Rogn's Blood

By Leslie Kappes

Vorodin was an artisan. He created things with his hands... and with his necromantic spells ─ among them the Hound of Halsingur, the Gorfalcons, and then, in one night, the demon Draja, a desperate scourge that Vorodin releases into the world.

The princess Tmynthe and the exile Sythrax, friends since childhood, must play their part in finding the demon, although clearly no mortal blade can slay him. It is possible, however, that another vagabond may be of help. He says his name is Rogn, that is, Death himself as described in the Erlsaga, the creation myth of all peoples.

The pursuit of the demon leads them, separately or together, through the wonders of the world ― dragon glen, mystic well, talismans of magical import, conversations with the gods, and a subterranean tryst with the Goddess. As the final battle with Draja approaches, however, each must find and fight the ultimate terror: the demon within.

Rogn’s Blood blends the existential and mystical — the primal conflict in every human heart. It begins with the creation myth of The Erlsaga, grounding the realities of this fantasy world, and then takes the reader immediately into the conjuring chamber of the Necromancer at work. Through astonishing imagery and the subtle depiction of relationships in flux, this pastoral and wild world conveys a quality at once recognizable and remote: a place where absolute good and absolute evil don’t exist ¬— yet conflict is ever present.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leslie Kappes
• Release date: Jun 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301720651

Leslie Kappes

I'm a baby boomer and since the boom is almost over, I figured it's now or never to publish the novel I've been working on for so many years. I've been a sales clerk, a deli worker, an artist, an English teacher, a copywriter (selling my soul to commerce, I know), and now a published fantasy author thanks to the digital age. Thanks also to my partner Michael who understands all things digital. And BTW, the accompanying photo, as you may have guessed, is NOT current. But please don't hold it against me -- I hope you enjoy this book.

Book preview

ROGN’S BLOOD

by

Leslie Kappes

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Published by Leslie Kappes on Smashwords

Cover Design by Debbie Iverson

copyright 2013 Leslie Kappes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. And thank you for respecting the hard work of this author and helping her keep the wolf from the door.

Table of Contents

The Map

Prologue

Chapter I Thringellir

Chapter II Anderen

Chapter III The Goddess in Anderen

Chapter IV The Exile Departs

Chapter V Like a Black Dog

Chapter VI To Wildmere

Chapter VII Darkness Visible

Chapter VIII The White Hawthorn Witch

Chapter IX Death and the Dragon

Chapter X Shadowrun

Chapter XI Nowhere to Hide

Chapter XII The Assassin

Chapter XIII Amongst Friends

Chapter XIV Colaaven Vale

Chapter XV Not Neve

Chapter XVI The Nether Outlands

Chapter XVII Fight and Flight

Chapter XVIII The Demon Draja

Chapter XIX The Wound and the Gift

Chapter XX Sun Shift and Return

Chapter XXI Lost and Alone

Chapter XXII East to Mindelorn

Chapter XXIII Wildmere Once More

Chapter XXIV Homecoming

Chapter XXV The Forest of the Moon

Chapter XXVI Primal Forces

Chapter XXVII The Face of Defeat

Chapter XXVIII Victory and Death

Chapter XXIX A Perfect Evening

END NOTES

Illustrations

Pronunciation Guide

Dedication

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Connect with me on line

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The Map

ROGN’S BLOOD

Prologue

She is Night. There was nothing before her and everything after her. She turned her head over her left shoulder, touched soft chin to ebony skin, and the wind was made. She spoke to it saying, You are Balkainen.

Be not still, breathed the wind as it streamed about her incessant form, for then I am nothing.

Yet I would be still, she said, so I will give you a dwelling in which to move while I rest. Then she took from her far finger a bone and set it in the night and that was the land. The thin end of the bone was colder than the thick end which was hot. She told the wind to inhabit the land, and the wind trembled joyfully at the touch of it, but did not leave the Goddess’s side. She laughed and her sweet breath stayed with the world and was a substance for the wind to move in. Then the wind flew into the world, was wild in its joy, divided, paring itself into smaller winds that it might dance with itself, and the smaller winds were as its children, and they were before the gods.

