The majority of the Eredian officers and a couple of noblemen took their leave as a sign of disapproval, although they still first bowed to the prince.
Garold ignored the leavers and stretched his hands to Baneca. As he held her hand gently and directed her to sit beside him, she continued to gaze at the assembly. I found her look condescending. When she sat, Garold turned to the window and looked across the garden to the long terrace at the end of the palace. Garold kept his gaze fixed toward the Lantern as he continued, “The Chain of Cas is our ally, whether some of us like it or not. Soon, those who deny you the bliss in this life will know that there are not enough chains for man’s desires. There is only one inevitable conclusion to this pitiful road we are taking.”
The smile that crawled onto Baneca’s face would haunt the dreams of those assembled for a lifetime.
The Order of Eon
Lorken: the land of darkness and despair, the land of sin and sorrow.
Lorken: the land of Cas.
I recollected the night I spent in that lonely cottage back in Tamos, a hundred years before Lorken’s audacious visit to the Ibdomad. I remembered all that A’rak the Ekran had told me about the downfall of Lorken as he poured steaming water from the kettle into our cups.
The Lorks had not always been on the dark side, he had told me. But it was in Lorken that the Evinshanost was born and the spark of the Redemption Wars flared. It was in that once proud land that the Chain of Cas, the world dominant dark alliance, was formed.
I recalled what he had said about the Order of Mercy and how it devolved. Everyone saw the steady process of Lorken’s mutation. They either loathed the confrontation or regaled the Lorks with flattery hoping to earn a seat beside them .
“In Sidius the Corruptor’s early days of ruling over the Evinshanost, he received a ship, and on it, a traveler came. No one knew from where he hailed, but on the mast-less slave ship, adorned by the Evinshanost’s flag, he came. On that ship, dozens, if not hundreds, of exotic slaves and drugs came as gifts to the Lorks. The Traveler spoke of untouched riches and promised of unspoiled powers hidden within our world. He muttered words into the ears of men, words about how rules were only meant to confine, not to refine. He said that true freedom lay just at an arm’s length, and all they had to do was to reach out and grab them.
This was how the Redemption Wars came to be, I had learned a century before. When men took such advice and reached their arms to powers and riches they thought were theirs, they clashed. Kingdoms battled over lands and spoils. And wars sparked throughout Talor.
The Traveler , I thought. I remembered him. Makista had spoken his name in a hushed whisper. If Makista had an ultimate enemy, it would have been that being.
After the fall of the Vigoran Empire, Lorken had turned its eyes to one crown in particular, Eredia’s. And there she was, right in front of me: Baneca Darknar, the pride of the Lorks and jewel of their land. Smiling arrogantly, she stood in the Ibdomad meters away from the Lantern. At that moment, I believed that the Chain of Cas had already won, and thought maybe I was too late.
There was only one conclusion left: the Shards of Mergal were doomed to oblivion. Despair slid through me, and I thought about the Brute. Never before did I fail in a mission but there was no hope in the land of Atmos Niver Darg. Lorken had already set its foot into Eredia, and without Trador, there was no hope.
***
In the bunker, the enigmatic apparition hovers towards Nimtha. It lingers at the edge of darkness, just too far from the light for the Genn to see it clearly. Circling around the two erect figures in the middle, the paladin and the demon, the Asker stops several feet away from Nimtha. Its eerie eyes fixate on the Genn, and a sound like that of muted thunderstorm issues from its direction.
But it doesn’t come any closer. It is waiting for more. Escaping the Asker’s eyes and his own temporary confinement, Nimtha peers through the window listening to the words of the Asker.
“Yes, tell me about the moment you lost all hope. Tell me about the moment you said goodbye to Talor.”
***
Before I left the Eredian keep, I went as close as possible to the Lantern to bask one more time in Trador’s light. Even as he slept, his mere sight brought peace to my troubled, clueless soul.
Despite the fact that I could peek from Veil to virtually any place, I preferred not to do so unnecessarily, especially then. I grew concerned with attracting attention to the Folds through which I peeked. Besides, usually critical moments happening in Talor were obscured behind the clouds. So I would just observe from behind natural cover in Talor relying on my innate connection to shadow and earth.
