I
despise writing introductions. I know most of you won’t even bother to read it.
But it really must be done, so here I sit at my typewriter with my study door
locked, pounding away at my old keyboard and praying none of the keys decide to
stick.

This
introduction isn’t like the other three (which I hope you read, as this is now
the fourth volume of the Dreaded King saga). By now, you know how these
remarkable documents came into my hands from another place, and how much skill
and care I have taken in translating them, and even about the two different
glossaries in the back of the work. I will not bother to repeat myself again.
If you wish to know more of all that, go and read my first introduction, to Dreaded King: A Son Rises. (Barry, my
friend who writes speeches for various government officials, is yelling through
my locked door that I shouldn’t be “tooting my own horn” like that, and
oughtn’t to mention any of the other books. I think perhaps I should stop
talking to myself while I type.) Unlike those first three, this introduction is
here to explain something about Planistah’s culture, something that you may or
may not have noticed as you read through the texts, but which I am betting you
missed entirely.

We
in American Western Culture are not particularly familiar with duty. Oh, we do
our duty alright, and we recognize that each individual person doing his part,
for his own purpose, is what keeps the country and economy up and running. I
think we recognize that more than most nations round the world. But, we tend to
call it things such as “a hard work ethic,” or even go into technicalities such
as the free market. Duty, as a virtue by itself, is not extolled or even
remembered.

In
Ǽselthŵeś, duty and virtue are the highest elevations a man can reach for. For
over a thousand years, since Yatsig the Mighty first created his world-wide
empire, and even before in the lives of the Aytenmars, duty and virtue are the
two things that fill the books and songs with loudest praise, and are exalted
and esteemed. Duty is drilled into a child from the day they are born, duty to
God, king, and family, a deep sense that one must do what one must do, no
matter what may try to hinder you. The most beloved of the old songs and
stories are all about characters who had a task given to them, and how they
quested to see the task accomplished, despite wars, peril, and distress of
every sort. It doesn’t matter how small the duty might be. One ancient tale
deals with a young knight who happens to be in the bedchamber of his king when
a fly lands on his sovereign’s nose and wakes him from sleep. The king
petulantly comments to the young knight, “I would have you slay that fly!” The
rest of the massive work is taken up by the knight going throughout the world
questing to find that particular fly and slay it. He meets up with a great many
perils on the way, and when he finally does make it back, he’s missing several
fingers, half a foot, and one eye. The beauty of the tale, for an Ǽselthŵeśian,
is found in the unwavering and indomitable will of the young knight to do his
duty by his king, no matter how difficult it might be to find one particular
fly. To us in America, such a story sounds almost like a satire, something
written to belittle a petulant king and show how silly you can be if you take
them seriously; why, you might spend half your life searching for a fly! In Ǽselthŵeś,
it is a tale of indomitable courage and beauty, and many a young boy is named
after that young knight.

Really,
I think I prefer the Ǽselthŵeś take on the matter. We are too cynical in this
day and age. Everything must have a purpose, and if that purpose doesn’t have
something to do with making something, or driving the economy forward, or
exalting our own head above our fellows, than really it is silly and dull. Things
such as goodness, humbleness, courage, duty for duty’s sake, honor, they are
given a passing nod if they appear in our Western culture. But they are not
talked about, because they are not tangibly useful, not solid. In Charlie’s
culture, they are as solid as the ground people walk on. That is a healthier
way to live, in my opinion. If the world really is more than we can see, if
there is a God who cares how we walk from day to day, and a life that continues
forever after the life we see around us now has dissipated, in the end it is
duty and virtue that will matter more than any sort of price tag or fame we can
place on our lives.

I
should mention, to avoid confusion as I go on, virtue is esteemed right
alongside duty. Indeed, the two are nigh inseparable in Ǽselthŵeś culture. You
do not merely do a duty. You do your
duty according to goodness, to the right founded in the Hurfin* God, the Source
from which the code of honor and goodness springs. A good man, who can be
absolutely trusted to do what he knows must be done, is the epitome of the hero
on Ǽselthŵeś.

At
least up till this time in their culture.