With fingers that touched every curve and crevasse, Balkainen and his werewinds carved caverns to live in, sculpted in their abandon the new land down into dust. Then Balkainen was ashamed and retreated as far from her warmth as might be, into the cold north, vowing never to come near her again. But she laughed and said, Delightful are the changes you have wrought. Her laughter brought Balkainen from his icy fastness, and he laughed, and the tears of their joy filled the hollows of the land and were seas.

Great variety was in the earth in those days, in the ocean, and the sky. In the far north, where Balkainen would reside, ran the Northern River. Beyond the river the Ice Shelves of Daminkainen. Before the river Finnrush the wide tundra, whose roots are ice. When the river is frozen they lie together all three. In the far south Shokala the desert flows like water, but ever so slowly like the dreams of the goddess, and stays only at the shores of the deep-throated endless ocean. Between Shokala and Daminkainen are the far-stepping long-sleeping mountains, Korkalla Paikalla, some with rounded backs, some with sharp flanks, all with the memory of the goddess. Then above hard land and broad water roams Mindroth the Thunderer, minion of the clouds that are the crown of earth as the goddess is crowned with hair. All these were the sons of the North Wind, for although of her substance, he shaped them and they are the gods. Yet there was no life on the earth, all this being but the bone and the breath of the Goddess. All was ever changing but undying under the movement of the wind and Night.

Now Balkainen the North Wind felt all but saw nothing for he was formed of her movement and what he could not touch, did not know. He asked to know even that which was afar and she said yes. She made him a light that hung on her breast and called it the sun. Now could he see even to the ends of the earth. He saw the land and the oceans, smooth or wrinkled, in motion swift or slow, and they were dark like the skin of the goddess. He saw the veins of precious ore and the rivers of sparkling water which ran like the blood under her skin and the sweat shining over it, and all that he saw was a reminder of her. Yet Balkainen knew at once that her gift was less than half a blessing: knew that though he had sight, he had lost the Night Absolute which he loved. So she made the sun to hide in the night that he might see her. Then she made a lesser light to wax and wane: the new moon which none can see, and the full moon which gives strong light.

All this she made and looking on it, loved it. She wanted to embrace that which she had made, to take it into her, but knew she could not without annihilating it. The North Wind seeing her love picked up a pearl of ice from the verge of the Northern River and said, Take this. It stands hard and firm like the land but is water, and within it are the tiny clouds of air, and the light shines through it. All things that you have made are in this. So she took it gratefully under the new moon and swallowed it and when the moon came full again, she bore the first thing that was begotten, not made, and his name was Rogn.

In time she gave the child to Balkainen saying, Now would I be still for a while. Be as a father to this child and let all things be his brothers. When he is filled with the ways of your realm, let him call to me and I will return again to the world.

Rogn lived with Balkainen in the far north but roamed the wide world learning to fly with the wind, sleep with the mountains, and dance with the waters. These were his brothers and Rogn learned from them all and loved them, yet even as a child he saw with his Mother’s eyes which they could not do. Every night he looked into the soft blackness, and his brothers said, That is our Mother and one day you will go to Her that you may know Her, even as we do not. Rogn was loved by all his brothers, but Balkainen the North Wind envied Rogn his term in the Goddess, so from Rogn was Balkainen ever remote although he nurtured him.

When Rogn had lived long in the world and knew it even as the North Wind, Balkainen said, Now you must summon the Mother. It was night in the far north where one night is many nights; no moon shone, and the stars were as yet unmade when Rogn went out under the darkness.

Mother, my life is from you; I am yours. What will you have of me?

