Wildling

by Curtis, Greg

  These were mostly wildlings from the southern realms. Most of them had had little in the way of formal education. Many of them probably couldn't read or write. And the only thing they knew of their history was what they had been raised with. Myths, half-truths, wishes, tall tales and legends. Not history.

  But that was true of all the world. Of all the four races that called it home, only the sun elves knew how it had begun. Or rather where it had come from since none knew how it had happened. How the old world had ended and the new one begun. Not even the eleven.

  And even among those who might accept her words, most she suspected wouldn't care. This was after all ancient history. They had more recent history on their minds. Like the troubles they had faced making the journey. The things they had suffered. Even the loved ones they had lost. The group in front of her had only arrived the day before, and they were tired. They had arrived exhausted and some of them were injured. Even now many were hungry and all were frightened for the future. What did they care for ancient history?

  “Friends.” It seemed the best way to speak with them. For they weren't students, not hers anyway, and not anyone else's yet.

  “I am Sena Erilis of the Golden Trail. I am a wayfarer and a sun elf. You may call me Sena.”

  Some of their eyes widened a little as she introduced herself as a sun elf. They'd never heard of a sun elf. In fact the only elves they knew of were the dusky elves who looked nothing like her. Nothing like humans either. In fact they all thought wayfarers were humans, just with white blonde hair. Unfortunately there was a reason for that. A reason they would learn today and probably soon forget.

  “You have come a long way to be here today. Suffered many hardships. And as yet you don't know why. You only know that some people who glow called you, placed a hex upon you, and forced you to come. Today, here and now I will start to tell you of why you were called here. And what it is that will be asked of you in time.”

  “But first I will begin by telling you this one truth. There are four races that call this world home. The sun elves, the dusky elves, the wood elves and the humans. This you know. But what you don't know is that three thousand years ago there was only one race. The race that built this temple and so many other ancient cities and monoliths.”

  “You know them as the ancients. We know them by their true name. The elves. And we all – you and me and everyone else – came from them. You too are elves. Stone elves.” She let that sink in for a little bit. Trying to see what impact her words had on them. If they understood. If they accepted it. If they wanted to reject her words as lies. Or if they even gave a damn. Unfortunately she didn't see much that suggested anything at all from them. They just sat there, listening, but as far as she could tell, not caring. And yet what she had just told them was probably one of the most important facts any person could know. Where he or she had come from.

  She had to wonder if they would care any more about the rest of it. About the true history of the world and their place within it. Still, she would tell them what they needed to know of it – just the crudest sketch – and hope that they listened.

  This land Deri ti Millen – or “the wastes” as they were now known – had once been the homeland of the elves, together with Terris Lee just a few leagues north of them and Tellur el Ve, four hundred leagues to the south. That was why there were ancient shrines and temples scattered throughout them. That was why Balen Rale itself had been built. The temple had been built at the heart of the ancient world. The greatest temple the world had ever known. The temple whose spire now towered over them, casting an impossible shadow. A finger of darkness that touched even the distant foot hills of the valley.

  But three thousand years ago something had happened. No one knew what, not even the eleven. All that they did know was that the elves had been broken into four peoples. And each of those people was only a part of what the original elves had been. A fraction.

  When Sena saw that they had heard her words and mostly seemed to understand them, she knew it was time to tell them the rest. Even if they didn't believe her – and she saw doubt in the eyes of many – they had to understand what had happened. Why there were four races in the world. Why they had been called to this place. And why they were all dying.

  “Somehow, and we don't know how, the ancient world was destroyed. Broken. Cities were shattered, raised to the ground. The lands were torn asunder. Mountains rose and valleys fell. In places new lands arose from the sea and elsewhere other lands sank into it. But that was only a part of the damage that was done. As the world was torn apart so too were the people. The elves. In that same cataclysm the ancients were split into four separate races. Transformed in some way.”

  That was another mystery to be answered. How the people had changed. But they had no true information about the days and years immediately following the cataclysm. Only a few reports written long after by the survivors. And what they spoke of was not an instantaneous transformation of the people, but a slow one that had taken years. And that from what they could tell, had continued for millennia. But the only thing they knew for sure was that it had begun with the cataclysm.

  “Each of those races is but an echo of the ancients. And like an echo each of those four races is incomplete. All have some of what it was that made the elves the people they were. That made them great. But also all four races lack something of it. And that makes us all less than we should be. It's slowly killing us.”

  “Each race reflects one of the ancients' traditions. For they divided their world into four impulses. Four vocations. Four ways of life. They fell into four classes; scholars, builders, warriors and guardians.”

  “The first people I will speak of are the sun elves. These are my people and we are often thought of as the scholars. We are of the sun because we value the light of knowledge. Taller and stronger than many we show the most obvious signs of our common heritage in our white blonde hair. Once all elves had hair that was a mixture of white and colours, but the other races have lost the white and we have lost the other colours.”

