Chapter Three
A Divided House
Roric thoughtfully studied the faces of those in attendance in the council chamber. It was a mixed crowd made up of council men, castle lords, and city governors. Most of the Valley Lander realm was represented in some way or another in this room.
They talked among themselves now. He had just told them of the attempt on his life and how it related to the disturbing events that had been transpiring over the past two years. He now scanned through the faces of those gathered not liking what he saw, as they talked quietly among themselves.
A governor from one of the southern cities spoke up loudly, “Granted that everything you’ve put before us makes the situation appear dire, but what are we to do against a religious movement?”
“The same thing that we’ve done ever since our peoples first split in division over religion, fight it.”
“Yes, but how can you fight an idea?”
Roric simply stared at him and shook his head softly in barely reined in disgust. “Well for starters you don’t role over dead before it!”
It was a sharp reprimand from one, who rarely made a point of doing so, much less had to. The room grew quiet.
“As I stated earlier a show of force must be made in order to stamp out this cult before it becomes firmly established!” Roric reaffirmed.
The governor from the largest of the southern cities, who often spoke for the other cities at council meetings, spoke reservedly into the still atmosphere of the room, “Roric we respect your leadership and support your idea of a show of force, but if this is all leading to a massive invasion of the Zoarinian Empire itself? Well that I’m afraid we can’t and won’t support!”
The castle lord from Esthol, which neighbored Thunder Ridge, started to speak up angrily in support of Roric, but Roric waived him silent.
In the twenty two years of peace since the great battle there had been a not so obvious falling away among the Valley Lander brotherhood. That is, until now, now the divide was sharply obvious within the chamber room.
There were many within the southern realm of the Valley Lands that had not been in favor of doing away with the power of the high council in favor of a single leader. In particular there were also many within the southern cities, who were not happy with the decision to leave the cities virtually defenseless during the great invasion.
That the gamble had paid off only quieted the voices opposed to Roric a little, but not completely. Roric well knew the things said behind his back and how his leadership of the nation was questioned.
Perhaps some of the unrest also came from the fact that there had been peace for over twenty years and yet Roric had kept the nation and the army at readiness, as if in preparation for a war that would start on the morrow.
Some even said that he was trying to instigate a war in order to further his own glory. In any case there was little to be gained in allowing those still loyal to him, such as the castle lord from Esthol, to engage in ineffective screaming matches with those who no longer respected him.
Further strife would only serve to fray the bonds of brotherhood and now was not the time for such an action.
“Very well.” Roric said softly.
Those in attendance in the room looked shocked at how easily Roric seemed to cave into the demands of the southern governors. It was most unlike him to run from a fight.
“I want a hundred thousand men. Sixty thousand on foot and forty thousand of our frontline cavalry.”
The governors from the south looking extremely pleased with their success in challenging Roric and immediately agreed to Roric’s request.
“Have each of your troop allotments gathered and ready to march at Kingdom Pass in two weeks time. This council is over.”
Roric abruptly stood up and left the room not waiting to be questioned or engaged in conversation by any within the room.
Later in the day from a lofty perch high on Thunder Ridge’s battlements, Roric watched most of the attendees of the council leave toward their separate homes.
Lord Rangold his hair white with age ponderously made his way up beside Roric to view the departure.
He harrumphed loudly, “These are dark times Roric, when your own people turn on you after all that you’ve done for them! What’s the world coming to anymore?”
Roric nodded, as he felt much the same.
Lord Rangold continued, “My people are with you Roric, you know that, but I have to say I see little sense in this plan for a show of force. What good does it do us to march around through the Southern Settlements, parading ourselves like idiots along the Zoarinian Empire’s northern border?”
Roric glanced over at his friend and smiled, “Rangold you know that plans are often subject to change, after all am I not still the leader of our people and in full control of the army?”
Lord Rangold guffawed and slapped his hands together in a delighted clap of remembered power. “I knew you wouldn’t let those pompous governors win the day! You have a plan?”
