by Terry Brooks
Pen and his band managed to rescue her. She joined Pen’s expedition into the Inkrim, using her gift to guide him to the island of the tanequil, where she sacrificed herself once again to assure that Pen would gain the darkwand he needed.
Her sacrifice took her from a life with Pen, but she gained the true sight and freedom she had never known as one of the aeriads that served Mother Tanequil.
Cinnaminson, blind Rover girl.
This advantage gave Gar Hatch the confidence to accept a contract to fly Ahren and Khyber Elessedil, Tagwen, and Penderrin Ohmsford to the Lazareen, a lake at the foot of the Charnal Mountains. He realized there was something odd about them, but he was never told that they were also attempting to evade a party of Druids and Gnomes. Under the best circumstances it was a long and difficult voyage, but for Hatch, it was also his last.
The city of Anatcherae is the last bastion of civilization against the northern wilderness. Built by Trolls and Bordermen after the Second War of the Races, it began as a ramshackle outpost for trappers. With the advent of airships, however, it grew quickly into a sprawling city of twenty thousand people. While the city still maintains much of its rough-and-tumble frontier character, it has grown into a bustling trade port, servicing all traffic passing along the corridor formed by the Charnal Mountains on the east and the Knife Edge Mountains to the west.
Anatcherae sits perched on the western edge of the legendary Lazareen, a huge inland sea nestled at the foot of the Charnals. Second only to the Rainbow Lake in size, the Lazareen is a dead sea, its slate-gray expanse rarely affected by wind or weather.
Fed by snowmelt from the peaks through dozens of rivers, the Lazareen is as much as three thousand feet deep in places. Sailors who travel the lake insist its waters reach all the way to the netherworld. Swirling mists created by the confluence of cold winds off the mountains and warm air from the water add to the mystery, sometimes reaching for ships like grasping fingers from another plane. Many travelers report that they have seen wraiths in the mist, and that the lake itself is alive.
The Druids say the Lazareen is connected to the netherworld, but unlike smaller bodies of water, its vast expanse becomes a prison for those spirits who cannot find their way through. They are doomed to haunt its surface, punishing sailors with their howls of unearthly pain—howls that drive men mad. Sailors who hear their cries become catatonic, leaving their ships to the mercy of the wind. Many affected ships have crashed, losing all aboard to join the dead trapped in the lake.
Mountains frame the edge of the great lake on the east and south, but the entire northeastern shore is a floodplain comprising miles and miles of wetlands. The Slags, as they are called, are a tangled maze of swamp and quicksand, filled with old-growth cypress and cedar and populated by creatures best left to nightmares. Throughout their misty reaches, swamp grass hides pools of quicksand large enough to swallow an entire ship.
Ahren Elessedil, Druid and Elven Prince.
Smugglers have been known to use the murky depths as a hiding place, though only those who know the area well dare to risk the dangers of the swamp. Among the vines and trees live creatures whose tentacles mimic those vines, but who prey on anything living that comes within their reach.
It was within the Slags that Ahren Elessedil made his stand against the renegade Druid Terek Molt in an attempt to save Khyber, Penderrin, and Tagwen from capture and death. Ahren tricked Molt so that Khyber could use the Elfstones against him. The renegade and his ship were destroyed in a great conflagration that left scars on the trees still visible years later, but Ahren Elessedil paid with his life. He died to buy time for Penderrin and his company to reach the island of the tanequil. The Elven Prince was cremated on a funeral pyre to assure that his body would not become food for scavengers.
Beyond the Slags, the land lifts into scrub and then forest as it rises into the foothills of the Charnal Mountains. Miles to the north of the hills through the edge of the Charnals is the land of the Rock Trolls.
Once primitive and nomadic, the Rock Trolls of the Charnals have changed over the years. The Ard Rhys of the Druids, Grianne Ohmsford, hastened that change by bringing the Troll people back into the Four Lands as the protectors of Paranor.
