Chapter 23
The Dark Rift
A cheerful climb soon became a weary trudge up the many spiralling steps to Freydel’s study at the top of the round tower. Out of breath and sweaty, they entered a large round room lined with shelves full of books and scrolls of all shapes and sizes. Some were so old they looked as though they would disintegrate if touched. There were also books on the floor stacked as high as her waist and the air was thick with dust.
Crammed against one wall was a bed, but it too was covered in scrolls and parchment. Issa wondered if Freydel actually slept on top of them. The room was dominated by a round table in the centre, also covered in books, maps and scrolls. Along one section of shelves were numerous vials of all shapes and colours, some on top of the other balancing in a way that defied gravity, yet the dust upon them suggested they had not been moved in a long time. The whole room was a mess, dusty and stuffy.
Freydel coughed, probably from the dust and possibly from embarrassment. ‘I don’t dare let that maid in here,’ he explained, ‘who knows what havoc she would wreak.’
She arched an eyebrow at him, strode over to one of the windows and flung it open. Wind gushed in, sending paper and dust swirling into the air. Freydel leapt and hopped to catch them.
‘What are you doing? This is madness,’ he said.
‘I’ll not shut it until I can breathe fresh air,’ Issa fumed and coughed.
Freydel sucked his teeth and shook his head. With a whisper and a motion of his hand, she felt a surge of magic. She watched in awe as the dust collected together in mid-air and streamed out of the window. The window slammed itself shut and calm returned once more to the room. Freydel sighed in relief.
‘This room is special,’ he grinned at her, all grievances clearly forgotten. He pulled on a thick red cord hanging from the roof. ‘It gives an excellent view of the stars.’
‘It’s wonderful.’ She stared up in awe as the red blinds rolled back to reveal a huge domed window and clear blue skies above.
‘You can step outside on to the balcony too,’ he indicated to the small door opposite. ‘Here I can map the very heavens. You should come up here when the night is clear. I can show you the constellations.’ He rummaged around and found a teapot and two cups hiding under the maps and scrolls.
Issa chose a chair next to the round table and took the books off it, carefully stacking them atop another pile that wavered frighteningly under the additional weight. She sat down with caution, ready at any moment to catch an avalanche of books. Freydel clicked his fingers and she watched open-mouthed as he lit the small stove under the teapot with a flame that appeared on the end of his finger. He rubbed his fingers together and the flame went.
‘How did you do that?’ she started.
‘Oh, it’s just a small trick really. Simple magic. Anyone with a little magical ability can do that,’ he stroked his beard and considered her before speaking again.
‘Hmm, there is much for you to learn. Magic, the Flow of energy between and within all things, exists throughout Maioria and the universe. You just need to understand how to harness the energy around you, and matter will do your bidding. Most importantly you must learn how to use your own energy and protect your own energy fields.
‘Of course, not everybody has the gift to use the energy of magic and even those that do, such as wizards, seers and witches, take years to master but a fraction of it. However, much of the power we once had has gone.’ He looked out of the window as if to find the lost magic out there somewhere.
‘Where to start,’ he sighed. He got up and pulled out some papers from under a book, two books from a shelf, and a rolled-up map. He tried to pick up another book but gave up when he dropped the map in the process.
‘Look,’ he said, coming around to her. He set the load down on the table, sending plumes of dust into the air. He wafted the dust away as he flicked through the pages of the largest book. It was labelled, “The Prophecies of Kartola Antasa. Book Five.” The aged, fawn-coloured pages crackled as he turned them. Though neat and pretty, the text was hard to read, written as it was in elaborate whorls and scrolls. He traced the words he had recited earlier,
‘…into his shades of the Dark Rift…’ Issa mumbled the words. Freydel flicked through more wrinkled pages and pointed out other texts about the Night Goddess that he had mentioned earlier.
