by Sean Rodden
The cold eastwind carried night over the Northern Plains. The stink of Shadow was on that wind, the foul forestench of war and ruin. And into the reek of the wind flew the fiery white blur of an elliam, a star shooting across the frosted firmament of the nightbound Plains. Arrowwing was his name, and Thrannien, Sun Lord of the Athair, was his master. As white wind into black they sailed, swift and certain, a bolt from the bow, speeding into the night, into the path of peril and pending doom.
To the great rocky rise where reared the forsaken fastness of the mighty House of Eccuron.
Into the emptiness of abandoned Arrenhoth.
“Lord Alvarion. Lady Cerriste. I give you Prince Arbamas of Ithramis.”
The Lord and the Lady of the Fiannar rose from their seats before the Hearth and fisted their regal rillagha. Their grey eyes gleamed in gracious greeting and welcome. The flameless fire of Alvarion’s Tomb flashed, pulsed. The Hearthhold itself seemed to warm inexplicably as the Prince of Ithramis entered the great carven chamber, as though the very rock itself was receiving a long lost friend, or embracing a lover of olde.
“The glory of this day to you, Prince Arbamas,” welcomed Cerriste. “It would appear, good friend,” observed she, her lips curving coyly, yet elegantly, “that Druintir remembers you.”
Prince Arbamas of Ithramis stepped away from the ghostly form of Varonin who had been his escort, and the Marshal of the Grey Watch soon vanished as would mist into fog. Alone before the most high of a majestic and masterly people, the Prince of Ithramis displayed neither discomfort nor discomfiture, but rather the quiet confidence of a man at ease among equals.
“And I Druintir, my Lady,” came Arbamas’ deep but strangely soft voice – the sound of waves washing over coastal shoals.
Cloaked in the heavy black brush of a great bear, clad and armoured in deepest grey, and about him a hint of darkness and dread, the Prince of Ithramis seemed a son of the very night itself. Ever with him was the scent of sea and salt, as though the essence of the ocean flowed in his veins. He embodied and exuded a great physical strength, being tall and broad, straight of back and narrow of waist, and thick in the chest and arms. His hair and beard were a bright and shining black, worn long and loose, substantially secreting a face that might have been quite handsome. His mouth was grim, his expression stern and set of purpose. And his eyes were as silver stars shining in the darkness of a night that knew no end.
“We welcome you in love and with some little hope, good Arbamas,” spoke Alvarion, Lord of the Fiannar. “Your early coming would make it seem fortune yet favours the Fiannar this day.”
The dark Prince of Ithramis fisted his chest in the manner of his hosts. His argentine eyes sparkled. Beneath the black of his beard, something that may have been a smile played at the corners of his hard mouth.
Hardly early, my brother, thought Arbamas in silence and shadow. Rather, I am more than two thousand years late.
The city-state of Ithramis was the youngest of all the Free Nations, having been founded by Arbamas fewer than thirty years before. An Erelian prospector said to have made a fortune in mining gold and precious stones from deep within the Erels, Arbamas had approached Alvarion and Cerriste with a proposal to purchase from the Fiannar their long-abandoned coastal city of Ithramis, that it might be converted into a place of learning for the people of all the Free Nations. Impressed with the Erelian and intrigued by his idea, the Lord and the Lady of the Fiannar had made a gift of the ancient city.
Arbamas had swiftly set Ithramis in good repair, employed teachers and masters of many and diverse arts and sciences, and soon people from all the nations came as students of lore to the fledgling city in the North. All had been schooled in both their chosen field of learning and in the field of warfare. Their education completed, many had remained at Ithramis, married, raised families, settled land and established commerce, and in short time the city became a nation in its own right.
Arbamas had adopted the honorific of Prince, but only to appease the demand of the people that their leader be held in titular esteem by the Kings and Earls and Senators of the world. The Prince had in his service a sizeable professional army comprised of both men and women, expertly trained and thoroughly disciplined. But the army of Ithramis, however well-drilled, well-armed and well-captained, was yet untried and untested upon the fury-flayed fields of war.
