by Sean Rodden
And Eldurion would take that comfort to his death.
For he was aware that his time was near. He well knew that he would not return to Druintir of the Deathward. He would destroy the dark thing lurking under New Ungloth and then he would disappear to die in the Wilderness after the fashion of his folk. Eldurion would never again lie with fair Taresse in the warmth and wonder of love’s embrace. And he would never again bask in the loveliness and light that was his daughter, the incomparable Caelle – he would never again see those starry eyes, never hear that angelic voice, feel that slim small hand in his own.
Never.
Never again.
Eldurion’s smile faded, fell.
Farewell, my precious Caelle.
The spears of autumn’s first dawn assailed Ravenwood’s tightly woven canopy, though none passed her leafy armour to strike the narrow animal trail that Eldurion followed toward Coldmire. But the Fian’s feet were sure, and the way was familiar to him. And darkness was a barrier to neither the Daradun warrior nor the Athain Sun Lord behind him. The Blade of Defurien bundled humbly at his back, his own sword in hand, confidence and determination in his every stride, Eldurion hurried on.
In defiance of dawn and of the impudent invaders who so boldly dared to bring bare steel into that dark domain, the ravens burst into a particularly shrill cacophony of complaint.
WARRRRRRRRRRRRE!!!
Hearing and heeding at last, grey Eldurion paused at the fore, and placed a hand upon the rillagh across his breast. He then lifted his own voice in answer, singing a light lullaby to the blackbirds in the boughs, his tempered tongue softening into a sweetly sonorous serenade. And in time, the great ravens of the wood were soothed into silence.
Eldurion’s lyric lapsed into a warm and wordless hum, and then stilled.
Rundul of the Wandering Guard came close behind the Fian and glowered at the contorted trees. There was an unhappy heat in the fired furnace of the Darad’s ebon eyes. He leaned on the haft of his war-axe, his dark whiskers bristling.
“We’re not welcome here.”
The Eldest of the Fiannar lowered his hand, slipped his naked blade into his belt, then nodded.
“There is both warding and warning in the voice of the forest, Stone Lord.”
Rundul glowered blackly. “So I’ve heard.”
Within the hollow of his hood, Eldurion’s steely eyes glinted, twin points of silvery light sourced in the sparkings of his soul.
“I have reminded Ravenwood of the glory of Eldagreen, and of those who once defended and died for her. The sacrifice of the Guardian Peoples remains unforgotten. Ravenwood remembers. She will protest our presence no longer.”
Rundul grunted dubiously, but spoke no more.
Yllufarr of the Undying was a ghost in the listing mist at their backs, blacker than the birds in the branches, as silent as a shadow. His innate Athain aura was subdued and shrouded within his coal-hued cloak and cowl, but a luminous lustre shimmered on the surface of his eerie eyes. He too had heard the warning in the call of the ravens. And of the three, he alone knew the cause of that cackling caution. But of this dark and distant thing the pale-eyed Prince of the Neverborn said nothing.
They resumed their trek, moving along the path with some semblance of speed, speaking little, sensing rather than seeing the day pass and become night again. They did not rest, but hurried on. Time was precious, vital, of the essence. Each moment lost drew doom near and nigh to Druintir and the Deathward.
Eldurion ate of salted meats and hard cheese from a pocket of his cloak, and drank of the waterskin at his hip, neither slowing nor halting as he appeased his hunger and sated his thirst. He set a swift pace, pressing persistently eastward through the wood, eager and earnest for the fall of the land where forest met fen.
Above deep dark Ravenwood, the second day’s sun rose pinkly, whitened into noon, yellowed with the passing day, reddened to dusk, then quickened into the star-specked black of night. But Ravenwood was a place of misted gloom and evergloam, and the cycles of sun and moon signified nothing there.
Eldurion did not slow.
But as the second night aged, the grey warrior of the House of Defurien became fatigued, for though the Fiannar were a rugged and robust folk, they were yet a mortal people and subject to wear and weariness. Eldurion was the Eldest of his race, and his legs had carried him through nearly three centuries of hard living in the wilder regions of Second Earth. Even his iron endurance was not limitless, not without bounds. But the ferriferous Fian had firmly resolved to attain the eastern edge of Ravenwood by the third day’s dusk, and this demanded the deferment of both rest and repose.
