The Prophetic Moment

By Donald Haynes

Seven years have passed. A spell has robbed Cormac of any memory of them. When the Princess calls him from Thanekeep and frees him from the enchantment, he is astounded to learn that he has become the Thane of Rivershome. He has no time to adjust to the news. Along with the Princess, he must immediately resume the quest. They must seek the only one who can explain the prophecy—an ancient, wrathful dragon legend says lives in a mountain cave somewhere far to the east.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543983685

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©2019 Donald Haynes. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-54398-367-8 (print)

ISBN: 978-1-54398-368-5 (ebook)

for Lois.

Wife. Companion. Friend.

The Sword must find a master

Who will seek the breaks of dawn

When the clouds foretell disaster

Because all hope is gone.

Contents

Book I: Upland Journey

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Book II: WXL

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Book III: The Cave of the Dragon

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 1

Cold. The wind from the surf. Cold. Chilling. They had come up from the clam beds, dragging their heavy, wet sacks. His pants wet with seawater. Cold. Tug had built a fire in the lea of the wind-tormented grove of trees. It crackled before him. He moved closer. It spit and crackled. Still it did not give off heat. The chill remained. He shuddered . . .

And he was cold. Bone cold. If only the fire would warm. Because there must be a fire. He could hear it crackle.

He lay on a couch.

Had been asleep.

Even though he wore his ceremonial regalia, he had been asleep.

Head pounded.

Opening his eyes, he saw that the doors onto the balcony stood open. Sunlight flooded in. The wrong color.

Silver.

Moonlight.

Moonlight in here, in his private chambers.

Anger flared. He had given standing orders. These doors must be kept locked and curtained. Never opened.

The nearly full midsummer moon stood overhead, outside, shining so brightly he could see as easily as at high noon.

And the fire that crackled behind him gave off the wrong color. It flickered blue on the furniture ahead of him.

His head seemed to float upward, as if it had changed into a balloon on a string. Closing his eyes, he waited until it floated back down.

Slowly he turned to face the wall at the rear of the apartment.

No fire burned in the fireplace.

The crackling came from the figure of a man that stood in front of the fireplace. Blue flames outlined him in the darkness.

Hail, the figure said.

Bewildered, the Swordthane shook his head.

We meet again, the figure went on, taking a step toward him.

Like a bubble of gas in a swamp, recognition rose into his consciousness.

You are . . . he said slowly, and then stopped. You are him who died.

Yes.

Why are you here?

Because long ago you trusted me to plant in you a call you cannot now refuse.

Call he said, uncomprehendingly.

Hail, Cormac the Swordthane, said the figure. The voice now rang with command. Cormac came to attention.

Go out. Go out into the moonlight.

Cormac turned and walked toward the other end of his apartment.

He stopped.

The moonlight coming through the doors fell at his feet. He could not step into it.

He could not move.

Go, thundered the command.

As if physically pushed, he stumbled forward into the moonlight, stopping only when he reached the parapet on the other side.

Dizzy.

For a moment he feared he would fall up and out and then down. Down.

He did not stand on a balcony.

He should have known that.

A landing.

Looking down he could see, to his left and right, marble steps that led far below, almost to the edge of the wall of the Keep, and then back to the center, ending in a second landing.

That one looked larger than the one on which he stood. He found it hard to judge.

From it, much broader steps descended, finally reaching the plaza where his troops would stand for review.

Leaning over the parapet he felt the moonlight cascade over him, as serenely rational as a distant flute.

He felt the enormous Keep rise upward behind him, tier upon tier, to spires and turrets in crenellated, cloud-capped rows.

The Thanekeep.

His Thanekeep.

Dizzy. Again he lurched. Held on with both hands to the parapet.

Below him in the middle distance stood a grove of trees, dark in the moonlight. Beyond it, the mighty waters of the River Quickflood joined. It was as if the Thanekeep sat on the stern of an enormous ship whose prow had somewhere northward parted the waters and now the flood joined and continued onward to the Southern Sea.

Go, thundered the voice at his back. Down!

Turning, he looked into the apartment. The figure stood just inside the doors, its arm outstretched.

