by A. Evermore
‘Great Goddess help her,’ Yisufalni cried, as the woman jumped from the cliff. But the image faded anyway, leaving only a still silver surface.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Unchartered Lands
Far away to the west of the Isles of Kammy, further than any of those upon Maioria had sailed and returned to tell of what they found, lay a vast expanse of land the size of Frayon but half as wide and stretched almost as far south as the Kingdom of Fire and as far north as the Kingdom of Ice. None from the Known World, as it was called upon all their maps, had ever made it so far west and so it was called simply The Unchartered Lands. Most doubted such lands existed at all and instead believed there was only an endless ocean, which they called the Ocean Kingdom, stretching on forever until one came almost full circle to the eastern lands of Intolana or Maphrax.
Here upon the northern half of The Unchartered Lands Asaph dreamt of her again, the pale, dark-haired girl with eyes the colour of the sea. The same girl that had plagued his dreams since he could remember, but it was a welcome plague and his soul yearned for her. She was always visible at first as a soft blue light captivating him in the darkness of his dream. As he neared, her form took shape and she turned to him, her face pale and flawless like Maioria’s white moon, Doon. He longed to touch her long hair and hold her close. She was as slender and wraith-like as the Shadowy World she inhabited, nothing more than a ghost in a ghostly realm.
Asaph stared into the blue-green depths of her eyes but she looked right through him as if he did not exist. She could never see him. Then a bloody battle began to unfold around them. People of all the races of Maioria, some in shining armour wielding maces or long swords, some atop screaming bucking horses, others poorly armoured and armed with blunted blades, all fought a desperate battle against an unrelenting tide of Maphraxies.
The thick black armour of the Immortals shone in the dull light like the backs of thousands of beetles. Screams of pain and shouts of rage filled the air alongside the din of clashing grinding metal. Fear and fury mingled together like lovers in a final embrace. The battle waned and all about were the faces of the dead and dying, friend and foe alike, their fallen bodies spread out for miles under a weak red sun that seemed as if it, too, were dying.
Far away in the distance his eyes rested upon a place he had never seen, the triple peaked mountains of Maphrax clawing up into a red smoking sky. He fell back with a yell, his heart pounded in his chest at the sight of the Immortal Lord’s domain. But in a blink Maphrax and the battle were gone and there was nothing but light surrounding her, the only light in the pallid ghostly world she inhabited.
‘Why do you not leave this place?’ he asked, his voice hollow in the emptiness. ‘There is nothing here, only desolation. Come with me, leave this place before you become like the shadows.’ But she did not hear him.
Asaph reached out to touch her but then she turned and fled. ‘Wait!’ he cried. But then he felt it and knew why she fled. He turned about but there was nothing to see, only he could still feel it. It came from the depths of the ocean behind him. It was corrupt and dirty, surrounding him like a rancid bog; madness like a thousand howling voices clawed at his mind and he feared it as one fears a rabid dog.
He stepped towards that wild ocean of crashing waves and glimpsed a massive white beast disappearing beneath the froth. His eyes travelled beyond it and far away to where a black cloud massed on the horizon. In that black cloud formed a masked, helmeted, face and two great burning red eyes. His soul shrivelled under their gaze. The abomination in the sky was worse than the white monster, worse than any Demon spewed forth from The Murk. His very being recoiled from it for it spoke not of death but of undoing.
Asaph tore after the dark-haired girl and away from horror in the sky. But by the time he reached her she stood at the cliffs edge and leapt. A scream tore free from his lips and he lunged to grab her. But it was too late and she plummeted away from his out-stretched empty hand, tumbling like a frail white flower in a gale towards her doom.
In the ocean toward which she tumbled a huge white shape bloomed from the depths breaking through the frothing waves to meet her. The white behemoth was the size of a whale but without beauty for it was deformed, covered in cancerous lumps and snaking twisted tentacles. It wailed, the sound of a hundred insane banshees that scoured through the mind spreading madness through all who heard it. Asaph fell to his knees clutching his ears but the screams seemed to come from inside his own head and he could not shut them out. Pitch black eyes caught his and the monster grinned showing a mouth lined with a hundred needle sharp teeth.
