Vedientir

  "I'm afraid that I've spent almost all that was in the chest," he began apologizing but then he remembered something and Vedientir saw it on his face.

  "I have a tip of a branch from my grandfather's Tree!" he said while he was fishing it out of the bag. "He did not have time to wait for its acorns to grow, and it seems he never went looking for it after he had planted it. An acorn from that Tree would mean the difference between life or death right now for the people in my hometown."

  "Hand it over," said Vedientir when the branch was finally out of the bag.

  "You say you were heading towards that Tree before my ravens brought you here? Why were you going there?"

  "Half of our army is in the kingdom where that Tree is. We were on our way to try to find them."

  "I see. And when was this broken off the Tree?"

  "Thirty years ago," replied Kerkio.

  "It is too old," said Vedientir but he did not stop inspecting the branch both with his eyes and his fingertips.

  "The World Tree is not available to us anymore, and I doubt that even Bor could successfully graft this onto the World Tree to have it produce new acorns." He squeezed the branch and smelled it.

  "Hm, but it might be enough... We could try to get what is left of the magic in the branch to open a Path toward that Tree."

  There was nothing more wondrous that Dion could have heard from Vedientir. He looked at the branch and Vedientir in motionless silence, afraid to dispel the moment. Kerkio fidgeted nervously, but also kept quiet.

  "Would opening the Path help you?" asked Vedientir, wanting to voice his already made decision in the form of a question.

  "That would help us beyond measure," answered Kerkio instead of Dion once more. "We would not have to travel across the great Inner Sea. Twice. This could remove a week from our travel at least, and as Dion has said already, lives are at stake."

  "Then I will do my best to help you, but I shall need a favor in return," said Vedientir and once more looked at Dion who nodded to show that he was listening.

  "Bring me at least one more inheritor that still has a Great Oak seed. I hope there is at least one left who hasn't planted his Tree."

  "I know of no other inheritors. I myself inherited nothing until a few days ago and only moments ago was I described as an inheritor by you."

  "You fell out of contact with every one of them?"

  "It seems so," answered Dion.

  "How do I find them? What do I have to search for?" he asked immediately after his reply, fearing Vedientir would retract his offer.

  "I cannot help you with that," replied Vedientir. "We had no interaction with the New World after the Migration. Is there no one else that knows more about the ways of old and the inheritors than you do?"

  "My father might know. My grandfather likely knows even more."

  "The one who planted the Great Oak?"

  "Yes."

  "Then go ask your grandfather where the other inheritors are."

  "I cannot. My family is in the besieged city from which the two of us have fled."

  "Maestra, I need your assistance," Vedientir called Eya to attention, and she bent closer to the fire fern.

  "Parvi, take Eya to Bor," he said to his eagle.

  "Eya, follow him and take my message to Bor. Will you do that?"

  "To Bor?" she asked somewhat puzzled.

  "Yes, to Bor. He came with me to Triboria a few days ago and he is not far away from here. Tell him that I need him urgently. The message for him is: Putodrvo."

  "A traveling tree," translated Dion to himself.

  "Repeat that last word," said Vedientir. He knew Eya did not speak the language of the Old World and she tried repeating it, but the last part of the word proved troublesome.

  "Putoda...darvo. Dar...drv. Putodrvo," she struggled a few times, but finally repeated the word correctly.

  "How will I recognize him?"

  "You will most easily recognize him by his green hair, even though some of it has already turned golden."

  "Green?" asked Eya with a glint of a smile as she tried to imagine the god's hair. Kerkio and Dion looked at Vedientir askew, sharing her surprise.

  "Absolutely. In spring his hair is green like grass growing on rich soil, and in summer it becomes golden, like sunburnt grass."

  "So what about autumn and winter?" asked Dion.

  "In autumn it turns red and brown like the leaves of the deciduous trees of his forests, and in winter his hair turns white and dark green, resembling pine needles covered in snow."

