Chapter 10: The Sleeper Sword

 

The Sleeper is Awake

 

Two thousand years have passed since the epic explosion in what is now called the Black Valley. Torrullin is in the invisible realms and the Darak Or is with him, and the universe enjoys a time of unprecedented peace.

A new threat rises on the cursed horizon.

It is time for the Sleeper Sword to awaken.

Ready to return to Valaris, Torrullin cannot exit the otherworld without aid. Samuel is his kinsman, his fate forged to the greatest sorcerer the cosmos has ever known. He swears to hold his hand out to Torrullin, to aid him home.

The old players gather for a renewal of the fateful games. This time the duel between a father and son will wound many, including Valla kin. Torrullin needs to build a relationship with his grandson Tannil, save Fay from hell, rescue Saska from captivity, and find the means to end Tymall. Their contest will reverberate through the spaces.

In an endless adventure of urgency and drama, the on-going saga of Torrullin’s role as saviour is as a sharp as the sword he reclaims and as blunt as his acerbic tongue. Wherever he goes someone will be hurt. To love him is to be ruined, to hate him is to be ruined.

Perhaps true catharsis lies in the realm of dreams.

 

CHAPTER 10

 

How to begin anew when hope is sundered? How to lift a head when life has no meaning? Why is it this hard to feel? Someone, please, throw disaster and suffering at me … I need to feel!

~ A cry of despair from the last Malnas

 

 

Luvanor

Atrin Continent

Near the Academia of Truth

 

CALTIAN KNELT BEFORE the grave. He was sad, for Key-ler was a true friend. His fingers trailed over the recently lowered slab. Mischievous, practical, impulsive and clever Key-ler.

The rotund Brother who aided him two millennia ago when he, Caltian, confronted the Dragon-man. Key-ler, first to realise who the Dragon-man was. Key-ler, who organised the rebuilding of his beloved Academia after Murs destruction, putting even Taranis, Lord of the Guardians, to work. The Dragon-man had trusted him, Tannil trusted him and Teighlar trusted him. Caltian loved him.

The graveyard was extensive, with single sites, family plots, small crypts and massive mausoleums. At the far end was a Wall of Remembrance for the many thousands who died during the Atrudis War. A sad place, but also peaceful. There were well-tended lawns, colourful flowers, stately trees and many benches. A number of Valleur moved among the old and new sites, some searching, others paying their respects. Key-ler belonged here among the departed, for the man adored history.

Caltian rose and murmured a short homage and drifted towards an exit. His gaze lingered on a name here and there and occasionally he nodded greeting at a familiar face.

As he left, he reflected on how it changed for him. Before Torrullin, he was shunned for his dark hair and grey eyes among a golden people, but now it was a mark of recognition. He was the man who slew the Dragon and he was the present Vallorin’s stepfather. No one remarked on his colouring, and he no longer needed to convince anyone he was as Golden on the inside as any of them.

He snorted as he ambled the grassy lane of trees that led to the Academia. The death of a friend and confidante had a way of causing one to re-evaluate … as when Torrullin died.

Perched on a large boulder off the trodden path, he grew introspective. Key-ler’s passing would leave a gap in his life, but Torrullin left a void. He never made peace with that particular passing and that was besides the telling that the man would return. Maybe he would not see it happen. He needed to lift out of depression and move on. It was useless hanging onto the coattails of the dead. He had Key-ler to thank for this soul searching and no doubt the Brother clapped in glee somewhere while encouraging him to do it, to trust in himself.

Caltian gave a reluctant grin. The spectre of Key-ler. Ha! Key-ler was nobody’s spectre. He had been whole in himself, sure of his place and happy with his life. The grin vanished. It was time to do the same. Find wholeness, find his place, reach for that same happy state, and, further, understand what he needed to attain it. This was an excellent time to try, having stared death intimately in the face the night before. Mortality forced issues.

His childhood was difficult. Shunned because of human looks and ostracised because of his family’s adherence to the old ways of magic and scrying - when sorcery was long subjugated - and laughed at because of his name. Beast Breacher. Well, he achieved the destiny his name implied, and no one laughed now. No one had laughed for a long time. He expected them to and that was the trouble. He carried scars. He had to find a way to let go or he would be a bitter fool before long - he was close to that already.

It came to him then, there on that boulder, he did not need to forgive anyone to go forward. He needed to forgive himself. He should have revelled in his difference, his future. He should have stood up for himself and his family. He bore scars he himself inflicted.

