Knight of Strolm Read online

  The courtyard was empty of noise. Jurod was immediately awed by the luck of the men who came here today, knowing the death that would have surely reached them had they come when all of the monks were present. Two monks atop the walls had crossbows aimed at the group of soldiers. A quick wave from Father Nikolas had the two dropping their bows. They were clearly outnumbered and couldn’t do anything to improve the situation. Jurod watched as Lewk passed beyond the main gate, turned around and slammed the gates shut with his magic, preventing the Knight from following. Without missing a step, Jurod waved the Knight through a service door directly into the stables outside the monastery ground. Once inside the stables, the Knight moved confidently to a tall, black warhorse and began to strap a saddle into place.

  The Knight glared at Jurod as he began saddling one of the monastery’s mares and barked, “You’re not coming, half-breed! I’ve no time for wards of the monastery.”

  Behind the Knight, a Faelhart soldier that Jurod hadn’t seen before lifted his sword. Instinctively, Jurod rushed the short distance forward, caught the soldier’s arm and pushed it forcibly to the side. He quickly hit a pressure point just above the man’s elbow and caused the blade fall harmlessly onto the stable floor. Pulling his left arm back, Jurod planted his right palm against the soldier’s sternum in an attempt push him away from the fallen blade.

  It felt as though something deep inside Jurod were being unlocked and unleashed simultaneously. A blue light began to encompass the stable. Blue flames of liquid fire shot out of Jurod’s hand and consumed the soldier’s uniform. Bewildered, Jurod saw nothing but the flames and heard nothing but the pained screams of his oppressor, who was now completely engulfed in the strange fire. A strong hand grabbed his arm and spun Jurod around.

  “Who are you?” the Knight whispered, fear and awe permeating his gaze.

  “J- J- Jurod Silv- Silvergem” he stammered as the Knight stared at him.

  “No name I’m familiar with,” the Knight stated as he nodded reverently, “But I’ve changed my mind; you’re coming with me!”

  Chapter 2

  Then the Betrayer changed Khes’yc, giving intelligence to the Ogres, Tyrns, Fey, and Ibeald.

  *

  35 years ago

  It was deep winter in Reth. A foot of snow had covered the trees and plant life of the vast forest, turning the typical blue and purple landscape into a stark, bland white. Clouds overhead promised more snow to come, covering the sky in their various shades of gray. Deep winter was always a bleak season among the Lythrain.

  Lyrameth moved among her troops as they rested for the night. Each of the ten patrols in her squadrons had gathered around their magical fires and were now sharing their raucous laughter for all of Reth to hear.

  Lyrameth smiled as she pulled her sergeant’s cloak tighter against the cold. They had spent the last four months on a three-month patrol of the southern border. They were deep within the Lythrain homeland now; five days’ ride from the Lythrain lines and seven days’ ride from the heaviest fighting against the Tyrns.

  Lyrameth was confident in their position, even to the point of walking through their camp with no armor and only a single, simple scimitar strapped to her waist. She felt nearly naked as she walked among her soldiers; she had worn full armor with a pair of scimitars out of necessity for the last four months.

  Tonight however, they were safe. They would be safe within their own beds in two days if they pressed the march, though Lyrameth would likely slow the march to three days just to give the soldiers a break.

  The nearby sound of Tyrnish war horns was absolutely astonishing.

  Arrows filled the air before the horns had silenced. Lyrameth dropped to the ground, scimitar flashing from its scabbard. Brown-skinned, eight-foot tall brutes descended upon the unsuspecting Lythrain.

  Three came rushing toward where she crouched, death-like. After the first two had passed, she leapt at the third. Her scimitar flashed across the Tyrn’s throat, nearly severing its head as the Tyrn’s momentum met the force of Lyrameth’s blow.

  Lyrameth spun to the pair that had passed, but both continued on to plant their axes and clubs into easier targets.

  Fireballs arched into the charging Tyrns, immolating several where they stood, as the wizards in Lyrameth’s squadrons took stock of the situation.

