The Children of Telm - The Complete Epic Fantasy Trilogy

by Dean F. Wilson

  “Do you miss Boror?” he questioned with a sigh, and he did not know if it was the question or the sigh that he directed at himself.

  “Yes,” she said, and she seemed less fierce. “I miss the freedom of moving from place to place. This castle is like a prison. I’m just glad Rúathar lets us go out to the Stumps every now and then. I never felt small before until I saw them.”

  “Then I look forward to feeling small,” Ifferon said.

  * * *

  Instead of feeling small, Ifferon found that he was feeling about in the dark as Rúathar led them from the dim bunker into a network of passages. The tunnels were dimmer than he imagined, and darker than he hoped. They reminded him of the secret passages in the monastery at Larksong, which led to Teron’s hidden cellar. Rúathar brought a torch with him and did not race from view, like Teron did, and this proved a solitary comfort to Ifferon.

  “It is dark in here,” he said.

  “I can see,” Affon said, but still Ifferon could hear her slip from time to time on the steps. She grumbled as she regained her composure, and she refused the aid of the Ferian twins when they tried to help her up, elbowing them angrily for the insulting offer.

  “Then you have the eyes of Taarí,” Ifferon said.

  “I will,” she said. “On my belt with the eyes of other traitors.”

  Ifferon was unsettled by her words, and yet he was reminded of someone he knew was equally violent and intense, who might have also said those words in her fiery youth. He thought of Geldirana, whose fire had never waned.

  * * *

  When at last the group emerged from the tunnels, they found themselves cursing the light that they had only moments before craved, for it stabbed their eyes, as if in envy of them spending so long in the dark. As they squinted, and as the light grew more forgiving, they began to make out the strange display before them, which the light itself seemed in awe of.

  The Stumps were beyond anything Ifferon had imagined. He expected something colossal, but many of the tree stumps here were taller than any fully-grown tree he had ever seen, and entire villages could be built on the larger ones, which spanned hundreds of metres across. It made Ifferon wonder just what walked these forests, and just how big they were. His mind could barely conceive of the scale, and he shuddered from the thought, as if a giant foot might suddenly come crashing down beside—or upon—him.

  Despite the daunting size of everything around him, Ifferon was comforted by the thick grass and flowers, which grew around the tree stumps like a people gathering to praise their gods. There were familiar flowers, like those he admired in Boror, but there were also flora he did not know, and he wondered if they grew anywhere else in Iraldas, or if they too were remnants of the time of the Elad Éni.

  “I love all of this,” Ifferon said. “Nature and all her wonders. I just wish I was walking through here because I wanted to, because I had time away from troubles, time just to see and admire, to explore and discover. Instead I am here because I have little choice, and so I see many great and wondrous things, but my mind is too preoccupied with huge and terrible things to appreciate them.”

  Rúathar smiled at him. “And yet if you were not forced on this quest, you would not have seen this at all. It is best to admire the light you find on your journey of darkness, than to live a life without darkness or light.”

  “It does appear that they come together,” Ifferon acknowledged. “There is no day without night.”

  “That is true,” Rúathar said. “And no life without death. Perhaps Théos had to die, to free Corrias from him, to give the god new life. Yet we cannot use that possibility as an excuse not to act, for we must do all we can to save all the peoples of Iraldas.”

  Ifferon nodded. He looked ahead at Marilah, the old woman, who looked as though she was living now just for her daughter and granddaughter. He glanced back at Affon and the Ferian twins, who were running about, screaming and shouting excitedly, and making sounds that he thought three children alone could not make.

  “Why do you seem so different to the Ferian?” Ifferon asked as he turned back to Rúathar. “They seem to hate every other race. Elithéa even told me that all others are dead to them. Yet the Al-Ferian harbour people of so many different races. Alimror sits in the middle of Iraldas, perhaps fittingly, so that all can reach its refuge more easily. But it does make me wonder how your people came about.”