Eldurion was also propelled by a passionate but purposeless pride that caused him to contend with the constitutions of those that followed him. The Darad would surely need scant sustenance and sleep whilst those heavy ironshod feet trod the living earth – and black Yllufarr behind was of the immortal Neverborn and would neither tax nor tire ere the world’s ending or his own.
Eldurion trudged on.
The third day dawned.
Eldurion’s awareness of golden Grimroth bound at his back registered as a constant reminder of the oath he had sworn to his nephew, the noble and worthy Lord Alvarion.
I will do this thing.
And though, in the cool confines of his heart, Eldurion believed he had surely failed the father, he would not fail the son. The steely-souled warrior of the Deathward willed weariness from mind and muscle, from body and bone – forsooth, fatigue was a frailty of feebler men.
As middle-morning brightened the world beyond Ravenwood, Rundul of Axar slowed his stride and fell back into the murky mists of the forest. He shifted beneath the great bulk of his pack, more for a certain inner unease than for any true physical discomfort. His heavy brows bunched into a thunderous scowl and he muttered something vaguely profane. His axe-haft was warm in his tightly fisted hand.
And a wraithlike shade appeared at Rundul’s side, a thing as ethereal and as formless as the fogs of the forest.
“Calm your thoughts, friend Rundul,” whispered Yllufarr of the Folk of Gavrayel, his pale eyes shining with a ghostly light, “lest Ravenwood sense your dislike for her.”
“I’ve got no ill will for this place, good Prince,” grumbled the Darad, “though I’ll be happy to leave it behind. Sooner better than later. I prefer tunnels fashioned of stone to those formed of timber.”
Yllufarr smiled blandly.
“We will agree to differ peaceably on that small detail, good Rundul of the Daradur.”
The Darad’s grasp on his axe loosened.
“My concern is more for the Fian than for the forest, Prince Yllufarr,” Rundul muttered in the mist. “No one appreciates his burden more than I do. I’ve seen what he must best in battle. I’m just worried that he presses himself beyond the bounds of his body. Oft is hope trod upon by haste and need.”
“Ah, but Eldurion’s need is great, friend Rundul, and of manifold causes, both obvious and obscure,” reasoned the Sun Lord. “And until he engages the Blood King under New Ungloth, haste is the sole weapon that he may wield against the marching might of Shadow.” Yllufarr’s voice was as a sigh of soft and sorrowful wind. “Haste, good Rundul, is his hope.”
Rundul grunted.
“The Blood King’s army is a behemoth made slow and shambling by its very mass, Prince. We three could march with ease to New Ungloth and back again in time to meet that beast at the battle’s beginning. I tell you again, the Fian’s haste is unnecessary.”
“The Blood King’s behemoth does not seek passage through the fens of Coldmire, Stone Lord. I assure you, my friend, you will wish for haste long before the bog is at our backs.” Yllufarr paused, his cool colourless eyes peering along the befogged trail before them. “And surely the second son of Alvarion the First knows his limits better than do you or I.”
The Darad’s massive shoulders shrugged as though the unwieldy weight they bore did not exist. His hand reached withi
n his tunic and curled unconsciously about the small plain stone given him by Brulwar the Earthmaster. He huffed once and abandoned his concern for Eldurion.
The Athain Prince smiled.
“Aye, verily, my friend. We would be well and ably served in looking to our own burdens.”
Nearer to his companions than they suspected, Eldurion glowered within the cowl of his cloak, his eyes glittering with a light both cold and hard, like the sheen of star-polished steel. Having paused to relieve himself, he had heard the conversation of his comrades. The Darad’s concern for him was genuine and born of love rather than of doubt or of callous criticism. And the Ath’s faith in him was clear and unshaking. But that they had even found cause to discuss his evident frailties irked him.
I will do this thing.
His countenance cast of stone, his eyes of iced iron, grey Eldurion slipped into the hovering haze of the path, adjusted the Blade of Defurien at his back, and deliberately lengthened his stride eastward.
I will do this thing.
They emerged from Ravenwood at dusk.
The ancient wood ended abruptly, her eastmost eaves crowning a steep formation of mossy rock that curved northeastward to the snow-maned rises of Rothrange and sloped away southwestward to border the banks of the River Ruil. Oak and ash teetered precariously at the edge of the precipice, leaning perilously into the open gloaming of eventide, dark green giants pondering the pains of life ere leaping in final despair to their doom.
