Here's the last part of the prologue . . . a little long at 2700 words. The whole prologue taps out at 7200 words, so it probably needs some trimming. Here's some questions I'd like specifically answered:
1) How are the transitions between action sequences (in the room, leaving the room, in front of the crowd, leaving the village, etc.)?
2) How is the dialogue, especially near the end?
3) Did you enjoy the description of the action?
4) What are your impressions of Uthar? How would you describe him?
5) Did the ending feel too rushed, or too slow, or just right?
6) General impressions.
Sky-blue eyes fluttered weakly and Uthar felt himself breathe for the first time in what seemed an eternity—she’s alive—and then his Lenora was looking up at him with eyes deeper than the sea.
“Uthar.” Her chest was heaving, and the words came out thick and wet sounding. “He’s alive. My little boy is alive.”
For a half-second Uthar could only stare at her in confusion—boy? what under the Ward is she talking about?—and then his heart skipped a beat as comprehension flooded him and he jerked around to stare woodenly at the still-screaming girl who was cupping a baby—his baby—to her chest. The child she held was wrapped in a small woolen blanket. He’d bought the fine Darnasan wool from a merchant five months ago on a trip south to Corson Hold; sky-blue was his Lenora’s favorite color and her face had lit up like summer dawn when he’d presented it to her. She’d given every free hour to making the blanket, humming to herself as she sat and knitted by the oven for warmth. She’d always been cold, these past few months—
A ragged growl, sounding more animal than man, tore from Uthar’s throat and he pushed the stray thoughts aside. Tried to brush them aside—it was as easy as sweeping away boulders with a brush-broom—but he kept at it, focusing on the tiny head and velvet ears that were just visible between the blanket and the girl’s chest. Both hands gripping the bed frame, he pulled himself upwards, cursing his trembling muscles and trying to hold his thoughts together. The blasted girl was still screaming!
Keep it together, man! Your wife and child are in the balance!
He’d taken no more than two wobbling steps around the bed and cleared less than half the distance to the girl, when her head snapped forward, white eyes drained of all color and feature locking onto Uthar’s and boring into him like an awl. He opened his mouth to calm her, but the words died in his throat.
The girl rose up off the blood-stained floor, her golden hair and tattered dress flaring around her as if billowed by an unseen wind. Jaw hanging slack, Uthar took a step back, one hand coming up to shield his eyes as her milky eyes began to glow, burn, with a brilliance that flared in an instant from a spark no brighter than a candle to a fire more fierce than the noon-day sun. Wind howled through the house, dead air suddenly churned by a hurricane’s force, that buffeted Uthar from all sides. Waves of heat rolled off the girl, the air buckling and warping worse than it ever did above Uthar’s forge. Cold seeped into his bones, and from the corner of his eye he saw ice creeping up the walls and bedposts, frosting over the windows. The earth beneath his feet trembled. Grimacing, he gripped the bed-frame to keep himself steady, and took another step forward. Another step towards the girl.
With a sudden move the girl lifted Uthar’s boy skyward, toward the unseen stars, and her head tilted back once more. She opened her mouth, and light and words burst out, the sound louder even than the wind that howled in Uthar’s ears: “He has come! He has come! Behold the Spear of the Ancients and the Scion of the Blessed.”
The voice rose higher still, till even the storm screaming around Uthar paled to a whisper. It crashed like waves against him, threatening to tear his knees out from beneath him. He took another step.
“Behold a Hope Forgotten and a Salvation All Men Fear.”
Closer. Another step closer.
“By His right hand the Master World shall be shattered, and with His left all Creation shall be gathered in.”
Uthar closed his eyes against a light so bright it burned.
Closer.
“From His gaze shall the Shadow flee, and in Him alone shall the Devourer know fear.”
Another step . . .
“The Spear of Ancients has come. He has come! Through Him alone shall all Life be saved.”
With one last ragged scream—a girl dying, an entire world dying—the girl went limp in the air, the blazing halo of light that was literally burning out of her frail body flickered out, and with a shuddering gasp that wracked her whole body, she fell into Uthar’s outstretched arms, the baby still cradled against her motionless chest.
Hissing in pain—the girl’s body burned iron fresh from the fire—Uthar dropped to his knees and set the girl down as gently as his trembling arms could. His baby wide-eyed but silent inside the already-smoldering blanket, and—fearing the heat was suffocating the child—Uthar pulled the tiny child out as quickly as he could, the wrinkled head cradled gently in the palm of his hand. Casting the blanket aside he stood—and none too soon. Halfway to his feet, the girl’s body burst into flames, withering to ash even as ice radiated outwards across the floor from where she lay.
