1210 A.B.

  Growing up, I always wanted to be a hero. To be able to command mighty magic or to be a great warrior were all I ever dreamed of. And why not do both? After I got a taste of these things, I found that power and skill at arms may not be the things that define a hero, however much they seem to do so outwardly. Have you ever wondered what makes a hero who they are? Champions, Paladins, and High Magi don’t just spring up out of the ground. What, then, are the qualities that make a person a hero? Selflessness? Honor?

  Life happens. It doesn’t always happen the way you would expect it to, either. Sometimes, like in my childhood, things happened that don’t outwardly seem to lead to a moment of great import, but they do. Remembering, I see now that there are experiences that define each of us. We can’t always see them when they happen, but when we look back, we can see the importance of those events. They’re what makes us who we are. Sure, you can become a physically strong or a weak person, but the strength you’re born with doesn’t make you who you are. Strength can’t make you a king, for example, but it can help shape you as a person. In my opinion, it’s the people in our lives and the way they interact with us that most greatly influence who we turn out to be.

  One day when I was young, Bran and I fidgeted at the kitchen table after breakfast in our home above the smithy. Though we were twins, we didn’t look much alike. Bran was taller and stronger, and he had light brown hair and blue eyes, all of which was different from me. Our bare feet swung from the chairs. Mom was sitting across the table from us sewing a patch on a pair of Bran’s pants. She had her long, brown hair braided into a ring that wrapped around her head like a crown, and she wore a white apron over her blue dress as usual. She had blue eyes that missed nothing even when she was sewing, so we had learned to put more effort into pretending to work on our studies.

  We both stared at the pages before us, but it was my turn to read out loud. Our family was well off because of dad’s armor smithing business, and we had a nice house in the upper city of Stonekeep. We ate good food, had good clothes, and we even had a few books. Not every family had a book, much less the four books we had. Nora thought it was very important that we know how to read, but I didn’t see why. You couldn’t read an ogre to death, after all. Well, maybe one would drop dead if it had to read this history book. I thought it was worth a try and paused for a moment to imagine it.

  “Mom, do we have to read this book today?” I asked. “Can we read about the Pirate King instead?”

  Nora was in a good mood, and though she didn’t let us switch topics often, I decided to go for it. She normally made sure we focused on a lesson and mastered it before she switched to something else, but something told me she’d let me have my way. Looking back, I think we were squirming too much, and she knew a rebellion was close at hand.

  “You’ve read that book three times already,” she said while shaking her head. “Aren’t you tired of it?”

  “No, not yet,” I said, trying not to look too eager.

  Nora smiled ruefully and shook her head. “All right. Get your silly book.”

  “Hooray!” Bran and I cheered together.

  Bran’s face lit up as much as mine must have. I slammed the history book shut and carelessly tossed it on the small shelf. Very reverently, I took “The Adventures of the Pirate King” off the shelf and brought it back to the table. The book was in bad shape from frequent use, and its pages were beginning to come out of the binding in many places. I opened it to my favorite part, just before the Pirate King relieved the royal house of Ithion of its jewels, and I started to read.

  “Chapter Four. The Shaming of Ithion. In the days leading up to the Harvest at New Years’ Day, in Twelvemonth, the Mordonian, Ithion, proclaimed that all Seekers in his city must pay a tax because of their especially large noses. He further decreed that the Pirate King, whose infamy had spread to every city in Aldon, should be forever after called ‘The Flyspeck Nuisance.’” This time I paused there, thinking. What was going on? “Mom, I’ve always wondered what this part was about. Do you know?”

  “You’ll have to figure it out for yourself,” Nora said. “What clues do you see?”

  I thought about it. “Well, Ithion doesn’t like Seekers for some reason.” She motioned me to continue. “Is Ithion punishing Seekers for being nosy?”

  “Very good, Jeron. Why would he want to give the Pirate King such a name as ‘The Flyspeck Nuisance’?”

  “Well, I get the ‘nuisance’ part. He was a pirate king, after all. What’s a flyspeck?” I asked.

  “You know how horses make a very big mess in their stables?” She asked. We nodded. “Consider that dropping a very large horse speck.”

  “Oh! Ithion was calling the Pirate King a tiny, little fly dropping?!” Bran and I both had a good laugh at that. “So Ithion was just insulting him. But… Oh, I get it. The Pirate King was a Seeker, and because he’d been plundering Ithion’s ships, Ithion was making trouble for the other Seekers. He must have been trying to draw the Pirate King out to finish him off, once and for all.”

  “That’s my best guess, too. Very good, son. Keep reading,” Nora said.

  I was only too happy to do so. She had Bran and I take turns reading for another hour or so, then stopped Bran at the end of the chapter, when the Pirate King sailed into Ithion’s harbor in his invisible ship, the Unseen Blade, then snuck into Ithion’s fortress, shaved his eyebrows off and robbed the place. He always robbed the place. My hero.

  “Jeron, tell me the worst of the dangers outside the walls,” Nora said.

  I gave her the list, having memorized it when I was four. “Spike berries, death lilies, renders, quill beasts, stroks, pit spiders, and anything else that can hide from and pounce on us.”

