Sacred Fire

by Chris Pierson

  It was in that dark time when Dario, the third son of the king of what was then the city-state of Istar, had discovered an ancient cavern in the hills northeast of the city. Dario was, by all accounts, a villain and a knave, a man of few prospects and fewer scruples, who lived for wine and women and roguery. He had gone into that cavern alone, certain it was an ancient barrow, ripe for plunder. But instead of a tomb, he found an old goblin lair, empty since before the time when Istar was a simple village of skin huts on the lake-shore. According to his later accounts, Dario found a cave at the bottom of the lair, filled with the bones of half a hundred goblins, charred black by some terrible fire.

  In their midst, Dario had found the Disks.

  He hadn’t known what they were at first, thinking only of treasure. Of themselves, the Peripas Mishakas were as precious as any riches he could imagine: hundreds of beaten circles of pure platinum, each larger than a full-grown man’s hand. Beaten into each, in cuneiform letters so fine that even dwarf smiths shook their heads at the craftsmanship, were words in a tongue Dario did not recognize. And yet, when he chanced to read one of the Disks, the words became as clear as if they were written in Istaran. Fascinated, he’d sat down among the goblin bones and began to read

  Dario stayed in that cave for a month. In that time, he took neither food nor water; nor did he sleep. He read each and every one of the Disks, while his father and brothers were scouring the hills for him in vain. Finally, after the king had given up the search, Dario emerged from the cave. He was gaunt and wild-eyed; his black hair and beard, grown long over the days, had turned stark white. In his hands, he bore the Peripas. He walked back to Istar on bare feet that bled profusely by the time he passed through the gates, and entered his father’s palace in the middle of his own funeral.

  “Ni sarudo, partun ourfo,” he had declared to the stunned mourners, “e barbas pram doboro iudun donbulas pidio, usas sod op tis balfo.”

  Sorrow not, for I live, and I bring word of the light beyond the stars, the true gods of this world.

  Until that day, Istar had been a heathen kingdom, the people worshipping their own ancestors as divine. Dario’s discovery changed that, just as sure as the Disks changed his life. He left wickedness behind, and was reborn with help from the gods’ words; he declared himself the First Son of Paladine, and founded the holy church of Istar. The Peripas became the church’s first relic, and over the next hundred years the neighboring city-states bowed, one by one, to their power. Thus was the Empire of Istar born.

  In the empire’s early years, there was only one copy of the Disks, and the First Sons cared for it in the imperial palace, reading from it to the laity, who knew they spoke for the gods of light. But times were not always peaceful in Istar; its enemies, the barbarians of plain and forest and mountain, sought to bring the realm low, and plunder its riches. Three times the barbarian hordes attacked the Lordcity itself, and on the third time they got through the walls, slew both the emperor and the First Son, and nearly sacked the palace itself. In the end the armies of Istar drove them back and wiped them out, but the shock of nearly losing the Disks was enough to change the church’s policy.

  Amiad, the new First Son, declared that the word of the gods should not be for his ears alone, and should be spread among all the peoples of the world.

  The result of this was the Abenfo Migel, the Great Translation. At the command of First Son Amiad, a dozen of the empire’s finest scribes and scholars set down to write out the text of the Peripas in the language of Istar’s church. It was painstaking work, lasting more than twenty years, and would have gone on for twenty more had Amiad not died in his sleep on the eve of his sixtieth year. His successor, an elder cleric named Regidan, did not approve of the Abenfo, and put an end to the translation. As a result, the final texts were incomplete: seven copies, each of which held no more than six hundred of the Disks’ thousand chapters.

  Regidan was a venal man, perhaps the least virtuous to hold the title of First Son until the time of Kurnos the Deceiver. He feared the translations, and believed they could weaken his grip on the reins of power; so he ordered all the translations destroyed. Six of the seven copies were burned, but Amiad’s scribes managed to smuggle one copy out of the palace and the city before Regidan’s men could seize it—at the sacrifice of their own lives. Regidan ordered an empire -wide hunt for the lost translation, and declared that anyone caught harboring it would be cast out of the god’s sight, and then put to death.

