by Jeff Wilson
“Irial, I have no power. It is true that my father could do things. He may have even been something like a sigil knight, but I have no power of my own.”
“You can’t know that,” Irial said. She was not ready to believe him.
“The day before he left Nar Edor, my father took my head in his hands and held me,” Edryd said. He felt the need to convince her, and so he began sharing a story that he had never told to anyone. “He was testing me, taking a measure of the composition of my soul, looking for any hint of unrealized potential. I could feel his spirit plying its way through mine. I was just a child, but I got a glimpse at that moment of the power my father wielded, of what he could do.”
“With children of sigil knights, spiritual power passed down along family lines,” Irial said, interrupting. “Surely his strength passed on to his son.”
“Not in my case,” Edryd said. “My father wanted to find a kernel of ability buried inside of me, but it was not there. He kept trying and trying. In the end, when he finished, he was exhausted. He had found nothing. He looked so sad it scared me. I knew then that he was ashamed of his son. He wouldn’t even look me in the eyes anymore, and in the morning, he was gone.”
Edryd didn’t know to this day why his father had left, but the experience had filled him with a pain and resentment that he continued to struggle with. In response to his having shared with her this memory which he so closely kept, Irial began to develop a resonant empathy towards Edryd, and she was at the conclusion of the story, visibly flushed with emotion.
“He was wrong about you,” she insisted.
Her declaration carried the weight of certain knowledge, not mere belief. Edryd could see he was not going to convince her. He had, he realized, also not been entirely truthful in his efforts to persuade her. There was something he possessed, but it seemed like the opposite of power, only giving added strength to his most dangerous enemies. If she knew this, maybe then she might understand, but he didn’t feel like sharing his fears.
“It still seems like…” he began to say, intending to argue once more that Irial needed to be the one to protect her sister.
“It has to be you,” Irial cut him off. “No one else can do this.”
Recognizing this was not the right moment to demand an explanation, Edryd let it pass. He needed to get a look at this book she had been reading. It was reinforcing the strange notions Irial seemed to have about him.
When they reached the estate they both headed towards the manor. Edryd had never actually visited this place where Seoras lived alone, but he needed to see him and had already traced the shaper’s distinct pattern and determined his location on the lower floor of the building. As Edryd drew closer, he began to get a picture his teacher’s emotions. Seoras was excited about something, something he was bursting to share.
Upon entering the building, it was obvious that no effort was being made to make use of, or to in any way maintain the upper levels. Everything on the main floor was kept clean, but the wooden stairs and railings that led up a level were covered in dust. Edryd located Seoras in the study near the back of the building next to the library, sorting his way through a pile of freshly made drawings. Depicted on some of these were renderings of the panels from the orphic chamber in the ruins.
“I’ve figured something out,” Seoras boasted, as he turned his head to greet Edryd. Seoras, Edryd realized, was in his true environment. Half of the library’s books were scattered about this room, a dozen of them cracked open on the table. Scrolls of loose parchment lay everywhere he looked. Edryd would never have imagined that this harsh manipulator of men, this shaper of the dark and master of steel, would have had so much passion for research and knowledge.
“The towers,” he began, “all five of them, or just four now I suppose, are massive constructs.”
Edryd did not understand the excitement. He expected more was coming, but Seoras seemed to be waiting for the importance of what he had said to sink in.
“Of course they were massive, seems you would have noticed that straight away,” Edryd said dryly. “And it isn’t a great discovery to point out that they were constructed, without knowing how or why.”
Seoras shook his head. “Constructs are, or were, tools created by sorcerers,” Seoras explained, “shaped pieces of the dark, torn loose from the barrier, and confined in a vessel.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You must have heard stories of creatures of stone and earth, magical weapons, sorcerer’s staffs, and spirit familiars that protected their masters?” Seoras asked. “Those things were all constructs. Anyone could be a sorcerer. Sorcerers did not need to be able to shape, or to attune their connections to the dark. All they needed was knowledge, and they used that knowledge to create constructs through which they could wield more power, stave off death, and unlock even greater secrets. Those towers were built as vessels to house constructs of incredible strength and power,”
Edryd still did not truly understand, but he did make the connection that this is what he must have been picking up on when he was in the ruins.
“Why could you not feel them?” Edryd wondered.
“It isn’t so much that I can’t,” Seoras said, “it’s more like they couldn’t see me.”
“You are not explaining this very well,” Edryd said. “Try something less cryptic, if you can manage it.”
“Their attentions were all directed at you. That is what you felt. While you were in there, as far as the constructs were concerned, I didn’t register as being worth notice.”
“You make it sound like the towers are alive,” Edryd said.
“Not the towers, but rather the constructs contained within them,” Seoras corrected. “Not exactly alive either, but over time, they can develop something close to a will of their own, even personalities. I have been in that chamber many times. Always, I felt a hint of animus focused on me, but just a hint so small that I dismissed it as a nervous reaction.”
“What I felt was not a hint or a nervous reaction. When I entered that chamber alone I was submerged beneath forces that overwhelmed me.”
