The First Wordweaver: Ryvenlock Trilogy

By Rachael Waldburger

A new age dawns. You must seek the phoenix in the mountains, in the darkness of the earth. There, you must face the shadows and return worthy to be called king.

 

When 18-year-old Vilden receives a prophecy telling him to travel north to become worthy of ruling his people, he has no choice but to obey. With only a rival warrior and a seer as his companions, Vilden sets out on a journey to become king. But it takes more than milage to make a ruler. Vilden will have to face a dangerous wilderness, foreign hunters, and a life-changing sacrifice before he can fulfill the prophecy—though the outcome may not be exactly what he expects.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rosedene Publishing LLC
• Release date: Nov 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988060628

Book preview

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Sea spray coats my skin in a layer of salt, and I would give anything to wash it off. Truly, anything. The fourteen longboats cutting through the surrounding waves, the settlers and all the supplies they carry—I would trade them all for a bath without a second thought. My clothes have been perpetually damp for two weeks, which is four days longer than Father said the journey would take.

Four days and ten hours.

It’s hard to remember the excitement I’d felt as we stood on the beach a fortnight ago. Father wore his plain traveling clothes, his rank as chieftain marked only by the leather band around his forehead. I’d been proud then, standing off to the side with the other young men, convinced I could be the warrior Father has always wanted me to be.

Now, I scowl out at the endless waves and wish I’d stayed in Andrevei with Grandmother Ryvne.

Or better yet, that she had never had the vision which sent us here.

Look, breathes a voice behind me.

My shoulders tense reflexively. Ieldran above, can’t they go more than six minutes without talking?

A shift of leather against wood tells me that one of them is turning in his seat. Look at what? There’s nothing out there.

No—there. See it?

I see… waves.

I glance over my shoulder, shooting a frown at the two men sitting behind me. Jørn and Brann, the banes of my existence, and the constant background noise to my thoughts for the past two weeks. Jørn is massive, towering over me even from his seat, with muscles thicker than the mast. Sweat and seawater slick his sand-colored hair against his square head, giving him the appearance of a large wet dog.

Brann is cool and composed in Jørn’s shadow. His unnaturally dark hair seems even blacker against Jørn’s golden skin, and his normally sallow face is sunburned after our time on the open sea. It hasn’t stopped the girls from making eyes at him from the supply boats, though he pretends not to notice.

I begged Father to put them on a different ship, but he’d said that we needed warriors in the lead boat in case we ran into trouble. I’d argued that the shore was unoccupied, that the only reports of inhabitants come from the mountains, but Father had only said, We may not be the only settlers.

If I have to listen to one more conversation between Brann and Jørn, I will throw myself overboard and swim to shore. I don’t care how far off it is.

Jørn catches my glare and wrinkles his nose in response. Hush, Brann. We’ll annoy Vilden.

My glare darkens, but I don’t answer. I turn back to face the bow and press my shoulder against the low side of the ship. Father stands with one hand resting on the curved back of the elegant raven figurehead, searching the seas for a glimpse of our new home.

Don’t be so hard on him, Brann says behind me. Your voice does tend to grate.

A quality bespeaking greatness, Jørn says.

Brann groans.

I glower at Father’s back. It’s bad enough that he chose Brann and Jørn for his landing party, but did I have to sit by them? There are dozens of young warriors he could have put me by. Why them?

You know why, says the cold, logical part of my brain. The part that looks over my life like a dissected beetle, spreading wide the protective shell and prying mercilessly into the tenderness beneath.

Father hopes I will be more like them.

We sail to a new land, one that holds all his hopes and dreams for the future. Father may be chieftain now, but that can’t last forever—and in Andrevei, the right to rule is not passed down from father to son. If I am to follow in his footsteps, I’ll need to win the right to wear his headband. Back home, I had little hope of beating the stronger warriors, but here… Here I can learn. The warriors will be busy building our new settlements, and I’ll have time to train. Before I can take Father’s place, I’ll need to be stronger, smarter, and likable enough to convince the clan to follow me.

In short, I’ll need to be more like Brann.

There! Brann says again. This time his exclamation draws more attention, including Father’s.

Stand up, Brann, Father says. What do you see?

Brann obeys, stepping around Jørn to steady himself against the mast. Due west, he says at last, grinning. I’m sure of it. Land.

A cheer goes up. I crane my neck to see past Father’s shoulder, but there is nothing except sparkling, shifting waters on the horizon.

No… there, a smudge of black against the blended blue of sky and sea. It blurs steadily closer as our low ships skim across the water. A gust of wind fills our sail, as if catching the hope soaring in each of our hearts and flinging it against the canvas.

Well done, Father says. Brann takes his seat, trying to appear as though he isn’t pleased with the praise, but I catch the gloating look he flashes Jørn.

Always circling Father’s feet in search of scraps. I frown at him, but all eyes are on the distant land. Details stand out against the darkness now—trees against the face of the cliff, and a long white beach beckoning like an outstretched hand to welcome us home.

Sails up, Father bellows, and the order goes out in a chain of echoes across the other boats. Sailors reach out eager hands to seize the stays, working in well-practiced unison to raise the sails. Our ship slows, but Father’s next order addresses it.

