The Sword of Midras Read online

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  PROLOGUE

  The Destiny Pool

  The End is the Beginning of us all.

  Hear the soundless lamentation of the ages lost! The past is hidden from the eyes of the weary, blanketed beneath ash and tears. The old world is passed away, its mountains shaken, its rivers torn from their courses, its plains rent with fire and the shining towers of man tumbled to ruin. The orb of night is broken, its black shards tumbling from the dome of night to fall as judgment’s cruel, black rain. The music of daughters fails to resound, the proud boasts of men are as dust in their mouths, and fear reigns in the dark silence that follows. The flesh is turned to dust, and all that we once were is forgotten and lost in the shuttered past.

  Where are the Virtues of the world now fallen? Were they taken from us or were we taken from them? Were they abandoned or were we orphaned by them? Was this not the blade of too fine an edge that cut between the light and night, between me and thee? Avatars of our dreams or nightmares, did you steal away from us in the night or did we lose you by the wayside, sightless in our pride?

  How, then, are we to look forward when we cannot look back?

  Only in the obsidian darkness can we comprehend the bright truth. The Fall has sown the seed of our redemption, that we may harvest its fruits, harness its might, and rise again from the blanketing ash of a past that has been cut from us as sharply as a malignant growth.

  Tomorrow is to be forged anew from a molten chaos by those who seize destiny’s hammer and strike with uncompromising will.

  —Sariah the Blind, Lamentation of the Fall

  The man reluctantly closed the thin metal sheets of the small book. Each page was slightly bent and wavy from use, and the edges were rusting despite his constant care. They were bound by six wide leather thongs along the left edge and a thick cover of tooled leather after the style of the northern Grunvald binders, and the book was barely larger than the size of his hand when he closed it. Still, the rune letters engraved on each page were as clear to his eyes as when he had first stolen the volume as a young boy. He no longer remembered where he had stolen it or even why it had seemed important to him at the time. He had not even known how to read then, an orphan of a village on the River Meino just outside of Rhun.

  He had survived on magic. He had a natural talent for conjuring and shaping that was of no small use to the farmers who kept him fed and sheltered in exchange for his urging their crops to grow or coaxing a troublesome boulder out of the way of their plow, but it was not until this book that he felt there might be more to his life than surviving.

  It was this book that had been his companion in learning to decipher the meaning from the runes with the help of the occasional minstrel that might mistakenly pass by such an inconsequential place. It had changed his life in such profound ways. He ran the fingers of his right hand over the tooled leather artwork of the front of the book as though caressing the cheek of a lover.

  If, indeed, he had ever loved at all.

  “Only in the Obsidian darkness can we comprehend the bright truth,” he murmured.

  It was the book that had led him to cross the Vaughban Mountains and into the Grunvald Plain. It brought him to the first of the Shard Falls. The shining crystalline stone, black and enormous, stood plunged like a dagger into the vast flatness around it. Everywhere else into the distance the grass was brown in the cold winter air, but around the Fall were a variety of plants and animals and even what the young man had thought were both plants and animals weaving and reweaving themselves into strange and wondrous forms, only to shift again into new shapes, both chaotic and ordered at once.

  It was the heart of a magic the likes of which the young man had never before experienced, and he was drawn to it without ever once questioning the wisdom in doing so.

  The man had had a name in that time before, but he decided that, like the world in his book, his old self should pass away and a new self should take its place. So he abandoned his name and became, instead, simply “the Obsidian Eye.”

  In the years that would follow he would come to understand that the wild magic surrounding the Shard Fall had all been a sign to him of bringing order out of chaos. He embraced the magic and its intoxicating power. Over time more and more men and women with the gift were drawn to him as his reputation spread, each learning and expanding upon the craft of Obsidian magic, but tempering it all with the glorious book in his hands as a touchstone to order amid the chaos.

  “It has shown me so many things,” he said as he gently set the book down on the stand next to the high-back chair on which he sat. It was in the center of a room whose walls could not be seen in the opaque darkness around him. He knew the place well, for it was his own chamber deep beneath the fortress of Desolis—a ruin from before the Fall that his young order of sorcerers had claimed for their own. It was near enough to the Shard Fall that magic could be wrought here and far from the prying eyes of the petty warlords who were constantly battling one another in the wake of the world’s collapse. He turned to face the floor before him. “And now we shall see even more.”

  In the floor was set a circle of stones around a dark, still pool. There was not a ripple in its surface, and it looked to be of infinite depth.

  The Obsidian Eye cocked his head slightly to one side. “Markus? Are you ready?”

