Whispers of War: The War for the North: Book One

by Sean Rodden

  “On purpose?”

  The Halflord angled his face toward the sun. Inhaled deeply.

  “Such are the orders given me. You may inform this Mighty One that Kor ben Dor is coming to Doomfall.”

  “I will.” Tulnarron shook his head slowly, almost sadly. “And… well…good luck with that.”

  Kor ben Dor dismissed – or simply missed – the mordacity in the Master’s words.

  “I am grateful for your good wishes, Tulnarron of Arrenhoth.” He inclined his handsome head. “I have enjoyed our conversation. We will leave you now.”

  The Master nodded, paused, considered, then fisted his breast in rare raw respect for an esteemed enemy.

  The Halflord raised his hand, hesitated, the giant fist hovering before his breastplate for four, five palpable pulses of blood in the veins at his thick wrists, then tentatively tapped the blackened steel over his heart. Once, twice. He then turned silently away.

  “Kor ben Dor.”

  The Prince of the Bloodspawn stopped, looked over his shoulder, waited.

  “Why did you come? Certainly not to…converse.”

  Kor ben Dor closed his eyes. “You would not understand, Tulnarron of Arrenhoth. Only a Bloodspawn could comprehend.”

  “Try me, Halflord.”

  The Prince lowered his head, his chin nearly touching his chest.

  “I came because the pain is gone,” he said softly, so very softly. “And because I remember. I remember everything.”

  19

  THE UNFORGIVEN

  “Often it is easier for one to forgive others their sins

  than it is for one to forgive oneself one’s own.”

  Rafayel, Book of Laments, Chapter XX11, Verse 24

  The beasts burst from the black heart of the night, leaping past the ring of rock that warded the rise of Carricevan. Dozens came – great feral creatures crashing through the sleet, hungering for flesh, thirsting for blood. Rundul of the Daradur and Eldurion of the Fiannar met them before the stones of Doras Serrin with mettle and metal. And the swamp-things of Coldmire began to die.

  Rundul’s war-axe whirled like a wild thing, slicing through sleet and mist and foul flesh in a fury of blood and iron. And the ever-bare blade of Eldurion danced in the darkness, sweeping aside fog and foe as effortlessly as a stormwind would do withered leaves. Death was come again to Doras Serrin that night, a tempest of doom riding the wings of wrath, wielding sickles of Daradun and Fiannian steel.

  The bog-beasts were large and loathsome, partly lupine, partly crocodilian, entirely abominable. They swarmed the sleet-slicked mosses of Carricevan, surging against Rundul and Eldurion in a roiling sea of fur, fang, scale and claw. But Darad and Fian stood as did the very stones of Doras Serrin, hard and grey. Stalwart, steadfast. Immovable. And the swamp-things died in droves upon their steel.

  There were dozens of them.

  And then there were none.

  “What on Mother Earth were these things?” growled Rundul in the hushed aftermath of battle as he brushed sleet from his beard and brackish blood from the blades of his war-axe.

  Eldurion slipped his sword from the belly of a bog-beast. The Fian’s visage was past grim, past grey, and his eyes were slits of silver in the sleets of night.

  “I know not, Stone Lord,” Eldurion replied lowly as he crouched to study the carcass of the creature. His nose wrinkled for the rancid reek of the thing. “Long have I traveled and tread the bogs of Coldmire, but I have neither seen nor sensed these things before, nor even heard rumour of them.”

  The beast was broad and bulky, easily seven feet from elongated snout to humped hind, with a perilously plated tail of like length. The creature’s jaws were ferociously fanged, its body alternately armoured in scale and matted with fur. The legs were stout but long, swift and strong, terminating in wickedly curved claws. The thing seemed an inexplicable anomaly of evolution, the product of mutation run amok, at once a horrible progenitor of the wolf and a hideous antecedent of the alligator.

  “I cannot determine with any certainty whether they are reptile or mammal,” Eldurion mused in the mist. “They appear to be...both.”

  “They are neither,” came a third voice into the night on Carricevan.

  Eldurion rose. Rundul turned.

  Yllufarr of the Neverborn stood amidst the slime and slaughter of the swamp-things, his form a shadow in the ice-rain of the stormbound bog, a long-bladed Athain dagger glimmering in each deft and deadly hand. A subtle shift of his presence, and the pair of pale blades vanished into invisible sheaths within his vestment. The Prince’s eerily luminous eyes glowed like pearls under moonlight, moving from carcass to carcass, then meeting the respective grey and black gazes of his companions.

