Son of Thunder by Murray Leeder

Author:Murray Leeder [Leeder, Murray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7869-6404-8
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2012-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

The caves had a light of their own, shimmering out from those strange pools. It cast eerie rippling shadows over the low cave ceiling, though Vell could not see any movement in the water itself. This was the kind of mystical place that alternately repelled and attracted the average Uthgardt— repelled him because of unknown magic, yet attracted him for the warm intimacy of the mystery, and the feeling of being wrapped in history. Vell bent over the nearest pool and found himself staring into his reflection.

So that’s what I look like, he thought. He was not so different from any other Thunderbeast, and even his brown eyes did not distinguish him. All faded, and only his eyes remained as the water shimmered and he was looking into another time. It was another face, but somehow he knew it was his, or rather, that of an ancestor who remained tied to him from the spirit world. The sun was shining brightly behind him onto a spectacular white city, and he was garbed in robes of gold marked with ornate symbols.

A wizard. He was descended from a wizard.

The vision told him something else. This scene was surely not one of Ruathym, the rocky isle that was the home of Uthgar’s mortal line. More likely, it was an image of his ancestry from his other line, stretching back to the Empire of Magic. Often he wondered if his brown eyes marked a stronger concentration of that blood. Most Uthgardt tribes denied that history, the Thunderbeasts included; it was a matter of shame to believe that they were spawned by those decadent magicians.

Vell leaned closer. The wizard melted away, and his eyes were set instead into the sunken sockets of a great lizard, one of the Thunderbeasts or behemoths that the tribe used in their art, or occasionally to tattoo upon themselves. It was the creature Vell had become. There was no human intelligence in those eyes—this was an animal, nothing more. It looked closely at him, as if staring through time back at Vell.

It turned and lumbered through a thick forest. The great beast planted a foot next to an oak sapling, struggling to grow within the dense underbrush. Vell realized with a shock that this must be Grandfather Tree. He knew it. While all of the other trees that stood around it, much greater trees, had died and gone, it remained. What force blessed it with such permanence? Before his eyes, it sprouted higher and higher, spreading its limbs wider and wider until they blocked the sky.

Now ripples disturbed the pool, each beginning at the center and bringing with it a new image. The scenes passed with such speed that Vell could not inspect each one closely. He saw images of heated battles, of a wide-shouldered man with coal-black hair. The dark-haired warrior wielded a greataxe and hacked at a shaggy demon on a mountainside. Then came a scene of that same axe cutting the neck of a behemoth on a vast green hill, but in the hands of a warrior with yellow hair and a bright yellow beard.

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