Lost Lore: A Fantasy Anthology

by Ben Galley

  Nor was weather alone to be blamed for the devastation. Meteors bombarded the eastern Mediterranean, Arabia and northern Africa. Earthquakes rocked much of the world. Mountains crumbled. Valleys filled with mud. Volcanoes spewed rock, lava, and ash. Pyroclastic flows decimated city, village, forest and jungle alike. Fire literally fell from the sky. So did trees, frogs, fish, livestock, stones, and human bodies too.

  In his silent cave, Fintán only knew grief.

  On the morning of the forty-first day since the Deluge began, Fintán sat alone, nibbling ocean trout supplied by Myrddin Wyllt. From below came a splash and a jubilant cry.

  “Fintán, my lad!”

  Fintán crawled to the edge. Far down the shaft was Myrddin, half out of the water, clinging to the rock with one hand, waving his lit gambanteinn in the other.

  “Come see, Fintán! You must come see!”

  Fintán stood with a groan, rolled his shoulders, stretched, and dove. The splash dislodged Myrddin Wyllt from the wall and left him spluttering.

  Calm seas, a light breeze, and rainbows. More rainbows than should be possible, great streamers of victory arcing through the sky. And there was life. Petrels, Skuas and Great Shearwaters screeched, soared and spun in exuberance. Tuxedo-clad puffins danced their clumsy dance on the rocks, bobbing orange-painted beaks at silver fishes that sprung from the sea. Humpback whales spouted and soared out of the water to splash playfully on their backs while porpoises performed triumphant aquatic ballets.

  Myrddin’s heart swelled as he and Fintán watched from where they sat on a jutting rock. What would come to be known as the Deluge was done. It hadn’t meant the end of the world. At least not for all things. Fintán couldn’t deny the magnificence, the beauty, the celebration of life, but it brought him no delight.

  In the days to come, Fintán searched the island one more time. He and the habilis and Druids found bodies far inland, wedged under stones and tangled in trees. They gathered them gently and gave them a proper burial. None were Cessair.

  Fintán widened his search, moving outward in an expanding spiral. In a matter of days he’d circumnavigated the globe, as only Fintán could, following much the same path he’d taken almost a year ago, when he’d warned as many as he could of the coming disaster.

  He visited all the continents in both hemispheres, north and south, and thousands of islands large and small. Everywhere he saw bodies floating, bloating, bobbing, bursting. Bird, fish, reptile, mammal, and man, all accompanied by the smell of sodden ripening death. Immense regions that once flourished were now devoid of life. Fintán’s hope of finding Cessair faded, but he continued, for each time he thought to turn back he’d find more humans in need. The earth had not been completely scourged, as many had feared would happen. Fintán found survivors trapped on mountaintops or high in trees, others floating on branches, hollowed logs and tattered rafts, even tree bark, gourds and in great wooden bowls. He aided all he came across, guiding or carrying them to safety.

  He found other Firstborn as well, kin to him and Myrddin Wyllt. Soon after his arrival to what is today referred to as the New World, though it is as old as any, he came across The Great Turtle, swimming with dozens of bedraggled Lenape natives clinging to rocks and twisted roots embedded in his carapace. This was in the area of what are now called the Great Lakes—which was more like one great lake for a time after the Flood. Fintán pointed him in the direction of the nearest dry land, then continued on his quest.

  In what is now the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America he greeted the much-loved Firstborn daughter, Mokosh. She’d saved the remnants of several tribes during the Flood, and was plucking more from the water onto reed rafts of her own making, then towing them to land. They called her Beaver (this was well before she migrated to the Slavic regions of Eurasia, where they worshipped her as Moist Mother Earth).

  In the Great Plains he glimpsed the enigmatic and elusive Buffalo Woman, but when he approached she performed a forward roll and slipped away. Then he heard a shrill cry, calling his old Lakota nickname, “Wanblee Galeshka!”

