Knowing only that a massive weapon or magic was to have been called to use to end a centuries’ old struggle, we had ridden hard to this final meeting. Then we had been struck. Ridden too late, caught in its backlash? Ambushed by other magics to prevent our arrival? No one can say. This and no more we pieced together from the old soldier’s journal of few words and fewer emotions. Most of what we gleaned came from between the lines he wrote. Some went mad and killed themselves, others threw themselves upon those wearing the uniform of the enemy and died in battle.
Others grew determined to live so that we might make our way back, fulfilling our oath to country and queen, and return to family not remembered, yet their loss mourned. We have found other thinking beings on this vastness known as Kerith and have apprenticed many of them to our service. We will lift them, willing or no, by their bootstraps and collars, into an Age they can barely imagine. We will establish our abilities in this new place, exert our control over the elements once again, anchoring our Houses and Strongholds in foreign soil, planting our superiority as deep as any root into this ground. These new Gods can hear us, and we will bend them as we never bent our old Gods, for they are inferior and malleable to us. Through them, we will reach what is rightfully ours again. They fear us, as indeed they should. Some of us will cajole them. Others will hunt them down till they have what they wish.
So begins the forging of our Elven Ways. We will master this earth as we had our old one, searching for the path back.
Foreword Two: A Smoking Tale
THERE ARE MANY TALES TOLD in the smoking dens of the Dwellers and other fair folk of Kerith, passed through the years by retelling and embellishing. This is one such tale, and ought to be heeded, for it is a mainstay of a teller’s pack of stories.
From a haze of herb-scented blue smoke will come the speaker’s voice, in the tradition of toback shop-told stories, interrupted only by the occasional deep draft upon a pipe or the tamping and relighting of its bowl.
“In the beginning came the Dwellers.”
This should not surprise the listener, as the storyteller is generally a Dweller, sturdy if shorter than many of the world’s other races, with a thick shock of hair, weather-marked eyes, and calloused hands.
“We Dwellers are the shepherds of the earth and its children, all which grow and graze upon it. The Gods blessed us with a love of our lives here, and we are a fortunate people. To balance that fortune and love, the Bolgers were born from the dark. Where we build, they destroy. They are not a people as we are, only a near-people, and one might pity them if it were not for their vile natures.”
Smoke will fill the room then, as the listener contemplates, within the pause that has been given for such contemplation, the balancing of the world with good and bad, light and dark.
The storyteller will inhale and accent his next words with a smoke cloud or clever ring. “Kernans came after, a taller people with ambitious souls. If we were the roots, they were the treetops, but they aspired to be mountain peaks. They built great cities, with gates, and armies, and levied taxes to keep their households furnished. It is said that from them sprang the Magi, when magic existed on Kerith. We know the Kernans love to talk to the Gods and in those days, the Gods talked back and even lay with them. Thus came the Mageborn, few but powerful.
“From the Kernans, the Magi bred the tall and arrogant Galdarkans to guard the Magi and their fortresses of magical power. When the Magis destroyed themselves fighting to see who was greatest, it was said the Gods turned against them and stripped all magic away. Not a Mageborn survived. The Kernans were left bowed in humility and guilt for their past as the Galdarkans who survived took over the Empire. They did not hold it long, and there was strife on Kerith. Eventually, all fell.”
The Dweller will pause, waiting patiently for the inevitable question, “What of the Raymy?” If asked, he will answer, if not asked, he will ask the question of himself, with a wreath or two of smoke to accent it.
“What of the Raymy? The Raymy are not a people, as we reckon it. They do not birth young, they do not have compassion, and they cannot be reasoned with. Their existence cannot be fathomed and all we can do is be thankful they were driven back across the great ocean and pray they never return. To this end, the Magi were true, and with the defeat of the great enemy, and only then, did the Magi fall to arguing among themselves and earned the wrath of the Gods.
“As for the Ravers, who can say what they are but a curse upon the living ground, wraiths of the Raymy left behind. Perhaps they are haunts of the Magi, twisted and corrupted and cut off from mortal Kerith. Smarter minds than ours have often contemplated this, with no answers.”
