Fire and Sword by Dylan Doose

Author:Dylan Doose [Doose, Dylan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780994828309
Publisher: Dylan Doose

* * *

“I’m still having trouble with it,” Aldous said to Chayse as he closed up his father’s book and looked over at her sitting in a reading chair to his left in the study. She was perhaps most beautiful when she was focused on a book. She held a great majesty of both physical and intellectual prowess as she sat with her powerful legs crossed and her hair tied back as she read Hagalaz: Bestiary of the North.

“Having trouble with what?” she asked without looking up from the words.

“Accepting what my father wrote as completely viable,” Aldous said. Saying it aloud to Chayse made his stomach turn a bit, for who was he to say that his father’s work was outlandish? He was only seventeen. Yet he had experienced much. He’d experienced his father’s only great conflict; he’d experienced his father losing that conflict; he’d experienced a count’s dungeon; and the rats. He’d experienced the seekers, and, worse yet, the Emerald Witch. As he thought this, the guilt in his gut faded and turned into resolve. He was young, but in his young age he had experienced enough to develop his own opinions on the world. Hadn’t he?

“I mean, it still feels to me almost pompous,” Aldous continued. “I know my father was an adventurer. He told me his father was, too, but I know Father never engaged in anything like you or Theron, or certainly not Ken. I don’t think he ever had to make one of the choices that he talks so certainly of in his books. It seems… high and mighty.” He let the last words out with a sigh, on a single breath, as if they were forced from him.

“Of course it is high and mighty,” Chayse began with a comforting smile. “I believe your father was writing down standards that every man and woman should strive to uphold. Impossibly high standards, so even if they were to fall short they could still be good people. The desire for vengeance and justice to be trumped by a hope for restoration is not a ridiculous notion. It is a perfectly rational one. Yet, despite its rationality, it is hard to imagine carrying it out.” Chayse paused and shook her head, as if she just in that moment came to some realization. “Yet I suppose we are overcoming that desire for justice right now in this house. At least, I am. Theron overcame it right away.”

“Kendrick?” Aldous whispered.

“Yes. If Theron ends up truly driving Ken to do good with the rest of his life, then your father’s theory will be true. But it was easy for Theron to have the power to choose Ken’s recovery, as your father would call it, over justice, or vengeance, because Ken had never harmed him. Had I been one of Ken’s victims or even the victim of any man who was just following orders, I wonder if Theron would have had such an easy time deciding on giving Ken a chance.”

“Exactly.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.