A Song for Niraniel
When Eld rien returns to his homeland after many years away-burdened by the awareness that he has perpetrated great evil at the hands of an Empire whose knight he has become-he encounters a continent riven by strife and war, and indeed threatened by creatures even more horrifying, born of the very darkness itself. Though he yearns to lay aside the sword, to leave behind a past marked with violence and bloodshed, he also longs to aid his people against the forces that endanger their very existence.
Elm riy , a young woman with the heart of a child, has left her home to join the temple of the mother-goddess and to seek the meaning of what she feels alive within her, of the way that she bears the pain and the joy of others as if it were her own. And yet shortly after her profession, two mysterious strangers arrive in the city where she resides, and they bring to the grandmaster of her order news of dire conflict and death that comes upon the people of Telm rion like a tidal wave at sea.
The path of resistance against the forces of violence and darkness is one that they cannot walk alone, and as these frail yet loving, broken yet beauteous hearts face obstacles both within and without, they find both light entrust to them and friends to walk at their side, in a deeper communion and joining of hearts than any of them have yet known. All the while, the land that they so deeply love slides inexorably into conflict, into what shall be known henceforth as the War of Darkness, and Eld rien, Elm riy , and those to whom they are joined are called upon to share the fate of their people, looking forward in hope to the promised coming of dawn after darkest night.
Lightborn is the standalone centerpiece of the Dawnbringer series of novels and the narrative heart of the Tales of Ir ndiel. This world is the sole artifact of my mythopoetic imagination and a lifelong fruit of both love and wonder, born of the desire that through the mysterious power of imagination and story the primordial light may shine to give solace and consolation, to stir our hearts to awe and lighthearted gratitude, and to awaken the compassion that embraces the world in both its brokenness and its beauty.
This is not a fantasy novel in the contemporary sense, but an act of contemplation through storytelling, taking its place firmly within the age-old tradition of exploring the meaning of reality through myth. It is a way of enacting, through the work of mythopoeia, both philosophia and theologia. It is a way of exploring, in other words, both the love of wisdom and the mystery of God.
This does not mean, of course, that the world and its characters and the dramatic events of the narrative do not exist for their own sake and in their own right. Rather, I have fallen in love with them again and again over the years, and it is my humble hope that upon entering into the world of Ir ndiel through these pages, you too may come to love these persons so like ourselves in their joys and their sorrows, in their hopes and their struggles, and may see refracted through the prism of this co-created world, lovingly woven in detail both epic and intimate, the beauty of the real world that we all share-a world bathed in the radiance of the light at the origin of all things and the love that has sung the universe into existence.
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