“They do,” said Lyrilan.
Tyro ignored the comment. “D’zan, I can teach you how to use that greatsword. It will be the icon of your birthright. Troops will rally around it during battle. The merest glimpse or mention of it will invoke your quest and inspire men to die for you. If you learn to carry it proudly. If it only hangs upon your back, I am afraid it will do you no good at all.”
“You’d school me as Olthacus did?” D’zan asked.
“Tonight, when we pavilion,” said Tyro, “we’ll begin. First we’ll build strength in your arms using rods of bronze instead of blades. After a few weeks of swinging metal, the Stone’s blade will feel as light as a rose in your grasp.”
Lyrilan huffed. “A gross exaggeration.”
D’zan smiled. “Thank you, Tyro.”
Tyro ran a gauntlet across his stallion’s sodden mane. “I’ll teach you technique as well. If you have the willpower, you will learn.”
Every night after a crude supper, D’zan joined Tyro in his wide pavilion, where the tables and braziers were cleared to form a practice space. He sparred there with Tyro using span-length cylinders of bronze. When they clashed metal against metal, D’zan’s bones trembled. The bronze was among other commodities to be traded on the streets of Udurum. The bronze of Uurz could in no way match Uduru steel, or southern iron, but it was the best bronze smelted anywhere in the north. The folk of Udurum used it for armor and implements, but not for weapons. Fighting with the bronze bars served D’zan well, sharpening his swordcraft, building his muscles, leaving his arms sore and aching every morning. After seven days he already felt stronger. Not strong enough to wield the greatsword – not even close – but enough to consider it more than some impossible dream.
Now the smokes of a hundred campfires rose into the damp night air at the very foot of the Grim Mountains, directly east of the river. This would be their last pavilion before they entered the mountain pass. The Uurzians camped in concentric circles, with the three Princes and their servants nestled in the center. Tarps propped upo ks pain pasn cedar poles sheltered the fires, and soldiers gathered in units of four or five about the warm flames. Shifts of night guards patrolled the perimeter of the camp in pairs. D’zan felt safer in the midst of all these spear-bearing warriors than he had in the depths of Dairon’s palace. And with good reason, for hadn’t the Death-Bringers of Khyrei found him there?
He sat on a folding chair in his pavilion, listening to the patter of rain on the canvas roof. Scattered rugs comprised a makeshift floor, providing relief from the constant mud of the fields. Except for one night spent in Lakehold, a fortress manned by the men of Uurz on the edge of Vod’s Lake, every evening was spent in such tents. Servants built them up and tore them down in minutes, and despite their mobile nature the pavilions gave him a measure of dry comfort.
A single brazier lit the tent, fuming with sweet incense, and D’zan sat with the Stone’s blade lying across his knees. His eyes ran from the rounded pommel with its spherical amethyst to the two-handed grip, wrapped tight in oiled leather, to the flaring black quillions of the guard, spreading wing-like to either side of the blade. At the blade’s base were set a trio of fire opals, scintillating red in the light of the brazier. In the exact center of those gems he noticed an insignia or sigil of some sort. A circular impression radiating spokes like a sun, centered within a trio of inverted, overlapping triangles forming a nine-pointed star. D’zan ran his index finger over the engraving. Among the tiny arabesques and details of the hiltwork, he had overlooked this symbol until now.
The guard outside his pavilion called out to him: “Prince Lyrilan approaches!” A dark shape stood before the tent’s entrance, and he recognized the tall, slim frame. The guard had no need to shout; who else could that shadow belong to?
“Enter,” said D’zan, his eyes lingering on the trio of jewels and the mysterious character at their center. Lyrilan spread the canvas flap and walked inside. He carried the working tome under his cloak, safe from the rain, a white quill stuck into its pages like a feathery bookmark. A bottle of ink bulged in the pocket of his flared trousers; his muddy boots contrasted greatly with the fine silks that draped his legs, arms and middle. His long hair was an oiled mass of curls that fell free as he tossed back his hood.
