The Legacy of Tirlannon: The Freedom Fighter

by Daniel Gelinske

  The Silver Temple of Rhia’li was long abandoned by the Taergeni as access was forbidden by the Imperial government. In the early morning’s final strike, it was put into service, as its massive meditation chambers beneath were used as a central store of weapons under the late Queen Talryn’s royal edict until opened on the orders of a Son of Meldehan or a crowned Kestelan of Namakiera. A veritable army of elves flooded in from the front gate of the temple and into the main part of the city to seize the gate to the Palace Quarter.

  * * *

  As morning arrived, desolate silence fell over the Chamber of Harvests. Vintaeus, adorned in a blue service uniform whispered in the Governor’s ear.

  “The city is in whose control?” he sharply barked.

  “The whole city, save for the Palace Quarter is under Taergeni control. The Son of Meldehan has revealed himself, and is rallying the serfs to revolt. The serfs have turned the city upside down. We should leave,” his voice stammered in panic.

  “Bring me the angel,” Mogran demanded. “We need the Asat Takran’s help right now.”

  A ghost-like apparition of the stygian angel guardian of Oro’quiel appeared at the table.

  “My master and your Emperor have supplied you with all the resources you need to maintain control,” the angel’s cold, yet gentle voice echoed around them. “Waste another second of my time, and you shall be punished.”

  The image faded.

  “Inzerakh!” Mogran cursed. “Tell your infernal master that if we lose Namakiera now, all his profits will be lost! Tell that silver-eyed monster that—“

  “This is why your slave dealings with Cireth are folly,” Mortuusa observed. “Lord Set is done with you. If it weren’t for my oath of service I would leave you to die with the dogs.”

  In the mezzanine directly over Mogran’s head, Threstan and Damarien waited for the signal, a single arrow with flame striking the Madrocean banner tapestry behind the governor’s seat. Mogran looked up in horror, hearing the sounds of his men falling to assassins’ blades. Nadali spun from behind a defaced statue of an ancient Taergeni king, and fired a flare into the tapestry, setting it ablaze. She swiftly swung behind the statue to ready her sword, a battered cyvnar once wielded by her father in the first war with Madrocea. Other archers came from behind her, killing the guests at Mogran’s table, one by one. At Mogran’s side, the Lord General stood calmly, drawing his blade.

  “The traitor Threis’ daughter, right?” Mogran addressed Nadali.

  Another wave of Ishaellar warriors came from below the city and through the western and eastern halls into the chamber.

  “Your sister,” Mogran started.

  “Aunt!” Vintaeus corrected.

  “Whatever her relation, she was delicious. I enjoyed my time with her before I collected my profits,” Mogran boasted. “Sixty thousand voidans standard, paid in pressed bars of the finest Kirmeg gold.

  “She was mine,” Vintaeus snarled.

  “Everybody pays the taxman,” Mogran sneered. “Even the taxman.”

  “What are you saying?” Nadali demanded.

  “The Lady Chenylde is a pleasure slave to a wealthy kailith merchant from Kith,” Vintaeus growled. “She was mine—you were mine!”

  Daecrynn charged to strike the Governor, and met Mortuusa’s blade. In the distance, loud stores of the fire-powder used in thunderstones exploded, taking out the Madrocean armory in which they were housed.

  “I will take him alone,” Daecrynn said to Nadali.

  She glared at him, and nodded reluctantly. Daecrynn kicked Mortuusa forward, and lunged again, his strike parried masterfully by the Lord General.

  “I have killed hundreds of your kind by my own blade, Taergeni. A pretty sword and rich, dead parents do not a warrior make,” Mortuusa growled. “You will die as Threis did, like a Taergeni dog.”

  “I’ve killed about thirty of you since that first run-in with the bounty hunters up the Nali,” Daecrynn retorted. “That was what, a few weeks ago? I’m catching up to you!”

  “It’s a start,” Mortuusa grunted, blocking Daecrynn’s fierce assault. “But I will finish you.”

