Instead, he spoke, and the Shadow that had spread to the edges of the horizon stood still. In the east rose Aurora, hand outstretched to hold back the darkness. She blazed with orange and golden light. In the west, Vespera rose up, hedging in the night with brilliant reds and purples. Ram spoke again, and the immortals gasped as countless points of light broke through the night above them. Vega was illuminating the darkness with a thousand silver stars. Her sister, Selene, soon followed, appearing low on the horizon, shining round and pale against the black sky.
So the darkness was contained, held in check by sunrise and sunset, and moon and stars kept the night from ever reigning supreme in Shiloh. Then Ram returned to the Mount of the Immortals, and his children followed, but Rurik lingered in the Shadow. He felt no sorrow for what he had done. Rather, he felt a sense of wicked delight, for he believed he had created something more powerful than any force in Shiloh. And that made Rurik, in his own mind, the greatest of all the immortals.
Ezra’s words rushed over them like wind, like water. They breathed them in, lapped them up, yearning to hear and to know, at last, the truth that had hovered, all their lives, just outside their reach.
It did not take long for Rurik to convince Riannon to partner with him again in creation, for though she harbored some regret, still she felt more of a kinship with Rurik than with any of the other immortals. One night, far from the Mount, Rurik and Riannon gave life to two daughters and a son. Infinite freedom and dark ambition gave birth to Fury, Savage, and Miri. Riannon never questioned her decision until the Shadow Wolves came.
While Ram and the Bright Immortals reveled in the beauty of their work (stained though it was by the Shadow), Rurik reveled in the power of his. He wore the darkness like a cloak, as a sign of his strength. And like his father, Savage loved nothing better than to dwell always in darkness. The two shared many visions of dark things, but their greatest collaboration spawned the Shadow Wolves: not one beast, or even a few, but a host of wicked wolves who moved silently through the night, stalking their victims and devouring them with darkness. They filled the forests of Shiloh, using the Shadow to prey on the innocent.
One evening, Riannon hovered on the edge of a meadow not far from the castle where she and Rurik now dwelt. As she watched Vespera rise up and usher in the night, a doe crept into the open with her young fawn. Riannon watched them with a sort of motherly tenderness. Her children had never been babes, had never been helpless, but they were born from her heart and mind, and she was fond of them and fiercely protective. Riannon’s thoughts were interrupted by a low, calculating growl and a sudden rustle of leaves. She watched as doe and fawn fled in fear from the Shadow Wolf, as the monster overtook them and tore them limb from limb. It was more than Riannon could bear, for it was she and Leander who first shared the vision of soft eyes and red-brown fur, of delicate legs and twitching ears. No creator, no mother could endure the sight of such vicious cruelty. She raced home, full of horror over the part she had played in Rurik’s dark work and fearing his next move. Only Miri could be found near the castle, so Riannon snatched her daughter into her arms and made for the Mount of the Immortals.
Riannon was wild and swift indeed, and she would have been long safe in the Hall of the Immortals had not Fury seen her rushing from their home. Fury felt betrayed for her father’s sake and her own. In her haste, Riannon had rescued her youngest daughter but spared no time to seek out her eldest. Fury raced to her father in a rage and told him of Riannon’s betrayal.
Cloaked in darkness, and moving with enormous speed and stealth, he tracked mother and daughter to the river. Riannon was moving lightly over the water, hardly rippling its surface, but Miri had pulled away from her and hung back. Something about the water frightened Miri, filling her mind with dark visions. Her hesitation was Rurik’s invitation. He leapt from the riverbank, throwing the full force of his strength against Miri and forcing her beneath the surface of the water. She thrashed and struggled, and the fight was bitter, but the outcome was inescapable. Not even an immortal can overpower her creator.
A shudder ran through the river, and Miri was no more. She dissolved in a haze of black that spread through every ripple, raced along every current, leached its poison into every drop of water. The water nymphs could not escape. Their sparkling eyes dulled to pale blue and livid green, and their bodies fell into decay.
Riannon, once wild as the wind, was still as stone. Anguish and sorrow and rage and regret swept over her with such force that she could neither move nor speak. She hovered over the water, watching the river darken to the shade of her daughter’s blood, until Rurik bound her in such chains as only the immortals know and carried her back to his castle.
Ezra paused in his telling, and the room was still until Isolde broke the silence with a thought and a question.
“I’ve never heard the story of Riannon so told, Ezra. Why?”
“Too much has been lost, too much forgotten. You will understand soon enough, Isolde.” He let out a slow breath and began again.
So began the War of the Immortals, for the murder of Miri and the capture of Riannon were crimes too unspeakable to be ignored. Yet the battles of the Bright and Dark Immortals (as they came to be called), and all that was risked and lost, and the great and terrible deeds that were done live, in their entirety, only in the minds of the immortals. Little is known, for Ram thought the accounts too grievous to be recorded. In the end, the Bright Immortals were victorious, but not before the birth of another generation of immortals and the creation of man. This is how it happened . . .
