Dawn of Swords Read online

  In other words, he would make a noble king.

  “How much longer?” asked Geris, his voice soft and distant.

  Jacob peered behind once more. “Shouldn’t be long now. Are you well?”

  The boy shrugged. “Yes,” he replied. “Just getting tired.”

  “This nightmare is behind us, and in time it will fade from you like a half-remembered dream.”

  Geris nodded, not quite looking like he believed him. Jacob faced forward again and let out a sigh. The Lordship, which included himself and the Wardens, Ahaesarus and Judarius, had been formed four years earlier with the purpose of finding the three human children they believed best suited to take up the mantle of leadership under the watchful eyes of Ashhur, the loving god of the lands west of the Rigon. All three boys had come from strong and loyal families spread throughout Paradise—Martin from Mordeina, Ben from Conch, and Geris from Ashhur’s home city of Safeway—and had been chosen after a lengthy process during which the three mentors watched and observed a great many youths, testing their skill and intelligence, for a span of eighteen months. The newly appointed kinglings were then sent to Safeway, along with their families, to continue their training in the shadow of Ashhur’s Sanctuary. Of the three, Martin Harrow had demonstrated the greatest potential. Martin had been a hardened youth possessed of high intellect, a sense of empathy for his fellow man, and the desire to learn all his instructors had to offer. But now Martin’s body was rotting atop a donkey. Jacob shook his head; the boy’s mentor, Judarius, would be greatly upset by the news.

  That left Ben Maryll and Geris Felhorn as the two in line to become king of the western lands of Paradise. Jacob knew that Geris would easily best Ben in any physical competition or game of wits. However, in deciding whom to crown ruler, the most essential qualities were faithfulness and charisma. Geris was a private child, happier when climbing the red cliffs around the Sanctuary than taking part in his lessons. But Ben drew people in. When he was comfortable, his sense of humor and timing were impeccable. He was certainly not a risk-taker, but he came across as cautious rather than fearful. As Ben’s mentor, Jacob nurtured that aspect of the boy’s personality, while seeking to instill a sense of fairness. Although Geris would be a stronger king, potentially leading the realm to greatness if Ashhur ever granted his subjects true self-rule, Jacob felt that, with the relative naïveté of the human race in Paradise, the people deserved a leader more like the one Ben would become.

  Again Jacob caught Geris stealing a glance at the third donkey.

  “Martin is in Afram now,” Jacob said, hoping to ease the boy’s lingering distress. “He is descending through the peaceful void, reaching out for Ashhur’s golden mountain. Cry if you must, but do not let it overwhelm you.”

  Geris nodded again, the resolve in his eyes increasing Jacob’s respect for him.

  What had been intended as a teaching opportunity for the kinglings had suddenly become a nightmare. After Ashhur had expressed concern about the goings-on in Haven a few weeks back, Jacob had suggested taking the three kinglings with him to preach Ashhur’s word at the Temple of the Flesh. He had been adamant that his words would reach the people of Haven, that the voice of Jacob Eveningstar, the First Man of Dezrel and Ashhur’s most trusted servant, would carry weight among the heathens.

  And yet it hadn’t. The people did not wish to hear his sermons. All they wanted was to enter their temple, watch Priestess Aprodia dance erotically, and then fill the rest of their days with copulation and brandied wine. They truly were a lost people, so lost that a part of Jacob felt they deserved what had happened to them.

  But there were other whispers that concerned him, tales told to him by Peytr, a merchant of precious gems from the delta, who had recently returned from the northern Tinderlands on his raft. He said there were signs of civilization in those dead plains, the remnants of fire pits and haphazardly created shelters. The bones of chickens and pigs had been scattered about the area, as well as the imprints of what could have been countless marching feet. At first Jacob had given no thought to the man’s discovery. Sinners had often fled to the vast emptiness of the Tinderlands, a place unclaimed by either Paradise or Neldar, to escape Karak’s judgment. But now that Jacob had seen a fraction of the forces led by Vulfram Mori, a new theory had begun to grow in his head.