He screamed but nothing came out except a ragged voiceless howl.
Asaph jolted awake gasping and covered in sweat, his heart pounded loudly in his chest and the world spun sickeningly. He swung his legs over the bed and held his face in shaking hands as the nightmare slowly released him.
How many times had he had that dream now? But never had the beast revealed itself, always it was just a white shape lurking in the ocean depths. I know that beast, he thought, Coronos spoke of the White Beast many times and who else could be called such other than Keteth? But he did not know who the girl was or why the beast hunted her.
Asaph swallowed painfully and took a deep breath willing his hands to stop shaking, his throat felt like he had been screaming all night. He glanced over at the man on the other bed but Coronos still slept soundly, his screams could only have been silent gasps. Asaph was relieved not to have woken him with another nightmare.
Coronos’s long hair was nearly all white now but whenever Asaph felt bold enough to ask his age Coronos could never remember, saying simply, “Oh something over a hundred”, and no more. Though this was old it was not ancient, for Draxians lived half again as long as other humans, attributing their longevity to the ancient Dragon Blood that ran in their veins. Only the Elves lived longer by half a century or so. Asaph suspected Coronos could add at least twenty to that number, but he kept his thoughts politely to himself.
Despite his age Coronos was still tall and hardy with a healthful coppery complexion, common to most Draxians. Coronos was as a father to him, having loved and raised him as his own son after his parents were murdered. He had taken Asaph, then just a newborn babe, and fled their beloved Drax with only a handful of others.
Only the west was open to them from the invading Maphraxies, west across the treacherous Abha Fey Sea where they narrowly avoided the forsaken Shadowlands and by some blessing of Feygriene, their beloved Sun Goddess, Keteth was nowhere to be found.
Coronos had told him it had been over a month later, near starved and two thirds of their number lost to sickness that they reached the foreign shores of the mysterious and aptly named Unchartered Lands. For no one had ever crossed the Abha Fey Sea from the Known World to the Unchartered Lands and returned alive to tell the tale.
But once there they found gentle sandy shores and a flourishing land filled with tall green trees laden with strange red and yellow fruits, the roots of which were nourished by many clear flowing rivers. There they also met a forgotten people. They called themselves the Kuapoh and were just one of many tribes thriving upon the fertile land.
It was the beginning of a new life for Coronos but the beginning of Asaph’s whole life. Of those twenty Draxians that made it to the Unchartered Land’s shores three more died from long festering wounds of battle and sickness at sea, seven tried to return to Drax six years later but were never seen again. Five left to explore the south and later became part of other tribes.
Only two middle-aged women, including Asaph’s wet nurse lived peacefully amongst the Kuapoh and the young girl with them had been captured by goblin hordes ten years ago and never seen again. Leaving only Asaph and Coronos and the two women with the Kuapoh.
Twenty five years had now passed since that day they had first set foot upon these shores and Asaph knew no other life, having grown up amongst the Kuapoh; working, eating and sleeping as they did. It was a good life,
Coronos told him, for within the tribe there was mostly peace and harmony. A life lived relatively free from disease and sickness and with food abundant in the trees nearly all year round, the Kuapoh had much time for the family, the spirit, and fun.
Coronos had learnt the Kuapoh language quickly, for it was very similar to Frayonesse, the Common Tongue used between all peoples of the Known World, so he had said though Asaph knew no different. It was almost as if the Kuapoh had originally come from Frayon or thereabouts and their language was an older version of the Common Tongue but with new words for plants and animals that did not exist in the Known World. Indeed their legends spoke of their people coming from the Great Water.