“Whatever you may lack in talent for shaping,” Seoras said, the words coming out slow as if being pulled loose with effort, “your perceptions are far beyond my own.”
It was a startling admission. Edryd had a healthy respect for the powers Seoras controlled so easily. That Seoras should see in him something which surpassed his own mastery over the dark, filled Edryd with a profound fear. He remembered then something that Seoras had said to him only the night before. He had accused Edryd of being afraid of his own power. Those words had made no sense to Edryd then, but he began to understand them now. It suggested another possibility as well. Seoras was learning far more from Edryd than he was giving back in return.
It wasn’t that Seoras wasn’t eager to teach, Edryd just hadn’t proved to be a very capable student. Edryd took a renewed interest in the papers spread out on the table.
“This morning I realized something else,” Seoras said, taking a hold of one of the drawings he had made from memory, “the runic symbols from this panel, are a map of sorts.”
Edryd took a moment to himself to feel superior. He had noticed this the moment he had seen the panel. Seoras however, had gone considerably further with this line of reasoning.
“The chamber wasn’t a failed bridge to the High Realms, but it might have been a portal to similar chambers in other cities. This one here, it corresponds with Alseam, and this one could be Orlon.”
“You can read these symbols?” Edryd asked. The names were not familiar to Edryd, but he got the idea; Seoras was listing off the names of ancient cities, some of which now survived only in the form of rumors of a lost age.
“No, no one can anymore,” Seoras said, “but if I am right, this could be a key to deciphering them. And if this is a map, it gives the locations of cities whose names are no longer even whispered, having long ago been lost to the ravages of time. We could find the
m again, and the knowledge hidden within them.”
Seoras was barely restraining his excitement now, and he was taking it for granted that Edryd would be at his side travelling the world, uncovering the hidden remains of sleeping construct chambers. Edryd silently wondered how best to tell this dangerous man, of whom he felt terrified, thanks but no, and wish him the best of luck. Edryd was curious about the runic inscriptions though, so instead of explaining that he had no wish to go and see any of these places, he began to help Seoras puzzle out what could be learned of the meanings behind the symbols.
Edryd learned that Seoras had an entire collection of transcriptions taken from various surviving sources written in these ancient symbols, and he had compiled a collection of notes drawn from years of study. This was not some recent fleeting pursuit meant to help pass moments of boredom. Seoras had already invested a great deal into this project. His discoveries to this point had been modest. He could interpret the system used for numbering and for giving dates, the names of two significant sorcerers, and a symbolic representation for ‘construct’, but that was the extent of what he knew for certain. The speculated names of known cities on the panel, believed to represent a crude sort of map, had the potential to significantly expand what was known.
It soon struck Edryd as quite impossible. These were not arcane coded symbols that had evolved into more modern equivalents, they were messages written in an unknown language that was long lost to history. The futility of the task drained his level of interest, and Edryd soon found himself distracted by something else. A small leather bound book lay on the table, with its pages open to a description of the funereal practices of ancient mythical beings, alternately known either as the Huldra or the Ældisir.
Edryd paged through the book, scanning its contents. The title had worn away, but what the pages described was a race of beings from another realm, trapped in this world after the bridges built by the first men collapsed. Of particular interest was a description of their physical appearance: tall beautiful men and women with ashen skin that resembled the surface of roughly polished stone. These were the true Ascomanni.
“I was looking for a way to destroy them,” Seoras said from over Edryd’s shoulder, causing Edryd to look up from the book. “But it wasn’t much use. They are no longer much like what they were when they were alive.”
“This book is about the draugar?” Edryd asked. It was a reflexive question, seeking unnecessary confirmation of the obvious.
“No, the book describes what they once were, not what they are now,” he repeated. “The few Huldra and Ældisir that survive are all changed into what you are calling draugar, which isn’t an altogether inaccurate description for what some of them have become.”
“You sound as if you feel sorry for them,” Edryd said.
“I do,” Seoras agreed. “They are anchored to a world that is not theirs, witnesses to the destruction of all their kind, and denied the possibility of release through death.”
“But you want to destroy them?”
“I possess no power that can help or harm them,” Seoras said, straightening his back as he spoke, “but you might.”
Edryd could feel a pressure behind those words, an accusation of sorts—a suggestion that he had hidden away something important.
“Where is the Edorin Sigil Blade?” Seoras demanded.
Aed Seoras began to shape. Edryd tried to move but he couldn’t. He was held down as if by coils of rope securing him to his chair.
“I’m not trying to take it from you, but I must know if you have it,” he said loudly, reacting to Edryd’s attempts to break free.
Seoras’s demeanor was not much different from any of the several times the shaper’s cultivated calm had been obliterated in a fit of anger. But what Edryd saw in his teacher’s mind now was not anger; it was something more frightening. It was an intense desperate thirst, borne out of a hope that the weapon could somehow save him from bondage and damnation.
“Let me go, or I will refuse to help you,” Edryd insisted.
