A Land Of Fire (Book 12) Read Free Page B

warrior—but toil and hardship, suffering and pain.
Suffering above all. It killed me to watch you suffer—and yet paradoxically,
that was what you needed most in order to become the man you have become. Do
you understand, Thorgrin?”
    Thor did indeed, for the first time in
his life, understand. For the first time, it all made sense. He thought of all
the suffering he had encountered in his life: his being raised without a
mother, reared as a lackey to his brothers, by a father who hated him, in a
small, suffocating village, viewed by everyone as a nobody. His upbringing had
been one long string of indignities.
    But now he was beginning to see that he
needed that; that all of his toil and tribulation was meant to be.
    “All of your hardship, your independence,
your struggling to find your own way,” his mother added, “it was my gift to
you. It was my gift to make you stronger.”
    A gift , Thorgrin thought to himself. He
had never thought of it that way before. At the time, it felt like the farthest
thing from a gift—yet now, looking back, he knew that it was exactly that. As she
spoke the words, he realized that she was right. All the adversity in his life that
he had faced—it had all been a gift, to help mold him into what he had become.
    His mother turned, and the two continued
to walk side-by-side through the castle, and Thor’s mind spun with a million
questions for her.
    “Are you real?” Thor asked.
    Once again, he was ashamed for being so
blunt, and once again he found himself asking a question he did not expect to
ask. Yet he felt an intense desire to know.
    “Is this place real?” Thor added. “Or is
it all just illusion, just a figment of my own imagination, like the rest of
this land?”
    His mother smiled at him.
    “I am as real as you,” she replied.
    Thor nodded, assured at the response.
    “You are correct that the Land of Druids
is a land of illusion, a magic land within yourself,” she added. “I am very
much real—yet at the same time, like you, I am a Druid. Druids are not so
attached to physical place as are humans. Which means that a part of me lives
here, while a part of me lives elsewhere. That is why I am always with you, even
if you cannot see me. Druids are everywhere and nowhere at once. We straddle
two worlds that others do not.”
    “Like Argon,” Thor replied, recalling Argon’s
distant gaze, his sometimes appearing and disappearing, his being everywhere
and nowhere at once.
    She nodded.
    “Yes,” she replied. “Just like my
brother.”
    Thor gaped, in shock.
    “Your brother?” he repeated.
    She nodded.
    “Argon is your uncle,” she said. “He
loves you very much. He always has. And Alistair, too.”
    Thor pondered it all, overwhelmed.
    His brow furrowed as he thought of
something.
    “But for me, it’s different,” Thor said.
“I don’t quite feel as you. I feel more of an attachment to place than you. I
can’t travel to other worlds as freely as Argon.”
    “That is because you are half human,”
she replied.
    Thor thought about that.
    “I am here now, in this castle, in my
home,” he said. “This is my home, is it not?”
    “Yes,” she replied. “It is. Your true
home. As much as any home you have in the world. Yet Druids are not as attached
to the concept of home.”
    “So if I wanted to stay here, to live
here, I could?” Thor asked.
    His mother shook her head.
    “No,” she said. “Because your time here,
in the Land of the Druids, is finite. Your arriving here was destined—yet you
can only visit the Land of the Druids once. When you leave, you can never
return again. This place, this castle, everything you see and know here, this
place of your dreams that you have seen for so many years, it will all be gone.
Like a river that cannot be stepped in twice.”
    “And you?” Thor asked, suddenly afraid.
    His mother shook her head sweetly.
    “You shall not see me again, either. Not
like this. Yet I will always be with you.”
    Thor was