The Broken Blade

1

It was almost dawn on the Great Ivory Plain, and the twin moons cast a ghostly light on the seemingly endless expanse of sparkling, hard-packed crystal. As the night wind shifted, blowing from the east, Sorak seemed to hear the tormented cries of the lost souls wandering the streets of Bodach, whose crumbling spires rose in the distance, barely visible in the bright, silvery moonlight.

Perhaps it was his imagination. Surely not even an elfling could hear across fifty miles of desert. And yet, tricks of the wind could sometimes carry sound far out in the trackless wastes of Athas, especially here where nothing grew, here on the shimmering crystal plain. As the desert breeze blew across the silt basins to the east, rustling through the palm fronds of the oasis, Sorak was almost certain he could hear the faint sounds of a tortured wailing, a chorus of ululating voices that chilled him to the bone. It was a sound he had hoped never to hear again.

Soon, the sun would rise and the living dead of Bodach would slink back to their hiding places in the ruins. The wind would cease to bear their fearsome wails across the desert, and the city of undead would fall silent as the sands swirled through its deserted streets and plazas. A deceptive stillness would once again descend upon the Great Ivory Plain as the dark sun baked its crystal surface with temperatures high enough to boil blood.

During the day, Bodach seemed merely an abandoned city on a narrow spit of land jutting into the great silt sea—the isolated, crumbling ruins of a once great civilization that had flourished upon Athas in an age when the world was green and the sea filled with water, not with brown and swirling silt. But at night, horror stalked Bodach, and those who fell victim to the city’s undead rose again to join their ranks, doomed by an age-old curse to spend eternity protecting the lost treasure of the ancients.

What Sorak had found in the city of undead was of greater value than any material treasure. He had found a gateway into Sanctuary, the refuge of the Sage, and it was there that he had learned the answers to the questions that had plagued him all his life. It was there that he had found himself, and in the process, came close to losing everything, even his life.

As he stood upon the low and rocky ridge that sheltered the oasis at the edge of the great salt plain, Sorak glanced back toward Ryana, sleeping in her bedroll by their campfire. Together, they had survived the city of undead, and their journey to find the Sage had taken them from their home in the forests of the Ringing Mountains all the way across the harsh and foreboding desert Tablelands. Along the way, they had fought marauders and mercenaries, half-giants and defilers, corrupt aristocrats and paid assassins, and a host of undead warriors. They had even defied the wrath of the Shadow King, Nibenay, himself. They had come a long way from the beginning of their quest and had both sacrificed a great deal to follow the Path of the Preserver. Their lives had changed immeasurably since they had set out on their journey, and as Sorak stood there, the cool night breeze ruffling his long, dark hair, he thought back to how it all had begun.

From childhood, he had been a tribe of one—a half-breed with a dozen personalities, some male, some female, each with distinctive attributes. A wandering pyreen had found him half dead, alone out in the desert. When the shapechanger realized that his ordeal had fragmented his young mind, she had brought him to the villichi convent, nestled high in an isolated valley of the Ringing Mountains.

The villichi were a sisterhood of warrior priestesses who had vowed to follow the Way of the Druid and the Path of the Preserver. They were women born with fully developed psionic powers, mutants ostracized from their communities. They were taller than most women, broad shouldered and long limbed, and most were marked with albino features—snow-white hair, eyes ranging from palest green or gray to pink, and pale, almost translucent skin that burned easily in the hot Athasian sun. Each year, robed villichi priestesses went out on pilgrimages to search for others of their kind, but never in all the history of Athas had there been a male villichi. In all the years the convent had existed, no male had set foot in its walls.

Though he was male, Sorak was accepted by the high mistress of the convent, both out of her reverence for the pyreen and because she had detected his inborn psionic powers. He was not only an elfling, born of a forbidden union between halfling and elf, he was also a tribe of one, a condition so rare that it was known only among villichi. He was an outcast, as were most villichi, and if he was not villichi himself, then he was as close to being one as any male had ever been. The high mistress took him in and named him Sorak, an elvish word for a nomad who travels alone.