Spoke the noble Prince of Ithramis:
“My Lord. My Lady. I know something of the struggles of the Fiannar. I know of the debt owed them by the Free Nations of Men. Some there may be among the leaders of the Free Nations who would consider the Wraithren and their sorcery and their armies of Unmen to be little more than fancies of legend. But I comprehend the Wraithren to be a real and terrible evil. The Blood King is real, the Illincarnadine is real, the approaching army of Shadow is real. And the peril posed by these compounded darknesses to the Fiannar and to the Free Nations is genuine.”
Alvarion and Cerriste listened to the flowing words of the Prince with a wet light in their eyes, and with hope kindling in their hearts.
“But equally real are the gallant spirit and glittering steel of the Ithramen,” stated Arbamas in uncontestable certainty. “And they now number fully four thousand foot, bow and heavy horse.”
Hope, holy hope.
“My Lord and my Lady of the Fiannar.” The Prince’s eyes seemed to explode with starfire. “I, Arbamas, Prince of Ithramis, will stand with you.”
Hope.
Commander Axennus Teagh clapped the tome entitled Of the Rise of the Red Wraith and the Battle of Mekkoleth on Sark-u-surum closed.
He rose, stretched in satisfaction, then moved about the Hall of the Ways of War, carefully returning to its proper place each of the hundreds of items of academia he had perused, studied, absorbed. His face was drawn and lean, haggard, grizzly with three days’ growth of beard. But his eyes and the mind behind them were clear and bright, and the set of his countenance calm and cool.
The Commander stepped out into the silvered dusk of Druintir.
And a fair and familiar form materialized at his shoulder.
“You are become my shadow, Shield Maiden,” said Axennus, his voice raw and rough, as though his throat was parched and pleading for water.
“There are worse shadows, Southman,” returned Caelle. “And darker. Of that you may be certain.”
“I am.”
Caelle waited briefly, expecting more from the usually loquacious Commander, but the Southman’s tongue seemed strangely still.
So, “Though he would never admit it, your brother worries for you, Commander,” said Caelle, striding in step at the Erelian’s side. “You should go to him.”
“And you, Shield Maiden?” retorted Axennus, a slight quirk to his lips. “Do you worry for me as well?”
“I have no cause for concern, Commander,” she replied simply, the sound of a shrug to her tone. “I know your purpose.”
“Then grant me another audience with your worthy cousin,” Axennus responded. “I would have a kindness from Lord Alvarion.”
“A kindness, Commander?”
Caelle peered at the Southman at her side. Something had changed in him. Something had altered. She searched the Erelian’s face, a face become rugged, become strange and stony with shades of care. But there were no revelations readily found in the uncharacteristically severe set of Axennus’ mouth, neither there nor in the steely line of his jaw. But the light in his eyes remained, though it had been made odd and alien, and was marked by something yet unrevealed.
And the Commander disclosed only, “Shield Maiden, I seek permission to do a thing that has been heretofore forbidden.”
Caelle comprehended.
The Southman seeks consent to survey the Seven Hills, that he might know the ground there when war comes.
The Shield Maiden looked away, her own features hardening, steel for steel, stone for stone.
Or that he might know the place of his death.
“Very wel
l, Commander Teagh,” she conceded crisply. “Let us hasten to the Hearthhold.”
The Commander and the Shield Maiden entered the Hall of the Hallowed as dusk in the last city of the Deathward darkened and deepened into night. The Commander was once again taken by the grandeur of the Hall, struck by its magnificence, and he washed his gaze in the skillfully worked stone of the cavern, bathing his eyes in the silvery shimmer of the wondrously wrought rock. The graven gold of the central colonnade blazed with innate fire, and the royal rillagha of the sculptured Lords flamed across stone breasts, bright and brave. And upon Axennus’ left, the fair but fearsome features of Vallian glowed as though the soul of that long-dead Lord of the Fiannar burned within the very stone from which his likeness had been rendered.
Very much the father’s son, Axennus recalled having said.
“Commander,” said Caelle, touching his arm. “Arbamas, Prince of Ithramis, comes.”
And there approached a man from the direction of the Door of Lords, a man tall and broad, black of hair and beard and billowing bearskin cloak, a man of masculine grace, of soundness and strength, whose argent eyes shone with intensity and intellect – a man of indisputable power and peril. He passed Caelle and Axennus with a nod and a fist to his breast, but spoke no word, and something in his manner forbade formal greeting and words of welcome.