Roric nodded, as he gazed once more on the departing debutantes. His gaze grew somber. There was in no way, that he, in good faith as a leader to his people could allow the dark menace to continue growing unchecked.
The blood of his dead men, his friends, cried out to him from the grave. His fists tightened at his sides resolutely reflecting the deeper rage that dwelled within. Soon he would have revenge.
I came out of the chapel with Gavin in the late afternoon. I had been joining Gavin on his daily visits to the chapel to study the fragments of the Word of God and I was richer for the experience.
Father was leaving tomorrow to join the army gathering at Kingdom Pass.
I wished I was going with him, but I knew how unlikely that was. Talaric was going of course. Gavin and I had completed his sword last week and presented it to him. He had seemed pleased enough with it and had thanked us, which had been surprising coming from our often aloof older brother. Father himself upon seeing the quality of the blade had come to us to give us praise.
That had been worth far more than anything our brother could have said or done. Gavin had positively glowed for days afterward.
I headed for the castle infirmary where my older sister, Sansa, reigned supreme. Mother had taught her everything she knew in the art of healing, and Sansa had put it to good use.
I had gotten a cut on my arm two days prior in a mock battle with Rolf. The cut had needed stitches and Sansa had told me to come back the next day so she could check on it.
I no doubt was about to be scolded once again, as only an older sister can towards a younger brother, for my tardiness in returning to her.
As I entered the infirmary I about tripped over a dog lying across the threshold. The infirmary could often resemble that of a veterinary shop. It was often teeming with sick animals and birds with broken wings that my little sister Ella’nara would bring for her big sister to heal.
Sansa to her credit always tried to cure our little sister’s furry and feathered friends. It was hard to deny Ella’nara anything.
Sansa scowled when she saw me, but she didn’t say anything surprisingly. She had me sit down, as she looked over my arm, which was healing nicely.
Sansa took after our father’s darker looks, while Ella’nara more strongly resembled my mother.
“Father was in today. He was looking for you.”
I looked up at her surprised. I wondered what he wanted. Probably just wanted to say goodbye.
Roric entered the hot house, where the servants had said that Krista was. He turned a corner and stopped, watching his wife at work. She was tending a massive arrangement of fire flowers.
Roric had made a special trip to the Attorgron jungle to bring back more of the special bushes just for her. She looked up and smiled when she saw him. He knew she was worried about him leaving tomorrow, but she kept it well hidden from him.
“You look as beautiful as ever next to your namesake.”
Her eyebrows rose suggestively, as he drew closer to her and he rewarded her with a kiss. He took her arm and together they started out through the hot house on a walk.
Eventually they made their way outside into the extensive flower gardens. His grandfather Thaddeus’s love for flowers had rubbed off on both him and Krista.
“I have something to ask you dear. If you say no I’ll respect your decision as final.”
She looked up concerned at the odd question, “What is it?”
Roric paused and then started in on it, “You know that I’m taking Talaric with me. I would also like to bring Zevin as well. Is that too much for you to bear if I take him too?”
Krista looked away for a moment, “Do you think he’s ready?”
“For battle yes, for the horrors of war I’m not so sure.”
Krista didn’t say anything as they continued to walk.
“The reason I ask this is something…. no not something. The Spirit of the Creator within me is urging me to give him this opportunity and experience. I’ve prayed about it and I haven’t been told otherwise so far.”
Krista looked up and Roric could see the tears in the corners of her eyes, “If you feel that way in your spirit and you’ve prayed about it, then that is what must be done.”
Roric reached down and put his arms around his wife as the tears started to come.
She stood on her tiptoes to whisper into his ear, “You come back to me, with our sons!”
“I’ll try my best honey!” Roric said, as he pressed his face deeply into his wife’s curly hair.
I walked into father’s study not knowing what to expect.
Father looked up from his cluttered desk and smiled, “You’re not in trouble Zevin, so relax.”
