The Four Forges

Table of Contents

“Sevryn Dardanon is not your typical elf. In fact, the world of Kerith is not your typical elf world. In this spectacular series debut, the pseudonymous Rhodes (a prolific YA author) plays fresh variations on the standard epic fantasy tropes. Her elves, the Vaelinars, are outsiders, propelled by a magical cataclysm into an unfamiliar and somewhat hostile new environment. For Sevryn, a half-breed Vaelinar, life is especially difficult as he’s neither of one world or the other. Meanwhile, human Dwellers take in the orphaned Rivergrace, an escaped slave of Vaelinar heritage, and raise her as their adopted daughter. Both Rivergrace and Sevryn struggle to survive as quietly as possible, until, by chance, their paths cross and they must help each other battle an unknown evil that’s infecting Kerith. Sevryn and Rivergrace possess not only undeveloped magical powers but mysteries in their respective pasts that promise to keep the excitement level high in the next installment.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

 
“The first book of the Elven Ways series introduces the very detailed and well-drawn world of Kerith, in which four different peoples coexisted since the end of a devastating war, until a magestorm from another world brought a fifth people, the Vaelinars. Rhodes’ use of detail will please those who like richly drawn settings and intricate plots.”—
Booklist

 
“Rhodes evokes an atmosphere of urgency in her series opener, set in a world of ever-shifting alliances and unforeseen dangers. Strong characters and a compelling story make this a good choice for most fantasy collections.”—
Library Journal

 
“. . . a fantastic epic fantasy in what looks like it will be a special series similar to the works of Tad Williams and other great epic fantasists. The key cast members are believable individuals with distinct personalities. Jenna Rhodes leaves enough threads for readers to look forward to the next tale, but in a paradox
The Four Forges
feels complete.”—
The Book Review Forum

 
“Rhodes has built a fully realized world with engaging characters with a dangerous manifest destiny. The characters are complex and real in perilous times and leave you waiting anxiously to see what is resolved. A bright beginning for a new light on the fantasy horizon.”—
ConNotations

Copyright © 2006 by Rhondi Vilott Salsitz.

 
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First Paperback Printing, July 2007

eISBN : 978-1-436-24605-7

 
.S.A.

Dedicated to:

 
My friends and family, and especially to my encouraging family of Sheila and Betsy, Debra, Peter, Marsha, and Anne at DAW Books, and Paula, too!

 
Also to Michael and Lori, my very first audience.

HISTORY CHANGES AS eyes age and souls pass. This is irrefutable. Histories can be struck to paper by hands that inscribe bigotry with every writing stroke and, if written honestly, can be burned to ashes later, so it is with some hesitation that I even attempt this. And who would read it? Should I tell all that we Vaelinars know as we know our own skin? Does a history then become a weapon in another’s hand, to strike like the most potent of venoms? Yet, although we are still first and second generation, the third generation to come will be privy to most of us, as we are an exceedingly long-lived race. Even the Gods here bow before us, and there is none who can hold us accountable except ourselves, and that alone bodes ill. It is a universe out of balance, and the Gods will not long allow that. Kerith is theirs, not ours, although we have claimed it.

We were born on the whirlwind, brought in with the storm. Those on Kerith before us say that we came with the Hammer of War. Three blows did it strike their earth and when the lightning and rain and clouds of ash cleared, the Vaelinars stepped forth from the destruction. I do not know if any of the eyes of Kerith saw it to record the event. I was there. Even I cannot say exactly what happened.

Let me state at the first setting of ink to paper here that over the years I will add to our history, but I will not rewrite what I have written. There will be no revising. Correcting, perhaps, but my original words will stay as set even as wrong or disillusioned as they might have been, as seen in later years. It is the only way our life can be assessed.

We stepped out of storm and devastation, and with that singular catastrophe we lost our former lives, our memories, our heritage, our Gods, our entire world. We knew only the moment, remembered only that last, second blow that obliterated our past. Stunned and thrown into confusion, our people and animals wheeled and screamed and desperately sought an anchor in the chaos, the ground blackened under us, timber thrown for leagues about us, plucked out of the earth and shorn and charred and dropped down in piles. The mud steamed. When we reached for help, it was to those around us whose faces we knew no more than we knew our own names. We had been rent asunder. Horses lay in harness, torn in two, their shaking hulks lost to an awful death. I saw a beast or two which had been turned inside out before falling to the ground with a keening squeal of passing. Most of us were fortunate to have come through whole of limb, if not mind. The dogs howled mournfully voicing the despair and fear that overwhelmed all of us.

Those reading this who may not be Vaelinar might ask how we knew we were Lost. We knew almost instantly because when we reached for the Gods and the elements by which we rule our lives and powers, They were gone. We have seven Gods, the Three Great, and the Four of Elements . . . Vae, Goddess of Light; Nar, God of War; and Daran, God of Dark. Fair Lina who rules Water, Aymar of Wind and Air, Dhuriel of Fire, and Banh of Earth in their aspects of male and female, dark and light, had intertwined with every Vaelinar soul, and could be reached no longer. We touched other Gods, other elementals, other Demons. They quailed or bridled at our touch, they as foreign to us as we to them. Searching for our Gods, we then knew that we had been blasted from our earth to another, and thus did a number of us grow mad and die of the desperation of being Godless. Even Their names would have been taken from us, but for the pamphlet of a novice priest who came with us, and whose shaking fingers opened brittle pages to find names for the aching emptiness welling inside us.

We were a war troop. That much was obvious to any who looked on us. We gathered our survivors and made camp. After burials, those alive read our shields and armor and weapons, even the riggings on our horses, gleaning our names and House lineage from whatever we could. To this day, I have no doubt that some of our names taken then might actually have been the name of a much beloved and depended-upon war steed, engraved upon his halter strap, but then—who among us cannot say that some of us deserve to be named after a horse’s ass?

Many of us had brought our younger siblings or older children with us, to assist and squire as they might, or to carry messages. We brought horses and our hunting dogs and falcons. Others fought side by side with their loved ones because our race has both male and female warriors, and still others had cooks and farriers and camp followers in wagons close behind. Not one of us knew for sure what had happened save that, according to a sparsely worded soldier’s journal, we had been riding hard to a great and final meet in the war between our queen and the despot called Pyradeen. The Hammer of War which struck us, and the storm which issued forth, caught up soldiers from both sides in its fury. That, too, became clear over days as natural animosities seemed to spring forth anew despite the fact that our queen and the lands for which we had fought no longer existed for us, nor did the tyranny of Pyradeen.