  “At first the sun elves made their home in Terris Lee after the event. Just a few leagues north of this temple. It was once the realm where the largest city of the elves stood. The capital of the ancient world. Arrol der Terris. Home to millions. And many others of the greatest cities stood there with it.”

  “My ancestors had thought that it was there in the ancient cities that had once been the pride of the elven world that they would find the answer to what had happened. In the institutions of learning and discovery. But the answers weren't there. Not in all the centuries that they lived there and searched did they find the answer to what had happened. Worse, as the centuries and aeons had passed their numbers waned. They simply weren't as blessed with children as the ancient elves had been.”

  “Some of my ancestors became wanderers in time, searching the world for clues as to what had happened, and in time their descendants became the wayfarers as you know us today. But you have known little of us save that we travel the world in our wagons and are people of peace.”

  “We have retained the magic of the ancient elves and much of their knowledge. But some of the scholars claimed that we have lost their ability to fight. That we have lost their will to survive. That that is why our people's fertility failed. They say that we are peaceful not because it is the right and proper thing to be, but because we no longer contain within us the will to struggle. And that a people without that will must die away in time.”

  Was that true though? She didn't know. She didn't feel as though she were weak in any way. She didn't feel that if the need arose she could not defend herself. But in truth she had never been pushed to the test. Few if any of her people ever had. They avoided conflict wherever they came across it. They ran away. And as to their fertility she often wondered if that was truly a matter of fertility as much as it was one of a lack of desire. So many of their people never had children because they never found partners. And they never found p
artners because they never sought them out. It was as though that part of their lives had never mattered as much to them as it did for others. As it should.

  “The second people born of that event were the wood elves. The guardians of the natural world. Most of you know little of them, and for good reason. There are few of them left.”

  “They are shorter than us, brown of hair and skin and finely built, and they no longer live in these parts. After the event they slowly migrated to the fertile lands of the south, and began building their great forest home, Tellur el Ve. They have only retained a little of the magic that had once belonged to the elves, a little of the knowledge and a little of the will.”

  “But the part that they have retained is precious indeed. It is best described as the soul of the elven people. For the elves have always been of the land and the forest, and that is the heart of the wood elves.”

  “That was their saving grace and their failure both. They cannot see past the living world. They live for it and only for it. Unlike my people they are at least a fertile race; however, they could never build a city or achieve greatness. They have lost the will to set their knowledge down in books. They have become a simple race. Lost in the beauty of the forests and the purity of the water. It is a noble calling, but it is not enough.” And of course it was worse for them. Small and weak and without the will to fight, they suffered under the yoke of the dusky elves more than any other race.

  “The dusky elves were the third race to have arisen from our ancestors. The warriors. We call them dusky for the shadow that grips their souls. The shadow of war. They are fast and strong, quick with weapons and anger, but slow with understanding. Immediately after the event they made Deri ti Millen – the wastes – their home. They gathered together in tribes near where the heart of the old world had been and planned to reclaim what had been. To seize it for themselves.”

  “But they could not. They are warriors, but that is a weakness as well as a strength. Unfortunately they are only warriors. They retained the fighting spirit of the ancient elves, but neither the wisdom nor the compassion. They have become followers of the ancient god Talos, God of War. That is not a god to let rule your life.”

  “Over the millennia they have descended into barbarism. They have fought and slaughtered one another without mercy, and as the years passed they have slowly changed. Their forms have withered. Twisted. Our scholars say that they have lost a part of their soul perhaps and their flesh has responded to that loss. Their bodies have become deformed. Their teeth have become daggers, their ears have grown strange points and stick out at strange angles. They have become thinner and yet somehow also faster and stronger. It is as though the only part of the ancient elves that remained in them was the warrior spirit, and it is not enough to sustain a soul let alone the flesh.”

  “In time their wars became so terrible that they gradually began to drive themselves to the end of their days. They had killed so many that those who remained were too few. To add to their troubles they had also lost their magic but remembered always that they had once had it. They felt that loss keenly and it has made them bitter.”

  Even today they spoke of Firelis, the last of the great lords of the ancients. The one who had presided over all the world at the time of the fall. And one who had been a true warrior. They blamed him for what had happened to them as though he had somehow betrayed them. They cursed his name, though they had no evidence that he was responsible. Only the tales handed down from one generation to the next over three thousand years.

  “But no matter the cost, they always knew the need to fight. They had to destroy their enemies and claim the remains as their prize. And so without the ancient magic or knowledge they turned to other means to win their endless wars. Every means they could think of. In desperation they started breeding many of the terrible beasts that now roam the lands. Manticores, griffins, furies, hippogriffs and so many others. They were all just war beasts. But without magic the dusky elves soon lost control of them.”

