Copyright © 2011 Daniel T Hylton
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1-4565-3871-3
ISBN-13: 978-1456538712
eBook ISBN: 978-1-61914-091-2
This book is dedicated to the memory
of Margaret Joan Asher.
She was a second mother to me.
Heaven is richer for her presence, and
we are poorer for her absence.
I also want to remember Andrew Gray; his
opinion was my first conduit to the world.
And then there’s my namesake, Daniel Samuel
Ibarra, as fine a boy as ever there was.
I have ten grandchildren now; the world is – and will
continue to be – a better place because they are in it.
He ascends the height, to put his hand among the stars;
And wield the Sword of Heaven.
-from Kelven’s Riddle
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
1
Utter darkness.
Terrific heat.
Terrible pain.
Terrible pain. Hideous, unmanageable pain. The pain fed on the heat; it overwhelmed his senses, his flesh and his bones, and gnawed viciously upon the very marrow of his being.
It was unendurable.
Die, he told himself desperately, die and be done.
Perhaps he was already dead. But, if so, why did the pain continue? The dead know no pain. No, his body must still cling tenaciously to his spirit, holding it hostage. Die, he pleaded with his flesh and bones, die. Free my spirit. End the pain.
A blindingly bright flash of light.
Piercing the blackness like sapphire lightning, it struck him, filled him, and illuminated him to his core, though it revealed nothing of the dark environs that surrounded him. Quick, intensely bright, and for a brief moment shockingly cold; it came and was gone.
But the heat – and much of the pain – went with it.
Cooler now. Cold, in fact.
Still dark, though, impenetrable night.
2
Ka’en, eldest daughter of Lancer, the Prince of Derosa, stood in the road just outside the gates of the wall that protected that city, and gazed westward across the darkening plains.
Something had happened in the west, where Aram had gone. Something terrible – she knew it in her heart.
Just two hours ago, the earth had shaken, suddenly, as if it had sustained a shock. Pottery slipped from shelves, fell and broke. Lancer himself had been mounting the main stairs; he stumbled, was thrown, and tumbled nearly to the bottom. He was shaken and bruised but otherwise, thankfully, unhurt. When the tremors stopped, Ka’en ran from her father’s house down through the town and the road beyond, through the gates and out onto the plains. Panting from the exertion and from fear, she stood with her hands to her breast and looked into the west. It was late evening, the sun hung low above the horizon.
But along that horizon smoke rose, thick, dark, and heavy. Shot through with fire, it boiled into the sky from the distant summit of Burning Mountain, a hundred miles away – where Aram had gone three days earlier with a small army of men and horses and wolves to assault the enemy’s fortress atop Flat Butte.
Something had gone wrong. The smoke and fire bore witness.
Aram had considered burning the fortress after ejecting its occupants – he had told her as much. But this smoke did not arise from the burning of wooden timbers and the broken instruments of war. This was something profoundly more serious, more substantial. The mountain had awakened and was spewing fire.
Like so many times before, Ka’en was worried – frightened; anxious over Aram’s safe return. She needed to know that he yet lived and was safe. She needed to see his face, hear his voice, to touch him and feel his arms enfold her, to let not an inch of space or a moment of time separate her from the tall, fierce, strange man that she loved.
But he was far to the west, somewhere beneath that towering, billowing column of smoke and fire. And so she stood as still as a statue, hands clasped to her breast, and stared into the west, watching conflagration spread across the horizon.
Eventually, the day waned away, the sun abandoned the earth and the rolling plains to the west grew darker. As she peered out into the deepening gloom, hoping against hope to see the huge form of the great horse Thaniel loom out of the dusk bearing Aram safely home, Ka’en’s mind filled with memories of him – so many memories, packed into the relatively small space of three years. She remembered the first time she’d heard of Aram, though at the time she did not know his name, or who he was.
He had appeared upon the landscape of her world at a time when her people were desperate and alone, threatened with annihilation.
In the time of her grandfather, when her father was a boy, the people of Wallensia – whose princess she was – had been expelled from their ancient capitol of Stell to the southwest by an army of Manon, the ancient god who’d turned to evil, and that one of Aram’s ancestors had named the enemy of the world. Many of their people had been slaughtered in that terrible time, most of the rest enslaved; only a few escaped.
The survivors had pulled back to the northeast, to the remote and rolling plains around Derosa, the only town in all of Wallensia still under control of the Prince. But the grim lord of the earth continued to ruthlessly expand the frontiers of his empire. Though for a while there was no organized force that came against them – they were far from places that Manon found more interesting, and their people were few in number – outlying farmsteads were attacked by roving bands of gray men, and occasionally lashers, the parents slain and the children taken.
