Harruq laughed, unable to believe the absurdities of fate that led to him standing there, here and now, about to give away a daughter to become queen. He stared at his precious Aubrienna, so alive, so wondrous, so deserving of all the world, and he smiled the widest he’d ever smiled.

  “You look like the world to me,” he said. Fine outfits and tradition be damned, he wrapped her in his arms. “I’m so happy for you, Aubby.”

  Such a simple statement. It came nowhere close to conveying the depths of it all, but what else might he say? What else mattered there at that moment? So he said it again, let it lift his spirits and break the stress and fears of the day.

  “I’m so happy. I’m so unbelievably gods-damned happy.”

  Second Epilogue

  HARRUQ

  The year 616 IA

  Harruq paced, his fingers twitching and his chest constricted with what felt like a thousand iron chains. Tarlak sat on a nearby padded chair, idly flipping through a leather-wrapped book he’d purchased earlier that day.

  “It hasn’t been too long, has it?” Harruq asked.

  Tarlak turned a page. The pair were in the small servant’s room connected to the royal bedroom within Mordeina’s castle. The wizard shrugged without looking up.

  “You’re just as nervous as you always were. It’s almost adorable.”

  Harruq swallowed down his retort. His fingers twitched, and he absurdly wished for his swords. Anything to give him comfort, or at least something to do.

  “It’s just hard to--”

  The connecting door opened, and Aurelia paused in the middle of the doorway, radiant as ever. Pure joy sparkled in her eyes.

  “I was right,” she said, and stepped out of the way so Gregory could enter. The fine young man looked more tired than the Abyss, with deep circles around his eyes. Despite his exhaustion, his smile was ear to ear as he held the newborn child in his arms.

  “So it’s a boy?” Harruq asked as Tarlak hurried to his feet, but only after pausing to place a bookmark to keep his page. Aurelia had insisted their granddaughter would be a boy, whereas Harruq had been convinced a tradition of daughters would continue in the Tun family line.

  “A healthy, chubby baby boy,” Gregory said, and he laughed. “I should cover Aubby in jewelry for carrying him for nine whole months.”

  Relief swept through Harruq. The dangerous part was over. He grinned down at the pink face wrapped in stark white cloth. His nose was scrunched, and his eyes squeezed firmly shut. Despite sleeping, he looked grumpy, as if the entire birthing process had made him miserable. A little patch of hair grew from the center of his head, fuzzy and dark.

  “Can I?” Harruq asked, offering his arms.

  “Of course,” Gregory said. Harruq accepted the child, struck by just how light he felt despite the wrappings. He grinned down at the kid, trying to judge likeness and resemblance despite it being far too early. Still, it looked like he’d inherit Harruq’s nose, and there was the faintest hint of sharpness to the ears squished to the sides of his face.

  “You’re a grandfather now,” Aurelia said, looping her arm around Harruq’s waist and leaning against him. “How’s it feel?”

  “Damn weird,” Harruq said, and laughed.

  “A fine looking kid,” Tarlak said, peering around Harruq’s arm. “And I’ll ask since the oaf here didn’t. I assume Aubrienna is healthy and well?”

  “She’s resting,” Gregory said, and there was no hiding the pride in his voice. “She endured the pain better than I ever could.”

  Harruq shifted the baby in his arms and gently brushed his thumb across that scrunched little nose, unable to help himself. Gregory watched, a smile permanently etched upon his tired face.

  “We’ll announce the birth of the prince soon,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. “Once I feel awake enough to deal with all that hassle.” He paused, suddenly uncertain. “We…Aubby and I, we’ve talked about names, and I pray you approve. His name, we want to name him Qurrah Copernus.”

  Harruq felt the tightness in his chest return, and he could not even begin to understand the sudden whirlwind of emotions that hit him.

  “Qurrah?” he asked, echoing the word as if it would conjure an explanation.

  Gregory cleared his throat, the young king suddenly embarrassed and uncertain. “Your brother gave his life for the both of us. This feels like the least we can give in return, by honoring his memory.” He hesitated again. “But if you object, or--”

  “It’s a lovely tribute,” Aurelia said, interrupting him. She stroked the baby’s forehead, her arm around Harruq’s waist tightening. “Isn’t that right, Harruq?”

  Harruq cradled the child, staring down at him. He suddenly could not speak, only nod. Aurelia eyed him, then released her grip.

  “Would you two mind giving us a moment?” his wife asked Gregory and Tarlak. The other two quickly accepted, Tarlak shuffling out to the hallway while Gregory hurried on through the connector door to the bedroom with Aubrienna and the midwife.

  Once alone, Aurelia bent down to softly kiss the sleeping baby’s forehead. Harruq watched, struck by his wife’s beauty and a sense of deep inequality that he could ever be loved by someone so wondrous.

  “A blessing,” she whispered, and then kissed Harruq’s cheek as well. “I’ll let you know when Aubby is cleaned up, all right?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Harruq said.

  She departed through the door. It shut, and in the ensuing silence Harruq stared down at the sleeping little thing in his arms. His throat felt dry and his heart thudded away at a relentless beat.