Trying to avoid the watchfulness of the Itians, I lingered one more night in the Ibdomad to say my last goodbyes. Even before the arrival of Baneca, the Itians kept a close eye on the royal palace. I noticed shady out-of-place individuals with bloody maniacal eyes skulking around the keep. Yet I found it easy to escape their attention, as they focused primarily on Trador’s family and friends.
The afternoon after the Dark Princess arrived, I stood atop the watchtower closest to the window of the Lantern. Oddly, I saw that the Mirror Mages were not in their posts, so I was able to get much closer. I saw Aster standing on the Path of the Kings, which extended to the farthest point northwest of the Ibdomad. He watched as Garold’s celebration continued for the second day. His wrinkled face was angry, yet reticent. He didn’t attend that celebration, but he didn’t have to be there to have some idea of what transpired. He rested his hands on the balcony facing the banquet and gazed upon the structure called the Sea Door below on the beach, under the silver moonlight.
The Sea Door was a most mysterious structure that had appeared only three centuries earlier. It was an ancient gate in a completely ruptured wall discovered one hundred fifty feet below Dargos Keep. It was uncovered on the eastern shore on the Sea of Mountain Waves, yards away from the water. No one knew what the original structure was. It could have been a wall, a tower or even a keep, but what remains of the wall the Sea Door was built in wasn’t enough to uncover that part. Many cults visited the Sea Door. They considered it a religious structure with divine powers. Each one of them bestowed some powers on the ancient structure, none proved to be real though. But the Doomsingers were the most peculiar of these groups. They tended to spout out unreasonable dark prophecies that were oddly accurate sometimes.
A strong Dargos knight approached the iconic wizard and waited to be noticed. Aster snapped out of his thoughts and smiled at her, and then he resumed with his walk. He passed by several Dargos elites until he reached the secluded chamber at the far end of the palace. Along the walkway, statues of Trador’s predecessors stood, challenging the Sea of Mountain Waves.
Aster paused for a moment by the last two statues and gazed at them proudly. The writings beneath them read Niver Darg and Atmos Niver Darg . Without a word, he respectfully caressed the sculpted flag held by Atmos and then walked toward the door of the Lantern.
Outside the chambers, the two Dargos captains and the Crown Priest greeted him.
“Lord Aster,” the stalwart knight said to him, bowing.
The Wizard of Time watched her open the door with a simple bow. Upon entering the room, Aster turned to the Dargos and said, “Please inform me of King Hidnor’s arrival.”
Inside, I could see creamy-golden gleams filling the room, lighting it up more than the afternoon sun could have; the reason The Lantern was named as such. The light reached for miles, deep into the terrifying Sea of Mountain Waves and the whole region. I recalled stories describing the light of the Lantern to be both a beacon and a warning. A beacon to those lost in the treacherous sea, and warning of what lay beneath it.
An elderly crown priest accompanied him from the entrance, through the golden curtains, up a few steps, and into the spacious main room of the Lantern. Aster slowly approached the massive bed at the end of the room with heavy steps. He gazed at his sleeping friend and saw a fifty-year-old man w
ith gray, flowing hair, slowly replacing his young king. Trador had already remained in that state for a little less than five years. But despite his long slumber, his eyebrows were furrowed as if he was having an unpleasant dream.
Aster took the chair beside his friend and gazed out the window at a young woman standing in the heavy rain. On a small table beside him was a plate full of Darkbane weed, as always. He put some in his mouth and started chewing on it. Once he felt its peculiar fluid watering his mouth, he turned to Trador.
“What can be done now, my friend?” he asked. “We have played all cards, and you have played your last. It is time to rest now.”
Aster went to sleep on his chair.
Outside on the narrow balcony circling around the Lantern stood Robyn, beautiful and staunch as she had been since her early days. Her blue eyes were fixed on the stormy sky, unshaken by the rain spraying in her face and on her ever-gleaming, midnight-black hair. She was distant that night, embracing the restless wind and lost in her thoughts. She turned her eyes to her brother's disgraceful celebration in the opposite building coming to its end.