  “Bran, what are death lilies like?” she asked.

  “Death lilies smell like cinnamon and will put you to sleep,” Bran said. “Then the roots entangle the sleeper and suck the life out of ‘em. Renders sometimes stay close by because they’re immune to the spores, and they get a meal they don’t have to work for.”

  “And what do you do when you find a death lily?”

  “When we smell cinnamon, we immediately retrace our steps until we can’t smell it, then try another route,” Bran said.

  “Very good! You two need a break, I think,” Nora said. “Why don’t you go and see if your father needs anything?”

  We were getting a little bouncy. We never had more than two hours between doing chores, so we just accepted it and went over to the heavy oaken stairs to father’s smithy. Bran bounded down the stairs.

  “Jeron, a moment, please,” Nora said. I paused, then walked over to her. “I left some sweets and two silver coins in the cupboard for Elric when he comes home from guard duty on Sevenday. I need you to remind me to give them to him. Don’t tell your brother, though, or Elric will never get a glimpse of those sweets.”

  It was Fourday, so there was an ocean of time between now and Sevenday as far as I was concerned. It was going to be tough to keep my mouth shut. I would’ve liked to have those sweets, too. She had never trusted me with the location of one of her secret stashes before, so I had the feeling that this was a big deal.

  “Not even Bran?” I asked.

  “No one, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Normally I don’t keep anything from Bran because he’s my twin brother, and we do everything together. I resolved that the only way to survive this was to put it out of my mind for the time being. There were chores to be done, anyway. I walked down the stairs and entered the smithy to see my father in his trusty leather apron pounding on a red-hot piece of steel, sparks and scales of rusty metal falling off as he hammered. The smithy was the size of the whole house, and it had stone walls unlike the rest of the house above, a blackened oak ceiling, and a flagstone floor. It had two forges, one at each end of the room, with racks of tools containing things like tongs, hammers, chisels, and files arrayed against the walls. It was a very orderly place, and the familiar smell of sweat and burning coal felt like home. Darek was working the furthest forge from the stairway with a lump of hot steel he was beating into a sheet.

  “I need a load, you two,” Dortham said without looking away from his work. His eyes were bloodshot and baggy like he didn’t get a good night’s sleep.

  “Yes, sir,” Bran and I said in unison.

  He meant for us to go to the lower city to a warehouse near the docks and buy a load of coal from old Charl. We knew better than to whine about it. Father was one of the biggest men in the city, and he was stronger than any two men. For all his strength, he was not a violent man, and he was very slow to anger. Still, he didn’t tolerate lazy people in his house, and we learned at an early age to respect his authority. We each picked up a metal bucket and headed out the door.

  The upper city of Stonekeep was a town made of stone and wood, enclosed by a stone wall fifty feet high. Most of the homes had three to four floors in them with the first floor being made of stone and mortar. The second floor often hung out a little further over the first, which made it look like the houses were leaning over the cobblestone streets. There wasn’t much space between the houses above the streets, which was intentional, since stroks didn’t like confined spaces. They couldn’t swoop down to snatch up children if they couldn’t fit their entire wingspan between a house.

  There were aqueducts running through the upper city bringing fresh water to all. Our home was very close to one of the aqueducts for obvious reasons. I could see the aqueduct coming from the terrace level of Castle Stonekeep, where fountains of pure water magically flowed. The water was diverted from the fountains, supplying the upper city with a good water source. The lower city had its own walls and wells, and it was close to the Deepflow River with its docks.

  Castle Stonekeep itself looked like a tall, two-tiered birthday cake with eight sides that towered over everything else. It had some gardens on top of the first tier, and this is where the aqueducts began. Even though no one could get above the first level of the keep from the inside, as it was magically sealed, someone had the bright idea to build scaffolds to reach the terrace to get the fresh water there. On top of the keep were eight small towers with big, hollow, metallic shapes that each had twenty sides. Those same metallic sculptures were mounted on top of the guard towers of the upper city’s walls, too. No one knew what they were for. They were too strange looking to be decorations unless the people of some bygone time smoked a lot of dreamweed.

  I always thought it was strange that no one lived in the keep above the first level. I wondered why someone would seal it off from everyone, and why some wizard hadn’t come along to unlock it. I knew from our history book that the Mordonian sorcerers built the place, and it was a strange building, indeed. There were no windows in the whole castle, and there was only one gate in. That gate had been left wide open when the rest of the keep was locked up and abandoned, so the King of Mithram, who inherited control of the city, had built a barbican outside the keep in order to put a working gate on it. It seems that the granite the keep and upper city walls were built with were impervious to attack, and thus, couldn’t be modified, either. The whole keep was one big, polished rock. There was no mortar in it at all, and no one alive knew how they did it. Everyone assumed it must have been their evil Mordonian sorcery at work.

  I had plenty of time to think about it as Bran and I walked to the lower city to Charl’s shop. Why couldn’t the merchant be located in the upper city? Complaining never helped anyone, as father said, so I kept my mouth shut. I was bored, though.

  “Hey, why don’t we take the scenic route and explore a little bit?” I asked.

  “Because we’ll get a whipping when we get back, idiot,” Bran said.