Trolls have given up their sod-and-skin buildings for more permanent dwellings of stone. This new permanence has done nothing to alter their nomadic life-style, however. Each tribe maintains several different villages, migrating among them as needed. The timing for migrations is decided by the Maturen and the Elders. Some villages may have better forage and hunting areas while others have superior fortifications.
All Troll villages contain concealed forges. While they may travel from one village or city to another, the forges ensure that their trade travels with them. Since the war on the Prekkendorran began, Troll-manufactured weaponry has dominated the field while fine metalware from their smiths dominates the marketplaces. Unlike past wars, the Trolls have not joined either side, preferring to profit from others’ madness. Some choose to become mercenaries, but they are usually young and only serve long enough to prove themselves in battle.
While the Trolls have chosen not to join the war, they have not lost their willingness to fight at need, or to defend themselves. Taupo Rough is one of the Troll villages built for defense. Seated on a low bluff against the cliffs on the lower edge of the Charnals, the village is ringed with a defensive wall of stone and protected to the rear by the natural barrier of the cliff wall. Catapults line the inner edge of the defensive wall.
The ever-present forges are built within the mountain to protect and hide them. Ventilation shafts direct the smoke and ash well away from the village area, keeping the air clean and preventing enemies from spotting the forges. The mountain is riddled with tunnels, some natural and some Troll-made, to provide access to the forges and mining areas. The tunnels also provide a well-defended escape route for the entire village in the event of an attack. All tunnels are riddled with traps and falls, and many lead into endless mazes. Provisions enough to feed the entire village for months are stored within the mountain in case of a siege, and several of the tunnels lead to passages through the mountains.
Within the village, each dwelling is warded by heavy ironbound wooden doors and shutters. Most walls have weapons ports cut into them. The approach to the village is protected by hidden channels full of flammable oil that can be set alight with a fire arrow. The streets are designed to confuse anyone unfamiliar with the path.
In each home, Trolls live with their extended family, often with three or more generations. Within the village, existing houses are allocated based on need. Larger families make use of the larger homes, while smaller families use smaller dwellings. If a family grows too large for their dwelling, they trade with another that has lost a member until each one has the house that comes closest to fitting their needs. All homes belong to the tribe as a whole, not to the individuals.
Despite their neutrality, renegade Druids and their Gnome warriors attacked Taupo Rough during the reign of the Usurper Druid. The Druids even brought the Trolls’ worst enemy—Mutens. The village was burned and sacked. The Troll defenses held long enough for most of the villagers to escape into the mountains and from there to another safe hold. The unprovoked attack, coupled with the earlier dismissal from their service at Paranor, convinced the Trolls to attack Paranor.
Troll Pledge
Whenever Trolls travel into dangerous, unknown territory or prepare for battle, they perform a ritual in which they first kneel in a circle and touch the earth to seek protection from the land they pass through, especially if it is land they might have to fight upon. Then they walk the circle, one by one, touching each member to pledge their lives in support of one another. The pledge includes a promise that they will stand together as brothers if the spirits bless them with protection and guidance.
Unlike years past, when a Troll army would have been forced to travel by land, Trolls now use airships configured as large, flat transport barges. T
hese barges can reach altitudes of only a few hundred feet and are comparatively slow, but they enable a large force to move much more easily and quickly than ever before.
Beyond Taupo Rough, across the peaks of the Charnals, lies the Klu, the most rugged and barren range within the northern Charnals. Created by a cataclysmic shift in the earth’s crust, they jut skyward in jagged broken pinnacles of treacherous, barren rock.
East of the Klu lies the Inkrim, a huge, dark valley more than a hundred miles across. The depths of the valley are choked with old-growth forests and tangled undergrowth. Believed to be older than the Races, the Inkrim probably existed before the Great Wars. The wildlife, protected and unchanged since before the Great Wars ravaged the rest of the world, bears only slight resemblance to counterparts outside the valley.
The Inkrim is also the ancestral home of the Urdas, who have lived within its shadowed reaches since the destruction of the Old World. Their primitive tribal culture thrives within the great forest, hunting the lesser beasts and worshiping those more powerful. For them the depths of the valley are sacred, for they know it is home to spirits and beings as old as Faerie. Some of those spirits sign to those who have the ability to hear.