Run out the oars.

The men lift their oars from between the thwarts and heave the ends out into the water. When the deck settles, I stand to get a better view of the shore. Tall trees shoot up into the sky, throwing out cheerful branches feathered in emerald leaves. Ieldran, I can’t wait to reach them. To have something new to explore, to study, to learn… it’s all I’ve thought about for weeks. Father motions me to sit, but he grins to show he shares my excitement.

The men begin a chant to coordinate their work, matching their words with the rhythm of the oars.

Heave and pull, out and forward,

dawns the breaking of the day,

waves push on and ever onward,

raise we up and heave away.

It’s a simple song, pulsing an ancient rhythm as familiar as my heartbeat. Ever since Mother’s death, Father has pushed farther and farther into the sea, never content with our ancestral territories. There’s more out there, he’d say every time we prepared for another journey. The whole world is out there.

I’ve spent as much of my life on a ship as on land, searching for something to fill the void in Father’s heart. Grandmother Ryvne’s vision may have convinced the others to leave Andrevei, but I don’t think Father has thought of it as home in a long time.

I’m not sure I ever did.

Father gives another command to adjust our course, his eyes fixed on the shoals ahead. We’d spent weeks pouring over the few maps I was able to get my hands on before our journey, and I know Father has them memorized as well as I do. This section of beach is simply labeled Landing, being the only point for miles of coast that’s fit to bring in ships. It will be our first contact—might even be our first settlement.

Father shouts an order, and the other ships draw together like autumn geese. Choppy gray water splashes up as the men drag us closer to shore. It’s cold on my face, but I can’t bring myself to back away. Everything is so clear now: the low cliffs on either side of the beach are covered in flowing salt grass and wildflowers, and sleek white gannets swoop through the spray thrown up by the breaking waves. We’ll have to send boats that way once we’ve established a camp—gannets hunt schooling fish near the surface of the water, and the presence of so many in one place might mark a decent fishery.

The ship jerks as the hull grates against sand. Men stand to vault the low ship sides into the shallows, ready to pull the boats in the last few steps and haul them onto the shore. I am on my feet with them, though I have no intention of towing the ship ashore. My gaze is fixed on the wall of trees farther inland, on the clumps of brush beneath their branches, on the promise of growing things.

Man overboard!

I snap my attention back to the water. In the boat nearest us, sailors lean out over the side and point into the shallows. There’s a splash as someone leaps out of our boat, and when I turn around to look, Jørn and Brann are gone.

The others hasten to put up their oars, but the boat beaches itself moments later. The water is only waist-deep where Brann and Jørn went in, and I lean over the side to see them standing in the shallows, supporting the sodden form of a girl between them.

Chief Erlendr! Brann calls. It’s Grye! She’s having a vision!

Get her on shore, Father says, vaulting overboard and surging through the shallows to join them.

I follow with dread welling in my chest. Grandmother Ryvne is a soer, one of the women blessed to receive messages from Ieldran in the form of dreams and visions, but prophecies are rare. She only had two within my lifetime. The first, which she had when I was a child, foretold the destruction that sent Father on his quest for meaning. The last was less than a month ago.

Across the sea, a new land lies in the mountain’s shadow. Many will seek to claim it, but peace can only be found beneath the raven’s wings.

I glance at the raven tattoo on Father’s forehead. Its wings spread over his eyebrows with the tail trailing down the bridge of his nose, a symbol of wisdom and leadership. Once again, his foresight is a blessing to his people. Grye is the only other soer from Andrevei, and I know Father paid dearly to bring her along on our voyage. Her father had hoped to marry her to one of the neighboring chieftains and was loathe to lose her to the new land, but Father must have made a convincing argument.

To receive another vision so soon after Grandmother’s is unheard of, and for it to happen the moment we touched this new land…

Stand back, Father says, kneeling in the sand beside Grye. Brann has stripped off his jacket and is rolling it into a dripping pillow beneath Grye’s head, but he stands and withdraws at Father’s command. He pulls Jørn with him, dragging him out of the way and eventually stopping behind me as I crouch at Father’s side.

Grye lies still, her eyes wide and staring at the sky, her wet hair splayed out around her. A strand of it is stuck to her cheek, and Father moves it gently aside. There’s no use talking to her in the middle of her vision, but at least we know she’s still breathing. The rest of the boats drift to shore around us, pulled in by the crews who wait with reverent impatience in the background.

A new age dawns, Grye says, turning suddenly toward me. Her voice is faint, and she lifts a hand in my direction while her eyes stare up at the sky. You must seek the phoenix… in the mountains, in the darkness of the earth. There, you must face the shadows and return worthy… to be called king.

All four hundred Andreveien settlers are silent. The whisper of waves brushing the shore is unnaturally loud in my ears.

King, Father says in a hushed voice.

He says it like it’s the answer to all of his prayers. Like it’s the confirmation that all he’s done in the last decade has brought us to this point, to the culmination of his dreams. It’s a monumental prophecy—bigger even than the one that sent us here. Andrevei has never had a king. Chieftains guide the clans, and occasionally clans unite under a jerle for the purpose of battle or to settle a larger area of land, but such alliances are rarely permanent. For