…the dance of life goes on.
Epilogue
After delivering the Dragonstone to the Academy of Mages on the Isle of Rwn, Arin and her comrades went their separate ways:
Aiko and Burel of course went back to Sarain to deal with the Fists of Rakka, and the results of their campaign are well recorded and will not be repeated here.
Delon and Ferret took to the road, he singing, she performing escape tricks, and they seemed to accumulate wealth at a rate not accounted for by their showmanship rewards alone. Too, much to Ferai’s surprise, she did indeed become the Baroness of the Alnawood—as Delon had told Raudhrskal she would, if they but recovered the silver chest—for Delon was heir to that barony all along. When his father died, Delon and Ferai returned to the ‘wood to manage the wide-flung estate; their son, in turn became a bard, and quite a trickster too, but of course the legends of Fallon the Fox are sung throughout the land, and again, I will not overburden you with such well-known tales.
As to Egil and Arin: it was true that with Ordrune’s demise Egil’s nightmares ceased, for the curse had been lifted with the Black Mage’s death. Too, over time, Egil’s stolen memories returned, though slowly and not all at once. When Egil and Arin returned to Fjordland, they discovered that the Fjordlanders and the Jutes were at bitter war, occasioned by Queen Gudrun the Comely declaring that the loss of her hand clearly was the Fjordlanders’ fault. Egil, however, sought to make peace, in keeping with his pledge to Arin long past when, following in the steps of another, he, too, had declared, “Let it begin with me.” But the war raged on in spite of his efforts, though he did win over converts, men and women who traveled across the many lands preaching lasting peace. Throughout the remainder of his life, Egil was unswerving in this cause, though now and again he did take up his axe and Arin took up her bow when there was no other choice. Long did Egil live, but at last age took him, weary and feeble and ill, an infirm old man yet loved by his precious Arin, who remained young and vibrant and bright, Arin who wept bitterly on that cold morn and mourned for many long years after.
Concerning Alos’s sacrifice: what is clear is that the oldster awakened from his stupor in time to see his shipmates in peril, and being bound to their cause he could not desert them, could not run away and hide…unlike before. Scholars still debate what Alos would have done had Ordrune not laid a curse upon him, a curse they believe the Mage cast merely to keep Arin’s band all together. It just may be that Ordrune sealed his own doom by binding the oldster to Arin’s quest. Regardless, scholars agree that Alos’s last act was heroic, indeed.
As to the others involved in that tale, the most notable event in this time of trouble was the retribution for the Felling of the Nine. Perin, Biren, Vanidar, Rissa, Melor, and Ruar all bore messages concerning the doom of the green stone to many kingdoms in the land, yet none knew what to do, other than stand vigilant. Thus it was that finally those six Elves came together to join the host of Coron Aldor and High King Bleys as they sought out the strongholds of Foul Folk throughout the Grimwall Mountains, strongholts where they displayed the remains of those who had hewn down the nine Eld Trees. At times they fought pitched battles. At other times the Spaunen blustered but withdrew in fear. Yet never again in the days thereafter did any Foul Folk fell a precious Eld Tree.
Regarding the Dragonstone: some scholars now speculate that the stone itself was responsible for Dara Arin’s vision. It was, after all, a token of power, and tokens of power have ways of fulfilling their own destinies. In any event, after Arin and her companions gave over the stone to Doriane, it was indeed taken to the deep vaults below and a deadly net of spells was cast about it as it was locked away. And when Rwn was destroyed some three hundred twenty-two years after, the stone was thought lost forever. Yet some eight millennia later, and a half a world away, in the Jinga Sea after an all-day struggle a fisherman in a small boat single-handedly landed a great fish. When he finally gutted his dark eyed catch, in its belly he found a peculiar green stone, egg-shaped and jadelike and the size of a melon. This very same day in Moku, after an all-day travail of labor to give birth, the youngest wife of the chuyohan was delivered of a child with a peculiar Dragonlike mark on its forehead. The midwives fell down in worship. Some twenty years passed ere the green stone found its way into the hands of this child…and of course we all know what happened then.
Finally, concerning free will versus predestination: Ferai and Burel never settled their debate…and neither has anyone else.
“The first rule of life is to live.”
Acknowledgments
Throughout the tale, I have used diverse historical and current languages to represent several of the foreign tongues involved. Hence, I would like to thank the following people for their expert help with the various adaptations: Shoshana Green, Early Hebrew; Daniel McKiernan, Ancient Greek; Hiroko Snare, Japanese; Judith Tarr, Latin; Meredith Tarr, German; John Vizcarrondo, Spanish. The other languages used (including French, Norwegian, some of the Japanese, and miscellaneous other tongues) and conversions involved are of my own making, and any errors in usage, translation, or errors in recording the words of my colleagues, are entirely mine.
