Lore of Sanctum Omnibus

by Elaina J Davidson

  None of that featured; he was more interested in what roiled in that figure’s head out there. The man, newly sworn in as Elder, sought justice for what had happened here. He sought justice for the terrible death of the woman he loved. Justice, however, was but a tiny nuance removed from revenge, and already the man thought of causing harm in some form to Torrullin Valla.

  Halon was a man able to be used.

  Chapter 3

  Tracker, hunter, guide, scout, huntsman, spotter, trailblazer, navigator, pathfinder, the same? Or are they different?

  ~ Tattle’s scribe ~

  Avaelyn

  Healer’s Facility

  TEIGHLAR LICKED HIS LIPS of the last lunch crumbs and rubbed his hands to clear them also.

  “That was outstanding, as always. Glad I came, if only for your treats.” He grinned at Elianas, the one who had prepared the picnic lunch. “So, why have you two summoned me to this rural discomfort?”

  Torrullin blinked as if something had surprised him. He gazed around, his expression guarded, before his shoulders unexpectedly slumped.

  Swallowing, he murmured, “To discover what Alexander Diluvan knows.”

  Elianas frowned. “Torrullin, what is it? I have the distinct impression you believe you were somewhere else.”

  Torrullin closed his eyes briefly, before reopening them onto the forested realm of the Healer’s Facility. He shrugged. “I was somewhere else. A vision, I think.”

  “And?” Elianas demanded.

  “I need to examine it first. Teighlar, it is time to talk.”

  The Emperor spread his hands. “I already told you everything.”

  Elianas, after studying Torrullin’s expression a moment more, said to Teighlar, “You lie.” He repacked the lunch basket, leaving a flask and mugs out.

  As Elianas proceeded to pour measures of his Fenu blend, Torrullin added, “Tannil tells us you possess knowledge of something that binds the then and the now, Teighlar, and that creature is about to go to war with all of us. I say we have to uncover what you uniquely possess there in that head of yours. Whether or not you are comfortable with sharing.”

  A shrug erupted from the Emperor, a swift shoulder movement. “Fine, I hear you, but I shall only say more when Elianas explains how it is he is weaponless in these dangerous times.” He patted the empty scabbard at his own waist. “I was on my way to see Alik when you called; my daughter does not like weapons.” He stared pointedly at Elianas.

  The dark man left off screwing the cap back on to the flask, lifted his right hand to flex his fingers and held, an instant later, the unmistakable length of metal and magic that was the Lumin Sword. He, in turn, stared at Teighlar.

  “I thought you relinquished that in Nowhere,” Torrullin said after a moment.

  “It remains a part of me,” Elianas responded.

  “Man, worlds should bow to you. You are dangerous. Lumin Sword, Shadow Wings, Warlock accruements, and a name that is a word of power.” Teighlar maintained the staring contest with the dark man.

  Elianas rose and held the legendary sword out to the Emperor. “You once kept this safe in Grinwallin’s crucible. Do so again. I have relinquished it. It will not harm you; take it.”

  Teighlar did not move.

  Elianas dropped the blade at his feet. “As for Wings; I have no Wings. Torrullin is able to confirm that.” He sat and reached for the flask. Having dealt with it, he passed around filled mugs. “The Danae word of power is mitigated. It may now be employed in a manner lumin kindred will applaud.” Elianas sipped with evident pleasure from the hot brew he cupped in both hands.

  “Really.” Torrullin stared at him, his coffee untasted.

  “Much that was hidden saw the light in that nowhere space, Torrullin, so, yes, really. Skynis repented after Kalgaia and it has reverberated.” Elianas shrugged and glanced at Teighlar. “As for Warlock accruements; I am still working on them.”

  Silence ensued.

  Torrullin and Teighlar looked at each other, and then Torrullin lowered his gaze to his hands and Teighlar stared at the sword at his feet in fascination.