I did relax a little at that assurance, but I was still anxious as to what was going on. Father gestured for me to take a seat and I did in front of his desk. Father got up and came around to sit on the edge of it facing me.
“Zevin I’d like to talk about you, specifically your future.”
I stared at him at a complete loss, “My future?”
“At the end of last week you turned sixteen, and in many ways you’re already a grown man. Your skill in fighting is amazing for a man of any age. I very much doubt that we would be having this conversation right now, if it weren’t for the Lord using you to help me against the assassins sent to kill me. By the time I was your age I was already killing men and wild beasts in the arena just to continue surviving to see the next day. That time in the arena taught me a lot about life other than just the fighting skills and experience that I picked up there. One dominating lesson it taught me is the value of freedom. Freedom is never free Zevin, it comes at a steep price and once you have it someone is always trying to take it away again. One has to make a choice of whether he is going to be a slave to other men’s desires or a master over one’s own destiny. If you choose to live your life the way you want, you can count on being in a fight or two along the way for that right to live freely. You were born with a free spirit Zevin and anything else just isn’t going to settle well for you. I think you know that. Now why am I going into all this? Your mother and I have both noticed a change in your spiritual walk with the Creator as of late. Your mother told me about your experience with the Creator that night and how you accepted His Holy Spirit to live inside of you. Zevin, I could receive no greater news as a father than to hear such good news of my own son’s progression in faith. Son you’ve already won the biggest battle you could ever face. Your destiny is sealed for all eternity, as long as you choose to maintain your walk with the Creator faithfully. There is no person, entity or power in existence that can take away your eternal future with the Lord for evermore. The problem we face though, while we still live in these mortal bodies is that there are many battles yet to be fought and won. Not to ensure our future eternal reward, that’s already established, but rather we fight these battles so that by winning them we extend the opportunity for the same Spirit of the Creator living within you and me to reign free in the hearts of many more. This is the evangelism of our faith at its core. Zevin this life shouldn’t be about how far we can exalt ourselves above those around us. We should instead strive to live humbly, exemplifying the character of the Creator and by His strength we should strive to lift as many people as you can onto your shoulders and help carry and enable them to reach the same eternal fate of being forever in the presence of our Creator. That is what a successful life looks like Zevin. It is the life that I have done my best to model to you and as I have modeled it to you I also expect the same or better of you. Zevin there is no doubt in my heart that if you are willing and obedient to the Spirit of the Creator living within you that He will use you to do great and mighty things. Greater things than you have ever seen Him do on my behalf. Son, I not only want you to live as I have and achieve the closeness that I have with the Creator, but I want you to eclipse me. As there is nothing impossible for the Creator to accomplish, so there is nothing impossible for you to accomplish that He sets your hand to do. In your darkest hour you will behold His awesome might, for it is well said that He is the Lord of battles and our clear and present help in times of distress. In your moment of deepest sorrow you will find a friend like no other in Him and in your greatest joy you will see His smile, as His favor rains down upon you. This is the future that I want for you son! Soon I am leaving to take part in a war not of our own making and I want you by my side. I know you are young and it would have been better to spend more time in innocence, before being plunged into the maelstrom of life, but the battle for freedom is before us and we can not change the timing of it. Will you come with me Zevin? There is no shame if you don’t, but for you I think it is important to get started on your journey of faith early on so know that I urge you to do this quest.”
I looked at him and said honestly as I stood up, “Father how can I not?”
His arms folded around me and mine him. He turned his head to my ear and said, “Zevin you do not know the beauty of your own heart. Many would have answered differently than to say, ‘how can you avoid making the right choice when it is there before you?’”
Stepping away from me he said, “I have something for you.”
He turned away and went over to a shelf and pulled something off of it. Returning to me I saw that it was his pair of matched sabers encased in a black leather harness.
“These have served me well in the past and I thought you should have them, as they fit your fighting style well and you have more than earned them. I also have this for you.”