Please read on for a preview of
Dennis L. McKiernan’s
ONCE UPON A WINTER’S NIGHT
Available from Roc
They lived in a one-room stone cottage on the edge of Faery, there where the world ends and the mystical realm begins, there where golden sunshine abruptly becomes twilight all silvery and grey, there where night on one side instead of the other is darkness, sometimes absolute, sometimes illumined with a glorious scatter of bright stars and silvery moonlight, sometimes illumined by small, dancing luminosities atwinkle among hoary trees, there where low, swampy lands and crofters’ fields and shadowed forests on this side change on that side into misty fens and untilled meadows and deep, dark, mysterious woods.
There at the edge of Faery…
There at the edge of the world…
There where they lived in days long past, when the mystical yet touched the real.
* * *
They were a large family—father, mother, six daughters, and a son—scratching out a mean living from a meager lot of land on this side of the marge where the world ended and Faery began. Yet the meek father and bitter mother and their six daughters—ranging in age from twenty to sixteen and in manner from whining to cheerful and sweet—and their uncomplaining young son of nine managed to eke out a bare existence from the scant land and to make do with what they had. Although they had enough to eat, beyond that they did not live well, working the poor soil, laboring hard, father and mother and daughters. As to the son, he was quite sickly, yet even he did what he could, though he did tire most easily and seemed always out of breath. It was but a scrape of land, standing remote at the edge of the world, and passed down through generations from poor fathers to equally poor sons. Neighbors they had none, the nearest croft miles away, the town even farther. None of the daughters was married, and no dowry did any have, and no suitors came to call, living in poverty and isolation as the daughters did. And so they were yet maidens all, though in face and form quite fair, especially the youngest with her golden hair, who often sang in a voice that would put the larks to shame as she worked in the field near the woods, there on the edge of Faery.
But then…
…Once upon a winter’s night…
* * *
“Oh, Papa, listen to the wind howl,” said Camille, raising her head from the hand-carved game of échecs over which she and Giles pondered, some of the shaped pieces arrayed on the squares of the board, other pieces sitting to one side, captured and no longer in play.
“Howl indeed, and I am freezing,” grumbled dark-haired Lisette, eldest of the six sisters, hitching the blanket tighter ’round her shoulders, then huddling closer to the meager fire and reaching out with her cold hands.
The chimney moaned as would a lost wraith, and the bound thatch across the sparse bea
ms above rattled and thumped and shook like a rat in a terrier’s jaws, and dust drifted down to swirl about in the darts of air whistling in through chinks in between stones in the walls.
“Move back, Lisette,” snapped Joie and Gai nearly together, the twins in their shared blanket crowding inward, Gai adding, “You are taking all the heat for yourself.” Colette and Felise chimed in, agreeing, at the same time crowding inward as well.
“Now, now, mes filles,” began the father, “do not bicker. Instead—” But his words were cut short.
“Complain they should, Henri,” snapped the mother, Aigrette, her downturned mouth disapproving, her glaring blue eyes full of ire as she pulled at the blanket she shared with him. “I told you time and again this summer to mortar the gaps, but you didn’t, and now the wind blows as fiercely within this hovel as it does without.”
As the tempest rattled the plank door, through the fire-light the father looked about the mean dwelling, with its hard-packed clay floor and rough field-rock walls and its aging and thinning reed roof. This single room was all they had, a fireplace in one corner, now crowded ’round by the family on three mismatched chairs and a wobbly three-legged stool and a small, splintery bench. Near the fireplace stood an inadequate worktable for the preparation of meals, such as they were, with a wretched few pots and pans and utensils hanging from the beams above. Several rude shelves on the wall at hand held a small number of wooden bowls and dishes and spoons. A water bucket sat on a shelf as well, a hollowed-out gourd for a dipper hanging down from the bail. To one side of the fireplace stood a tripod holding a lidded iron kettle dangling empty. Swaying in the shadows above, strings of beans and roots and turnips and onions and leeks and other such fare depended from the joists. Ranged along the walls stood a cot for the boy and three beds, two of which were stacked—upper and lower, shared by three girls each—and in the center of the room stood the table on which they ate, one short leg propped on a flat stone to keep the whole of it from rocking. Pegs here and there jammed into wall cracks held what few garments they owned, and by the door a meager coat for braving the cold hung over a single pair of large boots. In one corner a coarse burlap curtain draped from a rough hemp cord, behind which sat a wooden chamber pot, in truth nought but a bucket, though it did have a lid.