Nemisin had been different, he who accepted a symbiosis with a Dragon. Vannis had been in warring on humans and entering nine-thousand-year hibernation to do so again. Torrullin had been incredibly different from any norm, the Dragon-man and Enchanter in one. Not one hid in shame. Caltian could not count himself as august as those three Vallorins; how dared he hide for shame?

I am able to hold my head high, for others do not make me - they never did. I made myself and succeeded. He laughed, feeling free in a manner not experienced before. Yes, I can let go. It is liberating.

Caltian bent to extract a blade of grass, nibbled at the sweet end, his gaze faraway. Then there were the long years of Creed, awaiting the Dragon-man. They waited on the fulfilment of an ancient prophecy, knowing it would come in his lifetime, for his name said so. It was a time of fear and uncertainty, lack of self-confidence, and a time to learn the higher realms of sorcery. He devised a trap, a sorcerous prison employing the Dragon symbol to call and dupe his quarry, and Key-ler, Keeper of the Keys, locked it.

The long years of waiting, training, uncertainty, the suspicion and taunts from non-Creed, had taken toll by that terrible night, but finding the Dragon-man was not only the Vallorin, but the Enchanter, shocked him. His personal foundations cracked wide to throw him into the abyss. For a time, he was lost. He had not existed, except as a heart beating. The charm, the presence, the emotion of Torrullin pulled him out, and the Enchanter’s attempt to take on an entire nation’s suffering, to spare them and to share it, created new foundations, rock steady and solid.

Caltian smiled as he spit the grass out. In Torrullin he rediscovered who he was and became more. Their time was short and intense, not enough to know the man, but enough to know himself. And the months they spent marauding about the universe after the Dragon’s death taught him much about others.

Lessons were learned.

The Enchanter sacrificed himself and with him, choosing of his own will to die, went the charismatic Vannis, Torrullin’s beloved grandfather. He, Caltian, was here on Luvanor at the time, attending to humans evacuated from Valaris. There was no opportunity to thank his Vallorin for restoring his faith in life and in his people. With hindsight he knew Torrullin deliberately sent him out of harm’s way and, if he examined Torrullin’s last words, he knew the Enchanter had spoken his farewell, understanding there would be sorrow after and had touched his mind to impart peace.

Lessons were unlearned.

He lost surety of premise on hearing the terrible news. A wanderer since, looking for something to give his life meaning. For a time, he grounded in falling in love with Mitrill after she gave birth to Tannil. It was a short-lived grounding. Mitrill did not love him; in him she found someone who knew Torrullin, a man safe and acceptable to take as partner. At the time he had not realised, did not yet understand Mitrill carried flame for Torrullin, but after the birth of their daughter Fay, he came to see she did not need him as he needed her. He rarely saw her now and when he did return to Valaris it was to spend time with his daughter.

He was a wanderer, travelling Luvanor, going offworld, and he no longer found joy in the unexpected. He did not like the person he evolved into.

The first step to change was made there on a boulder. He rose, and ambled down the lane. I have Key-ler to thank for reaching out to me from beyond the grave. All I need now is courage. Caltian halted in the centre of the lane. Courage to choose a new road. To make the hard decisions. Forgive myself. Done. End my marriage. It would take more than courage to face the self-possessed Mitrill, but this deadness was unhealthy. He would spend more time with Fay on Valaris. Perhaps in helping her shape a future, he would shape his own.

Minutes later he strolled in under the arch of the Academia’s imposing entrance, and stood a moment to watch. The Brothers scurried, some arguing about interpretation of some literary work, others walking with eloquent fingers in the air punctuating their thoughts. Key-ler had loved it.

He gazed at the building. It was an exact replica of the original, but its soul was profoundly changed. Today it was open-minded and there were no Web Overlords to dampen the flames of truth. It became what its name implied, the Academia of Truth, and today dealt in matters magical also. Here all the nuances of Torrullin and Vannis’ remarkable lives were examined and chronicled. Here Torrullin’s father, Taranis of the Guardians, was further immortalised in works of universal note. Here the tangled tale of Millanu, Torrullin’s mother, wife to Taranis, daughter of Vannis, was brought together and made whole for the future Valleur. Her tale began beyond the Rift, another universe, another world.

Caltian’s heart beat unevenly. Torrullin’s tale ended with ‘Remember now, there is the legend of the Sleeper who will one night awake to claim the sword of previous awakenings. We await.’

Literary licence? Maybe. Yet everyone awaited his return. There was indeed a sword. The pieces were discovered in Menllik, and it was re-forged and waiting upon the familiar hand of its wielder. Torrullin’s sword. Caltian admitted the real truth.

I wander because I await my Lord.

THE SLEEPER SWORD