  “Oh, yeah. They wouldn’t know, though, would they?”

  “Mom would know if we farted in public, and dad always knows what time it is. He knows how long it takes.”

  “But…”

  “But nothing. They’d know we were goofing off. Instantly.”

  Bran was usually right about these things. We’d face the consequences, all right. I’ve always hated rules, though, and I had a rebellious streak a mile wide. Bran was a rules follower, but I couldn’t say that to his face. There were consequences for that, too.

  We came down the street from the gatehouse of the upper city’s walls and into the marketplace. Vendors shouted the virtues of their wares to the passersby as they had for hundreds of years. We passed through the crowded market, getting closer to the docks. There was a large open area one street away from the city wall separating the docks from the rest of the city that was called the Washer’s Basin. It was a well that had a very large basin next to it. Imagine that. There was a pump that an ingenious Seeker engineer created to pull the water up from the well and into an upper basin, which overflowed into a larger lower basin. The upper basin was where everyone got their clean water, and the lower basin was where they did their laundry.

  Bran saw our sister Juleen doing the laundry at the lower basin and talking with two other girls of about our age. He waved to her and walked over with me following in his wake.

  “Hi, Juleen,” he said.

  Juleen was two years older than we were, with long brown hair hanging down her back and blue eyes. She was currently wearing her older blue dress so she wouldn’t ruin her nice one.

  “Hello, boys. You’re not lazing about when you’re supposed to be hauling coal, are you?” Juleen said this with a smile, knowing we would be tempted to explore.

  “Absolutely not!” Bran said. “We came straight here.”

  His eye was caught by one of the two girls that Juleen was talking to. Juleen followed his gaze, which was really a stare at this point, to a girl in a green dress.

  “This is Elle Chandlersdotr, a new friend of mine. Elle, the bigger one is Bran, and that’s his twin brother, Jeron.”

  Elle had long blonde hair that she wore in a braid, and she had very bright green eyes and fair skin. She was easily one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen. Everything about her looked perfect. Bran was almost drooling, he was so enthralled.

  “Um. Hi,” Bran said stupidly.

  Elle nodded and went back to her washing without saying anything, which was very rude, but we didn’t even notice. She could have told Bran his hair was on fire, and he would have kept the same stupefied look on his face.

  Juleen turned to her other friend and said, “This is Mira Portersdotr.”

  I greeted her with a “hello” as was polite, but Bran didn’t take his eyes off of Elle.

  “I invented a spell of invisibility,” Mira said. “It only works when I stand next to Elle, though.”

  I had to grin at that. Mira was a very average-looking girl with short, brown hair and brown eyes, and she had the same skinned up knees and elbows that Bran and I had. She was wearing what looked to be a very uncomfortable, rough-spun wool dress of a brownish gray color, and it did indeed look like the perfect camouflage to use if one wanted to disappear into the background. She had life in her eyes that offset her nondescript appearance, though.

  “That’s nice,” Bran said.

  What an idiot, I thought. “I see you have the same badges of honor as me,” I said to Mira, eyeing her scrapes.

  “Those goblin war parties don’t just kill themselves,” she replied, striking a pose.

  Mira thrust at an invisible foe with a sword she didn’t have, and I joined her, slashing at imaginary foes for a moment. We both laughed and shared a good moment. I liked her, and I thought she would be a good friend to have even if she was a girl. Everyone knew that girls had the plague. Well, at least that’s what dad always said.

  “Hey, do you want to go exploring with me?” Mira asked me. She had to have heard Juleen’s comment about the coal we were supposed to fetch. Was this a test?

  “I would, but our dad’ll beat us both if I don’t do what he said,” I replied, pointing at Bran then myself.

  “I didn’t invite him,” Mira said with a quizzical expression.

  “Yeah, but we’d both still get it,” I said. “He’d beat me for abandoning my coal run, and Bran for letting me do it.”

  “Oh. My dad’s pretty strict, too,” Mira said, nodding.

  Juleen noticed that Elle reacted to Bran’s stare with slumped shoulders and downcast eyes as she turned back to her laundry. She decided that Bran and I had to go.

  “Off with you two,” Juleen said. “You know dad’s waiting for you.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I replied. “Don’t remind me. She’s right, though, Bran. Nice to meet you both.”

  I took Bran’s arm and pulled him towards the coal merchant’s shop. When pedestrian traffic blocked his view, he shook off my hand and began walking a little more alertly. It was a block later when he finally snapped out of it.

  “What a girl,” Bran said.

  “That’s it for you, then? No other gem could possibly hold your attention after that one?”

  Bran didn’t even offer a retort. This was serious, so I left him to his thoughts. We saw the black door with the sign above it that looked like a burning coal and walked into Charl’s shop to find him behind the counter with a shovel and a big cart of coal sitting next to him. It seemed that he ever left that spot. For all I knew, he could have been born there, too.

  “Ah! My favorite customers!” Charl boomed, smiling pleasantly. “Great to see the Smith brothers this fine day. Will it be another load?”

  “You know why we’re here?” I asked. “You have to be a psychic. All the other trips we’ve made couldn’t possibly have tipped you off.” I thought I was being hilarious and grinned at my own witty joke. With this kind of a start, it was going to take a long time to gain a worthy sense of humor.