The father sighed and stroked his care-lined face, for they would spend much of the remainder of the winter jammed together in this insufficient, single room—bickering, fighting, glowering at one another in sullen ire, or sunk in moody silences—for in the cold season the out-of-doors was brutal, and the meager clothes they wore would not protect them from the bone-deep, bitter chill. Even indoors as they were, they kept warm only by huddling within well-worn blankets, and these they had to share.
As the wind shrieked ’round the house and battered as if for admittance, in the dim shadows beyond the clustered fireside arc of family Camille said, “Gilles, I shall win in four moves.”
“What?” exclaimed the lad, staring at the board, perplexity in his hazel eyes. “You will? Four moves?”
Reaching out from the blanket they shared, Camille slid a miter-topped piece diagonally along three unoccupied squares and into the occupied fourth. “Hierophant takes spearman. Check. Now, Frère, what is the only move you have?”
Giles studied the board and finally said, “King takes hierophant,” and he smiled his crookedy smile.
“Yes,” replied Camille. “Then my warrior takes this spearman. Check.”
After a moment, Giles said, “This spearman takes your warrior.”
Camille nodded. “Now, with that spearman moved, tower takes tower. Check.”
“Oh, I see,” said Giles. “Then I have no choice but to move my king here, but then you reveal the mate by—” Of a sudden, Giles broke into racking coughs.
Camille wrapped the blanket tighter around Giles’s narrow shoulders, yet he gasped and wheezed, unable to gain his breath. “Here,” said Camille, helping the boy to stand, “let me get you closer to the fire.”
As Camille shepherded Giles toward the hearth, “You just want to steal our warmth,” declared Lisette. “Well, I for one do not intend to move.” An immediate squabbling broke out among the girls, the mother joining in.
Sighing and without saying a word, the father stood and yielded up his place, leaving the blanket he had shared wrapped about his wife.
But before Camille and Giles reached the vacated space, there came a hard pounding on the door, the cross-braced planks rattling under the blows, the barricading bar jumping in its wooden brackets.
Startled, the girls looked at one another and then at the father, who had jerked about to stare at the entry.
“Who could that be?” whispered Lisette. “Thieves? Brigands come to rob us? Kidnappers come to grab up one of us for ransom?”
“Ha!” snorted the mother. “And just what would they get, these thieves and robbers, these kidnappers? Rocks? Dirt? Straw?”
Again the pounding came.
“Papa,” said Camille to her father, even as she huddled closer to Giles, “perhaps you had better see who it is; they may need shelter from the storm.”
Looking about for a weapon, finding none, the father stepped to the door and pivoted the bar up and aside on its axle. Glancing back at Camille and receiving a nod, he placed a shoulder against the rattling planks to brace against the wind and lifted the clattering latch and eased the door on its leather-strap hinges open a crack, putting his eye to the narrow space as a snow-bearing sheet of wind swirled in. “Ai!” he wailed and slammed the door to and crashed the bar down into its brackets.
“What is it, Papa?” cried the children at the fire as they leapt to their feet and clustered, all clutching one another for support, the mother standing and shrinking back against the trembling knot of girls.
“A Bear! A white Bear!” wailed the father, backing away from the barred planks. “A great white Bear of the North!”
As the father retreated and the girls and the mother pressed even tighter together, and Camille held on to wheezing Giles, once more came the massive knock, the planks and bar shuddering under the blow, there at the cottage where the mortal world ended and the realm of Faery began.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dennis L. McKiernan is the author of many novels, most of them set in the world of Mithgar. He is one of the most prolific and enduring writers of fantasy today. He lives in Arizona with his wife, Martha Lee.
Click here for more titles by this author
By Dennis L. McKiernan
Caverns of Socrates
The Faery Series
Once Upon a Winter’s Night
Once Upon a Summer Day
Once Upon an Autumn Eve
Once Upon a Spring Morn
Once Upon a Dreadful Time
The Mithgar Series
The Dragonstone
Voyage of the Fox Rider
HÈL’S CRUCIBLE
Book 1: Into the Forge
Book 2: Into the Fire
Dragondoom
The Iron Tower (omnibus edition)
The Silver Call (omnibus edition)
Tales of Mithgar (a story collection)
The Vulgmaster (the graphic novel)
The Eye of the Hunter
Silver Wolf, Black Falcon
City of Jade
Red Slippers: More Tales of Mithgar (a story collection)
The Dragonstone Page 55