Stridegate
Toward the center of the valley, where trees old before the Races were born crowd out all else, stand the ruins of a lost city. It was Stridegate, a city grown old before the first Council of Druids was formed. Stride-gate’s ruins spread for miles over the valley floor. In most places, the outer wall has deteriorated to nothing but a ragged pile of stones. Inside the wall, the remains of palisades, broken façades, and shattered towers give tantalizing hints of the lost glory that was once a thriving city.
To the Urdas, the ruined city is sacred. They guard it against intrusion, attacking any who try to pass within its boundaries. But they will not cross into the ruins themselves, even to pursue intruders. Instead, they gather to form a living barrier beyond the wall, chanting to the spirits of the city as they hold a vigil against the escape of the intruders.
But the Urdas are not superstitious fools. They know the city is not truly dead. Deep within its rubble, hidden beyond a wall that has somehow survived, lies a wondrous garden, untouched by the ravages of time and neglect that have taken their toll on the rest of Stridegate. Flowers of all types and colors spill in riotous brilliance from unbroken rock walls. Water spills from sparkling fountains while streams shimmer past shining marble benches and flowering hedges. Walkways of crushed stone and tile meander among well-tended lawns and flower beds, leading to shrines bright with sculptures and elaborate designs, some inset with precious metals that glimmer in the light.
The ruined city of Stridegate.
More than a mile wide, the gardens extend to a broad stone stairway that rises over a hundred feet to end on a grassy knoll. Beyond the knoll, a ravine drops away between the grassy area and a forested pinnacle of rock that forms an island in the air. The pinnacle appears to be about a quarter mile across, completely surrounded by the deep barrier of the ravine. Vines and trees choke the ravine, obscuring the depths in shadow. The only access is via a stone archway connecting the garden to the pinnacle. A bare span of fifty yards in length, the bridge is narrow, only eight feet wide, with no railings on either side to prevent a fall.
The archway is constructed of massive, wedge-shaped stone blocks, each weighing more than two thousand pounds, cut and fitted with the narrow end down in such a precise manner that the weight of the bridge holds the blocks in place with no pins or supports. The seams marking the edges of each block are almost invisible due to the perfection of the placement; stone abutments at each end keep the remaining stones tightly pressed together. Such construction is impossible without the use of great technology or great magic. But the bridge shows none of the age and wear of the city, indicating that it was constructed long after the city was already dead—yet there was no one to build it.
Aphasia Wye, Assassin
Born in Dechtera and orphaned at a young age, Aphasia Wye was horribly disfigured in his youth. The scars never faded, leaving his limbs twisted like that of a misshapen spider, and his face and body equally marred. But his mind and soul bore even deeper scars than those on his body.
Aphasia found solace only one way—by killing. For him, killing provided a ritual cleansing. The only time he felt alive and whole was when he was dispensing death, mutilating and eviscerating his victims. Killing became an art form. Alone and friendless, he turned himself into a master assassin. He never failed in making his kill. Those who saw him move, sometimes skittering on all fours across rooftops, compared him to a spider, though never to his face.
Aphasia met Shadea a’Ru when they were both looking for the same deserter. Aphasia got to him first, and there was little left for Shadea. But it was the beginning of a strange friendship that eventually led Aphasia to live with Shadea in Grimpen Ward, then later to become Shadea’s assassin once she ascended to the leadership of the Druids. Armed with the legendary stiehl dagger Aphasia went after Penderrin Ohmsford. An easy task, to kill a young boy. Unfortunately, the boy had protectors: Druids, Rovers, and Trolls. A wild moor cat thwarted one attack, badly injuring the assassin before it died.
When Pen proved a difficult target, Aphasia became obsessed with him, following him to the island of the tanequil, where he found the boy alone and unarmed. But Aphasia forgot the boy’s talent for finding protectors. The boy was not truly alone. In the midst of his attack, Khyber Elessedil used her magic to knock the assassin over the edge of a ravine, into the chasm where Mother Tanequil waited. Aphasia Wye died as horribly as he had lived, crushed to death in the embrace of Mother Tanequil’s powerful roots.