He went back to the shelf and pulled a beautiful black composite bow and quiver of arrows from off the shelf, which he then extended out to me.
“See the bow and quiver hook right into the sword harness here.” He said as he demonstrated it for me.
Awed by the gifts I looked up at him, “You never doubted what choice I would make did you?”
My father met my gaze and responded back as confidently as could be, “Zevin I have never doubted the desire within your heart to do what’s right.”
That was really something I thought to myself later. How many could say that they had a father, who thought that they would make the right decisions when it came down to important choices. Having such a father only made me want to prove his confidence in me as the truth of what would be.
Excitement coursed through my veins, as I held on to the reins of my horse, as I was swept along in the tide of my father’s men. We were riding for Kingdom Pass to join the rest of the army already gathered there.
It was still hard to believe what was happening. The weight of the swords and bow against my back was a reminder that it was really so.
The swords with a history written upon them from the grasp of my father’s hands were in some ways a boost of confidence that helped stifle the unsteady giddiness I was feeling in my stomach.
The swords also helped reinforce that my father thought I was man enough to go to war, even if the men around me didn’t think so.
I wasn’t really sure what they thought about me coming along. I rode within the column, while my father and Talaric rode at the head of the column along with the lords of the northern castles.
I could have ridden by my father’s side, but I felt that would have been somehow presumptuous of me and looked down upon by the men I was to fight alongside of. Some things had to be earned and I knew the value of that.
The big stallion I rode was also confidence inspiring. The big corded muscles I felt flexing beneath me made me feel like I was a force to be reckoned with for as long as I was in the saddle. The stallion had been yet one more gift of my fathers.
The stallion was coal black and magnificent to behold, a hardy offspring of my father’s past great warhorse Flin. He was only a little over three years of age and this was his first experience with war as well. We would face it together, but I couldn’t help but feel that he was more ready for it than I was.
I hadn’t named him yet simply because I couldn’t think of a name that was right for him. A name was an important thing and I didn’t want to get it wrong.
Whether the men around me welcomed my presence or not I was aware of one in particular that was not happy with me tagging along on this ride to war. Talaric had been incensed to find out that I was coming along, which hadn’t been overly surprising to me.
Talaric very much lorded it over me and Gavin that he was the firstborn and that we were beneath him. Father bringing me along on Talaric’s first foray into war had been in many ways an insult to him or at least he took it as such.
Before we had left Thunder Ridge he had corned me in a hallway and pressed me up against the wall to practically spit out in my face, “Don’t get in my way little brother! This is the moment when I begin to shine and if you try to upstage me you’ll regret it!”
I had shoved him away and continued on down the hall angry at the injustice and selfishness on his part. I had wanted to hit him, but I held back sensing that had been what he had wanted. By getting involved in a petty fight Father might have reconsidered taking me along.
The afternoon wore on and towards dusk we reached the shores of Lake Sanjo, where the city of Kingdom Pass had once stood. The city had never been rebuilt, but instead it had been filled over with rock and dirt. A tomb that was to stand forever in loving memory of the brave men and women, who had died defending the city that had been before the great invasion by the Zoarinians.
The tunnel gates had been collapsed upon themselves and the breaches in the wall had been built up once more, but to a lower height than the rest of the existing wall.
All the towers had been rebuilt, but in lower profile and more thickly stoned than before, with iron plating on their outsides. The two slightly lower sections of the rebuilt wall served as channel falls for the two rivers that continued to flow into the head of Kingdom Pass.
The water flowed out over the lower sections of wall to fall cascading downward to the pass floor far below. The area of fill was half as large as the old city had been and was as high as the top of the walls.
It was a level plain empty except for the two river channels that cut through it as they exited Lake Sanjo at the head of the pass and which covered the rest of the old city and beyond.
There was a narrow road hewed out of the rocky sides of the pass itself along the one side that gave access to the top of the battlements along the wall from the Valley Land side.
