by Steven Drake
The executioner admired Galen’s knowledge, his wisdom, and his experience, but they often quarreled. Galen was a man of deep convictions, high-minded and virtuous, while Darien was detached, dispassionate, and pragmatic. Their discussions invariably devolved into arguments about what Darien considered meaningless trifles.
Rana, the human woman who had come with Jerris and Darien to Kadanar after trying and failing to kill Darien, was something else entirely. He had a deep respect for her tenacity and her fierce warrior spirit. He found his practice sessions with her invaluable, yet he never felt entirely comfortable around her. It was not hostility or distrust, as it had been when they’d first come to the valley, but something more inexplicable. Around her, he felt tense, edgy, and irrationally anxious. He found it difficult to look her in the eyes, and he never could focus quite as well when she was present. Nevertheless, this only served to increase the challenge when training, so it was not entirely disadvantageous.
“Well, Galen, I take it what you have to show us is important?”
“It is. What I will show you is among the deepest secrets of our people. Come.” Galen led them off towards the Ivory Hall, with its immaculate, seamless white stone walls, and colored glass windows. They passed through the ebon doors, and down a hallway, then down a staircase, through another hallway, across a corridor, and finally down another set of stairs. They passed through what must have once been a dungeon of some kind, but it seemed that no one had used it in centuries. Large barrels and boxes were stacked haphazardly in some of the cells while others were empty and still others some were filled with unidentifiable ores, colored stones, or moth eaten cloth. When they had come to the end of the main corridor of the dungeon, they came to a heavy looking door, made of black stone like the doors of the Ivory Hall itself. Galen produced a key from a hidden pocket, and turned it in the lock. The keyhole lit up momentarily, and the door groaned and creaked as it opened into an empty passageway. They proceeded down the passage until they came to a raised metal platform with a pedestal in the middle. Galen waved a hand and the platform began to descend into the earth. It descended slowly at first, but gradually picked up speed. After a minute or two, Darien noticed a light below them, which quickly grew brighter as they descended.
“What is this?” Darien asked.
Before he received an answer, there was a bright flash, and the walls around the platform had disappeared. They were in a wide, open cavern, mammoth in proportion, far larger even than the dwarf city at Vorog. Darien marveled at the power it must have taken to create such a thing. The ceiling glimmered and shone with luminescent crystals, red, blue, green, white, and yellow. As they descended, the crystals receded in size, becoming shining stars dotting an artificial sky. More lights hung randomly here and there in the air, without any apparent support.
Darien looked down, and saw what appeared to be a forest of some kind. The trees appeared white, or perhaps silver, and reflected the light of the cavern, and they contrasted sharply with the dark surface below. As the trees grew nearer, the lift slowed, then came to a stop at the floor of the cavern. The visitors stepped off and looked around. They were standing in a large open space far from any of the trees. The floor glistened with flecks of silver like dew on a meadow, shifting and blinking irregularly. The ground was soft, like a bed of moss, but it was uniformly and perfectly flat and level.
“This is the true nature of Kadanar,” Galen spoke solemnly. “Welcome to the Forest of the Sleepers.”
“Why is it called that?” Jerris asked curiously.
“Come, and you will see,” Galen replied as he started off towards the nearest grove of silvery trees. As they drew near to the trees, it became apparent that they were crystalline formations similar to those on the ceiling, grown into the shape of trees and frozen in eternal winter. The crystals were all arrow straight, with neat and regular patterns of branches that branched again into handfuls of needle-like leaves. That alone would have been strange enough, but as the two half-elves drew near, they beheld a sight that made even Darien the Executioner gasp. Within each of the tapering needles, were elves, male and female in roughly equal numbers with many children as well, all frozen as the trees themselves.
“What is this?” Darien gasped. “Is this a burial ground?”
“No,” Galen replied. “These elves are sleeping, not dead. When we realized we could not defeat the formless ones, we devoted much of our remaining power to creating this place. Those you see here were volunteers who have entered into a kind of hibernation we call the unending dream. They await the time of prophecy, when we can finally rebuild our kingdom.”