Finally, the Wallensians had pulled back into the small fortified valley around Derosa and had abandoned the plains entirely. But it was a small valley indeed, and though they were few, perhaps eight hundred men besides women and children, food supply became a serious issue. Meat, especially, and the vital nourishment it provided, had become worse than scarce – almost nonexistent. Due to the continuing ravages of protracted hostilities, the gradual depletion of their livestock and other domesticated animals had been unavoidable and irreversible. So, when the few hundred acres of arable ground in the valley had been parceled out to those best suited to work the soil, the others, farmers before, became hunters.
Deer were ple
ntiful in the rough, wooded hills surrounding the town and for many years, as they fought a seemingly endless defensive struggle against roving bands of the enemy’s servants, it had sufficed. But then, during the last several years, wolves had suddenly appeared in great numbers, crowding into the hills around Derosa as if driven before a storm, especially in the green hills to the northwest. As their numbers increased, the wolf packs infiltrated the hills to the north and northeast as well and even threatened the city – one pack had brazenly invaded a barn on the edge of town, savaging an ox and killing its owner. So, hunters became prey as well, and hunting parties were often more concerned with self-defense than with procuring supplies of meat. Year by year, the situation had become more dire, and finally untenable.
Three years earlier, late in the summer, Ka’en’s elder brother, Findaen, had taken a small hunting party into the hills to the northwest of Derosa, hoping to get safely beyond the range of the wolves and find deer. There were stories of a legendary “valley of spirits” fifty miles or so to the northwest. Findaen and his companions hoped to find that valley, and find it full of deer and free of wolves. Instead, wolves found them. But someone else found them as well.
She remembered how Findaen’s eyes shone as he related the tale to her father and others in the great hall after his return.
“There were eight wolves – five enormous beasts and three smaller ones; their young, I guess – and they ambushed us just as we were eating supper.” He indicated the slim, dark man standing to his left. “Wamlak had taken a deer with his bow at the bottom of this wash, and we were all hungry, so we started a fire and prepared to cook some of it. Until then, we hadn’t seen any wolves in the valley.” He glanced at his father. “Which we found, by the way – that valley does exist.”
A low murmur went around the room at this, but Findaen waved it off, anxious to continue his tale. “Anyway, there we were, backed up against the bluff with nowhere to run. The sun was down, darkness was falling fast, and our torches were burning out. It was about to get desperate and we knew it.”
Findaen glanced over at his companions, the slim, dark-headed Wamlak, the smaller but wiry Jonwood, and the enormous, barrel-chested Mallet. The three nodded solemnly, confirming his words. Findaen looked back at his father, seated quietly at his place at the head table.
“I thought we were finished, father, I really did. Those five big wolves were closing in, and they were monsters.” His eyes widened in memory and he spread his hands apart. “Then, one of the smaller wolves just keeled over dead, and then another – and then the third started squealing and I could see an arrow protruding from its haunches.
“Well, the older wolves must have thought that we’d done it somehow and they came straight at us. But then a couple of them went down and the others turned away to our right and charged into the darkness.” He paused a moment for effect. “And that’s when he came. He ran right into them and you can believe me, they didn’t stand a chance. He killed them easily, within a space of moments – before we could even close our mouths and try to help.”
Findaen shook his head in astonishment. “The next thing I know, this tall, dark, rough-looking fellow – dressed in wolf-hide, by the way – is going around making sure they’re all dead.”
He looked at his father. “And then do you know what he asked us?”
The gray-haired, aristocratic man shook his head slightly, his gaze riveted on his son’s face.
“He asked us what we were doing in his valley.”
Lancer stiffened. “His valley?”
Findaen nodded. “That’s what he called it – his valley.”
Ka’en thrilled as she listened to this narrative and the adventurer in her soul saw those things described by her brother quite clearly, including the deadly, mysterious stranger. She heard her father ask the question that was on her – and no doubt everyone else’s – mind.
“Who is he?”
Findaen shook his head. “He didn’t give us a name. He just wanted us to be gone, out of his valley. Mallet here thinks he’s a god.” He paused a moment and stared down at the floor before looking up again. “I don’t know about that, but I’ll tell you this, father – the gods sent him, that’s for sure. If he hadn’t come on the scene when he did, it’s likely that none of the four of us would be standing here now.”
“Did he supply you with the venison?”
Findaen nodded. “Most of it, yes. And we have to go back out again – he promised that there would be more – he leaves it hanging in trees for us to find.”