  Oh, how I need Romieth right now! Lyrameth thought; no one understood her like Romieth and his combat magic was more astounding than any other mage she had met before.

  The sound of crunching snow behind her alerted her to the next wave of Tyrns approaching. She spun quickly, barely raising her scimitar into a sufficient parry to deflect the downward strike of a Tyrn. Jumping around the brute, she whipped the Tyrn’s belt knife from its crude sheath on the monster’s belt. It was a crude weapon, nothing like her elegant scimitars, and was poorly weighted for true combat; but it was preferable to fighting with only one blade.

  The Tyrnish knife and Fey scimitar bit into the legs of the knife’s original owner, dropping him down to Lyrameth’s level as she dealt the brute a fatal blow.

  Her soldiers were falling all around, few even having the time to raise a death cry as they were sundered by Tyrnish axes and crushed by Tyrnish clubs. Her wizards had been forced into a tight knot, outnumbered two to one by the attackers. A crude line had formed before her own tent by those few Lythrain that had been able to mount a defense; likely they hadn’t realized that she wasn’t within and now it was all they could do to hold their position.

  Within the first precious seconds of the engagement she had lost an entire squadron. Fortunately she could not see any other Tyrns within the trees and she felt certain that the two dozen brutes in the camp were all that remained of the attacking force; but then, she had been certain there were no Tyrns at all this far north.

  The battle was lost; Lyrameth could see it already. Even as she watched the line in front of her tent began to break and the wizards began to shake with the exhaustion of their spells. Lyrameth looked out into the white forest. Freedom awaited her within the trees. Her husband, Romieth, would be recalled from the front within the month and her children, Ramier and Ilays, were waiting for her; but how could she abandon her soldiers?

  Giving up on her family, giving up on Romieth, Lyrameth ran to the aid of her wizards. One fell to a Tyrn’s axe as she ran to their aid, and a second collapsed from exhaustion after tearing through three of the brutes with lightning; then Lyrameth was upon them. The Tyrnish knife slashed across a brown skinned arm, forcing the brute to drop his axe before he could descend upon the unconscious wizard.

  Her scimitar arched and a Tyrn stepped back from her defensive assault. Her back bumped against her last standing wizard, and the pair fought back-to-back, keeping three Tyrn’s at bay and protecting their unconscious ally.

  It was a short-lived defense. Lyrameth felt the wizard behind her fall, whether to Tyrns or exhaustion she had no way of knowing. Without the wizard, she was alone surrounded by three Tyrns; they attacked in unison.

  Her Tyrnish knife met one in the throat as her scimitar stopped a horizontal strike from a wicked spiked club. Heat flashed across her legs, stomach and back as the remainder of the Tyrnish attacks landed. She fell, finally dropping her scimitar.

  She stared at the blade as it lay in the snow. It had been her intention to pass the pair of matching scimitars on to her daughter, Ilays. They had cost a small fortune in Strolm, crafted of the finest Penshalt mithril and enchanted not to lose their edges.

  Ilays, Lyrameth thought mournfully as darkness descended upon her, I will never see you become a woman…

  *

  35 years ago

  Ilays stood solemnly to her father’s left in the traditional, black mourning robes of Reth; her brother stood to his right.

  Before them was a Priestess of Rylvia, standing before an altar. Behind them, many Lythrain had gathered.

  It was unusual to have a gathering so large anymore. With the Tyrns’ aggression in
the south borderlands, most Lythrain that could swing a blade or hurl a bolt of fire had been recruited to defend the forest. That is what had gotten her mother killed.

  Romieth had been furious when he had received news of his wife’s fate. The Tyrnish tribe his own squadron had been engaging with for the last week still twice outnumbered his men, but he ceased caring. Regardless of the two children he would leave without parents, he took vanguard on a full, direct assault. It was fortunate for the Tyrns that his anger gave way to sorrow.

  He stood over their camp, their hunters dead around him, when the fury in his eyes died. He saw the children in the tribe and he lowered his staff. He saw them running as fast as their little legs could carry them and he dropped to his knees. He saw the fear painted across their faces and he wept.

