by Awert, Wolf
Nill gasped in bemusement. The small black figures had been twisted and bent branches, moving in the wind like shade-fighters, whipping through the air, spinning around, jerking here and there, rising up and slamming back down again.
It must have been the branches that got me, Nill thought as he wiped his aching forehead, where a small lump had begun to form. He now lay flat on his back, safe from most renewed attempts by the foliage to strike him. Only once or twice did a twig take a swipe at his face.
For the second time Nill raised his eyes to the unending heights of this forest, where the silvery trunks vanished into the dark green ceiling. This is no forest. This is a monumental hall with skyward pillars, silence and serenity under its roof, yet a wild witch-dance on the floor, Nill thought. “Dum-da-dam, dum-da-da-dam, dum-da-da-dam-dam.”
The rhythm of the swinging and flailing branches reverberated within Nill’s body and filled him with a sorrowful song. With sparing movements and slowly shifting his head he let his shoulders circle, until finally his whole body accepted the rhythm. Nill wriggled across the floor, scratching the fallen leaves with his fingertips, toes and ankles, revealing the soft, black topsoil that lay beneath. Nill danced, but not with the weightlessness of a dancer seeking to leave the world behind. Nill danced with the earth. He had slid back into a long-forgotten past, the ancient times when not all life had dared leave the security of the ground. The time of the first dragons, earthbound creatures who had yet to rise up into the air and make it their own. These days only few creatures still moved in this archaic way. Wood olm and den newts, many-legged snakes and flat-lizards had kept the memories of the old times in their bony skulls, and so had, perhaps, many more animals that Nill did not know of. He danced until the forest settled down with the setting sun. Only then did he regain consciousness and felt once more endless sadness and desperation in his heart. Until now he had only known dance as part of exhilaration, at the parties by the Judgment Tree, or just to get rid of excess energy. But this was completely different.
A snapping noise made Nill turn his head. He was able to make out Dakh-Ozz-Han’s silhouette vaguely against the backdrop of the forest. He was carrying a dark red light in his hand, but it barely illuminated his surroundings. “Come, it is time to fill the water skins.”
“What …?”
“Shh, keep quiet. It is better not to raise your voice in this forest.”
The druid walked with slow, careful steps, as straight as the many trees would allow. The branches were still moving, but it was no more than a slight twitch, barely enough to trip up a wanderer. Nill stumbled after Dakh. His senses were in disarray, and he still heard the thumping that had heralded his dance. The painful memory of the beating he had received caused him to raise his arms to protect his face, and his body was all hunched. When he finally reached the pond from which they had planned to refill their water, Dakh-Ozz-Han had already done most of the work.
“Come here, let me help you with that,” he murmured. Nill did not want to accept, but before he could say a word the druid had taken the water skin from him and begun to fill them from the pond, careful not to disturb the mud. He gave Nill a full one back, took the last two in his arms and began to make his way back. Nill followed him with his lips pressed tightly together, his back aching and his head full of sad thoughts.
It took a hot tea, some dried meat and rather a lot of honey to gradually make Nill’s melancholy pass.
“The forest down there is called the Valley of Unhappy Trees. One should usually avoid it. By day, as you no doubt noticed, it is dangerous, and by night most people can enter, but don’t have the strength to exit again. Quite a few people lie buried there. Lost, unknowing wanderers, or sad people, who had long since given up hope. Too many sad stories, too much pain. And the pain in this forest grows stronger the more time passes.”
The druid lowered his head. Even here by the hill, in respectful distance of the forest, they could not avoid its depressing air.
“It’s a magical place, isn’t it?” Nill asked with a mixture of awe, admiration and timidity, looking across the valley to the forest, now hidden in the shroud of the night.
The druid made a tired gesture. “I do not know. I can only feel the desperation and sometimes the helpless anger. Powerful forces are at work here, but whether they are magical, I cannot tell. It is no form of magic I know of.”
Nill shivered at these words. “Is there magic you do not know of? An ancient magic, or magic that is not of the elements?” Nill did not know where the question came from. Something stirred in his memory. Something about the forest that was vital to tell the druid about, but the memory was no more than a wisp of smoke.
“Why are the deepest questions always asked in moments of sorrow?” Dakh’s gaze wandered through the darkness beyond the campfire. “Every druid would now tell you that there is only the magic of five elements, and all other sorts are combinations of those. But I am not sure about that. The older I get, the more I learn about the magic that has been part of me all my life, the less certain I am. You asked of ancient magic. Well, if the legends hold true, this was once the Old Forest of Ancient Trees. But ancient magics are not mentioned.”