She turned to exit the balcony. When she noticed Aster in his chair, she walked to the wizard and solemnly stood beside him. Filled with daughterly love, she smiled and started caressing his long flowing white hair. A’tor entered the Lantern behind her. He looked toward Aster as he slept in his chair beside Trador.
“Good morning, my lords,” A’tor said, expecting no reply.
Robyn turned to him and her warm smile broadened. He repaid it with a kind one and crossed to the balcony.
When A’tor stretched his arms to close the window, he looked down at the Sea Door remembering the time when he was much less burdened. He had once played the Seven of Diamonds with Robyn on the same wet rocky plateau the door stood on, meters away from the shore, in a hopeful and youthful existence. When Robyn grew up, she used to take him to the ancient structure and sit there chatting for hours.
Before A’tor closed the window, we both heard something down on the beach; it was the sound of a broken trumpet. We looked down at the beach and saw a man clothed in tatters and standing in the shallow waters. The man, who seemed to me to be a Dar’gat, or a Doomsinger in the coastal tongue of the region, was standing facing the stormy sea and unmerciful waves. He looked like a former Wanokian monk, blindfolded and bald with a Wanokian pony tail. He was carrying something which appeared to be a necklace with a horn the size of a palm as its medallion.
The knight paused for a couple of seconds, feeling that there was something peculiar about that man. Not able to identify it or do anything about it, however, he took one more look at the gray sky and then went inside the Lantern.
Aster suddenly woke up as if he’d had a nightmare of some sort; he almost fell off his chair. Robyn caught his arm and adjusted him into a more comfortable position. The wizard took a couple of seconds to orient himself and mumbled in a strange tone as if someone’s words woke him up, “Hmm, what?”
“Uncle, this weed will be the end of you. It is not helping at all,” Robyn said. He did not seem to notice her as she spoke. Instead, he coughed and looked around for something to spit the weed in and found Robyn offering him a bowl. He spat the used up weed, still without looking at her.
“Who are you talking to, my lord?” She asked him.
He turned to her as if waking up from another layer of dreams, coming back to himself slowly. “Sweet Robyn. You …” Quickly he regained his usual persona and continued, “… you seem troubled.”
“Of course I am. I still can’t believe that the Black Princess of Lorken is in the same quarters that I call my own. How dare him!”
The princess turned her eyes to her sleeping father. I could not help feeling rather sorry for her. Together, the princess and her loyal Herald, Deina, had served her father, the temple, and the people of Eredia with utter devotion. Although she was only twenty, she was third in command among the Crown Priests. Still, with her brother as the steward, she was powerless to react well to this outsider.
“He will marry her, Aster. The daughter of the Targ of Lorken will be my sister-in-law and Eredian royalty. And when the next Ardul’s Seal comes, five years will have passed with Garold as the steward. According to the Eredian law, he must be crowned the king of Eredia. And then…”
Her voice trailed off, and Aster hastened to calm her fears. “It is a matter to be decided yet, though in the near future. Much can happen before Ardul’s Seal Day.”
“It was the Order of Eon that threatened Lorken once before. They were the only ones who did, weren’t they?” Robyn asked Aster.
“Yes. Our predecessors did, a long time ago,” he answered. “No one came as close to the Searing Summit, before or after, as we did. Learning from their mistakes, our enemies didn’t give us the chance to reassemble our order. We should have summoned the Order of Eon sooner. Your father was racing against time, and the offer the Chain of Cas sent us divided the Ibdomad and turned too many against us. Now, after five years have passed, Garold seems determined to see his desires come true. He is actively seeking to demolish the glory of your entire house.”
“What happened back then exactly, Aster; what happened with Lorken? What could the Order of Eon and Enigmus the Unbroken do that night in their capital to deserve such wrath?”
Aster glanced at the legendary lance, Dawn , suspended on the wall, taking his time before replying.
