King Artorin, the Oathdrawer

Luna's first human king, on an Arthurian line: a lowly human who drew the sword from the stone by an oath and was judged worthy to be king. The oath powers began with him. Buried under Avelor.

• Humans revere him as a holy figure; the Highlanders say Orun weighed his oath.
• [After the books spoiler]His sword was broken at the Fall and secretly reforged as Velorith.
• His title is his own; "First Witness" remains Charon's.
• His sword in the oath-stone is the faith symbol of Luna's humans: the Oathstone.

Death

Humans and elves tell his death differently. In truth he fought valiantly, bested many elves by himself, and was then killed dishonourably by a Solastis, the way Alerion fights. No book fixes his death, his era or his killer.

What really happened

• Who and when: Valerius Solastis (see the Fall), about 1060 BL, when Valerius was about 360 and a captain among the first elven knights to take Grimsward's deeps. Artorin had drawn the sword about a generation earlier, in the early part of the c. 1100–800 BL span. Valerius (born 1420 BL, died 680 BL) is the only Solastis alive at both ends: he killed the first king and, some 355 years later, led the Fall and broke his sword on its own stone.
• Where: a crossing on the Iron Road west of Luna, where the dwarves' road leaves the hills. The newly come Grimsward elves claimed the road and the dwarven builders sworn to Luna's knights.
• The stand: he bested many elves by himself. He held the crossing alone so a dwarven builders' train and his own people could get clear, and cut down more than a dozen elven knights.
• [Book 1 spoiler]The dishonour: Valerius came forward last and was beaten. With the oath-sword at his throat he was bidden to yield; by the knights' custom Artorin would not kill a yielded foe. Valerius said the word of yielding, then drove a hidden dagger up under Artorin's guard. It mirrors Alerion against Fi: the point at a Solastis throat, a human's mercy refused, the concealed dagger.
• After: his knights carried him east to Avelor and buried him there. They set the sword back in the oath-stone on Luna's hill for the next king to swear, and it stayed there until the Fall.

The human telling: "the Yielded Knife"

• Kept orally, in Old Speak hymn fragments, whispered in the Hearth and the slums and sung at graves.
• It grows the stand: he slew "a hundred" on the road, and the knife was poisoned.
• It names Valerius, the same pale lord who came back for the sword: the Fall "finished the knife's work".
• Every iron nail driven into a human grave is a little sword in the stone (the oath faith).

The elven telling: "the Stone-King's End"

• Written in the Solastis court chronicle and taught as history, not faith.
• A fair duel and a usurper's end: a lowborn upstart claimed a hill and a sword that were not his and barred the road to lawful elven passage. Valerius met him by the old custom of champions and slew him cleanly.
• The dagger is not in it, and the knights Artorin cut down shrink to "his brigands".
• Its lesson: "a stone-trick is no match for the Light". The breaking of the sword at the Fall proved it.
• In 188 AL the Creed seldom tells it. Where it must, catechism calls him "the stone-king", never Rex Iuratus.

Who knows the truth

• [After the books spoiler]No elf alive in 188 AL saw it: the oldest were born centuries later (Aiduin, 714 BL). Only Zenon, the Grail Bard, who remembers the past, can tell it as it was, and he tells it in riddles.