The immortals did not primarily battle with weapons of war. Rather, they fought with the greatest power they possessed: the power to create. They believed that creating other immortals to oppose the work of the enemy was the surest road to victory. The Bright brought forth Olwen and Shula, Penelope and Colm, Ezra and Oriole and Cyrus. These all were born into a world at war, and, for a time, they knew nothing else. Nothing of the wonder of Shiloh in its infancy, when the dew was still wet on the grass, and not a petal of a single flower was darkened by the Shadow.
Rurik took a new name. He became Ulff (the Wolf), ruler of the Dark Immortals. He and his children also battled creatively, though they always gave life to dark and horrible imaginings. Morrison and Erebus, Tacitus and Hadrian, Cecilia and Leto never knew the rule of Ram or any world apart from the Shadow, but it suited their nature, and they served the Shadow Lord without question. Meanwhile, Riannon languished in the bowels of the prison that was once her home. Sorrow and regret were her only companions as, outside in the wide world, the immortals sought to destroy each other.
For the listeners, the immortals suddenly came to life. They had heard of Linden and Olwen, of Morrison and Erebus. But until this night, the immortals had never had faces. Penelope, Giver of Dreams, took on form and shape and purpose. She was born out of need, to heal a broken world. And she was only one of many.
“Ezra?” Isolde was first to find a voice. “You’re the Ezra o’ the story? An immortal? A god?” She meant no insult. It merely came as a shock to discover that she had spoken and eaten with one who had watched the passing of thousands of years of history.
“Indeed, Isolde,” he replied.
“And Hadrian,” Amos added. He and Simeon had exchanged glances as soon as the name was mentioned.
“It was he who led the shifters into battle against Evander and his men,” Ezra explained.
The Nelya were born during the War of the Immortals, springing from the minds of Vega and Shula. Music too, and story were created to battle the deep, empty silence that Tacitus brought into Shiloh. Ulff created the shifters with the help of Cecilia, and these became one of his very favorite creations. He used them to murder Colm and Cyrus, disguising his servants as Bright Immortals and luring the two into a trap. That was a very dark moment in the war, and it was the moment when Ram stepped in.
To contain the destruc
tion, Ram had to limit the power of the immortals. No longer could they create gods or monsters, nothing bright and strong enough to dwell in the Mount of the Immortals, nothing wicked enough to blanket the world in eternal darkness or sorrow. The immortals could create nothing that would last forever.
So flowers budded and bloomed and shriveled and died, and others rose up to take their place. So the animals fed on one another and were eaten in their turn. So summer turned to winter and dawn to darkest night. And the mighty immortals were humbled. Now nothing they made could either draw Shiloh closer to its former glory or draw it down into death at last.
For a time, the fighting ceased. A great silence settled over the land. The Bright and Dark Immortals were suspended at opposing ends of a strange and fleeting peace. They waited, and the world was still.
Then Ram began again. He had been dreaming of a new creation, something still resembling himself, but altogether different from the immortals. This creature would be limited, bound by flesh and blood and bone. It would bear the mark of Ram, but neither Ram nor any of the immortals would hold power over it. “It will be altogether free,” Ram thought, and in his heart he felt a pang for his lovely Riannon. So, one shining morning as Aurora welcomed the sun into the Mount of the Immortals, Ram made Man. And because he wished for Man to multiply, and because his sons and daughters always created in partnership with one another, he made Woman. Ram called them Children of the Morning. He clothed them with fragments of his own glory, and they shone bright, brighter even than the sun.
Ram was indeed so pleased with his work that he held a great feast and invited all the immortals to come and bestow gifts upon the Children of the Morning. He invited not only the Bright Immortals, but the Dark as well, being firmly set in his wish that Man and Woman should be utterly free to do as they chose, and this confounded his sons and daughters. Their war with Ulff and his children had not yet been won, and they feared their brother would send his armies against the Mount.
But their fear proved unfounded, for Ulff regarded his invitation to the feast with suspicion. Thinking that Ram had laid him a trap, Ulff remained in his castle during the whole of the celebration. In the end, only Leto, the youngest of the Dark, traveled to the Mount of the Immortals and quietly observed from an unseen corner.
Man and Woman stood together before the Seat of Ram, robed in green and blue and bright silver. Leander and Vali were the first to step forward. They blessed Man with boldness and courage. Next, Petra and Callista endowed Woman with strength and beauty. And there were many more gifts: gifts of craft, of dreaming and magic (Olwen blessed Man and Woman with power. Their hands, their voices, even their thoughts could shape the world around them). There was no greater moment in the history of Man, and if the moment had lasted, if Man and Woman had lingered in that glory, the history of Shiloh might have been very different.
If only Leto had not been there, watching from the shadows as the Bright claimed this new race for their own. Leto was mistress of all things hidden and forgotten. Her eyes were dull, and she was careless, but her power was immense. As the Bright Immortals grudgingly drew aside and Ram waited in silence, Leto walked slowly up to Man and Woman, lifted her hand, and swept it in an arc before the faces of the Children of the Morning.
“What you know, you will not long remember
Your names, your bright glory will fade.
You’ll surrender your gifts to the Shadow
And forget by whose hand you were made.”’
