Decado

Decado is the third of the old Dragon comrades in The King Beyond the Gate, and the most unsettling. He was reckoned one of the greatest living swordsmen, called the Ice Killer for the calm with which he kills, and he had run out of opponents. Setting out to challenge his friend Tenaka Khan simply to find a fight worth having, he turns aside instead to a Source temple, gives up the sword and becomes its gardener. The temple turns out to belong to the Thirty, and they have plans for him that do not involve gardening. Much of his story is an attempt to find out whether a man built for killing can be anything else, and Gemmell treats it with more tenderness than the premise suggests. A thousand years later, in The Swords of Night and Day, Decado returns as a Reborn, grown from his remains, and finds himself face to face with Skilgannon, with whom he has more in common than either of them expects.

Appears in

1. 1The King Beyond the Gate (1985)A century after Legend, a half-Nadir exile comes home to kill a mad emperor, and finds himself leading a rebellion instead.
2. 2The Swords of Night and Day (2004)A thousand years after his death, Skilgannon is grown again from his bones and wakes in a Drenai world ruled by a sorceress called the Eternal.