by K L Reinhart
“Edar would stay out in the Forest of Hon for days and nights at a time, and sometimes even weeks, returning only when he knew he had a tale to tell the rest of the villagers.
“And it would be a tale that he had been given by the peoples he met, the peoples made of moss and wood and stone, whose sinews were knit together by the winds and the currents of the wilding streams.
“And they told Edar the name of their race. They were called the Elder Beings.”
An unexpected shiver ran through Terak’s body as he listened. He wasn’t sure whether it was an effect of Kol’s strange vocal abilities, but it felt somehow deeper, as if a part of him that was elf recognized something familiar in what the storyteller was saying.
Suddenly, there was a change in Kol’s entire voice and demeanor as he drew himself up, before crooking a shoulder and head to one side, as if he were a marionette or a tree blowing in the fierce wind. Once again, that shiver of apprehension swept through Terak’s whole being.
“Edar Marvas! Edar of the deep woods! Edar of the endless tracks!” Kol’s voice took on a hissing croak as the storyteller in the bird mask moved in stuttering halting steps.
“This is how the Elder Beings called to our Edar, and this is what happened!” Kol said in his normal, “regular” baritone.
“Edar Marvas who listens to the trees and to the five winds, listen to us now!” Terak watched as the storyteller dragged and stuttered across the small torch-lit green.
“And when Edar looked up through the tall trees of aspen and birch, he realized that he was not alone,” Kol said. “It was as if some piece of the forest had come alive. A knot of branches and twigs that Edar had thought was just a puzzle of tree had detached itself from the old knotted white-stemmed birch tree and had stepped to the forest floor, with toes like the grasping roots of the southern Banyan trees.”
The audience around the elf was rapt. Somehow, through the minute gestures and suggestions of movement that Kol the storyteller made, Terak could see this creature that was half tree, half lichen, and with a bird’s face.
“But Edar was frightened, of course,” Kol confided. “He had heard stories of those unwary humans who had wandered too far and for too long out onto the Fell, or unwise and unguided through the Forest of Hon. He had heard tell of villagers vanished and disappeared, never to come home.
“But this Elder Being just stood there, looking at the human with its beak to one side, and with one eye that glittered like starlight.
“Edar Marvas! I have long seen you and your kind wandering these tracks,” the Elder Being said, “but you alone of your young people have sought to listen to the speech of the forest itself and to hear what it is trying to say. And you, Edar Marvas, have never felled a tree nor taken any stem that you did not need. Neither did you ever forget to thank the stream for its water. And so, Edar Marvas, I have come to grant your boon . . .
“You came to listen to the forest speak, and so I will tell you what it is saying . . .”
Terak watched as Kol somehow lightly step-jumped to one of the broken-down walls, as if he had glided.
“The forest is saying that you are in danger. All of your kind is in a great danger. And the world will forever be unmade and never be whole again.”
13
The Three Sisters
“Edar Marvas, hear this doom that is coming for you!” the words of the storyteller continued. The hairs on the back of Terak’s neck rose up once again as a momentary chill blew through the ruins in the kingdom of Tor. The torches guttered against the night.
“When this world was created, Edar Marvas, it began out of breath and shadow. Before, there was void and darkness, but the darkness was a long time pregnant. She wanted to become something, she wanted to feel life in her void-belly!
“And so there was, at the start, a breath, and it was from that beginning that all later discord was sown!
“There was the breath like a fierce wind that blew through the void. And inside of it was contained every note and every song that could ever be thought of. Every voice that was to be heard in the world and many that have since been forgotten. That breath grew loud and raucous, and in its tumult, it created the world that we call Midhara. And it created the First Creatures.
“But right from the start, there were others. That breath that was a whisper and a shout created an echo. That echo that was a shadow and a mirror of what had already been born, that played and danced with its parent noise, never settling into one shape—that became the Aesther, the upper world of the Fey races and of dreams.”
