The Lights of Barbrin: Book One of the Barbrin Trilogy

By Joseph Burgo

Originally released as part of the legendary Timescape series from Pocket Books (Simon & Schuster), this book has been substantially revised and updated for its re-release.

From the original Timescape edition cover copy:

THE QUEST OF EHRED THE MIGHTY

Braced by the strength of his Haziad—the four freedom fighters who represent fire, air, earth, and water—fire-bearer Ehred fought his way to importance, wielding a mighty force that made him all-powerful in Nabrilehr, land of the misfits.

But the evil Rand, barred from all Haziads because of his twisted devotion to the dangerous Unmaker, strove long and hard—and finally stole Ehred’s firepower for his own destructive use.

Now Ehred and his Haziad must steal back the blazing power—for in Rand’s hands it threatens to consume Ehred’s world!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Burgo
• Release date: May 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9780997592016

Joseph Burgo

Joseph Burgo, PhD, has practiced psychotherapy for more than thirty years and held licenses as a marriage and family therapist and clinical psychologist. He earned his undergraduate degree in English Literature at UCLA and both his masters and doctorate in Psychology at California Graduate Institute in Los Angeles. Dr. Burgo has been quoted or featured as an expert on NPR and in publications such as USA TODAY, Glamour, The New York Times, and numerous other publications. As a writer on mental health topics, he is a regular contributor to The Atlantic and a frequent blogger for Psychology Today.

Book preview

Chapter One

Ehred!

The boy felt his father shaking him but couldn’t wake up. His dream gripped him in an icy world, with endless snow weighing upon a bleak mountain land. It seemed real, this vision of eternal winter. Inescapably real.

Eyes open now. Father’s face hovered above him. His frosty breath came in tight little gusts, the tangled mass of his beard and hair blending into the darkness.

Nearly time, Father whispered. Make yourself ready. He stood up, pulled the hortskin cover from Ehred, and left him alone in the cold.

Dawn waited not far off, but the sky showed no signs of its approach. It was black, solid black, and a thick sea fog had crowded out the stars. Rianah had long since slipped below the western horizon, followed by her two glowing brothers.

Ehred stood up as he pulled on his clothes—the same greasy hortskin garments he had worn throughout their three-day march from Gred. Around him, he sensed rather than saw others doing the same: men who had been on many raids before this one, and boy-men like himself who had only just left behind the games of children in their gray-stone village and come to this proving ground.

He wasn’t quite sure what he was expected to prove, but from whisperings he had overheard in the night and rumors of others who had failed, he knew that if he failed, he might soon find himself an outcast from his own village. The thought did not frighten him, and yet he trembled as he rolled up his bed mat on the barren ground. He fingered the rough edges of the small knife his father had given him the night before—a short, crude dagger he must use during the assault on Nilien.

Nilien.

For the first fifteen years of Ehred’s life, that word had been nothing more than a name shouted angrily at gatherings in Gred. It was home to strangers who sometimes came to raid his own village. Now Ehred stood less than a mile from this foreign place, and with the forty or so others from Gred would soon pour over the hill and down upon the unsuspecting sleepers. Among those below were strangers who had come before to Gred and killed people whom Ehred had known, but he doubted he could do what the elders said to do and give them what they deserved.

Nearby, Therin began to kindle a cooking fire. It was a small flame, not bright enough to be seen by any watchers from the village lying just beyond their hill camp. A sudden breeze brought the heavy odor of smoked bird flesh to Ehred’s nose—the ever-present grinil meat roasting over the fire—and he climbed nearly to the hill’s summit to avoid the smell.

The morning sky had finally begun to brighten in the east. Crawling higher, holding his body low, he peered over the hill summit and down upon the village of Nilien. He could have been gazing upon his own village of Gred, with its hundred or so gray-stone, thatch-roofed huts crowded onto the flat place between treeless brown hills and blue sea. On the beach, fishing boats rested heavily on the white sand, with their nets hanging on racks beside them. In the distance, he made out pens crowded with horts, and shacks where the grinil meat was smoked.

It could have been home.

The sight didn’t surprise him. From what the elders had discussed at the village gatherings, he knew Nilien would be a place very much like Gred. But he felt a small shock at the sight of white ruins massing on a hillside behind the village—crumbling towers and stone-littered streets layering down to the sea plain. At the summit, five high turrets caught the early morning sun on their white surface as first light came suddenly over the ocean edge. Below those clustering towers, the broken city terraced down to the flatland by the shore. Empty. Unpeopled. The ruins must have been deserted for countless years—just like the ones in Gred.

Ehred had always thought the Shadows—as whispering Gred folk referred to the ruins—were unique to his own village, and that the strange, dark legends which surrounded them were unknown to other peoples in the wild beyond. But these ruins were so like those near Ehred’s village that the same ancient men must have built them. He wondered if behind their decay lay the same sad stories—of a black madness that befell this white town, when all the people within its walls became like wild beasts. After the madness had passed, they fled their town and built stone huts upon the beach.

