Copyright © 2005 by Robert Marston Fannéy,
All art © 2005 by Siya Oum
Original maps, runes and symbols copyright © 2005 by Robert Marston Fannéy
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Convention
Published in the United States by Dark Forest Press
Edited by Matthew Friedman
www.luthielssong.com
Original copyright of first written materials
Copyright © 1997 by Robert Marston Fannéy
Cover art and interior art by Siya Oum
Cover design by Matthew Friedman
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fannéy, Robert
Dreams of the Ringed Vale/ Robert Fannéy
p. cm. (Luthiel’s Song ; bk. 1)
SUMMARY: In the elfin land of Minonowe, a fifteen-year-old orphan named Luthiel embarks on a dangerous journey to save her beloved foster sister Leowin. On the way, she encounters sorcerers, werewolves, dragons, monstrous spiders and Vyrl. Through her adventures—both in the world of Oesha and in the world of dreams—she learns that nothing, not even her own life, is what it seems.
ISBN 0-9764226-0-3
To all of those women ~
Strong enough to be heroes;
Fair enough to be ladies.
This song is for you.
CONTENTS
The Lilting
Prologue: A Dispatch of the Lord Tuorlin
Book I
Luthiel
Leowin
The Wyrd Stone
A Blade Dancer Comes
The Chosen
Silent Farewell
Into the World of Dreams
Race to the Vale
The Sorceror’s House
A Night Terror
Spiders and Werewolves
Into the Vale of Mists
The Cave of Painted Shadows
A Castle in the Mists
The Vyrl
Book II
The Mists’ Changing Magic
Melkion the Dragon
Summoned by Monsters
The Blood of Vlad Valkire
Rendillo the Grendilo
The Pools of Ottomnos
Ashiroth’s Army
Luthiel’s Promise
Seven Ride To Ottomnos
A Darkness in Dreams
A Black Curse
Lady of Ottomnos
Gift of the Bond
A Brief Rest
Cutter’s Shear~the Sword of Vlad Valkire
Armies Gather
A Secret Council
Vaelros’s Tale
A Piece of a Shadow Crown
Of Thrar Taurmori the Demon Lord
Do No Harm Without Need
How The Widdershae Came to Be
Escape Plans
Farewell to Ottomnos
Appendices
Appendix I: The Elfin Runes
Appendix II: The Suns and Moons of Oesha
Glossary
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Bonus Material
Preview of The War of Mists
Luthiel's Song Concept Art
The Lilting
Silver slips that ringed Vale
The mists that curled the air
Cupped in stone like snowy fists
All wreathed in gossamer
Lunen danced,
Her silken beams
A gauntlet to the night
And nine they rode
Their fiery steeds
To brave false mornings’ light
Hey ho! Said he
The grim faced god
Whom winds named Vlad Valkire
His fist clenched strong
His sword—slim, long
Cold—wrought
Dubbed Cutter’s Shear
Which clove the air
And set the night
Ablaze with starlight fire
Shear clove to heart
Undid Undeath
Damned Vyrl
And slew desire
The nine danced
Sacred lilting shades
To Vlad In rebel’s song
Who reigned over Vyrl
Brought death to life
And freed the cursed chained long
When all was won
The battle done
Of nine
But three remained
A pact they made
An oath of blood
To purge the murderer’s stain
So they grew
Again to shine
Like angels
Of Ëavanya and Ëavanar
Aedar
Of old,
Daughter of Elquellia
And sons of Evanestar
From his charred glass throne
Vlad reigned O’er all
Goblin, elf and Vyrl
For three hundred years
Summer to summer
With neither blight nor quarrel
Till black moon dreams
Scarred his nights
And in winter’s nightmare
He roamed
So he returned
To Lenidras of old
To craft
His last two stones
Of wyrd they were
Of dreaming sighs
Of fancies strange and light
Dim colored one
Cool as breezes
A drifting rim of night
The second danced
Like starshine lingers
Upon the ocean’s hair
One for his sire
One for his mother
Both old wounds to repair
But with her first touch
The lady fell to sleep
And dreams of Gorothoth
Where she yet fights
The strange lord’s spell
Of winter cold and dark
But with her loss
Into madness
His grim sire fell
His cry pierced the forest
Aroused the Sith
His words a demon’s spell
From tree and vale
From crag and rock
His might flew out to do battle
But Vlad received him
Cast down his Shear
Ordered his soldiers
“Bare no metal!”