“Why wait for a prophecy?” Darien questioned. “Surely with so many, you could easily build a new home somewhere.”
“You may be right, but we would be taking a great risk,” the silver haired elf explained. “They can only be awakened once, and cannot be put back to sleep. We simply no longer possess the magical arts. There are tens of thousands sleeping, many more than this valley can support. The last Tolmirran King proclaimed that they should only be awakened at the time of prophecy, and so only a new King may issue the command to wake the sleepers.” Jerris gulped audibly, likely realizing that this responsibility would ultimately fall upon him. Darien sighed inwardly, feeling something like pity for the lad. He had his own burden to bear, but somehow the prospect of being responsible for so many lives seemed even worse than the Demon Sword.
“I knew that the ancient elves were powerful, but I never imagined they, or anyone, would be capable of something like this. What terrible, wondrous power…” Darien trailed off, truly at a loss for words to describe his thoughts at that moment. “I assume this is what you wanted to show us.”
“Actually, no,” Galen replied. “The Forest of the Sleepers is indeed a guarded secret, but not our greatest. What I mean to show you is just beyond this place.” The lorekeeper weaved his way through the trees toward what appeared to be the outer wall, a yellowish gray, slightly iridescent surface that seemed dull compared to the starry ceiling, crystalline trees, and glittering cavern floor. They shortly arrived at a seemingly unremarkable point on the outer wall, but as Galen approached it, he waved his hand, and a section of the wall simply fell away, breaking into thousands of tiny grains of sand which gathered themselves into a pile just to the right of the empty hole that remained. They passed through the opening, and on through a tunnel just wide and tall enough to pass single file. A light shone at the end of this tunnel, brighter than the lights of the cavern, perhaps twenty or thirty feet away.
When they passed out of the tunnel, they entered a second cavern, much smaller than the first, but even more wondrous, for at the center of the round room was a massive orb, with a glassy outer surface, and an irregularly shaped light within that moved and shifted, flaring here and dimming there, as if the light itself were a living thing. Darien felt the immense magical energy of the room overwhelm his mind, and push against him, like a powerful, invisible wind.
“What is it?” Darien asked, his mind staggered by the scene.
“It is a living star, the only one we still possess, and perhaps the last of its kind,” Galen replied.
“But what IS it?” Darien repeated.
“Ah Darien, practical to a fault even in the presence of such wonder. I’m afraid I have no good answer to that question” Galen answered. “All I know that it is a life force that lacks mind and body. When I was first shown this secret, I was told that it is the energy of the universe concentrated and given form. Whether the ancient elves created them, or simply discovered them, I do not know. That information has not survived to this day, if it was ever recorded in the first place. Once there were many of them, but the formless ones found them and consumed them one by one, until only a few remained. We do not know what happened to the others, though we have searched. Perhaps they were consumed by demons who escaped the wars, or perhaps they were taken far away. We simply do not know.”
“What does it do?�
�� Jerris asked. “I mean, is this what keeps the elves asleep out in the cavern.”
“Not exactly, but in a way, yes. All the magic of the cavern is governed by starstones specially enchanted for that purpose. Living stars are the original source of all starstones. When the light presses against the barrier that contains it, it will push the barrier outward, forming a sort of bud, which eventually separates from the barrier.”
“So it’s like a piece of the star breaks away, and becomes a starstone,” Jerris interjected.
“Yes, essentially.”
“Is there any way to make it create starstones?” Jerris asked eagerly. “I mean, that would be helpful.”
“Once there was, but that art was lost to us as our power diminished. They will create stones all on their own, without interference, but this one has not produced a stone in centuries.”
“Why not?” Jerris asked.