I will join you at the bottom, it went on.

Turning to his left, the Swordthane walked toward the steps. He felt heavy. Ponderous. The moonlight seemed water through which he walked, as if he breathed liquid into his lungs.

Slowly he descended, the marble balustrade smooth under his right hand. He came to the place where the stairs reversed their direction, now going back toward the center. He continued down, leaning for support against the castle wall.

He reached the broad, lower landing.

Looking up he saw where he had stood outside his apartment, hundreds of feet above. The Keep brooded in the moonlight.

The vast review area flat before him, as if cut from the rock by some giant sword. Polished. He could see the veins of the rock.

He descended the broad central steps, each several paces across until at last he reached the plaza’s flatness. He wandered aimlessly into the middle of the review area.

The moonlight continued to make him dizzy. He staggered, and with an effort sank to one knee. Putting his hand down for balance. A wave of blackness. Then he could again stand.

He reached the middle of the stone plaza. Turning, he looked upward.

High above, the windows from his apartment reflected the light. On the wall below, the stairs traced a huge diamond, first out from the upper landing outside the apartment and then back to the second, larger landing.

The rock of the wall gleamed jet black. Polished.

Words.

He could see words etched in the black. Below them a huge map. At the bottom a black review stand.

His.

His review stand.

The stand from which he reviewed the massed troops of Rivershome.

His troops.

There echoed in his mind the words of the old woman in the Valley Time Forgot. Foretold. The massed troops of Rivershome.

He knelt for a moment in the vast and silvery unknown.

Rising he walked slowly back toward the stand.

Soon he could read the words etched in silver on the wall—

The Sword must find a master

Who will see the breaks of dawn

When the clouds foretell disaster

Because all hope is gone.

They burned in the moonlight with the cold, impersonal fury of battle.

Below them, silver filigree outlined a map. The Blessed Land.

He mounted the seven steps and stood in place in the review stand.

His place.

The place where he alone would be anointed to stand.

He looked at the map. Like a silver vein, a river made its way across the top of the land from the west. The River Tyrone. From the north, the River Quickflood, flowing out of the Barrier Mountains over the falls at the Castle of Silence. Joined by the River Tyrone, south it flowed, through the Blessed Land, past Rivershome, onward to the Southern Sea. A delicate band traced the shoreline of the Southern Sea.

From the east, coming from the Blasted Land, the bed of what had once been a river, now known as the River of Dust.

Rivershome. A silver circle of light. The Orb itself.

He looked at the eastern boundary. A distant martial fanfare seemed to ring in his ears.

The Wall.

That vast, magic barrier that forever separated the beauty and calm of the Blessed Land from the distempered and alien menace in the east.

The map outlined the Wall in straight segments, narrow bars with slight angles where they joined so to trace a broad, irregular arc from the mountains of the north to the uplands of the south. Each joint, he saw, glowed brightly in the moonlight.

The music inside his head seemed louder now. Proud and regal, it provided an appropriate pomp as he walked slowly toward the map. He paced with measured tread below it, confident that he moved as had Swordthanes before him.

Swordthanes of Rivershome. Proudly he knew he formed the most recent link in a chain extending back into the mists of time, heroes who had dedicated their lives to defending the Blessed Land against whatever foulness rose in the east.

As he walked, he counted the gleaming lights along the Barrier Wall, each one a garrison, a band of his men, sentinels against the east.

He stopped.

One of the lights had turned color. It glowed an angry, reddish yellow.

Somewhere to the east, a presence, perhaps obscured by clouds, approached the wall.

A group of brave men even now armed themselves, preparing to go out on the wall and defend it, with their lives if necessary.

Now they were alone.

In two days, he would be with them.

In two days, in full midsummer, he would stand in the assembly in the grove at the tip of the island of Rivershome for the third and final time. The third and final question would be asked of him by the Elder. That ritual, honored by time, would fully and finally initiate him into his thanedom.

Then he would but need to draw his sword and point its tip toward the point of light and he would be at one with his men, seeing through their eyes, hearing through their ears, infusing them with his will to victory, helping them to persevere, regardless of the misshapen horror that tried to scale the wall.