  He spied a young girl, caught in a cascade of rapids. He snatched her up and took her to a tall tree, gave her food, and pledged to send help—which he found soon enough in the form of one of the greatest benefactors of humankind in North America, the extraordinary Spider-Wife, known to some by her Truename, Kokyanwuhti, but to most as simply The Spider Woman. Nothing like her rapacious brother-mate, Maskim Xul—whom she’d escaped millennia before—and much larger than he, she’d once again saved thousands with her wisdom and web, just as she’d done for the Clovis people over ten thousand years earlier when a comet incinerated the continent in a blazing inferno that spawned many a moon of roaring wildfires and windstorms of flame, raising smoke and ash that cast out the sun. Fintán retrieved the Lakota girl, delivered her into the affectionate claws of the Spider-Wife, and sped on his way.

  In the southwest of the same continent he found Kokopelli helping single survivors find viable partners with which to procreate, including a few of the Pima natives, whom Fintán had warned of the pending disaster almost a year before. Fintán continued south, following the winding ranges of Central America. There he glimpsed a blue-shining flash in the distance, a blackbird, and his breath caught in his throat because he thought it might be Munin, The Raven, whom he hadn’t seen in a myria and sorely wished to speak with, but then it disappeared—proving it probably had been Munin, after all.

  Fintán plucked Chorote boys from rushing waters in eastern Paraguay, paid his respects to the kindly Llama with his Quechuan wards on Mount Villca Coto, and the gentle Sheep with his human friends high in the Cuzco range of Peru. Both were saddened for Fintán at hearing of the loss of Cessair. They knew of her only by reputation, but they’d also lost loved ones many times over, as all Firstborn do, and they knew the pain was just as intense with each, the emotional wound every bit as raw and deep.

  Fintán sped west over the wide ocean, helping all in need. Then, high over the South Pacific, he crossed paths with a great white dove that clutched a leafing twig in one foot and a note in the other. The note was written in Noah’s scrawl. He and his family had survived, and it named the place where they’d finally touched ground.

  Noah’s Ark hadn’t landed on Mount Ararat in Turkey, as is commonly claimed, or the biblical Mt. Sinai. Nor was it perched atop Mount Judi, or high in the Malaya Mountains (the southern range of what are now called the Ghats of western India) as alleged in the Hindi Matsya Purana—those were the arks of others of Noah’s clan, or those he’d sent out to other centers of civilization before the Deluge—but plunk in the mud of the Djilinbadu plains of western Australia.

  Noah greeted Fintán with delight and embraced him tight. He explained they’d intended to sail to Fiodh-Inis as planned, but final loading and boarding of the ships took longer than expected in the rain and winds that preceded the Flood, and they couldn’t catch the damned unicorns. They’d finally embarked only days before the Deluge hit. The ships had become separated, and forty-three days later, Noah’s Ark had been stranded here.

  Fintán told Noah of his own travails. Noah showed no sorrow for his son, Bith, for he’d denied Bith’s existence long ago, but at hearing of the loss of his granddaughter Cessair, his heart fell. Fintán only added to his anguish when he explained that Noah’s homeland in Sumeria had been devastated. Being stubborn and proud, Noah insisted on returning anyway.

  There would be no dragging of Noah’s Ark to the sea, so they hiked to the shoreline, where Fintán aided in the building of smaller sailing ships. Several dozen habilis who’d helped Noah complete the original arks and boarded Noah’s with him, worked on them as well. But when it was time to set sail, the habilis decided to stay. No plea could convince them otherwise. Many animals were loaded onto the ships, but others were left behind.

  Fintán provided coordinates for their journey, but did not travel with th
em. Instead, he set out to locate and similarly aid the surviving passengers of Noah’s other arks.

  When Noah and his family finally arrived upriver from the mouth of the Euphrates, at the northern tip of what is now called the Persian Gulf within the borders of modern-day Iraq, they found that the Sumerian city of Ur—glittering, sun-kissed center of Mesopotamian trade and commerce—was gone, and what was once a fertile valley nearby that Noah’s clan had called home for centuries was poisoned by saltwater. Dismayed but determined, they continued north to the lower regions of Anatolia. Noah again took up husbandry, shepherded and multiplied his flocks, replanted his vineyards from the precious vines he’d stowed aboard his ark. There he lived another three hundred and fifty years in relative peace and happiness (except for bouts of sloppy drunkenness and the occasional row with his sons), until his death at the ripe old age, for a human, of nine hundred and fifty.