It
is really in this book that things begin to shift. That is why I am writing
this introduction, because something subtle and interesting happens as the last
two books go along, and I knew you would miss it unless I pointed it out.
Anyone who reads the Battle of Maldon,
or Beowulf, is liable to miss the
great Saxon tradition of a lordling esteeming honor and courage above even his
own life, unless they know something of the culture. They drive forward
screaming things like “Death and glory!” and their contemporaries laud them for
it, while we of a less bloody culture blink in confusion and quietly quote,
“Better to live to fight another day than to die senselessly like that. What on
earth were they thinking?” I will not go into which is the better sentiment,
the old Saxon or the quiet life of the Western American, I merely bring it up
to help you understand why I am bothering to write this introduction. I am trying
to help you understand the thinking of the average person in Ǽselthŵeś who
would be reading this work, because otherwise you will simply not understand
it. It would be a shame to miss the main shift of the day, and what I predict
will be the best inheritance Charlie leaves to his children. In Ǽselthŵeś, duty
couched in a righteous fervor has been everything good and commendable to the
people. They even have a name for this lifestyle, for someone who places a
virtuous duty as their daily goal, and keeps to it no matter what. When found
in a hero on Ǽselthŵeś, it is called high duty. I could not have named it
better myself. This is the goal of every child, to grow into that type of
person, and it is certainly not a bad goal. I surmise this great love of duty
and virtue is one reason why Ǽselthŵeś has lasted for over a thousand years.

But
in this book, in Charlie and Arvi’s time, things begin to subtly shift. If you
have read the proceeding volume, KnightDuty, you have doubtless been thinking of Arvi throughout this whole
introduction, and you would have hit it on the nose (if you can pardon the
expression). He is the perfect Ǽselthŵeś hero. A young man who daily places
duty above his own happiness, and virtue above anything in the world. His whole
focus is on doing what is right and what is required of him, and doing it well.
He is very good at it. But, you may have noticed another part to Arvi’s
character. Almost despite himself, he has what one might call an ulterior
motive to his high duty. Later in the texts, Meagan suggests that Arvi is a new
type of Aytenmar, mixed with Hartsom, due to his mother’s blood. Whatever the
cause, Arvi’s driving force behind his high duty can be found (at least
partially) couched in love. We see his longing to please his family, his ache
to make his father proud, and the deepest well he delves into for his strength
in battle is the love of his good mother. This is not normal in a story of high
duty written on Ǽselthŵeś. When I came across it in the third volume, I put it
down to a sort of fluke of Arvi’s character, even a admirable fluke, and one
that he recorded merely to be perfectly honest with his readers. In this fourth
volume, things begin to take a dramatic switch.

Arvi
mentions duty less and less. Charlie never does. However, the virtue found in
the main characters grows and blossoms, into self-sacrifice that is beautiful
to behold, and tragic in its outcomes. But it is not couched primarily in duty.
Instead we see friendships and family bonds developing and strengthening, and
it is something new to the stories of Ǽselthŵeś that drives the characters on
to their inevitable end. We have always seen this “something else” in Charlie,
and it is part of what makes him so utterly alien to all those he meets in his
culture, and also so well-liked (even adored) once he is known. He is a man who
does what is right, partially for duty’s sake, certainly, that is what mostly drives him in the first book. But there is more to Charlie. We saw it when he
sat sick and miserable on the high seat in the Granges, meditating on his
motives while the council deliberated whether to back him or not, in volume
two, and in all his dealings with the individual people he comes across. When Charlie
meets a person, he wants to know their first name, not what they do for a
living. Do you see the subtle shift? Here, in book four, that “something else”
begins to define itself.

Love
has come into play.

Now,
I can almost promise some of you are wrinkling your nose and uttering noises
such as “eeewwwww.” May I just point out, if you have read the previous
volumes, you know very well that romantic love has little to do with it. That
is there, but that is not what I mean, and you can put your annoyance back
away, thank you very much. I mean Christian love, the type that looks on a
random stranger in the street and sees a soul very like his own. It is the kind
of love that looks upward to heaven’s throne and sees a God that loved despite
all the imperfections and disasters inside, and then looks outward, and puts
that grateful, burning love into action, pouring it out on the world around
them. It begins in humbleness, moves into gratefulness, spills on to a desire
to please the One Who loves even a sinner, which leads in turn to high virtue,
and that spills into actions that play out in a tender and beautiful service to
mankind. It is a deeper, more firmly rooted thing than a duty that has to be
cultivated and nursed to a high point. That deep humble love is what has marked
Charlie from the beginning of the volumes. In this fourth volume, it begins to
creep forward, and make itself known, spreading from Charlie to the other
characters, until it begins, in the fifth volume, to even overshadow bare duty.