But something guards it. A flat-topped boulder on the garden side warns against crossing the span. Carved with ancient symbols in the Gnomes’ language, the boulder’s message warns that the place is forbidden. Those who dare cross over will die. The carvings are so worn with age that they are almost obscured, but their meaning is still clear.
The pinnacle island is home to the tanequil, ancient creatures of Faerie. The tanequil send their welcome to a select few via the air spirits known as aeriads. Penderrin and Cinnaminson were allowed to cross over to secure a darkwand from the tanequil, welcomed by the song of the aeriads. The assassin Aphasia Wye was also allowed passage, hunting for Penderrin Ohmsford who had gone before, but the invitation was an illusion that led to his death.
Beyond the bridge, old-growth trees hundreds of feet tall cover the island, their branches intertwined so tightly they shut out the sunlight. Scattered outcroppings of rock jut from between the tree trunks on the pinnacle, while ravines split the forest floor. Down in the darkness of the ravine, something huge and ancient moves within the shadows. Anyone daring to cross the bridge uninvited ends up in the ravine, crushed and devoured by massive living roots.
The gardens of Stridegate and the island of the tanequil.
The forested pinnacle is a place of magic. Though it appears to be only a quarter mile wide, the distance is an illusion. Those allowed entrance may walk for miles without ever reaching the edge, and the path is ever changing. But deep within the center of the forest, a single ancient tree stands illuminated by the sun, its grandeur dwarfing that of the forest around it as the surrounding trees pull back their branches. Unlike the other trees, its bark is a strange mottled black and gray, its deep green foliage edged in brilliant orange. It is the tanequil. Not a tree at all, it is a living, intelligent creature of Faerie. But the thing that moves in the depths of the ravine is also the tanequil.
The entire pinnacle and the massive root system buried below are all part of the same dualistic Faerie creature. The branches above in the light are Father Tanequil, while the roots hidden below are Mother Tanequil. Together they are two entities forming one creature, he of the light, and she of the darkness. Father Tanequil gathers the light with his leaves while Mother Tanequil feeds in the dark. Her roots, ever changing and flexible, extend througho
ut the ravine and into the garden beyond. It is the magic of the tanequil that tends the garden, keeping it forever beautiful.
Aeriads, Spirits of the Air
Aeriads are immortal spirits of the air with the voice and manner of young women. The tanequil is father and mother to these spirits, who serve as the eyes and ears and sometimes voice of the great Faerie creature. But the aeriads were once human. Each spirit is that of a young woman, lured to the tanequil by the song of the others and convinced to join their dance. Each girl’s body now lies in the embrace of Mother Tanequil’s nurturing roots, protected and preserved for all time, while her spirit is free to roam the immensity of the Inkrim and its gardens.
It is believed that Mother Tanequil feeds on the spirit energy of her aeriads, her only companions in the darkness, but in exchange they gain freedom from human pain and infirmities, immortality, and the companionship and joy of their sisters.
A branch from Father Tanequil formed the basis for the darkwand that enabled Penderrin Ohmsford to rescue his aunt from the Forbidding. The tanequil formed a special branch from its heartwood for Pen, but required a sacrifice of both body and heart in exchange. Pen paid the price, losing two of his fingers as well as his beloved Cinnaminson.
But Cinnaminson did not die. She joined the aeriads, giving her body into the keeping of Mother Tanequil while gaining immortality, freedom, and the sight she had never known.
The Darkwand
The darkwand was a magic talisman of shining black-and-gray wood, carved with ancient symbols of power that glowed red when activated. Formed from the heartwood of Father Tanequil and carved by Penderrin Ohmsford, the staff was designed for a single purpose—to restore the balance between the world and the Forbidding. That balance was undone when Grianne Ohmsford was exiled and a demon released in her place. Only ancient magic, such as that of the tanequil, could breach the Forbidding and restore the balance.