He stood long under the vault of her, seeing nothing but the depth and breadth of her which was everything. Staring into her he saw that the darkness was not void, but he recognized the smallness of himself and was afraid. When he felt the trembling within him, he wanted to run back to the caverns of Balkainen, for even in the ice caves was it warmer than this fear which made his lips and fingers freeze. He stood with the feeling, however, and did not run. Soon the fear became familiar to him and because it was part of himself, it was a semblance of warmth, but it could not sustain him, and the coldness returned to his limbs. But Rogn, the youngest of things, was resolute. He thought not of the cold but of her, and his thoughts kindled a warmth inside that made him patient in his impatience to know her, and the feeling he named yearning.

It seemed then as if he were lifted into the night, growing huge, for beneath him all the earth grew small. A heat unknown to him moved within him, and as he rose higher into the night, he moaned with a fine pleasure. The pleasure was wild in his limbs and he quailed, for so great was he grown and so far from his home that he feared he might lose what he was. But the voice of the Goddess surrounded him and at the sound of her song no fear was as great as his love. In that instant he spewed his love into the night and these are the stars, made by Rogn, not begotten.

For the first time was Rogn dismayed because that was his love for the Mother and he had wasted it. He felt the strength leave him and the heat seep from his body. He was crest fallen and would have fallen even to earth, but her laughter upheld him and the warmth of her breath infused him anew. At her touch the heat grew searing inside him and this time he spilt his love into her, and the song of his joy, a howl in the night, echoed through the halls of Balkainen.

When the long Night was returned to silence, she laid him back down on the earth. After the caress of the Mother, the stillness before dawn was unendurable on his skin, so he shattered the silence with an uproarious prayer of gratitude and love. His brothers heard the singing and came to him, saw the fullness of his joy, and rejoiced with him dancing. Then he saw, as his brothers saw, the sun rise up from the mountains, but only Rogn saw her withdraw, with the most slender of decrescent moons, disappearing behind the radiant sun.

Thereafter when Rogn watched the sickle moon grow great, he thought, This time the fullness is of me for I am now in her. I am less than I was yet more than I was. I am complete. When her time came she returned to Rogn and said, That which you gave me I have nurtured, as I nurtured you, and now it must be born as you were born. This is my gift; where will you receive it?

Rogn was troubled for he saw the world as Balkainen’s and would not displace the father of his youth. He went to the North Wind begging counsel and the North Wind said, The earth and all of its seas are Hers, as are the sky and all of its clouds. Your children will live in me and under me, but they will never be me nor before me, so it matters nothing where they are born. Rogn returned to the Mother and spoke to her from the top of Mount Cymdry, the highest of peaks that now is the isle of Imbarien.

Here! cried he with arms flung wide under the sun and moon, together lighting the encircling sky. And the world of Balkainen’s forming was as nothing to the variety of living things born by the Goddess, and the stars of Rogn’s making were as nothing to the number of living things. Mosses overspread the tundra and shone when showered with sunshine, insects of onyx eye and emerald wing, trees so tall that just one would shade a dragon glen, the dragon himself with glittering flanks, the brown gull that flies through air and water, the antelope with horns curved like the moon, and human kind with busy fingers; and there were giants. Thus was the world adorned with living things.

When the Goddess had done, Balkainen came to her to adore her and marvel at her creation. He saw and Rogn saw that the Goddess had born twins of each kind and Rogn was filled with rapture at her gift to him.

Now must you give them a gift, she said, for they are yours as well as mine.

I give them the pleasure I had of you in the firmament, he cried from his heart, for no pleasure is like unto that. And so all things living became breeding and the breeding was urgent among them and the generations hastened under the eyes of the Wind, the Mother, and the begotten son.

But that which at first was an adornment to the world turned quickly to chaos and began to disfigure the earth, for Rogn’s gift was ill thought. Birds over-crowded the roost; pelted each other insensible from the sky. Fish choked the deep-throated ocean; festered in the waves at the shore. Animals in stupefaction crawled over each other, the strength gone from their limbs. And over all was a seething blanket of legs, feelers, and wings in a frenzy making an ill wind of incessant motion so that the winds of Balkainen retreated beyond the ice shelves of Daminkainen; fled to primordial wastes where there was room to fly free. And still did things breed, for Rogn’s gift was compelling within them; and there was no ending for the substance of the Goddess was in them which is everlasting.