  Vedientir nudged the eagle with his shoulder and the bird flew away without waiting for Eya who struggled under the low branches of one of the pines.

  "Eya, be quick. Our next move depends on Bor," said Vedientir to her as her wings took her off the ground.

  Vedientir closed his eyes as soon as she left them and his eyes saw what Parvi was seeing - the eagle was already above the treetops of Triboria. There was firelight coming from the west, both from daylight rushing to sleep and from dozens of fires eating away at the forest in places where Chaos gained a foothold in Triboria.

  "Still far away enough," he said out loud, and turned his thoughts and the eagle's eyes to the east. There was no more daylight in the east, but there was red light of the larger and even more numerous fires there.

  Vedientir opened his eyes and sighed wearily.

  "Bor must come quickly."

  Chapter 17 - To Syevnor

  The world slipped into darkness and a heavy silence that was interrupted only by the sound of faraway crashes of Chaos rocks falling across Triboria.

  "You know," began Dion as he was taking out his grandfather's book from the bag, still unsure if he should finish his thought out loud or not.

  "Our myths say that Vedientir has four heads. All the statues in Aelan, of you I guess, have heads that face in a separate direction, in order to see the whole world at the same time."

  Dion looked up at Vedientir, half-squinting, awaiting his reaction.

  Kerkio coughed as loud as he could to break the silence and rubbed his hands over the fire plant as if to warm them. He was eager for the two of them to return to Aelan or better yet Syevnor, but here Dion was, trying to anger the only one who could help them by saying that he has a few heads less than was expected of him.

  "Four heads! What possible use of four heads would I have?" wondered Vedientir loudly, but it was obvious Dion did not anger or insult him.

  "Aha!" exclaimed Vedientir using the old language word for when one remembers something and Dion laughed heartily when it came to him that he was pronouncing it incorrectly all his life. It sounded like "Aaaaa-HA!" when Vedientir said it just now.

  "Your storytellers must have been talking about my eagles."

  Dion shook his head.

  "I do not remember hearing any such story."

  "I have four eagles that allow me to see the world through their senses. Their names are Parvi, Druhi, Terti and Katri."

  "There's four heads for you," Kerkio told Dion, trying to end the conversation.

  "Yes. Those are probably the four heads. I fear to think what else you have changed in your stories since the Migration," Vedientir said and then, to Kerkio's relief, stopped talking and closed his eyes.

  "She has found Bor," said Vedientir. "They will be here soon."

  "What do we do now?" asked Dion just as the ground beneath them shook once again.

  "Now we have to see if there is anything that Bor can do with that little branch of yours and then you have to go back, either to that Tree or to the one you came here through. Your visit here is coming to an end, and I am afraid that neither Bor or I can wait for morning here to see if there is anything left of the Eternal Storm."

  "Why?" asked Dion. "You seem to have repulsed the attack."

  "A sense of profound uneasiness has overtaken me and I cannot rid myself of it. Moreover, it is growing stronger even as we speak. I am beginning to think about things I have not thought for centuries
, but we have lived apart from Chaos for so long and without them that I cannot be completely sure."

  Dion's eyes asked his next question instead of his mouth and Vedientir answered.

  "I think the Nightmares are coming."

  "Nightmares?" asked Kerkio. "You mentioned them earlier today and the fact that men once fought these Nightmares. What are they? Some elite forces from that Chaos land?"

  "I am loath to think of them at all," said Vedientir.

  "I was not the first to be, and neither were any of my brothers and sisters. The Nightmares became first, yet neither intentionally nor willfully. They are a residue, a waste from the beginning of all things, an embodiment of fears that grew in the Allfather's mind in the moment when he woke up in nothingness, knew himself and knew that he was alone.

  He felt them then, he feared them, he pitied them, and they haunted him, just like nightmares in the darkness of dreams. But he wished not to destroy them. He thought of them as of his first children, but he could not rid himself of their incessant torture and their selfish needs for his attention so he created the first material world. He gave shapes to the Nightmares and to himself, and he thus bound them to the world. He sent them into one corner of the world and made himself a home in the opposite one.

