earthdawn Anarya's Secret

by Tim Jones

  The Age of Legend

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  Before science, before history, an era of magic existed in our world's dim past. Magic flowed freely, touching every aspect of the lives of men and women of the Name-giver races. It was an age of heroes, an age of fantastical deeds and mythical stories. It was the Age of Legend.

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  As the levels of magic rose, so did the dangers in the world. The rise of magic lured the Horrors from the depths of astral space—nightmarish creatures that devoured all life in their path. For four centuries, entire nations hid underground as the Horrors devastated their lands during the dark time that came to be called the Scourge.

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  During the past century, the people of Barsaive have emerged from their sealed kaers and citadels. Trolls, dwarfs, elves, orks, and humans live side by side with exotic races: the lizard-like t'skrang, the small, winged windlings, and the earthen obsidimen. Fantastical creatures dwell once more in the forests and jungles. Arcane energies offer power to those willing to learn the ways of magic.

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  In the Age of Legend, bold heroes from all across Barsaive band together—ready to fight for life and freedom against the remaining Horrors and the oppressive Theran Empire, which seeks to bend the rebellious province again to their yoke. Through noble deeds and sacrifice, the heroes of the world forge Barsaive's future, arming themselves for their daunting task with powerful magical spells and treasures.

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  Prologue

  We all have to eat.

  Anarya grew up in a community sliding down the long slope to extinction. She played with toys handed down through the generations, and followed her parents from plaza to farm, from farm to market stall, from market stall to plaza, without wondering why there were so few other children, or why the lights were dim, or why so much of her world was shadow and silence. And as for the sun and the sky, she never thought of them, for she had never seen them.

  Fifteen generations ago, the ancestors of her ancestors lived in the fertile valley of the river then known as the Volost, which rose on the northern flanks of the Tylon Mountains. There they farmed, and sometimes fought. They traded with the human communities of the Tylon and the t'skrang of the Serpent River, and did not give undue thought to the future.

  Then emissaries from the Theran Empire came among them and told them of the coming Scourge: the time when the magical potential of the world would be so great that Horrors from other dimensions would be able to enter and ravage it, devouring bodies, devouring minds. The people of the Volost took a lot of persuasion, but the Therans were persistent; and as the years went by, even farmers who never stirred from their soil could no longer deny the reports that reached them from north and south, of terrible things gathering at the margins of the inhabited lands, and breaking through to wreak havoc on the innocent and the ill prepared.So the elders of the villages along the Volost swallowed their pride and began the construction of Kaer Volost within the mountains at the valley's head. They paid a high price in coin and freedom, but they built well, hewing as closely as possible to the Theran plan; and when the time came, they retreated behind their orichal-cum doors and prepared to wait out the Scourge deep within the rock.

  The doors and the barriers, both magical and physical, held against the worst that came to their world. Even as their valley was turned from fertile earth to Horror-haunted wasteland, its people survived deep within the kaer, and recounted their history in the plaza at night, comforting themselves with the hope that, though they would never again see the sun themselves, their far, far descendants would once more walk free on the surface.

  But if Kaer Volost was a refuge, it was also a prison: a prison for the souls of the old, living out their days in a growing darkness, and a greater prison for the souls of the young, trapped in a cage they could not escape.

  For the first ten generations after the doors were sealed it was, at least, a well-lit and well-provisioned prison. Using natural water and magical light, the people could grow all the food they needed, and though their skins became deathly pale from the absence of sunlight, and their bones were unduly prone to breaking, in most respects they were healthy enough in body.

  Then the magic began to fade. Who can say why? It may be that a little knowledge was lost as each generation of magicians and adepts passed on its learning to its successors, until some irrecoverable threshold was crossed. It may be that the loss of magic within the kaer was connected with the loss of magic in the world outside, for it was at this time that the kaer's elemental clock first showed movement. The ball of True earth, suspended above its dish of True water, began, infinitesimally, to fall. The closer it got to the water, the less the level of magic was in the world outside; and when it reached the water and dissolved, then the magic in the world outside would have gone too, and with it the Horrors. Then all could rejoice, and throw open the doors of the kaer.

  As the ball dropped, so the magic faded. The light quartzes grew dim. The spells that lent enchanted growth to the fruits, trees, and livestock of the underground farms lost their potency, and many people sickened of tainted food and bitter fruit. The darkness grew, and the shadows pressed around. Adults talked in softer voices. Beyond the narrow circles of firelight, the Troubadours' songs faltered and died.

  Then the ball of True earth stopped falling, just two fingers' breadth above the water. Days, and months, and years went by, and still the ball did not descend any further. Soon the kaer was split between those who gave away all hope, claiming that the Scourge would never end, and those who said that the ancients were wrong, that the Scourge was already over, and that the sunlit world awaited outside.

  Pity Anarya Chezarin, child of a dying kaer, if you must, but bear in mind that she is too young yet to know any of this history, except that which has filtered through, in distorted form, into lullabies and children's skipping rhymes. She plays her childish games, and pays no mind to wider troubles. Yet she hears much that will return to her memory in later years.

