CHILDREN OF A SUNLESS LAND
(THE DEAF SWORDSMAN SERIES NO. 1)
BY
R. JANVIER del VALLE
ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS BY
JASON CHEESEMAN-MEYER
“Man is always something worse or something better than an animal.”
-G. K. Chesterton
R. Janvier del Valle
Copyright 2012 by R. Janvier del Valle
CONTENTS
No. 1: Children of a Sunless Land
Afterword
Bibliography
OTHER BOOKS BY R. JANVIER del VALLE
SWORD FROM THE SKY SERIES (NOVELS)
Book One: The Blade School of Daví
Book II: Onward Unto An Endless Night (2013)
THE DEAF SWORDSMAN SERIES (NOVELLAS)
No. 2: The Abandoned Asylum of the Good Doctor Fangtasahd
No. 3: Along the Many Houses of Damnation
No. 4: Beauty in a Land of Sorrow
No. 5: Where the Frost Reigns (2013)
No. 6: The Golden Queen (2013)
No. 7: The Veil of Vanity (2013)
No. 8: The Hound of the Moon (2013)
No. 9: Escape from the Sunless Land (2013)
SILAS DE SAN MICHEL MYSTERY SERIES (NOVELS)
To Kill and Kill Again (2013)
“The man was a marriage of monk and savage, of scholar and assassin…a brute at times, he had a touch of the pagan barbarian…yet was the brightest of philosophers and had the grace of a spirited healer. On a quest to find his missing child, he took to a higher calling, driven by something greater, as if that one mission was just an excuse to truly enact his divine destiny. Restless and sour as the dank, gray air of the moon, he was reliable in only one respect--he was wired since birth to destroy evil--in all manners, in all forms. This was the deaf swordsman, Vohro Vahllenu--the man with nine blades.”
CHILDREN OF A SUNLESS LAND
THE OLD MAN KEPT STARING AT THE TALL RIDER’S eyes, so big and striking, like the blooming flowers of a morning meadow. “What was that?” he said, having difficulty discerning the tall rider’s words, for the man on the horse had been deaf since birth and could only speak with a muted tone. “I couldn’t understand you, traveler.”
“Have you seen this child?” said the rider whose eyes were kin to the moon, for overbearing those eyes were, enveloping everything surrounding him and casting their light on the man who had dared to question him twice. “Take a look at the girl in the drawing.”
Intimidated by rider’s soft speech, the man took another look at the picture. “I haven’t seen her,” he said. “Truly, I haven’t.”
The man on the horse, Vohro Vahllenu, placed the drawing back inside his dark poncho-like garment, and he grasped the reins of his horse with a fortuitous grip, forcing his veins to bulge out of his soft, leather gauntlets. He positioned his wide-brimmed hat back on his head, casting a patch of shadow diagonally across his face, leaving one eye to the caverns of the night, and the other, to the gleam of the silver eventide.
The old man took a few steps back, now wary of the rider’s presence. “I swear to you, I haven’t seen the girl,” he said.
“Calm your nerves,” said Vohro. “You have nothing to fear from me. I thank you for your honesty. But I pray, do tell--why do you seem so spooked beyond your grave?” As he said this, Vohro turned his eyes to the man’s family behind him, seated and huddled together in their sturdy carriage. “And don’t turn your head, for I cannot read your words.”
“We’re on our way out of the woods,” said the old man. “Too many nights have I heard the howling of children and women.” The man approached Vohro cautiously, “People have been talking, the people of the woods, and they say that certain things have been going on. People have been disappearing, whole families been taken, children and all. They say there are creatures out there, but I say it’s just a gang of blood-lusting thieves, a whole gang. And I cannot afford to have my family stay here any longer.”
“Thieves?” said Vohro.
“Don’t listen to him!” said the man’s other half. She stepped down from the carriage and approached Vohro without a care in the world; riders like him never seemed to spook the woman whose age was shown in the waves of wrinkles washing across the vastness of her skin.