Eldurion stood at the very rim of the ridge, arms crossed over his chest, his hood thrown back, long silvery hair floating on a rising wind. Rundul of Axar rested upon the haft of his war-axe, a living monolith of stone and steel, a mountain of might and muscle. And Yllufarr of the Neverborn was a silent shadow on the wind, a revenant black and baneful, a foreshade of the falling night.
Grey and black and eerily hueless eyes peered eastward, gazing from gloom into gloam. Eastward and away. Away and down.
Down.
Into Coldmire.
Coldmire.
The woeful waste of fallen Eldagreen.
That which had once been the fairest and most formidable forest of the Second World was now but a great grey grave, a monstrous hollow of haze-wreathed heath and fogbound fen. The moors were impossibly vast, stretching under the eternal shadow of Rothrange from the ridge at Ravenwood to the broken feet of the Peacekeepers. The fresh flow of the River Ruil that had nourished Eldagreen of olde was become but a confusion of acidic arteries and poisoned veins quickening into quag, seeping into slag.
All was cold there, all was dull and dank, greyed and brittle with everfrost. Low lethargic cloud smothered the moors, a death shroud suffocating all that may once have been beautiful, leaving only those slimy slinking things that might survive in the stillwater of the swamp.
Coldmire was a tomb – and for many long cold centuries the cadaver of once-elegant Eldagreen had lain rotting in the clammy casket of the bogs.
The three stared in silence upon the sunken sweep of Coldmire. Behind them, beyond Ravenwood, the sun slowly slipped under the world. Dusk deepened, dampened, darkened into newborn night. Above the moor the sky tinted to a tattered sheet of sable satin, sadly bereft of moon and star, the lights of night having long abandoned the heavens over that hateful and horrid place.
Something rumbled irascibly in Rundul’s bosom.
“Ah, would that you had seen Eldagreen in her glory, my young Daradun friend,” spoke Yllufarr of the Undying, a song of mourning to his tone. “This was once a place of grandeur and of unbounded beauty, where the sun swam in the boughs and the stars slumbered peacefully upon the soft forest floor. Often did I tread the wild wonder of Eldagreen, wandering with neither purpose nor destination, content and without care, as though moving through a dream of paradise.” The Sun Lord arched one fine eyebrow toward the Captain of the Wandering Guard. “Mayhap, had you walked with me, friend Rundul, you would have forsaken your halls of hewn stone for those grand green galleries of olde.”
Rundul peered upon the night-shackled fen below him, a wasteland as wretched and as removed from beauty as a butchered carcass decaying in the damp. Shrugging away the Prince’s suggestion, the Darad responded only, “What upon this earth or under might have caused this desecration?”
“War,” replied the dark Prince of the Neverborn simply. His pale eyes seemed to glaze and their ghostly gleam retreated as though withdrawing into the mists of memory and melancholy. “Or so I suppose. For in the heart of Eldagreen, in the golden glen the Athair once called the Valley of Dreams, was the Angar ban Gan Gebbernindh fought and sorely won. There broke the greatest of all the battles for this Second Earth. There was slain gallant Lord Vallian, son of Defurien. There your own fierce folk first raised fist and axe and hammer in wrath. And there my Sun Knights fought and fell.”
Yllufarr lowered his eyes in remembrance and reverence, and in each pale light there swelled a single silver tear for that which and for those whom would never be forgotten.
“And with them fell the greatness and glory of ancient Eldagreen.”
Rundul bowed his head. And when he looked up again the knight-less Sun Lord of the Neverborn was gone. The Darad glanced toward Eldurion.
The aged Fian drew his hood about his head once more.
“We will rest here this night, Stone Lord,” came the voice of oiled iron. “Come dawn, we descend into the moors of Coldmire.” Eldurion, bare blade at rest upon his shoulder, turned back into the black of Ravenwood. “My pace there will be more to your liking, I assure you.”
And then he also was gone.
Alone in the night, Rundul grumbled, spat into the blackness above the bogs and reminded himself of the stealth and heightened senses of the fair and fell folk that were the Fiannar.