Uthar shouldn’t have been able to look away from the charred remains at his feet, should have been weeping on floor for all the death he’d seen this night, but he had eyes only for his son. His boy had stopped crying almost immediately after Uthar had picked him up, and now lay quietly awake, deep gray eyes unfocused and blinking lazily and one miniature hand knotted in a fist that couldn’t close around Uthar’s thumb. The tiny creature was perfect, as perfect as Lenora—he even had Lenora nose! Uthar realized he was chuckling, chuckling and cooing to his boy. It was wrong, the Faith strike him dead, wrong to laugh when lives had been lost in his own home, but he could not stop. The Ward be praised! He was a father!
He was so absorbed in his son, that he did not hear the bells for several minutes; after the raging storm of noise that had engulfed the room only moments earlier, Uthar was surprised he could hear anything. Only after half of Matham’s bells had joined in did he look up, wide smile slipping from his face as he stared out the window into the darkness. The turmoil of earlier—the buckling earth and twisting . . . twisting everything—would have been more than enough to wake the village and send them into a panic, but with calm restored folk should be returning home, not ringing bells in the dark.
There was a sound behind him, and Uthar turned to find Renan stepping into the room, long face drawn and pale. “Faith,” the farmer said, pausing on the threshold and taking in the shattered room with a long, unblinking stare. “Faith, Uthar. What happened in—” he shook himself and straightened, visibly steeling himself. “No, it doesn’t matter now. We have to go. We have to leave now.”
Renan moved towards the bed, leaving a stunned Uthar staring at his back.
“By the Ward!” Renan said, looking over his shoulder in shock at Uthar. “What happened to Lenora?” The man must have known Uthar was in no state to respond—Uthar felt like everything around him was moving fast as lightning while his own thoughts were mired in mud, moving too slow by half—because he didn’t bother waiting for an explanation. Instead, he wrapped Lenora in the blankets as best he could then, picking Uthar’s wife up in his long arms, he turned and prodded Uthar towards the door with a gentle kick.
“Move it man, or you’ll lose more than a house and forge tonight.”
Still too lost to protest, Uthar moved forward numbly, all of his faculties focused on the tiny life he held in his arms, and the equally precious life Renan carried behind.
In the front room, the makeshift bed Nilana must have occupied was empty, bloodied sheets scattered on the floor around it. The front door was wide open, letting in the cool of the night, the frantic ringing of bells—somewhere amid his hazy thoughts, Uthar realized the ringing was growing louder, more frantic—and a strange orange glow that was too strong to be starlight. Could it be dawn already? How long since he’d stumbled into the room? How long since the world had gone mad?
Renan kept pushing from behind, forcing Uthar through the room and out into the night. What awaited them outside, Uthar could not have imagined, not in his wildest nightmare.
Matham was burning, a madman’s pyre that lit up the night, radiating from the village center—Uthar could see the chapel’s squat tower silhouetted by the dancing flames—spreading out through among the houses, leaping from roof to roof, greedy fingers of red and orange that roared with their own storm of noise above even the cry of the bells. And there were other noises on the night air: screams and shouts, the harsh clang of metal on metal, and the roar of beasts. Smells assaulted Uthar as they moved out onto the low porch, ash and soot, and the darker scent of blood.
Three dozen men, women and children were gathered in front of his house, huddling close to his door like a frightened flock and murming nervously to one another. The growing fires at their backs cast their faces in shadow, but even shocked as he was, Uthar recognized them: the Family, all that was left of it after nearly three thousand yeas of hiding and running and dying. Thirty-six souls who had been rooted out again this very night. Families who, if they survived the next few hours, would have to take to the roads and seek out a new home. The women were doing most of the talking, heads together, whispering to spare the children listening to dark words on an already dark night. Every man and boy over sixteen carried a weapon of some sort; hunting spears and bows for the most part, though Uthar spotted a sword here and there. They looked every bit as nervous as the women, but any man would have noted to his surprise that the men, even dressed as farmers and the like, seemed to know what they were about.
“Keep moving, man,” Renan muttered from behind, nudging Uthar forward again.
