Vlad'War's Anvil Read online

  Vlad'War's Anvil

  Book Three of the Chronicles of the Prophetess and the Hammer Bearer

  Rex Hazelton

  Vlad’War’s Anvil

  Book Three of the Chronicles of the Prophetess and the Hammer Bearer

  Rexford Evan Hazelton Copywright 2016

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Prophecy

  Chapter 1: A story Retold

  Chapter 2: The Song of Remebrance

  Chapter 3: Rebuked

  Chapter 4: Ay’Roan

  Chapter 5: Travyn

  Chapter 6: Rough Justice

  Chapter 7: J’Aryl

  Chapter 8: Serpent Eel

  Chapter 9: Kaylan

  Chapter 10: To Other Realms

  Chapter 11: the Realm of Ice

  Chapter 12: Muriel’s Request

  Chapter 13: The Madara Spike

  Chapter 14: The Watcher

  Chapter 15: Mishal Parm

  Chapter 16: Jeaf’s Capture

  Chapter 17: Vlad’War’s Anvil

  Chapter 18: Mar’Gul

  Chapter 19: Lan’Fon

  Chapter 20: Lamarik

  Chapter 21: A Hut in the Swamp

  Chapter 22: Dandaryll

  Chapter 23: Bala’s Task

  Chapter 24: Four Day’s Earlier

  Chapter 25: Prelude to a Wedding

  Chapter 26: Sorcerer’s Keep

  Chapter 27: The Stream Runs Red

  Chapter 28: Chylgroyd’s Keep

  Chapter 29: Dungeons

  Chapter 30: Slograp

  Chapter 31: A Dream that Mattered

  Chapter 32: The Hammer Bearer

  Chapter 33: The Socerer’s Advantage

  Chapter 34: A Place for Giants

  Chapter 35: Darkness Ascending

  Chapter 36: The Hall of Voyd

  Chapter 37: A Talisman called Crooked Finger

  Author

  Dedication

  I dedicate this book to my sons- Rex, Tim, Rick, and Evan- who gave me the template for the four young men described in this book. Though none of them relates directly to any of the others- for the Sons of the Storm are unique to themselves in most ways- the intelligence, curiousity, courage, and strength of character my sons possess has been bequeathed to Kaylan, Travyn, J’Aryl, and Ay’Roan.

  The Prophecy of the Prophetess and the Hammer Bearer

  There is a love within the warl that can calm the tempest tossed,

  And mend the breach and heal the wound that evil powers have caused.

  It is sweet love and only love that can lay foundations strong,

  Upon which castles of stone are built to undo the ancient wrong.

  The Hammer Bearer will find his love and with his courage heal,

  Her broken heart and innocence that evil men did steal.

  Together they will face the night and the wicked wind’s onslaught,

  And overcome the dragon’s fire until justice has been wrought.

  Though swords may clang and arrows fly and threaten to destroy,

  The hope of peace, the light of day within the warl of joy,

  Their love will rise like dawn’s new day to drive away the dark,

  And break the spell and crush the heads of all with evil’s mark.

  One destiny, two visions intertwined like ivy on a wall,

  For a three-strand cord can’t be broken by the darkness of the fall.

  Embraced in each other’s loving arms they will fight forgetfulness,

  And usher in Parm Warl’s resplendent light in the coming age of bliss

  Chapter 1: A Story Retold

  The cool wind blew through hair as black as a raven’s feathers, pushing it away from a face whose beauty was untouched by the physical rigors birthing four sons had put her body through. To this day, even with all the magic she had tapped into, magic that could heal wounds too horrible to imagine, riding on Grour Blood’s back made her feel freer than anything else she did, even freer than when she was in her husband’s arms.

  Soaring through the sky on a griffin’s powerful back, detached her from the demands those living in the warl below placed on the Prophetess who had learned to sing the Song of Breaking. Up here, she was at liberty to be herself- Muriel Blood, the inimitable Singer. Though becoming Jeaf Oakenfel’s wife and mother to his children was the most important thing in her life, up here her fundamental nature was free to be itself, free to enjoy the power her singing conjured up for no other reason than to entertain herself.