“No!” Isolde cried out. For Orin and Simeon and Amos, the feeling was much the same. As the story unfolded, their anticipation had turned to dread. They knew to what end the tale must come, and their anguish was as great as if Man had been cursed only yesterday.
“We felt as you do, Isolde,” Ezra said. “We pleaded with Ram. But he would not break the curse any more than he would annihilate Leto.”
“Why not?” Simeon asked.
Ezra shook his head as he answered. “Only Ram could say. I know he was grieved, though, as grieved as Ulff was delighted when he heard of Leto’s ‘gift.’”
It was not many days before everything changed. Man and Woman, like the last generation of the immortals, had only ever known a Shiloh that hung in the balance between day and night, between sun and shadow. When Aurora rose at dawn and welcomed the sun, Man and Woman were fearless and bold, powerful and beautiful, and their radiance outshone the sun. But as Vespera ushered in the close of the day and darkness settled over Shiloh, they forgot their boldness, forgot that morning would indeed come again. They were afraid, and their glory was dimmed. They forgot their creator, their gifts, their allies. Even Selene, the shining moon, and Vega, who lit the darkness with ten thousand stars, could not convince Ram’s last creation of any world filled with light and color. And every night was the same, until Ulff came.
The Shadow Lord left his dark castle, crossed the River Meander, now black with his daughter’s blood, and prowled through the night in search of Man and Woman. When he found them huddled beneath the branches of a willow tree, trembling with fear, he disguised himself, exchanging his cloak of darkness for a robe of brilliant white. He smiled as he spoke.
“Children of the Morning,” he said, calling them by their true names, “why do you cower in the dark?”
“We are alone and afraid,” Man replied. “We cannot rest, cannot move from this place, or the darkness will devour us.”
“In my kingdom,” Ulff said, “there is no one who fears the night.”
Man and Woman were awed by his glory, and they longed to be free from their fear.
“Ram has abandoned you,” Ulff continued. “There is nothing for you here.”
Man and Woman watched as the Shadow pulled away from the glaring light of his countenance, the leaves of the willow tree standing out in relief, vivid green against the black night beyond. They thought nothing of the soft glow emanating from their own skin.
The Shadow Lord extended a shining hand. “Come,” he said. His eyes flickered with malice. “Come with me.”
Blinded and deceived, forgetting everything that mattered, the Children of the Morning followed their new lord into the very heart of darkness. And when the great iron gates of his castle closed behind them, Riannon’s screams rang through the air. She vanished out of the world forever, leaving her chains on the floor of the dungeon.
Isolde raged against the blindness, the stupidity of the Children of the Morning. How could Man and Woman be so easily, so thoroughly deceived? How could they have chosen the darkness?
Again, Ram stepped in, and what the people of Shiloh would later call the Great Cataclysm was nothing more or less than the victory of the Bright in the War of the Immortals. Man and Woman had chosen the darkness. Their decision could not be undone, but Ulff’s kingdom could be contained. So Ram and his children, full of righteous fury over the death of Riannon and the capture of the Children of the Morning, did battle against the Shadow. They broke up the very foundations of Shiloh to set a boundary around Ulff and his kingdom.
Petra tore away at the ground, thrusting up the Pallid Peaks and the Black Mountains to the north and west of Shadow Castle. Maya, still grieving the death of the water nymphs, changed the courses of the rivers and broke open the fountains of the deep to form a great sea to the east of the castle. Linden called the trees to his aid, setting them in ranks to guard the darkness. Leander and Vali came in like the tide, driving the Shadow Wolves before them. And Ram, flanked by the gods of morning and evening, of star and sun, closed in on the Shadow, forcing it to its knees in one small corner of Shiloh. There Ulff and his children would be imprisoned forever, while light and glory and beauty reigned supreme and unchallenged in the wide world.
Still, Ulff had his captives, and his revenge. He took Leto into his every confidence, for it was she whose curse had delivered the Children of the Morning into his hands, and it was she who touched the
rivers with a careless finger and infused every drop of black water with the awful power of her curse.
“Only the rivers?” Amos asked, remembering with regret his father’s warning.
“Yes,” Ezra replied. “Ram would not allow her to poison all the waters, even in the Shadow Realm. In fact, the water from the lakes and springs is healing water. It is a counter to Leto’s curse.” Here he smiled. “That is Maya’s gift to the Children of the Morning.” He returned his gaze to the firelight and finished the story.
Man and Woman had made their choice, and instead of waking from a nightmare, they woke into one. And the worst of it, the greatest tragedy of all was that the Children of the Morning had forgotten the dawn. They woke in a world of Shadow, a world drained of color and beauty, and they did not weep.
But Ram would not leave them without hope. He sent Shula, the Flaming One to give the gift of fire. “May the light shine upon you,” she said, and she placed a flaming torch in Man’s hand and vanished. Then Ram brought to life one last immortal. Omega rose up from the Mount itself, as strong and solid as the rocks from which she had sprung, and prophesied an end to Man’s captivity.
“The Children of the Morning will dwell in darkness,” she said, “only until the day breaks and the Shadows flee away.”
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