  Over half of his squad had died in that assault, and he lost his battlefield commission because of the hasty, emotional decision. He had been “temporarily” assigned as a training officer while his commanding officers reviewed the situation, and he could not be angrier about the change in post. He stood stoically over his wife’s body upon the altar, awaiting the Priestess to return it to nature.

  Ramier was the opposite of his father’s cool, stoic composure. Sobs wracked the youthful boy as he stood in mourning black with a formal gladius strapped at his hip.

  Ilays simply stood and watched her family, taking in her father’s silence and her brother’s gasping sobs. It all seemed so strange to her.

  When the Priestess began the Rites, Ramier’s sobs renewed in full fervor and even Romieth was forced to wipe a tear from his eye. After what seemed to Ilays as several long hours, the Priestess stopped her chanting and her mother’s body decayed to dust. A swell of wind rose, lifting the dust from atop the altar slowly, bit by bit. When at last the altar was clean again, the wind died, and peace was restored to the ceremony.

  “The wind has brought chaos and unrest, just as time brings chaos and torment to mortality. But just as peace follows on the wind’s trail, so too has Lyrameth found the peace that comes only at the end of life’s great journey.”

  This brought renewed cries of mourning from those gathered, and the Priestess turned and walked away.

  Slowly, those gathered for the funeral ceased their cries and dispersed, until only Ilays and her family remained. Long into the night they stood, until Ilays eventually sat in the snow, leaning against her father’s legs, and slept.

  *

  “What do you mean you can’t open it!?” Justyn roared.

  “The spell book is sealed shut with magic. I can’t get it to open!” Lewk replied.

  “Well force it!” Justyn countered.

  “That could kill me.” Lewk growled.

  Justyn beamed with satisfaction, “I’m willing to make that sacrifice.”

  “Well I’m not.” Lewk finished.

  Nikolas laughed at his captors as he settled against a large oak. The clearing they had stopped in was small, quiet, and peaceful. Nikolas had shed his black robe and comfortably puffed on his pipe now as he sat in his black tunic and trousers listening to the pair bicker with one another over every subject imaginable; he had even enjoyed the argument when Justyn found out that because of Lewk’s oath as a monk, Nikolas could control his Focus and cast magic through him.

  The only moment he had enjoyed more than that was when Lewk himself had found out about his inability to use his own Focus. Dawn had just broken over the horizon when Lewk had tried to knock Nikolas off of his horse with a ball of air. He had thought the older monk was dozing in his saddle too much and he deserved to be punished. With a simple spell weave, Nikolas had turned that ball and caused it to hit its caster; who promptly fell off of his horse.

  “But you’re Guarded. How did you do that?” Lewk had exclaimed in rage.

  “I told you at the monastery that you had taken certain oaths that you would find hard to break. One of those is the oath you took to ‘always protect and serve the brotherhood.’ You may have chosen to kill several of the other members of our order, but I assure you that you will never be able to kill me. Through magic or physical means, I think you’ll find yourself lacking the capabilities.”

  It had been almost a full day later with no sign of pursuit that Nikolas finally found himself in a clearing where he could rest. As he was enjoying a nice puff on his pipe and watching Justyn and Lewk set up camp, he decided to heckle the men once more.

  “Where’s dinner?” Nikolas called out.

  Both men turned angrily on Nikolas.

  “Why can’t we just kill him?” Justyn grumbled.

  “Because he’s the only person we have that knows how to open the spell book,” Lewk snarled, “Once we get the ingredients for a truth serum in Erethil and force it out of him, you can do whatever you’d like and I can have my magic back!”

  *

  The road took them south out of the monastery for what Jurod guessed was about a mile before turning east and then eventually curving up to the northeast toward Erethil. They rode hard the rest of that day, all night, and into the next morning, eating the Knight’s trail rations in the saddle as they got hungry. After midday, the Knight cut off the road and into the trees; stopping in a clearing where they could watch the road.

