The Sworn Knight

  THE SWORN KNIGHT

  BOOK FOUR OF THE KINGSHIELD SERIES

  Robert Ryan

  Copyright © 2020 Robert J. Ryan

  All Rights Reserved. The right of Robert J. Ryan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All of the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Cover design by www.damonza.com

  Trotting Fox Press

  Contents

  1. The Death-sleep

  2. Seeking Destiny

  3. The Mark of Danger

  4. A Dilemma of Duty

  5. The Wisdom of the Dead

  6. Farewell

  7. Who are You?

  8. You Are My Family

  9. Unwitting Fools

  10. The Magic of the Land

  11. The Old Blood

  12. For Faladir

  13. The Spirit Trail

  14. Hunted

  15. Trapped and Bound

  16. Do You Dare?

  17. A Night of Chaos

  18. You are Mine

  19. A Worthy Foe

  20. Like His Own Shadow

  21. A Debt Repaid

  22. We Cannot Hide

  23. The Storm Approaches

  24. Battle!

  25. Through Their Eyes

  Epilogue

  Appendix: Encyclopedic Glossary

  1. The Death-sleep

  Aranloth hung in the abyss. No science had plumbed its depth in the days of the Letharn Empire, nor since. No magic had fathomed all its secrets, either.

  He rested uneasily, suspended by the powers that had formed and substanced the universe since time began. This was the greatest magic of his people, and it was built on death.

  It was not dark in the abyss. Not everywhere. Little sparks of light shone and flickered. There were millions of them, and though each by itself was but a glimmer, when they came together they shone brighter than the sun.

  Aranloth’s mind drifted, as it often did in the death-sleep. He was like one of those lights. He was closer to death than to life, and those lights were the spirits of the Letharn people, bound to the world after their passing by the magic of the Letharn wizard-priests.

  A sin it was called by some. An exalted magic by others. But good or bad, it had its uses, and Aranloth knew them for he had once been a wizard-priest himself.

  It seemed to him though that the years since then were greater than the depth of the abyss, and like it, they had no bottom.

  He was tired of those years. They were a weight upon him. Heavy as a mountain they seemed, and the burden of memory, regret and loss crushed him.

  No man was meant to live as long as he had done. No mind was capable of enduring so many losses, and it was only by an act of will that he had lived and walked the land he loved despite the pain it caused. He had done so because he was needed. Yet perhaps it was time to die. He was close to it now. Even in the death-sleep, which brought him to the brink and which he had slept so many times before, he had never been so near to letting go and accepting the void.

  It beckoned him. It was the balm to his every pain. Not of the body, but of the mind. The death-sleep had healed his physical form, as it always did. In that half-state between life and death the functioning of the body almost ceased, but not quite. Its energy became free to heal, and the magic within him strengthened. Both acted together, and embraced by the old powers of the world in the abyss, quickened inside him.

  The death-sleep had another use. It was accomplished in the Tombs of the Letharn, and the ancient magic that protected the dead and the amassed treasures of the Letharn Empire from the ravages of time and the greed of raiders protected him from his enemies, too. Nothing alive entered the tombs, unless the charm was spoken that appeased the Three Sisters, the harakgar. No one knew that charm but himself, and a very few of those he trusted.

  But the harakgar were their own danger. Their power was great, and while they protected him they could also kill him in a heartbeat. Drifting in and out of consciousness, he could not utter the protective charm. So it was that the death-sleep not only healed him, but also guarded him against attack. For to them, he seemed dead. Even so, at whiles he sensed their magic probe at him, but they drifted away and continued their eternal vigil.

  So it was now that he dreamed, and felt the powers of the cosmos about him, but he also sensed something of events in the world as they unfolded. For so close to death, he saw with the sight of the dead, and even at whiles his spirit drifted into the void and spoke with those who had died.

  The future, the past and the present had become one to him, for death was an unraveling of time. He saw Alithoras as though from a great distance.

  The marching of the Halathrin he saw on their great exodus into Alithoras. The elù-haraken drifted across his vision in a sprawl of mighty magics and a blaze of swords. The Shadowed Lord himself, the ultimate embodiment of evil in the world, he watched rise to power before falling. Yet he would rise again, and already he stirred.

  Then his vision swept away to a time of tumult when fires scorched the earth, and the seas swallowed the land. Mountains fell, toppling like anthills, and new ones rose crowned by vast clouds of turgid ash and lightning.

  Faladir he now saw, as it once was. It was not a large city, but its people were strong and Conduil a king out of legend. He was a man fit to rule, for he asked no man to dare what he would not himself, and his retinue loved him like a father and the people of the city spoke his name with pride and joy.

  Yet in the slow blink of an eye, Conduil had grown old. Or so it seemed to Aranloth. The strength left his arms. The light of his eyes dimmed. Even his mind lost its edge, but Aranloth had stayed with him until the end. Years it seemed to his friend, but to a lòhren whose memory spanned millennia it was as nothing, and the stabbing pain of his sudden passing was still a shock. And that pain never passed. It eased, but it remained with him down through the weary centuries, as did the deaths of other friends.

