Chapter 1: Return to Erârün

 

The return to Erârün was long, and quiet. Without the knowledge of the Hochträe’s tongue, Elven was largely left in silence, and in silence he preferred to stay.  He seemed not to have Brandyé’s gift for communication, and found himself mystified by the lyrical and thoroughly incomprehensible language the folk around him kept to themselves. Every so often one of them would attempt to speak to him in his own tongue, but by necessity his answers were always short and succinct, and they would eventually leave him be.

Neither he nor they seemed overly affected by this; Elven no longer had any particular interest in the Hochträe, and they seemed to understand this peacefully. In fact, Elven thought he would have preferred to make the journey alone, although he could not deny the comfort of having someone else hunt and prepare meals for him (and the camp at large). As the days wore on, he found his thoughts began to center solely on one thing, and that was discovering Talya’s fate.

Early in their journey, he wrote a short note detailing his plans on a scrap of leather torn from his pack, and bid Sonora, his falcon, to bear it to Talya, wherever she might be. The last time he had laid eyes on her, she had been hiding amongst the rocks of the Reinkrag mountains, fleeing from the oncoming army of Darkness from the north along with hundreds of frightened villagers and no soldiers to speak of. His heart ached at the thought, and he wondered often what madness had driven him to follow Brandyé into the ever-clouded peaks and away from the woman he loved.

It was a curious thing, he thought, to have such feelings for another person. Never in all his youth had anyone spoken of love as something harbored for another person, though now he came to realize it, he had always loved his parents, his family … his fallen sister. Rather, even the folk of Consolation, the one land that had for centuries escaped the fate of Darkness, married for convenience and prosperity, and the very word love was reserved for tasty meals and warm, sun-filled afternoons.

Such afternoons were now a time-wearied memory, for soon after departing from the Hochträe’s mountain realms, the ever-present clouds swarmed in upon them again, and each day wore on in bleak grayness, each night only a few shades darker than the day. Elven had known such skies for so long that the brief respite among the sunny peaks of the Hochträe felt almost an anomaly—that the return to desolation marked a return to everyday normality.

Elven found himself longing for normality, clouded or not. In his time with Brandyé he had known adventure and excitement, but also sadness and death, and he discovered he was dreadfully weary of it. The moment he found Talya, he resolved, he would ask her to marry, and they would find a home, and he would never leave it again. Perhaps he would even take her back to his parents, left so far behind in the forests of the Trestaé.

To this end, Elven was at times uneasy with the direction they were taking. He understood that the Hochträe wished to visit the kingdom of Erârün, and the most sensible destination was the great city of Vira Weitor to the south. Yet this was in fact leading him away from the last place he knew Talya to be, in the western fringes of the mountains. Some days he was overcome with the urge to abandon the party and set out on his own, and only two things prevented him from doing so: that the folk he traveled with had set out with him and because of him, and that so much time had passed that it was unlikely he would find Talya still hidden in the refuge caves of the Rein. Before their parting they had not discussed what they would do should they not be immediately reunited, and Elven cursed himself for this. However, it seemed sensible to him that she would make for a place that was well-known to both of them if she could, and he held hope that Vira Weitor might be that place. If not, he told himself, he would seek her out where they had met: the far southern village of Hansel’s Foil. Failing that, he would not rest; there were many more places in the world in which to seek for her.

As their passage through the mountains wore on, these thoughts consumed him, and he found himself searching the clouded skies daily for a sign that Sonora was returning, but for many weeks there was no sign of the bird. Instead, he would see only crows, and this unsettled him, for Brandyé had once told him that such birds were in the service of the Duithèn: of Darkness.

Of the other creatures of Darkness, however, they saw nothing: whether by chance or fate, the fierundé seemed uninterested or unwilling to pursue them. This was one of Elven’s greatest fears, for although the Hochträe seemed to possess great martial skill, he had yet to see even a battalion of soldiers hold their own against a pack of the dreadful wolves, except perhaps those of the Illuèn. If there was a third reason he stayed with the host of Hochträe, it was this: he knew he would not last a minute against even a single fierund.

Although they were thus largely left in peace, their journey was not without difficulty; rain and mud often made the going difficult, and the lay of the land seemed to work against them: the valleys seemed all arranged from east to west, meaning they had either to make great detours around the mountain peaks, or attempt to pass directly over them. On one such try one of their donkeys lost its footing and fell, and so they lost not only a beast of burden but many of their supplies also.