Terak nodded to himself. He had been to that surreal realm, where even the landscape could be alive, and where the creatures that lived there had somehow seen into his heart and soul.
“And the Aesther and Midhara played together for a while, making their noise and shadow-noise, with the Midhara always wanting for solidity and existence, but the Aesther always wanting freedom and possibility. That is why the Aesther is the realm of magic, and why the elves have always coveted it for that.”
Once again Terak nodded, but this time far more grimly than before.
“‘But there was another part of that breath, that noise, that was far deadlier than the play of magic and earth,’” Kol said in deep serious tones. “‘And that is the void from which all things came. The night. The dark. The pregnant shadows. It is the older sibling of the other two, Midhara or the Aesther.
“It was, is, and has always been the dark. The hungry murk that is the almost-born, jealous of its younger siblings with their noise and light and life!
“And this realm of shadow forged for itself its own realm, a world that was a cruel mockery of our beautiful Midhara or the playful Aesther.
“It is, of course, the world of the Ungol.”
As the storyteller Kol’s voice continued, not one of the listening men, women, or babes opened their mouth to speak, although Terak could hear a few shuffling nervously.
Word of the Blood Gate has spread, the assassin thought. Even out here in the human kingdom of Tor, they must have heard or seen the Baleful Signs, the Ungol Light to the North, the strange storms of monsters, and the magical sickness or the darkness that was spreading down the top of the world.
They know that their end is near. That the Blood Gate is about to open once again, and everything that they know is about to change. Perhaps for good.
“This Elder Being told Edar Marvas that at the start, there were three mighty beings, each one born of that same first breath,” Kol continued.
“For the Midhara, there was the First Creature, Grom, who was all noise and power.”
Grom, who I helped awaken, Terak realized.
“And Grom had an echo that was as small as he was big, and as light as he was loud. She was playful where he was serious, and she talked constantly like the twittering of birds where Grom spoke seldom and with the voice of mountains. And her name was Hyx.”
Hyxalion!? Terak suddenly coughed. The diminutive Aesther spirit who had saved him, time and time again? Terak blinked in confusion and felt a twinge of something electric like pain from the silver geas in his hand. When he looked up, he could see his guide Tanwen looking at him oddly.
“But both Grom and Hyx had an elder sister called Ung’olut.” Kol’s mouth twisted in an ugly fashion. “And this queen of her own realm, who is also called the Queen of a Thousand Tears and the Deceiver, has been working ever since to consume the other two worlds.”
Terak closed his eyes and lowered his head a little. He had seen the Queen of a Thousand Tears. He had heard her, hadn’t he? Talking to the Hexan in the ritual room of Araxia, as the Hexan bartered and bargained the entire world of Midhara with her.
And Ung’olut is a First Creature, Terak thought, his mind racing. Like Grom is . . . No, even older than Grom, if what this Kol has to say can be believed.
How is anyone going to be able to stop her!? he thought in dismay, as the Kol’s words continued.
“And so, each
of the three First Creatures brought forth the beings that would protect their realms. Grom called to life the Elder Beings, creatures that were, like him, made of earth and root and sky and plant,” Kol explained. He had lost the scratchy croaky voice of the Elder Being he had imitated before, but Terak could still well see in his mind’s eye the wide-eyed human Edar Marvas talking to the strange tree-bird thing in the Forest of Hon.
“And Hyx called into life the Kelpies, creatures made of nightmare and shriek and water that could travel through the dreams of man as readily as they could travel through the oceans.”
Terak wondered if that was the skeleton horse skull creature that he had met in the Aesther realm. The one who had died saving him from another Aesther monster, but who had also been able to reach inside Terak’s mind to pluck memories from him that even he had forgotten that he owned.
“And as for the Queen of a Thousand Tears? Her Elder Beings were the Ogres, for she could not think in the subtle ways of her younger siblings. Her Ogres were loud and evil and brutish. They attacked the other realms mercilessly, until Hyx came up with a plan . . .”