  Rundul spat into the squall.

  “Is it the curse of the Athair that they must ever come late to the battle, or come not at all?”

  Yllufarr disregarded the gruff banter of his Daradun friend.

  “They are neither mammalian nor reptilian,” he repeated. Something deep and dark swam in the pale pools of his eyes. “Nor are they of this Second World, but of the First. And I have seen their like before. They are the ulviathoi, the spawn of Ulviathon, and have not been seen on this Earth since the Angar ban Gan Gebbernindh. Their presence here now is...unsettling.”

  Rundul leaned on the haft of his war-axe, his midnight gaze contemplating the Athain Sun Lord intently.

  “Ulviathon was destroyed at Gan Gebbernin,” Eldurion stated succinctly, “as were his spawn. These cannot be ulviathoi.”

  “They are ulviathoi,” reiterated Yllufarr softly yet emphatically, “though lesser in size and power than those of olde, as these are more mortal animal than deathless demon-spawn.” Darkness swirled beneath the pale sheen of his eyes like the coils of a sea serpent undulating under ice. “I have reason to remember them.”

  Eldurion inclined his head. Slivers of sleet slid from his hood. He well knew what had occurred at the Battle of Gan Gebbernin. He knew what had been won there – and what had been lost.

  “What aren’t you telling us, Sun Lord?” Rundul rumbled. “You’re hiding something – what is it?”

  Yllufarr met the Darad’s midnight gaze evenly. He decided to withhold that which he knew from his comrades no longer. Their suspicions aroused, such suppression served no good purpose, but could only seed division, derision. The Fian was wise beyond his mere three hundred years. And the Darad could not be deceived.

  The night swelled. The storm raged. The sleet became hail and hurtled down like hammers from an angry heaven.

  And the Prince of the Neverborn said simply –

  “We are not alone.”

  The three companions gathered within the stone walls of Doras Serrin, sheltering from the night and the wet and the frozen rains of Coldmire. Eldurion stood tall and straight, as grey as a ghost, the Blade of Defurien bound at his back, his own blood-sullied sword yet gripped in one hand. Rundul of Axar, Captain of the Wandering Guard, positioned himself by the aperture of the dolmen’s leaning stones that served as sole entry and egress. Vapours rose into the chill from the blades of the Darad’s great war-axe like white wisps of the souls it had slain. Yllufarr of the Neverborn stood at the centre of the structure, a wraith of the Otherworld wrapped in midnight. And the hails rapped unrelentingly upon the capstone of Doras Serrin, the skeletal knuckles of unnumbered wayward wights, knocking, knocking, wanting in.

  “I have sensed something vast and vile in the bog,” whispered the Prince of the Folk of Gavrayel. “A great and powerful evil.”

  Eldurion’s eyes narrowed to silvery slits.

  “When did you sense this thing?”

  “I felt it as we entered,” replied Yllufarr softly. The serpent swam the pearly pools of his eyes. “And I have felt it since.”

  Rundul’s face darkened.

  “And you’re only telling us now?”

  The Sun Lord looked to the Captain of the Wandering Guard.

  “I did not wish to d
istract you, Stone Lord. The Athair sense much that others do not. There are many powers, both good and ill, of which the Athair may be fully or partially aware, but which take little or no interest in the affairs of this world. Were I to speak to you of all that I sense, friend Rundul, you would surely tire of my voice.”

  Rundul bit down on the obvious retort that teased the tip of his tongue.

  “What is this great evil of which you speak?” asked Eldurion. “And need we take cautions against it?”

  “I can be certain of neither, friend Eldurion. I know only that it is out there, somewhere, and that it slumbers now, and has done so for a long time.”

  “It sleeps?”

  “Soundly.”

  Rundul peered into the pale eyes of the Prince, and saw no untruth there, no falsehood, neither misdirection nor deception – only a serpentine thing moving beneath their pale sheen. And a rolling rock of warning rumbled in the Darad’s breast.

  “There’s more, isn’t there, Sun Lord?

  “I have at times felt eyes upon me in the mist,” revealed Yllufarr, “though in those eyes I perceived neither ill nor malice, but only some little curiosity – and something else.”

  Eldurion raised a greyed and grizzled brow.

