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  Night Born

  Dagger of the World, Book 1

  K. L. Reinhart

  Copyright © 2019 Fairfield Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Prologue: The Night-born Child

  1. Worm

  2. Null

  3. The Chief External

  4. The Loranthian Scroll

  5. Complications

  6. Beastial

  7. Forest Lessons

  8. In the Dark

  9. Shrine

  10. The Path of Pain

  11. The Brilliant Host

  12. The Old Ways

  13. Rewards

  14. New Homes and Old Enemies

  15. Revenge

  16. Learn Quick

  17. The Chase Begins

  18. Messengers

  19. Always Hungry

  20. Rukmol, Bugat, and Rodak

  21. The Fourteenth Maxim

  22. Loyalties

  23. The Night-born Novitiate

  Epilogue: The Hexan

  Thank You

  Prologue: The Night-born Child

  Father Jacques of the Enclave looked at the group of three riders approaching him, and his fist tightened on the sword at his side. It had been a long time since travelers had come out of Everdell Forest, and none of them had ever done what these three were about to do.

  The father frowned in the night. Dark hair shadowed his eyes. If anyone had bothered to ask him—and no one had—he would have said this whole business smelled like trouble.

  The skies were clouded and black. No stars and no moon, and of course it was raining as well.

  What better night to perform a task such as this? It was the sort of night for quiet work, the sort that the Enclave excelled at. A night for sneaking and private meetings, for plots hatched and untimely ends met.

  The father wondered briefly which of the above this night would end with . . .

  Beside him was the way-marker for the Enclave—a thin, black obelisk with obscure markings that had been there long before Father Jacques had ever made this place his home. The magister said that it was older even than the Black Keep, which his small community lived in.

  Jacques grumbled to himself as he waited. He was approaching his sixth decade, not old by any stretch of the imagination, but his back already ached with the cold that would leave him in agony tomorrow. A lifetime of missions for the Enclave had taken their toll.

  At least they didn’t send me to clear an orcish warband. Again, he thought.

  Riding one of the scrubby Enclave ponies would only make the bone-ache worse, but at least he would be riding rather than walking the two miles back to the dark stones of the keep.

  But Jacques would do his duty, as he had done ever since he was five years old. Maybe that was why the magister had chosen him for this task.

  A soft trilling sound from ahead, almost like birdsong, and Jacques raised a hand in greeting. His other hand was wrapped around the sword hilt under his cloak. His upraised hand had only two fingers on it and a thumb—a gift from his second training mission for the Enclave, at only sixteen.

  As the three riders drew closer, the older man could see the way that their cloaks shimmered in the night—a deep, velvety midnight blue that was just a shade off true black. The horses they rode were taller than his mount, chestnut creatures whose breath formed plumes in the cold air.

  “Father,” the first rider said as he approached, pulling back the dark cowl to reveal a face that was much finer than that of a human.

  “Elf,” Jacques said suspiciously.

  The rider was indeed an elf, with the pointed ears and wide eyes. His features were fine and bird-like, and his skin had an almost ethereal glow about it. The elf had black hair and a small circlet atop his forehead—made of the thinnest silver with black onyx stones set around its rim. A hard, cold, and starry light came from his eyes as he regarded the human before him. The elf didn’t bother to introduce himself.

  “As has been arranged.” The elf who was clearly the leader raised a pale, fine-fingered hand toward the other two riders. The first appeared to be another elf male, younger and sterner, with deep russet hair. Father Jacques could see a curving blade at this younger elf’s side.

  But the other was an elf maiden. Her hair was also black, and her skin as pale as the first moon would be, had it been in the sky this night.

  In her hands, she carried a swaddled bundle of deep, rich green cloth.

  “But—” The elf maiden looked up at the first in anguish. Tears sparkled like diamonds, spilling from her large eyes.

  “You know what to do with him, don’t you?” the first elf said in a stern, regal tone—not to the elf maiden, but to Father Jacques.

  “My magister has given me instruction.” Father Jacques nodded, just once, and held out his three-fingered hand.

  The woman was clearly bereft, but Jacques saw a deep weariness settle on her features as she accepted the inevitable. It had to be this way. She handed the bundle of green to the father, who caught it a little awkwardly before snugging the elf child to his lap. When he looked down, he could see the pointed ears and the ethereal skin of the newborn’s face.

  “Then I hope that we may never meet again,” the first rider stated, wheeling his pony away as he gestured for the other two to follow. Father Jacques saw the elf maiden hesitate and look once more at the child she had given into the care of the humans.

  “His name is Terak!” she said defiantly, holding Father Jacques’s gaze fiercely until he nodded. And then she, too, turned her horse away and rode back into the night. Back into the Everdell.

  “Well, now.” Jacques watched the dark lines of the forest a moment longer after they had gone, but there were no more answers to this mystery. He regarded the elvish infant again. Blissfully asleep.

  So young, Father Jacques thought. Younger than he was when he entered the Enclave.

