The Runes of Norien

by Auguste Corteau

The poor woman was starving herself to death, Yodren thought, nonetheless sucking with a shiver of delight the marrow out of a braised veal shank. Her once pretty face had sunk into itself so terribly it resembled a thinly-fleshed skull, while her dainty, lilac-scented skin had turned an unhealthy shade of yellow, and was stretched here and there by protruding bones. Worst of all were her eyes, sunken and rimmed by wrinkled, bruised-looking circles, an effect made even more harrowing by how often they shone with unadulterated bliss over her pitiful delusion. It caused Yodren enormous guilt, his flagrant impersonation of Royen the Eternal, and yet he felt so sorry for the Queen, he hadn’t the heart to crush her fragile fallacy when it brought her so much joy. And the fact that, even though still sequestered, he openly enjoyed the favour of Queen Firalda, had in more ways than one saved his life. If it weren’t for her unfliching belief in his deception, the King would doubltess have had him dispatched; and the generous offer of her rich, delicious food, no matter how regrettable its procurement, was a gift that Yodren couldn’t deny – not when food was so dreadfully scarce that even other Scribes, not by far the most undernourished denizens of the Castle, cast envious glances at the dishes he carried upon returning from the daily perpetration of his sham. All in all, the Queen’s madness, though sad, had been a veritable Spirit-send.

  But if the food was enough to stave off his hunger, it did nothing to diminish his profound fear and worry over a matter Yodren thought so unsafe, he didn’t even dare think of it too much, lest by some mysterious way it be disclosed.

  Because on that fateful morning, before the King summoned him and demanded that he demonstrate a superhuman strength he clearly didn’t possess, and before the decapitated corpse of the Prince arrived and confirmed his apprehension, Yodren had just deciphered part of a prophecy that had been resisting him for long. It once more spoke of Royen, and how he would lead the war against some ‘grimy tribe’ that would try to invade the sole standing kingdom – and Yodren had quite frankly had enough of this mythical saviour that only utter fools could possibly believe in, when, as he was about to swipe the parchments away in disgust, the last line of the text shimmered and became a name, a name he knew all too well and which he never once left out of his prayers.

  Yet still it was more with weariness and irritation than with actual alarm that he once again bent over the parchment and reread the prophecy’s conclusion.

  And this time he did feel the cold hand of dread seizing him till he gasped – for the last two words, Yonfi Kobold, weren’t written in the quicksilvery letters of the Divine Language, but in all Feeres’ plain mother tongue, as if the prediction was so unerring it had made the very ink settle, revealing without the least doubt his little brother’s name.

  At that exact moment Harfien had knocked on his door, making him jump, and when he entered to deliver King Fazen’s urgent summons he looked even more pale and fretful than usual. Luckily, Yodren had still had time to thrust the telltale parchment in the pocket of his robe before turning to face the Head Divinator, but Harfien’s flitting glance and obvious edginess made him wonder whether he, too, had come upon some unmistakable proof of Yonfi’s fabulous bequest, a fact which Yodren himself was still unable to wrap his head around. Yonfi? Six-year old Yonfi was Royen the Eternal?

  As it turned out, Harfien had been distressed by a prophecy quite similar to his, concerning the Castle’s invasion by ‘muck people’, though fortunately it didn’t mention Royen at all. However, even as they climbed down the Scriptorium’s winding stairs, Yodren, following behind, had stuck his hand in his pocket and torn the old parchment to shreds; it was a grave transgression to destroy a document, especially an ancient one written in the language of the Spirits, but Yodren simply couldn’t risk it.

  And then the dire events had swept them all up in a whirl of terror. When he had crept down the Palace stairs and come upon the horrible scene – the King down on his knees, holding up Prince Fantyr’s head while the flattened crowd around him heaved and wailed and butted their heads on the cobbles –, Yodren thought, I’m as good as dead. For once the King recalled that he was supposed to be Royen, raiser of the dead, he’d surely order him to somehow attach the Prince’s head to his body and stir him back to life; great grief could breed madness, and when Yodren failed to perform this miracle, as he surely would, King Fazen would have him executed on the spot.