  Despite this, the translation survived, moved in secret from one monastery to the next. Wherever it was secreted, monks furiously worked to create copies of its pages before sending it on again. The First Son’s men put the torch to many places where the Disks had visited, but they could not destroy all that had been created. In time, Regidan’s hunt for the lost manuscript resulted in the one thing he feared most: its spread throughout Istar. By the time of his arrest and execution—for the emperor had grown tired of Regidan’s burning of recalcitrant abbeys—more than a hundred copies of the Peripas had spread throughout the empire. In the years to follow, clerics began to read from them to their flocks, and even some of the laity came to own them. Monk, translated them into Old Solamnic, and the tongues of Kharolis and Ergoth. The elves and dwarves—in those days, the bearded folk were still friends of Istar—acquired copies of their own.

  As for the lost chapters, the four hundred that Amiad’s scribes had never set down in translation, the debate over whether they should be recorded nearly tore the church in two. The Completists argued that the Disks were not truly the gods’ word unless all of them were translated; the Reductionists countered that the gods themselves had willed Amiad’s untimely death as a sign that not all the Peripas should belong to common men, In the end, the Reductionists won, and so the books and scrolls held only part of the gods’ word.

  The Completists were not quite defeated. They tried to steal the Disks, in the hopes of producing a full transcription. They nearly succeeded, and actually spirited them out of the Lord city before the Scatas tracked them down and put the culprits to the sword.

  First Son Symeon, who had been the leader of the Reductionists, was livid, and proclaimed that the Peripas would not be safe as long as they remained in the hands of men. He made a pilgrimage into the hills, to the cave where Dario had found the sacred texts, and declared it a holy place. The Scatas cleared out the goblin bones, and the priesthood purified the site with prayers and holy water; an army of stonemasons and sculptors, whitesmiths and mosaicists set to building a mighty shrine above the spot. The shrine took five years to build, and when it was done Symeon brought the Disks to it and placed them within. Then he prayed to Paladine, shutting the shrine’s doors with a teal of gold.

  “Tos cir cunanpur soidint, onmornlig fi site sifas bronint. Ni bomo at ifeso gomit e nisit. Sifat.”

  Let these rest here evermore, untroubled by who in ever would do them harm. No living man or woman shall enter and survive. So be it.

  So, as ordered by Symeon—who, soon after, would throw down the emperor, don the Crown of Power, and declare himself the first Kingpriest of Istar—the Peripas Mishakas left the hands of men once more. Dario’s cave, and the shrine above it, came to be known as the Forino Babasom, the Vault of the Kingpriests. Many men, Completists and robbers alike, sought to break in and steal the Disks, and were never seen again; not even their bones were ever found. It became a haunted place, in the eyes of the people, and folk stopped going there. The road to the Vault decayed, vanished. Only Symeon’s geas remained, a warning that kept any who might approach—even the future line of Kingpriests—away.

  The Disks still lay within, the only copy of the gods’ full word to the mortals of Krynn.

  Waiting.

  Chapter 15

  In ancient times, the festival of Spring Dawning had been a time of wildness, a day when the people of Istar’s cities indulged their every whim and desire. Men and women alike donned masks to hide their identities, and paraded throu
gh the streets, eating, drinking, dancing, and singing. It was also a fertility rite, marking the start of the rains that opened the growing season, and it wasn’t uncommon for the revelers to shed everything but their masks, or for couples—even small groups—to entwine in the gardens, becoming groaning jumbles of arms and legs, sliding fingers and exploring lips.

  The church had put an end to that sort of thing long ago. The first Kingpriests had declared the more ribald parts of Spring Dawning to be pagan licentiousness, and the rituals had changed. The abandon was gone from the festival, though people being people, they still ate too much and got far too drunk, and if some still tore off their clothes and groped played, they were sure to do it in the deepest shadows, where the clergy wouldn’t spot them.

