Shield Knight: Third's Tale
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About this ebook
For a thousand years, the woman called Third was an urdhracos, a slave of the dark elven lord called the Traveler.
Now the Traveler is dead, and Third is free.
But when she undertakes the quest to find the missing Shield Knight of Andomhaim, Third must face the bloody shadows of her past.
Because if she does not, those shadows will devour her...
Jonathan Moeller
Standing over six feet tall, Jonathan Moeller has the piercing blue eyes of a Conan of Cimmeria, the bronze-colored hair of a Visigothic warrior-king, and the stern visage of a captain of men, none of which are useful in his career as a computer repairman, alas.He has written the "Demonsouled" trilogy of sword-and-sorcery novels, and continues to write the "Ghosts" sequence about assassin and spy Caina Amalas, the "$0.99 Beginner's Guide" series of computer books, and numerous other works.Visit his website at:http://www.jonathanmoeller.comVisit his technology blog at:http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/screed
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Shield Knight - Jonathan Moeller
SHIELD KNIGHT: THIRD'S TALE
Jonathan Moeller
***
Description
For a thousand years, the woman called Third was an urdhracos, a slave of the dark elven lord called the Traveler.
Now the Traveler is dead, and Third is free.
But when she undertakes the quest to find the missing Shield Knight of Andomhaim, Third must face the bloody shadows of her past.
Because if she does not, those shadows will devour her...
***
Shield Knight: Third's Tale
Copyright 2017 by Jonathan Moeller.
Smashwords Edition.
Ebook edition published November 2017.
All Rights Reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.
***
Author’s Note
The novella SHIELD KNIGHT: THIRD’S TALE takes place between the events of SEVENFOLD SWORD: CHAMPION and SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER. Note that this novella contains spoilers for those books.
***
Chapter 1: The Killer In The Dark
Fourteen days after the quest of the Seven Swords began, fourteen days after the day in the Year of Our Lord 1488 when the cloaked stranger came to the High King of Andomhaim’s court, the woman who called herself Third walked alone through the darkness of the Deeps.
The caverns of the Deeps were places of dread and darkness. Portions of it were ruled by the dwarves of the Three Kingdoms, the dvargir of Khaldurmar, various petty dark elven lords, and a constantly shifting array of deep orc and kobold and koballat tribes. And still worse things lurked in the caverns of the Deeps, urvaalgs and ursaars and the other war beasts of the dark elves of old. Undead haunted many of the caverns and ruins, and mzrokar prowled in search of carrion. And there were more powerful creatures in the blackness, urdmordar and malophages and Deep Walkers and creatures that even the urdmordar feared.
None of it troubled the woman who called herself Third.
She had been here before, after all.
Third walked through a narrow tunnel of rough stone. It was gloomy, but she needed very little light to see. Patches of fist-sized ghost mushrooms clung to the walls here and there, throwing pale blue light across the rough stone. The straps of Third’s pack tugged at her shoulders, and her swords of dark elven steel rested in scabbards at her left and right hips.
The bracer of blue steel that Antenora had forged rested upon her right forearm, over her close-fitting dark armor. From the magical bracer, Third felt a tugging sensation, almost like a lodestone rotating itself towards a steel cuirass.
That was good. It meant she was headed in the right direction.
Though Third thought she might have to make a few stops first.
The tunnel sloped downward, more patches of ghost mushrooms providing dim light. It began to widen, and Third felt a cool breeze on her face that tugged at her black hair. The air was damp, and the familiar smell of ironstalk mushrooms came to her nostrils. Likely there was a large cavern ahead, one with both water and enough space to support ironstalk mushrooms.
Such caverns were sources of food and water and were almost always defended.
Another scent came to Third’s nostrils, a dusty, dry smell like the scales of a serpent or a lizard.
She recognized that smell, too.
Third slipped her swords from their sheaths and glided forward, her boots making no sound against the rough stone floor.
As she had expected, the tunnel opened into a large oval cavern perhaps a half-mile long and a third of a mile wide. About a quarter of the floor was taken up by a rippling pond. The ripples came from the strange, glowing fish that darted back and forth beneath the surface. Clusters of ironstalk mushrooms, some of them standing over thirty feet tall, encircled the lake,