Dawn's Edge I: The Queen's Seeker

JOSETH - PYRRHIC

They had been summoned to the Hall of Heroes to pay their respects to the dead. Twenty rangers and their wards had died in the most recent raid; even five sentries had been wounded in the Battle of Kingsgrave. Joseth sensed fear in the air around them; it had been years since forsworn had come within a hundred leagues of Proud Spire. His fellow watchmen were singing The Raven's Feast, an ode to those who had died at their post at the fortresses of Vǫrðrfell. He hadn't been taught the words to the song. He felt Commandant Maldorn's pale icy blue stare on his face, and so he moved his mouth to make it look as though he were singing.

The Hall of Heroes was a cavernous dome-shaped gallery made of black and white marble veined with gold streaks. Gigantic arches of stone carved into the likeness of the Eight Kings of Elldinore reached up to a curved ceiling. Central to the roof decoration were nine scenes from the Book of Warden's Dawn of which The Rising of Vǫrðrfell was the best known; it depicted the dwarven Ironhands wielding giant stone hammers and carving forts into the mountainside to build the Twelve Towers, all illustrated in lashings of rich pastel paintwork. The Hall had in fact been a church during its origins, Joseth knew. It was one of the few things he had been told during his initiation almost seven years ago. During those days there were thousands of monks and priestesses that served at all the towers stretching for three hundred miles east and west. It was said that they used the prayers of the Trinity of Light to keep at bay a terrible evil, brooding beyond the mountains that ward. These days, however, the First Order had become merely a shadow of its former prestige. Just a ragtag band of vagabonds and traitors retreating to absolution at the edge of the world.

Oronard had never taught him any of those legends during his childhood at Irondorne. He had had to rely on eavesdropping other acolyte's conversations to learn about Proud Spire, the centremost of the Twelve Towers and headquarters of the First Order. Unlike all the other lords and their sons, Oron had never had enough time to teach him how to read and write. Joseth had been born in the midst of a rebellion between House Ferric and House Mandhill over sovereignty of the irondeep below the Frostfells. He remembered sitting at the window of his bed chambers every morning when the world was still and grey, and waving to his father ride into battle. 'Come back soon!' Joseth had always called after his father. When the iron-clad figure riding on horseback turned to his only son, Joseth saw no eyes behind the small slits in the lord's silver full helm shaped like a bear's head. It was as if a stranger had looked up at him in that little dark window and seen only an empty space. That was the feeling that had hurt him most of all, when his own father looked straight through him. He was not taught the noble Houses of Ardna or the lands they held, not like he knew his little brother Caderyn would be. Joseth grew up knowing nothing of the world but that great big moon-coloured door to his bedroom where he spent most of his time. He would look out over the Grey Grass Sea and see a curtain of swords, flashings of silver and spurts of red on the valleys as Ulryden Ferric warred with his own father, Ildfred.

At just thirteen years old, his father had decided the north was too dangerous a place for Joseth. He had returned to his room one day to find Maguster Vanadis rushing about his chamber, pulling chests open and throwing Joseth's clothes all over the floor, and hurrying them into cases. 'What are you doing?' Joseth had yelled, picking up all of his belongings and casting them back onto the bed. When the maguster explained that Joseth was to travel south to become a squire of the King's Guard, his heart had grown hollow and cold. His father was sending him away. He had failed his House. He could not read or write or say all of the lords in the Northern Realms. He was a stupid, dumb boy and only knew one thing – war. His father was not home when he left on horseback to head south, to the King's Reach. Joseth had looked up at the many windows in the castle to see if anyone was waving him goodbye, and asking him to be home soon. But all he saw when he looked back on that bronze-grey castle was loneliness. Irondorne had looked like an evil giant when he stared up at it as he left along the south road. It rested upon part of the Jarnos Dome, a spur of rock almost four hundred feet high; the land fell away sharply on the north, west and south, and a ditch cut into the rock protected the remaining approaches to the castle. Irondorne had a concentric design, Maguster Vanadis had taught him, with one line of defences enclosed by another, forming an inner and outer ward; the outer wall had been subjected to both weather and invasion over the years. At least, that is what his home had looked like ten years ago. He was not so sure what it looked like now. He remembered what Vanadis had told him about Irondorne every night, like a prayer almost, just to keep the memory alive in his heart.