The Ring and the Sword by Larry Z. Daily

Author:Larry Z. Daily [Larry Z. Daily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Larry Z. Daily
Published: 2024-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

I was alone on the top of a high tower of a ruined mountain city. I’d been there before. I knew now that it was Evendim, the trees uprooted, and the buildings thrown down, the light of the city extinguished. I was aware that I was dreaming, that I’d had this dream before, but I was also in the dream and living it. I raised my eyes to the east, where mountains stood, peak after peak, to a distant plain. Dark clouds massed there, towering over the mountains. I could feel the dark, malevolent intelligence searching for me, reaching for me. A dark wind arose, and tendrils of cloud began streaming toward me, one to the north and one to the south. The part of me that was not the dreamer knew what was coming next.

A wasp skidded in from the wind and managed to gain a hold on the merlon in front of me. Fear enveloped me and I shrank back from the wall. I found myself face down on the stone floor, held there by a being that was at once the wasp, poised to sting, and the black-cloaked figure from Songhaven, its booted foot on my neck.

A hoarse, whispering voice threatened to kill me, threatened to inject poison at the base of my skull.

I struggled to move…

…and woke, sweat-soaked and frightened, in the darkest depths of the night.

Once the beating of my heart had slowed to normal, I tried to get back to sleep, but the dream had hold of my thoughts. The malevolence had reached out for me, and Ambrose had gone down into the darkness. And the people of Cammlin. Many from Cammford as well. The minstrels of Songhaven.

And Peg.

Now I was in Evendim amongst the Elves. I’d been taught that they were evil, but I no longer saw them that way. I couldn’t. They lived lives not so different from the lives of the Alomar. And now I was with them. Whether I believed it or not, the malevolence, the darkness, whatever it was that was searching for me, that thing believed that I was the Lawbreaker. I had no doubt that what it had done to Ambrose and to Peg, it would do to Ryan, Alain, and Réalta. And Élan.

I couldn’t allow that. Not if I could stop it.

I spent the rest of the night listening to the breeze sighing through the trees outside the house and struggling to hold the fragile threads of my determination together in the face of my fear and uncertainty.

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