  “That’s pretty funny, Master Smithson,” Charl wheezed without smiling. He coughed wetly. “Sign here and I’ll get you on your way.”

  He indicated the book on his countertop, which Bran dutifully signed. Dad knew better than to give us money, so he had a system set up with Charl and always settled up with him each Sixday. After Charl filled each of our buckets to overflow with the bigger chunks of coal, he shoveled up the coal dust and piled that on top. Twice. The dust settled down into each bucket and made them a lot heavier. I could swear I saw him smile a bit wider when he did that.

  “Great sense of humor you have, young master,” Charl said. “Give your father my regards. Off you go, now!”

  Bran and I dutifully picked up our buckets and began the trek back to our smithy in the upper city. I knew then that father would never let the calluses on our bare feet dwindle in thickness. We made our way back to the Washer’s Basin, and I could see Bran was hoping for another look at Elle, but all three of the girls must have finished their chores and gone home. Those coal buckets were already getting heavy, so we marched on.

  We got back to the smithy about twenty minutes later to the familiar sound of father’s hammer blows. Dortham was teaching Darek the trade, and right now he was forging a cuirass. Darek and Dortham looked a lot alike. At the time, I often wondered why all of my brothers were getting strong like dad, but I wasn’t. I was noticeably smaller, and my features were different. Maybe it was because I was the younger twin, and Bran had inherited more blessings than me.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Of our family, there were seven of us. Dortham and Nora had five children over the years. Elric was the oldest, and he was already a decent smith, but his help was lacking right now because he was eighteen years old and thus was conscripted into the militia. Everyone in Stonekeep, even young women, had to give two years of service in the army. After Elric was Darek, who was sixteen. Then came Juleen at twelve, and then Bran and me at ten years old. It was a full house, but we all got along pretty well.

  We dumped our buckets into the coal bin, and father looked up from the cuirass he was working on long enough to check the dust cloud we made. He seemed satisfied, and it confirmed my suspicion that Charl added the dust to the buckets at father’s suggestion. It was a good arrangement for both of them. No one else really wanted the dust except soap makers, and father wanted us to grow up to be strong.

  Dortham quenched the cuirass in the barrel of oil with a prolonged hiss and cloud of fumes. Donin Baker and his daughter, Fayorette, walked by the shop, probably on the way to buy more flour. Donin paused for a moment at the door to the smithy.

  “Good day, Dortham,” Donin said, smiling.

  “Hello, Donin,” Dortham said, not unkindly. His critical eye was still on the cuirass.

  “Thanks again for your help with that… thing,” Donin said. “We all appreciate it very much.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Dortham said in a somewhat low voice, sparing him a glance. “Really.”

  “All right, then,” Donin said. He waved. “Well, thanks again.”

  I was standing there wondering what the “thing” was that Mr. Baker thanked father for, but I had no idea. Maybe it was connected with how tired father was this morning. Sometimes father went out for walks at night when he couldn’t sleep, and maybe he helped Mr. Baker carry something. It was probably nothing. We stood idly watching dad at work for a moment too long.

  “I’m expecting a shipment of ingots from the Terrans tomorrow,” Dortham said. “Please stack the older ones in the usual place.”

  Bran and I got to work. Father liked to rotate his stock of ingots so they didn’t rust as much. He also had us wipe an oily cloth over the ingots one by one to keep the rust at bay. Come to think of it, the steel ingots didn’t rust like the iron ones did. So why did he make us move these stupid metal bars around? It was hard work for a ten-year-old. I suspected he didn’t really need us to do this at all, but we did as we were told. After some time, mom called downstairs to us that it was lunch time. We all finished what we were doing and Darek slid the wide smithy door closed on the track where it hung. We went upstairs and washed off, as mother always insisted. Then we sat down at the table with its sturdy oak chairs and had a meal of sandwiches, seasoned potatoes, and milk. I spared a glance at the cupboard where I knew the sweets and money were hidden. Every kid loved sweets, after all. I didn’t mention the hidden treasure to anyone because it was mom’s secret and I didn’t want to let her down.

  After lunch was over, it was understood that Bran and I got to play for a few hours until dinner time. We fast-walked down the stairs, through the smithy, grabbed our wooden “swords,” and were out the door before we could get roped into doing more chores. Our swords were really just sticks that Elric picked up for us from the edge of the woods while he was serving on guard duty. The Stonekeep militia had to patrol the edges of the fields to be sure the farmers didn’t get eaten by something nasty, so we had a source for “weapons” as long as Elric had duties close to the woods. They were good sticks, and we liked to pretend to destroy armies of ogres and goblins with them. We liked to pretend our valor was legendary and that the king sent us on important missions.

  Bran and I explored, fought monsters, and did all the things city kids did for a few hours, then Bran decided we had to go back. We turned a corner and saw Kromwell and his gang playing stickball before they saw us, thankfully, so we darted down an alley and cut one street over to get around them. Kromwell’s father was a councilman and a rich merchant. He borrowed from his father’s success and used his father’s prestige to gather a bunch of toadies and bullies around him, then proceeded to make the lives of the other kids very difficult. They were a couple of years older than us, and we had learned the hard way to stay away from them.