  What if Peytr had seen the first signs of an army making its way toward Paradise?

  He licked his dry lips and glanced around.

  “Are you thirsty, Ben?” he asked, trying to calm his nerves. He turned enough to see the boy nod.

  There was a small watering hole close to the river, mostly hidden by a thatch of tall, swaying grasses. He steered his horse over, dismounted, and patted the mare on the nose. The horse whinnied in reply. He then assisted Ben and Geris in stepping down off their donkeys, and the three of them knelt beside the pool and filled their skins with cloudy water. The pool was located in a slight divot in the earth, likely created by runoff after one of the South’s rare cloudbursts. It was drying up, mostly gone after they’d filled their cups, but there were wolf and antelope tracks surrounding its muddy embankment. Jacob tapped the curved skinning knife tucked into his belt as his stomach grumbled. He wished the wildlife still lurked nearby, for he would certainly appreciate some meat, even if was the coarse and gristly canine variety.

  He left Ben and Geris sitting beside the pool and wandered toward the riverbank. The river branch was relatively thin, only twenty feet across, but the measureless swampland forest on the other side, with twisted mothertrees and slanting undergrowth—so different from the arid land where he stood—gave it a deep, immense feel, as though it were a spiritual divide between two separate worlds. With the rushing of the water came a light breeze, and Jacob closed his eyes and tilted his head back, allowing it to play with his long hair. Then he gazed south, watching the river wind into the distance until it melded with the horizon. They were nearing the Sanctuary now, which meant they were close to the shores of the Thulon Ocean. The winds would be stronger there, and the rocky coast would tempt one to sit and take in the splendor of the sea.

  Jacob lived by that sea, but not once had he relaxed in front of it since he’d dedicated his services to Ashhur seventeen years before. He had been free before that, for Jacob was the first—and only—human created by the hands of both brother gods. He was indelibly perfect, but that status carried a responsibility all its own. The rest of mankind had been made by either Karak or Ashhur, and with the River Rigon as a divider, they had split the world to make their nations. Jacob, as the First Man, was to be the link between the four First Families, two for each deity, who served as young humanity’s guiding light. It was only after he had spent time with the followers of both gods over the past ninety-three years that he’d decided his presence was most needed among the people of Ashhur. The eastern society of Neldar was much further along, having cast out the Wardens and replaced them with industry and towns and a ruling class and caste system. In the west the Wardens were all but necessary, and those that had been ousted from Neldar were welcomed into Paradise with open arms, for mankind hadn’t even decided on a king yet, and many in Paradise still debated over whether they should even have one.

  He took another sip from his skin before kicking at a loose stone, which bounced down the steep riverbank, crossing from reddened clay to brown mud. The stone plunged into the water, and Jacob watched the ripples it created expand in an ever-widening circle.

  Jacob had been formed from the magma at the center of the planet, birthed beneath the light of Celestia’s star as a fully grown man with the intelligence of the ages. His very first act had been to bow before his creators, the brother gods made flesh. His next was to bear silent witness with his two fathers as Celestia, the goddess who’d originally created this world and populated it with beings of her own design, stood before her two elven races, the Dezren and the Quellan, and asked them to act as wardens to a new race of beings that would soon be created by the broth
er gods. The leaders of both races declined, pleading with her that their numbers were still depleted from the great war many years before, and that if any beings required assistance, it was they. The goddess turned her children away, disappointment painting her glimmering, otherworldly features. With or without the elves’ help, she said, the decision had been made.

