Chapter 1: The Memory that Made Me

My time is growing short. My death looms like a dark figure breathing just behind me, over my shoulder. It is patient. It waits. I’ve known for years how this journey would end, and now that I can see the end of the path, I’ve done a great deal of thinking about the past, what it all means, and the future.

I wonder what I will leave behind. Is it common for those aware of the inevitable crunch of time to do so? If I am but a tool, a sword in the hand of El, does it matter? Am I fool to ask these questions?

Fool or not, I do. I’ve been called worse.

You will forgive what follows. You know me as I am but not how I came to be.

There are great battles to come, more destruction, miracle, and mystery ahead before I can rest. Perhaps you won’t survive the evil days to come, and I write this for nothing.

But I don’t think so. I believe you will emerge from the flames of war as exactly the person our world needs. We saw that in you at the beginning.

Others saw something similar in me, years ago, when I was only 15 years. The end is near, but I pray for the time to share what needs to be said. And by writing these stories down, I hope you’ll learn from my mistakes. For I made many. I still make them.

Maybe I’m only writing for my own selfish benefit, yet I feel El wants me to put pen to parchment for you. So, despite the fact I’m not much of a storyteller, I will.

I chose this journey, as tragic as it may seem. Even if I had chosen a different path, I would have lived with the ghosts of sorrow.

Some memories require effort; I need to search to bring them forward.

Others haunt me, with me always. They are still as real and stark as the day they tore my heart in half. I can kill the largest, fiercest trodall, but I can’t keep those haunting memories at bay. They are immortal. I can’t win.

This is the memory that made me.

I was young, not even a decade old. My sister Carys was much younger.

Our home sat at the foot of the mountains outside the town of Anneton, a cabin made of logs and thatch with two rooms - a tiny one for my parents’ bed and the large main room where Carys and I slept and meals were prepared. We gathered around the hearth, and my father told stories or read from old parchments forbidden by the elves for anyone to possess, even less to believe.

But you can’t control ideas. You can’t chain belief.

Da would often read one particular prophecy from the scriptures, one of a man that would rise up and lead humanity back to freedom from oppression. The prophecy of the Brendel, the sword of El. He would read and then stare off into an unseen distance.

A tiny path wove through a thick forest up to where our home was hidden. Father had cleared land years before, and my parents planted a vast garden full of vegetables. Beyond that, chickens clucked and squawked in a pen. Father would also hunt.

We were healthy. We were happy.

Our home had another function – humans who followed the forbidden god of El would come and stay with us. We were a haven from the elves and their soldiers, the militan.

On that day – a day without a name but real enough, and filled with enough evil that it should have one – my father was away. My mother, Carys, and I were home.

Mother cleaned freshly pulled vegetables from the garden at the wash-sink. She stiffened. Her head lifted.

“Caleb.” Her voice was quiet and dangerous. Carys and I froze. Mother turned to me, her eyes narrowed. “Take Carys to the safe place. Now.”

I stood from the floor, and Carys grabbed my hand, rising with me. We both knew the safe place. And why we would have to go there. I strained to catch what Mother heard but could only detect chickens and their useless wings.

Then other noises reached my ears – twigs snapping from the woods, the rustling of cloth, a clink of steel.

The elves were on the way.

Among the distant rustling, a high-pitched screech echoed through the forest.

I looked at my mother. “You’re not coming?”

Mother glanced around the room then caught my stare with her own again. “They have a grider.”

That screech belonged to the grider – a winged, blind animal captured from the deep caves across the ocean and trained by the elves to use its hypersensitive nostrils to hunt humans.

My mother grabbed a knife from the kitchen counter and rushed to us. She kissed our heads. “I have to draw them away from you first.” She used the knife to slice across her palm, fresh blood pooling there. “Whatever happens, protect your sister. I’ll be right behind you, my love. Now go!”