been. “You must do it,” he said to Raithe with a finality to his words. “There’s no other choice.”

  “The Gula-Rhunes have more skill and experience in battle than the Dureyans,” Raithe replied. “Udgar looks to be a fine warrior. He’s seen many more battles than I, and if he killed my brother, then I really have little chance.”

  “Perhaps not, but little is better than none. Besides, you need to avenge your brother.”

  “I hated my brothers,” Raithe said, and sighed. “Dead for three years and they’re still trying to kill me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Facing the Demon

  You never know what you are capable of until you are so desperate as to try anything. You might be pleased or disappointed, but always, always surprised.

  —THE BOOK OF BRIN

  Roan woke up in the blackness, wondering where she was. Usually she saw the orange glow of the slumbering coals in the center of the roundhouse, but it was dark. Iver wasn’t snoring. Waking to silence always frightened her. Doing so meant that her nightmares had followed her into the waking world. Nightmare, not nightmares, she corrected herself. Roan only had the one.

  She heard a sound, some kind of movement. Roan prepared herself, held her breath, and turned her head. It wasn’t Iver. In the glow of the green light, she saw Persephone, Moya, and Arion sitting near the center of the stone chamber. Everything came back. She wasn’t at home; she was trapped in a foreign land a mile beneath the world in a stone tomb with no water and little food, and there was a demon who would soon break through their barricade and kill them. Oh, thank you, Mari! Thank you! She sighed in relief and relaxed.

  The little men were also awake, sitting together a few feet away from Persephone, Moya, and Arion, two trios gathered like sets. The larger glowstone lay on the ground between them. Roan spotted the light of the other farther away, near where the desk and stack of tablets lay. She figured that was where Brin, Suri, and Minna were.

  Roan found it odd that she had fallen asleep. She hadn’t planned to, hadn’t even remembered lying down or closing her eyes. Most of all, it wasn’t like her to sleep so easily. Most nights she struggled, tossing and shifting. Iver used to collapse and pass right out. Moya, Roan discovered, slept well into the morning, even in the winter when nights were long. Usually, when Roan managed to sleep at all, it was only for three or four hours. The slightest sound woke her, and once up, she was completely awake with no hope of returning to slumber. Roan found it strange to discover she was still tired, groggy, weak, and bleary-eyed.

  Maybe I’m sick.

  Roan was rarely ill, but when she was, it was horrible. She thought back to the last time and realized her mistake too late.

  Gifford.

  She saw his face in the darkness, smiling at her the way he always did—with his lopsided grin, the one that made the boys call him goblin. When she was bedridden from the fever, he had made her soup. Perhaps the best soup she’d ever tasted, which meant he didn’t make it by himself. Gifford was many things, but he was not an especially good cook, and soup that wonderful could only have been made by one person. He had gone to Padera. Gifford never went to her. They didn’t get along, which Roan always found odd, as those two had to be the nicest people in the world.

  Gifford was always doing things like that, sacrificing himself on her behalf. He gave her his best pottery. Once, when he was trying to get honey for her birthday, he’d been stung nearly to death. And because of his leg, hunting copper for her in the pits near the river wasn’t just agonizing but dangerous. She wished he wouldn’t do it. Sweet as it was, he made her feel guilty. The worst part of getting sick was knowing how much it would hurt Gifford.

  Right now, Gifford is lying under the wool, battered and bloody because of me, because I couldn’t stop thinking. And yet I didn’t think. She never thought the right way. People like Persephone could always reason things out so much better than she. Others understood not only what to do but how and when to do it. Roan always had problems with things like that. Moya said it wasn’t her fault, that Roan hadn’t lived a normal life, but Roan knew that people—the nice ones—made excuses for her, too many excuses.

  Gifford didn’t make allowances; he refused to see her faults and failures. And she had plenty of both: like the leg brace that threw Gifford in the dirt or the spear thrower that proved to be useless. Gifford saw only the good in her, and that was the problem. He had been beaten because he couldn’t see what was so obvious to everyone else.

  You’re nothing, Roan. Iver’s voice always groaned from the back of his throat the way most people sounded only in the early morning. That’s what ‘Roan’ means…‘nothing.’ That’s why your mother pic
ked that name. She knew you would never amount to anything. You were a burden to her, and you’ve been a burden to me, and you’ll be a curse to anyone who cares about you. That’s what you really are, Roan, a burden and a curse.