  “Qurrah,” he whispered, and the dam within him broke. He more collapsed than sat in Tarlak’s chair, and tears cascaded down the sides of his face. He clutched the babe as a thousand memories raced through him, dulled by time but not without their sting. A full lifetime, of beauties and horrors beyond what anyone could ever believe. Fighting for scraps in the streets of Veldaren, burdened by the weight of his blood and brawling with fellow urchins to protect his weak little brother. The hate, all for the pale color of his skin and curve of his ears.

  Harruq clenched his jaw. Velixar’s arrival. A promise of conquest. A village slain, innocent people butchered in a drunken haze as Harruq wielded power, true power, for the first time in his life. Not just villagers. Children. Demanded by the one whose name this child now shared.

  Perhaps it was age. Perhaps it was the stress and exhaustion of waiting and fearing for his daughter, but he could not stop these memories now. They washed over him, errant, disordered, cruel in their honesty. Training with Haern. Laughing with Delysia after a mission, their table warmed by Tarlak and Brug’s presence. That first pregnancy, pacing nervously while Aullienna was born. Aullienna. Her laugh. Her smile. The way even Tessanna had doted over her.

  A body, lying face down upon the water.

  “I don’t deserve this,” he whispered as he wept over his grandson. It didn’t matter all he had fought. It didn’t matter all he had given. A brutal lifetime, killing, so much killing. Traveling across Dezrel, fleeing war demons and hordes of undead. Bleeding and screaming during the Night of Black Wings. It was enough to break him, if he let it. Every hope of peace, met with hatred and war.

  It was a question not often wondered by Harruq, but he confronted it now. What legacy would this child inherent by taking a name both cursed and revered in equal measure? A memory of Qurrah’s voice echoed within him, not quite his last words, but most certainly his last deed.

  But of my life, and my many sins, I know this here and now is the one act which atones for it all.

  The child stirred, grumpy whimpers escaping his throat. Harruq felt his little arms shift and press against the bonds of his wrappings. He smiled down at him, letting the joy in his breast wash away the memories of the past. That darkness, it did not belong to the young. Let the future be one free of bloodshed and war, if only in the hopes of his heart.

  “Hello there, Qurrah,” he said. Something caught in his throat, but he forced out the words, not caring that they released another wave of tears. Harruq felt so old, and yet a child again, side by side upon a wall, watching burning skulls soar across the night sky, a promise of death, and yet magical, strange, and unknown.

  “Welcome to Dezrel. There’s so much wonder here I cannot wait to show you.”

  A Second Note from the Author:

  It’s a strange thing, writing this novel. All the while, it’s been hard to shake a very simple question: who is this book for? And it’s absurd, if you really do stop to think about it. Not only must you have read the previous eight Half-Orc novels, but to get everything out of it, you’d also need to have read the six Shadowdance novels, too. I’m telling a story you likely need to be fourteen novels dedicated to appreciate. So what does that mean?

  Well, for starters, it means if you’re reading this note you are unquestionably one of my most dedicated fans. So for that, you already have my thanks. But as for my original question, who is this book for? There was really one answer.

  It’s for me.

  At this point, I’m twenty-two novels deep into the world of Dezrel, but at the same time, I still teased the existence of a long lost child of Haern the Watcher at the end of A Dance of Chaos. In my mind, that was a promise. One day I would tell their story, however long it took. Well. It took a decade. Does anyone still care, all these years later? I don’t know. Will Erin be what they hoped for? Again, I don’t know. So what do I know?

  I know that I had to toss all that aside if I were to finish this novel. I tried to not care what it meant to be a Shadowdance or Half-Orc novel. I looked at a decade of baggage and lore, of characters and deaths, and decided I would simply enjoy spending time with Erin, and Harruq, and by god, even Thren Felhorn once more. And so I did. I did what I used to do, before this was my career. I had fun.

  Will this mean a better book? I don’t know. You will have to be the judge of that.

  Speaking of Thren, I suppose I should mention the potentially controversial decision to retcon his death. I’ve been asked many, many times if there are character deaths I regret. Generally, the answer is no. There’s one specific character death in the Keepers Trilogy I regretted, and then in Dezrel, there’s Thren. You see, when I first introduced Thren Felhorn, it was in Cost of Betrayal, long before I had ever conceived the idea of the Shadowdance series. I’d barely written a handful of chapters with Haern at all, let alone come up with even a fraction of his eventually back story.

  What this all means is that Thren’s death is…pretty jarring to anyone who started chronologically with the Shadowdance series and then dove into the Half-Orcs. When I wrote A Dance of Chaos, I did my best to kind of rectify this, to write what I thought was the “true” conflict between father and son. When they meet again in Cost of Betrayal, that was but a defeated, hollow husk of the former master of the underworld.

  I did my best, but that doesn’t mean I still didn’t hate how Thren died. So anticlimactic. So clumsily written, being the second book I wrote in what is now a thirty-plus book career. I often debated rewriting portions of Cost of Betrayal to give him a better ending, but then I feared that the newly written parts would stand out compared to the old ones like a fresh brush of paint swiped across an old wall. So I left it alone.