  Only then were we born, the gods, as men call us. Only after the world and the Nightmares already existed. Bor, Grom, Plamen, and amongst all others, myself. Unlike the Nightmares, a name given to them by us, we were wanted by the Allfather and were born to give life to his world and make sure the Nightmares do not destroy it."

  "Could all this really have happened?" asked Dion, unwilling to believe Vedientir's words. Perhaps even incapable. "Where is mankind in all this?"

  "Mankind? You came to the world much later, but your coming changed everything, including the Nightmares. They ended up hating your kind even more than they hated the dragons who were born to the world before you. Because of men they even changed their appearance and assumed grotesque shapes to frighten you, and they succeeded. Of all the things in the world men most feared the sight of the Nightmares, even more than the incomprehensible horror that they really were, but that is what my kin and I fear the most still."

  "And where are the Nightmares now?" asked Kerkio, trying to calculate the danger they were in. Vedientir patted the empty air in front of him as if to calm Kerkio down. "I'll get to it," is what he meant with that gesture.

  "I hope they are still where they had ended up the last time I saw them, in a time that fades even from my memory. Brother Allfather not only broke the world in half, but in his rage, his strikes shattered the halves into many pieces. The destruction you saw here today is not even a pale shadow of what had happened to the world then." He stopped speaking for a short while when long forgotten memories flooded his mind.

  "Fearing the wrath of Brother Allfather that never before or after was felt by either us or them, the Nightmares fled like sheep back into their corner of the world. They trampled their own followers in their flight, and even some of the Lesser Nightmares died or were abandoned along the way, but the most powerful Nightmares managed to escape and hide.

  Brother Allfather then took the parts of the broken world and from them made Chaos. He ripped apart the fabric of the world, tore up the laws that thus far had governed over the world, hoping that would be enough to stop the Nightmares from reaching our part of the world again.

  As he did so the ground began to float in the air, as a feather would on water; water turned into great balls and detached itself from the land it was on, and molten rock and fire poured out of the ground. Such a wounded world he thrust down into the deep after the fleeing Nightmares.

  Then the rage subsided and he saw what damage he had caused to the world. The Lesser Nightmares and lesser demons who could not hide from Brother Allfather cast down their hideous forms and begged for forgiveness to avoid being cast down into the dark depths of what was to become Chaos. They assumed a man-like form for they knew that Brother Allfather would not be willing to punish them. But, they could not hide completely in that form. Their darkness poured out of them and made their eyes completely black."

  "Aw!" shouted Dion as if struck and jumped to his feet. The dragon roared, jolted out of his dream, Kerkio jumped to his feet as well, and the ravens jumped off of Vedientir's shoulders.

  "Lyud! Sto bit?" asked the confused dragon and Vedientir repeated the same question. "What is it?"

  "I saw such a man as you describe," said Dion. "On the first day of the attack on our kingdom. In Lorei. He was gray-skinned and had eyes as dark as coal."

  "Well," replied Vedientir calmly, "all of us can now be certain that Chaos has indeed reached the New World."

  "But that is a Nightmare! I saw a Nightmare!" argued Dion. He was visibly shaken.

  "The creature you describe was once one of the lowest of demons, not even a Nightmare. It is now only a wretch that has broken its oath to Brother Allfather. Roga, the one you say that you robbed is a true Nightmare, and yet I see you here before me, clearly having survived your encounter with her."

  Dion calmed down somewhat.

  "Let's move to happier thoughts as we wait for Bor to arrive," said Vedientir. "You have not shown me yet what my brothers and sisters packed into that chest of yours."

  His grandfather's handbook was the first he took out of the bag. He placed it aside and kept looking.

  "Grom's gift is still here I see," said Vedientir as Dion placed the lightning spear acorn into Vedientir's hand.