  “We are a bit more open-minded than our sister race,” Rúathar said. “Look at the trees. The tree does not say to the squirrel, ‘Go away. You are not a tree, so you cannot be part of the forest.’ The tree does not shoo away the birds because they do not have branches, nor exile the worms because they do not have leaves. The tree realises that it takes more than just the trees to make a forest.”

  They continued on until they reached a part of the Stumps that had been clearly trodden many times before, perhaps by Rúathar and the other Children of Telm. The trees spanned for miles further south, but the Al-Ferian would not dare go too far in. He said it was best to stay close to the Mountain Fortress, but Ifferon caught a nervousness in his voice, and he wondered what else might lie behind the fallen Perasalon trees.

  “Here we are,” Rúathar said.

  He produced an assortment of nuts from his bag, which he rummaged through periodically like a fussy squirrel. Ifferon thought it merely a strange custom until the Al-Ferian took an almond from the mix and tapped it against one of the gigantic tree stumps. He pressed his ear to the wood and then shook his head, before trying again with a chestnut. He listened once more, but did not find the answer he was seeking.

  At last Ifferon’s curiosity got the better of him. “What are you doing?” he asked. He imagined that if Yavün were there, he would have asked the question much sooner.

  “I am looking for the right wood for the Ferhassan,” Rúathar replied. “There are certain combinations that signify different things. We need to find the combination to signify a god, so that the Ferhassan will naturally store the soul of a god and not a boy.”

  “You say we, but I do not think I am much use here,” Ifferon said.

  “Of course you are,” Rúathar said. “In fact, you are essential. You are the closest thing to a god we have, as are the others here, so you must look for wood that matches your heart. You will know it when you find it. For me, I will ask the hazelnuts and walnuts to help.”

  Ifferon thought little of Rúathar’s words, but decided to wander and at least appear as if he was being useful. He knocked on trees, sniffed bits of fallen bark, and counted rings in the smaller of the Perasalon tree stumps. He did not find anything that spoke to him in particular—everything seemed decidedly foreign, not only to him but to the world at large. This was a place from another time, and it was very much at odds with everything else. He wondered how he would ever find anything that seemed to belong to him, like the Scroll in his pocket did.

  Affon seemed less ill at ease. She was racing through the trees and climbing up onto the tree stumps. She carried what looked like a large branch, but was actually a tiny twig from one of the monstrous trees. It did not seem to Ifferon that she picked it because she identified with it, but more because she enjoyed bashing the Ferian twins with it as she chased them through the woods.

  It took Ifferon a long time to find anything remotely resonant, but when he did, it immediately stood out to him. In the deepest part of the Stumps was a fallen Perasalon tree, beyond enormity and almost beyond conception. Its mighty trunk was so heavy that it had crushed the land beneath it, which seemed to sag from the weight. It was so large that it brought to Ifferon’s mind the idea of the great serpent called the Gormathrong, as if this were the body of one of its distant cousins. He shuddered at the thought and tried to focus on the task Rúathar had given him.

  Then he saw the flake of bark from the corner of his eye; it was small and golden, like a sliver of the precious metal, if a tree could produce such a thing. Yet it seemed even more brilliant in the light as he
took it up and turned it here and there, for it had the sheen of a mirror. He held it before him and saw his face in it, and for a fraction of a moment he saw himself when he was younger, when many knew him as an adventurer and not a coward, when Geldirana knew him as a lover and not a betrayer of love. The flake appeared thin, but it was heavy, and yet from it he could feel the potency and might of his youthful days, as if a spell from Chránán, the Lord of the Shadow of Time, had been cast upon it. After a time he realised that this was what Rúathar had hoped he would find, something to empower him, and to empower the ritual to bring Corrias back into the world.

