by P D Ceanneir
Nevertheless, the debacle would not go away. A month after the catastrophe King Criab, rather heartlessly, called in his debts and the Farness Bond went bust.
Duke Cormack sided with his monarch and forced the barons of the Farness Bond to pay up. His losses in all of this were minimal; his only collateral was supplying the point of departure, the harbour of Keveni. Although he did supply the king with a substantial loan, he had a royal contract to ensure his returns, and those returns were going to prove lucrative for the duke’s future generations.
Most of the barons were coinless and forced to place their land and business into the king’s care. Their titles became Royal Caput Baronium, a caput being the seat of the ruling title and separate from the land they owned, but worth more than the land itself. Of the sixteen barons of the Farness Bond, twelve now belonged to the crown, including lands and titles. The others became destitute by paying through bank loans or selling land to clear their debts.
Duke Cormack was ruthless in calling in the debts and most of the debtors had little time to raise the cash. Baron Kellerane was luckier than most. With half of his goods sailing from Sonora, he was able to pay back most of what he owed. Cormack wanted the baron’s rich lands of Tressel, on the banks of Lake Wyani, for himself. He secretly paid the baron’s loan off with the bank and presented Kellerane with a Debtors Note in his name from the bank payment. Unfortunately for the duke, due to Vallkyte law, if half of the debt is paid then the debtor has the right to pay the balance in monthly instalments until paid in full.
What Kellerane did next was to prove instrumental in Telmar’s tale.
4
A long time ago in the Dragor-rix War, an Elder by the name of Styx,[9] was besieged in his home, the castle of Dorit Lorne, by a large army of Acanthi and a dragon of the Sept of Red. It turns out the Elder only had a host of three thousand Wither Rangers to defend the walls. At the end of the siege both armies had brought each other to annihilation, and Styx died with them. His tomb still stands within the ruins of his castle.
I tell you this because about a mile from the ruins, in Tuen House, Baron Telmar was born.
Telmar’s grandfather, Kellerane, moved his family and business from Tressel to the shores of Lake Tuen. He left his vast ancestral lands behind and moved to a smallholding left to his mother in a wedding dowry by her mother, Princess Elta. The lands of Dorit Lorne came under the vassalage of Lord Vassoly, Count of the Withers and it was under his patronage that Kellerane placed himself[10]. This act made it impossible for Duke Cormack to approach him. Count Vassoly was an old rival of the duke’s family and not hugely popular with the king.
To make matters worse for Cormack, the lands of Tressel that he sought after were split up and given to four minor shire lords of the Barony Charter as Guarding Grants. Guarding Grants were old laws laid out over two thousand years ago as an interim clause for neighbouring lords to hold lands for their owners so they could go and fight in the Dragor-rix, safe in the knowledge that their homestead remained cared for by trusted individuals.
This meant that while Kellerane still held his title of Baron Tressel, his land was still his under the ancient Guarding Law. The result of this was that any debts that the landowner had become suspended, indefinitely.
However, as compensation to the holding agent, any profit from trade tax for guarding the land was theirs to take and only a small percentage returned to the main owner. Kellerane waved away the percentage and asked for a Fealty Note from the four lords instead. These lords had taken no part in the Farness Bond, so this meant he had a legal and binding contract with them for an eternity and no law court in the land could break it.
The laws of the Guarding Grant may have been old and unused, but it was still legal and Duke Cormack could find no way around the legality of it. He was enraged further by Kellerane’s departure to be under the protection of Count Vassoly. This act would start a blood feud with both families that would last hundreds of years.
The Dark Seed
“We are not to know what Dark Seed spawned inside Telmar, but his madness ignited a war so terrible, it would not recover for generations.”
The First Civil War: Ringwald the Tolerant
1
First blood in the feud was spilled by Duke Cormack. In 2489 YOA, a band of raiders that came to plunder cattle from his ranch killed Baron Kellerane while he tried to protect his livestock. Twenty-four well-armed men, according to witnesses, set upon the four hundred and seventy year old Rawn. Kellerane killed half of their numbers before an arrow pierced his heart.