  He dismounted quickly and pulled his bedroll, bow and quiver from their locations on his saddle and his hatchet from his saddlebags. Throwing his bedroll on the ground, he turned to Jurod with the bow and quiver in one hand and the hatchet in the other.

  “One of us will always be on watch so we can share a bedroll until you get your own. Do you want to hunt dinner or chop the fire wood?” the Knight asked.

  “I’ll hunt.” Jurod offered, taking the bow and clumsily slinging the quiver over his shoulder.

  “Have you ever used one of those before?”

  “Of course I have. I’ve just never had to use a quiver this large before.” Jurod lied.

  “Alright. Make sure you get enough meat for soup. No deer or elk or anything. Just small things: Birds, squirrels, rabbits, and the like. I don’t want to have to haul out 200 pounds of meat when we’re done here.”

  Jurod nodded at the Knight and quickly moved into the forest. He had always liked hunting with his knives, and the monks had given him plenty of time for it as long as they could use the entire kill. Jurod had only begun searching when he caught the tracks of some rabbits with his Lythrain sight gifted him from his mother; his Lythrain grace enabled him to move quickly and silently through the trees. Despite his advantages, Jurod found tracking anything difficult as his mind wandered continually to the inexplicable blue flames and the Knight that was intent on keeping him since. There was something in his mind since it had happened; a part that was partitioned from his conscious and fighting to take over it. He couldn’t feel it; he just couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  Magic, Jurod thought, that’s the only explanation. But I’ve never been able to Focus, and I wasn’t even trying in the stables.

  Jurod remembered a cool night in the monastery. It was late spring a few weeks after Lewk had arrived, and Jurod was sitting in one of the monastery’s smaller courtyards. He held a wet pebble from the nearby pond in his small hand and wept with frustration.

  “What's wrong, Child?” Father Nikolas asked.

  “I can’t Focus!” Jurod wailed.

  Father Nikolas seemed surprised, “Oh? I have never before met a Lythrain that couldn’t Focus, what are you using?”

  Jurod held the wet pebble in front of him as he wiped the tears from his cheek with his other hand.

  “I see.” Father Nikolas stated as he picked up the stone and inspected it carefully, “Well a pebble is a very poor Foci. Let’s go for a walk and we’ll see if we can’t find you something that will work a little bit better.”

  They wandered along the grounds searching for something that might be a better fit for Jurod. As they wandered, the young half breed would pick up a rock, a stick, a piece of glass, or anything else that seemed l
ike it would work to Focus with. With each item, Father Nikolas would shake his head and encourage the boy to keep looking. As they got to the gates of the monastery, the Father pointed just outside and said, “I think I see something there on the ground that might work.”

  Father Nikolas quickly pulled the ring off his finger and flung it outside the gates before Jurod could turn around. As Jurod picked it up, he exclaimed “Ah! I’ve been wondering where that ring went. It’s mine you see, and I lost it several days ago while training a new stable boy. Thank you for finding it. As your reward, let’s give that a try.

  “Now empty your mind of every thought and let your mind focus entirely on the ring.”

  As Jurod closed his eyes and let his mind picture the ring against a black background, a white light appeared in the center of it. It was small at first and started to grow. A warm sensation overcame Jurod as the light grew.

  Father Nikolas’s voice filled Jurod’s mind, “Now extend your mind and take hold of the light.”

  Jurod pictured his arm reaching out to grab the light, and to his surprise the light snapped out. Jurod opened his eyes and found Father Nikolas smiling at him.

  “Very close Child. I don’t think I’ve ever in all my years seen one of my students grasp that closely on their very first try. I’m proud of you.” Father Nikolas congratulated, “And as an extra bonus for doing so well, you keep that ring in case you ever do need a Focus again.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  Jurod pushed the memory out of his mind and stopped fingering the silver ring on his right middle finger. Pulling an arrow from the quiver, Jurod studied it momentarily. He understood the design of bows and arrows, but had never picked up the skill, nor had the knack to use them. He put the arrow back into the quiver, slung the bow across his back, pulled a pair of knives from his belt, and concentrated on the hunt.