So Vlad Valkire
Met the rage of his sire
Whose name may never be spoken
Vlad gave up his Shear
With words of love
With words of wrath
The cold wrought blade was broken
Now Shear all shards,
His hand once strong
Now weak in dying strains
Unleashed blood,
And his wraith
Cries out to kin
From those gleaming stains
For now my friends
Of Vlad Valkire
And his Love
Merrin of ocean waves
We know but this—
She sleeps in grief
As he lingers
On tongue of father’s blade
The three they grieve
With starving wail
The loss of their boon lord
And twist to bind
Their long held oath
Sealed by the bite and sword
To dance in mists
To hunt their bond
To grant, guide and receive
And sing with songs
The dance lilt long
With kin and sow fate’s seed
Pro
logue: A Dispatch
of the Lord Tuorlin
Mithorden ~
Old friend, if there were ever a time when I had need of your counsel then it is now. My trouble comes from the Vale of Mists where a great vapor builds, boiling over the hills that encircle it, creeping out into the land, molding the flesh of every beast or branch it touches. Now, creatures of strange magic walk abroad both day and night. I fear that this anger in the mists is merely a sign that the Vale’s terrible gods ~ the Vyrl ~ have become enraged. They dispatched their messenger to Ithilden only yester-eve demanding us to send another child. She will be the fourth sent this year ~ as though one a year were not enough! Now they demand four! When word gets out, I’ll have all the swords in Ithilden screaming to me for war.
The Vyrl have brought too many years of loss. Too many mothers weep over children sent, far too many, who now lay dead in the vapor. Far too few returned, and those like me, who have, bear scars that serve only as angry reminders.
In all my years, I’ve never seen such fury among the lords. They call upon me to loose the Blade Dancers, to bid them hunt the werewolf Othalas before he takes another to the Vyrl’s waiting mouths. The Kingdoms who received the message just tonight send emissaries of war to Ithilden. Zalos, Lord of Ashiroth, sends word that he is coming to address me, personally, and has already pledged a thousand of his most fierce wolf-riders.
My friend, I have long dreaded this day! For though I hate the Vyrl more than most and I judge Valkire’s promise to them for what it was ~ the last desperate act of a dying god, I, of any, should know that to fight them is folly.
The lords, I fear, will not be turned. When they look at me, they see only what the mists have marred. But with the Vale’s gift I have glimpsed a danger, more terrible than any I have yet foreseen, rising up from the ashes of this war. My counsel will be for peace but I fear that even my voice will be silenced.
So it is, in this darkening hour that I call you, my friend. Your wise words and steady hand are needed, more than ever. Perhaps you, who walked with Valkire, could sway the lords. Zalos’ mind is already set and to my advice its windows have long been shuttered. So I ask you to come with all speed to Ithilden! I will wait and watch. Come soon! Though it is summer, I fear the light is already starting to fail.
Yours in need,
The High Lord Tuorlin
Master of Ithilden, Keeper of the West Wind,
Bearer of the Sacred Eye, Who sits on the Starlight Throne
Luthiel
To be me is to be different, she thought as she watched them, from her place apart from them, upon the hillside.
And there was much to watch. For everywhere across the Minonowe, and where she lived in Flir Light Hollow, elves were preparing for celebration.
They were festooning trees with glowing flir bug bulbs, baking delicious almorah cakes, and rolling out giant gourds filled with the best summer’s wine. Master Alderdalf’s pixies were hard at work under the woven canopy of his voluminous fae holme turning out specially prepared fireworks. Loud popping tindersnaps, eek-eeking neekerbeeks, bright flaring fizzleflashes, and the scaly Romas Dragons lay in red, green, orange and silver stacks outside. Lady Lutendrah was busy tying ribbons to her famous pandur’s boxes (you never knew what would pop out). Even the otherwise grim-faced elves of the Dark Forest seemed to brighten as they drank toasts to the day—First Summer’s Eve.
As she watched them, a lively wind rose up, dancing through the trees, swatting gold and silver ripples across the lake shore, before riding up the hill on which she stood. The breeze played in the branches about her, but the swaying of her arms and the gentle curves of her neck were just as graceful. From her head flowed hair the color of moonlight. It spilled over leaf-shaped ears before falling down shoulders so supple they belied the gentle strength that lay beneath. Clothes of forest green embroidered with silver lay across skin as fair as a cloud. Eyes, which shone like green-blue stars, rested beneath softly sloping brows.
Even elves thought of her as beautiful—if a little strange. And sometimes she would hear them teasing that she’d arisen from the wyrd of sea foam or was born to earth in the cradle of a crescent moon floating down upon the gloaming. For she was an orphan and no one knew her parents.
Though the elves welcomed her, accepting her as one of their own, she could always sense that they held her apart. She bore it with a kind of sad resignation. But she always wondered:
Why do they treat me this way?
Am I not an elf like them? she would think. Why can’t they see me as Leowin does?
For her foster sister Leowin was the only one who treated her as though she were no different.