  Aranloth muttered in his death-sleep, and he sensed the harakgar stir. But once more he slipped into the world of dreams, where thought met magic, possibility was born and all of time revealed.

  Asana he now saw, as the child he had been when Aranloth first met and advised him. Frail he was, and scared of being bullied. There was great anger in him also, but matching all this, even surpassing it, was a spirit of nobility and endurance that befitted his lineage. Was he not of the same blood that also gave rise to Brand of the Duthenor?

  Quickly Asana had prospered, and Aranloth had intervened to have him taught by the great masters of the Cheng. At first, they had done so grudgingly and only as a favor for what Aranloth had done for them in the past. But that changed swiftly as the boy grew to a man and his rare skills blossomed.

  Few there were in his youth who could have stood against him, and he was better now as a swordsman than he was then, for his was a spirit that found harmony in the blade and ever sought to perfect it. He had outstripped all the masters, and his skill was become greater than theirs. There was no one to teach him now, yet still he practiced and increased his skill each day.

  But death would steal him away, too. It nearly had. Dimly, Aranloth beheld the scenes of battle in Danath Elbar. Asana had led the defense, and he had not fled to avoid the death he thought was coming. Aranloth was proud of him then, and his friend Kubodin. That little man had more to him than the others guessed.

  Kareste also had been brave, and she was burdened with great responsibility. She thought him dead, and she had assumed the task that had been his. Well did he know the weight of that. It was a suffocating feeling, and it would break people of lesser stature than her. But she had endured, and s
he could fulfil his role into the future. She had the heart.

  But it was of Ferla and Faran that he felt most proud. They had learned, and they had endured, and they had shaped themselves into tools that destiny could use. Yet still the chances of the world were against them, for their enemies were strong, and the sorcery that supported the Morleth Knights gave them powers that even lòhrens would fear to face.

  Faran and Ferla needed him, and he felt the pull on his spirit to go to their aid. But he was tired, bereft of strength, and he drifted again on the dark currents of the void.

  Now he saw, as though from a great distance, the marching of soldiers through the streets of Faladir, and the sound of their passing was as thunder. Homes were charred, and people lay dead and dying in the street. The sky burned red with old smoke, and the air was rank with ash and death.

  Through the dark skies, creatures of the old world flew, and at times they dipped down low and were lost to sight. Yet still the screams came to him moments later of some unfortunate soul caught without shelter or unable to defend themselves.

  Faladir was become a place of death. It stank of it, and high above in the Tower of the Stone a baleful light shone, casting dark shadows across the city, and beyond. The evil there would not cease. City after city would be turned into this nightmare, realm after realm until all Alithoras was the same.

  Aranloth drifted again, and mercifully the scene faded. Yet he wondered if it were a vision of the present or of the future. When all things were one, it was hard to tell. Perhaps it was neither, and merely a warning sent to him by the land itself, for he felt the sorrow of the Lady of the Land all around him.

  Mercifully, no new vision came. This was memory, and he saw himself now in the cabin by the lake. The others had escaped through the tunnel, and he had intended to follow. But Lindercroft had pressed home his attack, and the opportunity was lost. Instead, he had collapsed the tunnel, ensuring the others could elude their enemies and he had turned to face them all by himself.

  The memory of that was bitter. He was weak from long years of toil, and his last battle with the dark creature that had pursued them to the cabin. But he had fought, and where he could not fight he had used magic to conceal and trick.

  The end was the worst though. The cabin had been fired, and Lindercroft waited without. Again he had fought, but wounded by magic and sword he had managed to flee. Yet the enemy pursued him, and well that it was so.

  The time Lindercroft spent on that, deeming that if he could kill Aranloth his standing before the king would rise, helped the others escape. And several times Lindercroft had caught up to him, sensing victory. But he knew nothing of the death-sleep, and little about the tombs. The memory of his chagrin as he saw his quarry slip into their protection, and when he realized that it was death to him if he tried to follow, was a picture of mental anguish.

  Lindercroft had been foolish, and driven by pride. He sought to enhance his reputation rather than fulfil the task given to him. It had been a mistake, but not his worst.

  The knight had underestimated Ferla, and she had used that to her advantage. Their duel Aranloth now saw, and he was proud of her for she had the heart to seize her destiny. He wanted to be with her, for her quest had only begun and she would need help.

  But the void called to him. It beckoned like cool water to a thirsty man, or sleep to one who was bone-weary. He was too old, too fatigued in spirit to do what must be done. What he needed was not the death-sleep, but true death. That alone would carry away his burdens. It was time to leave toil, trouble and regret behind. His thought reached out to Kareste. She must assume his responsibilities, and she was a fitting replacement for him. She was greater than she knew.

  Once more he drifted on the currents of magic, and in the abyss the harakgar passed him by and gave him no attention.

