At a certain point during my walk, the air around me became frail, and the splashing of the water stopped. A whir built up progressively and I noticed that the shoreline was disappearing. I looked towards the sea and realized that it was regressing to its depth. The shoreface was uncovered and the whir turned to a painful pitch. The air got thinner, and I felt that some force was sucking me towards the sea.
Then came the shadow. Something blocked the sun. Trying to hold steady against the sudden gust of wind, I turned my eyes towards the sun and saw what stood between us. It was a manta ray.
The fish was not flying though, neither was it titanic in size. Instead, it was in its normal habitat, the sea. It was the sea itself that was not where it should be. I saw a wave, a one hundred feet or so high, steadily creeping towards the shore and the manta ray was at the tip of the crawling mountain.
A mountain wave.
The circumstances were too unstable for me to phase back to Veil. I turned towards the coastline and with a great effort started heading away from the tidal monstrosity as it picked up speed.
I barely escaped my watery tomb. Breathless, I fell atop the hill and turned to see the thunderous plunge as it crashed a dozen feet below me. As it retreated back in a hissing anger, I pulled myself together and continued towards Erados. But that time I kept a safe distance between myself and the treacherous sea.
***
Eredia, the last beacon of light, was in the southern parts of Talor. It was the home of the Dargos and the Crown Priests of Ardul. It was also where the Tower of Eclipse was rumored to exist. Somewhere in Eredia’s uncharted southern plains on the borders of Zenia, the first of the Seven Towers of Power (9) the origin of the Seekers was hidden.
No land or kingdom had the number of enemies Eredia had; no crown was schemed and plotted against like the Eredian crown. But centuries had passed since its rebirth under the rule of Niver Darg, and Eredia still stood.
The Eredian capital, Erados, was built high on a steep, jagged cliff on the eastern side of the oval-shaped Eredian Gulf. The Gates of Valor linked it to the Helgon dwarf kingdom on the other side, a massive iron gate that opened the Eredian Gulf to the Sea of Mountain Waves. At the far end and at the highest point of the cliff on the eastern side of the Eredian Gulf, a ramp rose all the way to the capital, leading to the city gates. The ramp collected many roads along its route that led to and from different destinations in the Eredian kingdom.
At the dawning of the day I reached Erados, I phased to Veil to gear up. I looked at the sky of my murky realm and saw that the whole of Eredia was shrouded in glooms of uncertainty. I reluctantly left for its capital, phasing into Talor under the oath I gave to myself to meddle in the affairs of men just one more time—to pass on the Legacy of Mergal. If Trador managed to reform the Order of Eon into its earlier glory, then he would deserve the Rushk.
I phased out of the shadows of a dark alley in the Eredian capital, hiding behind a plain hooded cloak. I had changed my complexion to the pale human skin, and as I materialized, I looked around more closely. I found some travelers sitting around a cozy fire and a couple of families gathered around it for warmth. I went over and glanced at an old man covering himself with a torn blanket. He nodded to me, allowing me amongst them.
I sat down by the fire. I lost myself in its mesmerizing flames dancing their exotic dance as if they knew how dear and rare warmth had become. The shadows cast on the walls danced too, although more eerily, as if besieging the fire by immortal enemies longing for its downfall and boldly threatening its domain.
I scanned the group, finding no one who seemed a more promising source of information than the old man. I offered him fresh rainberries that grew within my raingrass in Veil. He accepted them with a suspicious look.
“What are you seeking?” he asked.
I smiled, guessing that he must have had some skills in his younger days; he realized my intentions. I replied, “Tell me of your land and your king?”
For a moment he stared at me inquisitively.
“Trtck,” was the weird word he whispered, and I had no idea if it was actually a word or if he was about to sneeze.
Then he answered, “You carry no ill intentions within your chest, Genn.”