Sorak grew up among the villichi sisterhood. One of them, Ryana, a villichi girl his own age, became his closest friend. They grew up together, played together, trained together in the exotic warrior arts of the villichi, and studied the Way of the Druid. But as they grew older, youthful friendship and affection gave way to love and sexual attraction. And Sorak found himself tormented, torn between his own desires and those of his other personalities.

The female personalities residing in him could accept Ryana as sister or friend, but not as lover, so Sorak left the convent to seek out his destiny and discover the truth of his origins. But Ryana would not be parted from him. When she found out that he had left, she broke her villichi vows, fled the convent in the middle of the night, and followed him out into the desert.

Together, they sought the Sage, the reclusive and mysterious preserver wizard who had embarked upon the long and arduous course of metamorphosis into an avangion, the only creature capable of standing against the power of the dragon kings. Only the magic of the Sage was great enough to help Sorak discover his past, and only preserver magic, which did not destroy the dwindling natural resources of Athas, could cure him of his rare condition. To accept the help of a defiler would have violated everything he had been raised to believe, and would have doomed him to forsake forever the Path of the Preserver. However, in searching for the Sage, Sorak had attracted the attention of the dragon kings and their defiler minions, who regarded the preserver wizard as the sole threat to their power.

In Bodach, Sorak and Ryana faced not only an army of undead, but the murderous champion of the Shadow King, a ruthless killer named Valsavis. They prevailed, but only at great cost. Guided by Kara, a pyreen known as the Silent One, they had found the gateway into Sanctuary in Bodach. It was a magical doorway into another time and place, in an age when Athas was still green. That was the secret of the Sage, and it was why none of the dragon kings had ever been able to find him. They sought him in the present, but he had used his magic to find a refuge in the distant past.

In Sanctuary, Sorak found the answers he had so long sought. He had already deduced that the Sage was the same person once known as the Wanderer, who had chronicled his peregrinations across Athas in a book known as The Wanderer’s Journal. What he had not known was that the preserver wizard was his grandfather.

The Sage cast a spell on Sorak, which enabled him to see into his past. He discovered who his parents were, and what his truename was, and what had become of his people. Through the magic of the Sage, Sorak saw how the Moon Runner tribe of elves had been destroyed by a necromancer called the Faceless One, a defiler wizard hired by Sorak’s halfling grandfather.

However, finding out those answers both set Sorak free and severed him from the only security he had ever really known. The voices of his multiple personas would never speak to him again. The wise, maternal Guardian; the stoic Ranger; the calculating Eyron; the brash and irrepressible Kivara; the beastlike Screech; the gentle, childlike Lyric; and the others… all were gone now. They had joined with the Sage, living on inside him as he entered the next stage of his transformation. The act that empowered the Sage’s evolution also healed Sorak’s fragmented personality, and now Sorak was left feeling more alone than he had ever felt before.

“All living creatures are alone, Sorak,” Ryana told him afterward in an attempt to ease his pain. “That is why they mate and bond in friendship.”

“Yes, I know,” he replied. “But it is one thing to know it, and still another to experience truly being alone for the first time. I have never known the feeling. For as long as I can remember, I have had the others with me. Now, I feel their absence, the emptiness in my soul. It feels as if a part of me is missing.”

Nor was his multiplicity the only thing he lost.

When he had left the convent, High Mistress Varanna had given him a gift, a wondrous sword named Galdra—the enchanted blade of elven kings. It had been entrusted to her safekeeping by a pyreen elder, who had received it from the hand of Akron himself, last of the ancient line of elven kings. Sorak had not known the nature of the blade’s enchantment when he had received it, but he learned that it would cut through anything, and that other blades would shatter upon contact with its elven steel. He knew, too, that if Galdra fell into the hands of a defiler, its magic blade would shatter—and that was precisely what happened when he fought Valsavis, champion of the Shadow King. When Valsavis seized the sword, a blinding explosion of white light shattered the enchanted blade. Now, all that remained was the hilt and about a foot of broken blade. Of the legend once engraved on it in ancient runes—“Strong in spirit, true in temper, forged in faith”—only the elvish symbols for “Strong in spirit” now remained. A defiler’s hand had touched it, and the enchantment was broken.

