INTRODUCTION

In the world of Tond live the Fyorians and the Karjans, two civilizations who have been at war for centuries. Now they must face an adversary greater than their combined forces.

The Fyorian loremasters can see hints of this new menace, but refuse to acknowledge its existence. The Karjans know nothing of it, though its first manifestations were derived from their own darkest tales.

Into this world are born Rolan and Arnul, the two sons of the Fyorian loremaster Tlaen Ras-Erkéltis. While still in their teens, Rolan and Arnul stumble across clues about the gathering peril. Intending to discover more about it, and how to fight it, their quest may cost them their lives.

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BOOK ONE, CHAPTER ONE

Erkándas káa ílda, sellarn ii lin ínyas ke voráalis mi rényas.
"Even the most heroic tale begins with a single, humble sentence."
(Fyorian proverb)

Xóa Éyuhand in South Rohándal; Eighth Month, Fyorian Year 607

A small flickering light appeared in the dark room. Rolan Ras-Erkéltis, age eleven, sat up on his mattress, looked around him. It was Arnul, his dark-haired younger brother, holding a candle.

“...wha...what time is it? Why are you up so late?” Rolan asked.

“It’s a little after sundown. I stayed up. I didn’t drink my nemurath tea tonight. Easier to stay awake. Come on, I have something to show you.”

“After sundown?”

“Inside of course. Ever wondered what Keldar does in that room downstairs? Look; I hid this.” From under the folds of his night-robe he produced a gold-colored key.

Rolan laughed. “Silly. Keldar will miss it. He goes down in that room every night.”

“He has four of them. He often loses one. You didn’t hear him at dinner tonight? ‘Now where is that key?’ he asked, ‘I thought it was here, but I’m always mislaying things. Must be getting old.’ he said. Now come on, let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“You know, stupid. What’s the key for? The lore-room, of course.”

Rolan got off of his mattress, slipped on his night-robe, and padded out of the room behind Arnul. “You always get us in trouble.” he muttered, half to himself, as they passed the door to Arnul’s bedroom and then through the gently sloping rounded hall to the stairway. The stairs led to the rooms underground, where they spent much of their days out of the burning heat of the desert sun.

There were a lot of rooms, and some whole dwellings, underground in Xóa Éyuhand; rumor had it that if you knew where to look you could find whole systems of interconnected tunnels and secret passageways, but Rolan and Arnul had never found any. But at least one room had always remained secret: this very room, the lore-room, which they stood in front of now.

Arnul slipped the key into the keyhole and massive wooden door opened inward, as if by itself. Nothing could be seen inside; but Arnul slipped in confidently. Rolan followed into the darkness and the door shut behind them with a muffled fwump.

It certainly was dark. Even Arnul’s candle seemed dull in the stillness and the heavy air, and the flickering light did not reach the ceiling; or perhaps the ceiling was painted darkest black. In the dimness Rolan could barely make out a large cabinet, plain and undecorated, with some space behind it for the curve where the floor met the wall; a bookshelf, also plain and undecorated, half full or old tattered books stacked at odd angles; and a plain table covered with all manner of curious objects apparently made of metal and glass: knives, goblets, rings, crystals, and some things he couldn’t name.

“Are you sure we should be in here...? What if Keldar comes in...?” he whispered.

“Keldar’s asleep.” said Arnul. “Now, see those things on the table? Here.” He moved over to the table, set the candle down on it (a little too close to one of the crystals, thought Rolan) and picked up one of the objects, a metal ball. “Keldar calls these things mechanas; they’re left over from the Ancients, he says. From before the Devastation. Here.” He handed the ball to Rolan.

Rolan almost laughed. Some of the things were certainly mysterious; this ball, however, was not. “This is for playing ten-ball. If you wanted to come in here and risk getting in big trouble just to play a game of ten-ball...”

“See the holes?”

“Of course, silly. The thumb-hole and two finger-holes. I thought Keldar showed you how to play.”

“Put your thumb in the thumb-hole.”

Rolan did, half noticing that there was a Fyorian word “open” scratched in the metal beside the hole. Before he could wonder what it meant, a searing, eye-numbing light poured out of the ball, filling the room with clarity, rainbows and shadows. Rolan cried out and dropped the ball and it rolled into a corner. The shadows danced crazily.

Arnul giggled. “It’s a glow-ball. Better than a candle!” He retrieved the ball from its corner.

Rolan’s sight was returning. The light was actually not so bright; it had merely seemed so because he had been looking directly at it when it started.

Arnul turned the glowing ball around in his hand. “The other two holes; one is for ‘suspending’ it; here.” He put his finger in one of the holes and held the ball up above his head, and let go, dropping his hand. The ball remained in the air above his head. “Pull it down.”

