Mystic Warrior

by Tracy Hickman, Laura Hickman

Genres: Romantic Fantasy; Sagas; Science Fiction

Synopsis

Thrice upon a time, there were three worlds of magic.

From a remarkable, bestselling husband-and-wife team comes the start of a monumental dragon-laden fantasy series. The Bronze Canticles is an expansive saga chronicling the world-altering changes that take place as three connected universes—the Human world, the Goblin world, and the Faery world—are slowly drawn together.

Book One, Mystic Warrior, centers on young Galen Arvad, a human whose magical powers have branded him a lunatic in the eyes of the community. When Galen is suddenly captured and imprisoned, his wife Berkita and friend, Cephas the dwarf, set off to rescue him from the yearly ritual that would sacrifice local “crazies” to the Dragon Priests. But the fate that awaits Galen may be far worse than even his own death.

A Blackstone Audio production.

Release date: April 20, 2004

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 448

Sample

* All faery stories begin with this line. It is a designator for the listener or reader effectively saying that what follows is a lie—that it is something like real events but altered by limits of perspective and words. Faery stories were invented for the benefit of communication with humans, who require story structure for communication. They are for all intents and purposes useless to the faeries themselves.

 

* Faeries believe only in fact; they quite literally have no imagination. They believe that anything that does not exist in their experience is a lie. They believe that all truth that now exists has existed since the beginning of creation. “New truth” consists entirely of uncovering a truth that was previously unknown either through investigation or, more often, through the combination of known truths to uncover a “new truth.” The uncovering of such previously unknown truths is the calling and province of the Seeker caste.

 

* Humans might describe this experience as “imagining” a hallucination or a daydream, but this trait is completely unknown among faeries.

 

* There are no stairs in faery architecture, as all faeries fly. The access shafts are primarily used to control comings and goings among the faeries.

 

* The original manuscript indicated this measure as being “five feet,” but the measure was according to goblin feet. Throughout this translation, however, we have converted most measures of time, weight, and distance for both convenience and clarity.

 

* Readers and scholars of the Bronze Canticles have often noted the striking difference in the apparent eloquence of this text as compared to the other, third-person accounts from the goblin realms. This oral history, dictated and passed down by memory due to the lack of any formal writing system known by the goblins, was embellished linguistically over the years. This passage from Mimic’s oral history is the only known source of Mimic’s firsthand experience. However, as it is highly self-serving and has certainly been heavily embellished to improve Mimic’s image as an educated goblin, the accuracy of the account is highly suspect. It is most improbable than he—or any other goblin—ever actually spoke this way. This is, nevertheless, typical of all goblin oral histories.

 

* Faeries believe that all truth already exists but that many truths have not yet been discovered. It is the search for these undiscovered truths that is the sociological obsession of the faeries.

 

* To be “nameless” in the Fae classes is to be unrecognized by the other members of one’s caste. In most cases it is a virtual death sentence since most Fae refuse to accept a lower station than their born caste, and no station above their caste will support them.

 

* Fate is a preoccupation of the faeries. They believe that just as there is an ultimate, all-encompassing truth, also there is an all-encompassing fate. That fate exists, however, does not make the faeries “fatalistic.” They believe that part of their purpose in life is to discover what their fate is through their own actions and decisions.

 

* “. . . rehearsed for her, from first to last”: This is a common faery construction meant by the original author to shorten the hand-copied text. Faeries are exacting in their telling of their stories and histories. This phrase allows the faery chronicler to save himself the trouble of duplicating text that has already been copied by referring the reader back to previous records.

 

* Faeries do not lie, as they are obsessed with the truth of all things. The closest that faeries come to deception is to keep the truth of something hidden for a time that suits their purposes. However, if asked directly, they will answer with whatever they know to be true. For this reason, it appears, everyone who knows about the nightrunners’ flight from Qestardis is with the caravan itself, with the single exception of the queen.

 

* Humans would ascribe her experience to “making it up” in her imagination. Faeries, however, have no imagination. The sensation she is describing would be an uncomfortable one and is conveying knowledge to her through the magic.

1



Far Shores

In the 492nd year of the Dragonkings, no commoner within the lands of Hrunard, nor anyone within the Five Domains suspected that their world was already coming to an end. The silent invasion moved as slowly and as inevitably as a glacier, unmarked by the busy lives of the ordinary inhabitants . . .