Illness, too, they had to combat; although it was the time of year for spring, the weather nonetheless beat down upon them, and their high altitude meant the rain would often turn to sleet and snow. The folk of the Hochträe, unused to such persistently bad weather, found themselves succumbing to cold and flu, and Elven became busy seeking remedies in the woods. His own health he was able to maintain, but only through effort and wisdom; he had trekked with Brandyé through rain and cold many times before, and knew how to keep warm and dry.

Then there came a day when the land changed, and they descended from a series of long hills to find themselves at the edge of a vast lake. Elven was reminded of coming across such a lake with Brandyé in the Trestaé, but if that one had stretched a dozen miles this one must have stretched a hundred, for its edges were lost to sight. Then, with Brandyé, they had had little choice but to attempt to circumnavigate the lake, but here the Hochträe fell to the trees with axe and hatchet, and soon had a series of great rafts built that could house four men to a one, and their donkeys (provided the donkeys remained dreadfully still).

So they set out, and Elven found himself on a raft with two other Hochträe, one of whom seemed to know his tongue slightly better than the others.

“New land we come to,” he said to Elven.

“What do you mean?” Elven asked.

The man pointed behind them, to the north, and said, “Naiya,” which Elven knew was the name the Hochträe kept for themselves. “Hochträe,” the man said, as if to affirm Elven’s thought. Then he pointed to the northwest and said, “Reinkrag,” which Elven knew was the name of the mountains they had come from. The man seemed proud of himself that he knew the names of these places in Elven’s own tongue.

And so Elven pointed to the south, over the dark windswept waves of the lake, and said, “New land?”

The man nodded and smiled. “Irō-pa. Üthervaye!”

So Elven came to understand that they were entering a new line of mountains, and this lake served to divide the Reinkrag to the north from the Üthervaye to the south. He wondered how the Hochträe knew this, but the man seemed unable to explain beyond, “It is the way of the mountains.”

The lake’s length followed a southerly direction, and it was certainly faster progress than walking, though they remained in easy view of the shore at any given time. When the wind rose they would retreat to the banks of the river, create fire from the woods and camp. The Hochträe seemed adept at survival in general, for they appeared equally comfortable in the air, on the water or on land, and they were just as skilled at fishing as at hunting. The lake boasted many large fish, and for life in the middle of the wilderness, Elven was comfortable.

Then a day came when things began to go wrong, and it started with Sonora’s return. So many days had passed since Sonora had left his side that Elven had nearly forgotten to look for her, and so it was with great surprise that he looked to the gray skies around noon to see a familiar black speck approaching in the distance. He was sitting in the middle of the raft as they coursed gently down the lake, the water today stiller than usual. The Hochträe treated him as a guest and would not let him paddle, and so he often had little to do on these daily trips. Walking provided the distraction of physical movement; here there was nothing but himself and his thoughts.

Within moments the speck revealed itself as the headlong rush of feathers that he knew as Sonora, and soon she was circling above their craft. The Hochträe of his raft stopped their paddling momentarily to look upon her, speaking to each other in their own language and smiling.

Elven could not keep the smile from his own face, and retrieved the gauntlet he used with the bird from his pack and laced it over his forearm. With a delicate flutter the falcon settled herself upon it, and he lowered his arm under her familiar weight.

It was then that he noticed the note tied still to her leg—the very same, it seemed, that he had sent her away with. For a moment his heart stopped in his chest, for never in his life had Sonora returned without delivering a message. With swift fingers he undid the knot, and knew it as his own.

Yet a part of him said to be still—that perhaps Talya had merely replied to him on the same scrap of leather, not having the tools to write upon herself. When the note was released, Sonora leapt down from his arm and settled herself on the floor of the raft, peering nervously at the water all around her.

Elven unfolded the note. On it was written nothing but his own short piece:

Dearest Talya,

I am returning to Vira Weitor, though it may take several months. I will wait for you there.

With love,

Elven

He flipped the scrap of leather over, but it was bare on the reverse. He flipped again, reread his own writing, wondering if he was missing some clue, some subtle unwritten message that Talya might have sent back with Sonora.