Oh, he knew what I was. That was odd, but then I guessed that he had just cast a detection spell on me. The word he uttered must have been one he learnt from a Seeker, a word that unlocks a Door of Knowledge beyond which he could peer into the unknown.
He leaned back against the wall, covering his shivering legs with an old blanket. He took his time thinking, then answered, “Now that the Eastern elves are long gone, Eredia is the last hope. Many were and still are puzzled by the Dargos of Eredia, and how they survived all those years and still glimmered. Not like the Nelsian in the west who built walls high to seal the world out. Not like the Helgons who trust no one anymore as they kept fortifying their arsenal, daring their enemies to their gates, and getting obsessed by machines of war. Eredia didn’t shut itself within its realm, and ever since Niver Darg, it opened its arms to Talor. Not once did it fail the tests of honor and valor thrown at it since its rise. The astonishing story of Atmos Niver Darg is not the only Eredian tale or Dargos legend. These days witness the presence of another legend: Trador, the Gate Keeper.”
“So, do you believe in them, Trador and his Dargos?” I asked.
“If I had energy and hope left in me to believe in anything, I would definitely follow them to the grave. Even his daughter, Robyn, the Day Bringer, and his adopted son, A’tor, speak of an honor that will not end when he leaves this world. Both promise a more glorious future for Eredia than any of her kin. And one brighter than one offered by the king’s true-born son.”
Then he gazed at me and asked, “You didn’t answer me yet, Genn. What do you seek?”
A soothing sight distracted me from our conversation, the sight of a mother hugging her three-year-old son, trying to make him sleep. It was a scene that took a few pleasant seconds of my attention.
Then I replied absentmindedly, “I follow a faint trail of hope.”
I smiled when I heard the mother wishing her son goodnight. Turning my eyes back to the fire, I imagined the birth of a star in the sky of Veil.
But then, when I heard that child’s laugh, the blood froze in my veins.
His voice was not that of a three-year-old boy, but of a full-grown man. A rough and rugged man’s voice, with a booming echo as if coming out of a rocky hole, issued from that child’s mouth. It startled everyone around him, and all stood and gazed at the child.
I slowly stood up, too.
The child’s face was turned toward his flickering shadow on the wall. He sat up. His mother asked him in a trembling voice, “Baby, are you okay?”
One of the men moved towards him with a couple of adults while I squeezed Yoppa and Yarpus. I went to the left of the crowd, closing on the child from the other side. I needed to see his face.
Yarpus … my dagger whispered.
The face of the child’s shadow on the wall slowly turned in my direction. Yet his head didn’t move from its position. The shadow of his hands reached for my shadow on the wall. He reached for my daggers.
“Canigra artan,” the child said in his rough inhuman tongue.
We looked at each other for an explanation but none of us seemed to know that language.
“Rofdalim errtina, Vaud.”
Vaud? I asked myself. Did I hear that right? Did he just say the name of the elemental plane of the Mergals? Then the child shouted suddenly, “SORIFFA ERRTINA.”
“Wielder of the Whispers of Vaud, fall back to your shadow,” the old man translated.
Everyone was astonished to find out he could translate it. “It is Itian … he is speaking Itian,” the old man elaborated. The parents were understandably startled. They turned to me, and I thought of the Verda Luka, then shook that possibility away. There was no way they could have picked up on my scent that fast.
T
he child turned to me, smiling in a manner neither childish nor human. Then he said in a different but rough voice, “Nala aminya, canigra roma.”
“There is no hope, shadow walker.”
Then the child continued in his incomprehensible language. He changed his voice frequently, as though there were several entities speaking through his mouth.
The old man translated in bits and pieces as the voices took their turns. “She sensed you, and you are not welcome in her domain. As a favor to Lima, you will be spared. Do not go further… Keep to the shadows you hail from and quench the pathetic light you bring to Talor. Others are closing in on you, Sever; you do not want us to join them.”
That proved that they were not the Verda Luka. A shiver ran down my spine nevertheless.