“My, my, but you are, as always, filled with questions. I don’t really know, but I would hazard a guess that much of its power is gone. You see, when a living star’s power is depleted, it collapses, becoming a thing of darkness, a shadow of the life that it once possessed. I believe that this star’s power is mostly spent, used in its last labor.”
“And what labor would that be?” Darien inquired, believing he already knew the answer.
“Perhaps you’ve already guessed this,” Galen shrewdly answered. “This is where the Demon Sword, and its sister, the Star Sword, were created.”
Darien reached out and held his palm a few inches over the star. There was no heat, but Darien felt its magical energy flow around his fingers, like dipping his hand in a swift stream. He pushed harder, trying to touch it, but the resistance increased. He got his hand to within an inch of the smooth surface, but he could not push through that last resistance to touch the star. Thin tendrils reached out from the central core of the star towards his hand, but they never touched the barrier.
“This is what you had to ask permission to tell us, to tell me,” Darien asked and Galen nodded with a smile.
“The greatest remaining mages of our people sealed themselves in this cavern, and, over many decades, produced a large starstone in the shape of two swords, laid end to end. Once this was done, they did something that had never been attempted before, nor since. They pulled all the life energy into one half of the stone, leaving the other half a black void of emptiness.”
“Then the Demon’s Blade is like the shadow of the Star Blade?” Jerris asked enthusiastically.
“Not exactly, young prince. Pure light casts no shadow of its own. It is more complicated than that. The forgers told me once that the two are like an object and its reflection in a mirror, one solid and the other hollow, one real and the other formless.”
“So how did they do this?” Darien said and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “And more importantly, why? Binding two objects isn’t difficult. I can make simple homing stones or observation lenses, but the range of such bindings is limited to a few miles. I have heard dwarf master smiths can use the same piece of ore to make similar items that work over hundreds of miles, but I am guessing this is more complicated.”
“As to how the swords were created, we do not know. The forgers themselves destroyed all knowledge of their construction.”
“Why would they do that?” Jerris asked. “If we knew how it was made, we might learn how to destroy it.”
“I cannot say for certain but I believe they must have delved deep into forbidden magics, and they wanted to be sure that no one repeated the process or built further upon their work.” Galen turned towards the star and clasped his hands behind his back. “It was their desperation that drove them to make the Demon’s Blade, and perhaps the same desperation drove them to destroy all records of its creation.”
“They must have been meant to work together. The power of one must complement the other.” Darien asked. “But how?”
“Quite perceptive. You are correct.” Galen turned to Darien again. “Would you kindly draw the Demon Sword?”
Darien nodded and took the sword from its sheath on his back. Immediately, the star changed. It shuddered violently and flattened into an elliptical egglike shape, with tendrils reaching near the clear barrier on each side, as though part of the star were fleeing from the Demon Sword while another part was reaching out for it. The sword had an even more powerful reaction. The star pulled the Demon Sword with enough force that Darien had to fight to keep it from crashing into the barrier. He quickly sheathed the sword, and gave Galen a rather cross look.
“You knew that would happen.” Darien said. “You should have warned me. What if I had let it touch the barrier?”
“Nothing would have happened, though it would have been difficult to pull the two apart.”
“The forgers tried it?” Darien asked and Galen nodded with a wry grin. “So the Demon’s Blade pulls the magic of the starstones, and the reverse holds as well.”
“Yes, the Demon’s Blade has always been a weapon of darkness, but it did not yet possess the spirits of demons when it was first made. At its forging, it was perfectly empty. You see, the Demon Sword is not only a weapon, but also a prison. When the Star Sword cuts into a creature possessed by a formless, the twisted, empty soul is drawn, pulled into the Demon Sword, captured forever, a more powerful version of the effect you just observed.”
“So that’s it. That makes sense. If you can’t kill something, the next best thing is to capture it.” Darien nodded as the pieces fell into place. “But there must be more than that. How does the Demon Sword bind to a single person? How did the Demon King use its power without binding himself to it?”
