by A. Evermore
‘What happened?’ he asked stunned, gripping the bed to keep from falling off it. She shook her head slowly, trembling as she fought to regain her composure.
‘Something awful, to do that to you, your eye… You bring danger yet you do not know it. I don’t know what. I… I can’t explain. Never reveal your eye here again, for your own safety, for our safety.’
‘I am sorry. I don’t understand, I did not intend to… I did not know,’ he swallowed, desperately trying to understand what had happened. ‘That has never happened before.’ He suddenly felt sick, lay back down breathing deeply. She came a little closer and spoke quietly.
‘I see danger, often before it happens. Just lately I... I see more danger as the days go by. It makes it hard to... think straight,’ she shook her head.
So, she had the gift of foresight, like the Seers of Myrn back home, Marakon thought. The elven girl in the market, the old witch in the square… I don’t meet one for years and then three turn up one after the other.
‘You have a rare gift,’ he said, smiling in an effort to ease her worry in spite of his own. Less rare than I thought it was, perhaps.
She nodded but did not smile. ‘Some might say... some... Though truly I feel cursed,’ she was silent, deep in thought for a while before she spoke again. ‘Your eye, I don’t know why but it brings danger, I see much death.’
‘I don’t know what you saw but believe me, I come in peace.’
She nodded but said nothing. There was not much else he could say. He swung his legs over the bed and carefully stood up, wobbling a little as he did so. At least his wound no longer throbbed so much.
‘My name is Marakon. What is yours,’ he asked tentatively.
She frowned, as if he had been rude, and then smiled as if in forgiveness. ‘Jarlain,’ she replied.
‘Jarlain,’ he said it to himself, testing the pronunciation. ‘Jarlain, I know nothing about my eye and what it means other than I will never reveal it here again. The one thing I do know is that I am in sore need of a wash.’
‘Through there and to the left,’ she indicated to the opening on the other side of his bed.
He nodded slightly and went through the door. He stood outside in a small clearing no more than eight feet in diameter and secluded by trees. Water trickled over a rocky wall that had been funnelled deliberately to direct the flow. A dip in the ground surrounded by rocks created a small pool of water about a foot deep which then overflowed into another furrow in the ground that ran away through the trees.
He slipped off his torn clothes and stood naked in the deliciously cold water. He picked up the round pumice-style rock on a ledge, along with the orange coloured soap, well he assumed it was soap, and began to work away at the salt, the dirt, the blood. But not the guilt for the soldiers he had led to their deaths, that could never be scrubbed off. That was his curse, a Commander’s curse. He stepped away from the waterfall and stood with his eyes shut in the hot sunlight that came through the trees. It felt good on his wet skin. If only sunlight could cleanse the soul.
Bokaard, Lanac, Erylin… Then the Dread Dragon fire. Guilt and memory, all that was left. He blinked back tears.
He opened his eyes and noticed clean clothes folded neatly on a stool by the door. His ragged ones were missing. Had they left them for him whilst he was washing? He had been so deep in guilt he hadn’t heard anyone. Pushing aside his embarrassment as best he could he pulled on the linen tunic and knee-length slacks. The same clothes that they wore, and in this humid heat he understood why. It felt good to be in clean skin and clothes again.
By the time he went back inside the man was there. He was slightly shorter than Marakon but just as well-muscled and strong.
‘Thank you,’ Marakon said, gesturing to his clothes.
The man gave a half smile, the first he had seen, then he turned to leave just as Marakon began to introduce himself.
‘Tarn,’ the man said from beyond the door, ‘the name is Tarn, Marakon,’ and then he was gone.
Marakon closed his mouth. The man did not trust him yet and why should he? He was already sweating from the hot humidity despite the cool shower and loose clothes. He couldn’t bear lying down any longer and after a moment he decided to leave his sword where it was and follow the man. He hobbled after him on stiff overworked muscles into another room that was dark and bumped into Jarlain on her way to him.
