Shapers of Darkness Book Four of Winds of the Forelands

Chapter One Curtell, Braedon, year 880, Amon's Moon waning What did it mean to be a god? Was it simply immortality that separated the great ones from those who lived on Elined's earth? Was it their power to bend others to their will, their ability to shape the future and remake the world as they desired? Did he not possess those powers as well? Had he not made himself a god? Victory would soon be his, and with his triumph would a come a new world, one that he had foreseen, a world of his own making. Was that not the highest power? He could not cheat death---Bian would call him to his side eventually. But he would be remembered forever: the Weaver who toppled the Eandi courts and ruled the Forelands as its first Qirsi king. Was that not immortality? In these last days before war and conquest and the attainment of all for which he had worked and hungered for so long, he found himself remembering a legend told to him by his father when he was no more than a boy, before anyone had thought to call him high chancellor, or Weaver, or king. It was a tale of four brothers, a story his father said had come from the Southlands, with the first Qirsi invaders, nearly nine centuries ago. He had heard it told since by Eandi living in the Forelands, as if the parable and its moral belonged to them. But he knew the truth. According to the tale, the four brothers were soldiers who, as they wandered the land, came across a white stag that had been caught in a hunter's snare. The beast was more beautiful than any creature the four men had seen before. It stood taller than the greatest mounts of the southern plains, with a coat the color of cream, and ebony antlers as broad across as an eagle's wings. White stags were said to be enchanted, and they lived under the protection of royal decrees throughout all the kingdoms of the land. Those who dared hunt them not only invited ill fortune by slaying a magical creature, but also risked execution should they be caught. Knowing this, the brothers freed the beast, cutting through the snare with their blades. When it was free, the stag bowed to them, and then spoke. "You have given me my life, and so I will grant to each of you your heart's desire," the creature said. "You need only sleep tonight in this glade and await the first light of dawn." The stag left them then, and the brothers bedded down in the glade. In the middle of the night, the oldest of the four awoke to find a warrior standing before him in shining mail, bearing a sword that gleamed in the moonlight. "Come with me," the warrior said, "and I will make you the greatest swordsman in the land. No enemy will dare stand against you, and bards will sing of your prowess in battle." Believing that the stag had made good on his promise, the first brother followed the warrior from the glade. Once beyond the last of the trees, however, the warrior vanished as if a spirit and the brother found that the trees would not part to allow him back into the glade. Soon after, the second brother awoke to find an old man standing before him in the robes of a king. "Come with me," the man said, "and you shall rule all the land. Nobles will bow to you and swordsmen will follow you to war. All power shall be yours." Like his older brother before him, the second brother thought that this was what the stag had promised. He followed the man from the glade, only to find that the old king had been an apparition and the glade was now closed to him. A woman came to the third brother, clad in lace, her silken, black hair falling to the small of her back, and her skin gleaming with starlight. She led him from the glade before dissolving into the night like one of Bian's wraiths. The youngeCoe, David B. is the author of 'Shapers of Darkness Book Four of Winds of the Forelands', published 2006 under ISBN 9780312878108 and ISBN 0312878109.