At this point, the toback is usually bolstered with new leaf and tamped and relit carefully while the listener considers his or her own past and how the dread Raymy effected it.
“We had peace for a while, uneasy and slow. The Galdarkans scattered away to the eastern lands, feuding clan lords loyal to Magi of old, fighting one another but leaving us alone. Our farmers and traders rebuilt the free cities, a light but strong spiderweb that wove us all together, and we began to prosper again.
“Then the Gods struck Kerith with a great, resounding blow, the Hammer of the End Days themselves, and when the ground stopped shaking and smoking, the Vaelinars stepped out. If we can call the Bolgers a near-people, then I suppose we must call the Vaelinars a greater-people. High elves from our oldest wish-tales, closest to the Gods without actually being one or a Demon, some say, far nearer to the Gods than the Mageborn ever hoped to be. They came because they were God-ridden, but they do not accept that, and until they do, their lives here on Kerith will remain restless and fraught with anger and difficulty. Some of us they enslaved, others of us they taught and nurtured. They fought against us and have fought for us. Such are they, both light and dark in one people, and strangers amongst us. Yet here they are, and so are counted within our tales as a people of Kerith.”
A last, fragrant cloud of smoke will be exhaled. A moment will pass in case any wish to add or correct the tale, but politeness dictates that it should stand as the teller has related it.
“So be it,” the tale speaker will end.
It is only the ending of one tale, and the beginning of others, or of much argument as to the wisdom of the tale itself, a wheel of life forever churning.
Part I
Chapter One
703 After Empire, Stocking Month by Dweller Calendar
THE LEADEN SKY WEIGHED DOWN on them, as their horses carefully picked out a trail up a treacherous mountain scape with necks and backs bowed against the incline and the cold wind shivering down about them as their hooves sent pebbles and shale clattering downslope. Sevryn pulled his greatcoat close, fanning the high collar around his neck to no avail, for nothing could keep out the bitter wind for long. Red and orange leaves lay flattened to the ground, the thinning tree stands little more than stark branches as they climbed upward. A somber song ran through his head from the last tavern they’d slept in, days ago, about the pursuit of a Vaelinar father after his kidnapped daughter, and the tragedy which ensued, and it fit the mood of the day. The sturdy folk of Kerith and its western city provinces would be salting away meat, preserving the last of their fresh goods, stocking away stores for the bitter winter to come, not far behind the heels of these storm clouds. It would rain again soon, it had to; he could feel the humidity building and the only question in his mind was whether the skies would open up with water, hail, or snow. It felt cold enough for snow but too damp. What did he know of things like that, really, he who preferred bad weather under a stout roof? What he knew of snow he’d learned on trails like this, following after his resolute vagabond teacher.
Riding ahead of him, Gilgarran wore a hooded cloak against the climate, fastened sturdily in front with a series of cloak pins, each a small golden masterpiece of craftsmanship, holding the cloak tightly shut even in the face of the ever increasing wind. Lacings kept the hood secure as well, and although Sevryn had once laughed at the garment, he realized now that his own greatcoat and leather hat served him more poorly, and left his legs bare to the cold and what had been, for days, a frigid, driving rain. It would take him a month to dry out and he doubted that the weather would hold more than another candlemark or two before the sky opened up again.
City-born, he still did not like being out in the open, although he had gotten used to it over his years spent with Gilgarran on one trail or another, in pursuit of goals that often seemed obscure. He did not complain. What lay behind him, in city sewers and middens and back alleys, had always been far worse, and he bore the scars to remind him. However, a midmorning fire and warming brew would be welcome as the weather closed in about them, Stocking month indeed, before the snows and harsher times descended. “How much farther up the mountain lives this friend of yours?”
Gilgarran reined to a halt, and turned his horse toward Sevryn. “I am not sure.”
Their gazes met. “He is a friend,” Sevryn said, his voice rising slightly, almost making a question of it.