  And so different.

  “It’s going to be hard on you in there,” Father Jacques murmured before wheeling his horse around with a whistle and a click of his tongue. “But I guess you’ll toughen up,” he said sadly, as he started the winding and bumpy ride back to the Black Keep.

  1

  Worm

  “Faster!” screamed the very large man as he tried to smash Terak’s brains in with a stout iron oak club. The weapon was stained a deep ruddy chestnut, and it had a thousand scratches and dents where generations of previous acolytes had failed.

  “Ixcht!” Terak swore as he threw himself to one side, only able to move his upper body thanks to the floor-locks that held his thin feet sternly in place.

  The elvish youth was barely eighteen summers by his own reckoning—not that he remembered his first few years here at the strange community called simply the Enclave.

  Terak had grown. His hair was dark and had that lustrous quality of all his kind. But despite the daily training regimes with either Father Gourdain, who was trying to kill him right now, or one of Gourdain’s senior students—and despite the grueling physical regimes of climbing the Tartaruk Mountains or diving in the frozen Tartaruk lakes—Terak the elf had never filled out as the other human acolytes had.

  Which was a problem. Terak ducked another backhanded swing of the club. His shoulders were already black-and-blue from yesterday’s thumps, and the day before that.

  But it hadn’t mattered yesterday, had it? Terak hissed.

  Because today was a Testing Day, and if he didn’t manage to do well, then he wouldn’t be able to move beyo
nd the white belt of the lowest form of Enclave acolyte to the gray belt of a novitiate. The Enclave had many such strange grades, ranging all the way up to the magister herself.

  It was well-lit in Father Gourdain’s training hall, with lanterns set in alcoves lining the long, stone-built room. All the better for the chiefs to judge me. Terak’s eyes flickered to the dark terrace that ran along the top of the room. Shapes in cowls. The leading fathers of the order were up there, and they would be assessing his every move.

  Not that I can move, the young elf thought in disgust.

  THWACK! Pain burst through his forearm as Father Gourdain caught him a glancing blow.

  “Focus!” the man roared.

  Father Gourdain was the Chief Martial for the community of the Enclave, and he was the latest barrel-shaped human in a long line of similar barrel-shaped Chief Martials who had imparted their dangerous knowledge to young and impressionable minds.

  Well, or separated those young and impressionable minds from their bodies, that was.

  “Worm!” Gourdain growled as he stepped back to catch his breath.

  It was the nickname that the other boys and girls of this place had given him, thanks to the fact that his pale skin made him appear fey and strange to them.

  Just try me, old man! Terak glared back. He knew that Gourdain was trying to rile him up. Trying to get him to snap. Well, maybe he succeeded! Terak thought with a wolf-like snarl.

  The Chief Martial’s next blow was thrown forward. This time, Terak met it, managing to catch the blow with one wrist, while at the same time pushing the club away with his other palm. A classic deflection.

  The heavyset Gourdain grunted.

  “Okay,” he said, before drawing back his iron oak staff for a mighty sweep that would surely break a bone—

  But Terak could see it coming a mile off. He lowered one knee and slammed a palm upwards in a gesture that should have forced the club away again. If he struck out with enough force, he should even have been able to disarm the Chief Martial—

  THWACK! And then, somehow, Gourdain did some trick with his wrist, and the staff flicked downward, on the outside of Terak’s deflection. It hit the elf’s shoulder with a fraction of the force that the first blow would have had, but it still made Terak let out a gasp of pain and fall backward.

  Falling is not easy to do when your feet are locked to the floor. The young elf’s back hit the stone wall and slid down, scraping all the way.

  Tap. Father Gourdain gave Terak another, brief rap of the club on top of his head. It was nonetheless still strong enough to make him see stars.

  “And you’re dead. Again.” The man’s voice was gruff, but also smug as he stepped back. “No gray belt,” he called out loudly, and then muttered more softly for Terak’s pointed ears alone. “Don’t be so cocky next time. You always have to expect your opponent to know more than you. “You’d better hope that you have better luck with the Chief Arcanum than you did with me.” The man fished into the pocket of his tight-fitted jacket of padded leather and tossed a bronze key at Terak’s feet.

  “Let yourself out. Then put the key on my desk. Dismissed,” he said nonchalantly. He whistled some jaunty human folk tune as he strode to the wooden lockers at one end of the room.

  Brute. Terak stared daggers at the man’s mound of a back. He was the sort of man who apparently had given up any need for a neck, so his body went straight to his head without anything in between.

  The acolyte’s eyes swung up to the dim gallery above, but the heavily black-robed figures were already making their way out. Terak knew that his performance didn’t necessarily mean that he hadn’t impressed any of them, in his heart of hearts, he knew that he couldn’t have.

  Maybe I’m never going to impress any of these humans, Terak thought with a sigh, as his exhausted hands snatched up the key and inserted it into the blocks at his feet. He felt the shift of the locking mechanism. The plates of stone that had clamped him there revolved apart.