Luthiel smiled at the thought and sniffed the air. She sighed and let all the happy sounds, all the various smells, wash over her. It was going to be quite a party. Fitting, because this was the day she turned fifteen, or near enough as her foster parents Glendoras and Winowe could reckon. Some asked her if she cared that her birthday also fell on the night of First Summer’s Eve. But she only laughed.
“Can you think of a better day?” she would ask them in return. And what better day to be born than on the day that the world shook off the darkness? What happier time to celebrate than when everyone else was celebrating?
She secretly fantasized that the reason for all the hubbub, the cause for all this happy commotion, was her birthday. And she smiled to herself when the first thing they said to her was—“Happy Birthday, Luthiel!” followed by “Happy First Summer’s Eve!”
Leowin
Luthiel felt a hand tap her shoulder and turned around just in time to glimpse Leowin’s ruddy face before she sprang up into the leafy canopy.
“You’re tapped!” she could hear her cry from her hiding place among the leaves. A shower of laughter soon followed.
Her sister, though a year older than Luthiel, was three inches shorter. Wild strands of gold spilled down to her shoulder blades and light blue eyes shone at her from the shadows. Leowin wore colors that made it easier for her to hide—green and brown—and her sure footed, supple frame was well practiced in the arts of jumping, climbing and hanging.
“Leowin you flutterfler!” Luthiel cried and bounded up after her.
Leaves smacked her face as she sprang, faster than a tree frog, from branch to branch. Some of the branches were more than ten feet apart. Luthiel’s springs were long and her balance sure. Her tiptoes found purchase on each branch for only an instant before she was flying off through the air again leaping as surely and gracefully as a bird on a rope.
When it became plain to Leowin that Luthiel had found her, she shot up from her hiding place like a thrush flushed from the bushes with a happy cry bounding from limb to limb as if they were stairs.
“Can’t catch me!” Leowin taunted.
“You’re not getting away!” Luthiel cried back, then leapt gracefully through the air skipping two of the branches Leowin had just used and landing on a third. Luthiel was catching up to her fast. Soon now, she’d tap Leowin and then it would be her turn to run.
Leowin loved to play tap-and-turn and she’d found a hundred little tree hollows and crevices to hide in. Luthiel was often surprised by Leowin’s cunning; by the sly tricks she’d play and by a hundred planned escapes. But Luthiel was faster. So each played to their advantage. Luthiel was almost within reach of Leowin. She stretched her hand before her— mere inches away from Leowin’s back.
“No you don’t!” Leowin gasped.
Sudden as raindrops, Leowin leapt off the branch she was standing on and into mid-air.
The Wyrd Stone
Luthiel felt her heart rise into her throat. She watched helplessly as Leowin’s body rushed toward the ground, more than fifty feet below.
She lunged, stretching out a hand to grasp her, but the plummeting Leowin was already out of reach. Before she hit ground, Leowin lifted her arms above her head and pointed her toes. Her face, staring up at Luthiel, bore a wide grin.
What was
she doing?
Suddenly, Luthiel’s eyes refocused and she saw the lily pads beneath Leowin part as her toes touched them, revealing a sparkling pool of water.
Splash! Leowin disappeared beneath the surface and didn’t come up. Luthiel sighed.
“That puk,” she said.
Luthiel didn’t give up easily, though, so she ran along, hopping from tree-limb to tree-limb, tracing the lily pads that were disturbed as Leowin swam beneath the water. Luthiel hid herself in a thick patch of leaves, watching from the shadows as Leowin pulled herself from the water, made her way through a moss patch, then turned toward East Wind Road.
Luthiel was quiet—silent as any ghost fly—but Leowin was quieter.
Luthiel dropped from branch to branch like a shadow. Staying within sight of Leowin was the real trick. She dared not to even blink lest she lose the sneaker. Little by little, she closed the distance between them. Within a hundred heartbeats, she was a mere ten feet behind and above Leowin, gathering her legs beneath her for a pounce.
She shot through the air, spreading her arms wide like wings. An instant later, her arms encircled Leowin and they tumbled through the underbrush.
“Aaaaeeeeeaaaaaaa!” Leowin yelled in surprise and fought to escape. Luthiel struggled to grasp the flailing Leowin. Head over heels they tumbled, rolling back and forth, this way and that, until; at last, they somersaulted onto the speckled cobbles of East Wind Road. Luthiel ended up on top. She grabbed Leowin’s shoulders and pinned her against the stones.
“Caught you!” Luthiel cried.
With those words, Leowin stopped wriggling and looked up at Luthiel with a big grin on her face. With her free hand, she started digging at her belt.
Luthiel's Song: Dreams of the Ringed Vale Page 1