As he stood alone upon the rocky ridge in the first orange-tinted light of dawn, Sorak drew the broken blade from his belt and held it up before him, staring at it as it gleamed with a faint blue eldritch light, the remaining trace energies of the enchantment. Why keep it? It was useless as a sword, and Sorak bore Valsavis’s iron sword now, anyway. But Ryana had insisted that the legend of Galdra still stood for something and could be of use to them. Sorak grimaced wryly as he thought of it.

It was said in the songs of elven bards that whoever bore the sword Galdra was fated to become the Crown of Elves, the ruler who would once again unite the scattered tribes under one king. In his travels, Sorak had encountered elves who had believed that he would be that king, but he wanted no part of any elven crown.

Though his mother had named him Alaron after the long-dead elven king, Sorak felt the name did not belong to him. For as long as he could remember, he had been Sorak, the Nomad, and now that he had finally learned his truename, it did not seem to fit him. He was no elven king, no elven kingmaker.

So why keep the broken blade? Ryana thought it important, as did Kara. “Keep it as a symbol of what you have achieved, and what we struggle for,” the pyreen told him before they parted.

But was it really a symbol of achievement, Sorak wondered, or a symbol of a life left behind? He was no longer a tribe of one, an elfling with a dozen different personalities. Now, he was merely Sorak the elfling, the Nomad, around whom unwanted legends had already sprung up. Such notoriety brought only trouble, and he had enough trouble as it was.

For the first time in his life, he felt alone and vulnerable. Yet, for all that he had lost, he had gained the one thing he had never thought that he could have. Ryana.

He turned his back upon the great salt plain and gazed down the slope into the small oasis where Ryana slept, curled up in her bedroll near the smoking embers of their campfire. He thought back to the day she had declared her love for him. It seemed almost a lifetime ago…

As usual, after weapons training in the morning, the villichi students went down to the stream to bathe. In a desert world, a running stream was the rarest of luxuries, yet Sorak and his villichi companions took it for granted. The Ringing Mountains around them were covered with thick, old-growth forests, and he spent long days hiking through the lush woods, or running with Tigra by his side, a tigone that had been his constant companion since his childhood.

Instead of joining the others at the lagoon, Sorak and his best friend Ryana wandered off to a special spot a bit farther downstream. As they sat together on a large rock outcropping in the middle of the stream, feeling the coolness of the water rush over them, Ryana told him how she felt. “Sorak… there is something I have been meaning to ask you—”

“I know what you are going to ask. I have known for some time.” He had seen it coming and had dreaded the moment when she would finally give voice to her feelings. She had known he was a tribe of one, but because his other personalities all spoke with his male voice, she had not suspected that some of them were female, and he had been afraid to tell her. When she learned the truth at last, it took her completely by surprise.

Shocked and dismayed by his disclosure, Ryana fled to the temple tower, where she began a period of solitary meditation.

That was when Sorak appeared before High Mistress Varanna and told her he was going to leave the convent. He felt his continued presence would only bring heartache to Ryana, whom he cared for very deeply, but could never have. The vows taken by villichi priestesses did not permit them to have mates, and even if they had, his female personas would never have allowed it.

Though he had lived with the villichi sisterhood, he was never one of them, and as an adult male living among them, he knew he would only be a source of discord. He thought that by leaving, he would free Ryana from the burden of loving him.

Instead, she forsook her vows and followed.

Now, freed of his multiple personas, Sorak was able to accept her as a lover at long last, and that made all the difference. The harsh light of morning softened in his eyes as he looked down upon Ryana, sleeping below. In Sanctuary, they had made love for the first time, and they vowed that they would always be together, no matter what the future brought.