Watch
for it. Now that you know what to look for, I don’t think I really have to
point out examples. I will only say, it culminates in two things: one is
Charlie’s response to the kneeling baron at the end of book four, as everyone
gapes at him as an unexpected but beautiful oddity; the other is Arvi’s
response to Turner’s weeping plea as he kneels with Aston on the ship, near the beginning of volume five. These are alien
matters to Ǽselthŵeśians. It is challenging the culture to look at their lives,
examine why they do what they do, and decide if it really is the best method.

Duty
is placed in sharp relief against love in these final volumes. Duty does not go
away, by any means. In fact, duty is a part of every virtue. If you do not have
a settled determination to do your duty, no matter what you might feel when you wake up in the morning, you’re sunk before you even roll out of bed.
But it is challenged in its place of ruling over everything else. Duty is shown
to be a hard master. If that is all you strive for, you are likely to end up
hurting those you ought to be protecting, and your training methods may very
well end in bitterness and disaster. At the end of this volume, duty crumbles.
But virtue does not, and it has a new champion. I took the time to write this
introduction because I knew you would miss the point if I didn’t tell you it
was there. You are, after all, not a part of Ǽselthŵeś culture. A new kind of
king has taken the throne, and by now everyone has recognized he is a…different
sort of ruler. These last two volumes are bringing his differentness into sharp
relief, and shoving them in the faces of all those who would oppose the Dreaded
King of Ǽselthŵeś. Is high duty the ultimate goal and all that it is best to
strive for? Is it better, the texts are subtly asking their readers, to do your
duty for duty’s sake; or, is it a higher, better thing to do your duty because
you hold high a burning love for your Lord and His people?

It
is something each of us ought to be asking. Duty can be a bitter taskmaster.
Fail but once, and it might haunt you for the rest of your life, if that is
your only goal. Duty standing alone is a sapper, something that pulls enjoyment
from a person’s bones. It is a hardening thing, a dull lifeless creature if
found by itself. It can even quickly develop into a mere grudging will-power,
where a person grumbles, but does his duty nonetheless. It can make a man
virtuous. But can it really make him good? Doesn’t goodness have another facet
to it, a certain softening of the edges, one might say, that comes from mercy,
gentleness, and love itself? But love is a different creature. It imbues its
users with energy, and a deep joy that cannot be shaken. It is unshakeable for
it is founded directly in One Who cannot change. Duty is a derivative of life
on this earth, of our sin nature itself. Because we are weak and fallible, we
have to keep reminding ourselves to “do our duty.” Love stands alone. We
delight to love. Yes, sometimes it can hurt too, as this book will show. But it
is a life-giving, joyful thing to serve out of love. Love stands firm through
all that life can throw. It is Love alone that lasts through all of eternity.
Duty will eventually die with its owners. Love goes on forever.

If
you give your life for your friend because it is your duty, that is admirable.
If you give your life for your friend because you love him above yourself? Well…that
is something much higher than merely admirable. That is something that points
straight upward to the throne of a God Who loved those who were entirely
unlovable, Who loved such worms even to the point of death.

And
that is the story our lives ought to be telling.

[The text begins here]

*At its basic level, a Hurfin is the Planistah term for
a Christian. But our word falls somewhat short for a direct translation. For
one thing, in our Christianity there was a definite split from the old Jewish
ways into the Christian ways, after Jesus came and brought the New Covenant and
all that. As a result, Christian can often be seen as being from a certain time
period, whereas Hurfin encompasses basically the whole of Planistah history.
Also, because of that shift from Jewish to Christian, our Western culture
morphed the term Christian to occasionally mean things such as “non-Jewish,” or
even, “portraying a certain civilized manner.” In contrast, Hurfin is a purely
religious term, meaning someone who believes the Hurfin’s book (Planistah’s
Scriptures) and professes Christ.