Dawn of Swords(The Breaking World)

CHAPTER


2


The road was narrow, cutting a jagged swath through the rocky, desert terrain. Jacob bounced in his saddle, the pain from the cuts and bruises on his thighs beginning to work its way up his spine. The sound of his horse’s thumping hooves filled his ears. He glanced to his left, where one of the Rigon’s snaking tributaries flowed in the distance, and then to his right, gazing down on the cracked red clay speckled with sparse brown grasses. The heat in the south was so insufferable that the river’s nourishment died only a few feet from its banks.

He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, yanked on the collar of his tunic, and then ran a clammy hand through his hair. Yes, the heat was oppressive, but it would have been so much more tolerable had he been able to walk. Whereas Jacob hated riding, he loved walking; it was a pastime he had indulged in for over one hundred years. But it had taken days to reach this far on horseback, and he wished to return to the Sanctuary in haste, which meant that traveling by foot was out of the question.

Besides, he would not make the kinglings walk such a distance.

Someone sniffled behind him, and Jacob cast a glance over his shoulder. There he saw Ben and Geris following on their tethered donkeys. Ben’s posture was slumped, and each time his donkey took an odd step, the boy swung far to the side, coming close to falling off. It was up to Geris to reach over and assist his fellow kingling, straightening the boy in his saddle and patting him on the back. For his part, Geris seemed to be handling the whole situation rather well. Whereas Ben’s eyes were constantly downcast, Geris would periodically steal a look at the third donkey trailing behind them. On its back Jacob had tied the body of Martin Harrow, draped in a cloth etched with the symbol of the golden mountain. Geris appeared solemn whenever he looked back, but there was an acceptance about him, a stalwartness that Ben, even though he was almost two years the boy’s elder, simply didn’t have. Geris was a born freeman, an independent soul with a quick wit and even quicker hands; his memory was short in regard to failure or, in this case, grief.


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 na?veté 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 brother 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.

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.

“They’re back!” shouted the voice of a young boy. “Jacob and the kinglings!”

A crowd gathered, running alongside their mounts as they made their way down the uneven road. The people called out to them, cheering for each of the kinglings in turn. Jacob glanced at them, taking in the hope on their faces. Geris waved, and even Ben’s spirits seemed to lift, if only a little. Someone shouted out Martin Harrow’s name, but none of those who gathered let their gaze linger on the sack draped over the rear donkey.

“Where is he?” asked a woman’s voice. “Where is Kingling Harrow?”

Jacob peered over his shoulder to see that there was still a smile on the querying woman’s face. She did not understand. None of them did. Around here, with Ashhur, the Wardens, and the healers tending to the wounds and ailments of the populace, unnatural death was unheard of. In western Dezrel, over the span of ninety-three years, no one had perished before his or her time.

Jacob had a feeling that was about to change.

The crowd gradually thinned as the land sloped downward, and Jacob and the kinglings entered the Cavern of Solitude, a tapered passage cut through the middle of a foreboding hillock. Jagged spires of stone protruded from the sides of the cliff, narrowing the road. Jacob was grateful that it was still daylight, as the passage could prove treacherous when traversed in the dark. The cavern was guarded by the great statue of Ashhur, a twenty-foot behemoth carved into the side of the red clay cliff. The deity’s statue stared down at them as they passed beneath it, his left hand holding an olive branch to the heavens, his right hand crossed over his immortal heart. Jacob heard Ben whistle a quiet lullaby as the statue disappeared behind them—the very same lullaby the god himself had sung to the kinglings on the night they were anointed.

When they exited the Cavern of Solitude, the horizon stretched out before them. Clay huts and lean-tos constructed of desiccated animal hides peppered the land. From these abodes more people emerged, forming an assembly in front of the colossal building at the center of it all—the Sanctuary itself, forty feet high and circular, built with smoothed stone from the northwest coast. It was the only building in Safeway, and the tallest in all of western Dezrel. On its sloped crest, above the solarium, was etched the Golden Mountain of legend, the final, peaceful resting spot of the spirits of the dead in Afram. Below that were etched Ashhur’s two guiding principles, both of them concepts to revere and commands to obey: Love and Forgive.