  X

  It is mid-morning, as such things are measured in the kaer. Anarya is with her father, who is tending the goats—the hardiest of creatures, and those least affected by the failing light and meagre feed. She looks up and sees her mother coming. Anarya puts up her arms, and her mother lifts her and holds her close.

  "We have decided at last," her mother tells her father.

  "And?"

  "In seven days' time, a scouting group will be sent out."

  "The True earth has still not fallen?"

  "No. But we are running out of food. There will be deaths from starvation before the year is out, and there are few enough of us as it is. And in the end, little Ana..."

  Anarya's father puts his arms around her weeping mother. "You have made the only decision you could, and may Jaspree prove it is the right one."

  Her father held Anarya as they watched the first expedition set out, so bold, so few, to make their way to the little sally port that debouched onto the mountainside well away from the main doors. That expedition did not return, and nor did the next. But Anarya was old enough to understand, a little, when the third expedition did return, and told of the world outside: the sun, the fresh clean air, the light beating down (the members of the expedition were all red with sunburn and dizzy with dehydration), and the plants. Plants everywhere, growing wild, the distant descendants of their ancestors' well-ordered farms.

  The Council ordered one more expedition. It ventured a little furt
her, and returned as well. No sign of enemies, no sign of Horrors, no sign, for that matter, of the Therans, who had not been forgotten in all the long years of the kaer.

  "The world is safe again," the Council decreed. The kaer's timekeeping had been restored to that of the outside world, and at dawn in two days' time, the great doors of the kaer would be opened, and the people would be free to leave.

  Not everyone would go out at once. It was to be an orderly dispersal, and the people would return to the kaer at nightfall for many months yet, until they had rebuilt their homes and farms. And first there was the demanding business of disarming the wards and traps which protected the path from outer doors to the kaer— work that taxed the skills of the kaer's two remaining magicians to the limit, claiming the life of one.

  But the traps were disarmed, and the path to the doors was opened. Ana was now a heavy weight in her father's arms, and in the end he sat her on his shoulders. They stood a few spans back from the door and watched Ana's mother, and the other members of the Council, perform the final ritual. A line of light, too bright to look at, appeared between the doors. They swung back smoothly. The way was open.

  And then the Eaters came.

  Chapter 1

  They were three days into the mountains, and things were not going well. The trail had vanished. The clouds had come down from the peaks to drop remorseless, freezing drizzle on their heads. And Kendik Dezelek had decided that he'd made a bad choice, back in that tavern in Bilim, when he'd decided to hook up with the Turgut brothers.

  Not that he'd had much alternative. As a child, sitting round the hearth in the family home, listening to his mother's tales of adventure and glory in far-off lands in the years just after the Scourge ended (tales which, he had noticed later, never featured his father), he had been fired with enthusiasm for life far from his home village, which seemed more dull, more provincial, with each passing year. His mother's savings paid for him to follow her path and train as a Swordmaster. When he was done, he said goodbye to his mother and his master and walked off down the sole, rutted street of the village on his way to adventure, fame, and glory. He cut a fine figure: tall and lean, his dark hair flopping over his forehead, his shoulders strong and arms well muscled from three years of training.

  Kendik had imagined beginning his adventures in the dwarf king's palace, or bargaining for his life beneath Mountainshadow's golden eye. Bilim was just a way-station, a village three days' walk from his own which, he had been told, was frequented by adventuring parties looking for a strong arm and a keen eye. But he had been five days in Bilim, stuck on a scratchy, lice-ridden straw pallet in a narrow room above a crowded, smelly tavern. On the first evening, a young woman had paid him attention—flattering attention. That night, Marla had relieved him of both his virginity and his purse, and she was long gone by morning.

  It had been long days and short commons since then, for no one in Bilim seemed to need the services of a young human Swordmaster with plenty of ability but very little experience. He had been reduced to hewing wood and drawing water for the innkeeper until last night, when the Turgut brothers rode into town. They had ordered dinner, sat down to eat it with obvious enjoyment, and noticed him looking longingly at their heaped plates. A glance passed between them, then the tall one invited him to share some of their food. When they saw how hungry he was, they paid for another plate, and a mug of beer to wash it down with. Kendik was too famished to wonder at their generosity. Perhaps they felt pity for a fellow human in need.

  Prospectors, they said they were, tall Atlan with his bow, and little Mors with his shapeless bag of tools. Prospectors who made a living from what they could find in the northern reaches of the Tylon Mountains.

  "There's some places we don't go, mind," said Atlan. "Wherever the lousy Therans stick their interfering noses in, for one. These mountains have got a bad reputation in some parts, but we keep out of trouble, and we do all right for ourselves."

  "What do you find?" asked Kendik.

  "Shhh," said Mors. "Keep your voice down. There's others besides us making a living from these hills." Mors looked round suspiciously. Kendik, following his gaze, saw naught but honest villagers engaged in honest conversation; but Kendik had believed Marla was in love with him.

  Satisfied that no one was paying undue attention, Mors drew Kendik's face close to his. "Old stuff. Gems. Magic items. Gold, boy, lots of it, if you know where to look."