  Seated where Grour Blood’s neck met his shoulders, nestled against the griffin’s heavy mane with legs placed in front of the massive wings now fully extended to catch the thermals rising up the Alabaster Mountains’ slopes- Muriel looked down at fields filled with lush grain, legumes, squash and potatoes that wound their way through the rolling foothills below. The students who normally tended to the crops were conspicuously absent as she expected. Only a few older men, prodding a herd of browsing, spike-horned cattle through a field recently harvested, could be seen.

  The food grown here fed the students and staff at the School of the Sword and Song, as well as others who lived in the small but resplendent city of Vestylkynd that surrounded the venerable school. The Alabaster Mountains’ peaks, rising in the west, stood guard over the stronghold. Constructed with pale rose-colored, granite blocks on a broad shelf-like expanse, the cluster of impressive buildings was positoned on top of a rocky cliff that looked out on a sea of grass separating the Alabaster Mountains from the Thangmor Mountians. A cleft in the steep mountainside that rose above the renowned instituion was laced with terraced gardens filled with tomatos, succulents and edibles that were added to the produce harvested below. This same cleft's lower reaches gave travelers access to the school.

  “Little Sister,” Grour Blood’s deep voice rumbled through the cool air they flew through, “it’s time we went back to Jeaf. He’ll be addressing the students soon.”

  The thought of meeting her husband was the only thing that made ending her flight on the griffin's powerful back bearable. Back to real life, Muriel told herself before she said out loud, “Let’s go… the students are waiting.”

  Each of the past fifteen summers, on the anniversary of Jeaf discovering the Hammer of Power, he gave the students attending the revered school a demonstration of the magic Vlad’War had poured into the incomparable weapon. This was something Nyeg Warl’s kings wanted him to do after the Battle of the Temple of the Oake Tree had been fought.

  The presentaion's purpose was manifold: first, to remind their children why fate had placed the wizard’s talisman into the Hammer Bearer's hands; second, to remind them of the threat that Ar Warl posed, and, last, to keep alive the hope that an age of joy and prosperity called Parm Warl would come once the Sorcerer, who lived on the other side of the Breach Sea, was defeated.

  With the Nyeg being inexorably drawn back to the Ar, as reocurring earthquakes attested to, the sovereigns urged Jeaf to continue putting on his demonstrations for their children. When the earthquakes finally finished doing their work and the two land masses came back together, war would break out since Ab'Don would surely renew his attempts to conquer the kingdoms that evaded his grasp back when an insuperable magic split the warl asunder and created the Breach Sea, a sea that was disappearing as Nyeg Warl and Ar Warl crept toward each other.

  Muriel caught sight of her husband as Grour Blood banked down toward the granite citadel.

  Up on the outer wall, behind the crenulated battlements that were found there, stood a man with chestnut-colored hair that touched his broad shoulders. He wore a calf-length woolen tunic dyed gold. A belt made of interloc
king rings of star’s blood wrapped around his narrow waist. A red sheath, holding the Hammer of Power, hung from the belt. The image of a red hammer was stitched onto the front of his garment. A blue tattoo, depicting a hammer crushing a dragon’s head, could be seen on his neck as he turned his head. Soft, knee high, brown leather boots appeared below the tunic.

  Soaring over the cliff, fronting the fields that wound their way through the foothills below, the griffin tilted his massive wings, expanded their sword length feathers, and gracefully landed in front of the man.

  Grabbing Grour Blood’s mane in a show of affection with one hand, Jeaf used his other hand to help Muriel dismount. Dropping to her feet, shod with soft brown leather boots that were twins to the ones her husband wore, Muriel shook her long black hair out so it could fall into place against a tunic that matched Jeaf’s own. And as her hair fell, her tunic followed suit as it slide down the brown leather leggings she wore whenever she rode Grour Blood.

