Page 29 of Sword Bearer (Return of the Dragons 1)

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.