  “Ready, my master,” came the answer echoing through the chamber. Markus Dirae was an acolyte among the Obsidian Sorcerers, and the Obsidian Eye knew he was far too lowly among the ranks of their order to attend him. Undoubtedly, the nervous Markus was more perplexed at being here than any of those of higher rank and status who had thought to be here in his stead. The Obsidian Eye smiled. The presence of Markus was a matter of destiny.

  “Attend me.” The older sorcerer’s whisper carried throughout the hall. “We have never before looked into the Destiny Pool, but is not a thing created such that it might be used? It is time we know our fates.”

  The Obsidian Eye stepped down from his throne to the edge of the pool. He heard Markus take up his stylus behind him. There were several soft clay tablets arrayed on a table next to him within easy reach.

  The Obsidian Eye reached down.

  Was this not the blade of too fine an edge that cut between the light and night, between me and thee?

  He stopped his hand short of the mirror surface of the pool.

  “Have you read The Lamentation of the Fall, Markus?”

  “Yes, my master,” the acolyte answered at once. “We all have, Master.”

  “Of course,” the elder sorcerer said, and sighed.

  He extended
his hand and touched the surface of the pool.

  The placid surface erupted at once into a frothing, roiling madness. The Obsidian Eye stared at it for a moment and then began to speak. His own voice came to him as from a distance, being everywhere in the hall and nowhere at once—outside of himself.

  “The world is fallen … fallen into chaos…” he heard himself say.

  There was a dim awareness that Markus was inscribing runes into his tablet in some faraway place.

  * * *

  The world is fallen, fallen into chaos.

  Men reached up in anger and shattered the sky.

  Its blackness falls to Earth like a rain of dark, immutable glass;

  The ordered customs and rows of society are shattered.

  All men stumble

  In the blinding light of a bloodred dawn.

  Sightless who will not see.

  Deaf to the truth they will not hear.

  Mewing and wailing of and for themselves.

  They kill with discordant and untamed shouts

  The melodic order of their better selves.

  Yet from the Obsidians’ fall shall arise

  Seen only by the ordered Eye

  The blade that shall render order in their midst;

  Silence the voices who screech outside the ordered tune;

  Darken the eyes of unwelcome vision;

  And bring one vision, one voice, one song

  To a world reborn in perfect twilight.

  Supreme and ordered once more in its flawlessness.

  Of one thought and purpose born and died.

  Until only the night remains.

  —Prophecy of the Obsidian Eye

  * * *

  The master sorcerer withdrew his hand from the pool.

  “Master?”

  It was Markus behind him, near his chair.

  He could not stop his hand from shaking.

  “Master?” came the voice, more urgent this time.

  “Yes,” the Obsidian Eye answered hesitantly.

  “What … what does it mean?”

  “It means the world must be ordered,” the Obsidian Eye said with a smile as he gazed at his still shaking hand. “And that it is our destiny to order it.”

  PART I

  THE OBSIDIANS

  CHAPTER

  1

  Midras

  Aren Bennis, captain of the Westreach Army of the Obsidian Empire, looked out for the heads of his archer ranks toward the remains of the city of Midras.

  “Why does bringing order demand such a mess?” he mused as he scanned the splintering stockade wall for the remaining defenders behind it. “Such a beautiful, glorious mess.”

  The city—or what passed for a city in these times, Aren corrected himself ruefully—lay under the pall of a large column of smoke billowing from the still burning barracks on the far side of the city. The smoke rose to mar the otherwise clear sky overhead. Aren could see the forward lines of battle against the stockade wall that stood between him and the interior of the city beyond. This was the third breach in the defenses he had commanded that day. Parts of the city were already being looted because of his two previous successes. Now, once more at his orders, the satyrs had regrouped into a concentrated force and were tearing down another section of the defensive wall. The fauns were grouped here as well in support of the satyrs, their special song loosening the mortar between the timbers. They had been the key to the fall of Midras, penetrating the timbers that stood against them in a number of places. It allowed the main force of human warriors to sweep through the breach and collapse the city defenses. Now the city had fallen to them as the captain knew it would.

  The captain knew nothing of the city’s history nor did he particularly care. He could see there were walls and columns that predated the Fall in various places about the city. One area of these on the eastern side looked as though the ruling warlord of the city was trying to restore it to some semblance of its original form. Now the building was a ruin again following their assault. The warlord had been dislodged. Blood soaked the ground, and the city was being pillaged. Securing the city from vengeful pockets of warriors, under the mistaken belief that they could still win a victory through resistance, would be difficult and long—Aren had seen that time enough before—but the rule of order and law under the Obsidians had once more reclaimed part of the world from ignorance and the petty squabbles with its equally petty neighbors.

  Aren smiled.

  It was a beautiful day.