Lancer frowned. “Why does he do this thing for us?”
“Because he can, I guess.” Findaen grinned even as he shook his head in wonder. “He said that if we would stay out of his valley, in return he would kill all the wolves from the green hills and the hills to the north of Derosa.”
“All the wolves? By himself?”
“I asked if he wanted us to help – he said no, and he obviously doesn’t need any assistance. We never see him do the deed, but we find the carcasses. At the rate he’s going at it, there won’t be a wolf left in this country by winter.”
“We must find a means of thanking our benefactor.”
Findaen shrugged. “He just said to stay away.”
Lancer glanced up at his son but gave no answer.
The mysterious stranger from the valley had been as good as his word. The wolves disappeared from the hills to the north and northwest of Derosa, and the deer came back. All that fall and throughout the winter, the accomplishments of this mystery warrior were a common topic, and because his identity was unknown, what he was became as important in conversations of conjecture as who he was.
But knowing that he was there, and that his actions benefited them, made them feel strangely safer and more at peace. It seemed that better times had come. The tide of their fortunes, perhaps, had turned.
Then one cool autumn morning, the plains to the west darkened with the approach of power. An army of Manon came – a large, organized force, with thousands of gray-faced, grim soldiers – and the promising ghost of better times faded before the massed might of the enemy that gathered on the prairie just beyond the gates of their city.
One year had passed since the advent of their mysterious benefactor in the north. It was just as summer had waned into fall once again that a massive column of dust arose far away over the plains to the west and came determinedly onward, toward Derosa. Scouts were sent through the green hills to ascertain the meaning of the ominous cloud. When they returned, their report chilled the spirit and froze the heart.
An army of thousands, gray men and lashers, approached the gates.
Manon had finally bent his thoughts toward them in a serious and malignant way and meant to bring the last remnant of Wallensia under thrall. And there was no place left to run. Lancer, Prince of Derosa, prepared his people to die defending the thresholds of their houses.
But then Findaen, who’d been hunting the green hills, returned with a message from the mysterious warrior of the northern valley.
“Tell your Prince that you will not fight alone. I know someone who will help. Go now, prepare to defend yourselves, and aid will come.”
Their unknown guardian meant to help them yet again in these, the most dire of circumstances. And so it was that on a morning in autumn, as the enemy approached the gates in frightening numbers, a thin, ragged line of farmers gazed out upon the gathering host with a small, desperate hope struggling against the terrible fear in their breasts.
Ka’en was there among them, standing atop the wall. She had refused to remain behind in the town. Born in Derosa in times of unending war, she had never traveled outside the valley and the spirit inside her was as restless as that of a caged bird.
“If I am to die,” she told her father, “I will die looking out upon the world that has been denied to me for the whole of my life. You may forbid it if you like, and I have never disobeyed, but I will disobey now, if necessary. I will go to this ba
ttle with you and my brother whether you forbid it or not.”
Lancer gazed at his eldest daughter for a long moment, frowned deeply, shook his head, started to speak, frowned more deeply, and then pulled her to him silently, held her for one long desperate moment, and found her a small straight sword and a shield. Together, father and daughter went down and ascended the walls.
Out on the plains, the enemy broke his columns and spread across the field, forming a dark, menacing line, topped with shining spears. Ka’en knew with terrible certainty that she was gazing upon Death’s instrument being readied to accomplish its bloody, vile work. And though she had no formal training in the martial art of combat, she steeled herself to face this evil, to die facing it, for the sake of the mothers and the children in the valley behind her.
There was an abrupt silence, odd and eerie, as the army came on line and paused, the tramping of thousands of boots momentarily stopped, and the distant echoing roar of a lasher rolled toward them like muted thunder.
Behind the line, the archers formed up and moved forward.
The assault was about to begin.
Men who wanted nothing more than to live in peace and to work the bounteous earth for the benefit of their children and grandchildren were about to feel the full force of the grim lord’s power, the instrument of his dark lust to control all life.
Around Ka’en, the Derosans braced for the coming shock.
And then he came.
Exploding from a stand of trees at the base of the hills over to the right, an enormous metallic black beast came onto the field and charged directly into the enemy’s flank. On the back of the great beast there was a rider, the figure of a man dressed in black armor, and he wielded a long sword with which he wrought immediate and terrible carnage among the ranks of the enemy.
As the metal-clad behemoth crashed into the line Ka’en could hear piercing screams echo across the plains as men began to die with the passage of the beast and its rider.
And then something happened that struck awe into the hearts of the Derosans and fear into the hearts of the enemy.
Kelven's Riddle Book Three Page 1