An excerpt from Chapter One of
The Diamond Sword, presented here for your enjoyment.
It always happened like this: he was minding his own business,
completing a task or working at his lessons or even just sitting
under a tree, enjoying the sunshine, and then suddenly there they
would be. They seemed to have a knack for knowing when he was alone,
or when he was around adults who either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t
care. He never saw them when the lord was around - they wouldn’t
dare - or any of the ladies or gentlemen who’d taken a liking to
the skinny, dark-haired young squire-apprentice from Jorash City.
But the moment he was alone, they materialized as if by magic.
They, of course, were the eldest of the manor’s boys: a group of
four young toughs who would be men before too long. Their leader was
a boy who thought it good sport to toss kittens into the fighting
dogs’ pen: the lord’s bastard son, Jervan. Jervan was keenly
aware that, as one of many bastards, and not the eldest by far, his
position in his father’s graces was very precarious. So when the
lord brought a new squire-apprentice back from a trip to the duke’s
court, Jervan had moved immediately to make that new addition to the
household properly submissive to himself.
For two years, the smaller boy endured the taunts and the sneers
of Jervan and his mates, he suffered their attacks, and he bore their
blows. He did so because, when he took his leave of her, his mother
had held him close and whispered her best advice into his ear.
“There will be those,” she had said to him, “who will seek to
abuse you simply because they can. If you can help it, try not to
sink to their level. Keep your own hands clean as best as you can.”
But a boy can only be expected to endure so much ill-treatment
before he simply cannot bear any more.
“Oh, look, it’s the weed-boy,” was how it started on the
warm day when Eltan the Squire-Apprentice reached the end of his
tether. They had started calling him that one day when the
weaponsmaster had noticed that Eltan needed new practice armor and
had commented that the boy was growing like a weed.
“Perhaps we should pluck the weed,” Jervan said to his
companion Rell, a brute of a boy who ought to have been assigned a
man’s tasks several seasons before.
Rell laughed his ugly laugh. “I’ll pluck it out by the
roots,” he said, strolling toward Eltan, who was quickly and
quietly packing up his belt pouch.
“I say,” chimed in a third voice: the silky, urbane tone of
Rojis, another bastard with a temper. “What has the weed-boy got
there?”
“Some kind of box,” said the fourth, the wiry and dark Sera -
the only girl Eltan knew who would have anything to do with Jervan or
his friends.
Eltan slipped the box into his pouch quickly, not looking at the
other boys as he tied a hasty knot in the pouch’s strings and
gripped it tightly in his hand.
“I’ll have that box,” Jervan said flatly. “Give it here,
weed-boy.”
“No,” Eltan said, his voice quiet but firm, and his leg
muscles tensing.
The four bullies stopped, glancing at one another as though
surprised that their prey had the temerity to refuse. “What did it
say?” Sera exclaimed. “I think it refused a direct order.”
“Not surprising,” Rojis drawled. “It hasn’t got the sense
to defer to its betters. And I’m not certain, but do I smell
offal?”
“Yes, you do smell awful,” Eltan snapped, provoked at last by
nothing more than the available pun. “Maybe you should take a
bath.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, and then Jervan pointed at
him. “Get him! I want that box!”
Eltan sprang from his seat and fled, and they pursued him. He
dodged around buildings, scrambled over fences and even detoured
through one of the barns as he attempted to shake them off, but he
couldn’t quite manage it. They were larger and heavier than he
was, which slowed most of them down, but Sera was quick, and harder
to lose.
He finally evaded his tormentors by ducking into a field of young
corn; slight as he was, the stalks closed over his head and around
his frame and he vanished into them with little more than a shiver of
leaves to mark his passage. They rounded the corner of the field
just a few seconds too late. Their quarry had escaped; the path was
empty. Loudly disappointed in the abrupt end to their game, they
wandered away from the cornfield, moving toward the salle as their
noon appointment with the weaponsmaster approached.