For his part, Uthar barely noticed. Dorlein Eldun was standing someway back in the press of bodies, clutching three children to her as best she could, her face—what Uthar could see of it—drawn and anxious and failing to hide a growing fear. He opened his mouth to tell her that her husband was dead, stricken where he stood by whatever force had shaken the world, but the words would not come. Faith, if she didn’t know by now, then Evin had not survived the turmoil either.
The Family parted ranks to let Uthar and Renan pass, revealing a single handcart parked just outside the gate. Nilana was already bundled up inside the cart bed, and Renan stepped carefully past Uthar to lay Lenora down beside her. Uthar roused himself enough to cradle his child in one arm and arrange Lenora’s blankets with the other. His wife’s eyes were closed, had been closed since she’d spoken to him in the house, but her color was good and her breathing steady. Silently, Uthar offered a prayer in her behalf.
Holy Faith and Mighty Ward, let her live to raise my son. Let her live.
Meanwhile, Renan had turned to the assembled Family, raising his arms for silence, for all the good it did.
“What under the Ward has happened?” a man behind Uthar—it sounded like Caern Aydon, but Uthar didn’t care to check—yelled over the roar of flames and muffled sounds of fighting; both of which were drawing nearer by the moment.
“How were we found out?” Another voice cried out.
For a moment the assembled families dissolved into a dozen panicked conversations, men grumbling and fingering their weapons, women weeping or glancing worriedly over their shoulders at the burning village, children crying.
Renan shot a glance at Uthar, but he barely noticed. By rights he should be leading the Family, the charge had been his for nearly ten years now; but he couldn’t think, couldn’t bring his thoughts into any sort of order. Faith, was he to lose his family on the very night it was begun?
“We’ve all a dozen questions,” Renan said loudly, apparently giving up on Uthar and turning back to the Family. “And not a single answer between us. The short of it is, we were found out, and our time here has run out. The Faith save those of our neighbors that may be saved, but we’ve our duties and oaths to attend to. We’re leaving. Now; this very minute.”
“Where? Where under the Ward can we go?”
Again, Renan looked to Uthar, his deep-set eyes pleading silently. Something in that look roused Uthar, something in the way Renan’s shoulders slumped, as if the man had already given up. Tucking his baby boy tight against his chest, Uthar raised a hand and turned on his heel, gazing levely and silently at the folk about him, until all fell silent again. His thoughts had come back into focus, though he couldn’t say when or how, and suddenly he knew what needed doing.
“South. We are heading south, this very moment.” He nodded to Renan, and the tall farmer darted to the front of the handcart and hauled it up by its long handles. “We’ll walk until we find a safe place to hide, to begin again. We are the Family and we’ve done it before. The Faith willing, we’ll live to do it again.” Beyond them, the chapel tower collapsed with a deafening screech of crumbling stone and shattered timbers; a column of flame blossomed in its place, roiling skyward and bathing them in an even harsher glare.
Shielding his eyes with one hand, Uthar suited his own words, placing his baby gently in the cart, nestled between the two women, and settling in at the back of the cart to push while Renan began pulling. It was only then that he noticed the other babe nestled in Narina’s arms, another boy, by the looks of it, Renan’s son. Bitterly, he wondered if two new lives could make up for the blood that was being spilled at that very moment.
“Move out,” he grunted over his shoulder, his voice coming out more harshly than he’d intended. “We’ll keep to the woods as best we can until we’ve put some distance between us and our hunters. Those with weapons . . . you know your duties. Screen the women and children and keep a sharp eye out for any pursuers.”
The Family left Matham—left the only life most of them had known, left the homes their fathers had raised when the Family had first come to the village—at a jog, moving as silently as a group of thirty village folk can. Uthar never knew what miracle guided them out of the firelight and into the woods unseen, nor what power steered them through the dark night safely . . . but he never once stopped praying, not once through the long hours, though his knees felt like wet leather and his tongue as dry as cotton after only a quarter hour of pushing the cart through the tangled forest.
Two hours passed before the glare of burning Matham faded into darkness; two hours before the roar of the fires and the screams of the dying fell silent. Two hours, and the night closed in around them completely, a ragged band of poor folk stumbling through the trackless woods.
It was only then, when the darkness was complete, that Uthar’s child began to cry. It was a wailing sound, more piercing than any baby’s wail he’d ever heard, and was joined almost immediately by Renan’s boy, who cried just as loudly.
The two tiny voices intermixed, echoing weirdly amongst the trees, until it seemed to Uthar that two more small voices had joined the first. Four cries in the darkness. Four cries to weep for a world that would never be the same.
Four cries to break the Silence.