  Jacob stood by in awe when, a day later, Celestia forged this very river to split the land for the brother gods to share. He watched as a fissure formed in the center of the world, slowly widening like the maw of a great serpent, separating the land into east and west. The sound of splitting crust had been deafening, the echo of the boulders tumbling into the new crevasse like the constant beating of a drum. And when the gap was broad enough to please the goddess, water rushed into it from the snow-capped mountains in the far north. The rushing tide resonated with the deafening hiss of a massive windstorm, and with it the ecology of the land changed in an instant. The northern expanse, which had once been Kal’droth, the lush green homeland of the elves who had populated the world in the two thousand years since its creation, was particularly altered. The new twin rivers, the Rigon and Gihon, dried the Formian Lake and sucked the nutrients from the fertile soil, depositing them farther south along the new rivers’ banks. The trees shriveled and died in the elven homeland; the grasses browned and rotted; and the wildlife fled to the Northface Mountains, where vegetation still grew. With little choice, the Dezren and Quellan elves moved south, along the banks of the new rivers. Kal’droth became known as the Tinderlands—a wasteland of rocky soil nestled above the northern wedge of the conjoined rivers—where crops refused to grow, and neither god bothered to lay a claim.

  That had happened on the third day of his existence. On the fourth he embarked on a ten-year-long journey, one that took him from one corner of Dezrel to another, crisscrossing the landscape by foot. He was privy to wondrous sights: the southeastern coast, where the surf dashed against the shore, chiseling giant cliffs into wide beaches of fine sand; the Knothills and Craghills of the northwest and the giant grayhorns that grazed between them, beasts of thick gray hides, horned noses, and docile temperaments; the Kiln mountains on the outskirts of the far eastern Queln River, where flocks of multicolored brine geese migrated, forming living rainbows in the sky during the summer; the desert that would become Ker and the infinite prairies that surrounded it, oceans of flowing golden wheat that stretched far as the eye could see; the Pebble Islands off the southern coast, brimming with tropical flora and fauna and surrounded by crystal-blue waters; the snow-capped mountains of the northeast, offering frigid temperatures and deep caves in which Jacob often explored, discovering more than a few strange creatures that existed in almost pure darkness.

  He observed the cycle of life, watching as creatures struggled to survive, fighting each other for food and then huddling together for warmth once night fell. He witnessed the act of birth for the first time, one of the few miracles that he, as a forged man, had been denied. On a boulder outside the Ghostwood, he’d sat and looked on the last of the great dragons, a winged creature fifty feet long with glinting copper scales and fire dripping from its jaws. It had been swallowed whole by a glowing blue portal, ripped away from its home and sent to another reality by Celestia as she finished preparing the world for the coming of humankind.

  Finally, the gods summoned him back. It had taken Ashhur and Karak the full duration of his journey to gather the power and materials necessary for the spell that would bring forth life as well as form the Gods’ Road between the two nations and prepare the amenities that would allow their newly created children to thrive. Clay vessels were laid out on either side of the Rigon, with Jacob sitting in an anchored raft between them. First he looked on as the originators of the First Families took form—Clovis Crestwell, Isabel DuTaureau, Soleh Mori, and Bessus Gorgoros—four beings molded of the earth from the corners of Dezrel that would become their homes, coming into life just as Jacob had, as adults filled with knowledge, able to choose their own names from the ancient language that would become the world’s common tongue. Next he saw the new Wardens arrive, refugees from a different world, chosen after the elves dismissed Celestia’s offer. A thousand of them, males all, stepped into Dezrel as if passing through an invisible doorway. Half went to Ashhur, half to Karak. The tall, beautiful, elegant beings began filling the clay ewers with the same materials that had been used to create the First Four: silt from the Great Lake of the northwest, red sand from the south, chunks of quartz from the frigid northern mountains, and blue clay from the eastern coastal cliffs.

  Then the brother gods chanted, and Celestia’s star doubled in brightness overhead. The ewers glowed and shook, and their shapes changed. The light was so vivid that Jacob was blinded to what came next. When it was all over and his vision cleared, he saw that the ewers were gone; in their stead were two thousand fully developed young men and women, a thousand on each side of the river. They were new beings, infused with preternatural knowledge by the gods yet still frightened and confused, and the Wardens called them into their arms and quelled their fear. Ashhur and Karak then shared a silent nod, brother deities acknowledging their mutual respect for one another, and led their children away, deep into their separate lands.