For the second time was Rogn dismayed, for he saw that his gift was a twisting of his intent, and he cried out to the Mother, pleaded for mercy, begged for compassion. She said, I will annihilate that of my substance in each creature, but that of your substance is the quality of change and will stay with the world.

Rogn moaned; ran trembling fingers through tumbled hair. Is there no going back?

Only into the womb of Night which is annihilation utterly, she smiled.

Rogn was resolute. Not from you is the joy perverted into pain. I am the necessity. So Rogn became Death.

This I ask of the Mother. That the lives of all mortal things be henceforth like the pure and distant moon: from nothingness to fullness to nothingness in the midst of Night.

Henceforth it shall be. But what of these in the midst of their pain?

Rogn knew not. He felt in his belly the clawing of his necessity and the ache was as urgent as ever his pleasure had been. He called the ache hunger and went down into the world and touched every living thing, and that which he touched hungered, and being hungry, fed. And nothing in the world was not fed on, each in its turn from the dragon to the worm. Thus was his hunger appeased and a new balance achieved in the world. And the winds returned from beyond the verge of Daminkainen.

Now weary, Rogn walked the world over. He saw that in balance had beauty returned to the world, but with beauty was a shadow and the shadow was sorrow. Yet did life flourish side by side with the shadow. This Rogn saw as he wandered, and every living thing knew him yet turned from him in fear and sadness.

They despise you, whispered the Wind at his shoulder.

Rogn bowed before the breeze. In proportion to my love, he said. It is fitting.

Yet did the earth tremble; the balance not stable. The giants abroad in the earth and at large in the deep ocean had a hunger that could not be appeased. They were frantic to fill the void within them, nor could they fill it even in gorging, but in gorging was their hunger avenged. Wasting became as a pleasure and none could withstand them. And though endless was the weariness within him, Rogn could not turn away. He looked with wide eyes to the Mother, but she had withdrawn from him, so he turned to Balkainen.

Fight with me, he begged with shoulders sagging. I cannot destroy them alone, but with my brothers and you, then might we defeat them. Help me to ease the pain of my children and spare the face of the earth. Balkainen, ever remote, yet remembered the laughter of the Mother and took pity on Rogn’s children.

What followed was the Carnage. All things except the Goddess herself were caught up in it: the elements that were the house of Balkainen; the giants that were the appetite of the world under the shadow; and every living thing else composed of both element and appetite that were the innocent. When the killing ended and moaning covered the ground like mist, Rogn mourned, for so much that had been was now nothing. So he went to each corpse that had been alive and drank of its blood, drew through warm lips the cold ichor, to preserve in himself of their substance. Even of the giants he drank blood and so imbibed that of the void that he then knew was anguish seemingly endless.

Now the wish of Rogn’s heart, so great was his sorrow, was only to die; to lie buried forever beyond the Northern River, disappear beneath deep caverns where neither joy nor sorrow abides. Yet he could not for when Balkainen saw him drink blood, he reviled him and exiled him in his contempt. Rogn stood on the bank of the great river, the last of his house to come home, stood facing his father’s realm, but no wind came off the ice shelves, no murmur from the broad flowing river, no whisper from the far reaching tundra to meet him. Then was Rogn alone in the world. Yet was Rogn resolute. He sang a song of thanks to his father and a fond farewell to his brothers; turned his back on Balkainen; stepped swiftly sunward to the south, never looking back.

Seeing him retreat, small in the form of a mortal yet large in his heart, Balkainen despised Rogn, determined to punish him, decided to grant the wish of the son, never intending that he find peace. The King of the Northern River locked him in the fractured face of a glacier, set it adrift on the Emeraldine Sea, saying rest well, Waster. Until his weathering out, until washed from the ice by the sun and the rain—that was Rogn’s second term. And since his release from the ice, Rogn does not hide, but walks among the children of his love and folly. And as death is ever our most faithful companion, he is the most hated and beloved of all the gods.