  Ifferon felt relief at finding this ancient artefact, which to some was little more than a scrap of wood, but the relief did not last for long. When he turned around to find the others, to search out their voices, he could not see them and could not hear their words. Rúathar was not chasing down heirlooms of an ancient world, and Affon was not chasing the heirs of the newer world. Instead there was a silence he had not heard in a long time—and it was unsettling, for it was the echo of the Void, a semblance of the unnerving quiet that always existed in that place of nothingness in which the Elad Éni dwelt. The memory of his flight through the longwheat of Larksong, where he had lost Herr’Don and Yavün, returned like a hammer-fall to his mind, and immediately he was shaken. Yet even that terrifying ordeal compared little to what happened next.

  As Ifferon stood in the monstrous forest, with the great tree behind him and the many great tree stumps around him, he looked to and fro to search for his companions, and he listened here and there to find their voices or heavy footfalls. But something seized his heart, like the hand of Agon stretching up through the earth and the soil, and through his weak and mortal body. His breathing stopped and his eyes went wide, and suddenly it seemed as though he were seeing the Stumps for the first time again, but now they seemed more daunting, if not altogether terrifying.

  And then they emerged.

  From behind every tree and every tree stump. From behind every rock and bush. From behind every cover of the natural world, and especially from behind the many walls of Ifferon’s own mind. They emerged. Shapes of shadow crawled out into view, like hunting spiders that had always been there, but now were ready for the meal. The figures were darker than he remembered them, even in the horror of Larksong and the many horrors that followed, for they seemed black against the grey, green and brown of the forest floor—and black against the many colours of his mind.

  For a time they stood there, like the many twisted things that live in the nightmare that even the night itself tries to wake from, and Ifferon found himself frozen, paralysed by his fear. If they had come for him then, it would have been a mercy, for it would have at least brought an end to the rising panic in the very core of his being, but instead they stood and stared from whatever eyes the darkness had crafted, and Ifferon did not know what they wanted or when they would attack, only that he could not do what he struggled against his unmoving limbs to do—that he could not run.

  Then they began to flicker, like candle flames against the darkness, but these were flames of darkness flickering against the light. For a moment he did not see them, though the fear remained. When he blinked again they reappeared, or rather his sight adjusted, for they were always there, watching from beyond. Part of Ifferon wanted to reach for the Scroll in his pocket, but another part of him realised that it was useless against these phantom figures, for they did not answer to Molok the Animator, but to the Elad Éni who made and wandered the ancient forest that the Stumps were but a remnant of.

  Fear consumed him and gave way to panic, and together they banged on his heart and his brain, until he felt as though his body could no longer sustain the assault. He tried to think of Corrias and Telm, the powerful forces of the Céalari, but all he could see in his mind was an image of those gods cowering.

  Then Rúathar appeared, hurrying through the forest towards him. He passed straight through one of the shadowy figures, and this confirmed to Ifferon that they were not the ones that served Molok, but this did not lessen his anxiety.

  “Come, Ifferon,” Rúathar said. “We have been searching for you.”

  Then Rúathar’s face turned sour as he looked upon the cleric; the look on Ifferon’s face must have been far worse. The Al-Ferian immediately unleashed an Ilokrán from his pocket, like a sword from a scabbard, and his eyes darted to and fro, as if to flee his head and find safety in the less ancient trees in the other parts of the great forest.

  “I see naught, but I sense it,” Rúathar said, and his voice was hushed. “Perhaps more from you than from the land.” He produced another Shadowstone from his pocket and handed it to Ifferon. “Take this, and tell me what you saw.”

  The presence of the Al-Ferian, and the feel of the Ilokrán, brought a wave of calm to the ravaged shores of Ifferon’s mind. His heart still beat a battle rhythm, and his brain still pounded a percussion of its own, but the figures were no longer there before him, lingering only in the darker parts of his memory. Yet it took Ifferon what felt like a long and exhausting time to talk, to bring courage again to his voice.

  “Spectres,” he said at last, “but ones from the Elad Éni. I do not feel welcome in this wood.”

  “Nor I,” Rúathar said. “I doubt they like much that we seek to resurrect the very Céalar who imprisoned them in the Void. But these Spectres only have the power of fear, great though that might be, and outside of the Stumps they are powerless altogether. Let us make them powerless once again.”