  2. Seeking Destiny

  Faran was alone. The others were inside Danath Elbar, but he was outside and would heed Kareste’s advice. Don’t wander far, she had warned.

  It was good advice, and he would follow it. He would be a fool not to, yet still he felt a need in him to be by himself and to think.

  The top of the mountain was as it always was. There was beauty here, and serenity. But not for him. At least not today. The signs of the battle that had taken place here were nearly gone. All that remained was some trampled grass, and Lindercroft’s grave. It was almost like it had never happened.

  Yet it had, and the world was now a profoundly changed place.

  The wind was light on the mountain top, yet above, the sky was ribboned with thin clouds, stretched by some gale not felt on the earth far below.

  He looked to the sky often, and he was glad that it was not overcast. He could see clearly, and there was no sign of elù-draks. It was chiefly of them that he had to be wary, but there was no fog or low cloud in which they could hide. He was safe, at least for the moment.

  The edge of the plateau was not that far away. Certainly, he would not go beyond the flat top of the mountain, but he would risk the short walk to where the slope began.

  What had happened to the elù-draks, no one knew. They had disappeared, at least for the moment. But this much was certain, at least. The hiding place, like the previous one, where he and Ferla had lived and learned, was compromised. They could not stay here.

  How long did they have before more enemies came against them? There was no way to know, but it would be soon. This place was no longer safe, and yet once more they would have to pick up and leave. Where would they go? What would they do?

  He found no answers as he moved through the gardens and onto the green grass toward the southern edge of the plateau.

  The grass was soft beneath his boots, and it was a fine day. But he was troubled, and not by the things he had been considering, but by something else that he could not quite grasp.

  All around him the air was of that peculiar sort, wild and free and nothing at all like the air in a village or even inside Danath Elbar. It spoke of the great wilderness of Alithoras, and lands that he had not seen and paths that he had not trod. But they were there, waiting for him. The world was yet to be explored, and for all that he had learned recently, he suddenly knew that he understood nothing.

  The world was vast beyond his comprehension, and it had existed before he was born, before his race was born and before even mankind had first emerged from the great dark to light fires and dwell in the shelter of caves. Who was he to think that he understood something of that?

  His story was but a pebble in a great river of time that rolled mighty boulders down from the mountains and broke them to sand on the long journey to the sea. He was nothing compared to that, and he had seen neither mountains nor oceans but only one bend of the river in its winding path of thousands of miles.

  But it was his bend in the river, his story. And if it seemed vast to him, then so it should. It was all he knew. At that moment he also understood what was troubling him.

  He came to the edge of the plateau. This was a place he often came with Ferla, but he was alone today and it felt different. Everything would feel different from now on.

  There was a smooth patch of grass, and here he sat, looking out at the world beyond the mountain. The smudge of Halathar was clear today, and almost he thought he could make out individual trees. That was one place that he would dearly love to explore. So too he would like to test his skill with bow and arrow against the elves who dwelt there. None in Alithoras were finer archers, legend claimed. He believed it, but still he would like to test himself against them. It was not in his nature to accept second place to anyone. Rather, if there was a challenge he would fight for victory. Winning, losing or drawing did not matter so much. It was the fighting that counted.

  He yearned to walk the secret ways of the forest he could only see from afar, but he did not think he ever would. He wished he could shrug off responsibility, and dare to follow his heart. He had heard the elves let no one into their realm, but he had also heard stories o
f exceptions.

  Yet he could not shrug off responsibility. It would not be right, and he had promises yet to keep to the innocent dead of his village. He would help Ferla try to bring justice to a realm where dark sorcery and evil had begun to prosper.

  But was that his destiny? Was that his sole purpose in life?

  It was time to consider what was troubling him most. He knew what it was, now. What would he achieve with his life?

  He felt proud of Ferla, and he would do anything for her. But it had been easier when he thought he could do it without becoming a knight. Now, not only would he never be a knight, but he was no longer the focus of attention. Ferla was now the instrument of destiny, and he was only a helper.

  He smiled at that. Had she ever thought of herself as his helper? If he knew her, and he did, she would have always thought they were in this together.

  That was how he would approach it. He cared nothing for fame. All that mattered was overthrowing the king and bringing justice back into the land he loved. They would do it together. Or they would fail together.

  How long had she known she was the seventh knight? He smiled at that. He had never guessed it, but the moment she said the words he felt the truth of them. But he did not think destiny, if there was even such a thing, had been determined until she shaped it herself with those words. And more than likely, she had not been sure herself until that very moment. It was the words that created the destiny. It was the choice that made her who she was.

  But the long-dead queen of the Letharn had known. He shuddered, thinking back to his time in those dismal tombs. He would never go back, and he wished he could forget them. But not what the queen had said.

  The queen had known. What was it she had foretold about Ferla? Something along the lines of the quiet one whose name would echo across the land. There had been more, but he had forgotten. Yet that was enough. It could mean many things, but it was clear now that the queen knew Ferla would become the seventh knight.