  The repeated sound of metal striking metal filled the Chamber of Harvests, as Daecrynn’s blade met with Mortuusa’s in fervor. As the General and Kestiel Prince dueled, Threstan and Damarien subdued and bound the Governor in rope. Nadali held the front line as soldiers throughout the Palace gathered in the hallways to resist the Ishaellar.

  Daecrynn parried strike after strike, and ducked under an elongated, forceful swipe. He stood up to see Mortuusa’s blade flung in the other direction. Swiftly, Daecrynn ran Mortuusa through with Oro’quiel, and kicked his bleeding corpse off his blade. He ran to the others as they interrogated the Governor. Daecrynn glared at the bound up, gagged Governor. “Swear allegiance to me, you Madrocean pig! Can’t speak?”

  He plunged his sword into the chest of the Governor. Daecrynn felt a cold sensation all over his body, to the very core of his being as he beheaded the corpse of Mogran, and presented it in his left hand, wielding Oro’quiel in his right. He marched down the long stairs from the Palace down through the courtyard, holding the Governor’s head high.

  “Open the gates!” Daecrynn ordered.

  Wheels squeaked and grinded as the Palace Quarter gates swung open. The Ishaellar rebels had already raised the Ki’ronyx over the towers. Daecrynn marched intently, presenting the head of Mogran.

  “Get me a pike!” Daecrynn commanded to the Ishaellar gathering around him. Quickly, a pike used against the soldiers of a tower was given to Daecrynn. He mounted Mogran’s head by the base of the skull.

  “Let this day be remembered, the day that we remembered who and what we are!” Daecrynn shouted. “The day we seized hope, instead of letting despair and ruin conquer us all. Rhia’li has blessed this day, the first day of freedom for all the nations of Tarligean from Destriel to Mindule, a freedom that will last by our resolve as one people of many hearts. Raise the Ki’ronyx over the Palace! Our flight and our oppression end now!”

  From around him the Ishaellar, the Taergeni locals who joined the fight, even a few humans shouted cheers from all directions. A flaming arrow was shot through the Imperial banner above the palace, which quickly disintegrated into flame and ash. In minutes, the Ki’ronyx, and the banner of the Kingdom of Namakiera were raised over the highest spire of Namakiera’s citadel.

  Everything seemed to fall into place.

  XIV.

  The Ivory Tower

  “To the masses of human cattle, the once-proud children of Cireth, the Nashanti dynasty ended when the Sphinx became master of the Red Tower. In reality, it was when Lord Anubis had intoxicated Asan’s mind with the sweet Kailith,”

  –Da’at Set

  A cold northerly wind blew, moving the dull gray and black blanket of rain clouds over the sprawling, golden-orange metallic city of Kith. Purified orange copper, called orichalcum covered most of the buildings built on circular canals whose spokes spidered out into the Cirethian landscape in every cardinal and secondary direction. The tall buildings were mammoth, dwarfing people as a mountain dwarfs an ant. Above all of them, a high tower penetrated the stratosphere. The tower was called Ia Kendai; the Red Tower in the ancient Katta tongue, a building where the rulers of Cireth had their homes, their throne rooms, and their councils. Between the buildings and above them, flying machines shaped as V’s, with flexible wings for precise control sailed silently through the sky, as flashing green lights blinked below them. Inside the city, where huge glass domed walkways and even larger transport tunnels bridged the towers, a dull orange glow saturated the air.

  At the top of the tower, a heavily armored V-shaped gwyulni, a flexible winged aircraft landed. Above the ornithopter, red lights flashed as green lights flashed from the ebon surface beneath it. Even considering Kith’s location—many miles inland, one could see the east coast of Tirlannon as far south as Destriel on a rare clear day.

  An ivory walkway extended from
the forward cockpit of the flying machine. A dark windshield split through the center and retracted into the plane. From the cockpit, a man sliding two synthetic skin covers over data-ports used to control his plane climbed up a ladder inside the cockpit, then walked down the causeway.