The gateway to the lands we sought lay between the two giant waterfalls in the form of a narrow ramp that led down at a steep angle to the pass floor below.
If invaders were to attempt to ascend up the steep ramp the flow of both rivers could be diverted to flow directly down the ramp. The defenses of Kingdom Pass had only gotten more formidable instead of less.
I rode in awe over the hallowed ground. There was a still peace to the place that was something to feel, even as the battlements and waterfalls were to behold.
The blood of our people was strong in this place, like a tangible essence that reached out and claimed one’s respect for the sacrifice that had been committed to keep this hallowed ground Valley Lander land for forever.
We started down over the wall on the steep ramp. On either side we were flanked by the onrushing columns of water that crashed over the edge of the old walls into the chasm below creating a deafening roar, as the rivers foamed up in whirlpools at the base of the wall before continuing on their endless journey to the sea.
A fine mist of spray kicked off the cascading rivers to coat us as we rode down the ramp to join the army already gathered in the pass below.
If the leaders of the Valley Lands had forgotten what my father had done for them, their soldiers had not. They stood in rank and file order in a universal salute to my father, as he rode through the encampment.
I felt an immense sense of both responsibility and pride course through me at the knowledge that I was the son of a great man.
I whispered a prayer under my breadth, “Oh dear Lord help me to never tarnish my father’s name by any action of mine. Help me serve You faithfully, even as he has done.”
“Amen.” Said a soldier off to the side of me and I blushed red at the knowledge that I had been overheard, but the men around me didn’t appear to be in jest of me, but rather their faces reflected serious acknowledgment of my statement.
It was a beginning of sorts of relating with them. At least they knew I prayed. In some ways that was a lot to know about someone.
We made camp there at the foot of the wall that night and by dawn’s early light the army was on the move down the pass.
After the great battle at the Shrine of Remembrance, where the might of the Zoarinian Empire had been crushed our armies though few in number had marched down into the Southern Settlements and pushed all Zoarinian influence out from there.
The Zoarinians had respected the boundary that we had imposed between them and the Southern Settlements up until recently. From all reports it appeared that the Zoarinian Empire was once more stirring up confrontation between our two peoples.
We were hopefully going to find out what involvement this strange new cult was playing in the stirring up of old hatreds once more against our people, primarily because of our faith.
I had heard the night before, as the soldiers were talking that this was primarily a peace keeping mission and that open battle with enemy forces was extremely unlikely. Still there might be small skirmishes.
Skirmishes or not being along on this quest was still so very exciting!
Talaric looked over his shoulder back at the column behind him, as he rode next to his father. His good mood that he had been having dissipated some when he saw his younger brother laughing at some joke or something with a bunch of other soldiers around him.
The soldiers around Zevin seemed to be treating him, as if he was one of the gang. One even smacked him on the back over something funny he must have said.
Talaric turned to his father beside him and asked, “Why do you permit Zevin to ride back there with the men instead of up here with us?”
Roric shifted in the saddle and looked back to where Zevin was freely engaged in conversation with those around him and smiled knowingly.
Roric turned to his oldest son and answered him in a way that insinuated a hidden lesson to be learned in the moment like father’s have a way of doing, “Because he realizes that to ride at the head of the men he will perhaps one day command in battle is an honor that he has not won the right to yet. By riding with the men instead of ahead of them he is showing that he thinks of himself as no greater than them despite his birth as my son. They will in turn respect him for it and automatically look to him as a leader in time of battle long before he is asked to ride at the head of the column in a position of leadership.”
Talaric scowled, as he caught the drift of his father’s latest lesson in humility before advancement and dutifully let his horse fall back farther into the column away from his father’s side.
The lesson only served as fuel on the fire for the growing animosity that Talaric had growing for his little brother.
Days passed with little commotion taking place, just endless riding. We made our way through the small settlements of my grandmother’s people living upon the Litian plains as nomads. We stopped at Yorktown for a day before moving on.
The people of the Southern Settlements seemed glad to see us and ou