  “Sorrow, friend Eldurion. Sorrow was in those eyes in the gloom. The black sorrow of shame.”

  The Fian frowned. And he recalled the words that Tulnarron, the brash young Master of the House of Eccuron, had spoken to him in the eaves of Ravenwood.

  Beware the Moor Walkers, Eldurion.

  A small dark silence, but for the ghouls of Coldmire knocking, knocking, knocking upon the capstone of Doras Serrin.

  “One thing more, friends Eldurion and Rundul.”

  The Darad glowered.

  The Eldest of the Fiannar remained motionless for a moment, his countenance cast in clays pondering and pensive, and then he nodded for the Prince to proceed.

  Yllufarr’s pale gaze glowed in the dark of Doras Serrin. The serpent swam like the swirling script of the oghams on the walls.

  “I have heard the Song of the Shaddathair,” said the Sun Lord. He paused as one listening to a whisper on the wind. “I hear it sung even now.”

  Knocking, knocking, wanting in.

  “I hear nothing,” muttered Rundul, peering warily into the night, his eyes and ears searching the darkness about Carricevan.

  Eldurion cocked his head to one side, his leathery face a mask of concentration. He then looked up and shook his head slowly.

  “I too hear nothing, Prince Yllufarr. And unlike the Darad I am well-attuned to Coldmire. Perhaps the song you hear is for the ears of the Undying alone.”

  “Or perhaps the Ath has at long last gone entirely mad.”

  The Prince smiled blandly, beautifully, but dignified the Darad’s riposte with no retort.

  “I have not heard of these Shaddathair,” said Eldurion. Doubt darkened his tone. “And none know Coldmire better than do I.”

  “You know of the Shaddathair more than you suppose, and less than you should, friend Eldurion. For in your travels here you have often seen and sensed them, though your people name them the Moor Walkers.”

  “Ah. As I suspected. Harmless shades, then. The Moor Walkers are mere shadows. More or less.”

  “Less. And more. They were not always the Shaddathair, friend Eldurion.”

  “Is that significant?”

  “Is the past not always so?”

  The Eldest of the Fiannar frowned. “You say they are aware of our presence here.”

  The serpent swam the colourless seas of Yllufarr’s eyes.

  “Most certainly. They were once Eldagreen. They are now Coldmire.”

  “And they have been…watching us.”

  The Sun Lord nodded. The serpent swirled.

  Rundul’s hand tightened involuntarily about the haft of his axe.

  “Do the Moor Walkers mean us harm, Yllufarr?” Eldurion asked evenly. “Will they seek to thwart us?”

  The dark Prince of the Neverborn shrugged slightly.

  “I do not know. The Shaddathair have ever showed little concern for the travails of this World. Nor for those of any other.”

  The Darad grumbled gutturally and kept his vigil on the night, taking comfort in the feel of the steel upon his palm.

  “Tell me more of the Moor Walkers,” said the grim Fian. “I would know their nature, and decide the peril they may or may not pose.”

  The Prince of the Folk of Gavrayel hesitated for an ancient hurt in his heart, then inclined his hooded head.

  “It is fitting that the tale of Sammayal and his Unforgiven should be told here in this place, this Portal to the Stars – for it was here, in this very place, that the Unforgiven first set foot on Second Earth.”

  Rundul turned, glancing about the darkness of Doras Serrin warily.

  Eldurion waited in silence.

  And the serpent sank into the deepest depths of the Sun Lord’s glimmering eyes.

  “My friends, I would sing you the Song of the Shaddathair.”

  And Yllufarr, Prince of the Folk of Gavrayel of the Golden Voice, spread wide his arms, and the movement seemed to stir the music and the Light within him. For he shone as a star, ever bright, eternal, soft and white and beautiful. And about him there arose the tender tinkling of bells under silver moonlight, the haunting fugue of a harp plucked at the peak of a misty mountain, the rhythmic resonance of a lyre strummed upon a calm sea. And he summoned and set free the song within him, a song of tragic and terrible beauty, of magnificent melancholy and majesty, of the sublime and ceaseless sorrow of Sammayal and the Shaddathair.