  Noah was of the line of humans called the Antediluvian Patriarchs, also known as the Babylonian Kings of antiquity, direct descendants of a preeminent Firstborn son (though none of them truly knew his name), hence their long lives and prominence in pre-Flood history. After the Flood, Noah’s legend grew greater than any of the others before him, and he came to be celebrated variously and by many cultures as Atrahasis, Utnapishtim, Deucalion, Tumbainot, Nama, Nu’u, and Noe, among other great names of distinction.

  Sad and alone, even after all the good he’d done and many lives he’d saved, Fintán returned to Fiodh-Inis. Myrddin greeted him with a blend of gladness and grief. The body of Cessair had been found.

  Myrddin showed Fintán to where she’d been lain on a plush sheepskin atop a slab in a circle of shining stone. She was less broken and swollen than one might imagine, and the Druids had preserved her body with fragrant oils and piled colorful scented blooms around her. That evening they interred Cessair in a sepulcher excavated by the habilis from a rocky hillside, made smooth and glistening within by Myrddin’s wielding of his gambanteinn. Myrddin gave a moving benediction. Cessair’s cousin Banba, whose leg was nearly healed, spoke eloquently and wept. Fintán said naught. Upon completion of the ceremony, he retreated to a high cold mountain with only his heartache and woe.

  Some of the myths of ancient Éire differ in their accounts of the Deluge. Some say only Fintán survived. Some say he was only a boy. Others a grown man, but a shapeshifter. More claim a woman named Banba also survived. There is no mention of Myrddin Wyllt, by any name. He shows up in later fables of Ireland, however, as well as the rest of the British Isles, under that name and others.

  At the time of Cessair’s funeral, the troubles in Fiodh-Inis had been far from over. The isle suffered a string of settlements and invasions, terrible wars, natural disasters and not-so-natural plagues. Eventually the descendants of the great human warrior Míl Espáine, also known as Milesius, won the isle with the united clans of Gael and help from a handful of Firstborn, including Myrddin Wyllt, who was known to them as Amergin.

  Following the liberation of Fiodh-Inis and its settlement by the Milesians, Myrddin retired to his Weal in the mountains. He continued to travel, to check in on his habilis enclaves around the world, repair his circles of stone, and had many more adventures. He was always drawn back to these lands, however, and found himself spending more and more time on the largest of the isles. There he endeavored to ease the suffering of the people during hard times, and intercede with the invasive Romans on their behalf. Eventually he converted to Christianity, and found a new friend, a young Brythonic prince named Uther Pendragon.

  There came a time when all the Druids were gone, dead or bred into immigrating populations. As for the habilis, there are stories of them from around the globe, since they lived in many places, but some still inhabit isolated forests and fens of Ireland. The elders guard treasures left them by Myrddin Wyllt. When there are rainbows after a storm, the young ones come out to dance and celebrate their forefathers’ heroic deeds during the Great Flood.

  Fintán has seen it all. Every invasion, each battle, everything in between, and all that came after. Alone. Unseen. He said nothing. Did nothing. It is not known how he felt about it, if he felt anything at all.

  Few Firstborn have ever referred to Fintán mac Bóchra by that name, which is known so well in Éire. Like all of his kind, he had many names, most from before his time with Cessair, and many transliterated since. Malakbel, Anzu, Haru, Nekheny, Heru-ur, Heru-pa-khered, and, though inappropriately, Kemwer, are some. Pariacaca, The Victorious Warrior Nefer Hor, a.k.a Nephoros or Nopheros; Harpocrates, Haroeris, Hor Merti, and Horkhenti Irti are others. There is Periya Thiruvadi, Suparṇa, Galone, Galura, Karura, Khangarid, Yue Fei, Penju, and Great Peng, as well as The Elder, Hunter, Protector, God of the Kingdom, Lord of Lower Egypt, The Distant One, Old Bird, the Archangel Uriel, Naga’s Bane, and Garuda, Lord of the Sky. And yet, all are but a sampling.

  To Father and the Firstborn, he will always be Horus, also known as The Falcon, for that is the name he was given at the time of his hatching, almost two million years ago.