Gilgarran dropped his gloved hands to the withers of his mount. “Actually, he is more of an acquaintance than a friend. If that.”
“Which explains why the directions to his abode have been a bit obscure.”
“Indeed.” Gilgarran’s mount twitched slightly as if betraying a nervousness under his equine skin that his rider’s neutral expression refused to convey. Gilgarran had the agelessness of all Vaelinars, along with the high cheekbones, the slightly pointed ears, the eyes of brilliant gem-like colors, his of green and blue-green, a nice counterpoint to his amber hair. He wore an ear stud of a two-carat aquamarine as if to accent his eyes further. “Does that concern you?”
Sevryn’s dapple-gray gelding stamped the ground, telegraphing further what neither man allowed to ripple through their eyes or slightly smiling mouths. Sevryn stretched his legs in the stirrups and resettled as Gilgarran teased at his loyalty. “I would ask, does it concern you?”
“It does.”
“Then it worries me, for what concerns you can devastate me.” Sevryn grinned then, wryly, one corner of his mouth lifting as it had the habit of doing.
Gilgarran turned his face, glancing up the rough mountain scape, its peak hidden by the lowering cloud banks of blue and ever darkening grays. “This,” he said slowly, “is why I found and began to train you.”
Sevryn felt his crooked grin fade. Nearly twenty years under Gilgarran’s tutelage and he no longer asked why he’d been taken in and trained, grateful only that this one Vaelinar did not look down upon him or question his half-blood lineage or wish him dead. His hand tightened imperceptibly on the reins, and he shifted his weight slightly, taking stock of the various weapons in holsters and sleeves placed discreetly about his body.
Gilgarran gestured with his gloved hand toward the broken peaks. “Up there, if I am right, we will enter into a supposed alliance or, if I am wrong, we’ll make a formidable enemy. I shall know where we are going, but you have to mark it, too.”
Few words, but enough to quicken his pulse. No more questions now.
Gilgarran worked alone, save for him, and there would be no rescue to follow, and if there were recriminations to be had by their actions, the two of them alone would bear them. He knew this and had agreed to it long ago. The astiri, the way, would be but a single thread among all those that were natural in the elemental weaving of the world, and ought to shine through to him like a newly minted copper bit tossed in a clear pool of rainwater for a midsummer’s wish.
Sevryn took a shallow breath to steady himself, then opened his senses as Gilgarran had been teaching him these past decades, and let the essence of the elements about them fill him. The moment came with awe. He would never grow used to it, the rushing wealth of sensory information filling him. He felt the tiny creatures huddled underground against the storm in their crooks, caves, and boles of the world. The trees below hugging the stony mountain in the thinning air and water, their roots going deep even while their gnarled branches waited for whatever sun might strike them. He knew the birds in their nests and holds, wings tucked in sleep. He could feel the seeds which would stir to life in the spring, and he could hear and taste the river that ran through the roots of these peaks, underground, through cave and cavern and deep into the broken rock of the earth, before it tumbled free onto the greening valleys and became a true river. All this and more, he felt in an instant.
He also felt the moment that was coming upon them and what it could mean, as well as where it would happen. The prescience danced upon the raw nerves of his body. There were moments when everything in life could change, and one of them approached.
Sevryn opened his eyes, reflecting only the gray of the stormy sky overhead, and nodded to Gilgarran. He had the astiri firmly in his mind now and knew the path leading around and above to the man-made holdings they sought. Moreover, he tasted the soot of the stronghold’s forges in the air, heard the pound of hammer and tong, and knew the bite of hot iron being cooled in troughs of water drawn from the mountain’s underground streams. He could feel the flesh huddled, tired and sore, in the work camps riddling the caverns above, enslaved and miserable.
Formidable enemy, indeed. The forge which lay above them, hidden among the twisting crags and buttes, was not the simple ironworks of the Kernans on the eastern plains, devoted to basic breastplates and short swords for the ever quibbling Bolger tribes or the independent Galdarkans. No. The enclave he felt moved in full production, amassing weapons and armor, in direct violation of the Accords. No wonder the secrecy.