  She used to pretend it wasn’t true, but how could she keep believing when there was so much evidence to the contrary? What had happened to Gifford was a prime example. She could still see his bloody, beaten face.

  You’ll be a curse to anyone who cares about you.

  “Roan?” Brin said, her outline blotting out the light from the small stone. “Are you awake?”

  She nodded, realized that was stupid, and said, “Yes.”

  “Oh, good, I came over before, but didn’t want to wake you. I wasn’t quite done anyway.”

  “Before? How long was I sleeping?”

  “Don’t know. But a good while. Long enough for me to decipher quite a few tablets. I think I know what happened. I’m going to tell everyone, and I want you to hear, too.”

  “Okay.”

  Roan sat up straighter and scrubbed her face with her palms, trying to drive the grogginess away. The stone floor had sucked away her body heat and left her chilled. When she was done with her face, she rubbed her arms and thighs. Feeling a bit warmer, she got up and walked to where the others were gathered. She felt heavy, as if she’d gained weight, and was relieved to sit back down between Moya and Persephone, who smiled weakly at her.

  Arion didn’t look up. She faced the stoned-up crack. The bald Fhrey lady sat hunched over, her legs crossed, her hands in her lap, eyes closed almost as if sleeping. Just in front of her crossed ankles, dark dots marked where blood had dripped from her nose to the stone. They all looked exhausted. Persephone and Moya had dark circles under their eyes, and it seemed that even sitting took quite an effort.

  “Have a good sleep?” Moya asked.

  Roan thought about it and shook her head. “Still tired.”

  “Yeah, I think Arion has been needing more energy to keep the door closed,” Persephone said.

  “Perhaps she’ll put us to sleep when the time comes. Might be better that way,” Moya added.

  “There’s no point in thinking like that,” Persephone said. But Roan wondered if their chieftain really believed her own words.

  Brin came over, holding one of the tablets. “So let me explain what I’ve learned.” The girl placed the stone on the ground in front of them and sat beside Roan.

  “What about Suri?” Persephone asked.

  “She knows this already.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Memorizing the table tablet.” In the green light, Roan could see dark circles around Brin’s eyes, too. The girl’s normally round face drooped, but she seemed buoyed by the thrill of telling what she’d discovered, revealing a secret.

  “So I’ve been studying the tablets as best I can. I still miss a lot of the words. They’re in reverse order, meaning that the first tablet is on the bottom and the last one that was created is on top. So I started the story backward.”

  “Story?” Persephone asked.

  “The tablets are about the person who was imprisoned here.”

  “The Old One?” Moya asked.

  “Except he didn’t call himself that. As far as I can tell, his name was The Three. He was killed by his own brother, I think. A dispute over a woman. Both were in love with someone who was…real? Something like that. There’s a whole lot about this woman that I skipped over, but—”

  “Killed?” Moya asked. “How could he be dead and here as well? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Brin made an embarrassed face and shrugged. “But just listen anyway. So this Three person—the Old One—was trapped, sort of like us, okay? He couldn’t escape.”

  “But he did,” Roan said.

  Brin nodded. “The dwarfs made that possible. According to the tablets, The Three heard their hammers and shouted for help. They came closer, but they wouldn’t open the prison. He begged them, but they were afraid. They thought he was Uberlin.”

  “Who’s that?” Moya asked.

  Again, Brin shrugged. “Someone bad, I guess.”

  “The Evil One,” Flood spoke. “Ancient lore speaks of one who brought wickedness into the world. Uberlin is the great enemy of everyone and everything.”

  Brin nodded. “It fits. So, The Three apparently knew many things and offered to give the dwarfs a powerful gift if they let him out. He had learned that they used only stone tools and he offered to share the secret of a metal called copper.”

  “Wait,” Moya said. “The dwarfs didn’t know about copper? Isn’t that what Roan made her ax out of?” She looked at Roan, who nodded.

  “This was a very long time ago,” Brin explained.

  “Humans didn’t even exist then,” Flood said.

  “Oh, no. We did,” Brin said. “I saw references to the Three Peoples.”

  “The what?”

  “The Children of Ferrol, the Children of Drome, and the Children of Mari.”

  Persephone smiled when Brin said that last word.