Dakh-Ozz-Han knew many tales. Far more than Esara. And he told them well, too. Nill could have listened to the druid all night, had the desire to sleep not won. As much as Dakh kept to himself during the day, he would open up by the nightly campfire. Nill sat up expectantly. The druid just grumbled and said: “This story is quite short. Nobody knows what the Old Forest of Ancient Trees looked like, but this was the only place on Pentamuria where the forest grew. They say that the king camped here with a hunting party once and thought it was far too dusky. Neither joy nor laughter were had at the fire that night. The fool. He did not feel the powers this place has, although he was learned in magic. He could not find any happiness in the place either, although it was there, sleeping contentedly in the darkness. In the Old Forest of Ancient Trees the here and there were as one, earth and space were not separated, old and young felt the same.
“The king had a grove of Mylantos near his palace. Those are trees that shoot skyward like pillars, with silvery, slender bodies, and the branches only start very high up.”
Nill nodded. He had seen them in the forest earlier, but he did not want to interrupt the druid now, so he kept his silence.
“The king’s grove was famed, and it was called the Silver Palace for the trees. By day the sun would shine down through the branches and sprinkle the ground with gold.
“The king asked his sorcerers to bring some of his fast-growing Mylantos here so that he and his company might rest in more comfortable surroundings. But it was in vain. None of the seeds they sowed would grow. One day, something happened. Perhaps it was a bolt of lightning or a storm, nobody knows any more. Either way, some of the old trees burned down and there was a clearing in the woods. The sorcerers planted three Mylantos trees in that clearing. The king never knew what happened with the seeds. He had grown tired of the whole business and left the forest with his party. He went back home and never came back here. What we know today we know from the people who live here. The Old Forest of Ancient Trees was always important to these people, for they felt what was special about the place and declared it sacred.
“The Mylantos grew far quicker than the old trees. Their branches wove together and cast shadows on the ground, and the children of the old trees could not grow. Now there are only Mylantos. But the last of the ancient trees noticed that the Mylantos moved in the wind and sometimes the leafy canopy opened up. Light would soak the ground, and darkness would be dispelled for a while. So they began to move, and so the ancient trees still move. They move towards the light to survive. They are the only trees on Pentamuria that can grow under Mylantos.”
“So both trees now live together in peace.” Nill liked the nice end to the tale, but the druid shook his head sadly.
“I do not know if there is peace. I cannot feel it. The legend
claims that the trees were giants and connected the earth to the sky. What we see here and call the “ancient trees” are small, tough warriors, fighting for their lives. These are no giants any more. What you feel are their cries for help, their anger. That is why people call this place the Valley of Unhappy Trees. They know the forest. I do not believe that there is peace here. There will be peace when the ancient trees are alone again.”
Nill liked Dakh’s stories. Something in the way he told them turned the words into song. But he never quite understood what the druid was trying to convey, and this annoyed him. He did not want to seem obtuse or stupid.
“I did not feel anger,” he said, “but certainly desperation. And sadness, too. Why do I always feel like you’re trying to tell me something with your tales? I rarely understand what you really mean.”
Dakh-Ozz-Han plucked a fresh blade of grass from the earth. “I am not trying to say anything. The stories are the ones who want that. That is why there are always people to keep telling them, and every new person sees a different message in them. But that is also the reason that we keep telling stories about the early days of man.”
The druid gazed up toward the sky. “Many generations ago, Shubalo the Seer showed the future to mankind. He did not tell what he had seen. He wrote a song of what would no longer be. The song is sung by druids and other peoples, and has been for many hundreds of years.” And the druid began to sing a few lines in his rough voice.
Where once was magic, still is now
It conquers and defends
King will fall and Circle sleep
And ev’ry reign must end.
With no order, sorrow comes
Into darkness flees the light
When the world is crumbling down
No one retains their might.
Nill shook his head, confused. “That is a song for dancing. But who would give a dance-tune such dark lyrics? Did Shubalo really know the future?”
Dakh opened his hands and looked into his palms, as if to show that there was nothing there. “We druids believe that man once knew his distant future, but the knowledge has been lost. In the tales of the tribes some of the old prophecy is still intact. But I begin to wonder. More and more prophecies are reaching the light of day. Bits of stories that everyone knows, but are still new. Signs inscribed in stone tablets or rocks. And I wonder how we could have missed that? Prophecies made by great mages are truths. But as with all truths, there are more than one.”
Nill shook his head again. “Either it’s true or not. There is no in between.”
The druid smiled. “No, my young friend. It is not as easy as you would think. The opposite of a truth is not a lie, but another truth. As such there is always the possibility that a prophecy does not come to pass, or even to stop it from happening. And that is what the mage’s Circle is trying to do.”
“How?”
The word exploded out of Nill in his excitement and curiosity, shooting through the air loudly and leaving an empty silence in its wake for a moment, which was then filled with the quiet rustling of the fire. Dakh jumped.
“What did you just do? Just now?” he asked sharply.
“Nothing,” Nill answered as innocently as he felt. “I would like to know how the mages intend to stop their destinies from happening.”