The witnesses were six labourers who had accompanied the baron on a tour of the grazing fields that day. One of them was the called Jaen, the Count of the Withers Factor, who saw the whole thing. He was one of two others that managed to escape the raiders, and the only one to notice the livery of Keveni under the raider’s surcoats.
Nearly two hundred years before, Baron Kellerane and his family had settled in Dorit Lorne. He had been given a “substantial loan” by Count Vassoly to build Tuen House.[11] The two storied six-bedroom mansion saw the arrival of two generations of the Lords of Dorit Lorne. The first was Telmar’s father Efron who was born in 2470 YOA, just nineteen years before the death of his father.
Count Vassoly had died in 2463 YOA and his son, Talien, had come to rely on Kellerane’s business mind and authority, so much so that he made him Sheriff of the Withers, a post that would bring him back to the Vallkyte Parliament and in touching distance of Duke Cormack.
Cattle raiding in the Withers were rife, but Kellerane clamped down on such theft with severity. Any he caught he hung without trial, and this, though applauded by most of his neighbouring lords, was derided as heavy handed by Duke Cormack when parliament met twice a year.
Baron Kellerane was so successful in his role as sheriff that raiding had all but stopped in his territories. This is why his death sent shockwaves around the island. Count Talien, just as robust in his protection of Kellerane as his father was, publicly outed Duke Cormack as the murderer, which made him less popular in parliament, although it did make the duke more enemies. One of those enemies was Telmar’s farther, Efron.
2
In 2464, King Criab III died after four hundred years on the throne, the longest reigning Vallkyte king. The crown passed to his great grandson Cambrain and the royal house became the House of Cambrain. Duke Cormack died a year after Kellerane under mysterious circumstances, his title passing to a succession of duchesses and the Keveni power within the parliament now receded to a footnote in history. Unfortunately, the new king never gave back the debt owed to Cormack’s family even though the descending duchesses vehemently called for reimbursement every year at the budget announcement in parliament.
Efron, still angry at the murder of his father, left Dorit Lorne under the protection of Count Talien and his Factors. As a young Rawn Master, he became a successful ambassador for the academy in the years after his father’s death. His Field Missions with apprentices became legendary. Yet his real love was history, and he took up a teaching post at the academy that would last for more than a hundred years.
In 2887 YOA, Efron retired from the academy and married his second cousin, Lady Catlyn, King Cambrain’s aunt. Catlyn, an accomplished Rawn Master herself, was a favourite of the king. She was a Vallkyte ambassador for the crown and met Efron on many occasions during their service. King Cambrain officiated at their wedding, held at the Temple of Arcun, and it became a glorious state affair. Also at the wedding were the Duchess of Keveni and her ten-year-old son Beltane: the boy would prove to be as burdensome as his ancestors were.
Efron and Catlyn both retired from royal service and went to live a peaceful and long life in Dorit Lorne. Efron wrote many books on history, but his main interest lay in the Dragor-rix, especially the Eldi.
Few of the Elders have their own resting places and it intrigued him because one such tomb lay on his land. The tomb of the Elder Styx had a base of white marble and a domed
lid of crystal made by the hands of the Elder Eighthan when he discovered his body after the siege ended. The well-preserved corpse of Styx lay under the transparent sheet of the crystal lid, his legs crossed at the ankles to show he fought in the Dragor-rix, his right hand held his staff, and in his left he clasped a red leather-bound book to his chest. The image of the Elder’s corpse was so familiar to Efron in his youth, yet the significance of the book had not registered until now. During his studies in the academy he was interested to note that the Eldi kept diaries of their lives, often called Grymwards, which were usually thick tomes, bound in red leather.
Efron set about an intense study of the Elder Styx mere months after his wedding to Catlyn.
3
One morning, on a hot summer’s day, Catlyn wakens to an empty bed. She dresses and calls for her husband, but he does not answer. She searches the rooms of Tuen House to find them void of his presence. She goes to the stable yard at the end of the property and discovers his horse is missing. She saddles her own and makes for the old ruins of Dorit Lorne Castle.