From between the thickening stalks of corn, Eltan watched them go,
heaving a soft sigh when it became obvious that they really had given
up the chase.
For now, he thought bitterly, knowing perfectly
well that when he arrived at the salle for his own training, they
would be there, and the torment would begin again. He groaned
softly, pushing the cornstalks aside so that he could see the sky.
The first sun was very nearly overhead, and the second wasn’t far
behind it. He would be expected in the salle with the others.
Likely there would be a beating in it for him if he didn’t turn up.
He stood very still in the corn for a long moment, tying his pouch
around his waist and considering. Then he turned his back on the
buildings and made his way through the field. On the other side, he
clambered over a low stacked-stone wall into one of the hayfields.
It was up to his armpits - the second harvest of hay this year - and
moving through it felt a bit like wading through very deep water as
he made his way even farther from where he should be. His eyes
remained fixed on his ultimate goal: the dark bulk of the forest.
He took an angled track through hay that billowed in the sweet
summer breeze, and it wasn’t long before the shadows of those great
trees were casting over him, their cool shade a balm after the
burning heat of noon. He felt the trees open to him, welcoming him
into their gentle silence, and he sighed softly, relaxing for the
first time since the older boys had caught sight of him.
Resentment for the bullying burned in his belly as he made his way
deeper into the woods, ignoring the regular hunting trails in favor
of a deer track he happened to stumble upon. Though he loved
exploring the forest, and had done so often, he didn’t think he’d
seen that particular track before, and he had never been the type of
boy to pass up a chance to seek out something new. He placed his
feet carefully as he moved, quiet to avoid disturbing the wildlife
and quiet to avoid detection as well. A boy never knew when one of
the men would take it into his head to form up a hunting party, and
he really didn’t want to be caught.
The overhead canopy blocked out the sunlight, making the forest
floor cool and shady. It was no great strain on a healthy young lad
to travel a well-worn deer track for quite a long time - long enough
that he almost certainly faced a beating for shirking when he
returned. He didn’t care. If it wasn’t shirking, it would be
something else; the lord, who usually protected him from such
mistreatment, had been gone for several days. The boy bitterly
wondered if he might not be best served by simply remaining in the
forest until the lord returned. Snorting softly at himself, he
rounded a rock outcropping that had forced the track to turn - and he
stopped still at its edge, gasping in awe.
That was no outcropping, he realized belatedly, a flash of
childhood memory overtaking him. That was a stacked-stone wall,
covered in the moss of centuries. He rounded the fallen edge of the
wall, clambering over a bit of the remaining debris, and stared
around with glee. “I didn’t know there were ruins out here!”
he exclaimed, heedless of the birds who took wing at the sound of his
voice. “This is wonderful!”
And indeed it was. The stone wall he had mistaken for an
outcropping stood eight feet high, encircling an overgrown but still
beautiful courtyard. The pavers were cracked and shifted with the
centuries, mossy in some places and sprouting grass in others, but
their design was still visible; the faded variegation of the colored
stones radiated out from a five-tiered marble fountain which held
court in the precise middle of the area. Off to one side, two stone
benches still stood beside the remains of a third, which had toppled;
across the flagstones on the opposite end of the oval-shaped area
were the remains of two wrought-iron chairs which faced one another
across the skeleton of a small wrought-iron table. In the grass
beneath them, the boy discovered a set of chessmen, carved of green
and white stone. Gleefully, he collected these, digging his belt
pouch from under his tunic to pour them in.
As he did so, he felt the weight of the small box that was already
in his pouch, and he remembered, quite suddenly, the reason why the
older boys had been chasing him earlier. He fished it out and set it
aside, then lined up the chessmen on the stones to be sure he had
them all. Once he was certain that he did, he transferred them into
the pouch and tucked it away again. Then he picked up his parcel,
holding it carefully as he walked over to perch on the side of the
dry fountain. He took a deep breath and opened the box. The first
thing he encountered was a letter from his mother. His fingers
traced the familiar shapes of her handwriting as he read it.