  Bran and I entered the smithy at a full run at exactly the wrong time. Dortham was teaching Darek about tempering steel, and it was at a critical stage. Darek had just pulled the back side of the cuirass he quenched out of the oil barrel with the tongs when we came running in. It was the first quench, and the metal was fragile then.

  “- the steel has not set in its hardened structure yet. Another heating is needed, and when you see the steel has turned blue in the fire, you quench it again,” Dortham said.

  As I ran in, I crashed into the warm tongs Darek was holding the cuirass with. The cuirass was knocked out of his grasp and hit the stone floor with a resounding CRACK. The breastplate broke into three pieces like it was a clay pot. We all stared aghast at what I had done.

  “-and… And as you can see, the steel is fragile until after the second quenching. Thanks, Jeron, for demonstrating that,” Dortham said evenly, his eyes still on the broken back plate.

  Dortham didn’t move a muscle, but I thought he would explode at any moment. My doom was at hand. Darek was silent but his face was red from anger at all the wasted effort. No one said a word. I knelt down and nearly picked up the hot cuirass before I stopped myself. I would give anything to fix that breastplate, I thought. I was so upset at what I did that I didn’t immediately notice a tingling in my chest, but I certainly noticed the flash of pain I felt in my right hand. Then a magical thing happened. The pieces of the broken breastplate slid together and became one piece again. The tingling sensation that I had just now noticed faded quickly. We all stood slack-jawed, unable to believe our eyes.

  “What the heck was that?!” Darek exclaimed. No one had any words.

  Dortham looked to the door of the smithy, which was wide open. No people but the four of us were in the vicinity and looking our way, thank God. People had been killed for using magic! Dortham picked up the repaired cuirass with a pair of tongs and turned it over. Then he set it in the glowing forge fire, still inspecting it closely.

  “It’s as it was a moment ago. Not even a hint of the crack that was there,” Dortham said. He looked us each in the eye, and we knew he was dead serious. “We will not speak of this to anyone outside our family. Anyone. Understood?” We all nodded. We knew the deadly danger we were in. “Bran and Jeron, go get ready for dinner. Darek, give it the second heating and quenching as we discussed, and I’ll close up shop. We’ll talk at the table.”

  Still in shock, Bran and I put our sticks by the door and went up the stairs like automatons. I had the same thought running through my head over and over. Either the prince or the Council of Elders would find out about this spell I had somehow cast and would call the Executors from Aerie. They’d kill me immediately, then torture my family until they knew exactly how far the magical ability went. There were some wizards in the world, but they were very few, and they were not nearly as individually powerful as the Mordonian sorcerers. The Executors were tasked to make sure no sorcerer ever arose again.

  Bran looked at me intently after we got up the stairs. “How’d you do that?”

  “I’ve no idea. It just… Happened.”

  We washed up in the kitchen as mother was putting the finishing touches on dinner. She gave us both a calculating look. She knew something was wrong, as mothers always do, but I think she thought it was something Dortham had already dealt with.

  “What’s got you two looking like that? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Juleen! Set the table, please!” Juleen’s affirmative reply was barely heard. “Bran, can you tell me where the sweets are?”

  Bran cocked his head. “We have sweets?” he asked.

  Nora smiled slightly to herself. “Maybe. Never you mind,” she said.

  Nora nodded to herself in satisfaction and finished spooning some green beans into a bowl. She shot a glance at Bran and me quizzically from time to time as she worked, but she didn’t question us. I just stood there and tried not to look guilty. Juleen came in and made short work of the table settings. I heard father and Darek coming up the stairs, but I didn’t look at anyone. All my life I had known that sorcerers were an evil plague that had to be stamped out, and now I could be one of them. The whole family, less Elric, was standing in the kitchen now, as father and Darek washed their faces and hands. No one said a word as the food was put on the table. Nora looked from person to person.

  “Well, everyone sit. What happened?” Nora asked, unable to fathom why all the men of the family were acting so strangely.

  As we all sat, Dortham looked at her steadily and said, “Something happened with Jeron. It’s time for the whole truth.”

  The look she gave me told me she knew exactly what truth he was talking about. She put her hand to her mouth and her eyes teared up. I still had no idea what was going on, and the way mom was acting made me want to throw up. Dortham paused and looked at each one of us steadily.

  “What we discuss here tonight is not to be repeated to anyone for any reason, or we could all be killed. Is that clear?” He looked right at Juleen, then Bran, then me. “Is that clear?” We all nodded, and I knew he meant it. No one touched the food. “Jeron just used magic.” We were all in shock at that point, and we could have heard a pin drop it was so quiet. After taking a moment to collect his thoughts, he continued speaking.

  “Ten years ago, your mother was pregnant. I needed to go to Mithram to deliver a suit of plate armor, and I brought your mother along to be close to better midwives. Your grandma took care of Elric, Darek and Juleen while we were gone. Anyway, your mother’s time came, and she gave birth to Bran in the inn. It took a lot out of her.”

