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 beidentified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All of the characters in this book are fictitious andany 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 itsdepth in the days of the Letharn Empire, nor since. No magic had fathomed allits secrets, either.
He rested uneasily, suspended by the powers that had formedand substanced the universe since time began. This was the greatest magic ofhis people, and it was built on death.
It was not dark in the abyss. Not everywhere. Little sparksof light shone and flickered. There were millions of them, and though each byitself was but a glimmer, when they came together they shone brighter than thesun.
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 thoselights were the spirits of the Letharn people, bound to the world after their passingby the magic of the Letharn wizard-priests.
A sin it was called by some. An exalted magic by others. Butgood or bad, it had its uses, and Aranloth knew them for he had once been awizard-priest himself.
It seemed to him though that the years since then weregreater 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 losscrushed him.
No man was meant to live as long as he had done. No mind wascapable of enduring so many losses, and it was only by an act of will that hehad lived and walked the land he loved despite the pain it caused. He had doneso because he was needed. Yet perhaps it was time to die. He was close to itnow. Even in the death-sleep, which brought him to the brink and which he hadslept so many times before, he had never been so near to letting go andaccepting the void.
It beckoned him. It was the balm to his every pain. Not ofthe body, but of the mind. The death-sleep had healed his physical form, as italways did. In that half-state between life and death the functioning of thebody almost ceased, but not quite. Its energy became free to heal, and themagic within him strengthened. Both acted together, and embraced by the oldpowers of the world in the abyss, quickened inside him.
The death-sleep had another use. It was accomplished in the Tombsof the Letharn, and the ancient magic that protected the dead and the amassedtreasures of the Letharn Empire from the ravages of time and the greed ofraiders protected him from his enemies, too. Nothing alive entered the tombs,unless the charm was spoken that appeased the Three Sisters, the harakgar. Noone knew that charm but himself, and a very few of those he trusted.
But the harakgar were their own danger. Their power wasgreat, 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 himagainst attack. For to them, he seemed dead. Even so, at whiles he sensed theirmagic probe at him, but they drifted away and continued their eternal vigil.
So it was now that he dreamed, and felt the powers of thecosmos about him, but he also sensed something of events in the world as theyunfolded. For so close to death, he saw with the sight of the dead, and even atwhiles 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 greatdistance.
The marching of the Halathrin he saw on their great exodusinto Alithoras. The elù-haraken drifted across his vision in a sprawl of mightymagics and a blaze of swords. The Shadowed Lord himself, the ultimateembodiment of evil in the world, he watched rise to power before falling. Yethe would rise again, and already he stirred.
Then his vision swept away to a time of tumult when fires scorchedthe earth, and the seas swallowed the land. Mountains fell, toppling likeanthills, 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 fitto rule, for he asked no man to dare what he would not himself, and his retinueloved him like a father and the people of the city spoke his name with prideand joy.
Yet in the slow blink of an eye, Conduil had grown old. Orso it seemed to Aranloth. The strength left his arms. The light of his eyesdimmed. Even his mind lost its edge, but Aranloth had stayed with him until theend. Years it seemed to his friend, but to a lòhren whose memory spannedmillennia it was as nothing, and the stabbing pain of his sudden passing wasstill a shock. And that pain never passed. It eased, but it remained with himdown through the weary centuries, as did the deaths of other friends.
Aranloth muttered in his death-sleep, and he sensed theharakgar stir. But once more he slipped into the world of dreams, where thoughtmet magic, possibility was born