My dear son,
I hope that this letter finds you well and happy on the twelfth
anniversary of your birth. Know that I miss you greatly and think of
you always, and I yearn for the day when I shall see you again. Lord
Andrus writes me often to tell me of your progress, and expresses his
pleasure with your hard work and eager mind; I do wish, though, that
I might hear directly from you a bit more often.
He grinned slightly. He could write every day and it wouldn’t
be often enough for his mother.
I have enclosed your birthing-day gift; I confess that I found
myself flummoxed when attempting to decide what you should have. I
know little of the habits and preferences of adolescent boys, and
with you so far away, I am sadly unaware of what you might lack or
desire. After consulting with my Lord, I thought it best to let you
choose for yourself.
He blinked, looking back into the box, and his eyes grew wide at
the sight of the fat little leather purse which was waiting for him.
Knowing his mother - and the generosity of her master, who had only
ever been kind to both of them - it probably held more coin than he
would be able to spend in a year. Dodging into that cornfield had
been the best idea he’d had recently; the loss of that money would
have been quite a blow. He returned to the letter.
My Eltan, I do miss you greatly, the letter continued.
Lord Andrus has promised that you will come to see me soon, but he
is distracted by the Sandrian incursions on the eastern border, and
my Lord will not permit me to travel while the situation is so
precarious, even to the relative safety of the west, where you are.
So I shall not see you again until conditions permit; I may only hope
and pray that it is soon.
Your little brothers send their regards; Tybost wished me to
send you the tadpoles he found in the stream, but I convinced him
that this would not be a good idea.
I hope that you think of me occasionally, and remember me
fondly.
All my love,
Mama.
By the end of the letter, the boy was sniffling; he missed his
mother terribly on the best of days, and today was far from the best
of days. A sudden wave of homesickness washed over him. That
protected courtyard reminded him strongly of the walled gardens in
the Hall of Women where he had been born. Sitting there in the
middle of it, with the afternoon suns warming his head and shoulders,
he clutched the letter against his chest and cried softly.
A sudden sound interrupted his grief - a ringing like the chime of
a bell. He raised his head and looked around. A sudden,
extra-brilliant shaft of late-afternoon sunlight fell from the sky,
perfectly illuminating the massive figure that strode toward him.
Each footstep rang against the cracked flagstones, and the chimes
echoing around the little courtyard did not fade until more had rung
out. By the time the figure was eye-to-eye with the boy, his head
was ringing with the sound of bells.
It was a magnificent unicorn stallion. He stood still for a
moment, bathed in the light, and then his caramel-colored head
dipped, his golden eyes taking the boy in carefully. There was a
long moment of silence as the ringing faded. “No offense,” the
unicorn finally said, his voice a deep baritone, “but I really
thought you’d be taller.” It - he - blinked at the boy. “What’s
your name, child?”
“El -” The boy’s voice cracked, and he swallowed. “Eltan,
sir.”
The unicorn shook his pale mane, his nicker sounding suspiciously
like a laugh. “No need to ‘sir’ me, boy. My name is
Teriántan. I’m called Teri.”
Out of habit, Eltan gave a half-bow, nearly braining himself on
the unicorn’s golden horn. Teri took a quick half-step back, a
sound of alarm escaping him. “Careful, now!” he exclaimed,
shaking his mane at the boy. “This thing isn’t for show, you
know.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Eltan stared at the unicorn for a moment
longer before suddenly blinking, his eyes narrowing just a fraction.
“Wait a moment. What do you mean, you thought I’d be taller?”
“Aha!” Teri nickered in amusement again. “So your brain is
working again already. Next time, I need the light to be higher, so
you’ll be dazzled longer.” He gave the boy a sidelong look that
could only be interpreted as a horsey sort of grin. “And I meant,
of course, that our meeting here was no accident. I came here for
you.”
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