‘Come, the Elders wish to see you. It is good that you can walk,’ she smiled.
He raised his eyebrows but followed her silently across the small dark room that had low round wicker stools, rich red and purple rugs and a low table. The walls were a mix of bamboo type shoots and hardened mud. It was lovely and cool inside. They went through another door into a small cooking area. A strange hole in the wall looked like an oven and various plates and bowls were stacked upon a table. Another door led them outside and he stood blinking in the sunlight.
They walked barefoot in the hot sun on warm sandy red earth. He squinted in the bright light and took in his surroundings as they walked, too intrigued to talk. There were many small simple houses made of mud and bamboo, much like Jarlain’s, bordering the forty-foot or so wide sandy path. Beyond the huts to his left dense jungle stretched up high, dark and green. To the right was also thick with trees and bushes but they were not as tall or dense. He could smell the sea on the air and could just catch the sound of surf coming from the right. They were close to the sea then.
All the houses were decorated brightly with yellow and pink flowering vines that cleverly wound around their entrances. There were people moving around everywhere, young, old, male and female - all tall, black-haired and smooth brown-skinned. Everyone was out and about and busy about their daily tasks. Some carried big woven baskets on their backs filled with a plant Marakon did not recognise. Some had donkeys laden with cloth, others simply stood chatting, the children running around them as they played.
They all looked at Marakon. Some frowned, others smiled uncertainly, some nodded in greeting. Marakon nodded to each of them the same, feeling pale-skinned and out of place. They seemed a proud and respectable people. It was a blessing. He could have awoken in the sacrifice cages of Histanatarn.
The bamboo houses widened into a circle and they stopped in its centre by a large well surrounded by foot high stones. Intricate pictures of animals and birds were elaborately carved into each of those stones, some animals of which he had never seen before. Some looked like huge pigs with long flappy noses. Others were deer-like but with two straight horns rather than antlers. One looked like a bear standing up on two feet, but it had small curved horns and slanted goat-like eyes and a completely flat face that looked unnervingly human. It seemed particularly large. He hoped he didn’t meet one in that endless jungle.
All of the houses had been only one floor high until now. The one closest to the well had two storeys and was decorated the same with the pretty yellow and pink flowers. He looked up from his study of the strange animals as people emerged from the house. They all had white hair and wrinkled faces. All the men were clean-shaven except for the last. He had a long straight beard reaching to his chest. If it hadn’t been dyed red it would probably be the same pure white that his hair was. He leant on an ornately carved staff, though his back was straight and his legs looked strong.
‘The Elders?’ he queried. Jarlain nodded.
Marakon wondered if Red Beard was a wizard, for all the wizards he had known always carried staves. Jarlain smiled reassuringly and took his arm, leading him towards the five people that stood looking at him; their long unbound white hair blew gently in the wind.
‘They do not bite,’ Jarlain grinned and he wondered what sort of expression must have been on his face.
All right, he was apprehensive. He gave a small smile back. Luckily he had decided to leave his sword behind. It showed them that he was not afraid and that he came in peace.
The “Elders” as Jarlain had called them, watched his approach with
solemn expressions and perhaps a hint of wariness. These people have enemies; of course they are wary, he thought. Many villagers crowded behind them out of interest in this strange visitor. Now they were standing still he noticed some men and women had long bows as tall as they were slung on their backs and long sheaths of quivers dangling from leather belts. All with bows carried wide foot-long curved blades tied at their waists and held in brightly coloured beaded sheathes.
The Elder’s feet and hands were decorated in bright blue swirling designs, all similar but none exactly the same. They had no weapons and were dressed in loose white linen robes that fell just below the knee.