  When he didn’t mention my name in the same sentence that he mentioned Bran being born, I had a sinking feeling in my gut, like I was falling off of the city wall. My whole world was built around my family, and the biggest part of that was being a fraternal twin to Bran. I felt like I lost a piece of myself just then.

  Dortham continued. “I‘d delivered the armor earlier that day, and we decided to take a couple days of rest before heading back by boat. It was then Sixday, so it was raining, and it was a more violent rain there than we get here. There was thunder and lightning, and we had a tough time getting Bran to sleep. Just then, a woman appeared from nowhere in our room, dripping water from her cloak, with a bundle in her arms.“ He got a far-away look in his eye as he remembered.

  “She looked torn,” Nora said. “And she looked hunted. She just begged us to care for her son and disappeared. I looked down at her sweet little baby and couldn’t imagine saying no. We stayed in Mithram another two days after that against the possibility that she would change her mind, but we never saw her again. On Twoday we left by boat. No one would know I only birthed one baby, and fraternal twins were known to be born occasionally, so that became our story. We stuck to it for ten years, hoping that this day wouldn’t come.” Nora sniffled, visibly upset, and Dortham put his great arm around her and held her close.

  “Did you know she was a Mordonian?!” Darek said incredulously.

  Mom nodded. “He was just a baby.” She pulled away from Dortham and wiped her eyes.

  Dortham let her calm down a bit, then said, “Though we knew there was a potential for you to be like your birth mother, Jeron, we just wanted to give you a good home and the family you wouldn’t have had if you were an orphan. Or dead. Nothing’s changed in the minds of your mother and me. We both love you the same now as we always have.”

  That was my father. He was a rock in any storm, and even now it makes my eyes tear up to remember it. I looked around at my brothers and sister. I felt tainted, but they all had expressions of concern, not loathing. They all nodded. It wasn’t every day that you find out you’re adopted and probably a Mordonian sorcerer as well. I took comfort in their steadfastness and I tried to put on a brave face, but inwardly I was scared. Really scared. Sorcerers were killed immediately when found. I wasn’t even sure I could use the magic again, not that I wanted to. It really hurt.

  “Over time, I’ve tested each one of you to see if you could keep a secret,” Nora said. Understanding dawned on me. “I just didn’t know it would be necessary so soon. This affects our whole family, and you all know how important it is that this secret is kept. We cannot risk anyone knowing, so nothing about any of this is to be spoken of outside this house or we can fully expect an Executor to show up. Got it?”

  We all nodded. It was serious business, indeed. Executors were the kind of men who would club a baby to death without batting an eye. In fact, they did it all the time. There was no recourse, either. In bringing a Mordonian sorcerer to justice, they could do anything they wanted and get away with it.

  “You know, you could be handy to have around if you can do that trick again, Jeron,” Darek said with a smile. He was consciously trying to dispel the atmosphere, and I silently thanked him for it. I started breathing normally.

  “What trick?” asked Juleen.

  “He repaired the breastplate I had been working on after he broke it,” Darek said. “It was like it had never happened.”

  “And he didn’t burst into flame, or blow up the place, or anything?” Juleen asked.

  “Nah. That story must have been told to scare everyone,” Darek said.

  “That’s a good point, Darek. We don’t know what’s true and what isn’t with regards to the sorcerers and their craft,” Nora said. “Every evil thing people say about sorcerers could be lies aimed at getting people to turn on their neighbors if they show signs of magical ability. The king and princes probably destroy fledgling sorcerers in order to stay in power. Remember your history lessons.”

  That actually made a lot of sense. The Church of the Overgod sent forth the Executors, and come to think of it, they didn’t do much to promote worship. They always said they wanted to give people a quiet, peaceful life, but maybe they hid their real motives.

  Nora got up from the table and went into her bedroom. She came out a minute later with a glass scroll case. There was a scroll inside that had my name written on it. She handed the case to me. It looked like the case was sealed with a glass cap that screwed onto the end. I wondered where she hid that for all these years that I had never found it. It must have been a really good hiding place.

  “That’s yours, son,” she said. “I tried in vain to open that in a variety of ways over the years. I hope you’ll forgive me. I was dying to know what it said, but I could never break it open. I even tried smashing it with a hammer, but nothing worked.”

  I held it in my hands and then tried to unscrew the lid. It came off easily in my hands. I looked around and saw Nora blush a little bit with embarrassment. It must be magic that kept it closed. I slid the letter out and unrolled it in my hands, then read it to myself. When I looked up, everyone was watching me like a bunch of stroks, so I read it again out loud.

  Dearest Jeron,

  If you are reading this, then I am dead or worse, but your adoptive mother has kept her promise. I want you to know that you are descended from Mordon, one of the greatest High Magi of this world, and that it is a glorious and noble heritage, no matter what the ignorant people of today say. With that heritage comes the responsibility that Mordon himself shouldered, to help people and to defend the world from any threat. Though I cannot teach you the laws of the magic of this world, things may come to you instinctively. You have just to visualize what you need to do, focus your will, and seize the power. You must be careful not to display your gifts until you are strong enough to defend yourself against the attacks of the Xerith. They are the demonic creations of the Crix, an evil race that attacked our world and Broke it, and through their spellcraft, they are responsible for much of the danger we face even to this day. The Xerith are shapeshifters, able to transform themselves into anyone and nearly any creature that you can imagine. They can mimic animals, people, or even a close friend. They are blessedly few, but their sole purpose is to assassinate magicians, especially Mordonian sorcerers, and they are resistant to, but not immune to, magic. They hunt me now. Be careful who you trust. Know this: if you need shelter, the portals of Stonekeep will open to you. If anyone sees you enter, however, it will change your world. Do not do so lightly. I love you desperately, Jeron. Just know that I tried to give you the best life I could.