  Thus went the birth of humankind.

  “We’re ready now,” said a timid voice, tearing Jacob from his memories.

  Jacob turned to find Ben standing there, hands tucked inside his cotton breeches, cheeks flushed and eyes watery. He placed a hand on the boy’s back. Geris was off wandering the road, looking beneath rocks in search of centipedes and scorpions. It seemed some things never changed.

  Just as dusk began to settle over the world of Dezrel, Jacob and his charges finally entered Safeway, the growing community surrounding the Sanctuary. The land shifted—where once there had been reddish, cracked earth, now there were green, cultivated fields. Much of Safeway looked just like this—miles upon miles of flatland, two days across by foot, bordered by the river to the east and the Kerrian desert to the west, the clay cliffs to the north and the shores of the Thulon Ocean to the south. The whole area was peppered with small tent- and hut-dwelling communities for as far as the eye could see. Near ten thousand men, women, and children called it home, just as they all in turn called Ashhur their kind and loving god.

  Bareatus—one of the Wardens Ashhur and Celestia had brought over from some different reality—stood off to the side of the dirt road, hand raised in greeting. Just like the rest of the Wardens, he was tall, almost seven feet, and sublimely graceful. Jacob always thought the Wardens looked eerily similar to elves, only with rounded ears and hair like spun silk. Though all were male, their smooth ivory features held certain feminine qualities, which made them seem approachable despite their size. Bareatus glanced at the trailing donkey and the wrapped lump atop it, and his smile of greeting wavered. His hand fell to his side, and he stood still as a stone, his eyes narrowed to mere slits framed by a mane of straight, golden locks.

  “Are Ahaesarus and Judarius about?” asked Jacob.

  Bareatus shook his head, his gaze still trained on Martin’s covered body.

  “They are in Ang, holding court with Bessus and Damaspia.”

  Of course, thought Jacob. The masters of House Gorgoros were always requesting spiritual guidance.

  “And our Lord? Is he here?”

  Bareatus nodded.

  “He is.”

  “Good. I will meet with him at once. Please send word to my fellow mentors that their presence is required back at the Sanctuary.”

  “Very well, Jacob. I will send a crow bearing that message. In regards to our Lord, please be forewarned that Ashhur is spending time with the children. ‘At once’ may not be as quick as you wish.”

  Jacob gestured for the youths to follow him and kicked his mare, leaving Bareatus alone on the road. He heard the massive Warden’s long strides as he loped away, heading for the tents that were just visible at the tip of a distant rise.r />
  The road rose and fell, rose and fell, and as the sun slowly descended, casting the sky with a deep burgundy pallor, people came into view all around him. There was a group of men in the meadow to his right, dressed in dirty rags and hacking away at the soil, seemingly vacant smiles plastered on their faces. To his left were seven children, running and laughing through a field of short corn, ducking below the stalks and daring others to find them. Beyond the children was a mixed group of men and women, twenty of them at least, on their knees facing the setting sun, their eyes closed and chins held high. Farther ahead, a group of women sat around a small fire. A young mother, no older than fourteen, held a babe in her arms, and she put it to her breast as they passed. One of the other women, much older and more wizened looking, tended the small garden before her. She sprinkled dust onto the carpet of dirt, chanted a few choice words, and from the ground sprouted three buds. The buds grew and grew, and in a matter of moments the three sprouts joined to became a full strawberry bush. The woman plucked a ripe fruit from the vine and fed it to the young mother, whose child continued to suckle at her breast.

  That was life in Safeway: praying, farming, breeding, and playing, all under the watchful eye of Ashhur, their god made flesh.