Dawn came dull and dismal upon the wastes of Coldmire, the new sun’s light veiled and made vague by the ever-hanging haze that haunted the heavens over the grey northern marshes. The escarpment that marked the march of Ravenwood fell away at a hard angle, severe though not sheer, some few hundred feet into the dank and dreary dark of the moors. The descent was treacherous, the rockface of the ridge made slick with moist moss and strange viscous condensation. But each member of the company was footsure and secure for his own inherent ability – the Fian for his intimacy with the wild and for his familiarity with the way; the heavily encumbered Darad for his oneness with rock and stone; the Sun Lord for the astonishing agility innate to all Athair.
The party paused upon a rocky landing at the foot of the fall, tendrils of marshmist twisting and twining about their legs. They gazed in a hush akin to dread across the flats of the fen. The place was wet and windless, wracked by a tundral cold that seemed a physical being, invisible teeth and talons tearing at the wasted flesh of the earth. The air was at once both thick and thin, and bore the rancid reek of decay, of dead things, of countless corpses rotting in the chill. And ever there arose from Coldmire a wet squishing sound, like that of monstrous thing moving through mud and muck, or of great white carrion worms feasting on the festering carcass of a fallen giant.
“Maiden Earth has forsaken this place,” muttered Rundul of Axar as he felt the damp creep into his beard. His breath came white into the grey air. “This foul land, this...Coldmire...is not...alive.”
“Nor is it dead,” appended Yllufarr. His eyes appeared impossibly pale in the grey unlight of the fetid dawn. “But there is death here. Much death.”
Eldurion sighed as he slid his sword from his belt.
“All things that come of womb and of egg and of seed die, Prince Yllufarr.”
“As do some that do not, Eldurion of the Deathward,” responded the Sun Lord quietly, sadly. He peered far into the mists of the mire and of memory to a place and time where many had done that had not. And he repeated, more quietly, more sadly, “As do some that do not.”
The stern grey Fian nodded curtly.
“Understood.”
A moment given to the Sun Lord in his sor
row, then:
“We must move as swiftly as the bog allows, no slower and no faster,” instructed Eldurion. “None now live that know this place better than do I, but as you can hear in the gurgling of the moors, Coldmire is ever changing, ever altering, shifting, morphing. And that which may have been solid ground at dusk may be quickmud at dawn. Remain close, and do not stray from my course, or surely the mires will have you.” His face was but a shadow within his cowl. “And mind that you refrain from the employ of any power that may alert the spies of Suru-luk to our presence here, lest this little venture be for naught and in vain.”
And with no further word the former Marshal of the Grey Watch of the Fiannar strode away into the mists of the marsh.
Yllufarr’s cool achromous eyes moved from the dismal wastes of wetland and memory to the solid heavy hulk of the Darad beside him.
“I believe that dissertation was directed toward you rather than me, my friend,” suggested the Sun Lord with a small smile, though one yet shaded with grief. “But fear not, good Rundul, I will not permit the swamp to swallow you.”
“Urth ru Glir,” growled the Captain of the Wandering Guard irritably as he hefted his war-axe. “First forest, then fen. What must a Darad do for some deep dark delvings of subterranean stone?”
“In time,” assured Yllufarr softly.
Rundul of the Wandering Guard was still muttering and mumbling as he moved away in the wake of Eldurion.
The Athain Prince’s smile immediately faltered and vanished and an ancient anguish clouded his comely countenance.
Much death, reflected the bereaved Sun Lord in muted melancholy. So much death. And so very undeserved.
A moment later, watchful and wary, Yllufarr melted into the misted mire at the Darad’s back, a dark guardian gliding into the grey dreariness of dying dawn.
And eyes were on him as he went.
Formed over long slow centuries of the paludification of dead Eldagreen and of the terrestrialization of the eastern reaches of the Ruil, Coldmire was a wetland waste of spongy peat deposits, stagnant waters and oozing muds suffocating under a covering carpet of colourless sphagnum moss. The vegetation there was of the harsh and hardy kind – cotton grasses, tamarack, sturdy sedges, carnivorous pitcher plants. But nothing that grew there was green. And nothing there blossomed bright and beautiful. All was grotesque. Stunted. Warped. And all was cloaked in unbroken gloom, clad in a death shroud of dull and mottled grey.