Only the fevered dreamers sensed the initial tremblers of the Deep Magic; the vanguard of a glory and a doom they could scarcely comprehend. They were the first of the Mystics, these dreamers . . .

. . . and they were insane.

Bronze Canticles,

Tome III, Folio 2, Leaf 19

They watch me.

I feel their eyes peering through the darkness at the top of the falls. Each pinprick in the dome of night burns me, unblinking in its considerations. The stars try to speak—a murmuring of stardust on a wind that I cannot feel. I ignore them. They never say anything of consequence. They babble incessantly about the past and say nothing of the future. Their concerns, it seems, are too far above the lowly place that I occupy. They watch me with eyes of fire.

The stars are not the only ones watching me. Dark eyes, holes in the night, peer at me from under the black shadows of the forest around me. Their gaze is lust and hunger. Theirs are the eyes of the hunter, and I am the hunted.

I turn from them, stumbling in my flight beneath the low boughs of a pine tree. I might hide from the gaze of the stars here, but the other, unseen eyes are still on me, burning through the darkness. The whispered words between them drift past my ears, talking about me, talking to me. The voices creak and groan like overheated metal: the hiss of steam and the taste of a forge. They are searching for me, licking their long teeth in anticipation. Their voices are more distinct now, chattering madly and incessantly.

Demons. They are dark spirits from the deep reaches of N’Kara—the belly of the world where all condemned sinners suffer unceasingly in the afterlife. They have come for me in my blasphemy and they are getting closer.

I know this place, these trees are near my home and yet so different somehow. They can offer me no safety nor solace. I plunge headlong, mindlessly through the thick woods. Home is farther and farther from me with each panicked stride, but the demons stand between me and that place of solace. I am spinning, lost and confused by trees that I no longer remember. The branches move too slowly out of the way, marking my face and clawing at my eyes. The trees suddenly part . . . and I run headlong into the demons’ encampment.

Four of the revolting creatures have their backs to me as I slide noisily to a halt. The demons are tearing at the flesh of a red-haired scholar, his arms and legs spread wide and staked to the ground. Books and parchment scrolls lie shredded and scattered about.

The haggard scholar looks up calmly from the tortured scene. “Would you be so kind as to help me?” he says in a quiet, patient voice despite the terror filling his eyes. “Please make them stop.”

The demons follow the scholar’s gaze.

Only my own life concerns me. I leap at once back into the woods, fleeing heedless of my direction.

Somewhere behind me, the demons scream, spurred into the hunt by the prospect of easy quarry. I hear their panting behind me. I sense the excitement in their squealing voices. They have caught me before—at other times and in other places—but not tonight, I swear! Not tonight!

The trees, enjoying the sport, now point the way for me, doing their best to come to my aid. But the rocks underfoot are friends to the demons, and one trips me in my headlong flight. I tumble painfully, rolling across the uneven ground. Fear conquers my pain, and, panicked, I push myself up from the dirt.

I can see them now. The metal that they wear flashes dully in the starlight. Their steel eyes stare unblinking as they bound through the underbrush toward me. Their skin, too, is green, even in the faint light of the stars. Their smell is an outrageous offense. Their long knives are drawn, dripping from the rending of a previous soul. They clang their blades against their armor as they approach. Hideous grins split their faces.

My feet struggle to find purchase in the dirt beneath me. Time stretches thin into an eternity. My legs will not move as they should. My body does not respond. The ground slides beneath me.

The demons rush forward, their screams echoing through the forest.

A massive vine suddenly lunges from the trees, wrapping around me. It jerks me upward, snatching me from the demons’ outstretched claws and flinging me into the air.

I tumble slowly through the night sky, and then I am rolling gently into a meadow. No, not just a meadow—it is the meadow, the place where Berkita and I come on holiday afternoons. It is the stolen place, the secret place, the one place in the entire world that we claimed as our own, if not in deed then with our hearts. I drink in its peace, aching to keep frozen this moment forever, but the moment does not last.

The demons are already at the edge of the clearing. I flee once more, desperate to get to the falls that I know are beyond the far tree line. My breath, labored and hollow, rattles in my ears with each thunderous beat of my heart. The rushing of water calls me from beyond the trees. I heed its tumbling voice, weaving through the dark shadows of the forest at full gait. I can feel the heat of my pursuers on the back of my neck and taste their cloying stench. Cold, steely eyes still burn behind me. The chatter of their enraged voices rises with my every panicked stride.