‘It’s a shame, I only have book five, but there were supposed to be twelve. I just cannot find them.’ He switched to the smaller book. It was dark brown and bent into the shape of a bowl as if it had been used to prop up a bed. It had no title and the words within were hastily scribbled and untidy.
‘I have read many prophecies - albeit just fragments left of once great and marvellous texts—that mention the coming of the Night Goddess who will walk the earth in living form “cleansing Maioria.” Many call that living form the Queen of Ravens. Fantastical I know, and as such these prophecies are generally considered to be myths purporting to wars only affecting mythical gods, and not to us mere mortals.
‘In some texts, it seems that this Queen of Ravens is a sort of warrior goddess incarnate, a great and terrible war leader who will bring death to the immortals. In others, she is a loving and benevolent peaceful person, a wielder of ancient magic guiding the world into the light.’
‘Why does a goddess need to send anyone here?’ Issa frowned. Surely a powerful goddess could do anything they wanted without using someone.
Freydel nodded. ‘Why indeed. There are ancient myths so old even wizards and dragons can barely remember them. They speak of a time when men and women and other magnificent beings lived as gods upon Maioria and life was eternal, our bodies did not die. But then came the Dark Rift, and with it ageing and death.’
‘The Dark Rift?’ Something within her stirred. She had always wondered about the dark scar that split the sky and was only visible at night, but nobody seemed to know much about it, other than it had happened a long long time ago.
‘The myths suggest the people of the world caused the rift to happen. With their great power and explorative minds they did something that broke them, they created a tear in the fabric of the world, which proved devastating. The tear became known as the Dark Rift.’
‘The Dark Rift let evil things in from other dimensions that should never have been able to reach us. And I’m not talking about the petty demons from the Murk. Oh no. These things were far worse, although what they did also brought the Murk closer to us and more easily accessible.
‘But worse than all of that, people began to age and die, although they still lived for thousands of years. Over millennia the life span of all things on this planet has become progressively shorter, and now we are lucky to reach a hundred - if you’re human. Also, when beings die their souls often became lost in the darkness that seeps from the Dark Rift. Thank the Great Goddess for Zanufey.’ Freydel stopped talking when the kettle began to whistle. She considered his words whilst he made the tea.
‘But why didn’t they fix the problem?’ She asked. If they were so powerful surely they could mend it?
Freydel nodded. ‘Good question, and one I still ask to this day. It seems that they did not understand what they had done in order to undo it. It seems our cosmos; Maioria, our sun and moons, and surrounding planets, were bleeding their life force into the Dark Rift, and so too were the inhabitants of this planet.
‘The Dark Rift is not an empty place but filled with evil things that feed off of the life force of living systems. As the people’s living force was bled away, so too was their power. Soon they no longer had enough power to heal the Dark Rift.’
‘But the goddess… she could have fixed it?’ she asked. Why wasn’t she told any of this at school or from Ma? It was by far the most interesting thing she had ever learned about the word.
‘Quite, but some people worked in league with the evil and had become powerful. They did not want to fix it. The evil things did not want it fixed either because then they wou
ld have nothing to feed off. The Great Goddess loves all of her children and always allows them the free will to choose the life that they desire.’
‘But that’s not fair,’ she blurted. ‘I don’t want to grow old and die, no one I have ever known has wanted that, and I doubt I’ll ever meet one who does. Where is my free will in this?’
‘Yes, it’s true,’ Freydel nodded, ‘we have been at the mercy of the free will of those who would destroy us for too long, and become trapped in the worlds of time. It is written that in response to this plague upon our cosmos, and through unconditional love for her children, the Great Goddess sent a part of herself into the darkness. That part of her is Zanufey. It is Zanufey who reaches for the souls of the dead so that they will not be lost forever.’ He fell into silent reverence, his eyes looking far into the distance.
‘If we do not want it anymore, then why is it still broken?’ she folded her arms. This didn’t sound like free will at all.