  “Captain!”

  The call came from behind him, barely carrying over the clash of steel, the death cries, and the battle shouts that filled the air. Aren turned only slightly in response, not wanting to miss the battle raging before him. “What is it, Halik? I’m a little engaged at the moment.”

  Nik Halik saluted after the manner of the Obsidians, slamming his fist against the center of his breastplate. “General Karpasic sends his compliments—”

  “Nik, General Karpasic never sends a compliment,” the captain observed, his eyes still on the battle. “At least not without demanding payment for it.”

  “Of course,” Nik replied with a shrug of his steel pauldrons at both shoulders. Halik had dark, close-shorn hair and preferred to keep his face shaved bare. His dusky complexion only made his smile brighter. “Did you think our glorious commander would send me out here just to tell you how pretty you are?”

  “So you’ve come to tell me the general thinks I’m comely?” Aren snorted. “Now we both know how much that’s worth!”

  “So you’ll be asking me for a receipt?” Nik flashed an easy smile as he patted down the breastplate. “Oh, must have lost my parchment and quill during the battle. You’ll just have to take my word for it then.… The general sends his compliments, and you’ll owe him for it on account.”

  Lieutenant Halik was wearing his full battle armor as he approached. Aren looked him over once with approval. The lieutenant wore the armor of a Westreach warlord that looked nearly identical to Aren’s own: blackened plates trimmed in bright silver, with bloodred accents.

  Aren smiled at the memory of the original design, when he had first seen the sketches made over a year ago by General Karpasic. The helmet looked like it had more horns and spikes sticking out of it than a thistle. The shoulder pauldrons and gardbraces were similarly sculpted into spikes and points and, it seemed, at every other available point. It looked impressive and fear-inspiring, but it was completely impractical in battle. A warrior would not be able to exit his own tent in such a ridiculous contrivance, let alone engage in combat. True, an enemy’s weapon could easily get caught up in the pointy bits, and he might even do himself harm should he be so foolish as to impale himself on his opponent. More likely, however, the enemy weapon would simply do more damage by directing the blow into the armor rather than away from it. Aren managed to work with the armorers and, in the end, convinced Karpasic that a design with fewer spikes and more deflecting curves would be more effective. The one concession was a single large and spikey gardbrace attached to the pauldron of the right shoulder, which became a symbol of rank among the warlords based on the shape and design. Aren made certain that the gardbrace could be detached during combat. Warriors could then at least shed this spiked contrivance when necessary. Only General Karpasic’s armor was ornamented with six such ornate gardbraces, with three at each shoulder. Aren knew they were showy and practically useless—not unlike the general himself.

  Aren smiled with satisfaction as he saw that Halik’s armor was stained, and a number of blade strikes marred the finish. Aren had no use for army staff who kept their armor bright.

  Which explained why his own armor was so badly damaged.

  “I’d rather not owe the general anything for his compliments, on account or otherwise. You don’t suppose the general would consider our ledger balanced now that I’ve taken the city for him?” Aren mused as he turned toward a message runner who was rapidly approaching from his left.

&n
bsp; “No more than he credited you with the previous two cities, or any of the engagements in between,” Halik rejoined. “His ledger is a bit one-sided.”

  “Elf of Blood-Cleaver Legion reports that the tower ruin on the left flank has been occupied by enemy archers, sire!” the runner reported slightly out of breath. “The elf requests the captain order the support of the west-flank archer units for his assault to retake the tower!”

  “Tell the elf to pull his forces back westward along the battle line until they are out of range of the tower,” Aren said pointedly to the runner. “He is to support the breaching force until we’re through the stockade wall.”

  “But, sire,” the runner replied, his eyes blinking nervously as he spoke, “the elf said he has orders from the general to take the tower and eliminate the threat.”

  Halik rolled his eyes.

  “What the elf has not appreciated is that we don’t need to take the tower,” Aren replied, his voice attaining a dangerous, calm quality as he spoke. “If we isolate the tower by breaching the wall first, then we completely take them out of the battle and make them irrelevant to our victory. Tell the elf, further, that he will take the tower as instructed by the general—but only after the wall is breached and the city is secure. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sire!” the runner replied.

  “Then get back to the elf with my orders before he charges the tower without permission and gets a lot of my forces killed without reason.”

  “Yes, sire!” the runner said again with more conviction, before turning and running westward back into the conflict.

  Halik cleared his throat loudly. “The general sends his compliments and requests that you—”

  “Nik, my time is occupied at the moment with keeping this army together and seizing the city,” Aren said as he rubbed his tired brow with his fingers. “What does the general want?”

  “Simple”—Halik sighed—“he asks that you accompany me to the command tent.”