  Vedientir returned the acorn to Dion and then spoke its rune, being careful not to activate it needlessly.

  Dion took out the jar of honey and placed it next to the fire and grandfather's handbook.

  "A few scrolls which I haven't looked through yet, and acorns from this Tree in Arvinia that I picked earlier today," voiced Dion as he took out things from the bag and placed them aside.

  "No more?" asked Vedientir. "All else is spent? Where are the earth and water elementals? I still remember that we gave those away."

  "I used almost everything that was in the chest. I still have this one acorn, but I cannot read what is written on it," said Dion and gave Vedientir the last acorn in his possession that was not a traveling acorn.

  Vedientir grew silent as soon as he touched the acorn and then his breathing grew faster. He clenched the hand that held the acorn into a fist.

  "I am certain that most if not all of the good fortune given to your family must have been spent in order to stop you or the other members of your family from activating this acorn," said Vedientir, and his voice was no longer gentle.

  The eyes of everyone were on Vedientir's now trembling hand. Something was happening.

  "Priatel," said Vedientir. It was the word for friend in the old language.

  The skin on his hand began to grow white and signs of a struggle appeared on Vedientir's face.

  "What is going on?" asked Dion after a wave of panic went through him.

  "The acorn does not contain a friend as its rune says," explained Vedientir. He spoke through his teeth, and he was in visible discomfort.

  "There is a spirit from Chaos inside it and now that the acorn is open, I can feel it trying to get out."

  He lifted his thumb slightly and immediately a thick black fog, darker than the night around them, started pouring out of his hand.

  "The essence of evil," said Vedientir.

  "If any member of your family had activated this acorn in a moment of weakness or in any other moment when someone felt the need for a friend, this essence would have embedded itself into the one that had activated the rune. Given enough time, the essence would intertwine with the body so thoroughly that even the offspring of the person would be affected by Chaos."

  "How did it get in the chest? Did all the inheritors receive such an acorn?"

  "I don't know how it got to be there and most probably all inheritors have such an acorn, yes."

  The god's face wrinkled.

/>   "Your tasks have just now multiplied. After you find another inheritor who does have an acorn of a Great Oak and you bring him or it to us you will have to find all the other inheritors. You must destroy these acorns before it is too late for the other inheritors and for us."

  Eya appeared in that moment, as if she waited for Vedientir to stop speaking. She was tired and the redness of her face was apparent when she came closer to the fire. She moved aside to let Bor through.

  Bor's face looked much younger than Vedientir's. It was not as wide as Vedientir's nor as weathered and serious. It was smooth and shiny under the fire of the light, and the darker strands of his hair really looked green, just like Vedientir said they would.

  He was even taller than Vedientir. He wore deer-skin moccasins and pants, but was naked from the waist up. The only thing that he wore above his waist was a small wooden amulet that hung from his neck on a finger-wide strip of leather threaded through it. The amulet did not appear to be carved or adorned, and neither did its shape appear to have some purpose or meaning that Dion could think of.

  "So many surprises around one small fire! My brother, a fairy, a dragon from the Old world and men from the New world!"

  Bor smiled with joyful amazement, but the group stayed silent. It seemed to Dion that they should be afraid since they were now in the presence of two giant strangers, but fear refused to emerge, as if suppressed by some magic.

  "It's been so long," he continued. "I thought they would never return, but it's good to see them. We could certainly use their help, brother."

  "We could," answered Vedientir, "but they are not here to help us. These men came to ask for our help. Chaos has reached the New world."

  Bor was now the one shaking his head, and his face slowly became as serious as Vedientir's had been for a while now.

  "You sent for me because of a Putodrvo? The one on top of the hill there?"

  "No. They have with them a branch from an inheritor's Putodrvo that they want to reach. I want you to see if there's anything left in the branch that could be used to open the Path to it."

  Bor came closer to Vedientir, took Dion's branch and bit into the thicker end of it. He tore off a small piece of the bark and then chewed it thoroughly.