Prologue: Dawn of Destiny

I turned the blade over in my hands, a thrill surging through my veins. It was hardly the first time in my life that I had seen a sword, though scarce thirteen winters had passed since my birth. But a sword was the weapon of a king, of a chieftain. I, Ewan of Clan MacDougall, was neither. I was a peasant, the widow's son, as the chieftain knew me. No man knew my name. One day they would. But, as I knelt there, my bare knees cushioned by the cool earth of the furrow, I knew nothing of this. The future was a dark mist, hiding the path from my eyes.
All I knew then was the spell of the sword—a magical weapon such as I had never seen before. It took both my hands and all of my strength to lift it, a long blade as tall as I was then, a stripling of thirteen.
Where had it come from? The question flashed unbidden to my mind and I glanced furtively through the morning mist, as though I expected to see its owner staring sternly upon me.
There was no one there. I was alone, alone there upon the moor, the only witness the cow staring placidly at me six feet away.
The sword I held in my hands was no common weapon, nothing like the clansman's sword of my father, the blade which still hung above the entrance to our hut on the glen. This was the sword of a noble, of a king. . .
How long I knelt there, I know not. By the time I remember, the sun was shining over the highlands to the north, glinting off the blade I held. I lifted it up, brushing its edge carefully with my finger to clean off the dirt that encrusted it.
What to do? I knew not then, I know not now what I would have done differently. From the moment I saw it, I knew I could not give it up. And I knew I would never be the same again.
I rose to my feet with a sigh, making my way to a small cave near the Devil's Tor, an elevation rising above the surrounding plain. Looking back, I'm sure I made a comic figure, the gaunt youth carrying a colossal sword, glancing from left to right as though searching for an antagonist. Yea, but there was little amusing in the situation to me then.
Little has been amusing to me in the years since, either. Fate has woven a twisted road for this son of the clans. Fate—and a sword. . .