  The Senlu Emperor set his mug aside and reluctantly retrieved the blade, sighing when the contrary object did not react to his touch. It had been known to do so. Exhaling again, this time an extended breath, he proceeded to sheath it at his waist and then tried hard to ignore its presence. To that end he seriously sipped at his coffee, looking at no one in particular, at nothing precisely. Folk should destroy the dangerous object, in his considered opinion.

  “Your turn, Emperor,” Torrullin prompted.

  Silence. A nod. And more silence.

  “It is time,” Elianas said.

  Another nod. “I know it is. This then.”

  Again Teighlar lapsed into stillness. It took another prompt from Torrullin before he started talking, haltingly at first and thereafter with ever greater confidence.

  “Understand this. The tale I am about to unravel for you I have pieced together from various sources and cannot thus be certain of accuracy. Me, a creature who imagined a people. How much is imagination and how much is wishful thinking?

  “Yes, Alexander Diluvan was abandoned by a pathfinder in the mists of time. That pathfinder took swiftly to the skies again when it became known the world those aboard had hoped to settle was about to be inundated. Loss of life, after all, was estimated as total. The inundation came to pass, of course, but only later.

  “The world was Orb, its inundation history now accepted fact, and is today known as Sanctuary. One day soon the people of Sanctuary will need to prepare for comprehensive evacuation, but you already know this. You are very aware inundation is a fact of life and time for that world, an unstoppable event, unpreventable history.”

  He sucked at his teeth. “To move on. Alexander Diluvan was abandoned, not by accident, rather because he was the product of two races. No one desired a hybrid aboard for the long journey home. Had there been no reason to abandon Orb, someone sometime would probably have felled him and buried him in a shallow grave.

  “No, hear me out; I do not require sympathy. Understand this; part of the agreement made before the pathfinder departed home territory was to ever keep the two races pure, to maintain the bloodlines, but it was a long journey and … anyway.”

  “Mists of time, Teighlar?” Torrullin said.

  A ghost of a smile. “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “A technological civilisation in the beginnings of this era. If you two looped back, is it such a stretch that others did so as well and thus were we born technologically advanced? There is much we cannot fathom and yet we live with the mysteries. You will readily admit that your Adagin and Ixion are not of your genesis period, and in the time before them there was one known as the Original. Someone who was genuinely first, perhaps? Torrullin, what?”

  Torrullin had made a sound on hearing ‘Original’. “Never mind. Continue.” He ignored the look Elianas turned on him.

  Teighlar went on. “Be that as it may. A long time ago, an advanced world rotated its giant telescopes up to the stars and discovered other planets, and others. Another race. They found the Valleur, my friends. They discovered Akhavar in the sights of mighty lenses.”

  He snorted at the disbelief on display before him. “You Valleur are so arrogant, were even then, and believed yourselves alone and unique. For a time that was true and in other loops it was no doubt fact, but next door to Akhavar in this era there was a world inhabited. It was not the Q’lin’la or the Thinnings who sundered the isolation of the Valleur, and it certainly was not the Kallanon Dragon Neolone.”

  Torrullin sighed.

  Elianas was unmoving.

  “Fortunately technology equalled intelligence on that world. They saw the Valleur first and swiftly understood the dangers; they made no contact. Technology breaks, does it not, while sorcery cannot. Err on the side of caution. Then one day a group of intrepid Valleur youths, offworld to practice sorcerical transport, happened upon
a similar youthful group of stargazers on a mountain top. Imagine the surprise.

  “Youth enjoys change, though, celebrates the newness of ideas, and they started talking rather than instantly bristling for a fight. They discussed everything from technology versus sorcery, a cold world versus a hot one, to politics, farming, culture, art - you can imagine. A host of topics, nothing in depth upon that first coming together.

  “Of course they wanted more of the same. Only those set in their ways need denounce others different from themselves as enemies too dangerous to know. They understood, however, their elders would be horrified and thus kept the secret. Father to son, mother to daughter, many generations, until numbers alone would eventually have revealed them.”

  “What changed it?” Elianas asked.