Yet there seemed to be nothing but the note he had sent the falcon away with weeks ago. With nervous hands he folded the note into his pack, and leaned to pat Sonora’s head. “You did well, dear,” he said to her. “I’m sorry you couldn’t find her.”

The bird looked up at him with a disdainful look, as though he was somehow implying she had not tried hard enough. So human was the look that Elven could not help but laugh. “I’m not blaming you!” he said. “But I do worry—where could Talya be?”

What he did not voice aloud was his worst thought; that the reason Sonora had not delivered the note was that Talya had gone somewhere he could not follow.

Later that night, they stopped by a shallow creek that fed into the great lake through a series of bogs and marshes, and Elven could not help but think they could have picked a better spot. Almost as soon as they landed, he was beset by swarms of mosquitoes and midges, and spent the evening futilely swatting them away. The Hochträe, oddly, seemed unaffected, and laughed at his antics. “At home we have bites,” they told him. “They are bigger!”

“You’re just lucky to have me around,” Elven grumbled. “Without me they’d have no choice but to feed on you!” He shuffled closer to the fire, whose smoke seemed to help keep the insects at bay. He wrapped himself as fully as he could, but by the morning he was nonetheless covered with great, red spots that itched like nothing he had known before.

The morning brought with it cooler air, and the persistent attacks died away. Elven insisted they wait for him as he searched the woods for soothing plant leaves, but after an hour they were calling him to leave, and he had found nothing. In a foul mood he retreated to the rafts, and they set out on the day’s journey.

As the day went on the itch slowly faded, and Elven found himself scratching less and less. A cold, soothing wind rose from the north, and Elven found that if he sat backward on the raft with his face to the wind, he could almost forget the mild agony he was in.

With the wind, however, came waves, and the rafts began to bob roughly up and down. Soon there were strong gusts, and Elven could see far in the distance black storm clouds descending from the hills. The horizon faded into a haze of coming rain, and soon drops were falling on them with increasing rapidity.

“We need to go ashore!” Brandyé called to the Hochträe on his raft. The looked at him without understanding, and he vehemently pointed toward the lake’s shore. “We must go there, now!” To reinforce his thought, he pointed back at the closing storm, and they followed his finger, and nodded. As they shifted their position on the raft and began to call out their intentions to the others, Elven saw a great shaft of lightning reach out from the sky and seem to strike the lake not a mile distant, and a moment later came the ominous roll of thunder.

It was only just past midday by the time they beached their craft, but the sky was thick and black, and the rain was pouring down torrentially. Every now and then the sky with illuminate with brilliant lightning, and Elven was reminded of the great storm he and Brandyé had suffered through in the Trestaé. He was reluctant to enter the woods, for he knew there was the chance of lightning striking a tree near to them, and he had no desire to break his leg again. Yet he knew they would be drier under the branches, and so followed the Hochträe as they progressed a quarter mile inland to where the rain was less.

Eventually they came to a stop near a stream (one that, fortunately, did not seem to be home to any variety of biting insects), and Elven helped them set up a series of small tents. When they crawled under and were sheltered from the rain (though not from the wet ground), Elven thought perhaps they might just survive the storm, despite the sounds of the sky being torn asunder that seemed to come from directly over their heads.

There was nothing to speak of, and as the Hochträe in his tent tried without luck to start a small fire, Elven listened to the patter of rain, the crack of thunder and the rush of wind, and began to doze. Eventually he settled himself into a lying position on the ground, his pack as a pillow, and with Sonora curled close to his head, he passed into sleep.

His slumber could not have lasted more than a few minutes, however, before he was startled awake by the loudest crack of thunder yet, and a brilliant flash that seemed to burn right through his closed eyelids. A shout came from one of the nearby tents, and for a moment Elven waited, breathless, for the sounds of falling trees or crackling flames.

Neither came, however, and when he followed the Hochträe out of the tent and into the rain, it was to find everything as it had been—undisturbed, wet and dark. It seemed it had been a cry of surprise more than alarm, and Elven was about to turn back to reenter the tent when without warning the very ground itself seemed to tremble, and he was thrown to his knees.