Jacob saw the Marylls and Felhorns emerge from their crude domiciles, making their way toward the passageway that was cut into the short wall bordering the Sanctuary. He searched for the unmistakable bald pate of Stoke Harrow, Martin’s father, and eventually found the burly man in the crowd. He was wearing a burlap robe and pulling his wife Tori along. Soon the families of all three kinglings stood front and center, waiting with wringing hands and expressions overwrought with excitement.

At the edge of the gathering, Jacob veered his mare off to the side and dismounted. He tapped the horse’s flank, and it began to saunter away obediently. He then helped Ben and Geris down from their donkeys. The two boys immediately found their families, who were waiting with open arms, and ran to them.

The Harrows stood confused, their gazes shifting from the other two kinglings to Jacob and then to the wrapped carcass atop the third donkey. Hesitantly, Jacob approached it, gesturing for Stoke Harrow to come forward. The large man did as he was bidden, that perplexed expression still smeared across his face. Tori followed meekly, hands clenched over her mouth. Jacob lifted one end of the bulk, untied the rope, and pulled back a flap of fabric. The pale face of Martin Harrow emerged, mouth slightly agape, eyes sewn shut. His cheeks were sunken, and his red hair had lost its luster. The scent of rot wafted off the dead child, the result of three days riding in the sweltering southern heat. Jacob cringed and pinched his nose shut while Stoke’s face twisted into a manifestation of stupefaction.

Tori shoved past her husband, and Jacob backed away, letting her grab hold of the dead boy’s shoulders.

“Martin?” she whispered, lifting the child’s head. She shook him, hard, and his body flopped like a dead fish on the saddle. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she took in the reality of the situation. Her husband was behind her the next instant, his strong hands on her back, holding her up. Tori spun around and buried her face in his chest. Stoke wailed in disbelief as his wife’s tears saturated his burlap robe. The cry she released was shrill in its anguish, threatening to shatter the hearts of all who heard it.

The Marylls and Felhorns gathered around the weeping parents, embracing them, consoling them in the only way they knew how, while the rest of the throng stood in shocked silence. Suddenly, Stoke Harrow’s head shot upward, and he fixed Jacob with a murderous stare. The anguished father stepped away from the other grievers, his meaty hands balled into fists. The tears that ran from his eyes created ravines on his muddy cheeks.

“You were supposed to protect him!”

Jacob stood his ground as the larger man stormed across the narrow space between them. He never flinched, not even when Stoke’s arm cocked back, the rage in his eyes burning as hot as the sun.


“Stop!” said a voice like booming thunder.

Stoke’s arm fell mid-swing. The man’s shoulders hunched as he turned around. Jacob glanced up at the Sanctuary. The great door was open, and now children were streaming out of it, filing down the cobbled path and into the milling crowd. A giant figure ducked beneath the doorframe, stepping out of the darkness and into the light. He was as tall as two men standing atop each other. His broad shoulders looked capable of carrying the world upon them, and yet all they held up was a gown made of glimmering white silk. On the front of the gown was stenciled a mountain surrounded by a field of red roses. His beard was trimmed but pronounced, and his blond hair, cut shoulder length, swooped back from his skull like a wave receding into the ocean. His eyes, golden as sunlight, seemed to see everything at once.

Jacob stepped away from Stoke, bowed on one knee, and placed his right fist over his heart.

“My Lord Ashhur, I beg your pardon,” he said. The rest of those gathered, save the children who had exited the Sanctuary, fell to their knees.

The god-made-flesh offered Jacob a nod as he stepped with a single stride over the low wall surrounding the Sanctuary. The crowd parted before him, shuffling sideways on their knees, as their god approached the still-weeping couple. Ashhur placed his index finger gently on the forehead of their dead son, and then lowered himself and wrapped both arms around the grieving parents. Stoke began sobbing anew, until his mood shifted back from sorrow to fury.

“Why did you let this happen?” he kept repeating, driving his fists into Ashhur’s enormous knee. The god touched the man’s chin with his palm—the sheer size of his hand swallowed Stoke’s entire skull—and the outburst ceased.