The shadow of the child started to change. A bald-headed and nose-less face, with something that seemed to protrude from his skull and covering his mouth, gradually took the place of his baby face. His features kept changing and twisting like unstable grit.
The old man calmly said to me, “They are coming for you, shadow walker. You stirred an ancient, ever-watchful evil, and threatened its domain. Your return is not welcomed, and it will never let you reach the light.”
I looked at him, confused. “What light? And who the hell are you, really?”
“I am just an aged, near-blind wizard. A remnant of a dismantled tower,” the old man replied. Then, trying not to draw the attention of the child to him, he said to me cautiously, “Run… Genn… run! They have been watching the Ibdomad and the grandson of Niver Darg and Atmos. They were not expecting you but they don’t need to. They are Itians. They are the creators of the Million Deaths.”
When I turned to the child and found him standing smiling, closer to me, then closer, smiling… then closer. You have been warned!
I ran.
It was at the end of the alley that I saw Sherako. I followed him until he disappeared. When I looked back I saw him walking in the other direction with someone who looked exactly like me, a misdirecting mirage Sherako created. Then out of the alley, a distortion of air appeared like that which hangs atop a flame. It followed my false image.
It was the first time Sherako interfered proactively, and I guessed one thing; the danger that encircled me back there was the greatest one he ever saw me in.
I stepped into the shadows once more and lingered by the borders of Veil for the whole night, thinking of that obvious threat.
Itians? How the hell did I attract such an ancient evil, a race long forgotten?
I’d known that reaching Trador wouldn’t be easy but had not expected this degree of difficulty. The Itians must have been closely monitoring the Eredian capital and apparently, they held a tight grip on it. And now they’d detected me. Perhaps they had ties with the realm of shadows, perhaps they foresaw my arrival. Whatever the reason, their vigilance around Trador proved that I was on the right track.
Should I ignore that threat which circled around Dargos Keep and try to reach Trador? I wondered.
If I approached cautiously and interfered with nothing, I could get closer to that glimpse of hope to judge for myself, to see if it was really what I had been waiting for. Despite my apprehension of the Itians, I was not new to the feeling of being hunted. So I decided to head for Dargos Keep.
I needed to see if Trador was ready to reunite the Order of Eon and receive the Legacy of Mergal. If he was, then it would be the only time in history that a Genn gave back something he had taken.
***
The Itians, were the true creators of the Tirra Mortus, the Million Deaths, after they were freed from their exile. They were not like any danger I had come across before. Unlike the Black Army and in spite of their alliance with the Chain, the Tirra Mortus seemed to occupy itself with obscured plans independent of the Chain’s. Sometimes the Lorks called but the Million Deaths were nowhere to be found. For months there were no signs of them in any spot on the face of Talor. However, they shared a common enemy: Eredia.
Yet there I was, behind a column or in a dark balcony, roaming the Ibdomad and watching the Gate Keeper from the borders of Veil. It seemed that the Itians had their attention primarily on the royal family and their friends, so it was easier, with a little more caution, to avoid their eyes. I found the Gate Keeper exactly as that retired wizard described to me. He was even more than I imagined when I heard the Brute speaking of him; it was like watching the birth of the sun. The light that breezed along in his wake, and the honor he carried was like a dawn, drawing smiles to the faces of men.
Yet, I lurked in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to pass on the powerful legacy to Trador. I waited for him to reassemble the Order of Eon. That would be the sign.
As his legend grew so did the list of his enemies. I knew that when the courageous king sends word to the members of the Order of Eon, calling for its reassembly, it would be nearly time to pass on the Shards of Mergal. And soon I would be home.
The Lantern
Ibdomad, the Eredian royal palace, was built on the lip of the cliff, a full two hundred feet above sea level. Five towers made of white Cartian rocks and imbued with obsidian pierced the Eredian sky around the keep. Its towers housed the Dargos and the Crown Priests.