‘We have degenerated so far we can no longer remember what we once were, and we are no longer powerful enough to fix the problem. There was a chance when the Ancients were here, but Baelthrom and his Maphraxies destroyed them and all their sacred scriptures and magical works. If we heal the Dark Rift, Baelthrom can no longer use this world’s power - he and his horde can no longer feed off our life force.
‘Baelthrom came through the Dark Rift into our time and world. We must remove him if we are to be free, if we want to heal. This is what the prophecies speak of,’ he tapped a hand on the books.
‘From Maioria he is not. From life, he is not. He is the absence of life and of death, a true immortal. He seeks to make all immortal, but his immortality is the absence of life, it is not divine eternal life. His gift is one that sucks the life out of the living to survive. A parasite upon true everlasting life.’
‘Baelthrom,’ she mouthed the name and in her mind saw a dark figure, half-human and half-beast and all black armour. Great wings stretched out behind him and in one gauntleted hand, he held a heavy notched blade. His face was a helmet and his terrible eyes burned all colours. She shivered. It is he who hunts me, of that I am sure.
In his other hand he held a glass bottle, and inside it was a beautiful star darting around as if trying to get out. Her eyes transfixed upon that little star for it offered her the world and beyond. Desire for that star overwhelmed her and her heart thudded heavily in her chest.
A piercing screech and furied tapping broke the image. She gasped and blinked up at the raven scraping and flapping at the window. He stopped attacking the window when she looked at him and perched upon the sill. Freydel frowned at the bird and stroked his short beard.
‘Tell me about the Ancients,’ she asked when her heart had calmed. She didn’t want to talk about the Dark Rift anymore.
‘Here,’ Freydel said, turning from the raven and passing her a steaming mug. ‘Spiced apple tea,’ he said proudly.
She took the mug, it certainly smelled good, apple and cinnamon and something else she did not recognise. She cupped it in her hands as it was too hot to drink.
‘Yet more power and knowledge was lost when the Ancients were destroyed, and what little we have left is slowly being taken by Baelthrom,’ he stared out of the window stirring his tea.
‘The Ancients were powerful, beautiful, intelligent… the first to harness once more the magic that flows through the world. They fiercely fought against the Immortal Lord, and in their wisdom, broke the magic into its constituent parts, lest Baelthrom takes it all. With those parts they created a prison of complex design and enchantments and bound him deep within it, seeking only to buy enough time to find a way to be rid of him for good. For the first time, we had a chance to be free of the darkness filling Maioria.
‘Unfortunately, in splitting the magic apart, the Ancients also made it weaker, and thus, in turn, they and all Maioria were weaker. Despite their efforts, they failed to banish Baelthrom back into the Dark Rift, and so his darkness was here to stay, the plague of his unholy power seeping through the world.
‘Then came Keteth, intelligent, greedy and completely mad. When Keteth stole the orb and Baelthrom broke free of his prison, for so long had he been bound, that there was no mercy in the Immortal Lord’s wrath - and so powerful had he become that the Ancients could not withstand him. At this time they began to speak of fleeing, returning to their own mythical sacred land, Aralanastias.
‘It was not long, thereafter, before all the Ancients were gone from Maioria. Baelthrom destroyed even the earth upon which they stood, their lands gone forever, sunk beneath the sea. Every trace of a people and their great works erased in all but the memories of those who remained.’
She’d spent her whole life thinking the Ancients were just a myth, now she knew they were real, the world was a sadder place without them. She wondered if they all looked like Murlonius, and if there were any others. Tucking her legs up under her, she sipped her tea. It was sweet and spicy and very tasty. Freydel pulled up a chair beside hers and sat down heavily.
‘Baelthrom unleashed his wrath upon the rest of Maioria. Being imprisoned deep in the earth he had come to know the energy lines of Maioria, and along them he flooded his own terrible magic. The seas surged forth to take the land, volcanoes that had lain dormant for centuries exploded into the sky, spewing forth thick choking smoke that covered the world and blotted out the sun. People and animals died and crops failed.