Rolan reached up and gave the ball a yank; it stubbornly remained in the middle of the air as if held there by an invisible solid object, and when he let go it bounced and rolled a couple of inches across its invisible floor. Arnul reached up again and slapped it; it bounced again and rolled back into the corner, but now above their heads. “You can use the light to read but it stays out your way,” he commented. “I came in here last night. I tried it. The other hole stops the light. ‘Closes’ it, says Keldar. Here.”

He put his hand up to retrieve the ball again, and froze. From outside of the room, there came the muffled sound of footsteps.

“...Keldar! He must’ve heard you yell when you ‘opened’ the light! Quick, behind the cabinet!” and in one motion he grabbed the ball, replaced it on the table, snuffed out the candle with his fingers, stopped the light from the ball and apparently jumped behind the cabinet in the dark, leaving Rolan to feel around blindly.

The footsteps grew louder, then stopped, and another light, this time a shaft of whiteness, split open the dark. Rolan saw the location of the cabinet and dived toward it, feeling Arnul’s hands drag him back behind. There was the fwump of the door closing as the light went out, and then the sound of Keldar’s raspy breathing in the room.

And then silence.

And another spate of raspy breath, this time like sniffing.

And another silence. Rolan could feel Arnul’s hot breath down his back.

Another light appeared. A glowball, from the dancing shadows it cast. Then the shadows stopped moving; Keldar had suspended it in a corner.

Silence. Rolan could feel his heart pounding. Then, almost imperceptibly, Keldar muttered to himself, and chuckled. A small scraping sound, and the light went out.

Silence; a long deep dreadful silence, and darkness. Rolan felt his sweat running down his face, though it was cold. He was not ready for what happened next.

Keldar’s voice, now loud and powerful, speaking nonsense. “Trúmiti káva mikáva ahíkulaa!” And a blast of light, much more intense than the glowball. When Rolan’s eyes readjusted, he saw that the room was now filled with the yellow flicker of firelight.

Arnul’s green eyes were filled with terror. “He’s started a fire in the middle of the room! He’s going to burn us up, or smother us with smoke...!”

“I don’t smell any smoke,” said Rolan, truthfully enough.

And at that moment he felt something awaken deep inside of him, something he could barely name and scarcely control; he just knew that he absolutely had to see what Keldar was doing, no matter what the danger. He cautiously peered out from behind the cabinet while trying to bat away Arnul’s attempts to pull him back.

Keldar the old man was seated on the floor, with his back towards Rolan, facing a blaze in the middle of the room. Really in the middle of the room. It seemed to be contained in a rectangular space, starting a little more than a foot above the floor, and reaching to about a foot below the black ceiling, without changing or diminishing in intensity. No coals or embers were visible. As Rolan watched, its center part changed into many colors and formed a scene of the desert with the half-moon above. This could have been a scene of very near their home.

“...Get back behind, you fool!” Arnul whispered, quite loudly, and Rolan felt clammy hands on his shoulders. He squirmed free. Keldar turned around with a sharp glance right at the cabinet. Rolan withdrew just in time. “Stay here!” whispered Arnul.

Reflections and shadows moved across the wall behind Rolan. For a moment he hardly dared to move, and then, slowly, quietly, he peeked out again, fighting Arnul’s protests.

Keldar was facing the flame again, and the scene of the desert was moving, speeding past as though they were on a horse. It stopped momentarily at an eyuhand with quite a number of houses, and then proceeded to another that was surrounded by fields of towering qenéila edible cactus (a staple food of the Fyorians). Then faster again, now passing through several more oases and then abruptly into a grassland. A few more farms were visible in the moonlight, but now the scene was moving so quickly that Rolan could not see details. There were some mountains in the distance, visible as vague shadows, and apparently the scene was moving toward them. Suddenly it was over them, and Rolan momentarily was gazing down into a deep snowy crevasse, and then the mountains were behind, and the moon vanished behind a cover of clouds, just before a second range of mountains appeared and was hidden in the dark. “Darkness in a flame; an odd idea!” Rolan thought. For a moment the image was blank, and then an eerie greenish light illuminated a scene of mountains again; the scene was now moving quite slowly, about the speed of a man walking. Rolan could see bizarrely shaped outcroppings of rock, twisted and bent, and old gnarled trees with branches like twisted, diseased arms. A strange creature appeared, seemingly made of body parts of several different animals; a scaly fish-like body, a bird’s head with a long, spiny lower mandible and no feathers, and arms that appeared almost like the branches of the trees. It padded along on thin muscular legs shaped like those of an insect; it gleamed metallically in the strange light (was it wearing some kind of armor?) and seemed to be carrying something on its back. The scene followed along for a moment, and then the creature turned and stared right at Keldar (and Rolan); its eyes were small and black; and it spat something red. Rolan ducked, expecting to get hit with venom (surely the creature was poisonous!) but the red goo fell to the ground in front of it; this was of course only an image of the creature and it couldn’t have hit them. The venom had been aimed at something else, apparently, and Rolan began to feel frustrated that Keldar wouldn’t show him what (Keldar certainly was controlling the scene). But then the creature turned and strode jerkily away. A shooting star appeared overhead; the image tumbled headlong towards it, ignoring the hybrid creature; Rolan saw the trees and rocks and mountains in the distance spin dizzily. The scene went blank again.