“Let us speak in the Sanctuary,” he said, his voice still booming across the countryside.

The god led the Harrows into the tall edifice, and the donkey carrying Martin’s body was ushered in after them. When they were gone, the crowd looked to Jacob for instruction. He waved them away as kindly as he could, and they dispersed. Geris Felhorn was the last to leave, staring at him for a while before relenting and finally joining his parents on the short walk back to their domicile.

Jacob breathed heavily out his mouth, making his way in the opposite direction. He followed the dirt path along the west side of the Sanctuary wall, where the path broke away from the structure and passed through a field of wildflowers. Unlike the roads into and out of Safeway, this path was smooth, flattened by the constant foot traffic. Not many people left, after all. The land—along with Ashhur himself—supplied them with all they needed. There was a reason that the west had been named Paradise by the people who lived there.

He trotted down a gulch, and the sound of crashing waves reached his ears. The sun dipped low on the horizon, and the sky lit up in a brilliant shade of purple. A cabin of rough-hewn stone came into view, the straw of its roof bristling with the gentle sea breeze. Jacob had purposefully built his home far away from the Sanctuary to allow himself respite from the prayers that rang out seemingly without end. He was rarely visited, and when he was, it was usually by the Sanctuary stewards coming to tell him that Ashhur required his presence.

As he approached, he noticed that a ladder was propped up against the side of the cabin. A figure was braced on the top rung, applying a layer of wet tar to the areas where the roof had grown thin. He was a handsome man of twenty years, stocky of build and good with his hands.

“Hello, Roland,” Jacob said to his steward.

“Hello, Master Jacob,” Roland replied. He never took his eyes off his work. “I wasn’t expecting you back until next week. How were things in Haven?”

Jacob stopped once he reached the side of the ladder. “They were…not well.”

Finally Roland gazed down.

“You wish to speak of it?” he asked, his piercing blue eyes glinting between strands of his sandy-brown hair.

“Not at the moment. How goes the labor?”

“Laboriously. I set out grain for the chickens, milked the cows, and helped Fela Felabosi construct a new shelter for his son Bronta. The boy is expecting a child soon and wanted to strike out on his own. I just started the household chores an hour ago.”

“It’s late, son. Your work is done for the day.”

Roland gave him a queer look.

“Are you sure? There are three more weak spots on the roof, and I haven’t begun mortaring the loose stone on the eastern wall.…”

Jacob chuckled. Roland didn’t like stopping before his work was complete, which was an honorable characteristic. Not many in the west shared the boy’s work ethic, perhaps not even Jacob himself.

“It’s fine. If it showers tonight, I will set out a bucket. Go home. Get some rest. I will see you on the morrow.”

Roland hopped off the ladder and then lowered it to the grass. Despite his nonchalant attitude, Jacob could tell he was intensely curious about his master’s trip to Haven.

“So, tomorrow we will speak of what happened, yes?”

“We will. I promise you.”

The boy smiled, and just like everything else about him, it was beautiful.

“I bid you good night then, Master.”

With that, Roland bowed before turning tail and sprinting up the path, heading back into Safeway. Again Jacob chuckled. Over the nine years the boy had served as Jacob’s steward, he had headed for home in that exact same manner each evening. His energy was awe-inspiring.

It was energy Jacob could have used at the moment. Suddenly his arms felt too heavy, his knees too weak. He slumped his shoulders, turned around, and pulled open the door to his cabin. Stepping inside, he found the embers of a recent fire, glowing in the inglenook. Above it, resting on an iron rack, was a steaming pot. He dipped a finger inside. Roland had left a meal for him—rabbit from the smell of it. His stomach cramped as he licked his finger; then he grabbed a wooden bowl from the niche above the inglenook and ladled himself a helping.

The soup was warm and spiced with lemongrass and sage, which made it taste a tad sour. He gulped down mouthful after mouthful, feeling his hunger pangs decrease with each swallow. Making his way to the window, he pushed open the shutters with his free hand, allowing the breeze to tickle his flesh. The stifling heat from the embers was slowly whisked away.