  But it irked me.

  Zip ahead all these years, and I was pondering what exactly this ninth Half-Orc novel would be. How would I examine Haern’s legacy? How would I showcase the potential conflicts and influences that would drive young Erin? And all the while, I kept thinking how there was this gaping hole, the absence of Thren Felhorn. But what could I do? Thren was dead. That was pretty definitive. Wasn’t it?

  Wasn’t it?

  I will not pretend here, this was absolutely a retcon. I opened up Cost of Betrayal and examined the chapter with Thren’s death with laser focus. How did he die? Where was his body? It seemed pretty clear cut. Sliced throat. A burning building. How could he possibly survive? But then I remembered what I always said, that Thren was a hollowed out, defeated husk. A broken Thren would still contain his pride, and he would loathe suffering under the Watcher’s reign, even as he knew he could not win. Yet he would also take a twisted measure of pride at what his son created.

  The Spider Guild could not continue with him, but neither would he allow it continue without him. So what if…what if that death was everything he wanted, so he could finally escape the paralyzing Abyss he found himself trapped within?

  Given the history of Dezrel, necromancy and healing magic are both abundant. And suddenly, I was excited. I cannot express how great it felt that fucking Thren Felhorn was back in play. To write his scenes. To relive those final moments, now seen from Thren’s perspective, and give them a far more interesting dynamic. This final story with Erin went from feeling like a daunting task to something I could no longer predict. And to be able to discuss the legacy of the infamous Watcher, father to granddaughter? Yeah. I don’t know how I could have ever finished this book without him.

  If you think this was cheap of me, or wrong, or that I should have left him dead, I can only ask for your forgiveness. I sought to rectify what I believed was a mistake, in a manner that did not cheat or directly contradict my prior books. I did it because I thought the character deserved better, and it would lead to a more entertaining story. Even if you disagree with the act, I hope you at least understand and sympathize with the motive.

  This all ties to another point I must address. All these books, these interconnected characters and lore; it is exhausting. It is stifling. Even the briefest cameos have me worrying I am remembering a character wrong, or not accurately reflecting their old personalities. Perhaps this new Thren Felhorn does not match the Thren of Shadowdance in your mind, to the point of being unrecognizable. Twenty two novels. Twenty two novels set in this one world, almost all of them covering a scant few years of the second Gods’ War.

  This is my way of saying: I am done with Dezrel, for now. I will never say never, but at this point, I cannot imagine what more I could write. What more there is to say? How does one continue to up the stakes, after all I have put Harruq and his friends through? The well is dry. The story is told. My promise, to reveal the child of the Watcher, is fulfilled.

  The King of the Vile, in many ways, was also meant to be a goodbye to the world of Dezrel, but in a different manner. It was an end to the Gods’ War, and all its spiraling threads. An end to Karak and Ashhur, locked in battle. It was brutal, and harsh, and so many characters reached their end, characters I suspect many people never believed could truly die. It was goodbye, but I would hardly call it a “fun” goodbye. It was a bloody separation, me closing many doors and giving one last chance for these characters so beloved to me to tear out my heart. It was a sparsely attended funeral. It was a young woman, exhausted in sorrow, lifting a broken bow.

  This book? This is the fun goodbye. This is Harruq being a goofball in a tournament. This is Tarlak cracking jokes, and Aurelia threatening once more to polymorph people for their misbehavior. It is a remembrance of the character, Aaron Felhorn turned Haern the Watcher, who launched my entire career. It is a chance to see the potential for good even in those who knew only the worst. A chance to see a new generation rising up, and for that generation to embrace a future that contains hope and promise.

  A Qurrah who will grow up a prince, and not an orphan on the streets of a city that hates him.

  This is a series that started with the apparent protagonist murdering a child. It shall end with that same protagonist now a grandfather, holding his cherished grandchild. If you wish to see stories beyond this closure, it will likely have to be in your own hearts, minds, imaginations, and fanfiction. Consider yourselves given my blessing in that regard.

  As for me, the Godslayer has no gods left to slay. Let Salvation and Condemnation remained sheathed.

  I pray you enjoyed the journey. I pray I ended it well, and perhaps with a smile on your face. However many books of mine, be it these nine, the additional thirteen other books on Dezrel, or perhaps if you stumbled here after the Keepers, Seraphim, or Vagrant Gods…I thank you. Fully. Truly. When I started this strange, morbid tale of two half-orc brothers, I thought they would be read by only a few friends as well as my wife, who was the direct inspiration for both Aurelia and Tessanna. Instead, they have become beloved to thousands. It’s unreal.

  I am stepping away from Dezrel, but I assure you, I will never stop loving it, nor being grateful for the stories that brought us here together, one more time, to rambling a note from the author at the final page.

  Thank you.

  David Dalglish

  October 5th, 2023

 

 

  David Dalglish, Legacy of the Watcher

 

 

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