  But, horrible though it seemed to call such carnage fortunate, Yodren had been spared because the King’s madness was too ferocious to be quelled by the death of just one man. Cradling the head of his son in the crook of his arm, he rose unsteadily to his feet, drew his sword, and while his subjects were too distraught and terrified to react, he let out a roar of wrath and began to bring down the long sharp heavy blade on the heads, necks, shoulders, backs, torsos, arms and legs of the men, women and children around him. It was as if his fury, despite his paunch and the fact that he had never been to war, had transformed him into a score of savage warriors. The guards rushed to his aid, kicking people away to spare their lives and stop them from fighting back and hurting their liege, but no one dared lay a finger on the howling King, who kept striking blindly, till he was drenched in blood from head to toe and there was nothing left to attack but a still or faintly-moving mass of mutilated bodies, too weak to even scream in pain.

  Praying that his drab Scribe’s robes would make him inconspicuous among the people who’d leapt to their feet at the first spray of blood that hit them, Yodren had run to the Scriptorium, and instead of going to his cell where he could be found and dragged back to the Palace, he stole into the deep dark cellar where the Scribes kept their casks of wine and ale, great sacks filled with flour and wheat, and clay vats of honey. He was horrified by the King’s rabid brutality – he’d slain small children as if swatting gnats – and appalled by the fact that not one person had stood up to him, let alone responded in kind, though they’d been probably as petrified as he; after all, here he was, hiding like a rat between the sacks. In the event, he had kept up this rat-like existence, nibbling on wheat and honey and sucking wine straight from the barrel, until Celes the Head Scribe came looking for him, shouting earsplittingly as always because of his deafness.

  “There you are!” the old man bellowed, even though the fact was plain enough as they stood less than a yard from each other. “You are to present yourself at the Palace!”

  Those moments, as he padded across the darkening marketplace, convinced that he was walking towards an agonizing death, were the worst moments in Yodren’s life; so when the chambermaid awaiting him at the Palace gates, a girl even younger than he and twice as skittish, lead him wordlessly to the dimly-lit dining hall, where the Queen was having a quiet if one-sided conversation with the luxuriously bedecked corpse of Prince Fantyr, Yodren’s relief and astonishment had been so sudden and profound, he’d nearly broken out in laughter. Oh, yes! Of course he was Royen the Eternal! Touch the Prince’s heart? Why, it was his privilege and pleasure! If it pleased Her Majesty, he’d gladly feed His Majesty the Prince a chunk of his own flesh! Anything to stay alive!

  But now he knew; he was shaken and astounded and not a little doubtful, but in his heart of hearts, in that place where love resides, along with the living ghosts of our beloveds, Yodren knew that the prophecy didn’t lie. The fate of Feerien was in the tiny hands of his little brother, who most likely was unaware of his daunting legacy. Because a day or two after what came to be known as ‘the King’s wrath’, reports began to inundate the Castle, speaking of the Scavengers’ sudden, bloody rampage, that no force seemed able to withstand. The ‘filthy tribe’, the ‘muck people’ were upon them.

  And now this. Little Yonfi. The darling boy whose face he didn’t know, whose hair he’d never tousled, the brother he hadn’t held lovingly in his arms outside of dreams, was Royen.

  Did that mean that the rest of them – Father and Mother and sweet Yofana – were safer? Or would Yonfi’s powers, because of his youth and the playfulness of b
oys, attract the attention of the killer hordes? (For even if he did reluctantly accept that his brother was the actual incarnation of so much extravagant folklore, Yodren couldn’t quite see a mere child pitted against an army he could vanquish on his own).

  However, and even though the thought of his family wandering the Farmlands, scared and hungry, plagued him and robbed him of his sleep, Yodren knew that no one must ever find out the truth about Yonfi. And it wasn’t only that such a revelation would make the Queen cast him out as an impostor, and earn him the excruciating death the King was more than eager to mete out; Yodren would readily give up his own life for the boy’s. For what if the hero of fables was no more than a fable himself? What if Yonfi was unable to bring the Prince back to life? Would anyone’s life be spared then?

