by Awert, Wolf
“Thank you. I can see you’re trying to become my best friends,” Nill gasped through clenched teeth.
The darkness had lifted. Nill was lying in a large cave that was sparsely lit. His companion was bound to a large branch like a slain buck and was now being carefully lowered. He turned to face Nill and gave another wide grin.
“Safety,” he said in that guttural voice.
Nill looked up and saw five pairs of curious eyes. An outstretched hand pulled him up. The leader of the group mimicked the other’s wide smile and stepped aside, gesturing invitingly to the half-darkness. After the wild ride through the forest, Nill’s legs were unsteady and he walked hesitantly.
If these are friends, I’d hate to see what they do to their enemies.
The tunnel wound snakelike into the mountain and opened into a large cave whose walls Nill could not make out in the darkness. Several fires burned around a central area. A slender arm waved him over from beneath wide dark clothing.
“Come closer.”
The voice was lighter and more melodic than the growls he had grown used to. The speaker’s face was slightly more delicate, but still too rough to guess at an approximate age.
“I have been told you saved my son. Please accept a mother’s deepest gratitude. I also heard you fought off the bird. I can hardly believe it – no one can survive the mountain birds’ wrath. But you are here, alive, and so is my son, thanks to you. How could I doubt it? And yet I cannot understand.”
Nill was surprised. Her voice was gravelly, yet musical. She spoke in full sentences, unlike those Nill had already met, who had merely grunted words at him. The people surrounding them were beaming. It seemed to be an important moment for all.
Nill felt as though the air in the cave was getting heavier and found that he had difficulty breathing. He looked around hastily. People were streaming into the caves from all directions. Soon the cave was full but for a small circle around the woman on her high chair and himself, where the others had left a respectful distance. Everywhere they sat now; men, women, and their children happily clambering over their parents’ shoulders. There was nowhere left to sit, and still they kept coming; those who had arrived too late to secure a spot on the ground simply climbed up the walls, where they clung tightly to small notches and holes. All this happened so quietly a sleeping person would not have been woken.
Nill felt uncomfortable. Although nobody had approached him, their many auras fought for space and distorted his vision.
I suppose that’s the price you pay for feeling magic, he thought. A muckling would never suffer from the same.
“You will feel better soon. Wait a little longer,” the small woman on her chair said, and she began to sing. It was a jolly song with a simple, quick rhythm. One after another the others joined in. Nill’s eyes widened in surprise; this was not just a song, this was magic. Pure magic. These creatures changed their auras with their melodies and words, fused them together, formed a huge magical field. The song grew quieter and ended, but the field remained. Nill drew a deep breath.
“I am surprised. I did not realize you were gifted in the magical arts.” Nill hesitated; his next question was potentially dangerous, and he had not forgotten his encounter with the creatures of Fire. “Are you something akin to the guardians of the magic of Metal?”
Laughter echoed through the cave, and it stood at odds with their bulky bodies; light, sparkling and high in pitch. “We are the Ossronkari. The word means roughly the same to us as ‘human’ does to you. You could say we are those who live with Metal, and it feeds us. But there is no such thing as a magic of Metal; we ought to know.”
Nill tasted the bitter, sharp metallic air upon his tongue; it prickled on his skin and made his hair stand on end. These people claimed there was no Metal magic. Nill decided to wait and listen.
“All our brothers and sisters have come here to thank you, for you have saved the First Son. I am Matria, the mother of my people. But first, I would like to introduce my son, and the men who brought you here.”
The woman called out several names that all sounded the same to Nill. Sounds like pling, clang and dong gave him the impression he was hearing the sound of tiny hammers in the rocks.
“My name is Nill,” he said. He expected to encounter the usual surprise his name evoked, but Matria’s expression remained unchanged.
“The mountain bird, as you called it, had made a mistake. It was a simple matter of telling it to leave.”
“You are a polite person, and must be a great leader of your people; yet you still look half a boy. We know that you exist, but our races rarely meet.”
Nill nodded. “I have heard many stories during my travels, but never one of a people who live with Metal.”
“We seldom leave our mines, and if we do, it is at night. All we need to survive is here in the rocks, in the metal, and sometimes in the animals that seek refuge for the winter. Wood is the only thing we must sometimes fetch from the forest. We need it for our gardens.”
Nill’s imagination fell short at the idea of an underground garden, but he told himself to be patient. If it was important, an explanation would follow.
“And yet your son was outside in broad daylight,” Nill pointed out.
The woman sighed. “Yes, he had volunteered for an exceptionally dangerous task. We will soon have to leave this mountain. It has fed our families for many generations, but now it is bare. There are other mountains nearby, but sadly none are as beautiful as this one. This mountain is special. On one side it contains water-metal, and on the other it was forged in flame. But enough talk. Give me your hand. We will meet again tomorrow.”
Nill extended his hand hesitantly. This kind of farewell was unusual. The woman grasped his fourth finger, stroked it gently and let go again. Nill felt as though sparks had shot through his head. What sort of magic was that? What are these creatures? he wondered. And another thought crossed his mind as he did so: How little the mages know of the world we live in…
As if on a secret command, the Ossronkari disappeared into the darkness of the tunnels. Strong arms pulled Nill to his feet and guided him to a small side-cave.