  Brin smiled back. “I have a feeling there’s a lot more about that in the other tablets that I’ve yet to go over. There’s so many of them. Must have taken decades to make them all.”

  “How many did you decipher? How many have you gotten through?” Persephone asked.

  “Just two. And I helped Suri work out the table tablet.”

  “So, to get back to the story…” Moya paused to yawn, and then she looked in Arion’s direction. “You were saying that this prisoner asked the dwarfs to set him free and…?”

  “Right,” Brin said. “The dwarfs said they needed to test the gift, and they went away for a long time. When they returned, they said it wasn’t good enough because copper is too weak.”

  Roan nodded. “It’s true. You can’t do much with it.”

  “So The Three offered a better gift, the secret to making bronze. Again, the Dherg went away for a very long time. When they returned, they complained that copper was too scarce, and the gift was worthless.”

  “Bronze is made from copper?” Roan asked excitedly.

  “And tin, apparently. The whole formula is right here.” She pointed to the tablet that lay between them. “You see now why I wanted you to hear this?”

  Brin’s tales were usually good, but Roan had to admit this one was particularly interesting.

  “Bronze wasn’t good enough?” Persephone said with a smirk, looking at the dwarfs.

  “We weren’t there,” Frost reminded her.

  “Anyway,” Brin went on, “The Three was getting irritated by this time, thinking he was being used by the dwarfs.”

  “I know how he feels,” Moya said, and Persephone nodded with her, making Frost and Flood frown.

  “But he offered them one more gift if they absolutely guaranteed to let him out. He then gave them the secret of something called Eye-run.”

  “Iron,” Frost said.

  “Iron?” Brin looked at him thoughtfully.

  “Is that in there too?” Roan asked, staring down at the flat stone at Brin’s knees and daring to touch the engraved marks on the surface “How to make it, I mean?”

  Brin nodded. “Just like bronze. I think it might be the gray metal we saw.”

  “Happy birthday, Roan,” Moya said.

  Roan looked at her confused. It wasn’t her birthday, at least she didn’t think so. Roan’s mother, Reanna, lived until Roan was eleven, but never celebrated the day her daughter was born. Iver told her Reanna called it “the worst day of her life.”

  “Anyway…so, the dwarfs went away again, okay? For a very long time. And when they came back, they said it’s still not enough. They wanted more. The Three then promised the key to immortality, which is to eat the fruit of the First Tree. He explained that he had a seed, and if they planted it, they could have all the fruit they wanted. This was very clever because the other gifts were just knowledge, but the seed was a physical thing and they wo
uld have to open a tiny hole in the stone for him to pass it through. The dwarfs went away again to think about it. By then The Three knew he had tempted the dwarfs with something they couldn’t resist.”

  Frost and Flood made huffing sounds and grumbled. “What a pile of silt.”

  Brin pretended not to hear. “The small hole was all The Three needed to get out. But by then he hated them so much for their greed and treachery that he couldn’t bear to let them get his treasure, the tablets and the wisdom they contained. So, he determined how to create Balgargarath, but he didn’t call it that.”

  “Balgargarath is our word,” Flood said.

  “The Three used another name.”

  “A shorter one, I hope,” Moya said.

  Brin shook her head. “Sadly, no. And I have no chance of pronouncing it. He also referred to the creature as almost alive. The sentinel would live forever and prevent the dwarfs from accessing the tablets. He gave it rein to roam all of Neith and permission to punish the dwarfs should they enter.”

  “Oh!” Frost exploded. “He curses us? Claims it’s our own fault?”

  Moya shook her head. “You told us yourself that you came here in search of riches. Your habits don’t seem to have changed.”

  “Quiet, the both of you,” Persephone said, raising her voice. “Go on, Brin.”

  “The Three forbade his creation from going beyond this mountain, to prevent it from becoming a curse on the rest of the world.”

  “Wait. What? It can’t leave Neith?” Frost said.

  “Not according to this.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Persephone said. “At least we don’t have to worry about it coming to our shores.”

  “So what happened next?” Moya asked.

  Brin shrugged. “That’s all there was. This last tablet was never finished. I think because the prisoner left. It spoke about his sacrifice, and how he would escape and create Balgargarath.”

  “How’d he get out?” Persephone asked.

  “I guess the dwarfs returned and made that small hole.”

  “And that was enough?”