  One part of the day that did remain was the masque. No one in the Lordcity—or other cities throughout the empire—went about during Spring Dawning wearing his own face. Many simply covered their faces with strips of cloth, with holes cut for the eyes, but there were also more fanciful disguises: dragons and griffins, tigers and antlered stags, laughing fey folk and snarling ogres, the red and silver moons. Some bore plumes of exotic feathers, or were studded with sticks of smoldering incense, or carried long trains of bright silk that fluttered in the warm breeze off the lake. Even the clerics took part, though their guises were more staid, to stave off the temptation of idolatry. And the song and the dance, the feasting and the rivers of wine, persisted to this day.

  The festivities lasted three days. The first began with a benediction from the Lightbringer himself, who appeared on the steps of the Great Temple. Standing before the throngs of the Barigon and masked by his own aura, he performed the familiar ritual, first signing the triangle and blessing the people, then pouring out three urns before him: one of water, to beckon the rains; another of barley, for the growing times; and a third of ashes, for those who had perished that winter. Then, light streaming from him in waves, he led the folk of the Lordcity in prayer that they be kept safe from evil for yet another season.

  When that was done, he raised his hands for silence, and all eyes turned to him. Beldinas made a special pronouncement, every year at Spring Dawning, speaking of what lay ahead for Istar. This day he looked out over the crowds, who were craning in anticipation, then threw back his head and laughed.

  “Do not fear, usas farnas,” he proclaimed, when the people looked at one another in puzzlement and alarm. “I am only thinking of our enemies, and how many they once were. It was only a thousand years ago, in the time of the last Dragonwar, when the candle of good was guttering, ready to go out forever. But goodness rallied, and threw down the dark gods and all their nightmare minions, and in the end light prevailed, as it must.

  “Now the wheel has turned, and it is evil that faces the end. Nothing remains of the dark ones’ churches, and almost nothing of the gray heathens that abetted them through their very acceptance of the ‘need’ for evil in the world. The wizards have fled, the monsters of old are slain or driven so deep beneath the earth that they must wander forever in shadowed caverns, never again to experience the sun.

  “Now, I say this to you. In three days’ time, when the festival is done, I shall embark on a pilgrimage into the hills … one last journey to gain the power I need, the knowledge to put an end to evil forever. Once and for all, I will show the Doctrine of Balance, which this very church accepted for so many years, to be the lie that it is.

  “Good does not need evil to define it. A white robe is still a robe, even if it has no stains. A melody with no sour notes still sounds sweet. The sun still shines at noontide, when the shadows fade. And when darkness is gone forever—yea, even from the depths of your own hearts—this world, this realm, this city will still stand, shining bright as the sun itself!”

  The crowd erupted, roars of joy resounding all over the Lordcity and rippling out across the lake. The cry echoed across the empire, from nearby cities like Chidell and Calah, to Lattakay and Karthay and other far-off places. Beldinas had sent clockwork falcons winging to all corners of Istar, bearing copies of his proclamation for the patriarchs to read. Now millions of Istarans answered him, from the mob standing before him to throngs hundreds of leagues away.

  The festival went on, full of laughter and song. The celebration lasted on into the evening, when Istar’s lamps kindled and turned the city into a warm sea of light. A rain shower swept in off the lake, quick but potent, leaving the revelers drenched in its wake. They didn’t care. Wine flowed on, bodies twirled and cavorted, voices called out from behind masks the whole night long.

  Then dawn came, and it all began again—or rather, it continued.

  The second day of the festival was one of storytelling: Poets stood on the rims of fountains in a hundred courtyards, reciting their latest epics and odes. Singers and actors performed melodramas from all corners of history: the death of Huma Dragonbane, the rise of Symeon the first Kingpriest, the corruption of Kurnos, the battle of Govinna and the Silver Dawn, when the Lightbringer had donned the Miceram for the first time. Some of the tellings were excellent, many more were middling, and a few were awful. The crowds broke the worst up with catcalls, pelting the players with fruit. In a couple places, this escalated to brief melees that left everyone laughing and covered with pith and juice.

