Dragh knelt in the muck, putting his hand out to the old woman.

She looked up at Dragh with fear in her eyes. Dragh had dressed himself in simple clothes, a tunic, leather leggings and riding boots that he’d packed in his saddle bags. He could not afford to look like a General or a Sunborn now. Dragh couldn’t have his enemies know what he was doing, that he was not at the head of The Dragon Legion. The armies of Landor.

The old lady looked to his sword and dagger sheathed on his belt and then back to his hand.

“It’s okay,” He assured the old lady, pushing his hood back.

Her eyes softened, seeing Dragh’s face. She accepted his hand, pulling with a shaky arm. Dragh stood in the line of men and women seeking to gain access to Landor through the eastern gates. Most of them simple travelers, some with carriages and servants hanging from the sides. They all waited, inspections by the watch guard required before entering.

The line shuffled forward.

Landor was a walled city with gates on all four side. The southern gate was it’s largest, the western gate second largest. The north and east gate were smaller. All of them were built of oak and iron, seasoned for hundreds of years, they were split and gray. They were gouged and beaten, but never broken.

The smaller gate in the east had a lesser compliment of men, especially around supper time. He was counting on his men, the men of the army of Landor to be less vigilant this time of day. He knew it was ironic, considering he should flog them if he could sneak into his own city. But the reality of thousands of people was that none could guarantee security. Each man had to be ready to defend themselves.

It only the people really knew how close they were to danger, every day. The walls, the guards, all were a facade of safety. But all would sacrifice their lives for their people.

The old lady wiped at the muck; tears welled at the corner of her eyes. “Thank you -.”

“Kallen,” Dragh offered, the name of his dead father.

The old lady smiled. “Your Ma and Pa named you after the old king? Bless them and bless you,”

Dragh laughed. “I suspect that they would be disappointed in me, have not lived up to a kings name,”

The old lady tutted and moved ahead, one step and then a half step. Dragh followed.

“Soka, we all have our burdens, thank the gods that you aren’t with those poor sods moving west. I hear that the Legions are moving out to meet the horde again. Been attacking decent folk out west,”

Dragh felt his smile disappear. He would be one of them, and his son and daughter were currently out there alone, surrounded by foe. He said nothing, the old lady took his silence as an invitation to speak.

“My boy and my man died in the Dragon Legion. He was so proud he got into the same unit as his Pa. He was bragging to me the day he signed up. They took me, they took me. He kept saying, sporting his sword and crested cloak around. He lasted a year, his Pa not long after that, died in the wars in the south. So, count your lucky stars that you are here,”

“What happened?” Dragh asked, surprising himself.

“They never told me. Just got a letter that he was killed,”

Dragh felt the last words like a punch to the face.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry they are gone, they are supposed to tell the families what happened to their loved ones,”

Dragh stumbled through the words. He had faced many widows, many grieving mothers and fathers in his life. But they were always ate distance. He was of course the General. Not just a general, but a Sunborn as well. They’d cry, they’d grieve, but he always told them the truth.

The line moved again, Dragh and the lady stepped forward.

“Soka dear. It’s not your fault,” The old lady patted him on the shoulder. “It’s that bloody General they got terrorizing the south I hear. His son ought to stop him, he seems the right sort. You know they call his father mad? They call in the General of Death,”

Dragh felt the anger rising in him, the General of Death. He’d never heard it before. He couldn’t believe that they called him that. The very people he’d spent his life defending.

He wanted to tell her he’d find out what happened to them, that he was sorry for her loss. The line moved ahead, saving Dragh from an awkward moment. He was not sure what to say next. He cursed himself. These men had signed up to serve. And he’d not made sure that their families knew how they died. Why they’d died.

“What is your name?” Dragh asked.

They shuffled forward, another step, a half step.

“Names Rosa Valera. From the street of cloth, the big red brick building on the corner,” Rosa said, a smile on her face.

Dragh dipped his head in thanks.

“Mam, please come forward,” A tall guard on the left called to Rosa.

Dragh was thankful and sad to meet Rosa, making a mental note to find out about her son and husband. He always tried to keep relatives out of one Legion, some days it could save entire bloodlines.

Dragh hobbled forward, faking a slight limp as Rosa walked into the city and past the guards.