— The Erlsaga —

Chapter I Thringellir

Vorodin was an artisan; he created things with his hands. His old body which had seen the stars revolve around many ages of earth had grown dry and wan. It had lost little of its poise, but the wind blew white locks across his sight and the smooth staff of Bucharil looked ill in his mottled hand. The man was a perfectionist in his way, so these suggestions of infirmity moved him to take a new form. This he could do. Managing the falcon’s implacable grip, the bear’s impervious hide, the brachet’s delicate nose, he welded these and other attributes useful to his craft into human form and promptly took up residence. His new body admitted nothing of prettiness. Vorodin’s pride was above beauty for its own sake; function was his ideal. A body unassuming but efficient would suffice.

All his creations were beautiful in their functions. In one night when the world was young he had created the Hound of Halsingur and fed it. It was a powerful beast that served him so ably in matters of fetch and carry. He had pulled a black wing feather from the Crow of the Eclipse; it wrote to him on air of any happening out of sight of the sun. When he needed a more ubiquitous report, he created the Gorfalcons, two raptors of devastating power and incomparable speed. Their names were Danir and Fel, Witness and Vengeance. And although he had not created the Sadusar Serpent, he had subdued it and secured it until he might need it.

The seat of his present power was Thringellir a fortress that lay in the center of the broad meadows encircled by the Forest of the Moon. Thringellir was not truly a fortress, just a low outer wall that began and ended in a single tower and included a storehouse within its walls. What need for impregnable stonework when the structure had two defenses already marvelous and complete? One was the Forest of the Moon, a grasping crescent of ancient greenwood, dense and dangerous in its sphere; and the other was Thringellir itself. The castle was invisible. In truth, it was not the castle that foiled creatures’ eyes, but the Mantle of Shadows. This was his masterpiece. Vorodin wove it; Vorodin wore it. Draped over his shoulders as a shawl, wrapped about his waist as a skirt, dropped over his feet for warmth, or folded beneath his head as a pillow, while he was in possession of it, the castle and all of its secrets remained securely hidden. The more so since this mighty mantle was unknown to, undreamed of, by all but a very few who knew him of old and knew to what lengths the hungry spirit will go.

At the center of Thringellir’s tower was the octagonal chamber. Three great windows north, east, and south offered broad views of the meadows beyond. In the western wall Vorodin had built his fireplace ribbed with levers, pincers, and barbs. On the walls to either side of the forging place stood massive shelves of cruets, casters, panniers, phials, and decanters. On the northeast wall long ranks of brindle books shelved like an abandoned army rose to the vaulted ceiling. In them was the lore of all the elements, all the species, and many changes. At this hour three narrow volumes, one of them opened, lay on the thick oaken table that stood before the window on the east.

Vorodin had been perusing all the long winter night. He was casual about it although the spell he wanted was important to him. What he needed was an animation charm. Such charms were few and the ones he had used for creating the hound and gorfalcons were inadequate for tonight’s work. They were mutation charms and tonight he was creating from scratch. The closest he found was a charm for revivifying dragons. He wrote it down to fix it in his mind. If he had to use it, he could say it aloud but once. He sat back behind the great table and thought it over for a moment, then marking the place with his practice parchment, flipped the book shut. Strolling over to the south window, he wondered if perhaps he were looking in the wrong place. Perhaps a charm of theft. After studying the heavens a short while and dispersing a few clouds that had wandered too near the gibbous moon, he proceeded to the shelves of elements by the fire. Whatever spell he finally chose, he would need herba sardonica, aconite, quicksilver for the eyes, something red for blood. These were for the preliminary task.