  Ten soldiers in glossy black body armor quickly formed two lines of five, saluting toward the center as the man from the ornithopter walked down the pathway between the lines.

  “Hail! Hail! Hail Asan Nashanti, Thoth-Emperor of Emperors, King of Kings, God of Gods, Lord Pharaoh and Supreme Commander of All of Earth’s Armies,” they shouted in unison as they saluted him in his passing.

  In moments, he was in a tropical paradise, on a beach.

  “Make it jungle today, I’m feeling ornery,” the Pharaoh said.

  The environment flickered for a moment, fading into a white tile room that surrounded the Pharaoh. Beside him was a nondescript, hairless albino human with green jewels for eyes.

  “Incoming report from Channel 203, oh Mighty Thoth,” the figure droned in monotone.

  “Put it on,” he grumbled, nostrils flaring in irritation.

  “Acknowledged,” the drone replied.

  The white room turned into a bird’s eye view of burning towers in Namakiera’s Palace Quarter.

  A woman’s voice echoed, “In Namakiera, the Madrocean Empire is in retreat, as a Taergeni insurrection has toppled the provincial government of Ayus Mogran.”

  The room flickered, and the illusory landscape turned into a bird’s eye view of a dusty city of stucco and adobe towers. “In Greater Lycopea the famines continue, with this year’s death toll in the city of Lyci now exceeding the number of starvation deaths recorded in the census of 4204.

  “They should invent condensers then,” Asan quipped. “Let them starve for their lack of innovation!”

  The room turned to white again, After a moment, flat-plane images of a rainy city with marble steps and towers surrounded him.

  “Uprisings in Astus have lead to the removal of Lord Rindar of Athasia, and a new regime is in place.”

  A darker land with lavender skies and ruddy, rocky earth appeared around him. Below him, a cluster of seven silvery domes stood in front of a pyramid backdrop. “Far-Kith is nearing completion. Its support habitat was pressurized six hours ago.”

  The illusion faded. A gracefully curved golden haired woman entered the chamber, wearing a silk gown, gazing into the Pharaoh’s eyes, chewing on a slim stick of bark.

  “We should have wiped the Taergeni out long ago. Their genes are unclean; they’re useless to us! Lord Set should unleash a virus on that festering slime hole and cleanse it of their filth!”

  “Oooh, get mad at me,” the woman sang to the Thoth.

  “Dearest Meilana,” Asan said as he stroked her face. “I need to get my mind off of affairs so I can deal with them from a more… rational mind,” he trailed off. He pulled an eyedropper full of an amber fluid from his pocket, and carefully dripped two drops onto his tongue. He gave the eyedropper to the woman. “Don’t waste your time with the bark; the extract will unravel your tensions faster.”

  “Delicious,” she purred.

  “Remind me to chastise that fool Emperor of Madrocea for losing Namakiera,” he remarked as the cold rage in his eyes dissolved.

  * * *

  Da’at Set was a powerful servant, who ruled the shadows of Cireth and held its darkest secrets. Given the title of “Set” or caretaker, he was a minister of assassins, a chancellor of intelligence, and the hidden hand of the most powerful Empire on Earth, the Grand Imperium of Cireth. He walked alone in his black hooded robe over a crystalline walkway above a deep artificial ravine created by the separation of two towers of orichalcum. Above and below, V-shaped gwyulni swooped by at regularly erratic intervals. At the bottom of the artificial channel was a canal.

  ‘This is the beginning of an age that will forever be remembered as the age humanity truly began to evolve,’ echoed in the mind of the pallid, bald man with eye sockets of silvery metal as he walked beneath an arch of orichalcum into a building made of the same, with panoramic crystal-glass windows.

  A human in a gold and violet robe approached, winded from a hurried rush to meet his master. “I am here to serve, Lord Set. What do you request of me?”

  “What news from the angel, my servant?”

  “The heir to the throne of Tarligean has been sighted and confirmed,” he said. “His people overturned the city of Namakiera in a day.”

  Da’at Set turned, and strode swiftly down the glowing ivory-white hallway into the core of the building.

