60 pages • 2-hour read
Kings of the Wyld
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Symbols & Motifs
The Swords
Many of the swords mentioned in the story have names and magical properties, acquiring a symbolic resonance that reflects what their user stands for.
Vellichor is the heroic sword forged to save the druins from their ruined world and help them find refuge in this realm. Vespian, the druin who forged Vellichor, doesn’t want it to fall into unworthy hands, which is why he gives the sword to Gabe and not to his son, Lastleaf. The sword itself is unique and beautiful:
double-edged, near as long as Gabe was tall […] It was widely considered the most sacred (and second most dangerous) relic of the Old Dominion. The blade was silver-green, and in its surface one could sometimes glimpse a swathe of twilit sky, or the colossal trees of some primordial forest, as though the sword itself were a window to another, older age” (235).
Later, it’s explicitly stated that this is “[t]he blade used by Vespian himself to carve a path between worlds” (344). As such, Vellichor is a symbolic bridge. In Gabriel’s hand, the sword establishes a continuity between the heroism and glory of the past and that of the present. Vellichor is part of Gabriel’s heroic legend, but he uses it to battle the Horde, stop Lastleaf, and kill the Infernal, which represents the most monstrous, demonic, and aggressive aspects of the Horde. In so doing, Gabriel is finally able to rescue Rose, so the sword enables a reconnection between father and daughter, remedying the split between parent and child that it enacted between Vespian and Lastleaf.
Lastleaf carries three swords, which reflect the three different identities he exhibits: Lastleaf, son of Archon and formerly a prince; the Autumn Son, the harvest god who demands sacrifice; and the Heathen, the son who rebels against his father and his kind. The most terrible of his swords is Tamarat, the sword Vespian forged to reincarnate Lastleaf’s mother, Astra, after she died. Tamarat has a black blade which is described as “a colourless void […] a fragment of utter oblivion” (473). This symbolizes the destruction and obliteration that Lastleaf wants to visit on the world. It’s suggested that his final use of the sword to take his own life will open the way to reincarnate Astra once again as the cold and pitiless Winter Queen.
Blackheart
Blackheart is the name of Clay’s shield, and it comes to symbolize his sturdy and protective nature. Blackheart was the name of a treant, a kind of sentient and humanoid tree, that had led his army on a killing spree before laying siege to a place called Hollow Hill. Clay cut down Blackheart in the fight and made a shield from the wood of his corpse. Clay has a habit of losing swords, which suggests that he is rarely the aggressor in battle; rather, he fights to defend. For this reason he relies on Blackheart, and feels “[i]t had saved his life more times than all his bandmates together, and was Clay’s most cherished possession” (28).
In his battles during the story, Clay relies on Blackheart to defend himself and his bandmates. Like Clay himself, the shield is cut and battered, but survives the quest more or less in one piece. Clay imagines that when he runs his inn, he will put Blackheart on display as a conversation piece and perhaps a symbol of his past glory, or a reminder that a once-dangerous world is safer now.
Castia
Castia is a walled and cleverly engineered city built by the men who fled the fall of the first human Empire and established a new Republic in Endland, on the western side of the Heartwyld Forest and the mountains. As such, Castia represents what is best about human achievement. Castia also comes to represent the last hope of a continued human realm when it comes under siege by the Heartwyld Horde, part of Lastleaf’s larger plan to eliminate the Republic, then conquer the Kingdoms of Grandual and found a new Dominion.
Castia is described as in desperate straits during the course of the novel: The attacking Horde has poisoned the water supply by dumping corpses in the water, and those within are running out of food. Rose, as one of the few remaining members of the Republic’s army, is trying to hold things together; she represents the endangered hope that the next generation of humans in this world can survive, much less have a better life. When the Battle of Castia brings together old heroes and new to aid the besieged, and the Battle becomes an effort to subdue the monsters of the Horde and return them to a marginalized, controlled status, the human success bodes well for the perpetuation of human governance and peace, but the subjugation of the monsters suggests a monstrous element in human behavior, highlighting The Blurred Line Between Human and Monster. Castia is rebuilt with even more dignity than before, as signaled in the epilogue when they declare themselves an Empire.
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