Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

“And that is why I am entrusting you with this task.”

My mouth dry, my eyes searching for any purchase upon his person and in the end not even able to hold the sight of his boots, I studied the earth beneath them instead. “Please, my Lord—what task is this?”

I am still not convinced that his answer pertained to what he considered my true task, knowing as he did that the information was too overwhelming to be delivered to me then. “You must protect the women who are meant to perpetuate your line,” he answered instead, which was also the truth. “You must teach your children to live by my laws and wander far and wide, spreading knowledge of me as neither the Church nor the Order can disseminate.”

“Are these institutions not manifestations of your word? Are they not the enforcers of your will upon Urde?”

“No institution can understand the teachings I provide. Only a Wanderer can carry my news about, and only a Wanderer can understand it—but those to whom the Wanderers carry my news are doomed to only understand such things insofar as it suits them.”

Lips dry, my gaze still darting about, I asked, “Do you mean to say it is my destiny to leave the Order?”

“All these things will sort themselves in time.”

To my astonishment—and, somehow, greater fear—he lowered his lance to the ground and slowly knelt before me. Hildolfr’s once-familiar hands fit to my shoulders and I forced myself to keep my eyes open.

“You’re wise to humble yourself, Rorke,” he said in that same grandfatherly manner from before, “but you, of all men, have little need to fear.”

The crown of my skull itched as I looked upon him. This was the aged face of the same friend with which I’d journeyed to the Nightlands—a man with whom I’d ridden horses and sparred while traveling and flirted with women all over Cascadia.

And all this time…all this time.

“Master,” I said, my throat parched, “why me? What purpose serves my line?”

I paused, searching his face, afraid to ask more but unable to help myself.

“What is a “Wotsung?””

The smile that crossed his face was one I had rarely seen Hildolfr wear. His good eye crinkled with the appearance of teeth that were bright, white, and perfectly straight, each one gleaming in the light of the lantern.

“You have much to learn, Burningsoul…and your companions are nearly here. Protect them, and love them, and find others who will see the wisdom in your heart.”

For some reason, I thought of gentle Elishta-bet—and the duel, for which I now had no weapon. “My sword! Oh, what am I to do about Strife?”

“Never challenge me again,” he said, releasing me and rising while I studied the ground at his feet, “and you will find a sword in your moment of greatest need.”

I exhaled, lifting my head to ask him so much more.

Instead of the man who called himself Hildolfr, I found the Scepter of Weltyr.

ORDER RESTORED

A GREAT TENSION released upon my sudden solitude. My armor rattled around me while my body collapsed into tremors, the euphoria to be alive mingling with profound fear, respect, and gratitude.

It was impossible to comprehend what had just happened. Impossible to think that I had just been met with (and journeyed with before!) the most powerful of the gods. The Great All-Father, whose far-seeing eye uncloaked the contents of all the world’s shadows.

And the evidence of my bond with him had been shattered by his sacred lance.

My heart twisted in pain. The broken sword still lay before me on the ground. Unspeaking, I lifted both pieces of Strife to my heart. How easily I might have met the fate of this sword!

How easily I might (any second, every second) meet the fate of that sword even now.

Overwhelmed by tears, I covered my eyes in one hand and silently wept.

As far as I had already journeyed, as close to death as I had come, as many battles as I had already fought in my then-short life, I did not tangibly awaken to my own personal fear of death until that very moment. It were as though Weltyr had forced me to draw nearer it by steps: first, with the pain of Adonisius for his family and my new regard for the act of killing. Then, by sparing me in spite of my arrogance.

My body screamed with relief to be alive, to know itself—to have its future, its past, itself. Friendly chemicals as I had never felt swept through me…but I had been left with something that I knew from that very moment would never depart me. Aware of Oppenhir’s shadow as I suddenly was, feeling its palpable black form cast across my face, (and, worse, understanding that it had always been there, waiting for me to notice), I knew that I had not escaped it. That none, truly, could ever escape it.

None save for those who, by the grace of Weltyr and the gentle hands of his Selectrices, joined the Hall of Valor.

With a glance at the scepter reclining against the rock where Hildolfr sat moments before, I remained kneeling and shut my eyes. With Strife still pressed to my breastplate, I prayed as even I had never prayed before, with my attention focused on whole-heartedly celebrating what it was to be alive. Yes! Just to be alive. To be blessed with a mind and conscious perception and Weltyr’s great gift of Reason—one of the greatest powers granted us. To be alive, and to have therefore the conscious basis of reality and all its nuances: the wonders of the sense-organs, the majesty of the sun, the loving arms of a woman, the promises of things unknowable but hoped for and all the adventures of the future.

And yet to be alive so tentatively. To be alive on the face of a vessel circling a ball of fire amid a cold, black ocean. To be one heartbeat away from nothing—nothing. To be