She knows exactly where he is.
This is the tale told to Telmar on his mother’s knee, the story of the Grymward, and of the Black Seed and her husband’s madness.
She makes the journey to the ruins at a canter and trots through the partly collapsed arch that leads to the inner courtyard of the old castle. The ruins are widely spread, though little is in evidence because nature has grown over the broken stonework, and some of it had been taken away to build Tuen House and also to build walls to enclose local fields.
She panics when she rounds a corner to the overgrown cobbled courtyard because she sees Efron lying on the ground next to the tomb of the Elder. She hurriedly dismounts and runs to him screaming his name. She is vaguely aware that the crystal lid of the tomb has been prised open and shifted to one side. Efron does not stir, his breathing is shallow, and she cannot wake him. Clutched in his hand is the Elders Grymward, it is held so tightly she cannot pull it from his grasp.
Suddenly her husband’s eyes snap open and he sits up quickly.
‘The Black Seed, it’s alive, alive!’ he shouts as he points to the tomb, then he collapses and begins to shake.
Catlyn is so distraught that she uses the Thought Link to send him into a very deep sleep. She stands and looks into the tomb of the long dead Elder and is horrified to witness the Styx’s body disintegrating before her very eyes, within seconds he is merely a pile of dust and tattered clothing.
4
A fever wracked Efron’s body for a month after that. Catlyn feared, because of his age, that the Rawn Phage had finally taken hold of him. She sat at his side day and night, wiped the sweat from his brow, and fed him soup and water. He gibbered and ranted, spoke of the Dark Seed that came from the Elders body to infect his own and said other things that she could not understand.
At one point Efron’s sister, Lady Anna, a powerful Rawn Master, came to be at his bedside. Both women did not leave him until the fever broke and he slept soundly once more.
‘Skrol,’ said Anna as she leafed through the Grymward, ‘very complex Skrol to be precise.’
‘He should have left it alone,’ said Catlyn. ‘He has desecrated an ancient tomb, and it may have been booby-trapped or something. But that does not explain why a Rawn Master has become sick!’
‘I agree, but this book could be very important, historically I mean, and knowing Efron that was worth the risk.’
‘I hope you are right.’
Many physicians came to administer to the baron and most were perplexed at his symptoms. None could find a root cause for the ailment and when the fever finally broke, they left him to rest. In the days that passed after that, his adoring wife looked after Efron as he sat in a trance. It was to be another three months before he spoke again. Unfortunately, he had no memory of the events that led up to the beginning of his ailment.
What did bring him out of his fugue state was the Grymward.
Catlyn found him one day in his study leafing through the book, still in his nightgown.
‘Where did you get this?’ he asked her sleepily.
Catlyn rejoiced to hear her husband speak again and explained to him how he came to have the Grymward after visiting Styx’s tomb. He frowned and shook his head in confusion.
‘I can’t remember any of that,’ he said, looking small and pitiful as he sat by his desk with a woollen blanket over his shoulders. Catlyn hugged him, happy to have her husband fully recovered even if his memories of the event were a little lacking. She was still concerned for his health though. Efron’s hair had been greying since before the incident, now it was pure white and his eyes had lost some of their usual vibrancy.
His recovery was slow but marked by his constant obsession to study the past and he underwent this with a renewed vigour, though only as far as his health would allow. He would sit in his study, poring over books and scrutinising the Grymward from early morning until nightfall. His research shifted to the ruins of Dorit Lorne Castle and he hired a team of labourers to carry out an archaeological dig at the centre of the castle that was once the main hallway.
Baroness Catlyn, happy that her husband improved each day, left him to his work as she sought to take control of the homestead, which she did well, making a tidy profit at the annual cattle market. She even crossed cattle breeds and produced a sturdy white cow called a Whiteox which was much sought after by her competitors for the quality of its beef. She was never far from Efron, though. On occasion he would become weak as his continued sickness crept back in stages, which would force him to his bed for several days at a time. On those occasions fever gripped him again and he would babble incoherently. As always, he remember nothing of his affliction when the fever broke.