The tall guard on the left waved him forward again. He nodded to the guard across the gate who stepped across to hem in Dragh, give him less space to move.

Dragh would have been impressed, but wished he’d pulled simpler guards. These men were sharp.

“What’s your business in Landor?” The tall one asked, a slight lisp to his speech.

Dragh kept his eyes averted, not making eye contact, he kicked at the dirt. “Trying to find some work is all,”

The shorter guard from the right of the gate put his hand on Dragh’s shoulder and leaned in. “You looking for blade work? What are those for? You served?”

“Spent a few years in the Fourth, served under Marius,” Dragh said.

“Gavin, this one served under Marius, didn’t you serve under him in the south?” The smaller man said.

The tall man nodded. “Aye, whose squad did you serve in old one?”

Dragh cursed his mistake. He knew Generals. His own Legates, but he didn’t know the Fourth’s. He was going to have to say something, but what would get these men to let him into Landor? He didn’t want to have to pull rank, not after he’d tried to hide his identity. The Council had spies everywhere, these two might be spies for all he knew.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“I Dunno his name, was a fat one, couldn’t run the length of a camp,” Dragh said, making it up as he talked.

The tall guard laughed aloud, slapping his knee as he bent over.

Dragh tensed.

“That fat one was Renau, the weaver. I remember him. The only place he run was to the bakers,” The tall guard said, laughing as he did.

“Don’t be using them things in the city, you hear me old one?” The man on the right said, waving him through.

“Many thanks’ men. Many thanks,” Dragh nodded to each man and hobbled into Landor. Fear touched him now. He knew where he had to go, but didn’t know if he had the strength for it. He needed something, something he’d only heard a rumor of. Something that he wasn’t sure existed except for a comment from his father, many years before.

—--

“You,”

The words were spoken simply, quietly by the old man, more a question than a statement.

There was a place in the south of Landor that Dragh had avoided since he was a child. A place where he had memories of pain and frustration. A place that more than anywhere else he did not want to be.

“Yes old man, I have returned,” Dragh said with as much hate in his voice he could muster. He breathed in through his nose, sharply. He felt a tremor in his hand.

The old man was clothed in a long brown robe. A simple rope around his waist. The garb of a man of the gods. His whisps of white hair stood at odd angles from his head, as if trying to escape him.

The old man smiled, his teeth rotted.

Dragh cringed at the sweet stink of his breath, the smell bringing him back to his childhood. He had to resist lashing out at the priest of Sazaal, god of knowledge. He took an involuntary step back.

“Your father told me that one day you would return. But I knew, I knew you’d return. When you had learned that knowledge is more valuable than the blade,”

Dragh cracked his knuckles. Clenching and unclenching his hands. He could still feel the pain in his hands from his childhood, from learning. “Show me what we have of our histories from before the Cleansing,”

The old man smiled again, this time a wicked smile. “You have finally asked the right question Dragh. I taught you well it seems, I did not have hope, but I always surprised by some of my former students, even if you didn’t last the year,”

“Show me what we have on the Council, The Cleansing,” Dragh ordered the old man. Dragh felt the blood rush to his face. He tool a half step forward, his hand finding the handle of Drago, his bowie knife. Sweat beaded at his back, but he was cold.

The old man raised and eyebrow, leaning away from Dragh.

“You know, I found out today that the people of Landor have a name for me, a name that was not given by my father and mother, but by the very people I serve. They call me the General of Death,” Dragh said.

The old man nodded furrowing his eyebrows at Dragh as if to ask a question.

“I’ve burned down two buildings recently, and I’m beginning to enjoy it. Show me what we have in the Sunborn Archive. Show me right now or I will live up to my name and burn this palace down with you in it old man,” Dragh said quietly.

The old man’s eye narrowed. He inhaled sharply.

They stared at each other, a battle of the wills, and not for the first time in Dragh’s life. He felt the cold stone seats on his back, the lashes, the shouting and hitting. He could feel the shame in his heart when he had to tell his father he’d quit. His time with the Library at a close.

That was a day he would never forget. Disappointment had been etched into his fathers face, his eyes soft with sadness. Dragh had faced death and betrayal in his long life of soldiery. He’d faced his own uncle trying to kill him. He realized in this moment that the old man had no power over him now. He was the master of his own fate.