  He led Ifferon back to the others, who were not far away, though evidently they had not witnessed anything as harrowing as Ifferon had. Affon still seemed brash and cheerful, the Ferian twins were bruised, but smiling, and the three generations of the Arlinian family seemed content, if not altogether mirthful, with the bits of tree and twig they had found and collected. None of them needed much encouragement to hurry out of the Stumps, however, and this made Ifferon wonder if Rúathar had been forced to make flight from there before with them.

  Ifferon could not find his bearings amidst the trees, but Rúathar found his way with ease, like a king who wanders regularly the many passages of his own castle. Though Ifferon could not see the Mountain Fortress through the thick ceiling of leaves above him, he could sense that they were approaching the point where the trees did not give way to a clearing, but instead seemed to climb up the side of the mountain, like giant adventurers of their own.

  In time they found the opening that led back into the secret passages up the mountain, but now Ifferon was even more reluctant to enter the darkness, for fear had heightened his senses, so that he could see every shimmer of a shadow, hear every creak or crack, and feel every strand of a cobweb and every raised hair on the back of his neck. Yet he did not want to linger on the outskirts of the Stumps, where he knew these heightened senses could detect something best left unfound.

  Ifferon found the tunnels much darker than before, as if the darkness had grown just as jealous of the light and sought to punish their senses. He clutched the wall of the tunnel for support, but he found his head was spinning, and the floor, wherever it was, dared to imitate his mind. At times he stumbled and was hauled up by Affon, who seemed to determine a kind of scrutiny of his strength from his grip, and seemed to communicate a kind of appraisal of his weakness from her own.

  “Good,” Rúathar said as they entered out into the light of the main courtyard at the top of the Mountain Fortress, where the light again chastised them. “Let us see what we have found. We must begin the process as soon as possible.”

  He took out the dappled cupule of a large acorn, the size of his hand, which was itself larger than the hands of most others present. The nut was missing, it seemed, perhaps eaten by some long extinct species of large animal that lived at the time of the Elad Éni.

  “This will form the base,” he said. He looked then to Ifferon.

  Ifferon took the sliver of bark from his pocket, and it almost seemed that the Scroll wa
s relieved to not be sharing its resting place with the Elad Éni relic any longer. He placed it on the table, where everyone gathered around it. Some did not seem much impressed, but Rúathar’s eyes lit up, like a child who had just been gifted his most desired toy.

  For a moment Rúathar was speechless, though he oft opened his mouth, perhaps to speak, or perhaps simply to let out the air of his stayed breath. “Perfect,” he eventually managed. “This will form the core. It is large enough that we will need little else, but many is stronger. Marilah—”

  But before he could finish his words, and almost before he had finished the woman’s name, Affon barged through and placed the giant twig on the table. She raised her chin in expectation of what, no doubt, she thought was a most deserving chorus of praise.

  “Wait your turn, child,” Rúathar said sharply, and she glowered at him as she took the stick away, with an air that suggested she might not ever give it back. “Marilah,” Rúathar repeated, and he stressed the name, as if to show how different it sounded to Affon, “what did you and your family find?”

  Marilah produced an aged golden leaf, which was the size of her outstretched palm. Her daughter had a similar leaf, though younger, smaller and fairer, and her granddaughter held a tiny leaf, which was dappled with silver spots. Rúathar nodded as each was added to the table.

  He looked at Affon, who Ifferon expected would be next, but it seemed that Rúathar wanted her to show more respect, so he skipped to the Ferian twins instead. Though all expected them to produce two identical items, they instead revealed a spiky brown leaf and a shell containing a droplet of the sap of one of the trees.

  “Very good,” Rúathar said. “You have an affinity with the forest.”

  He turned to Affon, who still puckered her face in defiance, like she had when the twins tried to get her to stop hitting them with the stick. It seemed as though she wanted to bash Rúathar with it now instead.