5
It is documented that the lives of Rawn Masters are long. The ability to control the four elements of the Earth helps to increase longevity and avert sickness, though death will eventually take them. A Rawns age differs from person to person; some Masters have died at two hundred years old while others live as long as six hundred. Whatever the age of death, they still look as young as twenty years old before the Rawn Phage strikes them down. The Phage ages the Rawn quickly and they die looking very old indeed. Some say it is not painful, as far as the usual geriatric’s aches and pains can be, and most die peacefully in their sleep.
Experts believed that the type of Phage that Efron had was called the Stuttering Phage, whereby the sickness was able to hold death at bay. I now know that the mysterious “Black Seed” he spoke of was a Pyromantic Spore that had lain dormant in the Elders corpse for two thousand years. Spores pass from one generation to another before it becomes active within a desired host. The emotional trigger that activates the Spore is usually one associated with Fire. In Efron’s case he could only produce the Fire Element by using the emotion of fear.
How the Pyromantic Spore got inside Styx’s body is a mystery, but I do know how Telmar became a Pyromancer.
It is not unusual for Rawn couples to become sterile with age. This was not a problem for Efron and Catlyn. Catlyn fell pregnant five times in the hundred years after Efron’s sickness began, but each time she miscarried. Efron feared he would have no heir to carry on his work. More, he feared for Catlyn’s physical and emotional wellbeing each time she was with child. The trauma of losing one was too much for her and she would fall into deep depressions.
I believe that it was this Fear in both of them, though more so in Efron, that triggered the Pyromantic Spore into life so it could be passed from father to son. It is a strange irony that Telmar’s parents thought themselves blessed when his mother carried him to full term only because the dark and awesome power of Pyromancy allowed it. Nevertheless, on a hot summer’s day in 2944 YOA, Telmar of Tressel was born.
There is also another strange turn in the tale of Telmar. The day he was born was one of the hottest in living memory and Efron decided not to call him Kellerane after his father and named
him Telmar instead. The name Telmar is local to the Withers; an old tribe that once lived in the mountains had a sun god by that name. It means Burning One.
6
Many scholars of Telmar’s story have mentioned much of the baron’s early life. They mainly reference his happy days at Tuen House. Having his memories swimming about in my head gives me a valuable insight into his life, and I can tell you the scholars were right.
He was a large and healthy baby, long as well as plump, and very vocal. Both Efron and Catlyn were overjoyed at their son’s arrival and it is to be noted that since Telmar’s birth, Efron’s sickness did not recur, which proves my theory of the Pyromantic Spore, which had now passed from father to son.
Telmar grew up to be a lover of the great outdoors, like his mother. He became a competent horseman at seven and spent most of his young life helping his mother and farm hands track down stray cattle that had wandered into the mountains.
Efron dealt with the boy’s education. Telmar became fluent in Desert Nordic, Bolin, Shakranili and several other Plysarusian dialects. He studied maths, something he later excelled at, and philosophy. His father even hired a Sword Master, by the name of Gius to teach him fencing and war craft, and a local priest to teach him Theology. All this he learnt before the age of thirteen. It may have sounded extreme to put ones child through such intensive study, but in those days sons of nobles learnt outside the normal schooling classes so they could go to the Academy of Rawn Arts at the age of thirteen with a full array of knowledge. Being privy to Telmar’s thoughts and feelings of those early days tells me he enjoyed his education amongst his friends and family in the slow joyful days at Tuen House.
He even helped his father with his studies after he finished his evening chores. Efron had instilled a patient discipline within his son in order to help him understand the need to collate information from books and scrolls that arrived as a loan from the library of Aln-Tiss. Telmar was often enthralled at his father’s knowledge of history and realised how one could learn many things in the present day just by understanding the lessons of the past. One such lesson was the Efron Pump.