A silence descends like a thunderclap. The eyes and the voices that are always at the edge of my mind have vanished. The peace is more unnerving than the pursuit. My rushed footfalls stutter to a stop. I stand gulping air at the top of the falls.

My breath smoothes out and my heart slows as I gaze into the river. The water rushes past on my left. There is movement in the water now—laughing, graceful spirits dancing across the rocks. I smile timidly at them and they smile back, waving their lithe arms, beckoning me. I watch their passage down the river until they leap gleefully from the crest of the waterfall, sparkling down the cliff face. They smash against the rocks below, shattering into smaller versions of themselves; hundreds and then thousands of them caught up in the foam. They rush among the rocks and then drift out into the still waters of Mirren Bay to the south.

A gentle breeze fills my nostrils, carried inland from the sea. From my high perch atop the falls cliff, my eyes follow the shoreline eastward beyond the river and the falls. There, cradled in the gentle crescent of the beach, are the glowing lights of Benyn Village—my village and the only home I know. Strands of smoke curl up from the chimneys of the town, weaving together toward the uncaring stars. The town sleeps deeply; secure in its slumber and oblivious to any world beyond its boundary wall. I wonder at the peace that resides here surrounded by a world infested with demons.

The hair on the back of my neck rises.

I know that she is near.

I turn slowly to my right to face her, at once both dreading and longing for her visage.

Across the river, at the head of the falls, floats a woman on translucent wings.

I have seen her a thousand times before. Her dark, delicate features are achingly beautiful. Her large, almond-shaped eyes gaze at me—through me—with curious questioning. Her hair is pulled sharply back from her oval face. Blue strands, two at each temple, are the only coloration in her otherwise brilliantly white hair. Her skin is dark yet lustrous, her features exotic. Yet it is her wings that are the most astonishing—long and intricate opalescent wings like a butterfly that float her above the common ground. They beat slowly, as though they were moving through water rather than air.

The river separates us.

I speak to her—as I have a thousand times before.

“Who are you, dear lady? Why are you here?”

Her eyes narrow with effort. Her smile dims slightly.

“Do you understand me?” I speak my words through a forced calm, desperate to be understood. “Can you hear me?”

She blinks and opens her mouth to speak.

It is happening again. I brace myself for what is coming.

The woman’s voice drifts over the river as a song, and the water stops at its sound out of awe and wonder. The wind holds its breath. Even the stars cease to blink in the night sky.

The song moves through me, ringing in my mind and bones. I have heard the song before, but a thousand repetitions could never prepare me for the reality of it. The beauty of its sound shatters my being. The undeniable honesty of its feeling and passion overwhelms my mind with its grace and truth. Tears well up unbidden in my eyes from the joy and the feeling of ultimate loss—for I am small compared to this truth.

The woman stops her singing. She watches me weep and a depthless sorrow fills her visage. A great, glistening tear falls from her eyes and into the waters of the river.

The spirits of the river, now freed from the sound of her voice, see the tear as it falls. In a sudden frenzy, they fight one another for the tear as it melds into the waters now once more rushing to the sea.

I fall to my knees, weeping at the loss of the voice, wishing it would go on forever, rebounding in my soul.

“Pardon me . . .”

A human voice? Here? I leap to my feet in fright at the sound. My heart pounds once more as I turn.

Blinking through my tears, I confront a young man wearing the robes of a Pir monk—an Inquisitor, by the purple trim. The robe is slightly too large to fit well on his thin frame. The priest’s light blond hair is wispy and short, cut in the rough manner of the Drakonic orders. His long face seems the longer for the turned-down corners of his mouth, and his pale blue eyes examine me suspiciously.

“Do you understand me?” the Inquisitor asks, his words coming slowly.

I nod, my mouth suddenly dry. I force my breath in and out, desperate to control my fear.

“Who are you?” the monk asks sharply.

The question strikes me as ludicrous, and I laugh nervously. “What do you mean, ‘Who am I?’ This is my dream—my nightmare. You should know whose dream you are in.”