He smiled at the master of books then. A real smile.

The old man’s stare faltered, he looked away, turning and walking into the heart of the library.

Dragh looked down at the man’s hands, gnarled and old. He remembered the beatings he’d taken by the old man’s hands. He resisted the urge to pull out Drago, his bowie knife and cut his hands off.

The library was located to the south of the castle. It was built of the same stone as the castle, quarried from the mountains of the Car Lauch. A hard granite that was cut into stones taller than a man. It was laid out in four rows of shelves, more than forty rows across the large open building. Each shelf contained hundreds of books and scrolls. They were all organized by subjects and centuries. In the center of the rows were the study tables. All of them long oak tables, dark with age. The seats carved of stone, rising out of the floor, cut into the very stone that was laid in building the place.

The old man swept down the main aisleway, two sets of rows on either side of them. Light spilled in from the upper windows. Dragh could smell the musty smell of books that he’d known as a child in this place.

Dragh followed the old man, noticing the limp he had in his left leg. One he’d tried to hide. He laughed at himself. He’d feared this old man for most of his life. His sharp tongue, and the way he’d treated Dragh as a child.

“It will require the key. I assume that you still have it?” The old man asked, walking straight through the rows of tables in the center of the library.

“Aye,” Dragh said.

They walked with purpose to the back of the library, it’s only additional room one for the master of the library to stay in.

Dragh went through the back door with the old man, laughing as he did.

“What do you find amusing?” The old man asked, closing his door.

Dragh shook his head. “I was just in a room like this, a place like this with another false priest who claimed he had answers,”

“And what of him?”

Dragh looked the old man in the eyes. “He met his god,”

Silence filled the room.

Dragh took in the space. Simple and cold compared to the opulence of the Church of Zufier he’d burned. There was one more door inside of the master’s room. It was smaller than the first, but different. It was made up of black iron, not wood. It was coated in an oil that made it almost wet.

Dragh put his hand on his chest, feeling for the key that hung under his shirt. He fished it out and approached the door.

“Two to the left, four to the right,” The old man recited.

Dragh found the small opening for the key in the center of the door. He inserted the key and followed the old man’s instructions.

Two clicks, then four, then a dull scraping noise started on the other side of the door.

Dragh stepped back and looked to the old master.

The old man shrugged. “Your father did not explain the mystery of this place to me. I only know the instructions that have been passed to the master of this place for generations. We are the keepers Dragh. Nothing more.

Dragh pushed at the door. The door gave way easily, sliding without a sound. It moved inward, swinging open to shed light on a dark room.

The smell of burnt leaf, ink and old paper hit Dragh like a hammer. It was his fathers scent. The scent that had colored his childhood. Kallen’s study had smelled of burnt leaf, a habit he’d picked up later in life.

“The records begin with you forefather, Ren Sunborn,” The old man quipped.

Dragh felt his blood boil.

“I do not need you anymore old man, be gone!” Dragh roared.

The old man cowered.

Dragh turned, pulled one of the master’s oil lanterns off his wall and walked back into the study. When he looked back from inside, the master had disappeared from his view. He laughed again. The old man had haunted the memories of his childhood, and now he disappeared from sight.

Turning back to the Archive he shone the lantern’s light across the room.

The room had a high ceiling, the same stone of the Car Lauch, cold and familiar rose up in an intricate spiral. Whoever had made this room had taken care to hide it, but had also made it a work of art. The stones swirled like the winds and turned it around it’s top, making a beautiful sweeping ceiling.

It was an open space, it’s walls covered in shelves instead of rows of them like the library. Dragh walked around the edges, running his hand over the smooth shelves. The wood was light with dark spots, a fine finish on it of wax or oil. He pulled his hand away and rubbed his thumb over his forefinger.

“Huh,”

Even after all of the years since someone had worked here, they were still lightly oiled. Each shelf had a name or places. Some he’d heard of. The tribes of the Sinovi. Black cloaked and martial. Each man and women a terror with the blade. Ralarian Islands, the home of the best sailors in the world, south of the continent, a collection of islands spread across the sea. Some called them pirates. Dragh knew better, thinking of the old captain from his youth that had helped him escape certain death in the north. El Alera. Jevin, The Horde, The Council and more.

He could smell the dust on the old books, but the floor was clean. Someone cared for this place.