In silence and stillness Axennus watched Arbamas of Ithramis pass, the Commander’s eyes caught and held by the majestic mien of the man – the cold eyes, the grim mouth, the stern and purposeful expression.
And when Arbamas was gone, Axennus muttered, “Ahhh…so there goes the Black Prince.”
Caelle tilted a brow.
“You know Arbamas of Ithramis, Commander?”
Axennus smiled curiously.
“Nay, Shield Maiden, I do not know the man.”
He looked once more upon to the severe and stony visage of Vallian, son of Defurien, and his smile first broadened, then fell.
And he said softly, “But the face is familiar to me.”
The Rock of Arren rose from the flats of the benighted Northern Plains, a bold black fist upthrust in the faces of dark and Darkness. Beneath Arren’s invisible shadow, completely encircling the toe of the tor, a great crumbled cromlech grew from frost-greyed grasses, a ruined ring of tumbled dolmens, long-disused dwelling-places of the diaphanous dead. Above this megalithic wall of broken stone, a cladding of conifers clung tenaciously to Arren’s steep and stony sides, a suit of sharply spiked armour shielding the Rock from the ravages of wind and winter. And atop the soaring summit rose the walls and towers of ancient Arrenhoth, the magnificent manor of the mighty and militant House of Eccuron.
Abandoned now. Emptied of the sons and daughters of Eccuron.
But not deserted.
Thrannien, Prince of the Undying, stood upon a parapet of Arrenhoth’s weatherworn walls, the foul breath of the eastwind flaying his feathered hair. The Sun Lord’s golden eyes gleamed eastward into the night, staring into the starless black in silence and solitude until both were shattered by a sound akin to magma moving beneath the mantle of the earth.
“What do you see, Prince of the Neverborn?” came Brulwar’s smooth marble voice as his form flowed from the stone at the Sun Lord’s side.
Thrannien displayed no surprise, his golden gaze not moving from the abysmal blackness of the eastward night.
And he said sorrowfully, “I see the doom of the Deathward, Earthmaster.”
Brulwar, uldwan Dor of the Daradur, leaned on the huge head of his heavy war-hammer. The only thing blacker than the eastern night was the dark light in the Earthmaster’s eyes.
“The enemy are many, Prince Thrannien,” he said stonily, “but they are not overmany.”
Thrannien’s head swayed slowly.
“The army of the Blood King numbers more than one hundred and twenty thousand,” revealed the Prince of the Athair. “Graniants, Urkroks, Unmen of Mroch Durva and the Hebbingore, more from Waldard. Ill-bred half-Urks. Norian mercenaries. Wild Wulfings from the icefields of distant Var. And others with which I am unfamiliar, hundreds of great grey giants in black armour riding horrible red-maned beasts. From the breaks in the enemy’s formation, I would suggest that at least one hundred thousand will assault the Fiannar at Eryn Ruil, but some twenty thousand more will remove from the main force and strike for the way of Doomfall.”
The Earthmaster’s massive shoulders shrugged.
“The more that come to Doomfall, the more that Drogul will kill.”
“Twenty thousand is an army, Earthmaster.”
“So is Drogul.”
“You have not the farsight of the Athair, Earthmaster,” the Sun Lord sighed sadly. “You do not see what I see.”
“I do not see them, Prince, but I feel them. I feel them in the earth, in the rock and stone.” The wind fell upon the black of Brulwar’s mane, but neither hair nor whisker wavered. “And I feel other things. I feel mud and muck sucking down the blood and bones of one hundred thousand foes at Eryn Ruil. And I feel fire consuming the flesh of twenty thousand more under Raku Ulrun.” He nodded knowingly, and his black eyes burned with certitude. “Neither Druintir nor Doomfall will fall to this foe.”
They shared a certain silence then, Darad and Ath, Earthmaster and Sun Lord. A silence that forbade further doubt, that abolished dismay, dismissed all despair.