He pulled the broken blade from his belt. It might still have made a useful knife, even though the tip resisted all his efforts to sharpen it into a tapering point. Useless, though it yet sparked faintly with a crackling discharge of blue energy, like a guttering candle.

So much for the legend of the Crown of Elves, he thought. A broken blade, a broken people, scattered throughout Athas in small desert-dwelling tribes or living in the cities, where they performed the most menial of labor or eked out lives as gamers and merchants in the squalid, overcrowded elven quarters. A legend, perhaps, would give them some small hope for their future. Those who still believed in it, at any rate. But if they met with the reality, then they would see only a nomadic wanderer with a broken sword, not a fabled blade borne by an elven king. Why shatter their illusions, as the touch of a defiler had shattered the steel of the blade?

Why shatter more lives? Sorak’s ancestors had done enough of that already…

The Sage, his maternal grandfather, was the only family Sorak knew. He did not know if his paternal grandfather, the halfling chieftain Ragna, still lived, but hoped he was dead. If Ragna lived and Sorak found it out, the halfling would live no longer.

Sorak would never understand what sort of father could condemn his own son to death by fire for mating with a female of another race. Ragna had meant for him to die as well, and but for a chance casting of a spell, Sorak had survived.

Ragna’s commission to the Faceless One was to cast a spell to slay every last elfin the Moon Runner tribe. Sorak had been spared only because he was not a full-blooded elf. He was a half-breed, born of two races that were natural enemies. The spell cast by the Faceless One had failed to strike him down, as it had struck down all the others, and though he was a sworn enemy of all defilers, Sorak despised the Faceless One above all others. He knew nothing of the wizard but his name, yet somehow, somewhere, he would find him. And then his father and his mother and her tribe would be avenged. Death to the sorcerer, and to the grandfather who commissioned him.

It was a cold and ruthless resolution. An unsettling thought.

And there were so many thoughts streaming through his head these days. He could not get used to the curious feeling of being all alone in there.

He was having trouble sleeping. When he was a tribe of one, Sorak could rest by letting one of his other personalities come to the fore and take over. He would fade back and “go under,” as if sinking down into warm darkness, sometimes aware of what was happening outside and sometimes not, while his body remained awake and in the control of one of his other personalities.

Now that he was just alone, he had to learn to fall asleep the way that everyone else did. Sooner or later, he grew tired, and then sleep would come. However, being part elf and part halfling meant his body possessed immense physical reserves. Since leaving Sanctuary, he had found he could go for days without sleep. He would lie down to rest, as he had done the previous night, but while Ryana quickly fell asleep, he remained awake, his mind relentlessly active as if it sought to fill the void left by his other personalities.

It was a new life, a new way of being, and he was not yet accustomed to it.

Often, at night after Ryana fell asleep, he would start talking to himself, a habit many people had, but Sorak would half expect to hear an answer. He would start to speak to one of his personalities aloud, as he had often done before, and when no answer came, he would remember again there would be no answer, and then the crushing loneliness would descend on him like an immense weight on his chest.

Sorak felt the warmth of the dark sun as it slowly rose on the horizon. Soon, Ryana would awaken, and they would fill their waterskins from the oasis pool and set off once again, en route to North Ledopolus, one of two dwarven villages located on opposite banks of the Estuary of the Forked Tongue, roughly thirty miles southwest. From there, they planned to cross the estuary to South Ledopolus, through which the caravan trade route ran from Altaruk to Balic.

Neither he nor Ryana had ever been to that part of the world, and all they knew of it was what Sorak’s grandfather had written in his journal, a copy of which Sorak carried with him. However, it had been written many years ago, and they had no way of knowing if the information it contained was still accurate.

According to the journal, the dwarves of South Ledopolus were trying to build a causeway to Ledo Island, a long-dead volcano that rose in the center of the estuary. At the same time, the dwarves of North Ledopolus were trying to do likewise, thereby hoping to meet in the middle and connect the two villages with a bridge that would open a shorter caravan route from Gulg and Nibenay to Balic and the other cities south of the Tyr region. The bridge would benefit both villages and increase the traffic coming through them.