Unknown horrors and certain death awaited within the ruins … or so the legends told. No one really knew, for few from Gred had entered the Shadows to find out. None had ever returned.

In spite of those legends, the Shadows had never frightened Ehred. He thought them sad; he often tried to imagine how magnificent they once must have been in their towering beauty. Sometimes he would stand beside the fallen gate and broken arch that marked the lowest entrance to the ruins, gazing up the stone-paved road until it wound around a corner and went out of sight. The road cut back and forth across the hillside in a spiral to high towers at the top; though he longed to follow it and look out upon the sea from those tall windows, something always stopped him from entering. Not fear, but a strange yet certain feeling that he wasn’t quite ready—that the time had not yet come.

One day it would come, he felt certain.

At the sound of an angry voice hissing his name, Ehred hurried down the hill to his father’s side. Knuckles rapped him sharply above his left ear. Rubbing the sore pot, he joined the others at their meal.

He ate the fried grinil, though he had long ago learned to hate the ever-present smoked bird flesh. There was nothing more but hard black bread, and Ehred knew he must fill his stomach for strength in battle. Around him, Gred men and boys crouched or sat cross-legged on the rocky soil, silent except for their licking and chewing sounds as fingers stuffed meat and bread into mouths. They ate with their heads low to the wooden plates to catch the droppings from their mouths. Just like animals, Ehred thought with a feeling of disgust. He moved a short distance away from the others with his back toward them, slowly finishing his meal.

By the time he was done, the others had already scoured their plates with sand, stored them away in their packs, and had begun hiding all belongings except weapons behind a large boulder nearby. Ehred hurried to join them. The morning sun now showed its full circle in the eastern sky—the time for the attack had come.

The more experienced men were to lead the assault, followed by the younger men like Ehred’s brother Baril who had been on raids before this one. The untried ones were to bring up the rear, hewing down those women and children the leaders might leave behind. As he joined the other boys, he sensed their tension in the heat and fear-odor from their close bodies. They whispered anxiously among themselves while the older men remained still and silent. What were they waiting for? Some of the younger ones, on their second or third raid, gazed around them into the open air, as if they expected someone or something to arrive on the wind or materialize before them from out of nowhere.

Ehred’s palms began to sweat as he shifted the dagger uneasily from one hand to another. What would he do when the killing moment came?

Old and young alike kept glancing about in expectation. When it finally came, Ehred understood. Though no tangible thing, it seemed to have real substance—a thick shadow, a mist of darkness descending upon them. It had a voice of its own, too—arising within his thoughts, inciting him to violence. Black fire began to course through his veins; a savage kind of blindness drew over him.

Forget, an unfamiliar voice whispered. Forget yourself and submit.

As a single unit, the crowd of men began running up and over the hill toward Nilien. Ehred’s feet seemed to be moving in spite of himself; something inside kept holding him back. The black fire urged him on, the hissing voice within urged him to kill. His own thoughts, now almost like strangers, resisted.

At the top of the hill, he suddenly came to a halt. The broken white towers of the Nilien ruins caught morning light and dispelled the dark dream. The killing frenzy passed from his thoughts. Once again he was Ehred alone, standing just beyond the hilltop as his own people hurried with shrieks and war cries down upon the silent, unmoving village.

The quiet stillness of the village suddenly burst into angry motion as the folk of Nilien came forth to meet the attack. They must have known that the Gred force was at hand: behind or within those outlying stone huts, the entire village had hidden with weapons at the ready. They burst forth with howling battle cries, knives and spears in hand.

The people of Nilien outmatched the invaders by nearly three to one. The men of his home showed no fear. Cries of pain and anger, shrieks of fury rose to Ehred on the hill. Animal sounds, wordless and guttural. They fought and screamed like wild beasts; they stabbed and hewed one another in their killing frenzy. With fear and rising nausea, Ehred turned away.

The brilliant white ruins drew his eyes toward them. He found himself in motion without realizing he had chosen to walk—toward the ruins, down the hill but away from the fighting. The radiance of those crumbling towers called to him; he walked steadily toward the ruins without shifting his eyes from them.

At last he reached a gate—not the lowest one close to the village where the fighting still raged but another one halfway up the hill. It opened onto the pitted remains of a broad road, catching it at a curve. One-half of the wooden gate was still hanging by its upper hinge.

Ehred stood staring along the road through the archway; it climbed in a straight line toward the next curve and descended to another. Wood-and-stone structures with pitched roofs lined the road, with wonderfully carved doorways on either side. Many faded colors adorned the city, but its dominant color was white—white like those massive towers above it.

Ehred felt the great beauty of this place even in its decay. A light seem to glow from within the stones. He longed to enter and explore it. He stepped forward and passed beneath the arch.