  “Perfect!” he shouted in a voice of frigid jubilation.

  XV.

  The Imperial Prince

  Well into the month of Kayana, the chill of the coming winter had grown in the air. The leaves were brown and barren. As they fell, the cold gusts of autumn wind beckoned them. The harvest was over, and the sound of splitting logs filled the air in Namakiera, as people gathered their piles of firewood for the months ahead. Armies trained in the streets, marching in formation as Taergeni children played in the streets of all sections of the town. From the farthest reaches of Tarligean, many came to pay homage to the High Prince and enlist in the growing legions of the Ishaellar.

  The Throne Room of Namakiera had been temporarily modified to function as a war room. Five Generals had been chosen from among the resistance. Kalrys Kretali was nominated Lord General of Andriel, Anthian Tartali the General of Tanathiel, Alrain Folare the General of Namakiera, and Nadali Murana the General of Andule. Cellan was chosen for General of Tuitari, but had yet to arrive in Namakiera to accept the position. In addition, a group of sixteen, chosen elves of renown who had fought with the Ishaellar gathered around a table and took seats.

  Daecrynn, adorned in chainmail and sweating from a heated training session approached the table. Two servants removed his silver-spire helm, and replaced it with a golden crown. He adjusted the Tuvitor brooch that kept his crimson cape in place.

  “Friends, brothers, sisters. Welcome to the first meeting of the Council of the High Kingdom under the Kestiel Daecrynn Tuvitor. This is but an interim council, which will be replaced with a more traditional Kia’tendé after our Kestiel’s coronation. Our purpose today will be to elect the traditional Five Generals of the High Kingdom, who will then appoint twelve knights of their own,” said the archivist in attendance to record the minutes of the meeting in Atriune script.

  The secretary sat, and began tow rite upon a stack of scrolls.

  “My nominations as Kestiel are as such, and I will explain my reasons for each upon announcement,” Daecrynn stated. “For General of Tuitari, I appoint Cellan Kaewaya, who is unfortunately not present to accept.”

  The door swung open.

  “I cannot accept, for I am heir to the crown of Tuitari,” Cellan announced. “My place is to serve under my father in Ciartha Tuitari.”

  To his side was another elf, wearing a traditional Tuitari war-chieftain’s garb, with a feather headdress, and loose leather armor covered with tribal patterns painted and etched into the leather.

  “So I suggest my uncle Tiardan to fill this role,” Cellan requested.

  “The Tiardan Kaewaya? It would be an honor,” Daecrynn said. “I was under the impression that you were retired.”

  “These are extraordinary times milord,” Tiardan said.

  “Impressive,” Daecrynn said lowly, then spoke addressing the Council, “Never has a battle under Tiardan’s direction been lost. I nominate Tiardan Kaewaya for General of Tuitari.”

  “This will be a bloody war; I will not soften my words. There will be terrible losses for both sides, and there is much to consider in regards to our neighbor on the other side of the Straits of Destriel,” Tiardan explained.

  “We haven’t been in direct conflict with the Cirethians since the Siege of Kith,” Alrain stated.

  “Andriel fell to a Cirethian machination of war just before Cassadina,” Tiardan said lo
wly. “Not always are soldiers required to make a beachhead.”

  “Many are still baffled by the fall of Andriel,” Nadali said in pause. “Without any magical direction, the animals turned against us. Foreign animals traveled from far away places to run us out of our city; to devour us alive. Chenylde was there on that day, and barely escaped.”

  “I remember too,” Daecrynn said lowly.

  “They were under Cirethian control. The General of Tanathiel can verify this,” Tiardan affirmed.

  “If General Tiardan feels it is for us to know, then I must speak,” an elf with red hair and dark blue eyes said. “The attack on Andriel and the incident at Cassadina were both the result of Cirethian design. There were no dragons in the badlands that day, and every dragon in the Dragonlands known to us has been spoken too except for Kwailhir, who refuses to speak to non-dragons. Wyznog the White has vouched for his innocence.”