But the giants who lived on Ledo posed an obstacle. They had no desire to see their island become a connecting point between two dwarven villages, with the increase in traffic, and so they kept tearing down the causeway that the dwarves were building. Constant battles raged between the giants and the dwarves, and Sorak had no idea if there would be a bridge across the estuary when they reached it or not.

The dwarves had ferries that plied the estuary, above and below Ledo Island, but the giants often attacked these, as well. The dwarves therefore navigated with great care, taking ferries across the deepest parts of the estuary to avoid the giants. But the silt shifted on the bottom, and it was difficult to gauge the estuary’s depth, so any ferry crossing was a gamble.

Even so, Sorak knew they had to take that course. The only other alternative was to head north across the Great Ivory Plain and take the trade route along its northern boundary. They had crossed the plain once already, and Sorak was not anxious to repeat the long, arduous journey.

Once they had crossed the estuary and reached the caravan trade route that ran past South Ledopolus, Sorak had no idea which way they would go. He had expected to receive some sign from the Sage, but as yet, there had been no message from his grandfather. He knew only one thing—wherever they were bound, they would be going toward trouble, not away from it.

Throughout Athas, in the larger city-states, the dragon kings held sway. In the smaller towns and villages, their defiler minions were always active, seeking to extend and consolidate their power. The preservers were outnumbered by defilers everywhere, so much so that preserver adepts and their supporters had been forced underground.

They functioned as small, semi-independent groups collectively known as the Veiled Alliance. To be exposed as a member of the Alliance meant certain death, so members functioned in great secrecy, working against the power of the defilers in whatever ways they could.

The structure of the Alliance assured anonymity. It was divided into secret cells, with each cell being aware of only two other cells on the same level, and only one above it. In this way, if any one cell were exposed, it could quickly be cut off, and the members of the cells in contact with it absorbed into other groups. This system kept defilers from penetrating the structure of the entire organization.

Fortunately for them, the defilers were not united. The dragon kings were in fierce competition with each other. Even so, they commanded far more power than the preservers. And that power was slowly, relentlessly destroying Athas.

Yes, the dark sun rose upon a dying world. With each passing year, more and more of the planet’s resources were used up by the defilers in their greedy quest for power. Some said it was the science of a bygone age that had changed the climate and reduced most of the world to blasted desert, but Sorak knew it was defiler magic.

He walked back down the rocky slope and approached the small pool of the oasis. For a moment, he simply stood there, staring down into the dark blue water.

Behind him, Ryana stirred softly. “Good morning,” she said, as she sat up behind him and stretched. “Have you been awake long?”

“I have not slept.”

“Again?”

He sighed, heavily. “My thoughts are too much with me.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“Legends,” he replied. “And about the difference between fable and reality. Sometimes reality leaves much to be desired.” And with that, he tossed the broken blade into the pool.

Ryana leapt to her feet and ran to his side. “No! What have you done?”

He grabbed her by the arm before she could dive in after it.

“Let it go, Ryana,” he said.

She stared at him, uncomprehending. “Why?”

“Because I am not a king,” he said. “And legend or no legend, the blade is broken.”

“But it still could have been a symbol!”

“Of what? Of the elven prophecy? Defilers could just as easily claim that with Galdra broken, the prophecy has proven false. I may not have much faith in it myself, but neither do I wish to see defilers twist it to their own ends. If there is to be another elven king someday, then let it be my grandfather. The avangion will have the strength and wisdom to rule well. I find it challenging enough to rule myself.”

“But think what you have thrown away!” Ryana said with chagrin.

“I have,” said Sorak, staring into the pool where Galdra had sunk out of sight. “I have discarded the reality, and in doing so, I have preserved the legend. I do not regret my choice. Come, let us fill our waterskins. We still have a long way to go.”