The druid exhaled, shuddering. “If you don’t learn to control your abilities quickly, you won’t even have a destiny.”
“That bad?”
“That bad!”
Dakh-Ozz-Han hummed a melody to himself. The notes came from deep within his throat and had little to do with music as Nill knew it, but he could not resist their effect. He felt his energy draining and had difficulty in staying upright. “What are you doing with me?” he yawned.
“It was a difficult day. We will talk more tomorrow.”
Nill agreed, but before he fell asleep for good he jerked up again.
“Wait!”
Nill had remembered what he had wanted to tell Dakh-Ozz-Han all along. First the sadness, then Dakh’s tale, then the strange discourse about truth and lies had pushed all else aside, and so he burst out: “There is an ancient magic in this forest!”
“Leave it for now,” the druid mumbled.
“No, no, I felt it. It was in the movement of the branches. It looked like they were reaching for the light at first, but really it was a dance of souls. I danced with them, and I know it wasn’t about sunlight any longer. I felt like an olm or a dragon, or a…” His eyes fell shut and he heard Dakh’s answer as a distant grumble. One word managed to get through to him.
“The tough warriors are very old,” the druid said. “Their memories reach back to the parts of time that man had no access to. It is possible that they granted you some. You seem more accessible than most people.”
“Accessible”: there was that word again. Esara had said the same after the runes had danced and he had fought the demon. “What does accessible mean?”
Whatever else the druid said to him, he did not hear it.
The next morning they had left the Valley of Unhappy Trees behind them and were glad to be back in the sun. With every step some of the despair lifted, and before long Nill was singing loudly.
“Vitality is best when it comes back,” the druid said simply.
They marched towards the rising sun, the unending mountains to their left in the distance, a small jagged crown on the horizon, and on their right the familiar hills that looked like the backs of a grazing herd of rams from this distance. The landscape kept to its yellowish green and the shrubs and bushes looked like those they had passed already, back near the village. The only things that had changed in the forest were Nill and Dakh-Ozz-Han. Nill had left behind his timidity before the mighty man, and Dakh had begun to teach Nill. He mostly did this with short signs, little more than a nod of the head.
Once, Dakh stopped moving suddenly and craned his neck. Nill looked around but could not see what had caught Dakh’s attention. Once the druid had shown no obvious signs of wanting to keep walking and the calm of the moment had spread across the hill, Nill heard the wind. It was blowing across the land differently than usual, and as such sounded unfamiliar. Nill nodded, the druid smiled, and they continued their walk. That was all that happened. But what could cause the wind to blow differently? The question stayed in Nill’s mind all day.
Chapter 3
In Metal World a foul-tempered sorcerer straightened his sumptuous but threadbare robe. The glory of days long past seemed a constant reminder in the small stone house where he resided with his son, his son’s wife and their son.
“You should be forging more weapons than tools,” he grumbled in the direction of the dimly glowing fire. “Magical weapons, armor and helmets.”
“Leave it, father. The war is over, and the people of the area need the tools more than they need weapons.”
“You fool!” The old man shook his fist. “The war never ends. And even if it subsides for a while, then it is just the precursor to another war. And if you were to use the gifts bestowed upon you, you would know what awaits us; alas, you care more to shut your senses to the outside world and entomb yourself away from the truth than to take your rightful place.”
The blacksmith was used to his father’s volatile temper and answered calmly: “Leave it be, father, I have enough tasks to see us through the winter. I will take care of our other worries once they actually exist.”
The old sorcerer snorted. “In spite of all his weaknesses, your son has more backbone than you. He is a true Chron-Lai. Fetch my grandson.”
But the grandson was more than a day’s march away from the stone house. He rushed through the dusk like a gray khanwolf, afraid of coming too late. His goal was somewhere between fire and wood. He avoided settlements and merchant roads and tried to regain some lost time with daring leaps down steep mountainsides. More than once he barely managed to escape the falling rubble he himself had set in motion with his foolhardy movements.
I
n the darkness he felt safe. The moon only illuminated the ridges and cliffs ever so slightly. He knew about this; but no hunter can catch running wild in the night. The boy welcomed the moonlight, and so he kept running towards the fire until the exhaustion forced him into a short, uneasy rest.
The Oas’ journey to Ringwall dragged on. Grimala lead the cavalcade and her many breaks decided their speed. Quiwill and Feirie, two of Tiriwi’s mothers, had joined their daughter on her journey and took the opportunity to refill their stocks of seeds, leaves and roots. A young Oa from the neighboring village was there to carry Grimala’s luggage, three more women were responsible for all the equipment that a traveling group needed in terms of food and shelter. Grimala had carefully planned everything, for the steppe that lay between Ringwall and their home forest gave little shelter and seemed dangerous to all Oas.