  He emerged from the locks in pain and exhausted. Just like any other day at the Black Keep, Terak thought miserably.

  The Black Keep stood atop the Cliffs of Mourn in the Tartaruk Mountains. Everything about the place seemed built to inspire dread in any who might dare to visit it. The cliffs themselves were sheer gray walls made of numerous pencil-thin shale plates that stretched for hundreds of feet down to the stony gullies below.

  A thin ribbon of road climbed the far slopes, winding between stands of gnarled, wind-bent trees and gigantic boulders until it reached the keep itself.

  The fortification looked deceptively small from the outside, probably due to the high walls topped with thin monks’ towers. Everything was built out of the same black Tartaruk rock, making the place look vaguely like some gigantic sculpture of a dire wolf or monstrous vulture ready to leap down the cliffs.

  In fact, the high walls hid quite a large space—albeit mostly occupied by more black stone buildings, halls, towers, chapels, and endless, endless stairs, all interconnected and flowing from one group of rooms to the next. There were a few patches of ‘open’ space, all routinely surrounded by the higher steps and walls of neighboring halls, and all made of the flat roofs of the halls below.

  It was in perhaps the smallest of these open-air spaces that Terak sought refuge—a place called First Moon Garden.

  The elf opened the narrow wooden door. He stepped into a space that was barely bigger than two of him laid head-to-foot. It was nearing midday, and the acolytes were expected to be in the lower canteens eating, but Terak didn’t feel like it this time. The sunlight was watery and thin this high in the mountains, and the air was freezing, but Terak never felt the cold that much.

  He crouched down on his haunches and breathed out slowly. The First Moon Garden was one of the few places where Terak felt a sense of peace in the Enclave.

  It overlooked a drop of about four levels to a set of stairs below. Around its walls were great earthenware pots filled with ancient, towering plants. Inset along the walls, between the pots, were carved stone reliefs of austere and grim human faces. Men and women, their expressions serious and calm. Those weren’t what Terak came here for, however.

  “Ratachook!” He heard the familiar chittering sound of his only friend here at the Enclave.

  “C’mere, little fella,” Terak whispered. A scuttling, scampering sound came from between the earthenware plant pots.

  “Ratachook!” The creature appeared. It darted forward to the edge of one of the pots.

  Terak had no name for this creature, even though he had met it a hundred times. It was barely as big as his palm and covered with brindled, gold-and-black fur. Its long snout shivered as it took a hesitant step forward. A long, prehensile tail with a sprout of black fluff at the end moved tentatively behind it.

  What set this creature apart from any other of the keep rodents were its eyes, which were large and a deep emerald green.

  “Ratachook!” The thing twittered once again, and Terak grinned.

  “Here.” He fished in his robes for the roll of bread he had taken from the kitchens, crumbling it on the paving slabs. “I’d much rather share my meal with you than Torin or Reticula or any of the others.” The other acolytes who were tested in the group today all kept their distance from him, the worm.

  The creature’s nose was going crazy. It apparently decided that the easy meal was worth it and darted forward to pick at the crumbs.

  “I can’t stay long,” Terak’s musical voice murmured, although he wondered if he might be able to camp out here a while, unnoticed and unseen.

  But no . . . Terak set the fantasy aside. Today was, after all, Testing Day, and he still had one more chance to impress the fathers and chiefs.

  The Chief Arcanum.

  The Chief Arcanum taught the finer arts of the Enclave—the scholarly arts that ranged from scroll translation to memory skill and, of course, magic!

  “Not that we’ve been shown any,” Terak complained to his rodent
friend. The acolytes weren’t allowed to practice magic, to even learn about magic, until they were “of a mature age.”

  “How are we supposed to prepare for a test of something we’ve never even practiced!” said Terak.

  “Ratachook!” The creature offered its high-pitched opinion. Terak didn’t think it was being helpful. When he turned to offer his own thoughts on the matter to his furry friend, the creature shot across the garden to the far side, between two large earthenware pots. Terak crumbled the last of his lunch and stepped to throw it where the creature had gone.

  That’s when he saw there was another stone relief of a face there, half-hidden behind the plants. And it was completely different than all the others.

  It was the face of a human woman, but Terak found something about her strangely compelling . . .

  To start with, she wasn’t carved from the same Tartaruk black stone as the other reliefs. Instead, she was of a white marble, long since stained an off-yellow color, presumably through the action of the near-constant rains here at the top of the world. With a heavy scrape and protesting muscles, Terak shifted the plant to get a better look at her.

  The woman’s face did not look straight ahead, and it did not frown grimly, either. Instead, she had her head turned, looking over her shoulder, with her chin raised. The sculptor had caught a thoughtful, almost optimistic air, as if the woman had just realized something.

  Under her chin her open palm held a perfectly round stone.

  “I see you found Magister Lorett,” A voice disturbed him, making him jump. Terak hopped back from the wall to see who had invaded his sanctuary.