Asaph grew up learning almost three languages. When it was just Coronos and himself they spoke only Draxian and when with any others it was always Kuapoh. Coronos taught him Frayonesse easily enough, saying he might need it one day, and Asaph wondered if his father secretly hoped that they would return to the Known World, but Coronos never said anything to confirm it.
Their only plague were marauding goblins, an old enemy but manageable for the Kuapoh lived in houses built in the trees and no goblin dared climb a tree for fear of the tree shaking it from its boughs. Trees did not like goblins.
Their tree-house empire was vast. Asaph glanced down at the thick wooden floor, knowing that the ground was some thirty feet below, but the house would not so much as creak in a storm. Beyond the wooden walls of their bedroom, platforms and ropes spread out for a mile in each direction linking each house and communal area to the other.
The Kuapoh had a profound knowledge of woodwork construction, enough to make even the Elves gawp, so said Coronos. Up here they could also harvest the abundant fruits and nuts from their beloved trees. But it was because of goblins that they were a people ready to fight to defend themselves and all were skilled in the bow and the knife.
From all that Coronos had told him, Asaph knew he was lucky to be alive. However, though he knew no other life than that amongst his generous Kuapoh family, he felt a far different future calling to him. It was a if the land of his birth, Drax, a place of massive snow covered mountains and harsh winter blizzards, called for his return and try as he might he could not ignore its call. He felt a change in the air these past few days like a cold wind heralding the coming winter and it filled him with excitement.
A glint caught his eye. He reached over to pick up his mother’s ring on the table beside his bed; a silver flame upon a silver band. It was well made and of the finest silver, bearing the hallmark of Gold Hand the Dwarf smith, but it was not overly precious, more a thing of sentiment. It had been a gift from his father to his mother long before they were wed. A token of love and nothing more, but that in itself made it invaluable to Asaph, it gave him a link to his long dead parents.
Asaph’s mother had passed it on to him when he was born, so Coronos said, and now he was a man it did not even fit his little finger. He said she had been a much-loved Queen and a mighty Dragon Lord, even unto her last breath.
‘Hmph,’ Asaph almost laughed aloud at his own incompetence, ‘I wish that I could do half of the things I have seen you do in Dragon form,’ he breathed, his mind reaching into the thick reservoir of their shared memories. There he watched a copper-red Dragon fly, diving and arching over the snow-covered landscape turning orange with the setting sun, swift and agile as any sparrow, the joyous freedom of her mastery of the air was palpable.
The shared memory between all Dragon Lords was called The Recollection, Coronos had explained long ago. The Recollection was part of the gift of the Great Binding; it bound all Dragon Lords together through shared memories. Each Dragon Lord could see and feel the memories of all other Dragon Lords, even into the distant past. Some Dragon Lords could even see the memories of Pure Dragons, and Asaph knew that he could, though they were hazy. They had a wilder unpredictable feel to them, more like the memories of powerful beasts than human.
Those were the Pure Dragons of course, though Asaph had never seen one outside of The Recollection. They could not change form and were smaller than Dragon Lords, their magic ancient, feral and wild. They were more numerous further to the north in the Kingdom of Ice where it was too harsh for humans to survive. Though Dragon Lords could command them, should they have need and only under the direst of circumstances, and then again only with consent, Pure Dragons were forever independent and free of the laws of humans.
Asaph found The Recollection both a blessing and a curse, for though he often sought solace in the shared memories it was not always easy to access it at will when he most wanted to, or it came upon him when he least wanted it. Many memories were painful, particularly those concerning the doomed battle of Drax against the Maphraxies.
Asaph’s own memories were the clearest and there was always this feel of a thin membrane between his and another’s memories, so he never got confused. The next clearest were his mother’s, but he rarely looked there for they often led to her final battle and that was too much for him to bear. It took skill and experience to read the memories clearly, and he had neither, and no one to teach him.
There were endless memories from his ancestors besides hers but they were more distant and faded, by time or by blood he could not tell. It was very difficult to distinguish whose memories belonged to whom without being schooled in traversing The Recollection and Coronos had said most Dragon Lords took many years of training to gain such skills.