Then –
“And I feel one thing more, Prince of the Neverborn,” muttered Brulwar meaningfully. “I feel the foe is lonesome and bewildered in this far and foreign land.” The Darad’s heavy hand tapped the silver sheaf of arrows at the Sun Lord’s shoulder. “Perhaps you should assure him that he is not alone.”
And with a dark grin, broad black Brulwar, Earthmaster of the Wandering Guard, slid silently back and down into the stone.
And a smile like sunlight slid across Thrannien’s beautiful face.
A single sleek Athain arrow sailed upward and eastward into the unstarred night over the Northern Plains – a solitary missile sailing, sailing, over minutes and miles, singing through the heavens, then plummeting down, down, down into the bloody light of twenty thousand fires.
Thus was Ongulthuk, King of the Unmen of Waldard, welcomed warmly that night – and the warmth of that welcome was the heat of the Unmannish King’s own blood as it seeped about the shaft of the gold-feathered arrow that had pierced his heart while he slept.
Verily, winds of war were not the province of Shadow alone.
16
COLDMIRE
“Alas! Eldagreen, fair wood of olde,
Thy glory drowned in waters cold,
Thy grace lost, thy will enslaved –
And grey Coldmire, thy watery grave.”
The Song of the Shaddathair
Ravenwood, last bastion of ruined Eldagreen, was more than ancient, having stood for untold ages, a remnant of an elder era far beyond the memory of Man. Legends told that Ravenwood had always existed, aging before Time, growing before Light – great groves of oak and soaring stands of cedar holding themselves in deathless darkness, black bark and bough bathing in unending evergloom.
There, and there forever.
The sun never touched there, never marred Ravenwood’s perfect murk, the tightly entwined branches of her canopy forming a solid shield against the loathed light of the outer world. But Ravenwood permitted wet and chill to penetrate her – indeed, she welcomed them – and her mossed and matted earth was cold and damp beneath unnumbered millennia of fallen leaves and failed life.
There, and there forever.
And there came into the Ravenwood no whisper of wind, but only a low lethargic mist that crept and crawled about twisted trunk and knotted root – the ghostly gasping breath of a thing near death, or of a thing beyond it. And only the occasional croak of the raven broke the black and baneful silence.
Ravenwood. A place at once both deathless and lifeless, neither dead nor alive, but only there. Existing.
There.
&nb
sp; And there forever.
The bright and beady eyes of great blackbirds traced the trio’s trek through the trees. The avian watchers cawed intermittently in the waning night, restlessly ruffling their inky feathers, alerting one another to the strangers in their midst, to the unwanted outlanders disturbing the deep dark slumber of ancient cedar, oak and ash. And now and then, they erupted in concerted and raucous protest, a clamourous chorus against the threesome’s intrusion into the final fastness of fallen Eldagreen.
Waa-waa-ware!!!
Heedless, the company from Druintir trotted eastward through the trees.
Eldurion of the House of Defurien strode at the fore, pressing ever onward in the misted murk, silent and sure. His thoughts, however, remained at the time and place of his departure, with the lovely oval face of his daughter, with the love and loss shining damply in her wondrous eyes. Caelle was strong, he knew, a true scion of Defurien. Hers was the formidable fortitude and battle-fury of the first Fiannar, of those whose stature was once as gods among men, like rods of steel amidst twigs and sprigs. But hers was also a gentleness and tenderness that belied the bloodied history of her kin and kind – things surely passed to her by her mother rather than by her father. And her heart was like a butterfly fluttering on a sifting summer breeze, bright and beautiful – a heart unfettered, free to be given to whomsoever she chose.
Axennus Teagh.
Eldurion smiled grimly, but there was warmth there, underlying the cool curl of his thin lips. The Erelian Commander was a good and honest man, a man of courage, skill and intellect. And his love for Caelle was unmistakable. That Axennus was not of the Fiannar mattered nothing – he was of the hallowed line of Hiridion, and the blood of that high House’s founding father flowed like fire in his veins. The Erelian was impudent, perhaps, even insolent at whiles. But the coming war would certainly cure him of those things. And the Seer Sarrane had recently confided to Eldurion – with some understandable reluctance – that the Southman would be remembered long after the world had forgotten Eldurion of the House of Defurien.
Caelle had chosen well.