Sounds of approaching battle suddenly stopped him. He turned and looked back. The skirmish below had gone quickly against his people. The Gred men were still fighting, but the overpowering force of Nilien had slaughtered many and were slowly driving the invaders away from the village, up the hill toward Ehred.

He hid just within the archway and searched for his father and brother. They were both wounded but alive—Baril bleeding from a wound on his shoulder, Father with an ugly gash upon his brow. As the Gred warriors came closer, Ehred could see in their faces and feel in their fear that the strange frenzy had left them. They knew death was at hand. Drawing together, they retreated to the gate, until finally those at the rear of the group stood only a few yards away. He slipped silently among them: if his father and brother were to die, he would die along with them.

Eborac their leader suddenly raised his sword into the air and cried out to his adversaries. He was a massive man, with thickly muscled arms and hair as a red as flame.

Come! he said. We will fight you within the ruined city!

The fighting came to a halt. The courage of the Nilien men wavered for a moment; fear of the ruins abruptly overcame the mindless fog that had possessed them. In that instant the group from Gred began as one to run up the hill and away from the gate.

Ehred ran with them. He feared that at any moment a sharp blade would pierce his back. When he glanced behind, the folk of Nilien were trudging down the hill toward the slain and wounded of their village. The battle was over.

Turning back, Ehred met his father’s glaring gaze, a look more of anger than disappointment.

He had failed.

Chapter Two

He knew by their silence through the evening meal that his mother and father had something on their minds, something they wanted to talk about in private. They hurried through their food and gruffly urged him to eat faster. Ehred lingered and played with his food, pushing bits of meat around the plate with his fork and nibbling slowly at a chunk of black bread. He had the uneasy sense that they wanted to talk about him.

After the meal, he sat before the stone hearth for a long time. Now and then he’d toss small chips of wood into the fire and watch them ignite. Their flames would lick up against the rocks and send shadows flickering across the one-room hut. He could sit this way for hours. Fire consoled him for the ugliness of life. When their gray hut was gone, when the stones with brown moss growing in the cracks had crumbled and the petty wars of his people were done, fire would remain. Fire everlasting. The sun would still shine and the stars would still glimmer against the sky after Gred had passed. He sang softly before the blaze, hugging himself and rocking gently from side to side.

Go to sleep! his mother told him.

She was hunched at the table, putting her fishbone hook through tanned hortskin. His father was combing fibers from flax. This was their nightly ritual. They worked through the day and continued into evening by the meager light as they put together pieces of hide for a coat or wove twine for a new net. It seemed no different this night, but Ehred knew they only waited until he slept.

I’m not tired, he said.

Go! hissed his father.

He finally made his way to the corner pallet. Lying beside Baril, already asleep and snoring softly, Ehred pulled the fodder over himself for warmth. He closed his eyes, made his breathing deep and regular, and pretended to sleep.

He thought of the many times he’d stayed this way, the things he had learned from late-night eavesdropping. It began six or seven years ago; he’d awoken from the first of his dreams of frozen mountains and black starless night to find voices whispering in the dark. His stomach ached from hunger.

That was the summer of the Great Drought when wolves had come down from the hills to plunder the grinil smoking shacks, devouring most of their stores. They nearly died before the grinil came south in autumn, for they had only fish from Drifed Bay or what little prey they could find in the parched hills above.

In the dark, Ehred had heard his parents speak of the trouble and how they might escape: two could live where four might starve. Nothing ever came of it. He never forgot.

Since then he had learned when to listen. His intuition tonight didn’t let him down. Once the fire had burned low, his mother and father moved to their corner of the room, huddling on their mat, and whispered in anxious voices. It was a small hut; Ehred heard each word quite clearly.

Did you speak with Abrimor today? his mother whispered. She always began, always took the first step while father followed closely behind.

Y-yes. He hesitated. Are you sure the boy is asleep. Such a secretive one. I wonder if he isn’t listening, if he doesn’t already know what’s in store for him.

He’ll know soon enough. Something in her tone made Ehred uneasy. He felt a change in the night—lighter or darker, he couldn’t tell which. Tell me what Abrimor said, the woman insisted.

He didn’t want to talk about it. He seemed afraid.

"Afraid of what?

I don’t know. He’d only say I must go to the lake and wait. They’ll know we’re coming.

He told you nothing of this place … how is it called?

Nabrilehr. The word broke like dawn across Ehred’s mind. He’d never heard the name before; he somehow knew it would be important to his future. He only went there that one time but they wouldn’t let him near. They took his son and told him never to return.

It must be the place for Ehred. That’s where the useless ones go. Besides, he’s always running away into the hills and staying by himself. He doesn’t belong here.

What will the others say when they find out? What will they think of us in the village? It was his part to doubt, not out of any real worry. He gave his questions so that Mother could answer them; he knew what she would say before she spoke.

Just what we all said when Abrimor took his boy away. They know he’s a burden on our people. He has no place, no friends. He’s not happy here. They’ll think us wise in ridding ourselves of a nuisance.

"He might even be happier at …