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The point pierced through, and the skin drank deep of the dark, thick streak that sprang forth without warning. Soren felt his heart lurch like a startled colt, clenched his jaw. Three breaths, slow and hard. Rage made poor counsel against a cold-minded foe. Too wide a swing, too clumsy a step, a careless opening, a lunge too hasty—and the fight’s lost.
His jaw was clenched. Knuckles white. Neck taut. Right shoulder tight. Back bent. Arse in shambles. Skull drumming. Fingers blackened. Not the muscles he was used to calling on. His hand trembled, broad and calloused, too rough for such a dainty thing. He lunged for the blotter, too late. Ruined. He exhaled through his teeth, rolled his shoulders back as one does after suffering through a blow. Regain balance. Stay in the fight.
The grimoire lay open before him. Old. Fragile. Pierced and sullied.
But it was Soren who was bleeding.
He wiped his hands. Then his eyes, in a gesture of wrath. Nights now he had been hiding here, and stars knew how often he’d been tempted to toss the whole lot into the fire. At his feet: a thousand fallen drafts, their corpses riddled with edits. Before him: the page, waiting. A silent foe, a training dummy that would not yield under the blows. He might have cracked some jest to lift the mood, but in this chamber, there was no one to hear it. He’d made sure of that.
He forced each finger to curl, uncurl.
He told himself this was a fight like any other. But letters did not obey like men. They bucked, rebelled, broke formation, mutinied, danced mockingly under the hand that sought to still them. Even with the dictionary’s support, the d and the b, the p and the q were bloody traitors still. Grammar and syntax, crooked little rules, turned against him like boggy ground too soft to even stand on. His short sentences and grammar methods gleaned from the dusty shelves of Banther’s library barely made up for that. He was no scribe. And still there he was, alone, in the flicker of a candle, setting down what none had dared set down. What none must know he set down.
In the front rank: three clay tablets, precious for being erasable with a swipe of the thumb—one for the general outline, another for the structure of each paragraph, the last for every sentence. Then came the infantry: low-quality paper, torn scraps. After which, the vellum, where he copied the same damned line fifteen times. And then, only then, dared to set it down on the grimoire. The grimoire, upon which he’d used a square and lead to draw margins, lines, even boxes to house each letter.
The front line was marked. The battle plan etched.
Yet Sources, it was ugly.
He’d hesitated over the dates—old calendar or new, exile or reunion, sundering or healing ? —so he’d written both. He hadn't chosen at all. Coward. He dared not think of the reversed letters, the undoubtful mistakes, the doubtful grammar, the errant tenses that betrayed him. Still, he pressed on. He knew effort. Knew discipline, rigor, endurance. Knew what it meant to lose a hundred times before winning once. But worse still: not a single letter matched the next in size. It wasn’t the first blemish he’d left upon this priceless relic, handed down through centuries of careful hands, its pages adorned with illuminations and flowery patterns of bue, green, red, gold leaf, sheets as fine and shiny as butterfly wings: the last surviving copy of The Deeds of the Orphan-blooded Brave Ones.
Well, after all, he was writing of an orphan. No known parentage. A bastard who broke a dynasty. And yet, by law, that alone had been enough to grant him a throne. And so, a place in this book. Whether one liked it or not.
The other copy had burned in the castle’s fall, when Sol Regem laid waste to it seven years past. It had burned along with the rest: the portrait, the archives, the books, the reports, the ledgers, the letters, the seals, the journals, the registers, the missives, -the letter. No, that one had burned just before. As had anything that might’ve testified. No body, no statue, no plaque, no grave. No mausoleum, like the dragons. Not even a song. Too much ill to speak well. Too much good to damn. So no one speaks at all. Easier that way.
One bard had tried to be clever. To simplify it all. Soren had him arrested. Rode out in person, cloaked and booted, breastplate gleaming, sword at hip, face hard. The man had been terrified—not just of him (maybe the damn resemblance too), but of the fact that he had come at all. The Lord Commander of the Royal Guard, stooping to such errands, had come. That alone was cause for fear.
Soren didn’t stoop to written tasks either, not usually. Even the reports he handed off to Corvus. Paperwork, detail, dust-choked grimoires, those were for king Ezran, and High Prelate Opeli, and Lord Mage Callum, and monks, and ink-stained scriveners. Soren was the golden brute, broad of shoulder, loud of laugh, cracking jokes and cracking skulls, the voice that roused men, the blade that held firm, the shield behind which kings might stand unblooded. He was the Lord Commander of Ezran’s guard.
But tonight, he was the boy of nine, nailed to a chair. Scratch in his ear. Ink, wax, and parchment thick in his nose. Four years they’d tried tutors. One by one they’d quit—too much effort for too little fruit. All had given up but one. Four hours a day under eyes hard as steel, in fair weather and foul, through fever, birthdays, bruises, tantrums, and tears. Legs twitching above the floor. Belly knotted with shame. A hand, steady and firm, gently holding his own. The same damned counsels, day after day. Slow steps behind him. He had hated him. Hated him more than the letters that laughed as they fled across the page, more than the pens he kept snapping in his grip.
He had hated him. Hated himself. But he had learned. And beyond that cursed resemblance, that was all he left him: cursed discipline.
No one will do it for you. Get a grip.
He jerked back from the page. A stupid tear had fallen on it. He gasped. Couldn’t press on. A rush of memory, a surge of sentiment. He rose, staggered from the table. Withdrawal. He threw the window wide, drank deep of night air, cold and blade-sharp. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. He paced. Stretched. Shook. Leapt. Dropped for push-ups, crunches, lunges across the thick rugs. When his blood was coursing, his limbs warm, his mind clear, his throat unknotted, he shut the window, drained a goblet of water, lit a fresh candle, refilled the inkwell, resharpened the quill, and checked the line.
Still so filthy, his hands. But no one else would do it. He was there through it all —or nearly. And Terry had told him more things he hadn’t understood back then, but now knew had to be set down as well. All of it. Nothing spared. It had to be done. It was right. Now he must write the next line. The last line.
The candle was nearly gone when Soren blew on the fresh ink:
“Died defending the realm.”
He closed his eyes. And the grimoire. His heart had steadied. What remained was a hollow in the chest, and a scattering of defaced, scribbled-over skins, scoured like floor-rags. But it was done.
And thank that book wasn’t in Old Draconic, or the Sources only knew how he’d have suffered.