“It’s not thieves,” she said as she walked towards him. “It’s the things of the night. Look around you. Feel them. They’re out there.”
“What’s out there?” said Vohro.
“Oh, be quiet!” said the old man. “You needn’t be going around telling stories about things you can’t see or hear, especially for him.” Then realizing his slight insult, the old man quickly took off his hat and stepped away from the rider. “Oh dear, I didn’t mean that.”
“I know, old man,” said Vohro. “My apologies if my presence unnerves you.”
“Oh, don’t apologize to him,” said the woman. “He’s nothing but a tainted fool, much like the people yonder in those woods.”
Vohro raised his head to the path before him and surveyed the cluster of trees. The aging oaks had been around for centuries, and it showed, for the trees were converging, hunch-backed as if leaning forward from years of intense pain. The path leading up to the forest was shadowed, and the empty pockets in and out of the trees were privy only to the intrusion of gleaming eyes made of yellow anger, of different varieties, all staring back at him. The moon had dipped lower than usual, skimming the ailing leaves atop the highest peaks of the woods, throwing silver specks of light here and there, not to light the way but to shine on what was most foul.
“They’re tainted, you say?” Vohro replied.
“There are people that live hidden in the woods, away from everyone,” said the woman. “They’ve ceased to care about the mystical world around them; they live to themselves, for themselves, guided by their self-centeredness and hunger. Their desire to happify themselves at the costs of bending the truths of this world has caused them to be consumed by the foulest things of the night. They are corrupt, intoxicated with self-pleasure, opening themselves to be gripped by their own shadows. Essentially, they have become their shadows.”
“That’s enough!” said her husband. “Leave him be--with those stories of shadows and whatever else your trickster mind can conjure up. We must hurry and get back on the road.”
The uneasiness of their bickering words troubled Vohro, including his horse, which seemed rather jumpy as it strode to the side, backing away from the ill-boding speech coming from the woman’s lips.
Now exposed, the moonlight took a liking to Vohro, bathing him throughout his massive, rock-like form as if it took a bucket of moonlit essence and splashed it across the totality of his mass. On his back, there seemed to be the long hilt of a fierce sword, and his center mass was bulky as if the garment he wore kept many secrets hidden deep inside.
The old woman backed away from the stranger, and she read the histories of his past written along the crevices outlining his darkly features. He was like a hawk that had traversed all the lengths of the land and had now become weary of flight.
“Mister, where do you hail from?” said the woman.
“From a kingdom far away from here,” said Vohro. “I have been led astray, far from the reaches of my home, far into the bowels of the night.” He took a good look at the woman, and in a soft voice, asked her once more, “Now, have you seen the child I seek?” He ended with a smile that seemed to have cured all her fears.
“Why do you seek the child?” said the woman.
“I made a promise to protect a little girl many year
s ago,” said Vohro with dour lips. “Then one night, she was taken from me, the promise--broken.”
“What makes you think the child has come this way?” said the old man.
“I sense her,” said Vohro in a soft muted tone, a speech where patches of syllables and letters intertwined with soft moans as if struggling to make sense of the spoken word. “Every now and then I find her among the stars, a phantasm of her likeness, bouncing off from one star to the other, like one would do if skipping about the rocks of a river’s bank. And she’s content, and I can hear her laughter. I know it’s hard for you to believe--to think that I can truly hear her--but I can. I may not be able to hear her with my ears, but I hear her loud and clear with my heart. It is that laugher that guides me to her. Not long ago, the child gripped my soul with her tiny hands, and she has yet to let go. So you see, old man, I cannot go any other way but forward.”
“I’m sorry stranger; I haven’t seen her,” said the woman slightly lowering her head, saddened.
“Then I must bid you farewell and continue onward.”
“But you’re not going into the forest?” said the woman. “Haven’t I warned you?”
Vohro looked onto the woman who had spoken to him in a foolish manner and cut her down with a stare made of steel forged out of a transcendent courage. “Your warning has been noted, kind woman,” he said, “but as you are oblivious to the truth, you must know that I will descend