When he finished eating, he went to his desk on the far side of the room. The desk had been a gift from Norman Astencroft, the lone carpenter to take up residence in Safeway. Norman wasn’t particularly skilled, and the ash desk wasn’t particularly well made, but it served its purpose. That was all Jacob could really ask for.

Setting aside his bowl, he reached beneath the desk and pulled out a leather-bound book. He placed it on the flat surface, wiped dust from the cover, and undid the iron clasp. The food might have settled his stomach, but it had done nothing to stifle his exhaustion from riding three days straight with little sleep. Nor did it calm the dissonant thoughts running through his mind. He had not yet decided what he would tell Ashhur about the events at the temple. His hand shook as he took out a folded piece of paper from the inner pocket of his tunic, flipped open the cover of the book, and turned until he reached a blank page.

He unfolded the paper and began inscribing the words written on it. With each letter he formed, he sensed his fatigue—and his anger—lessening. It was as if documenting his adventures and discoveries in his journal was setting his soul afire. Other than serving his god, this was what he lived for: unlocking the mysteries of the world, slowly assembling the building blocks of life in Dezrel, one word at a time.


His earliest entries had originally been written on the huge leaves of the barrow elms that grew atop Mount Ire in the northwest, using excretions from nightworms as his ink. It wasn’t until his twenty-fourth year, when Ashhur showed his people how ink could be made by mixing iron salts with gallnut tannins, that Isabel DuTaureau, the matriarch of House DuTaureau of Mordeina, had had this particular tome created for him.

The journal was filled with oddities—descriptions of plants and animals beyond number. He chronicled humanity’s progress, from their early days as youths under the watch of the Wardens to the time when those in the east began to earn their independence. The chronicles also served as a comparison of the burgeoning cultures in the east and west, both their similarities and their vast differences.

Though magic was sparse within Paradise, used only to heal the sick and urge crops to grow, the study of it was what interested Jacob the most. Page after page of his journal was scrawled with psalms, ingredients, runes, powerful words, and the laws of tribute. One could open the book to any random page and discover something wonderful: practical magic, such as how to conjure food from topaz or create a bubbling stream with onyx dust; earth magic, derived from the elves, about how to divine power from the molecules in the air itself to form balls of fire, shards of ice, or even cause plant life to obey commands; astral magic on how to bend time and space to travel between two points in an instant; psychic magic, explaining how to use the power of one’s mind to manipulate physical objects on a whim or commune with others over great distances, using select totems, such as sea-worn copper or dragonglass. There were also vast sections on metallurgy, botany, chemistry, astrology, and what he had learned about the inner workings of the human mind. Rarest were the segments dealing with blood magic, an ancient form of conjuring that existed only in the legends told to him by the elves.

According to those legends, two millennia ago there were three demon kings—Darakken, the thunder lord; Velixar, the beast of a thousand faces; and Sluggoth, the slithering famine. When they ascended from the underworld, they brought terror to the elves. A war lasting a hundred years ensued, until Celestia, apparently upset that these hellbeasts were laying waste to her creations, sent the demons and their minions back to the underworld and locked it up tight. The demons were said to have possessed great mystical abilities. Through their words and strength of will they could control the dead, inflict insanity upon all who gazed on them, and rip apart a living body and reassemble it as they pleased. Their story fascinated Jacob. He wanted more than anything to discover the truths hidden within the legends, to inscribe the words of these beasts’ ancient magic in the pages of his tome. Sadly, barring a few obscure carvings in the crypts of Dezerea, there was no hard evidence that the demon kings had been anything but bedtime stories. The section on them in his journal was maddeningly sparse.

His current work for the night dealt with medicinal herbs. Living in the west meant a life free from disease and physical maladies, so it intrigued him how those in the east—and in Haven—got through each day with all the potential dangers surrounding them. He had catalogued all the different herbs and their uses, both medicinal and recreational, from poppy to crimleaf to the silia fungus. During his visit to the Temple of the Flesh, he’d spoken with the priestess Aprodia, who had told him that by sucking the milk from the large seeds of nectarines, her people avoided the Wasting that inflicted many throughout the east. That information might not have much practical use in Ashhur’s Paradise, but Jacob was nothing if not fastidious, so into the book it went.