  “Your bloody Nemisin became Vallorin, and the secret was swiftly no longer underground. The collaborators chose to abscond, hoping to start fresh elsewhere, hoping to continue what had become far more than a youthful secret many generations old. By then they were true friends and learned from each other about life, about how to celebrate difference, how to create new thought, bouncing ideas off each other for the benefit of their own societies. It worked for them; why end it because politics demanded it?” Teighlar lifted an eyebrow. “A conundrum familiar even today, not so?”

  Torrullin nodded.

  “A lengthy journey commenced and they discovered Orb, only to be forced to leave again.” Teighlar shook his head. “They returned to their homeworld because they had neither the experience nor the supplies to venture further out. It was empty space in those times. Owning a space-faring vessel did not necessarily translate as expertise. Their homeworld was at war when they re-entered those skies, and Nemisin, I believe, heard someone had been left behind somewhere. We cannot know with certainty, but their world …”

  “Name it, Emperor,” Elianas snapped. “Cease the theatrics.”

  “Elianas, I wish to explain first.”

  Elianas straightened. “Something is about to change for us, regarding our perceptions. This is why you assume the long route.”

  Teighlar dipped his head. “Indeed.”

  “Something close to the word ‘Danae’,” Torrullin murmured, staring at Teighlar.

  Teighlar huffed in exasperation. “Such impatience from the two of you does not leave one with space to properly clarify. Yes, the homeworld was known as Danaan. The dark Valleur, the Danae, made contact upon a mountain top.”

  Elianas was unmoving for long moments, before he hung his head. “Thus Danae is not ‘dark kind’ as we have always believed, but ‘traitors to Danaan’. It was the kind of curse that crossed all barriers.”

  “Unfortunately. Nemisin, I believe, annihilated every Danaan. He needed Valleur to believe in Valleur supremacy.”

  “Why do we not know of this?” Torrullin asked of Elianas.

  “It happened on this timeline, Torrullin,” Teighlar said. “Perhaps around the period one of you forgot everything and the other vanished into a golden seat.”

  “That makes no sense. Nemisin was a full Enchanter by the time Elianas and I vanished. If he had a race on his doorstep to employ as a device of threat to supremacy, why did he invent the situation on Orb? Why go forward in time to find the people you had imagined? Using, of course, the rumour of someone left behind to point the way for him. Unless …”

  “… he annihilated the Danaan before he became Enchanter,” Elianas said, snapping his fingers. “Remember Valen’s father, Torrullin? A soldier who succumbed in battle, was a hero to the Valleur, and yet Valen came to us to ask how it could be so when no battles had ever been fought on Akhavar. Nemisin summoned a unit into the Apnor range around the time he ascended the Throne, a fledgling Vallorin with a giant chip on his shoulder, and Valen’s father was commander. No one returned, and it was given out that the unit did battle with …” Elianas frowned. “What did he call it?”

  “Djinns.”

  Elianas nodded. “Right, and no one knew what that was and assumed they were creatures of the underworld inadvertently released in a Valleur spell.”

  Torrullin grimaced. “Valen did not believe a word of it, but what was he to do? We, at the time, thought it possible.”

  “Having called forth bizarre entities ourselves.” Elianas offered a sheepish grin.

  Torrullin murmured, “Nemisin did not then possess the unassailable power base he craved; he thus annihilated even the spectre of threat, thereafter using what he learned on Danaan as foundation for the Orb situation.”

  Elianas returned his attention to the silent Senlu Emperor. “Your longevity stems from your Valleur genes; that was how you were able to survive long while building your palace and imagining a people to alleviate your loneliness on another world.”

  Teighlar rubbed at a cheek, agreeing with the statement. He then focused on Torrullin. “When we spoke about this before I did not know. Much of what I have revealed to you now came to me - well, we had a lot of time to think in those goddamned dungeons in Nowhere. My mother was the Valleur, but I do not recall her name or even a smell that goes with her presence in my life the first years. My father was a historian. He told me of the accidental meeting on the mountain.” Teighlar paused, swallowed. “Xander Diluvan was his name, but he died on Orb, a snakebite. I guess his passing made it easier for my mother to leave me behind.”