He took the ingredients over to the table and, neatly setting the books aside, arranged the containers. Returning to the shelves to his right, he pulled down a heavy mortar with iron pestle. The row of books braced by it slid down like dominoes. Vorodin took note of them with a disapproving glance. They straightened themselves immediately. Back at the fireplace, he worked the bellows in his broad hands. The fire, ever burning, illumined less than moonlight. It was intended for creation, not for comfort. The fire breathed and grew. The hotter it waxed, the less light it gave off. Vorodin, smith primeval, master of fires, had devised this one. This was his especial fire, ultimately hot, but the heat did not diffuse. The longer he worked it, the more excited he became with his plan. His plan and his power. Shortly he noticed his mooncast shadow behind the quivering space that was his fire. It was ready and so was he.

He crossed to the door in the southeast wall against which an innocuous bundle lay. Vorodin had prepared it the week before. Tonight he would bring it again to the fire. An iron hook was swung out over the flagstone floor. Another was swung out opposite the first. On each was placed the handle of an immense black cauldron. Into this Vorodin fingered the moist gray fibers handful by handful from the bundle on the floor. As the last particles slid through his fingers, he remembered his faraway youth when the feel of dirt was clean and good. The smith made his choice of spells and the conjuring began.

He sang a song of sturdy beginning as he swung the cauldron back over the fire. This spell was an old one, second nature to him now and his first spell of the evening. The spell he yet pondered was the final spell he would need for this night’s work. As the fibers churned quickly to the boil, they lost their filiform texture, heaving and collapsing into viscous sponginess. The mass flushed and paled the greener colors of the spectrum.

With the contents of the cauldron cooking nicely, Vorodin effortlessly pulled the massive table before the fire. There was no need to hurry this stage. Timing must be precise, but the first stage took the longest and the conjuring would take the rest of the night. The smith took down and neatly ordered the remainder of the ingredients. Into the mortar he placed sulfur with yellow orpiment and began grinding them to finest powder. He was reminded of the many times as a young man that he had gone out gathering such ingredients while he was learning his art. He didn’t watch what he was doing; he didn’t need to. He looked almost absent minded as he plied his craft, his eyes running over the compounds before him or appraising his brew, but it was not so. The marvel was not the creation, but the creator. Vorodin worked with extreme economy of motion. Not a gesture, not a glance was idle, and every operation was a part of him.

The moon had long descended from the top of the tower when he lifted a lancet from the wall and pulled the cauldron out. Into it he sifted the yellow powder which was immediately absorbed and turned the mixture its own choleric color. Reaching behind him Vorodin drew forth the cruet of quicksilver and poured it in, reciting as he stirred. Now the song was a spell of purpose, instilling the creation with the vision of Vorodin’s path. His voice was mellow and serene. As the mixture began slowly to cool, he added the last minerals that he would need that night finishing with just a pinch of purest gold, to give his creation the promise of nobility. Then he hauled the mixture completely away from the fire.

Vorodin turned his attention to a sea-green phial on the table. It held a clear tincture of almost radiant blue. Into this solution he sprinkled the dust of the sardonic herb, red poppy of the rock, and aconite. Aconite, he thought, the wolf’s bane. I use it to make blood, the wolf’s salvation. Grasping the phial in iron pincers, he took it from the table and held it high over the invisible flames. He could smell the blood he was brewing. The tone of his spell was terse. He was instructing the ingredients to their work. They had never been bound in this way before. In a few moments the liquid had reduced to an ichor of shining black. Actually, it was not black, but only Vorodin could perceive the utter depth of its vermilion. He poured it into the cauldron and returned the cauldron to the fire.

As the mixture raced once more to the boil, Vorodin sang the flames even hotter. The fire and he were one, both surging together under a fierce and passionate discipline. The seething mass did not liquefy, rather it seemed to gel. Smooth protuberances writhed and swelled, knotted together, then slipped apart. Vorodin’s spells now took on an air of ruthlessness. He no longer instructed the constituents, he commanded them. He was bending, perverting, the laws which bound these elements, and his voice grew stronger in his throat. The ichor remained intact, only stretching and twisting itself like tendrils around the flesh-like masses. As soon as the fluid had been integrated, Vorodin reached down from the mantle a talisman he had created generations before.