The monk arches his eyebrows in astonishment. “Your nightmare? It’s my dream you are in . . . not the other way about!”

The statement takes me aback. I gape at him, unsure how to respond. He continues to watch me.

“I’ll tell you what,” I say carefully after some thought. “What if we’re both in someone else’s dream?”

The Inquisitor blurts out a laugh. He tries to stifle it but this only causes him to laugh all the more.

I join him somewhat warily in my own joke.

“Perhaps so.” The monk smiles. He moves slowly to sit on a rock near the falls. “Perhaps we are all just figments of the dragon-gods’ dreams. I had never really considered that idea before. Tell me; have you seen her . . . that flying woman before?”

With dread and hope, I follow the monk’s gesture toward the opposite bank. The winged woman considers us both as she floats in midair. “Yes . . . I have seen her many times before, here at the falls and elsewhere, it seems . . . but I cannot remember where or when.”

“Intriguing: perhaps in this place there is no where or when,” answers the monk. He leans forward suddenly, his eyes wide and desperate. “Listen, tell me, please . . . are we mad?”

I take a careful step back. “You are a monk of the Pir Inquis by the marks on your robe. The insane are your province. You see what I see here. If such dreams make me a madman then, perhaps, we both . . .”

The monk, however, is distracted. He stands up slowly, concern in his eyes as he faces toward the east. His gaze is fixed on the village . . . my village.

The smoke from the chimneys of Benyn curls over the sleepy rooftops. It begins to thicken until its darkness obliterates the stars. The smoke twists in on itself, coalescing at last into the form of a gigantic dragon, writhing over the village. The smoke-dragon’s black wings beat downward upon the homes of my friends, family, all that means anything to me in the world. With each beat of its wings, another light is extinguished in the town. Another light . . . another life.

“Stop it!” I scream at the Inquisitor.

“It isn’t me!” the monk responds, but his voice has changed, it screeches with the sound of demons. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

The dark wall of the woods is suddenly alive with pairs of steel eyes. The demons, grinning hideously, advance toward me. The monk seems oblivious to the danger stalking up behind him.

I turn, plunging into the river. My bare feet splash into the icy waters, which sting them like sharp barbs. On the far bank, however, the winged woman beckons me onward, urging me quickly to cross, to save my village, to save my life.

A bitter cold grips my ankle. Too late, I glance down. It isn’t the cold that stings me, but the icy grip of the water spirits. They laugh hysterically at my folly. I scream, struggling desperately to reach the opposite shore, but the water spirits are having too fine a game. More and more of them tear at my feet, my ankles. The malicious spirits foam and splash at my face and eyes and ears. I hear their voices gathering about me. “Come play! Come play!”

I trip over them, panicked, then slip on a rock, crashing flat in the frigid, gathering waters of the river. The spirits shout and roar with glee, their icy talons dragging me down with them toward the falls. They dance about my face, filling my ears and nostrils, blurring my eyes.

“We dance! We sing! We revel! Come play! Come play!”

I struggle for breath, choking on the waters. The water spirits, gathering in numbers by the moment, carom me against the rocks. The swiftness of the stream increases and the roar of the falls draws closer.

A hand suddenly grasps my wrist, pulling me up against the current. I reflexively clasp my hand tightly around the other’s wrist, struggling to pull my head up and breathe. Shaking the water from my face, I gulp air as the water spirits rage against me.

It is the Inquisitor.

“Hold on, I’ve got you!” The monk’s other hand strains to grip a rock on the embankment, as he pulls me against the current.

I frantically kick in the thunderous river, searching desperately for a foothold and trying to free myself from the hysterical water spirits.

“Come on!” the monk yells. “Hurry! I can’t—”

His eyes widen as he sees the look on my face.

Behind the Inquisitor, and unseen by him, a silent line of grinning demons advances toward the riverbank. They creep patiently up behind the man but their eyes are on me.

I release my hold on the monk.

“No!” the monk shouts. He struggles to retain his grip but the water spirits pry at his fingers, splashing between them.

The Inquisitor’s hand slips.