“The smiths and sorcerers who made these blades were among the greatest to ever live, Vondis, Maglen, Tirenis, Argos, Seianna, Lorina, and so many others. They were stronger and wiser than I. I do not know what other enchantments were placed upon the swords, nor could I properly understand them if I knew. I only know what I was taught when I was made Lorekeeper long ago. You see, I am the oldest remaining elf in this world. I have lived far beyond what is normal even for our people, a gift of magic laid upon me by those who made these swords. I was a lad when the swords were forged, and taken to be used against the Demons in the War of Vengeance. I was told no more, and did not dare to ask. The magical talents they possessed were beyond what any mage of this age possesses, far beyond even yours, Darien.”
“The other sword, the Star Sword,” Jerris asked curiously. “Do you have any idea where it is?”
“I do not know. There were rumors that it was possessed by the royal family of Sarenna, but when that kingdom fell, it vanished from history much as the Demon Sword did. The faerie queen has said that it too, will reappear before the prophecy is fulfilled.”
“But I suppose they didn’t give you any idea where to find it,” Darien scoffed. “Only their typical useless vagaries. You place far too much faith in the faeries, Galen. They never tell you everything they know.”
Galen shook his head. “Perhaps, but no one can know everything, or do everything. It is often necessary to place faith in others. You may not agree with their methods, but in their manipulations, they place considerable faith in the choices we make. Besides, in this case, I have my own reasons for believing that the Star Sword may be important.”
“And what would that be?” Darien pressed.
“The Star Sword captures the souls of demons, transferring their power into the Demon Sword. Surely you realize the significance of that fact.”
Darien thought a moment, then his eyes suddenly lit up as he realized Galen’s implication. “If we used the Star Sword on the Demon King, it would pull all the demonic power he possesses back into the Demon Sword, all at once. It would kill him, almost certainly, and we wouldn’t even have to strike a mortal blow.” Galen nodded calmly.
“Of course!” Jerris blurted out. “That’s it! That’s how we can destroy him. All we have to do is find the Star Sword then.”
“That is what
I believe as well,” Galen confirmed. “But I have no idea where to even begin a search. The last wielder of the Star Sword was a human, a great hero who led a rebellion against the formless demons. He became the first King of Sarenna, and the blade was passed down for generations by his heirs, but when that kingdom fell, it was lost. Regrettably, we don’t know anything more.”
“Well, then that isn’t much use, is it?” Darien grumbled. “Finding one sword in all the wide world, with no clue where to look.”
“There must be someone, somewhere, who knows something,” Galen countered. “Some clue must have been left behind, but it must be within the kingdoms of men, who ultimately succeeded in defeating the demons where we could not.”
“Ah well,” Jerris sighed. “I suppose there’s nothing more we can do then.”
“Not at the moment, yet I have faith that the Star Sword will be found, in some way yet to be revealed. Now…” Galen’s voice grew grave and cold. “What I have shown you here, the location of this place, the truth of the forging of the swords, the sleepers, and most importantly, the last living star, must remain secret, even to those you consider trusted friends. Our secrets are dangerous in the hands of our enemies, yet perhaps even more dangerous in the hands of the younger races, who are unready to wield such power responsibly.” Darien and Jerris nodded in turn, swore their oaths of secrecy, and then Galen led them back out of the cavern.
The walk back to the lift was silent and sober. The ride up lacked the sense of wonder that had been present on the ride down. The revelations of the cavern beneath Kadanar had left Darien stunned, and he lost himself in thought as they made their way out of the Ivory Hall. He had never imagined that any power had ever existed that could perform the sorts of magic he had seen in the cavern. The hopes and dreams of a doomed race all wagered upon a vague prophecy, and two magical swords. Darien held the Demon’s Blade, but it was the second sword, the Star Sword, that truly held the key to defeating Varias, the Demon King. Darien knew that it would fall to him to search for it. Now that there was a glimmer of hope, Darien had to finish what he had begun years ago, and finally visit justice upon the last living person involved in his mother’s death.