‘War between desperate starving peoples broke out, and plagues took what the sword did not. They are called the Dark Wars, for they fought always under the darkness of a poison-covered sky against the darkness of death, against the darkness that filled their hearts. Baelthrom grew strong as they grew weak, taking the magic of the world for himself whilst the people fought amongst themselves.
‘Much was lost in the Dark Wars. Books, scriptures, magics, arts - all gone. The Age of the Ancients passed. Now it seems another age is beginning, for the dark moon rises in the time of our greatest peril.’
‘Could this new moon be his doing?’ she asked. She hoped it wasn’t so, the energy of the moon had felt so pure and cleansing.
‘The dark moon of Zanufey is not his doing, no. I think it’s a message to him, to us, from the Great Goddess. A message of warning because it’s the Source of All that he ultimately seeks to destroy, for then the entire cosmos and beyond will be his to command. He wants to break the cycle of life so that he and his immortals can rule all.’
Freydel stopped, looked at her as if trying to decide upon something, then got up and went to a cabinet on the wall. ‘I have compiled an extensive body of work, dedicated purely to Zanufey and the dark moon.’ He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the cabinet. His hands shot to the doors as they burst open and bits of paper tried to escape.
‘I er, hah, have not ordered my writings yet,’ he gave a sheepish smile over his shoulder, and opened the cupboard, letting papers and scrolls spill out. With a murmur and clap, the tumbling parchments stopped in mid-air and tidied themselves neatly back onto the shelf. She was at first mesmerised by the magic, then horrified at the tall stacks of paper.
‘I can take your word for it. I’m a better listener than reader anyway,’ she forced a smile.
Freydel shrugged, but his shoulders slumped. Murmuring to himself and after some hesitation, he closed the cabinet with a sigh and locked it again. He seemed a little deflated. Issa thought of something to say.
‘I remember something Ma said once, though it was a long time ago, and I never paid it much attention. I wish I had. She said that we are in the Age of the Immortals?’
Freydel nodded. ‘Yes, that is what the people of the Known World call it. We are a people under siege and our world is not our own. Baelthrom’s might casts its dark hand across Maioria, and there are more of his Maphraxies than there are Feylint Halanoi.’
‘Freedom fighters,’ she said.
‘Well, really the Feylint Halanoi are any who choose freedom from the immortals, b
ut it has come to be the name of our united army. But I do not call it the Age of Immortals, and the Wizards’ Circle does not call it thus. We call it the Last Age, for there is no age foreseen after this, the future is dark to us.’
‘The future is dark?’ she frowned, Edarna had said something similar.
‘Yes. For it is the first time since the birth of Maioria, those with magic cannot see into the future, it is dark. It is dark because there is none, the future has not been decided. Our ‘future’ hangs in the balance, there may not even be one for us, it has not been determined. None of the prophecies speaks of anything past these end days.’
She felt a chill trickle down her spine. On seeing Freydel’s pale face she gave a hopeful smile.
‘Well, perhaps it could be called the Age of the Raven,’ she said. Freydel gave her a quizzical look and scratched his beard in thought. ‘And what about this Child of the Raven?’ she asked, draining the last of her luke-warm tea.
‘The Child will become the Queen of Ravens who will lead us through the darkness. It is not a queen who rules, it is more a term of status. And it seems you are one such Raven Child,’ Freydel said. Her throat went dry.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ she blurted out. She suddenly felt very angry with everything that she could not understand, which was most things at the moment.
‘Is it your thinking that I can help you fight this… this Baelthrom? How can the ramblings of mad people hundreds of years ago have anything to do with me? I come from a tiny island in the middle of the ocean where I mostly tend sick animals.’
‘I didn’t believe any of the prophecies either,’ he said with a gentleness that soothed her unexpected fury, ‘even when the dark moon rose. After all, the constellations are in constant motion. The moon was with us in the past so it means its orbit is just a very long cycle.
Night Goddess (The Goddess Prophecies Book 1) Page 24