Finally, he said. “The time will come when you will hear the story of how Lorken was reborn in its current monstrous form. You will hear about the day when the Order of Eon went to Denaria, the capital of Lorken.”
A’tor and Robyn exchanged looks, but Robyn merely covered Aster’s legs with a blanket. She pressed the topic no further. “Another thing that is bothering me is this weather. Frequent storms are hurtling at our walls. The mountain waves are getting bolder, and the wind is getting fiercer.”
“Yes, the damn thing brought me back midway from …” he said, then realized, as soon as he saw their confusion, that he’d said something he shouldn’t have. “That is a normal way to feel during such storms, my child.”
That intrigued me a lot. The wizard was holding back. The reason for such a behavior escaped me.
“It is also the Heralds,” A’tor added. “Something is wrong with them. I believe it’s the weather. The Patheran grooms can hardly maintain control over them anymore. They are too restless, and none of the females have conceived. I fear that...”
He paused. Aster finished his sentence, saying, “You fear that the rumors are true, that this could be the last generation of the Dargos. Indeed there is no steed better than the Herald. No horse can ever endure the trial of the elements which each Dargos takes as he or she travels from the freezing blizzards of the Realm of Frost to the scorching wastes of Carta. Yet, my knights, although I know they are more than steeds to you, the Dargos are not bound to a certain horse breed. The Dargos is a set of codes and beliefs.
“Niver Darg said when he knighted the first circle of Dargos:
Go now, spread the word and don’t waver.
Steeds may fall; shields may fail… a knight is forever .”
Aster ended his words with a clenched fist and proud resolve. He wanted to say more, but a Crown Priest opened the door. They turned toward the woman, who announced, “My lords, King Hidnor is on his way here.”
Aster stood up and walked to the entrance to welcome his friend. “We will continue this conversation later, then,” Robyn said, still baffled by Aster’s incomprehensible indifference towards what they discussed. She and A’tor moved to greet the royal visitor. Aster gave Robyn a quick smile, but it faded away as he turned to receive the king of Helgon. Something irritated him about the king’s visit. Nothing short of the gravest of matters called for a visit from the dwarven king himself.
As if the years had no effect on him, a muscular, and larger than average, bald dwarf, with a golden beard and royal presence entered the room. He was un
adorned by a crown but he had an unmistakable kingly aura. Their friend, Gashnor the Wallbreaker, followed his king.
Aster, Robyn, and A’tor welcomed the important visitors. Then A’tor said, “We will take our leave now, my lords.”
Seeing enough soreness for the day, I was ready to abandon my airy form and leave as well. Yet Hidnor’s next words urged me otherwise.
“Please stay, my child,” said Hidnor. “You need to hear this too, all of you.”
All ? I asked myself.
He sat beside Trador’s bed in another chair beside the one Aster had vacated, greeting his sleeping friend. Then he said with a heavy heart, “An ancient conflict has reached your generation.” After a measured pause, he continued, “Agathorn has returned.”
“That’s good news!” said Aster. “But why do you look burdened?”
“Who is Agathorn? And what conflict are you referring to?” asked Robyn.
Hidnor answered, “Agathorn was a close friend of ours; you were too young to remember him before he left for a quest south. He is an elf of tremendous powers, an Ignar, the Heart of Igna; the highest rank in the elven temples. He was the first elf to come out of Eastern Wind and the first to have any contact with humans.”
“How do you know him?” Robyn asked Aster. “Merely tales, or have you met?”
“He was one of the co-founders of the first circle of the Order of Eon and a major pillar in the order since its very beginning. He was in the team that delved into Lorken with Enigmus the Unbroken in the year of the Traveler.”
Impressed by what she heard, Robyn expressed, “I didn’t know that there are people like this still around. But that makes his return worth rejoicing!”
“It is,” said Hidnor. “Fulfilling his promise to us, he returned from a perilous journey he took in the Realm of Frost, a journey he started twenty years ago. He would have returned earlier and attended the meeting your father planned to reassemble the Order if it ever came to be”
The Dark Season Saga- the Final Harvest Page 17