He was in the middle of writing his last word of the evening when a board creaked behind him. The quill halted mid-stroke, and he cocked his head. All was quiet but for the whistling of the wind through the open window. Just then, something grabbed the back of his hair, forcing his head back. Sharp steel pressed against his throat. He reached for the skinning knife he kept tucked into his belt, but it was no longer there.

“Looking for something?” asked a low, mocking voice.

“It seems I have misplaced my knife,” Jacob replied, calm as could be. “You wouldn’t happen to have it, would you?”

“I might.”

“Please be careful. The blade is quite sharp.”

The voice snickered, and the knife was pulled away from his throat. The hand dropped from his forehead, silken fingers tracing a sinuous line down his cheek.

“So many apologies, kind sir,” the voice said, now sounding high-pitched and childish. “I knew not.”

Jacob stood from his chair and turned around slowly. The corners of his mouth rose into a sad grin when he saw the elf girl standing there.

“Brienna, one of these days you might actually hurt me. I may not age, but I’m not indestructible, you know.”

“I wouldn’t have broken the skin. Where’s your sense of humor?”

He shook his head. “It seems to have abandoned me this night. Forgive my lack of charm. You took me by surprise, Bree. Shouldn’t you be at the homestead, preparing for the engagement?”

“I reckon my sister could do without my company for a few nights. There are only so many flower arrangements a girl can make, and to be honest, I have no desire to spend time in Dezerea. Our cousins there are so…stuffy and staid.” She clucked her tongue. “Now I ask, would I not be of more use to you here?”

Brienna gestured to the bedchamber, leaned her head forward, and gazed at him from under slanted eyelids. Her hair hung down to her waist in a straight sheet the color of sun-drenched summer wheat. Her skin was like fresh milk, pale and shimmering in the light of the dying coals in the inglenook. She was slender yet durable, muscular yet womanly. The green, satin-threaded petticoat she was wearing offered the faintest hint of her shapely body. She was Brienna Meln of the Stonewood Forest, daughter of Cleotis and Audrianna, Lord and Lady of the southern Dezren elves. At just over a century old, she was eleven years Jacob’s elder, and they had been partners for twenty-two years. Jacob had been infatuated with her since the day they met, before the dawn of man, and had eventually wooed her by defeating her shamed older brother Carskel in a duel. He depended on her for many reasons, not least of which was her ability to make him laugh.

But now that laughter seemed so far away.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, a look of concern crossing her normally mischievous face.

“The Temple was attacked. Martin Harrow died.”

Jacob was becoming accustomed to the expression that crossed Brienna’s face—blatant incredulity.

“Attacked?” she asked. “By whom?”

“A small battalion from the east, flying Karak’s banners. They demanded that the people of Haven swear themselves once more to Karak or else face more violence.”

“And Martin was caught in the middle?”

Jacob nodded. Brienna frowned, and he could tell that her sharp mind was already working through the problem.

“So Karak’s followers have formed an army,” she said.

“It seems so, though I cannot begin to guess at the size. The hundred men who attacked Haven may only be a fraction, or they may represent the entirety of their power. Either way, it means we now have a rather unfortunate problem. If Neldar is lashing out at those in Haven, who have done nothing wrong save exercise their freedom, how long until their soldiers cross the bridges and do the same to us?”


“You know that can’t happen, Jacob. Ashhur won’t let it, and neither would Karak. Nothing good can come from that way of thinking. Nothing at all.”

He sighed, and even to his ears it sounded defeated.

“I know.”

“So what are you going to do? What does your god say?”

Jacob shook his head. “Nothing as of yet. He is consoling Stoke and Tori Harrow as we speak. I assume he will send for me come morning.”

“What will you do until then? Do you want to talk of it?”

He stepped forward and wrapped an arm around Brienna’s slender waist. The downy feel of her petticoat helped ease his mind, and he suddenly felt tired once more.

“I’d rather not,” he said.

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

He smiled at her.

“You know there is.”

Brienna blew a strand of hair from her eyes, which sparkled with life.

“Indeed I do.”