The nearly full moon stood almost directly overhead. In the distance he could see the hills beyond the river, pleasant open land where music sounded in the trees during the summer.

Beyond them, he knew, the land ran fresh and lovely for untold leagues, to the base of the western escarpment.

A beautiful land, one worth the sacrifices its defense demanded.

He resumed his walk, his eyes moving from the lights that glowed at each joint in the map to the eastern horizon, imagining the distant reality the map mirrored.

The garrisons themselves, set back a distance from the wall, stayed within the beneficence of the Orb. North and south they were connected by a road that reminded him of the Greenway.

A road ran from each garrison to the base of the wall. Steeply switchbacked steps ran up its face. On regular hours, patrols left a garrison, climbed to the top of the wall and turned south, to patrol to the next garrison. Here they would descend and, after bathing themselves and cleaning their armor, march north on the trail to their permanent base, there to await their next turn on the wall.

His mind returned to the ceremonial review earlier in the day. He had stood, listening to the cheers of the cohort. By the power of the sword he had touched them, looked into them, shared their secret fears and hopes and dreams, known their essential goodness and decency, their love of the Blessed Land strong enough to defend it with their lives if needed, each one unique and yet joined by common bonds . . .

A wave of nausea crashed around him. His gorge rose.

He must not foul the silver perfection of the map.

Carefully he walked out to the middle of the plaza. He knelt in the moonlight.

Sweat stood on his forehead.

"It’s hard to command when one can see each man so clearly," a calm voice said.

True. Terribly true.

War ought to be as objective as chess, the voice went on, but sacrificing a man you’ve come to know so well isn’t the same as sacrificing a pawn.

There lay the truth of the matter.

Try as he might, he could not see his soldiers merely as pawns in the game of war.

As he wiped his forehead, he suddenly realized someone had spoken to him. He looked up. Hooded figures stood before him. Five of them. Small. Even though he knelt, the tallest could look directly into his eyes. Because the moon shone directly down, he could not see their faces.

At the feet of the figure in the center lay a dog.

For a long moment, the silence continued. Even though he stood much taller than any of them, the figures seemed menacing. His hand trembled as he sought for his sword.

He could not find the handle.

As he looked down for it, the same hissing sizzle he had earlier heard in his chambers broke the silence. As it grew louder, another figure began to be visible, standing a little to the side of the group. The figure who had commanded the Swordthane from his apartment, out into the moonlight.

Forced him out into the moonlight.

The figure stepped forward. Hello, young man, it said. The voice seemed familiar.

The figure came closer. As it did so, the sense filled him that to know it, he only needed to draw the sword.

Still on his knees, he again looked down, seeking the handle of the sword. Evidently the belt had twisted and it hung at his back.

In the moment that his eyes were averted, the figure came to his side and placed a blue-limned hand on his left shoulder.

Be still, its familiar voice said.

He could not move.

Then the smallest of the hooded figures came silently to stand before him.

A woman. She pushed back the hood. Her hair, silver in the moonlight, framed her face, setting off a simple silver crown that seemed to take in the essence of the moon and give it back in living serenity.

Tears ran down her cheeks.

How odd that she does not wipe them, he thought. He watched as the drops fell and darkened the front of her cloak.

She stepped deliberately forward. Reaching out, she pulled aside part of his ceremonial armor and drew the sword. As it came free, she stepped back. The blue-edged figure stepped away as well.

Grasping the hilt with both hands, high over her head she lifted the sword. The moonlight seemed to flow down it, gathering around her hands.

Slowly she lowered the sword until the point stood just above his forehead.

A soundless explosion encapsulated him. White noise enveloped him.

He tried to breathe. No air.

Filigrees of pain etched his arms and legs.

He will fall, he heard a woman cry from some place far away.

Stay back, another man’s voice said.

Be still, Cormac, said yet another voice. This one, too, familiar, known. "Do not move."

He tried. He could not wholly obey. Slowly he felt his knees draw up to his chest.

"Be still," the voice said again.