Terak’s pointed ears pricked up.
“The youngest sister was always the better at magic. She devised a way to send each of their three realms into a circling dance, so that each realm would be removed from the other for all time, locked into their circling orbits. It hurt Hyx terribly, though, and some say she never got over it. Only the use of magical portals which she taught to the Elder Beings and the Kelpie could allow friends to travel from one to the other,” the storyteller explained.
“It was Hyx who separated and split the three worlds via a vast act of magic. She made sure that her older sister could not hurt her and her brother ever again!”
Kol jumped lightly down from his impromptu stand, suddenly aggressively stalking forward, accusative and arrogant.
“And it would have stayed that way, were it not for the First Family of the Elves!” Kol cried out, raising a fist and looking up at the night sky with his bird-mask as if he could curse the failed and destroyed family all over again.
“The First Family were hungry for the magic of the Aesther. They were the ones who attempted to draw Hyx’s world closer to them. They were the ones who set the three worlds out of Hyx’s delicate balance, allowing the Blood Gate to open onto the Ungol realm every five hundred years instead!”
Terak felt his cheeks burning, even though he knew that he was not a member of the First Family at all, but of the Second. Is that why Hyxalion wants me to murder the leading Mother of the Second Family? the elvish assassin thought. Was it an ancient, multi-millennia old grudge that the First Creature had against his kind?
“And that, my friends, is the tale that the Elder Being gave to Edar Marvas, who spoke it to Mari, then to Vond, then to Montperrey, to Dinar, to Yalda, to Freya, and to Jakob—who taught it to me.”
Kol swept his arms around him in a swirl of his black-feather cloak, clasping his own shoulders and standing stock still, as motionless as when he had begun. Very slowly, sound and life returned to the rest of the seated crowd, although no one appeared filled with mirth or good cheer.
“That is a dark tale,” Tanwen said with a heavy nod as she eyed the crowd, each of them looking a little more intently at the northern skies and each other. “But these are dark times, and Kol is trying to tell them what is at stake. What dangers we are all facing.”
Terak nodded dismally to himself, but that did not mean that he was thinking the same thing. He was staring intently at the stock-still form of Kol as the flaming torches and fire-rope started to gutter and wink out. Every missing light flung the shape of the storyteller into deeper shadow, as if he were returning to the void or the realm of dreams himself.
The elf had already known some of that story, that the Queen of a Thousand Tears was hungry to take over the world of the Midhara and would stop at nothing to do it, at least. But what stuck in Terak’s mind was that the Elder Beings of Midhara had been created to defend their world against the beings of the Ungol, and that Kol, somewhere out there in the dark, might know a way to contact them.
14
Arcanum
The air was cast in an unhealthy purple-pink hue and was heavy with the sound of grunts and growls.
It appeared to the old man that surveyed his new home that every foul thing that had ever walked or crawled under the stars was making its way here, to the Blood Gate.
The old man himself was perfectly warm despite the frozen ground and the driving wind that howled with snow and ice. That was because he stood a few inches above the ground, encapsulated in a shimmering blue sphere that kept the inside warm—and anything that he didn’t want in, out.
Despite this security, the ancient wispy-bearded man with skin like parchment had still decided to take himself up the slope that surrounded the Vale of the Blood Gate, away from the beastials, the Estreek, the larger wyrm walking serpents, and the many other creatures of terror and night that had been drawn up here.
The Blood Gate itself was visible below him, exuding its own Ungol-light glow on the broken-tooth mountainsides that held the abominable archway construction at its heart.
“Arcanum,” said a voice from outside the traitor’s protective sphere. The ex-Chief of the Black Keep turned, surprised that the man had managed to get past the magical wards and traps that Arcanum had been throwing about himself with apparent forgetful ease.
The intruder in question was a tall human with lank dark hair. He had high cheekbones and bright eyes that might have seemed attractive down there in the courts of the South. But there was something about the intentness of the Hexan’s stare that unnerved even the Chief Arcanum, and he had talked to some very strange beings in his time indeed.