“Rest here. All quiet.”
The smaller cave was pitch dark. Nill conjured a small ball of light and pulled out the last few sweet-fruits and ate them before wrapping himself in his cloak. He fell asleep within moments.
When he woke up he did not know whether it was night or day. He felt rested, fresh and keen to act, but the darkness around him was absolute. The sun and stars did not exist down here to tell him the time. Nill produced another light and found a thin sliver of water at the back of the cave. It fell into a small basin, and from there drained through a gap in the stone.
Oh well, better than nothing, he thought as he cupped a hand to lift some. He drank in small, measured sips. The water was cold and had the distinctly disagreeable flavor of iron. He shook his head. This place was not meant for a shepherd, used to open sky and wide plains. He hurried to leave.
The tunnels were all lit with the same dim light that had shone in the meeting cave the previous night. Nill turned a corner and found himself staring into a kind-looking face.
“Come this way.”
Nill surrendered his temporary plan of fleeing as quickly as possible and followed. On his way, he noticed the details and intricacies of the cavernous world his hosts lived in. He saw the holes and tears in the stone where ore had been hewn from the mountain, and he saw the gardens he had heard of the night before. The Ossronkari mined the ore with mighty hammers and small, sharp pickaxes. Their technique was intriguing: they clung to the rock with three of their limbs and used the remaining one to use their tools. Nill could not make out whether they were hands or feet in the half-light.
The gardens were large, shallow pools, fed by small streams of water that flowed down the metal seams. Nill could smell the iron more strongly than in the water he had previously drunk, and pulled a disgusted face. Two strong men were busy
laying large branches into the water in a complicated pattern.
“New garden,” his guide explained proudly.
“Ripe garden,” he said as they passed another pool. Its surface was covered with some sort of black pulp. Several Ossronkari were carefully lifting the slimy substance from the water and draining it before adding it to large containers.
Nill could not see anything special about it. The aroma of Metal was overwhelming now.
“Food?” Nill asked politely.
“Metal meal.” His companion nodded happily.
Nill decided to decline any invitation to supper and instead ate the last supplies he had managed to bring from the Fire Kingdom. The evening – if indeed it was evening – was again given to a meeting.
Nill bowed before the small woman, who was again sitting in the high chair.
“I have learned much, both yesterday and today. It appears to me that you have dedicated your lives to the magic of Metal. It is the most important of the five elements to you, but Fire and Water and Wood are also present, in lesser quantities. Here with you, the elements feel at harmony.”
To his surprise he noticed that his words incited disquiet; it was so different from the Ossronkari’s usual silence that he was momentarily confused. He heard a small laugh in the crowd.
“I do not know where you came from; a stranger who suddenly appears out of nowhere and saves my son’s life. Neither do I understand how you made the mountain bird leave my son. You must have unmatched magical powers. But the Ossronkari do not know the magic of Metal, and the magic of Wood is unknown to us too.”
“You don’t know Metal? But you mine it and live off it and you eat something called a metal meal?” Nill’s disbelief was mounting.
“Metal, we know. Better than most, I might add. But we do not know this magic of Metal. Metal is simply a part of the earth; the earth is the keeper of the flame, and the flame is the birthplace of life. We keep water to stop the flames from burning us, but if you drink too much of it, you extinguish the fire in yourself. And so you need something to keep the fire alive, and that is air. Those are the four powers we know in the world. Fire, earth, air and water.”
Nill attempted valiantly to understand what he had just been told. With enough conviction, he could simply brush off the ancient magic as a relic of a long-forgotten era, when life had not been advanced enough to grasp the subtleties of the world. Light was Fire, darkness was Water; Earth, Metal and Wood were a blend of the two in their own ways – how, he did not quite understand. Yet the explanation that the magic of the five elements had evolved from the ancient magic made sense to him. The magic of two – the magic of five. The Oas knew the sky and the earth, mirroring darkness and light, and to them, the humans were the connecting piece. Three elements. And now the Ossronkari told him of another magic, the magic of four. From one to two, from two to three, and onwards until there were five. What came after that, when the Great Change inevitably came to Pentamuria? Six, most likely.
Matria interpreted Nill’s hesitation as an expression of doubt.
“Do you not trust us? We have proof of the four elements. The gods themselves gave it to us.”
Nill groaned internally. He had heard of gods now and again, and he had never thought much of them. Yes, the people of Earthland spoke of a god of springs, a god of the earth, a god of grass, of evening wind and all sorts of other mundane things. But did anyone truly believe in them? Nill doubted it.
He was torn away from his thoughts as the woman rose, and he noticed with surprise how small she really was. Her diminutive stature was exaggerated when her comparatively tall son joined her. He was slightly hunched from his injuries, but he appeared to have regained most of his strength.
“Take our guest to the halidom. The priests may follow us.”