Coronos often used to ask him if he could access The Recollection, always trying to determine if Asaph was a Dragon Lord like his mother. But Asaph always feigned dumb and evaded such questions, despite having full personal access to the shared memory that existed between his Dragon Lord kin. Asaph had long since mastered the art of hiding the truth of his Dragon being, and for that he was ashamed.
Coronos still tried to reach that truth but after Asaph’s many bouts of boyish anger and feigned hurt at not being a Dragon Lord, Coronos no longer pushed the topic, saying that if Asaph was a Dragon Lord it surely would have showed by now.
Asaph suspected that Coronos knew he was a Dragon Lord but was waiting for him to say it himself. Although now he had left it so long hidden from the man who was a father to him in all but blood that he felt he could not reveal it now. He kept it hidden for no small reason. The reality and shame of it was that he was afraid of his ‘gift’.
A Dragon afraid! He snorted in self-disgust. But he knew of no other shape shifter and the Kuapoh had many myths damning any creature that took more than one form. To them it was dark sorcery, the magic of Demons and wraiths. Even Coronos made sure they were alone and no one was listening when he spoke of Dragon Lords.
They both vividly remembered the time when a boy-man came stumbling into their village at dusk mumbling all sorts of nonsense and struggling bodily against some unseen foe. When anyone came near he would howl in agony as his skin bulged and stretched until the boy was no more and instead stood a two legged devil beast with brown slimy skin, three horns and six black eyes. The beast had howled a terrible unholy sound that struck terror deep into the heart. When they withdrew the young man returned in perfect form and so handsomely beautiful it drew the people towards him again.
It had taken all the shamans and Coronos to break the Incubus Demon’s spell upon the people but the possessed young man was beyond saving. Asaph had watched in horror as they slew him with poisoned arrows from afar. No one dared even touch his lifeless body and instead wood was thrown upon him and a lit torch hurled to burn him where he lay. The very ground he was burnt upon had to be reconsecrated before anyone would go near it. Even to this day people still veered left or right to avoid walking over it. Such was the threat and the fear of the Incubi.
It turned out the boy-man was from another tribe in the south. He had been hunting far into the jungle and did not return for a week. When he did he was not the same, the Demon Incubus had gotten in and his tribe cast him out lest they too suffer the same possession from other Demons, fo
r Incubi never worked alone.
All of that only made Asaph more afraid of himself so he hid the truth of his Dragon form, tried to forget about it, but he knew he could not hide it forever and lately it was becoming harder and harder to stop the Dragon within from awakening.
Asaph had become a Dragon only a few times and it had come completely unbidden when rage consumed him. He could not change at will, had never dared to try to fly and only hoped that one day he would meet another Dragon Lord who could teach him, but until that time came he strove to keep it a secret, wondering if such a time would ever come. He remembered the first time it happened vividly.
Asaph was only a boy of eight when he stumbled, quite by chance, upon the seven goblins, laughing in their ear-grating snarling way as they danced about taunting and spearing an equally snarling bear they had trapped and chained to a rock.
The goblins were as tall as he with dark grey to pale green skin and long gangly arms and legs. Though skinny, those arms and legs were taut and knotted with sinewy muscle and their wiry forms made them incredibly agile. They could scale any rock face and even crawl upside down upon overhangs.
Their heads were flat and faces squashed so it seemed they had a large head compared to their pug face. Wide pointy ears stuck outwards on the sides of their heads and their large yellow eyes that could turn the pupil from a pin prick into all-black orbs ringed in gold. Their eyes were for seeing in the dark cave tunnels where they lived. Hundreds of tiny needle-sharp teeth flashed when they howled at the bear, teeth for biting and tearing flesh.
Their backs were rounded over but they stood mostly upright on squat legs that jumped rather than walked. Each brandished a visible weapon that they shook at the tormented bear, be it spear or bow or knife, and they knew how to use them most cruelly.