The forces holding Edryd in place weakened reluctantly. Edryd stood up slowly with an attitude of indifferent composure, which he in no way truly felt, and backed away from his teacher.
“I dropped it into the middle of the ocean,” Edryd said.
The lie had a visible effect on Seoras, whose shoulders fell as he exhaled all of the air in his lungs. The shaper stumbled over to the other side of the table and slumped despondently into a chair.
“You can’t imagine what you have done,” Seoras lamented.
“There was something in that sword,” Edryd explained, “an evil that I couldn’t control.”
“Those weapons were forged by the Sigil Order specifically to destroy constructs, and you may have discarded the last working example,” Seoras said, admonishing his student. “I cannot imagine a more stupid act.”
“I had no use for such a thing,” Edryd said. The rebuke from Seoras had set him on edge even more than having been confined in the chair. He hadn’t truly discarded the weapon, but he had seriously considered doing so, dissuaded only by Aelsian’s promise to hide it away.
“You should realize nothing has only one use. That weapon could have been used to defeat Huldra and Ældisir. They will come for you again, and you will wish then that you had such a weapon.”
Deciding it was time to put space between himself and the dark, unpredictable shaper, Edryd left. He had unanswered questions, but he hoped that many of them would be answered by the small leather bound book he had tucked inside his coat.
Edryd sought Irial without success, and ended up in the little used room that had been made up for him in the barracks. Suspecting that she was probably still up at the manor, where he didn’t intend to return for fear of running into Seoras, Edryd settled into a chair and began to read from the book he had stolen. She was certain to find him here if he waited.
The book was an account summarizing the history and culture of the Huldra and Ældisir, whose long story traced back to a time when the first men had bridged this world and theirs, driving a period of trade, with shared exchanges of knowledge and materials that were previously foreign to the respective worlds. The Huldra and the Ældisir were descended from ancestors who were trapped on this side when the bridge collapsed. Many men were also trapped at that time by this collapse in numerous other realms, including theirs, Huldasvárri.
The Huldra were a warrior caste, predominantly male and often exceptionally strong. The Ældisir were the exclusively female practitioners of a unique deistic form of sorcery called Seiðr, with which they performed an essential role for their people. Denied admittance to the High Realms of men, when one of the Huldra died in this realm, displaced so far from the paths that led to their own afterworld, they were at risk of being condemned to wander, forever lost in the æther. The Ældisir were living guides, travelers of the æther who helped the dead find the paths which would enable them to make their journey to the afterlife.
Edryd continued to read, but he had to agree, the people described in this book were alive, vulnerable to death, and not much like the monsters he had either encountered himself or heard descriptions of from others. Nothing in the book hinted at what might have transformed them so cruelly.
He had been reading for a few hours and was half way through the text when Irial arrived.
“What is that?” she asked.
“A book borrowed from the library of our good Lord Seoras,” Edryd said to Irial, who gave him a critical look upon hearing this description.
“Alright, stolen from Lord Seoras then,” he said, admitting to the act of theft.
“I’m not sure what he would even do, but it would be best if you don’t let him know you have taken it,” Irial cautioned.
“Have you seen the state his study is in? If he misses it at all, he will think it is buried under a pile somewhere.”
“Maybe,” Irial allowed, without expressing any real confidence in Edryd’s logic, “but
what was so interesting about it that you would even take the risk?”
In answer, Edryd turned the pages of the book to a detailed drawing. Reversing his hold on the book he raised it in the air so that Irial could see the image.
“That looks like Herja!” Irial gasped.
Edryd closed the book and tucked it back into his coat. Irial clearly would have liked to take a closer look, and Edryd did want her opinion, but this was leverage with which he could pry information from her first.
“How did Seoras become connected with the draugar?” Edryd asked.
Irial glanced around nervously, reacting with a conditioned alarm caused by recent memories of Herja and her thralls in residence at the estate.
“Do you not think that conversation would be better suited for another time, and any place but here?” she asked.
“It definitely would be,” Edryd agreed. “I’m ready to go if you are.”
Edryd was pleasantly surprised to learn that Irial was ready to leave, as he had not realized that a good part of the day had already passed while he was reading. As they left together and headed for the gates, Edryd was troubled by the idea that he would be stopped by Seoras, but he did his best to conceal the anxiety.
Once they were well away from the edges of the settlement, Irial and Edryd stopped to rest and talk on a grassy slope overlooking the city. The air was still and quiet, with occasional currents that transported the fresh lavender scent from Irial’s hair and her simple dark woolen dress. Edryd was suddenly aware of the fact that he had not done anything to clean himself up since his time out in the forests. He wore fresh clothing, but his black canvas coat had become worn and dirty, and he didn’t want to consider what a week spent in the woods must smell like.
“Seoras came here with Beodred’s men,” Irial began, answering the question Edryd had posed about Seoras while back at the estate. “He had been one of Beodred’s personal guards, and as such had some status. He could have vied for control, but he was only here for a few months, leaving at the first opportunity.”