“Evenbliss,” Lyrilan greeted him.
D’zan looked up for a moment. “Have a seat,” he said. “You have more questions for me, I suppose?”
Lyrilan smiled, dropping into a pile of cushions. “An infinite number, Majesty…”
D’zan nodded. “I have one for you actually,” he said. He motioned for Lyrilan to come closer. After spreading out his book, quill, and ink bottle on a well-placed rug, Lyrilan drew near to him. His eyes followed D’zan’s to the base of the heavy blade, into the triangle of crimson opals, and the sigil where Dzan’s fingertip pointed. “What do you make of this?”
Lyrilan craned his neck, squinting his eyes, lowering them close to the blade. “It’s a rune,” he said. “Much like the Sun God’s symbol, but markedly different. Older, perhaps.”
“A rune?” said D’zan.
“Yes, I’ve seen this sigil before,” said Lyrilan. He snapped his fingers. “In The Codex of Ancient Icons. It’s a ward, I’m sure of it.”
“What does that mean?”
“A ward is a rune that protects its bearer from evil spirits.”
“Evil spirits.”
“Yes, some orders of the Sun God carve a ward like this on their talismans. Sometimes the priests inscribe them on the shields of warriors bound to a holy cause. The Sun is the eternal enemy of darkness, where evil dwells.”
“So… some Sun Priest placed a ward on the Stone’s blade?”
“Most likely… or it was engraved during the forging of the sword. Based on the pattern of these gems, I’d say that is most likely.”
D’zan thought of the Stone carrying this sword across a blood-soaked battlefield, smiting terrible monsters and living men, wading through a swamp of black gore. If only it could have protected him from the assassins who finally took his life. But they had been living men, not spirits. Evil, yes, but flesh and blood.
“This is a priceless treasure,” said Lyrilan. “My brother was right: it should be your standard… the icon of your cause. Guard it carefully.”
D’zan nodded. He flexed his sore arms, more determined than ever to master the wielding of this weapon. Until then it would ride upon his back, symbol of all he strove to accomplish.
Lyrilan shifted back to his cushions and took the book up onto his knees. He dipped his quill in the open ink bottle and looked up at D’zan. “So… where were we?” His eyes scanned the last paragraph he had written. “Ah, yes… You were six years old when your father returned from the Battle of Teryllope. What do you remember from that day?”
D’zan slid the greatsword back into its scabbard and laid it down beside his cot. He poured black brandy from a bottle into two cups and handed one to Lyrilan.
“I remember… the smell of my father’s cloak. Seawater, smoke… and blood. He gave me a little jeweled sea-beast, a trinket from the southern isles. A seahorse, he called it. I remember that he hugged me, and I cried when he put me down. Then he was off to matters of state. There was a victory feast… My cousins were there… I don’t remember much of it.”
The night drew on with D’zan searching his memories and Lyrilan transcribing them, until the brazier guttered low and D’zan began to yawn. Lyrilan took his cue and departed for his own tent. “My brother’s training is wearing you out,” he said. “Don’t let him push you too hard.”
D’zan smiled, giving birth to another yawn. “He pushes me less than I should be. Good night, Lyrilan.”
“Sleep well, Prince.” And Lyrilan was gone.
D’zan fell to sleep on a pile of blankets that turned the thin cot into a pleasant bed.
He dreamed of the sable mountains towering over the encampment, ripe with boiling darkness and terrible groaning thunders. He soared above the frosty peaks, in the realm of moon and stars. He looked down across ravines and gorges, where sometimes blood-colored fires danced, then faded into the dark.
A swirling shadow came up from the depths between the black mountainsides. It had waited there for him, at the edge of the range looking across the plains, inhumanly patient. A dark smoke in the shape of a winged thing… a great bat with the body of a bloated eel. Its eyes were shards of gleaming amber… the fires of wicked desire… the
