Free Sword Bearer (Return of the Dragons) by Teddy Jacobs

of
strange dream?
    I looked at Kalle and Kara and was about to ask a question
when I noticed they hadn’t moved a muscle since the spears had been withdrawn.
    “Kalle? Kara?”
    No response. I waved my hand in front of their eyes. They
didn’t even blink.
    I stood up, and looked up at the clouds. They too seemed
frozen. I looked around and saw, around a hundred feet away, a small building,
and at the doorway, two figures. One of them beckoned.
    I began to walk towards them. As I grew closer, I recognized
Woltan and Jona. Woltan continued to wave me onward.
    The building too seemed to pull at me, but there was a
struggle inside me.
    Part of me wanted to resist, part of me wanted to rush
forward. It felt right, somehow, to advance towards whatever awaited me. But
what if it was all a trick, all a trap?
    Part of me felt I was meant to walk these stones, to meet
this people, and that in some way I could not understand, they were my people
too, just like Kara and Kalle. Part of me felt I should have stayed in the
castle, kept on training to be a diplomat, like my father.
    But I hadn’t. I was here.
    I opened my mouth, calling out to them. But instead of
words, out of my mouth came more song.
    It wasn’t my voice that sang, but instead the voice of my
blood, of my people, of my ancestors. Though I didn’t know the words in my mind,
I knew them in my blood, and this is what my blood sang:
     
    Once a blood prince left his keep,
    went away over seas calm and deep, 
    met his true love in lands afar,
    and never returned to Gammalstan.
    There he started a blood line,
    that runs along until this day,
    one day when we cannot say,
    he shall return and with him kin,
    for his blood shall be of three lines,
    he shall be Kriek, old city and mer,
    and with his sword wielded true,
    the old bloodlines will be remade new.
     
    The stones underfoot started to glow as the words flowed
from my mouth. The closer I came to the building the brighter they glowed, and
I with them. I was a human lantern — Woltan and Jona shielded their eyes with
their hands. With each step I was heavier and hotter. My body was turning into
molten lead. It was not painful, but it was no longer pleasant.
    Woltan opened his mouth then; I was not far away now, and
could have reached him in a moment, if it weren’t for this heaviness that made
every step seem to take forever.
     
    Time will stop, when he comes,
    The testing of him will be done,
    His feet, so fleet, will feel like lead,
    And to walk the walk toward his kin,
    Will take his last ounce of strength;
    When he is done, his kin will weep,
    Tears, of joy or sadness, which,
    we cannot see, but true tears,
    for a blood prince kin of kin,
    that they never hoped to see.
     
    The last steps seemed to take an eternity.
    But what was the meaning of the word eternity, when time had
stopped? I moved slowly, then more slowly still.
    But what did the word slow mean, when time didn’t move?
Around me, no one moved at all, as I struggled through my last steps. At last I
reached them, and faced the two warriors, my kin if the blood song was true.
    I stood there eye to eye with Woltan and Jona.
    Woltan smiled. It was written that he who will reunite
the bloodlines will carry a blade of power; the hilt and pommel will be silver,
the blade, wood. Here in Gammalstan a new blade will be forged.
    Jona nodded. We have kept the pieces of the broken blades
of the kings of old: King Karlson of the Kriek, King Ludwig of Gammalstan, and
King Luciano of the merpeople. They are incomplete, and together make up just a
little more than one sword.
    Woltan continued. We shall smelt them together to make
one true blade. The ancients used a steel which we can no longer create, but we
still have the forge, and the smithy. We will make the steel flow again. Reform
the blade, purify it with hammer and forge, and then the prince of the three
bloodlines will have his sword.
    There was a pause, which seemed to last forever. My face
started to itch.