The Path of the King was a long terrace extending from the tip of the central lengthy building which bisected the right angle made by the other two long buildings. It stretched farther to the northwest towards the farthest point of the keep. There, a single, circular, heavily guarded chamber existed.
The Lantern, it was called.
Atop the conical roof of the Lantern, two battlemages of the highest rank were posted as constant guards. They were called the Mirror Mages; one from the Seekers and one from Time Keepers.
As I lurked around the Ibdomad, I saw flying horrors resembling a humanoid that shed his skin to make wings out of it. I knew them to be Itians, trying to sneak past the two archwizards guarding its roof. They never got within the lethal range of the wizard, maintaining the secrecy of what went on in the room.
The Lantern was a large round one-room building surrounded by a circular balcony with windows in all directions. It was connected to the rest of the palace by the Path of the King. The pathway was guarded by Dargos champions, who were the royal guards and the might of Ardul. The Crown Priests, the clerics of Ardul, shared that honor with them, guarding the Lantern. Only the most faithful of them were given the very important task of guarding the Path of the King and the Lantern.
From the shadowy borders of Veil, I watched a meeting between six men.
Inside the Lantern, a huge map stood at the center of the circular room. Around it stood three men discussing the movements of different armies in the region. Trador was leaning on the battle station, staring at a fleet in the Eredian Gulf. It was represented on the map by a marker with an ash-gray banner – the banner of Lorken.
Opposite to Trador, stood a brown-colored, bald man with a gray beard, a man graced with scars as impressive as his king’s. Iden Supremus, the commander of the Eredian army, gazed at a similar banner on the shores of Bayland, right next to the former fleet.
In the back stood a white-haired man in his early sixties, with an oval face and a distant smile. His kind eyes were staring at the gray sky above the raging Sea of Rhymes. Covering his aging form, was a light blue robe with white linings that bore the emblem of the Tower of the Eclipse, a book that opened through the clouds. The tower, the origin of the seekers, was one of the few remaining worthy oppositions against the Chain of Cas. In my opinion, the Seekers were the greatest diviners of all ages. They posed as one of the greatest threats to the Genn, one of the few that could detect us.
At the corner of the room sat Trador’s son, Garold. As I looked closer, I realized that he was not at all engaged in the activities of the other men; he never moved from his spot. Instead, his eyes constantly roamed his surroundings, looking beyond the chamber’s walls in constant unease. Drawing close to the age of thirty,
Garold was an average man in stature, with brown hair surrounding his diamond-shaped face. His greedy, restless brown eyes constantly roamed his surroundings as if expecting betrayal from any direction. He was not average when it came to ambition, though, being the main opposition to his father. He was always in the most expensive clothing gold could buy during that age. He acted to be interested in something outside the conversation, but it was obvious that he was doing his best to avoid the steady stare of the one sitting opposite to him.
In the opposite corner, another wizard, one much younger, stared piercingly at the young prince. His black hair and sharp mustache gave him a playful look, not quite as stern as the rest of the presence. Yet his piercing eyes gave him away. An emblem of a circle divided in half decorated his red robe. I recognized it as the emblem of the Time Keepers, the second Tower of Cane.
Behind the young wizard, a painting of a forest looked almost alive. The tree branch arching above him seemed to waver under the burden of its own heavy weight, and the bushes around it swayed faintly with the breeze.
When I first started listening, the man beside Trador was the most animated. “We can join the battle, you know. I can send A’tor with a few hundred Dargos with you, Supremus. They would make a substantial difference.” The speaker was a big and handsome man with a little gray in his short hair.
“I am afraid I am against this suggestion, Valadas,” commented Commander Iden Supremus. “Your Dargos are our last line of defense. They are the protectors of our cities, our way of life, and the royal family. They are already fewer than we wish. We cannot spare them. Their role is too important.”
Then he turned to the older wizard asking, “Aster, are you against moving our second army west?”
The Dark Season Saga- the Final Harvest Page 13