  Yllufarr sang of the treachery of Asrayal the Accursed, that dark and dreadful Ath who wrought war and ruin upon the paradise of First Earth, and of the misfounded loyalty of his lordly lieutenants, Ingallin and Sammayal. He sang of battle and bloodshed, of the might of Sammayal, tall and terrible, of the strength of his arm and the swiftness of his sword, of the wrath and wreckage he bore with him in battle against his brethren. Sang of the final fall of Asrayal to the fury of Defurien and the flaming brand of Grimroth, of the trial of the Folk of Asrayal at the Stone of Scullain, of the pardon granted them by the Kings Micyll and Gavrayel and by the gallant Lord Defurien. Of the rift in the ranks of the Folk of Asrayal, of those that followed Ingallin and accepted the absolution offered them, and of the shame and sorrow of Sammayal and his faction, and their refusal of all forgiveness.

  Yllufarr sang of the coming of folk of Sammayal to Second Earth, of their emergence from the Portal to the Stars, of their making a home in elegant Eldagreen, of their abiding there in peace with the primal Tuathroth. But he sang also of their incredible sorrow, of their naming themselves the Unforgiven, for though it was true that they had been shrived of their sins by those that ruled the First Earth, they could not remit themselves their own wrongs, and ever did the galleries of ancient Eldagreen weep to their sorrowful song.

  Yllufarr sang of the coming of Gavrayel and his golden folk to the shores of Second Earth, of the welcome given them by Sammayal, of the sureties sought by the King and his Queen Aeline. He sang of Sammayal and the Unforgiven vowing against all violence, of the setting down of their swords and the shedding of their armour. Sang of Gavrayel and his fair folk taking their leave of Sammayal and going far into the north, of the founding of the hidden realm of Gith Glennin. Of their removal of themselves from the woes and worries of Men as that mortal people emerged from the bindings of their primitive past.

  And then he sang of the Unforgiven’s withdrawal from the world of the living into the deepest depths of Eldagreen, of their walking over-often in the halfworld of Eilla Evvanin, of their becoming the shadowy shee of Rothic legend.

  The stone walls of Doras Serrin shimmered with the light of the Sun Lord, and the music of his voice was as a wistful wind weaving through the leaves of living Eldagreen in her ancient glory. Eldurion harkened, aswoon with the love for song that all Deathward possessed, and the lids of
his eyes fluttered and fell closed, and his sword slipped from his grasp. But Rundul listened, unmoving and unmoved, a rock within rock, his axe fast and firm in his fist, and ever did he retain his vigil on the night.

  Yllufarr sang of the rise of the Wraithren, and of war ravaging the Second Earth, of the resolute resistance of the Roths, and of Sammayal’s steadfast refusal to intervene. He sang of the arrival of the Fiannar, that fierce and fell folk, and of their gathering unto them the beleaguered tribes of Man, and of their riding into the wars of the new world under banners bold and brave. Sang of Vallian and of Eccuron and of Hiridion, of glorious triumph and victory in the vale of Caen-al-Morra, and of the ensuing years of peace and prosperity. Of Sammayal knowing little of these things and caring even less.

  Yllufarr sang of the return of the Wraithren and war, of the Angar ban Maelmorradh, the apocalyptic Battle of the Barrens. He sang of the grievous defeat the Fiannar and the Men that stood with them suffered there, of the Lord Vallian’s long retreat to the seeming sanctuary of Eldagreen. Sang of the cool reception by Sammayal of those wretched refugees of war, of dour Vallian’s outright dismissal of him. Of the subsequent invasion of glorious Eldagreen by the swarming armies of Shadow.

  Yllufarr sang of the great and terrible battle fought at Gan Innivir, the vale the Athair named the Valley of Dreams, but which would ever afterward be known as Gan Gebbernin, the Valley of the Dead. He sang of the gallant last stand of the Deathward and their allies. Sang of the courage and fortitude they displayed in defiance of death, doom and destruction. Of Sammayal’s refusal to receive the emissary of the Fiannar who came to him begging aid of the Unforgiven.

  And then he sang of the sudden coming of the shining Sul Athaifain of Gavrayel to the devastated Valley of Dreams, of the valour of the Sun Lords Evangael and Thrannien and Yllufarr at the Angar ban Gan Gebbernindh. He sang of the failing of hope and fortune as Zan-zurak, Death King of the Wraithren, unleashed his hidden hordes of heinous things upon the Sun Lords and their shining Knights. Sang of Evangael bidding Yllufarr seek Sammayal to sue for assistance, for Yllufarr and mighty Sammayal had of a time been fast in friendship. Of Yllufarr finding Sammayal weeping in the wood.