  As the griffin’s deep, rumbling purr enveloped them, Jeaf and Muriel smiled at one another before embracing. Topping the greeting off with a kiss, the couple stood hand in hand and took in the breathtaking view as they talked. On the other side of a narrow sea of grass, the distant Thangmor Mountains' western end was aimed at the Alabaster Mountains like the prow of a great ship set on ramming another vessel. The grassland continued northward until it emptied its verdant contents into the Plains of Decision, the place where the Prophetess and the Hammer Bearer bested the Lord of Regret, Ab’Dons ruthless general, whose teeming hordes tried to swallow up Nyeg Warl in a war that was fought there fifteen winters past.

  Though the view appeared unscathed by the series of earthquakes that had rocked Nyeg Warl since the day Jeaf fought the Sorcerer in the Battle of the Temple of the Oak Tree, that wasn't the case, for all of Nyeg Warl had suffered as the result of the shakings that were growing in strength as time passed by. Piles of rubble, heaped up against the buildings lining the avenues below, along with the scaffolding erected so workers could reach damaged portions of the walls, were immediate proofs of the earthquakes’ power. Fortunately, only one student had been killed during the biggest of the shakings. This happened last winter when a large, granite block fell on the students as they walked from one class to another. A score of others, in one earthquake or another, had sustained injuries, but none were life threatening.

  Looking into Jeaf’s amber-colored eyes, Muriel said, “My Love, did you know that we’re standing on the very spot where we first met?”

  “Off course I do.” Unlike his father, Jeaf didn’t choose to grow a beard as time passed by. Now the same age Aryl was when Jeaf began the journey that led him to the Hammer of Power, he was every inch the man his father was. Strong, agile, possessing a quick mind that made him a foe few would want to challenge, he looked much younger than Aryl at his age.

  Like her husband, Muriel’s youthful appearance belied the number of summers she had lived. Many said the magic they wielded kept the two from being touched by the ravages of time. Others speculated that their lives were being extended because the road they had to travel and the work they had to do were so demanding. “Why do you think I waited for you here?” Jeaf added with another smile as he recalled the day when he and Tsut’waeh asked Muriel, and her cousin Truamor, if they would help them shovel snow off the battlements.

  “You’re a romantic,” Muriel laughed light-heartedly as she leaned forward and kissed her husband once more.

  “Whether I’m a romantic or not,” Jeaf ran his hand over Muriel’s shapely shoulder before adding, “I believe it’s wise to remember the things that are important, and I’d say you’re the most important thing to me… here… in this life.”

  “More important than our sons or the hammer you carry?”

  “The hammer... of course. Our sons… well they’re your boys, the branches of the most beautiful tree in the warl.”

  “Maudlin humans,” Grour Blood said as he snorted air from his nose to accentuate the playful jab he made more to entertain himself than to be heard by Jeaf, a jab that carried little punch because the griffin easily matched the humans in sentimentality since the cornestone of the Community of Blood was its adherence to things that made strong relationships possible.

  Twenty winters earlier, back when Jeaf and Muriel were coming to grips with the prophetic expectations that came from having the mantle of the Prophetess and Hammer Bearer thrust upon them, the two met on this very spot. Not yet twenty summers old, both were new to the School of the Sword and the Song and strangers to each other. Having been assigned the job of shoveling snow off the battlements following a storm Ab’Don conjured up to keep Nyeg Warl’s king’s from completing preparations for the invasion he would soon unleash, the two ran into each other by chance, and in the moment they met, they fell in love not yet knowing who the other would become, unaware that the prophets had foretold their union.

  On that day, as Jeaf took hold of the shovel Muriel was handing over to him, he was hurled into a vision. In it he saw the beautiful young woman he had just met standing on a pinnacle of white stone that rose out of a raging sea. Battling furious winds that buffeted the ship he was steering, Jeaf drove the great vessel forward, not caring that the rocks, jutting up from the waters like they were tips of giant spears, could tear his craft apart. The reward was worth the risk. For reasons he could not yet understand, Jeaf had to save her.

  The vision was one he had seen before, one that made little sense until he met Muriel, the woman who had handed him the shovel he held that day. Like he had done in the earlier visions, Jeaf called out to the woman. “Don’t fear My Lady, for I’m here now!”

  And when he finished saying this, he was drawn out the vision by a voice so fair it made his heart ache. “I know you are,” Muriel quietly replied.