It was a staff, not unlike the staff of Bucharil, but smaller and of far fewer powers. Vorodin had made it of iron and bone and the hardy wood of an oak tree root. When he was young and acquiring lore, he had sublimated the properties of mineral, animal, and vegetable into its smooth and graceful shape. At the time it had been quite a feat for him, a victory against the mysteries of the world. Now it was, of itself, of no value, but as part of the present creation it would be just the thing. Pulling the cauldron out only enough to accommodate the height of the staff, he fed it inch by inch into the slowly coalescing mass. The spells he growled were coercive; they were threats secure in the power behind them, and he never once had to repeat them, even as a thin patina of sweat shone from his temples. The staff did not melt nor dissolve into the mixture. Like the ichor, it integrated with the concoction but did not lose its own cohesion. The cauldron was swung back again and the sorcerer took from within his shirt an ugly little box of unadorned lead. Within it lay yet another masterwork.

His smooth fingers withdrew a soft pulpy object roughly heart shaped. Indeed, it was a heart. It was the epitome of mortal contrivance. It had been subjected, distilled, divided, fermented, separated, conjoined, purged, and fixed until now it was a quintessence. When Vorodin spoke it to life, it would be the core, the spirit, the driving force of his creation. And when it came to the speaking of it, this was the spell he needed. As he held it in his hand, this pulpy lump, he was suddenly startled by his own impudence. He knew that no spells uttered before in the world would do. And he realized he didn’t need them. He was the master of all these elements, all the changes. The spell he sang would not fail because it was his spell. It was his spell and no other voice would ever sing it but his. The heart lay inert in Vorodin’s hand, and he gloated. Then he sang. And the heart began to beat. It was wonderful. As he brought it over the fire, his song became not harsh but cruel, and the object pulsed as with anticipation, anxious to perform in its own milieu. Vorodin’s hand was not entirely impervious to heat but sustained no injury as he gently lay the living mass into the cauldron.

Vorodin could not extract his creation until just before the moon set. The longer it cooked until then, the better. He had pulled it off with brilliant ease and now felt he wanted to indulge a touch of whimsy: just a little something more that would forever mark the creature to its purpose. Vorodin strolled over to the south window and peered once more towards the ever alluring moon. He saw the silhouette of an eagle against the clear white face: the symbol of freedom at one with the symbol of serenity. He whistled a long and compelling note and extended his hand into the chill clear air. Flying in a direct line, the noble bird took three minutes to reach the window and light on Vorodin’s arm. The bird neither trusted nor feared; it had been commanded and had come. Vorodin spoke to it and fingered the feathers under the creature’s strong beak. The bird was lulled while Vorodin spoke and appreciated its beauty. Then, caressing the majestic head between his thumb and forefinger, Vorodin quickly, brutally, snapped the neck, killing the king of birds. He carried the heavy body to the table. Its yellow beak he ground rapidly to dust and added to the cauldron, then discarded the carcase in a heap beside the hearth.

As the moon bent low to touch the high mountains beyond the forest that bore its name, Vorodin carefully sang down the embers of his fire. The cauldron he lifted with an iron barb to the cold floor, then with one hand shoved the massive table to the wall. He stepped three paces back and uttered his command, softly and with triumph. On impulse, to demonstrate his mastery, he added an ancient and well worn invocation of the Death God. After all, Rogn had coupled with the goddess herself to create life. Now Vorodin would do it alone: himself complete.

I have put the soul of earth and ether in your eyes; by Rogn’s Blood, none else can conjure so. Arise!

From the cauldron, like a nymph emerging from the waves, rose sleekly, silently, but of awesome proportions, a warrior fully clad. Its helm gleamed, as did its raven locks which, parted to either side, revealed a broad and lofty brow. Behind that brow burned the memory of a thousand stratagems instilled by Vorodin’s spells. Its face was smooth and hard like the stone the smith had smelted in his forge. The only thing that could crack that visage was a smile from the creature itself. That smile Vorodin had made sensitive and disarming and a lie. The softness of the garments that it wore drew attention to the unyielding strength of its supple limbs. Shadows danced off the subtle planes of its massive hands. The armor it wore, true to its creator, was light, durable, and unadorned. The creature was magnificent.