  The greatest of the performances that day took place at the Arena, where men, women, and children filled the stands to watch the latest work of a playwright acclaimed as a genius, Gendellis of Edessa. Gendellis specialized in Baponnas, melodramas told in rhyming verse that were filled with songs and spectacle. Today, to a crowd of eighty thousand who gathered beneath the Arena’s blue and gold banners, he and his company were performing the Stone City’s Doom, a telling of the battle for the Tower of High Sorcery in Losarcum.

  The people cheered as Lord Cathan Twice-Born—or, rather, the actor who played him—led his company of knights into the Stone City. They laughed at the boisterousness of Sir Marto, and more than a few women swooned at the dashing figure of Sir Tithian, the young knight always standing by his captain’s side. They stamped their feet when the wizards of the Tower—Black Robes, all—defied Lord Cathan’s demand that they quit the city at once. They hissed when the wizards tried to kill Tithian with foul sorcery. They applauded when Cathan rallied his men with a stirring song of valor and glory, before leading them forth on the final assault. Gasps and cries of alarm resounded through the stands when the battle was joined, and Gendellis’s play gave way to a storm of fireworks and flashing swords as knights and sorcerers met. There were even a few minotaurs involved in the show, playing demons called forth by the wizards to join the battle. The watchers hissed all the more when the mages decided to destroy the Tower—“and damnation unto the City of Stone!”—and wept when Sir Marto fell, trying to thwart them. Finally, the Tower exploded, and the masses erupted in a howl of outrage that turned to joy when the Kingpriest himself appeared, stepping through the smoke to spirit Lord Cathan and faithful Tithian to safety. The play ended with Cathan—saddened by the events of Losarcum—resigning his place as Grand Marshal and quietly walking from the stage. Not a single murmur was heard from the crowd in the stands.

  Then came a final soliloquy from the Lightbringer himself, and everyone surged to their feet and cheered so loudly the noise was heard as far away as the Hammerhall. The play was a triumph, undeniably Gendellis’s finest work to date. Word quickly spread after the audience filed out the Arena’s many arched gates: This would be a drama for the ages, one of the best ever to grace a stage in Istar, and surely there would be many more performances of it in the years to come.

  That night, masked folk shouted and capered in the streets. Then, when the first light appeared over the Lordcity’s eastern gates, all eyes turned back to the Arena again.

  The Games would begin on the third day.

  *****

  Cathan swallowed, staring up past the Arena’s white walls, where statues of warriors stood with swords and spears held high. The sky
overhead was clear, the blue of Zaladhi sapphires. Griffins wheeled across its cloudless expanse, their lion-eagle shapes strange to his eyes. Quarath and his elves kept them at an aerie in the hills north of the city; they let them out, every day of the festival, to thrill the people. Cathan didn’t think griffins were wondrous; he’d seen the winged creatures before, and knew their purpose for the festival. They were watchers, their keen eyes searching for signs of trouble. It made him feel exposed, vulnerable, guilty. His hand went to the malachite amulet, hidden beneath his clothes.

  “Please don’t do that,” murmured a voice to his right, half-muffled by the drooping nose of a troll. One of Wentha’s sons—both were wearing the same fearsome masks, so it took a moment to recognize Tancred—touched his elbow, gently forcing him to lower his arm. “Do you want to give yourself away?”

  “You’re safe. Uncle,” said Rath, appearing on his right, nodding at the mobs that were inching their way through the Arena’s gates. “None of them know. None of them could know. Unless you go acting suspicious, of course.”

  Cathan made a sour face, lost behind his own wolf mask. The crowd was full of thought-readers, each one searching the minds of those around him for evil notions. He’d already seen the Scatas move in and take three people away—discreetly enough, so as not to cause a stir. He told himself, as he’d done many times before, that if the Araifas could sense what he had decided to do, they would have taken him away by now. It didn’t make him feel any less helpless.

  There was already a rumbling from within, the Arena, of feet stamping and voices chanting names Cathan didn’t recognize Every now and then, a muted explosion of cheers rang out, followed by the blare of horns.