  “The war beasts escaped naturally enough and eventually made the wastes their home. Some of them died out but many thrived to become plagues upon the world. And eventually the wastes became too dangerous for the dusky elves to live in. For anyone to live in.” Which made it somewhat ironic that as they the warriors had fled the death that they had brought upon the land, the humans – the builders – had slowly started reclaiming them.

  “They had also run out of food because they had driven out the farmers. In their soul they could never raise food or build houses. Always and ever they have to be warriors. They had no healers for the same reason and so fell victim to illness. They learned to live on their horses because there was no knowledge left to them of how to build a home. And in any case a home was always a target.”

  “Finally, once they had rendered the once idyllic land of Deri ti Millen uninhabitable and had transformed it into the wastes it has become known as today, they migrated south, hunting down, killing and enslaving the wood elves, forcing them to provide them with that which they lacked. Food, medicine and shelter. And that is how we find them today.”

  “But as you know they now try to reclaim the wastes. The reason as some of you will have heard is that there is a drought in the south. But that is only part of the truth. The rest is that they have brought this drought upon themselves. Even knowing that they need the wood elves they have killed so many of them that there are few left to grow the food they need. They have destroyed many of the ancient structures that once retained water for the dry years. Lakes have been emptied and dams burst as the clans have tried to destroy their enemies by starvation, and they have been destroyed in the same way by their enemy clans in turn.”

  It constantly amazed her that any people could be so foolish. That they could do such evil to the world. But that was their way. They had to fight and they had to win. No matter the cost.

  “The last race of course is you, the humans. The stone elves. The builders. Stone because that is the blocks with which you build and because it is within the stone that you mine. In form perhaps you are the most similar to the ancient elves, perhaps a bit more solid, but for the most part your people are without their magic. Some though retain it, and have become the wildlings. You.”

  “Humans have lost the knowledge of the ancient elves too, but not the intelligence, and little by little your people have rediscovered how to build. And in doing so they have become the most successful of the elven races. Certainly humans are the most numerous. But like the others humans lack something as well. Perhaps it is the heart of the elf. Certainly you have nothing of the ways of the wood elves among you. Little of the warrior spirit of the dusky elves. And only some of the wisdom of the sun elves.”

  “Your people aspire to greatness. You yearn for it. You build great cities and amass great wealth. You pull metal out of the ground as none others could and fashion it into countless things you do not need. You level forests and turn rivers into filth. And though you have not the true warrior nature that the dusky elves have, you still have wars. Terrible wars.”

  “In the end humans too will join the rest of us in the end of days. My people will run out of children. The wood elves will be hunted to the end. The dusky elves will kill one another until none remain and there is no food left. And your people will destroy the world and when it dies they will die with it. Every race contains within it the seeds of its own destruction.” But no race save the sun elves could see it. And none could truly accept it.

  Looking around at the almost lifeless faces of her class, she guessed that they would not accept it either. They sat there and they heard. Perhaps some of them even listened, though most she suspected didn't really care. But they would not accept it. Not for a very long time to come. She hurried on.

  “For a thousand years or even two my people have known that this was the fate for all of us. But we have been helpless to stop it.”

  “We searched for answers across the world. We prayed for them as
well. We hoped that one day we would at least know what had happened so that we might see a way to repair it. But all for naught.”

  “Then, six weeks ago, a miracle was granted us. We do not know how or why or by whom. But what we do know is that eleven ancients were returned to the world after three thousand years. Eleven who were once the high priests of the ancient gods.”

  “We do not know where they have been these past three thousand years. No more do they. It is for them as if the world suddenly changed between one blink of an eye and the next.” That Sena thought had to be hard. To in an instant lose everyone and everything you had ever known. In their place she would have been bereft. But they were all high priests. Made of sterner stuff than others. And they had quickly determined that instead of grieving for what was lost to them, they had work to do to save what they had found.

  “But while even they do not know what happened to their world or their people they have found a way to fix it.”

  Unfortunately as she told them the wondrous news Sena had to force herself to show the confidence she didn't have. She herself doubted. The ancients had not said that it would repair what had been done, only that it might. But they had to work with that, because there was no other possibility. Might was all they had.

  “Arrol der Terris must be rebuilt.” That finally drew a response from her class. A round of surprised stares and looks of disbelief. Rebuilding an ancient city was a huge undertaking.

  “Not the whole city, though that we pray will happen in time. Just the chamber of souls. But it will be no small task.”

  “The chamber is located within the very heart of the ancient citadel, which in turn is at the very centre of the city. And its rebuilding will require more than just the skills of the masons. It is a structure of magic and faith as much as stone. Built with the life blood of the ancient elves and invested with the very essence of the world.”