The river drags me backward. I roll among the water spirits, their voices laughing as they scurry about me. My body merges with the river and now I am clear as the stream, flowing with it, pulled helplessly down its course. Resigned to my fate, I am transformed. A spirit of the water myself now, I cascade over the crest of the falls. The water spirits leap about excited and triumphant. I tumble through the air and water, smashing against the rocks and exploding into a thousand drops of blood. Each drop is my shattered self, diffusing among the waters of the river and the foam of the water spirits. The crimson waters rush outward into the bay. I am scattered farther and farther apart—thinner and thinner until there is no more left of me to gather up. Nothing left of me to be me. Lost forever among the waters of the bay, lost forever to my home now dark under the smoke of the dragon . . .

BOOK OF GALEN

BRONZE CANTICLES, TOME IV, FOLIO 1, LEAF 4

2



Galen

Galen screamed, thrashing through darkness. He could not see, could not breathe, could not think of anything except escaping the awful place that was dissolving him into nothingness.

He opened his eyes.

An iron dragon, its maw gaping open, glared back at him.

Startled, he lurched backward, tumbling off the edge of the bed. He fell hard against the floor, his breath rushing out of his lungs. He lay there for a time, breathing heavily, his fear slowly melting into the smell of the fitted planks of wood and their reassuring solidness against his back. They were common and comforting sensations. They were so very real.

He lay still, stared up into the darkness pooled between the intricately carved beams overhead. The people of Benyn Township rarely closed off the ceilings of their homes, preferring the exposed space of the vaulting rafters to be as much a part of the expression of a room as the floor and walls. Galen was no exception. Dutifully he had carved the intricate patterns and icons of the Magnificent Vasska into the rafters of his house.

Vasska—Dragonking of Hrunard and all the region of the Dragonback. His talons reached across the room, curving with the beam. Carvings of each of the four major aspects of Vasska—defense, conquest, glory, and spirit—adorned each of the vertical supports from the crossbeams to the peak of the roof. Many other faces—the lesser aspects of Vasska—stared back at him from the deep shadows of the ornate arches. They all seemed distant because of the haze created by his uncooperative fireplace flue.

“Galen?” came her sweet, sleepy voice, rising in concern. “Galen, what is it?”

He shuddered. Exposed to the early morning air, the sweat that had poured so freely moments ago now chilled him. Galen pulled himself up to lean painfully against the frame of their bed. He glanced ruefully up at the headboard where the iron dragon’s head still hung as it had since he forged it for their marriage bed less than a year ago. Berkita had insisted on it, telling him that such an icon would bring fortune to their home and children to their bed.

He hated it, but Berkita would not be denied. He gulped in air, hoping to calm his thoughts. It would never do to upset Berkita.

“I’m all right,” he said as evenly as he could. His words formed clouds in the cold of their one-room home. He glanced about, still upset. He had scattered most of their wedding pelts in his flailing.

He had hoped that somehow his marriage would have brought the dreams to an end. The truth was that he had little desire to think about anything but Berkita since their wedding. She had become his life and his breath. Yet just as each year since he was fourteen, the dreams were back. He simply had to find a way of keeping his dangerous secret from his beloved bride.

“It’s just a dream,” he muttered. “Just a bad dream.”

“A dream?” Berkita was sitting up on the bed, pulling one of the larger pelts up around her to ward off the morning chill. The dawn was far from being born, it was only a hinted glow on the horizon, but he could still see her silhouetted form against the window beyond. He had ordered that glass for her, shipped across the Chebon Sea from Hrunard itself. Imperfect and rippled, the glass had cost him two months’ profit from the shop. It offered little more than token resistance to the weather beyond its glazing, but it had made his Berkita happy.

Now, in the rising morning light, he gazed at her shadowy silhouette framed in that useless, glorious window. Her dark curls were a wild nimbus around the heart shape of her face. He needed no light to see her features, for he could see them with his eyes shut. Her high cheekbones so finely pronounced. Her violet eyes were jeweled treasures. If some thought her chin too sharp or her hair unruly, they were imperfections that Galen could not see. The sight of the firm sweep of her skin made him ache for her. She was all he ever wanted in life. Everything he ever hoped to attain was only to please her.

“A dream?” she repeated. “Drak, Galen! This is the third time in as many days!”

Galen shook his head. “Berkita, please don’t swear.”

He could feel her pout through the darkness. “I’m sorry, Galen. But . . . what’s the matter?”

“Tell her, Galen.”