A face appeared in the flame, a Fyorian man with a long bushy blond beard. The light was normal again, and the man was looking directly at Keldar.

The man spoke. “Keldar Ras-Áelinar. Pleasant to see you.”

“And you, Eilann Kun-Táninos.” Replied Keldar. “But I have just seen--”

The man in the fire cut him off, but his face was smiling. “Before you tell me, uh, there is…”

Keldar laughed loudly, and mumbled something inaudible. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, followed by more whispered words.

Surely they were talking about Rolan! What could he do now? He couldn’t just disappear back behind the cabinet; he’d been seen (the image in the fire obviously did go both directions!).

Arnul had stopped clawing at him; in fact Arnul was staring at him with such wide eyes and open mouth that he was almost fishlike. The expression would have been hilarious if he were not so frightened himself…

“...so I’ll bring it up at the next Council of Ahíinor.” Keldar was saying, in a normal voice again. “A gruntagkshk...” (his pronunciation of the word was bizarre, with all of the consonants in the jumble at the end clearly enunciated) “...a gruntagkshk that knew we were watching it, and a flyfire in Borrogg. Who could possibly have a mechana for a flyfire in Borrogg...? Anyway I’ll worry about it later. AND NOW FOR THE LITTLE SPY...!” he turned around and glared right at Rolan with his narrow dark eyes, and at the same time the glowball in the corner lit up and rebounded through the air and came to rest about an inch from Rolan’s nose. Rolan withdrew, only to crash into Arnul (who had apparently slipped while trying to squeeze out from the other side, although the bookshelf was blocking his escape); he stuck his elbow in Arnul’s eye, Arnul swore and lunged at him, and they both tumbled out onto the floor.

Keldar guffawed. “Well, there are two of you. Surprise, surprise!” His intonation indicated that he was not surprised at all.

Rolan stood up and brushed off his night-cloak. “I’m sorry, I’ve been spying... I hope you’re not angry... It was all so... so... interesting, the fire and the mountains... and the glowball...”

Arnul was groveling on the ground in pure terror. “Oh please don’t... d-d-d-d-d-don’t p-p-p-p-put the fire on m-m-m-m-m-m-me...! I’ll n-n-n-n-n-n-never do it again; I’ll nev-v-v-v-v-ver s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-spy on you...!”

“Arnul you fool!” growled Keldar. “If you can’t trust an old man any more than that, you should have gone into oblivion with your father! Now grow up!” (The man in the fire chuckled.) “Even if I wanted to kill you with lore-fire, I couldn’t,” continued Keldar. “I could not make my mechanas harm a man. Or a woman, or a child. Now stand up like your brother!”

Arnul stopped shaking, and rose to his knees slowly.

“Now, the truth of the matter is,” Keldar continued, “spying is not good and it shall not go unpunished. (And you certainly could have done it better than you did. You both made enough noise to wake up everyone in Xóa Eyuhand!) But actually I’ve been waiting to catch one or both of you in here. I’ve always seen you two as a couple of promising ahíinor. You, Rolan, because of your curiosity, and you, Arnul, because you are good with words. It was probably you who persuaded Rolan to come down here! ...So I decided to give you a show when I knew you were here. You’ve seen the Firey Eye, the product of the mechana your father, or his friend, discovered. And this,” he indicated the man in the fire, “is Eilann Kun-Táninos, ahíinor of Séyar Eyuhand in the east, near the Shervanya Lands.”

“Pleased to meet you.” said the man, and he winked.

“P-p-p-pleased to meet you too,” stuttered Rolan. Arnul said nothing.

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Who are these two kids? What exactly is a mechana? What is their special meaning of the word "lore"? Hint: Rolan becomes the last to wield the Sword of Law before its powers vanish forever. READ THE REST ON Amazon.com OR ON Smashwords.com ("Tond, Book One: The Sons of Tlaen Ras-Erkéltis"). There are four books in the series, plus a companion volume of appendices.