  With all my love,

  Your mother,

  Ismaera

  I was stunned. I read the letter again silently as people started helping themselves to the food set before them. Someone took my plate and loaded a serving of everything for me. Still thinking, I rolled up the letter and slid it back into the scroll case, then put the cap back on. I set it on the table and finally looked to my food, still vainly trying to make sense of everything. We were all quiet that night at dinner and we ate slowly. Despite trying to talk everything out over dinner, we just couldn’t figure out her true motivations with the little information the letter had revealed. What we learned was a lot worse than we thought it would be, too.

  The normal routine took over, and pretty soon our family returned to its normal state of activity. This meant I was wrestling around the living room floor with Bran as we struggled for dominance. Bran always won, but that didn’t stop me from trying. I was determined to beat him one day.

  Eventually Bran and I were sent to our room for bedtime. My brain was still buzzing with today’s revelations. We both lay on our backs in our bunks, staring at the ceiling.

  “Weird day, huh?” Bran asked me from his bed across the room.

  “Yeah. Weird.”

  “Hey, don’t get any crazy ideas about becoming the next Pirate King or something, huh?”

  “I don’t ever want to do that again,” I said earnestly. It hurt to use magic. I made up my mind at that moment, however, to never actually tell anyone how much it hurt. I didn’t want to worry my mom.

  “Good. Don’t make me beat you up.”

  Bran wasn’t serious when he said that. It was just something that brothers said sometimes. Still trying to work out how I’d actually used the magic, I eventually fell into a troubled sleep.

  -----

  When Fiveday morning came, my family behaved like nothing had happened. Bran and I did our morning chores, then mother focused on our Terran language skills. We were the only children we knew that could speak, read and write the common tongue, Terran and a little Arborean. We were working more on Terran than Arborean because father bought his steel ingots from the Terrans of Kurgh Rhamot, specifically a grizzled old warrior named Hamot Thickbeard. As my father (yes, he still felt like my father) predicted yesterday, Hamot had come today with a load of ingots, and he had just arrived in the smithy with his entourage. We heard them coming from a block away. Terrans were as subtle as a sledgehammer, and their armor was just as thick and noisy. As I got to know Terrans, I got the impression that they liked the noise.

  “Why don’t you two go downstairs and practice your Terran with Hamot?” Nora suggested.

  Bran and I smiled and took the stairs two at a time, racing to get there first. Bran won, of course, but he did it by pushing me backwards before we even started. The cheater. We entered the smithy as dad and Hamot were exchanging the usual Terran pleasantries while Darek hammered away in the background. Terran greetings were never supposed to be reused, which was something the Terrans did on purpose to keep things fresh.

  “[May yer hammer find a noggin’ needin’ knockin’],” Dortham said in Terran.

  “[And may yer forge burn hot an’ yer brew be cool],” Hamot replied.

  Hamot was short by human standards, about four and a half feet tall, but he was almost that wide, too. You would think that a person that short would be weak, but there was nothing about Hamot that looked weak. He had a barrel chest and thick arms and legs. His legs were much shorter in proportion to the way a human’s legs usually were, but they were each as big around as my waist. He was arrayed in fine Terran plate armor with an open-faced helmet that covered his nose and cheeks and allowed his great, grey beard to flow out over his cuirass, all the way down to his belt, which had a golden buckle on it as big as my face. He carried a shield with his left hand. A thick warhammer hung from his belt. His armor had Terran runes etched into the borders of the plates. From what I could tell, they were the words of the battle song of his clan, but I hadn’t been able to read the whole thing yet. I also wasn’t quite sure where it started, but that was beside the point. In his right hand, he held the strap of a very thick leather backpack that sounded like it was full of steel ingots as he set it down on the stone floor. His six companions were dressed in similar, but slightly less ornate, fashion. Some had battleaxes and some had warhammers at their belts, but all of them looked like they were carved out of the mountain stone, and they had a similarly stern disposition. Legends say the Terrans actually were carved from the granite of their mountain homes. Under close scrutiny, their skin looked like it was formed from tiny rocks, like river sand, gritty and almost unpolished. I promised myself I’d find out the truth of their origin one day, but I was a little too intimidated by the Terrans to ask them about that.

  “Hi, Hamot!” Bran exclaimed. He was always happy to see the Terrans. “Uh, I mean, [May the noggin of yer enemy be yer footstool],” Bran said in Terran, with as deep a voice as he could muster.

  “[May yer enemies see their weapons shatter on yer armor an’ despair],” I said.

  “Yer sons’re gettin’ more polite every time we come this way, Dortham. Ye should be right proud, ye should,” Hamot said with a smile. “Are ye workin’ on yer curses, lads?”