Galen caught his breath, pretending to ignore the whispered words from the iron dragon’s head. “Nothing. Truly. I’m just—I’ve just been so busy. The Festival’s been bigger this year than most and I’m way behind at the forge.”

“Tell her,” insisted the motionless dragon heads from the hazy rafters overhead.

“Well, Father warned you when you first took up the forge.” Berkita chuckled. “He always said Festival was the hardest time of year for smithies.” The furred pelt lay draped about her, hiding everything, promising everything. “I can help you through the holiday. I’ve brightened a forge fire or two before.”

“More than one as I recall,” Galen chided, “though your father was always intent on settling you down to one.”

“Not just any one,” Berkita purred back at him.

“Most certainly not.” Galen nodded. The local priest had apprenticed Galen to Ansal, Berkita’s father, back when he was only twelve. The apprenticeship was one thing—winning his daughter, however, was something else entirely. Berkita was the only child of Ansal and his dear wife, Hilna. Ownership of Ansal Kadish’s forge would be passed down to the deserving man who would win his daughter’s hand. The competition for Berkita’s hand in marriage became more than just a matter of idle speculation in the region. Aspiring blacksmiths all along the Dragonback may have had varying degrees of interest in Berkita, but all were quite moved at the prospect of inheriting Ansal’s prosperous forge.

The matter of suitors was getting entirely out of hand until Ansal announced a smithing competition. It was never openly stated, but was implied that Ansal’s appreciation of the winner’s craft would also be something of a factor in determining who would earn the right to court his daughter and, subsequently, his forge.

Galen had loved her since the first day he reported to Ansal’s shop for his apprenticeship. He had despaired of ever winning Berkita for himself until he had a chance meeting with a blind dwarf . . .

“Come on, Galen,” Berkita said, shifting on the bed. “Don’t be crazy, let me help at the forge.”

Galen laughed—then shivered. Her voice was calming; sometimes he thought it was the only thing that kept him sane.

Sane. He was sane. He was not sure what was wrong with him. Whatever it was, if he was not completely cured, at least he was not getting any worse. Surely it was some sort of long, drawn-out illness. Perhaps he had eaten some blindlight berries by mistake years ago. Maybe it was something in the wind that would one day simply blow away. Whatever it was, he held on to the thought that it wasn’t getting any worse. That, and the comfort of his cherished wife.

The iron dragon’s head turned to gaze at him from its cold, dead eyes. “Tell her!” it insisted.

Galen only blinked. He had long ago learned never to acknowledge the objects and carvings that spoke to him. They, too, came more frequently with the dreams each fall—another emblem of his strange malady. Once, years ago, he had an entire argument with a particularly annoying walking stick while exploring the West Woods outside of town. Young Markin Frendigar happened to be using the stick at the time, however. Markin mistakenly thought Galen was angry with him rather than the stick. Since then, Galen made sure that whenever the statues, carvings, or pottery spoke to him he never answered back within anyone’s earshot.

“No, there’s no need for you to come to the shop . . . or your father either.” Galen spoke gently to her. “Cephas is there and does twice the work of you and me put together. I honestly don’t know what I would do without—”

A low trumpet resounded in the distance. Galen and Berkita both turned toward the window as a second horn joined the first in an even lower note. Their deep duet rumbled through the glass.

“Galen! It’s Festival! Oh, come on! See?” She jumped from the bed, the curve of her firm back gloriously exposed through the folds of the pelt she held against her. She gestured urgently for him to join her.

The window looked south, down over the village as it sloped toward the shore a few miles away. The dawn was ablaze now in full earnest with red streaks crossing the sky from the east, bathing the town in a salmon brilliance. The polished dome of the Kath-Drakonis—by far the largest structure of the town—glowed under the fiery dawn. The smaller buildings of Benyn were dwarfed by its opulent expanse. Galen’s thoughts went unbidden down the Vasska Processional to his forge shop and beyond, as the street continued all the way down to the docks. The towering masts of the fishing boats blushed crimson as they swayed in the morning swell. Farther still was the vast expanse of Mirren Bay. It glittered in the morning light. The Widow Isles lay just beyond the curve of the harbor. He thought he could even make out the Narrows more than twenty miles away through the morning, flame-streaked mists.

“It’s a sign, Galen.” Berkita smiled. “It’s Vasska’s blessing just for us!”

Galen stood up and crossed to join her at the window. He wr