Dragh walked over to the small desk and sorted through the paper strewn across it. He sat down, putting his hands on the desk and letting out a deep breath. His father had sat here. Before he died, before he’d passed on Dawnbringer to Dragh’s son, Harin, passing the crown on to him.

Dragh picked up the pipe that lay in a clay cup with ash in it. He breathed in, smelling the dried leaf that his father had smoked. A tear came unbidden to his eye. He breathed through his nose and clamped his eyes closed. He missed his father.

“You have work to do Dragh,” he chided himself out of his memories.

Pushing the chair back he walked over to the row of books where he’d seen the name Ren. The last emperor.

He’d been taught of Ren, the last emperor before The Cleansing, but did not know of the histories before.

He took the tomb, covered in dry cracked leather and put it in front of him on the desk.

The empire was something that all knew of, broken up by the Cleansing, the Council had given the nations back to the Kings of old. He’d been told that his family had been given Landor back after it had been taken from them. That the Sunborn should be thankful for it.

He read through the first pages of the book, scanning the content. It seemed like a journal of sorts. Entries of a life, explaining the state of the world through the eyes of the man writing it.

Simple things, who he was thankful to in his life, who’d taught him humility and morality in his life. Next came discussion of the empire. The makeup of the place that Ren ruled. He ascended to the throne through his bloodline. The Sunborn bloodline.

Dragh sat back in his chair, rubbing at his eyes. He read the passage, again and again.

The blood that runs through my veins the stuff that gives me life gave me the throne. The blood of the Sunborn, my line gave us the throne of empire, by assent from the gods themselves.

How could this be? They were Kings, not Emperors. What happened ? How could the last emperor, in his own journal call himself a Sunborn? Had Dragh been lied to his whole life, did his father know of this?

I fought to unify this place, from the tribes of our fathers and mothers to this very throne from which I rule. Those that would have taken it in my stead have allied themselves to us.

Us? Dragh shook his head. Us? He’d only know of Ren. Who was he speaking of. Part of him wanted to call for the old librarian, the priest of knowledge. The other half of him reminded himself that he’d kill the old man if he saw him again. Dragh put his head back down to the page.

The horsemen of the west, they were the last holdouts, I had to give them free passage to the east’s plains to graze their horse herds. But, the north gained new bloodlines for their stock.

Dragh leaned back. The more he learned, the more he realized he didn’t know. The horde was once allied to the Sunborns. They were part of an empire. His families empire. Could he make peace with them once again? Or had The Council taken their peace when they built the Skellen Pass?

Dragh looked around the Archive, his fathers pipe, a walking stick in the corner of gnarled drift wood, all reminders of his father. He pushed his chair back again, returning to the shelves where he’d found the journal of Ren and picked up his fathers pipe.

He held it close to his nose and inhaled.

“Cherry wood,” He said aloud, shocked at the vivid memories of Kallen that it brought back. His father,

As he ran his fingers down the leather backed book spines he read. Names of kings throughout the last thousand years of Landor’s histories. Hefal, Yannier, Junnis, Klef, Edwed, Danes and on the list of names went. Generation after generation. Until he got to the name he was looking for. Harin.

Dragh’s hand hurt, a memory of years gone by. He remembered the beatings when the old librarian had caught him with an old book he’d not been aloud to read. As a boy he’d not understood it.

Dragh stopped, recognizing the script of his father’s hand.

Harin. He’d written his own name across the spine of the journal.

Taking it out of the shelf, Dragh was careful to treat the book gently. The book smelled of must and iron ink. The book was heavy as he lifted it, the reason for the big table in the center of the room. He set it down on the desk, his heart pounding in his chest. He licked his lips, suddenly dry. Dragh opened up the journal to the first page, his hands shaking slightly as he turned the thick cover and first page over to the right.

Son, if you are reading this, I waited too long to tell you the truth of our bloodline.

Dragh fell backwards into the wooden chair, his momentum pushing the legs of the chair back on the stone floor, scraping.

Dragh shook his head. It was as if his dead father was speaking directly to him from the past.

A sudden hunger filled Dragh. He had to know, what had his father left for him? What gift of knowledge, sharper than the edge of a blade might be hidden in these pages. He pulled himself forward and began to devour his father’s journal.