He could not. A garment of pain enfolded him.

Be still . . . A wonderful voice. Unhurried. Precise. It enunciated carefully. Exactly.

He concentrated on the voice. As he did so, he found himself abstracted from the pain. Even though it remained, it seemed as if some other person felt it.

Abruptly, like an egg that falls from a nest on a cliff high above the rocks, the shell of pain cracked.

He lay on his back, aware only that he no longer hurt. Opening his eyes, he looked around.

Should we help? said another woman’s voice.

No. He must come back by himself, said the man’s voice.

Only then can we help, said the woman who wore the crown.

His head lay at an odd angle. His neck began to ache. There must be a more comfortable way to lay, he thought.

He struggled to sit up.

He seemed to be smothered in clothes and armor.

Simply because one has suddenly come to his senses does not mean one can stand up by oneself, said the unknown voice, a lemon of irony lacing the blandness of the words.

What would one recommend, Cormac thought.

Wait and let the others help, it responded.

Wait, echoed the woman’s voice.

Gently he felt her hand on his arm. Gently she began to lift him up.

As he tried to rise, he realized he wore clothing much too large. With an effort he managed to get his hands out of the sleeves.

Laughter. He realized that the several hooded figures, the woman among them, laughed at him. Look at you, she said. The laughter had a sob in it, as if some great tension had passed.

Cormac looked up. To his surprise, he saw they had grown. Where a few moments before he had towered over them, now they stood as tall as he did. You’re big, he blurted out. You’re as big as I am.

The strained laughter continued, led by the woman. No, she said after a moment. We’ve not grown. You’ve shrunk.

As she spoke, she shook her head. The moonlight glittered on the circlet she wore.

She was the Princess.

Princess Orianna of the Seven Families.

He was Cormac.

Cormac the Apprentice Storyteller.

Cormac, Chosen of the . . .

He looked down. Stupefied, he realized he must look like a small boy dressed in his father’s clothes. His hands thrust out of sleeves much too large for them. He shuffled along, his feet somewhere inside his pants.

Two of the figures advanced. Now that their hoods were back he could see that one was an older man, the other somewhat younger. May we help? the older asked.

Cormac looked at him. With the moonlight shining full on his face, he realized he knew him.

Quint.

Quint Quintenson.

Please do.

First give me the scabbard, the Princess said. When he had unbuckled the heavy silver buckle and handed the belt with the scabbard to her, she returned the sword to it and then motioned to Quint and the others. She walked back toward the center of the plaza.

Deftly Quint removed the ceremonial garments. With a small knife, the younger man cut the sleeves from the shirt. It hung now as a kind of tunic. Quint handed him a length of rope. Tie this for now as a belt, he said. We’ve clothes for you, but we’d best make do for now. There’s much to get done before moonset.

Let us join them, the younger said.

Having wiped his face as best he could on one of the discarded garments, Cormac joined the two men in walking toward the center of the broad polished stone to where the Princess now waited, the dog at her feet, a taller woman slightly to her left.

Where is the other? Cormac asked, realizing that the blue-limned figure had vanished.

We do not know, the younger man said. We did not expect it. The needs of this crisis must have called it back. They walked in silence for a moment. Evidently when the Princess called to you to respond to Fulton’s command, it called him back to carry it out.

They reached the Princess. She looked at him, seeming about to speak. Before she could, the younger man suddenly knelt before him.

Forgive us, he said, his head down, for the pain we have caused you.

Since he could see no reason for either the act or the statement, Cormac motioned him back to his feet.

Come now, he commanded as he did so. No harm done. I’ve never felt better.

Indeed, he did. A sense of well-being filled him. He breathed deeply, feeling the cool night air in his lungs.

Quint I know, Cormac said, but who are you?

I am Florian, the man answered, Loremaster of the House of Selinus.

He is a distant cousin, the Princess said, stepping forward. And this is Willow, my Lady-in-Waiting. The tall woman stepped forward and curtsied before him.

This is another of my house, she went on, presenting to him the fifth. A shock of white hair over a lined face. His cheeks ruddy, even in the moonlight. A smile lurked