This time, nobody pushed or dragged Nill anywhere. A small group, consisting of Matria, her son and the men who had brought them here, walked through the mountain in a solemn procession. Every path they took, every tunnel sloped downwards. The air grew hot and humid, though nobody except Nill seemed to mind. Sweat formed between his shoulders and soon stained his shirt. And still they descended. Nill began to understand what Matria had meant when she told him the mountain was bare. Generations upon generations of Ossronkari must have dug deep into the rock. As Nill pondered what had happened to all the metal, the group stopped.
“We must approach the halidom one at a time. The entrance is ahead, that small gap there. No Ossronkar would ever dream of widening it with a hammer.”
They all took a step backwards and indicated that Nill should be the first to enter. He had an easier time of it than the Ossronkari; he was taller, but considerably slimmer. He ducked a little to avoid cracking his head on the stone above, and as he did so his gaze fell to the floor. When he looked back up again, a small yelp of joy escaped his lips.
Symbols had been stamped into the wall opposite in shining metal. The cave he was in reminded him of the Hall of Symbols, deep within Ringwall’s foundations. All that was missing was the bright light and the devouring darkness around the edges. Here, in the Ossronkari’s mountain, there was a perpetual yellow-gold dusk light, whose origins were still unknown to Nill.
The writing was not in glyphs, but in the familiar Fire runes.
“Cheon!” Nill shouted, equally delighted and reverential, as he read the first few words.
The text was short and even more mysterious than Eos. Nill raised his voice as he read aloud:
“After the Third Circle comes the Fourth. It lasts only momentarily, but those who live in it believe it an eternity. The people of the Fourth Circle will understand fire as a cosmic power, apart from earth, water and sky. The sky will lose its meaning for those who live beneath the earth, and air will be their memory of it. And so the elements of change grow stronger, and the elements of form grow weaker. The Fourth Circle will crumble beneath its own inconsistency and dissolve into air; for air is fleeting.
But the remnants of the Second Circle, the children of earth and fire, will meet their brothers of light and shadow. Together they will briefly blossom. This, too, is the Fourth Circle. It will die with along with its unity, for what does not belong together cannot be held together.”
Nill scratched the back of his neck. Eos had described the birth of the Second Circle and the ancient magic, and Cheon prophesied a magic of four elements. The Ossronkari were the race that lives beneath the earth, no doubt. But there must have been another culture. Nill was a little surprised at how short the passage was.
I’ll find some answers in the Book of Arun, he thought. And I know where to look for it.
“I hear you can read the ancient symbols,” Matria said. “And now you see for yourself that there are only four elements, and four magics that feed off them. Earth and Fire are not one, but two elements. Earth grants form, and Fire gives life to the form.”
“I envy your certainty.” Nill’s voice was steady and measured, and did not betray the effort it took him not to scream in desperation. The more he learned about the nature of magic, the less he understood; the chaos that had perturbed what he had believed to be the divine order of the world had shattered not only his own certainty, but also his home. The great Druid Dakh-Ozz-Han was wrong, just like the magon and the archmages of Ringwall. The wise women of the Oas understood just as little as the shamans. And what would these calm, doubtless people say if they knew that their world was made up of five elements, or even three or only two? Would they believe it? Could they believe it?
It felt like a cruel joke to Nill that his magical powers grew as his worldly foundations crumbled. If you don’t understand magic, you shouldn’t use it, he heard Tiriwi say in his head. If you summon and banish without knowing what you’re doing, you’re killing the world. The Oas put understanding before action. Nill closed his eyes and sank his teeth into his knuckles to silence the scream that fought to escape him: “Help me!”
“Perdis,” he said quietly, once the fi
rst wave of emotions had subsided. “Do you know of a sorcerer called Perdis?”
His question fell on deaf ears. “Come, let us leave. It is not easy to witness divine truth,” the woman said. She could see that he was in a state of inner turmoil. “Remaining here costs more strength than most can give. But it can also give strength back. Security, certainty; these are a constant source of it.”
Matria’s words were meant to be comforting, but every sentence sliced deeper into his soul, splintered his bones, flayed the skin from his flesh, and shattered his aura.
“Certainty… There is no certainty in the world. Mirages and illusions, that’s all there is. Magic is an illusion.”
“But in the beginning, there was Nothing!” Like a struck gong, the sentence rang out and Nill raised his right hand as if praying.
From the Nothing it had come
Summoned and undone
The Fate
Before the Time
Brothers of the Light, they ought
As the children of nought
Be glad
And in line
For humans, far too great
A terrible fate
Magic look
Silent pain.
False gladness
Solitude
Eternity.
Nill listened to the silence of the room and thought he heard a quiet laugh. He looked around angrily and finally stared into his companions’ faces. What he saw there was not laughter, but horror. The laugh was in his head.
“That was magic too great for humans,” Matria said. “But nobody can tell what an encounter with the divine might wreak in a mortal.”
“When you leave the mountain to find a new home, will you leave your halidom behind?” Nill asked.
“Yes, it will be so. Our halidom will become a pilgrimage, but no longer part of our home. I fear for change, not only in our lives… the separation of the Ossronkari from the roots of our beliefs is a sign. Our priests have not yet managed to understand it.”