Your name is Draja, said Vorodin. Follow me. Vorodin moved to the window on the north. He watched the warrior as it approached the window, but did not pause to admire it. He knew it was perfect. Like a man in every way; only its eyes shone the metallic and ever-changing color of quicksilver. But not a man; first and foremost an implement of destruction. Vorodin pointed into the realms of the far north. The new dawn was illuminating the hazy peaks. There, he said, is where you begin.

Chapter II Anderen

Draja was created on the winter solstice. Nine months later and three hundred miles to the south the Heir of Anderen was invested on the equinox. Anderen was a prosperous city built of brick and stone, wattle and daub, where the Madern River, Mother of Waters, opened her legs to create a delta rich and wide. This delta was formed by a river, not wearied by its thousand mile burden of silt, but strong enough in its channels to carry its burden out into the Inland Sea.

The pink and white stone that gave the city a glow was quarried from the embankments of bedrock that thrust up through the lowland floor, weathered tableland standing out among the wild grasses and cultivated grain. The city itself was built on the largest of these outcroppings which held it above the spring floods. The Andir quarried the rock not only for building but also for burying. Imbur Rock, lying a mile and more from the city, was a holy resting place for their dead, catacombed with vaults and passages and surmounted by a grove of fifty venerable yew trees. The smallest of the stone beds, and the most sacred because it was seen as child to the one on which the city stood, was Holmdrin, a weathered gray knoll scarcely twenty feet high. The delicate green grasses that covered it were crowned with an ancient ash. There were few hardwoods of great size in the delta, although there were many stands of alder, willow, and hazel, and this ash tree had been tended with exquisite care for hundreds of years. Beneath its feathery leaves lay a granite sarsen stone, perched on two supporting slabs that safely protected the bones of the city’s founder.

The path down from the great stone led past a cleft in the rock worn shiny smooth by an unfailing spring whose cold clear water made a dark pool at Holmdrin’s foot where trefoil grew and heartsease. The spring meandered into one of countless estuary streams, all of which formed the pathways of the delta.

The water in the delta was not brackish because the Madern emptied into the freshwater Inland Sea, a wide expanse that finally careened over the great cataracts, fifteen miles wide, to join with the Ocean Wide. Here in the estuary, waving like a separate sea, grew the reedbeds of Anderen, tall and lush, teeming with water beasts. It was the fish and fowl, even more than the water beasts, however, for which the delta was known. The largest of these were the Madern perch that could swallow a coracle whole and the ebony ibis that was the symbol of the Mother to the delta folk. The reed beds had ever been a last refuge for the city under siege.

Many generations had passed, however, since Anderen had been pressed from without. The shallow valley sprawling to the mountains east and west, less than two hundred miles on either side, lay under the city’s protection. Its fields were rich and the people who tilled them counted themselves as Andir. The delta valley opened north onto the Great Plain stretching far beyond the horizon, step by step with the river, to where both began under the cliffs of the Dolyeaba Plateau half a world away. Settlements seeded the plain, but not one to rival Anderen. Most of those living upriver followed the herds of grazing beasts that flowed like tides across the grasslands.

East of Anderen, however, where the mountains lay blanketed in woodland, lived the clans of Mindelorn, generally herders, frequently bandits, depending on how hard the winter. They were once kindred to the Andir, but had roamed away long before when the dwellings on the delta were made of reeds not of stone. Unlike the rulers of Anderen, their chieftains were men. Yet even the men of Mindelorn had occasion to leave their wild pastures sometimes, and the shortest path to the western world, to places like the Isle of Imbarien in the Ocean Wide, was across the valley or down the river to Anderen.

The Andir practiced many crafts: ship building,