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Curtell, Braedon, year 880, Amon’s Moon waning

What did it mean to be a god? Was it simply immortality that separated the great ones from those who lived on Elined’s earth? Was it their power to bend others to their will, their ability to shape the future and remake the world as they desired? Did he not possess those powers as well? Had he not made himself a god?

Victory would soon be his, and with his triumph would come a new world, one that he had foreseen, a world of his own making. Was that not the highest power? He could not cheat death-Bian would call him to his side eventually. But he would be remembered forever: the Weaver who toppled the Eandi courts and ruled the Forelands as its first Qirsi king. Was that not immortality?

In these last days before war and conquest and the attainment of all for which he had worked and hungered for so long, he found himself remembering a legend told to him by his father when he was no more than a boy, before anyone had thought to call him high chancellor, or Weaver, or king. It was a tale of four brothers, a story his father said had come from the Southlands, with the first Qirsi invaders, nearly nine centuries ago. He had heard it told since by Eandi living in the Forelands, as if the parable and its moral belonged to them. But he knew the truth.

According to the tale, the four brothers were soldiers who, as they wandered the land, came across a white stag that had been caught in a hunter’s snare. The beast was more beautiful than any creature the four men had seen before. It stood taller than the greatest mounts of the southern plains, with a coat the color of cream, and ebony antlers as broad across as an eagle’s wings.

Knowing this, the brothers freed the beast, cutting through the snare with their blades. When it was free, the stag bowed to them, and then spoke.

“You have given me my life, and so I will grant to each of you your heart’s desire,” the creature said. “You need only sleep tonight in this glade and await the first light of dawn. ”

The stag left them then, and the brothers bedded down in the glade.

In the middle of the night, the oldest of the four awoke to find a warrior standing before him in shining mail, bearing a sword that gleamed in the moonlight. “Come with me,” the warrior said, “and I will make you the greatest swordsman in the land. No enemy will dare stand against you, and bards will sing of your prowess in battle. ”