  All that afternoon, only a handful of moons from the beginning of a dreadful war that came to be called the Battle of Decision, the two young people spoke to each other, sharing their hearts, delighting in each other’s presence. In the course of the conversation, Jeaf learned that Muriel had seen him before just as he had seen her, but in a dream and not a vision, a dream the Prophetess had in the days of her imprisonment in the Cave of Forgetfulness, the place where her body and soul had been defiled.

  In the dream, Muriel found herself in a cloud room where a large man, dressed in a white linen tunic, held her in his comforting arms as the night passed by. Then, before she was sent back to the nightmare warl she lived in, a window appeared in the cloud wall. And as she looked through it, Muriel saw a young boy and his father practicing with wooden swords. In time, the wooden swords became blunted iron blades and the boy became a man, the man that now stood before her.

  Placing an arm around Muriel’s waist while gently pulling on Grour Blood’s mane, Jeaf began the walk to the Hall of Meditation. “Where are the boys?”

  “I suspect they’re on their way to the Hall." Muriel replied before lifting her eyebrows and adding, “Though I saw the twins rough housing with Shar Blood on the practice field as Grour Blood and I were landing.”

  “They better not get their clothes dirty.” Jeaf’s spoke more with resignation than sterness, kowing if he was still their age, he’d be doing the same thing. Though now an adult, he still loved games more than ceremony, hunting more than banqueting, and the joy of being with close friends more than the accolades the crowds gave him. That’s why he walked so slowly to the august event where he was expected to give a performance. Even with the maturity gained from nearly forty summers of life, he still had an impulse to jump on Grour Blood’s back, pull Muriel up behind him, and fly off to Ship Rock Island where they could spend the day roaming about as they pleased, alone in each other’s company.

  I’ll always be a Woodswane, Jeaf thought as he fought the urge to escape. Watching Grour Blood leap gracefully off the ramparts and soar to the ground below, he led Muriel into an adjoining tower and down the stairs found there. The structure was not built
with the massive griffin’s size in mind. And it’s no wonder I’m the way I am, Jeaf continued his ruminations, I was raised by Aryl Oakenfel.

  In his father’s way of thinking, the greenwood was always preferable to the comforts a castle afforded. Dead fifteen winters now, the life Aryl once lived influenced Jeaf profoundly still. That’s why he winced as his thoughts turned to his father; then the wince was followed by a smile that swept across his face as the memories of the man persisted.

  Taking a deep breath, aware that the magic he would put on display for the students gathering in the Hall of Meditation might well show images of Aryl in the life he once knew, or in the place where his spirit now waited, Jeaf took Muriel by the hand and strode off to the appointed gathering.

  As they exited the tower, Grour Blood fell in behind them. Soon, others joined the griffin as they neared the hall. By the time they arrived, the Prophetess and the Hammer Bearer were escorted by an entourage of more than a hundred students who quickly filled the last of the empty seats as the couple stepped up on a dais and took their places beside a collection of dignitaries who were already seated there.

  Numbered among these was Elamor, Jeaf’s mother, Vav, Muriel’s uncle, Arhnosyn, Chief Mentor of the School of the Sword and Song, Illumanor, the Candle Master and head of the School of the Candle, the Eagle and Bull Kings, Jubalamor, leader of the Forest People, Ramskynd and Alegramor, rulers of the elf-city of Mystlkynd, and the Company of the Hammer who escorted Jeaf on a perilous journey that led them all to the Battle of Decision.

  Wearing a cloak of many colors, Goldan sat beside his wife Truamor, Vav’s daughter and Muriel’s cousin.

  Alynd, the King of Otrodor, sat beside Marta, an old mystic and the Elf-Man’s advisor. Wearing a bear skin instead of the brown woolen cloak she favored, using the beast’s head as a hood, the woman, who was just as strange as others who were knowledgeable in magic, watched Muriel’s sons grow as closely as she did the clans Alynd ruled over. Even now she was trying to locate the boys who, eschewing the seats that were arranged for them beside the Prophetess and Hammer Bearer, sat scattered among the students.