  Yodren didn’t think so. He had always thought King Fazen a dull-witted man, cruel and vindictive, but after his latest atrocity, (no matter how the cowardly Castle-dwellers tried to justify their monarch’s gross injustice as part of the same pitiless fate they bowed their heads to) Yodren would rather die a thousand grisly deaths before letting the King lay his filthy hands on Yonfi. And to this purpose, claiming that he needed to study the legends of the hero whose destiny and deeds he must fulfill, he had the other Divinators hand over to him every text telling of Royen even in passing; and during his sleepless nights and long, idle days, he would peruse the obscure documents, seeking his brother’s and family’s names – but even when he found no mention or hint, he still kept at it, for the Divine Language couldn’t be trusted to not change from one moment to the next.

  Thus now, licking his fingers clean and wishing that, like a dog, he could eat the bones as well, Yodren looked despairingly at the stack of books and parchments on his desk, repelled by the prospect of spending yet another night reading about how Royen could subdue dragons and dethrone wicked kings and venture into the heart of winter naked as his mother bore him.

  Oh, what he wouldn’t give to be with his family! Even in these darkest of times, with throngs of Scavengers hot on their trail, their love would be the balm he so needed, the bliss he so desperately craved! What good was being safe if you couldn’t protect the ones your heart ached for? Come to that, what good was the ‘gift’ of reading if all it got you was a locked cell and knowledge which frightened you more than it soothed you?

  It was this bleak frame of mind that led Yodren’s steps to the narrow window of his cell, his worn-out mind’s sole release when he wasn’t at the Palace deceiving the Queen or at his desk scrutinizing ancient ramblings. Not that it had much to offer in way of a view; the rear of the Scriptorium, where his cell was, looked out on the sea, as well as, whenever they chose to surface, on the Drowning Isles. Luckily, Yodren could enhance this rather uninspiring seascape thanks to a spyglass smuggled out of old Celes’ quarters and slipped to him by Harfien, “to pass the time,” as he’d said, oddly blushing.

  Yet the spyglass wasn’t the extent of Harfien Griff’s recent kindness towards him, a fact Yodren felt grateful for even if he couldn’t quite explain it. For one thing, he was almost certain that Harfien, by far the most diligent Divinator, knew about Yonfi, but for some unfathomable reason had decided to keep this knowledge secret rather than share it with the King and Queen, who would surely and generously reward such a display of loyalty. Moreover, Harfien was the only Scribe who didn’t seem to begrudge him the Queen’s favour, not once staring at his plate of leftovers or raising a scornful brow, as did many, when they crossed paths on the stairs. And when the time came for the door of his cell to be locked for the night, Harfien, who alone had assumed the task, looked ashamed of it, as if it were he who had ordered Yodren’s confinement, keeping his pale eyes fixed on the floor and murmuring “Good night” in the voice of a child who has been chastized so many times he mistrusts his own trusting nature. (And there was something more, some intangible quality to the rare moments when Harfien, thinking himself unseen, would cast a furtive glance at him, filled with a longing Yodren could feel even without fully grasping it, similar perhaps to the urge, never indulged in by himself, that drove other Scribes to seek the company of whores).

  The final moonset had left the sky a deepening violet; soon it would be dark, and Yodren, sighing at the vagaries of life, stood before the window and gazed through the spyglass at the slowly vanishing view.

  All three isles were visible, a peculiar thing; they usually seemed as though shy or afraid of one another, surfacing only when the other two were sinking or about to. But in the last light Yodren could discern the three jagged peaks, and the –

  Wait. Didn’t the middle one look somewhat taller? Stepping closer to the vertical aperture, Yodren trained his eye on the Drowning Isles. And, sure enough, the one in the middle was taller. But that wasn’t all that was strange about it.

  At first he’d thought it was his own exhausted mind making him see things that weren’t there. Yet now, rubbing at his eyes, he looked again, and drew a sharp breath of susprise.

  A fountain of fiery sparks gushed from the second island’s peak.