The Hexan had abandoned his fineries as the High Chancellor of Araxia and instead donned the thick, leather-and-wool-lined cloak of an expeditioner, with matching heavy canvas trews, thick with straps that secured more furs to his legs.
Pompous fool! the Arcanum thought. Why doesn’t the Hexan just cast a zone of warmth instead of hiding his powers! Whilst the Chief Arcanum himself had been taught to embrace pain, and he had spent enough of his time kneeling in the freezing cold alongside any other acolyte or novitiate, he had long since come to the conclusion that embracing pain—be it through hardship or bracing cold—was foolish and irresponsible. No matter what the Book of Corrections stated.
There was a sudden fizzle of red light as the Hexan stepped closer to his turncoat ally from the Black Keep. The rocks under the Hexan’s snow-inscribed boots suddenly flared with lurid red glyphs, spitting and hissing before they dulled to nothing.
“Oh, I do beg your pardon,” The Hexan continued his step as if nothing had happened, before holding up the edge of one hand and slicing downwards against the Arcanum’s protective sphere.
The magical zone of strength that the Arcanum had crafted for himself peeled apart as easily as an orange, allowing the howling wind—and the Hexan himself—to step calmly inside. The Arcanum’s bubble to self-sealed behind him as if it had never been broken.
“There, that’s much better now, isn’t it?” the Hexan said, shaking his shoulders for a flurry of snow to drift to the floor and lie at the bottom of the protective sphere, a few inches from the ground.
The Hexan beamed wolfishly at the Chief Arcanum, who had managed to go even paler than before.
“How did you do that?! I’ve been casting Sizerius’s Shield for three decades now with no one ever being able to crack it!” the Arcanum spluttered.
“Ah,” the Hexan nodded condescendingly. “Well, you see, that is one of the problems of holing yourself up in the Black Keep for half a century or so, isn’t it?” He opened and closed his hands generously. “I’ve had so many opportunities to learn tricks and techniques from all sorts of places!” the dark magician gloated. “There’s the Witches of Aesther, the Recusants of Hambra, the elves, the orcs—even the Ixcht have their ways of magic, you know.
Who would have thought it?”
He’s saying that he’s a better magician than me, the Arcanum bristled, reading the slight easily. Obviously, there was no part of the Chief that could accept such an outrageous insult.
“You would do well to remember whose magic you are messing with, before you try—” the Arcanum said in his full glower, the sort of look that would have sent his Enclave students running for their lives.
But in response, the Hexan just took a step forward once more toward the old man. The protective Shield of Sizerius wasn’t overlarge, and instantly the Hexan was uncomfortably close and seemed to enjoy the discomfort that he was reading on the old man’s face.
“Oh, I do remember. I do,” the Hexan purred at the Arcanum, turning with an exaggerated glance below them, back toward the Blood Gate. “I’m passably good with spells and cantrips, I’ll admit that,” the Hexan stated, “but I’ve also been getting lessons from our mutual friend out there.” His implication was clear.
Ung’olut. The Arcanum felt a shiver of real fear. The Queen of the Ungol Realm.
“So, with that in mind, Chief Arcanum,” the Hexan continued, turning back to the ancient methuselah with a friendly smile as if nothing had ever happened. “You know that my Sending worked and that the beastials arrived to soften up the Black Keep, of course?”
“I do,” the Arcanum grumbled.
“Well, you apparently completely forgot to tell me that the Black Keep has a built-in fire moat!” the Hexan said with apparent mirth.
“It does?!” The Arcanum blinked. Of this, he was completely unaware.
“It does. And since our Queen has personally asked me to make sure that her arrival goes without any problems—she wants the screaming crowds of terrified worshippers and all, you know the sort of thing—I have a new task for you. You are going to use all of your great learning and doubtless mighty magic to find a way to destroy the Black Keep. Utterly.”