  “Valleur take the long view,” Elianas said.

  Teighlar’s blue eyes sparked. “Is that so? Well, fuck that.”

  Torrullin leaned forward to grip the Emperor’s wrist. “Focus, my friend. We cannot undo the past.”

  “Ha!”

  Torrullin shook him. “Focus, and hear this. We three bring the threads together. You mentioned Original …”

  Teighlar, about to explode, blinked instead. “Yes.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “The Danaan named their creator as Original. Akin to saying ‘God’ or ‘Supreme’.”

  “Yet you spoke of him in the same breath as Adagin and Ixion. You said ‘first’. You believe the Original was, in fact, a timekeeper. Perhaps the Timekeeper.”

  Slowly Teighlar nodded. “I believe so, yes.”

  Elianas shifted to study Torrullin. “Clearly you believe thus also. What do you know of this Original?”

  “The vision earlier revealed him.”

  Torrullin briefly explained the images of seven boys with seven messages, expressionless and monotone, and then continued.

  “Amongst conflicting revelations, there was this - many answers lie in silence, to end time, scream into silence. I am thinking it refers to empty Danaan. Also this. The true measure of sentience lies in the building blocks of mountains, there is one stone that was, is and will be, find it if you seek peace. There I believe is the first indication of a timepiece and it is made of stone. And this; the Original fashioned the first stone, became the beginning and therefore also the end. That confirms the timepiece as a stone and reveals the first Timekeeper. In fact, a boy spoke these exact words - I, Original, employing this mouthpiece of silent words, shall answer. I created the means to dance; I made a clock. I commenced the measuring of chaos and thus forged the path for those who would come after.”

  “A stone. As a clock?” Teighlar interrupted.

  “The building blocks of the time, my friend. Akhavar is all stone and Grinwallin was imagined using stone - need I say more?”

  “And you think this clock is the master mechanism and it can be found on Danaan,” Teighlar said.

  Elianas, having carefully watched Torrullin’s stoic behaviour, abruptly surged to his feet. Grabbing the basket, pitching flask and mugs in, he said, “I think there is something you need be made aware of. Follow me to my study.”

  He swivelled on his heels and vanished.

  “What now?” Teighlar whispered.

  Torrullin ran a hand through his fair hair. “Damned if I know. Only one way to find out. Come.”

  Avaelyn

  Monklicopin
Dwelling

  THEY FOUND ELIANAS HURLING scrolls and flinging parchment, muttering at a rapid pace under his breath.

  Elianas collected maps, star charts and ley-line sketches. All types and of all ages and eras. The entire one wall of his study was a system of pigeonholes, every nook crammed full. It was the worst filing system in the universe; to date he had not yet laid hands on a map he sought in a first attempt.

  Seeing his face, the force of the concentration there, Torrullin decided not to tease, as he so often had. Teighlar, mercifully, said not a word.

  Elianas glared at them as if they were intruding and then swung away to continue his search. Finally he forged a path through discarded scrolls, holding one in each hand. One was clearly ancient, if its sienna hue was anything to go by, while the other was more recent, an ivory tone.

  After clearing space on his desk, he unfurled them.

  “Bear with me,” he muttered, giving both men an irritated look. He jabbed at the older map. “Era of the Dancing Suns. Nemisin’s time. Teighlar, take a look.”

  The Emperor leaned in, eyelids flicking as he raked the fading illustrations, before straightening in astonishment. “I am amazed you have this.” He elbowed Torrullin beside him and pointed. “Danaan.”

  Torrullin bent over the scroll. “It has no name.”

  “It is Danaan,” Teighlar insisted.

  Elianas laid a finger on another fading sphere. “No name either, but this is Akhavar. Same solar system, same patch of sky. Note that both worlds are ringed blue, which translates as habitable. The ancient mapmaker may not have known the names of these worlds, but he knew they could and possibly had sustained life. Fine, now this.” He shoved the map aside to reveal the other, younger parchment. “Era of the Dying Moons, our current time.” He pointed significantly.