  “Mom hasn’t taught us any of those, yet,” Bran said, slowly adopting an evil grin. “We may need your help with that.”

  “Don’t ye worry, lad. I’ll have ye swearin’ like a crampin’ miner in no time. Just remember ta rrrroll yer r’s. Insults ’re more memorable that way.”

  We all had a good laugh. I was about to ask for some lessons in swearing, but I made the mistake of looking at Dortham before asking. His face said that wouldn’t be happening today. I choked on my question and shuffled my feet nervously.

  We all spoke in the Terran tongue about the news from Kurgh Rhamot, creatures crushed on the way here, and how the Thickbeard clan was doing while the other Terrans unloaded their ingots on the smithy floor close to the door. Father handed Hamot a small leather bag full of gold that he had been holding. Without even counting the coins, Hamot put the bag in his pack. The two of them had been doing business for a long time and trusted each other completely.

  “Well, we’re off ta th’ farmer’s market ta get some o’ yer finest vittles ta bring back to th’ Kurgh. Ye know, Dortham, I’m still havin’ trouble with me youngest son. Got the wanderlust, he does. Let me know if ye change yer mind about ‘prenticin’ any o’ yer sons with us at th’ Kurgh. We could make a trade, we could.”

  This was interesting news. I didn’t know such an offer had been made. I’d love to see what Kurgh Rhamot was like. I had never even seen a mountain before, much less lived in one.

  “Maybe one day, if they ever displease me enough,” father said with a wink.

  “Bah! Ye say that every time, ye do! Seriously, though, me clan’s in the foundry business and the Clan Fathers are resistant ta change, they are. If I ever wanna expand me clan’s prospects, I gotta look elsewhere.”

  “I’ll give it some thought,” Dortham said evasively.

  Knowing they wouldn’t strike a deal today, Hamot turned to leave. “[May yer clan be bountiful].”

  “[May yer lass be happy ta see yer return],” Dortham said with a wave as the Terrans marched out the door. When the Terrans had stomped away, Dortham pointedly looked at the pile of ingots by the door.

  “We know,” Bran said.

  Bran and I got to work oiling and storing them on the other side of the smithy without being told. Dortham went back to his forge and set his iron in the fire, pumping the bellows. Soon enough, the familiar rhythm of Dortham’s hammer on metal joined Darek’s.

  My stomach told me it was getting close to lunch time when I was stacking the last of the ingots with Bran. In through the smithy door walked Juleen with a basket of laundry on her hip, followed by Mira and Elle. They must have started a good friendship, as it was customary in Stonekeep for people to eat lunch together as a family. When playing, friends usually split up to eat with their own families. The three of them were chatting as they walked and went up the stairs to the house. I elbowed Bran in the ribs without saying anything as he just stood there mesmerized. He resumed carrying and stacking with fervor, and when we finished a short time later, we rushed upstairs to wash up.

  Mother was just coming to the stairs to call father and Darek for lunch when we bounded past. Juleen, Elle and Mira were already sitting at the table. Bran and I washed our faces and hands at the basin as father and Darek came up the stairs. We had a bench on one side of the table that the youngest kids usually sat at. It would be a little tighter of a fit today, but no one minded. Except maybe Elle. She sat as close as she could to the far edge of the bench and looked to be in danger of falling off. I wondered briefly why she wouldn’t want to be here.

  “This is Mira Portersdotr and Elle Chandlersdotr,” Nora said to Dortham. “They’ll be joining us for lunch today.”

  “You’re both very welcome here,” father said, helping himself to a sandwich. “Mira, what is your father’s name?”

  “Myhan Porter, sir. He usually works the docks with my brothers,” Mira said. Porters were men who transported heavy loads off the boats and through the city on their strong backs. It was no wonder that Mira wasn’t learning the family trade. She was probably left to her own devices most of the time simply because she was small. Hopefully. Sometimes a father would hire out a daughter to scullery work or to act as a maid or nanny.

  “Very good. What about your father, Elle?” Dortham gently asked.

  “Pyter Chandler, sir,” Elle said softly. Her eyes remained downcast.

  That name seemed to mean something to Dortham, but I had no idea what. “Ah,” he said. “You’re always welcome here, Elle,” Dortham said softly. Her demeanor relaxed a little bit at that for some reason, and she took a bite of her sandwich.

  Mother made small talk with the girls while they ate, asking their age, which was ten (like Bran and me), and things like that. Bran and I ate in silence, Bran because he was self-conscious around Elle, but I was quiet because I was still thinking about yesterday’s happenings and the letter. Despite how it hurt, I was genuinely tempted to do it again. I may be imagining things, but I could almost feel a connection to something right now. Something vast. The letter said to visualize what I wanted to do. Focus my will. Seize the power. Those were my mother’s last words, and I knew last words were the most important things a person could think of to say. If only I knew how I did what I did when I mended the breastplate.

  Before I knew it, lunch time was over, and the girls all pitched in to clean up.

  “I need a load, boys.”

  “Yes, sir,” we said. The coal bin was getting empty, so we knew it was coming. Off we went to see Charl.