  Over the history of Éire, since his self-imposed exile from the concerns of the world, he gradually gained the fabled epithets of White Ancient and the Witness, the legendary observer of the unfolding history of Ireland (and indeed all the British Isles). Or, as Myrddin Wyllt came to address him, and not without some good-natured derision, The White Watcher.

  Head to www.paternusbooks.com to discover more books by Dyrk Ashton.

  7

  I, Kane

  Laura M. Hughes

  The following is a transcription of pages recently recovered from beneath the surface of Nasaki on Draguna IV. Archaeologists’ reports suggest that the original document was barely legible, though it appears that this was less due to its bloodstained pages than it was to the author’s gradually deteriorating penmanship.

  You there! Yes, you. Are you ready?

  Excellent. Let us begin.

  With no shortage of sorrow, I hereby pronounce the imminent fall of the world you call ‘Earth’. Now listen well, and note my words with absolute precision.

  My tale is one of fatal hubris (aren’t they all?) and tells how mankind worked to bring about its own declension through pursuit of an absurd conviction: namely, that one has the right to impose one’s ideology upon others using fear, fire, and lead.

  Are you getting all of this?

  What? ‘Pace myself’, you say? To which ‘formalities’ do you refer, O insolent scribe?

  Fine, fine. For the record, ‘tis evening - about teatime, in fact - the eighth full moon of the Year of the Flaming Maw, etcetera, etceter— No, don’t actually write ‘etcetera’, fool!

  What? Yes, fine, we’ll do it your way. In your parlance, it is the ninth day of August, in the year of nineteen forty-five. Happy now?

  Shall I begin the introductions, then? Splendid.

  Humble scribe, you must tell me your name.

  How enigmatic! You prefer to go without a name? You’re sure?

  Oh, so cryptic! Anyone would think these bright and charming chambers were in fact some kind of seedy gaol - and you, a shifty accomplice in some dishonest plot! But surely your fine country’s leaders would not so abuse the basic principles of the convention of Geneva? Though … they were reluctant to agree to its conditions, no?

  Eh. Regardless, I find myself entirely at your mercy, and serenely wait to learn the nature of my fate.

  But let us not get mired in gloomy musings on the bloody future! My dire circumstances are a problem for tomorrow! Listen well, and pray take care to note my words with absolute precision.

  I, the mighty Diabolos Kane, do hereby—

  No. That’s uninspired. If we are to create a chronicle the world will not forget, we must endeavour to create a much more grand impression.

  Let us try again. You’re ready? Good.

  I, the mighty Diabolos Kane, the Elder One — ooh,
make that Senior Elder One! — erm — bane of lizards, most illustrious Master of the Elements and Saviour of this Earth, do hereby set down for posterity this brief, yet frank, account of the events that led up to the recent cataclysm, and an explanation as to why said cataclysm was entirely justif—

  Wait. Wait!

  I feel that ‘cataclysm’ is a clumsy choice of word. (Although I do very much adore it. CATaclysm. Cataclysm. C-A-T-A-C-L-Y-S-M.)

  Ahem. Yes. Do allow me to begin again.

  I, Diabolos Kane, shall hereby tell of the final great events of this blue planet. This account will include a full description of the fell cat— No! No, I was most definitely NOT about to utter the word ‘cataclysm’. No, I was in fact about to say … ‘calamity’. I was. Don’t look at me like that. I was! I was, and that will be the end of it.

  Ah, where was I? Oh! Last events, end of the world, ah yes. A tale of mankind’s fatal hubris and its role in your kind’s pitiful and slow descent into the mire of self-destruction. And, of course, your utterly ridiculous belief that one man’s view or random outlook can be enforced by filling his dissenters full of sharp metal.

  But I am not here to judge you; indeed, I must reluctantly commend your patience in enduring my denunciation of your race … as well as the swiftness with which you scribble! Dear scrivener, perhaps you would permit me to examine your calligraphy? I’m keen to— hmm? What do you mean, am I trying to— Dear scribbler, you offend me! I ask from personal curiosity, no more.

  You see, once upon a time I considered myself well-acquainted with the practice of integrative graphology— you have heard of it? No? — In short, it is the process wherein one might determine a man’s character solely from the study of his handwriting. Are you amenable to participating in such an assessment?