  "Old stuff. You mean—"

  "There were a lot of fertile valleys in here before the Scourge came," said Atlan. "A lot of kaers. Most of them made it through. Some didn't."

  Kendik took a nervous swig of his beer. "Horrors? Did Horrors get them?"

  "Sometimes," said Atlan. "But a lot of them just ran out of food, or hope. Sank into despair and died, when all the time the sun was shining outside." Atlan paused. "Makes a fellow sad, it does. But their loss is our gain, if we get there before the competition."

  "Thing is," said Mors," the competition can get a mite fierce sometimes. That's why, when we saw a young Swordmaster a bit down on his luck, we asked ourselves: is that the lad for us? A bit of adventure, and maybe a bit of fighting, and if we're lucky, a good bit of loot at the end of it. What do you say, boy?"

  "How much loot?" asked Kendik, whose mother had managed to drum some sense into him over the years.

  "A fifth for you," said Atlan.

  "Meaning I get half what you each get?"

  "That's true, boy," said Mors, "but we do all the planning, see? And we'll keep you fed and sheltered, too."

  "I don't have a horse," said Kendik, weakening.

  "That's all right. We walk from here."

  So they walked. Mors and Atlan had a map, which showed a broad trail parting the mountains with dwarfish precision. The reality was somewhat different. So long as they stayed on the left bank of the Bilim Stream, the trail was easy enough to see, and the country was pleasant, with farms and orchards driving the wilderness back into the hills. Kendik walked in front, occasionally swishing his sword, taking pleasure in how cleanly the blade cut through the air. At last, all his training was about to be put to the test. Whatever enemies lay ahead would be no match for him. He would drive back darkness at the point of his sword, and return to Bilim a rich man, ready for further and bigger adventures. He would—

  "Kendik," called Atlan. "Kendik!"

  "Yes?"

  "You're going the wrong way. You've walked right past the junction."

  The new trail was neither broad nor straight, but it followed a tributary of the Bilim back into the mountains. As long as they stayed close to the stream, they didn't have too much trouble, apart from a difficult ascent to avoid a particularly deep and impassable gorge. The sun beat down while they were climbing, but by the time they scrambled down to rejoin the river at the head of the gorge, the clouds had closed in and the drizzle was seeping down. It was getting dark.

  "I've had enough," said Atlan. "Time to stop and catch us some fish."

  The fish were small and shy. Kendik had to walk a long way for an armful of dry firewood, and he was well ready for sleep by the time he had gnawed his last morsel of charred flesh and spat out his last bone. It was then he discovered that the Turgut brothers' tent must have been ancient when the Scourge began, and that neither of them was a dab hand at patching. He was sleeping nearest the flap, and however he twisted and turned, he could not avoid the water that insinuated itself through any hole it could find.

  He was wet and cold when he awoke, just like the weather. The Turgut brothers were still sleeping. He went outside to relieve himself—he was a well-brought-up young man, so he kept away from the stream—and peered through the murk at the route ahead. Not much comfort there: at the far end of the short flat on which they were camped, the head of the valley rose in a steep-sided cirque, carved out by some great glacier in the days long before the Scourge. Kendik returned to the tent, cleaned his sword, and tried to work out which combination of clothes had the best ch
ance of keeping him dry and warm.

  Wet weather did not agree with the Turgut brothers. While waking, while making breakfast (some glutinous variant of porridge; Kendik's job was to wash out the pot), while striking camp, they moaned and bickered. At least it was each other they bickered with; Kendik wasn't really part of the family yet. He let them get a little way ahead before he started walking, feeling the damp turf squelch beneath his leather boots.

  Whatever their deficiencies in other areas, Mors and Atlan were fit. At the head of the valley, they continued to climb to the left of the stream. Atlan's long strides took him rapidly out of view, and before long, Mors was also gone. Then there was only Kendik, his gasping breath, and the maddening laughter of the stream.

  When he next saw Atlan and Mors, they were standing on a rock outcrop, looking down at him with mixed exasperation and amusement. "You haven't been out in the wild much, have you, boy?" said Atlan.

  "No," Kendik managed to gasp. They let him have a full thirty seconds' rest before they set off again.

  That first day, they climbed to the saddle at the head of the cirque and descended into the valley beyond. There was no formed track in the second valley, but an occasional blaze or chopped-off branch provided reasonable evidence that other Name-givers had come this way.

  Some time that day, they took a wrong turning. According to Mors, they were supposed to take one of the narrow side-valleys to the right of their present course, opposite a prominent bluff. But the left of the valley was full of prominent bluffs, and the right was full of side valleys, all looking equally unpromising.

  "You any good with maps, boy?" asked Mors.

  It looked to Kendik as though the third side valley on the right was the one they wanted, which meant that the Turgut brothers blamed Kendik for pretty much everything that followed. The valley was filled with particularly dense forest, looped about with clinging vines. Atlan put his hand into a clump of stinging nettles and was in agony for the next few hours. Mors slipped crossing the stream and emerged soaking wet. There were no fish to be caught for lunch. And, when they finally reached the head of the valley, there was nowhere to camp, so they decided to attempt to climb to the ridgeline at the valley's head in the hope that they could find a campsite there.