Not knowing exactly how to greet them he saluted them in elven, showing them his unarmed upturned palms before bringing them to his heart and bowing as he did so. Perhaps these people reminded him of elves, the way they lived simply and close to nature, yet were clearly highly skilled builders, archers and metal-smiths. He sensed the Old Way strong here and not without a pang of loss. He had no qualms revealing his elven heritage to these strange people who probably did not know what an elf was, let alone seen one before. Their faces did not change and they continued to stare at him solemnly. His palms turned sweaty and he shifted awkwardly under their gaze.
‘We have not seen the elven blessing in a long time,’ one of the Elder women said in a deep voice that carried easily over the crowd.
‘A very long time indeed,’ echoed an Elder man, ‘and even then only in the Dreaming.’
The others nodded.
‘I would not have said you were elven at first, but now I see more clearly,’ the same woman said squinting.
‘My mother was elven, my father, human,’ he explained briefly, ‘and I carry The Burden of guilt of my ancestors,’ he added. It was a test, nothing more. How much did these people know of the world? How long had they lived here in isolation? Could this possibly be the Uncharted Lands? It was a crazy idea, it was impossible to reach them ship-wrecked from the northern Lost Sea, but the only one that seemed to make any sense so far.
All races in Maioria understood The Elven Burden; the crime in withdrawing from Maioria, leaving her people to a fate worse than death at the hands of the Immortal Lord. It was the burden of guilt those left behind would be forced to carry.
‘The sins of the father are not those of the son, Half-Elf,’ the Elder woman said.
He grimaced at his old label and scratched his beard for comfort. The Elder with the red beard and thick staff had been watching him silently and now he spoke, his thin voice portraying his age though his clear rich-brown eyes did not. The language he spoke Marakon did not recognise at all. All the Elders listened to the old man as he spoke and then looked back at Marakon when he had finished. He then spoke in words Marakon understood.
‘The Hidden Ones have spoken to me and explained what the Dreaming has been telling me for a full year. Now I understand. The stranger has come to find the Banished Legion. Zanu the dark goddess is calling him to claim back what once was his. The Hidden Ones say Zanu’s Chosen walks the land; the dark moon heralds her coming. The same dark moon we have all seen.’
Marakon could not hide the shock on his face as the Elder’s words strummed the chords of truth within him. It was as if a long closed door momentarily opened, allowing him access to hidden memories from long ago in which he was another person, in another life, in many lives, and yet he knew it was undoubtedly him all along. He felt liberated and yet he could not breathe for his constricted throat.
The pang of urgency stabbed at him again, the strongest yet, as he fought to slow his racing mind. He glimpsed his lives like the flickering of a picture book before him. He had been a soldier of the Feylint Halanoi before, many times before. But he knew that, had felt that anyway. It didn’t matter.
There were lives before those too. He glimpsed only snapshots of them. He had been them all; a man, a woman, an elf, a dwarf, rich and poor, gifted with magic and a simpleton and in them all he had suffered terribly. Those lives didn’t matter. They were all leading back to that life he did not want to remember, that time that cursed his soul to a life of suffering and pain forever after.
Please spare me, I do not want to remember. He pleaded silently. But who was there to spare him? Who was there to ask? The world spun and he breathed the air of another land. Rich green grass under a clear blue sky. The hooves of his white horse pounded into the ground, the metal of his armour shone in the sunlight. His tabard was white and upon it adorned a silver star.
Knights of the Shining Star.
Beside him galloped others, men and women, human, elves and dwarves. Our hearts are pure, we are glorious! We bring freedom. Freedom from the demons. Demons…
Memories whirled as the visions moved. A battle unfolded. The clang and clash of metal against metal, the snarling of hatred, the cries of the dying. Huge grey and brown hairless beasts flew on giant wings towards him. They were coming from a swirling black hole in the trees, twenty feet in diameter. Demons from the Murk. His sword rose high, a demon fell under his blow, a terrible howling that clawed at his soul.
The battle became another atop a high windy land. Thousands of knights glittered in the darkness, twice as many demons. Cutting, howling, bleeding, dying.
“We fought them high, we fought them low.”
That was the song they sang when it was all over. How many battles? How many years? Countless lives as decades passed by.
The world spun and the demons were gone. He stood staring down at his helmet ringed in a golden crown.
“We drove them down, deep down below!” The song chanted over and again in the background of his mind.
“We fought them high, we fought them low.
We drove them down, deep down below!”
Astride their white horses the people thronged through the city walls, laughing and crying, casting petals upon them. Victory is ours. We are glorious. Clouds darkened the sky, the air, the ground. He was suffocating in a green mist. It came from a broken vial. He tried not to breathe it but a breath forced itself in. The rage came. Old faces, young faces, male and female. Crying, bleeding, falling from his bloodied sword.
‘No!’ he screamed, but he couldn’t stop the killing, he could only watch.
Laughter came from behind. He turned and stared in horror. A headless man stood there. The laughter came from the head at his feet. Laughing. Laughing. I know that face!
A barren land, a desert. Houses in a rock face. Then the skeletons rose out of the earth. They turned to him and pointed, pointed as they stomped towards him. ‘No!’ he screamed again. He was falling. A voice echoed around him, the young elf-girl in the market.
“Can you find and restore a long forgotten glory?”
He blinked as the suffocating receded. Sweat ran down his face and he realised Jarlain was steadying him, a worried look in her eyes. He looked away and breathed deeply. Wiped the sweat from his eyes. The memories were true, they did not lie, but he understood none of them.
‘The Hidden Ones,’ the bearded elder continued, as if he hadn’t noticed and no time had passed at all, ‘see the everlasting truth and the ages pass as seconds to them, but they have deigned it necessary to commune with me at this time.’
‘Who are these “Hidden Ones”?’ Marakon asked, his voice hoarse, but the Elder seemed not to hear him and continued without pause.
‘Too long have we been apart from the Old World in the east as the darkness rose over it. Perhaps we too should share The Burden,’ a hundred thoughts flittered through Marakon’s mind as the Elder spoke. ‘The King comes to find the Banished Legion and his coming signals our time is running out. The darkness will spread even here. He must be led to the Drowning Wastes. There, the Hidden Ones say, is where he will complete the final task, the reason for which the Ancient Boatman brought him here,’ he spread his hands wide, ‘I myself do not understand much of what the Hidden Ones say, I tell you only what I know.’
The old man turned and started walking back t
o the largest hut, now leaning heavily on his staff as if the effort of speaking had exerted him too much.
‘I don’t understand,’ Marakon started, where the hell did you start? ‘What are the Drowning Wastes? Who are the Hidden Ones? I am not a King. Who are the Banished Legion? Hey!’ he called, but the old man did not stop. Marakon started after him but Jarlain laid a surprisingly strong restraining grip on his arm.
‘Our master cannot hear you with his ears,’ she said softly, ‘he can only hear you with his mind.’
‘What? He is deaf?’ asked Marakon in shock.
‘Only in the physical sense, his outer ears are gone so that he might hear with his inner ears. All of our High Elders have had their ears broken so they might hear the Hidden Ones. You have much to learn of our ways, half-elf,’ she said, but her smile was warm.
Marakon grimaced in habit, it was the second time in only a few minutes that they had called him that.
‘Who are the Hidden Ones?’ he asked again. Is that why he had come? To find something called the Banished Legion? How did the old man know so much, know more about himself than he did? Jarlain looked at him, her handsome dark eyes piercing, as if she were carefully choosing words that he would understand.
‘To us they are the spirits of the forest. They are half in this dimension half in the next one above us; some can even glimpse them like a flashing light in the forest, gone as soon as seen. Very few people can hear them. We have always had a special relationship to them, but no one knows why or can remember how far back we began communicating. They see the world as it spans the centuries, whereas we can only see the present. That is as much as I know of them. The High Elder mostly keeps the knowledge he receives secret for it is too much for us all to understand and it keeps that knowledge from our enemies.’