There was no sound this time, however, and no lightning flash to precede; only a great tremor underfoot, and then suddenly the world seemed to fade entirely from Elven’s sight. At first he thought perhaps he had closed his eyes, but he blinked several times and raised his hands to his face, and realized he could not see them at all. It was as if all light had suddenly been extinguished from the world, and in the distance he heard Sonora’s frightened call.

For an endless moment his sightlessness continued, and he heard the Hochträe crying to each other and knew it was not just him. He did not dare to stand, and remained on his knees, the rain still falling on his shoulders, waiting.

And then, as if to contradict the abyssal blackness, a flash brighter than any he had yet known seared his open eyes, and he was deafened by a vicious crack of thunder and smelled burning air. The ground’s trembling seemed to fade, and slowly, the world came back into view.

Finally Elven stood shakily, and looked around him. Beside him were the Hochträe that shared his tent, and not too far in the distance were several others. They were also looking about them, and Elven could hear the frightened note in their voices, though he could not understand their words. For a moment he was overcome with frustration, for he wanted desperately to ask them what had just happened, but knew they would be unable to explain, even if they knew.

Over the raised voices of the Hochträe, Elven caught wind of Sonora again, and turned back toward the tent to reassure the bird. As he lifted the tent’s flap, he cast a final glance to the dark forest behind him, and wondered if it seemed a shade darker than it had before.

At his appearance, Sonora burst into a furore of squawking, and Elven was relieved to know that the bird had not lost her own sight. Elven settled himself on the ground again, and held a hand out to Sonora, who hopped toward him and nestled her head against him. “I don’t know what just happened,” he said softly to her. “I hope it’s nothing.”

By the morning the storm had subsided, and they drank from the stream before packing their tents and returning to the lake’s shore. They had progressed at the very least some seventy miles down the lake, and Elven was desperately hoping that they might reach the end of it soon, for he was growing increasingly weary of sitting still day after day with nothing to do.

He could not deny that the scenery around them had changed however; from the barren fields and rocks of the northern Reinkrag, the Üthervaye seemed much more akin to the Trestaé in their demeanor. From the lake’s edges rose high, pine-covered peaks, rising higher into the distance to those whose summits remained capped in snow even in the rain and the warmer weather. Every so often another river or stream would empty itself into the lake as they went on, and Elven suspected that the river that finally exited the lake to the south must be prodigious indeed.

The remainder of that day was dull and without incident; the rain came and went, and one of the Hochträe on Elven’s raft began to cough. Elven tried to insist that the man take a brief rest and allow him to paddle, but even in the midst of a wrenching hack, the man refused to relinquish the wooden board.

When they stopped that evening, however, Elven came to realize that it was not only the man from his raft that seemed to be suffering from a cold. Several others were also coughing or languishing, and Elven took the opportunity that night to boil a great stew for the camp, including a small pinch of munadé that he had managed to keep upon his person ever since he and Brandyé had left the Illuèn in the forests of the Trestaé.

Nothing seemed to help, however, and by the morning Elven saw that at least half the camp were suffering some new illness. Hardy folk, though, the Hochträe insisted on moving forward, and so they spent what would become their last day on the rafts. It was not long into the morning before Elven realized their own raft was drifting perpetually sideways, as the sick man’s paddling became ever weaker. Finally he rose carefully and grasped the paddle firmly, looking into the man’s now watering and bloodshot eyes. The man tried briefly to resist, but Elven did not let go, and merely shook his head determinedly.

In the end the man allowed Elven the paddle and retreated himself to the center of the raft, where it seemed to Elven he rapidly fell asleep. For some hours they continued thus, Elven keeping pace easily with the third man on the raft, until soon after midday a commotion on a raft ahead brought them to a halt.

Without warning, there erupted from before them a great series of cries and calls, and Elven saw several of the Hochträe leap bodily into the water. For a moment he could not fathom their actions, until he saw one of them splashing and treading water with a firm grasp on the inert form of one of his fellows. As several others reached out to help him, Elven came to realize that one of the men on the rafts ahead of them had fallen into the water, unconscious. With a sudden chill he looked to the sleeping man on his own raft. “We need to make for the shore!” he called out to the others as loud as he could.

At first none seemed to pay him heed, so fixated were they on rescuing their fallen friend, and so Elven turned to the man who was paddling beside him and pointed to the shore. “We must go to land,” he said firmly, and with relief he saw the man nod in agreement.

By the time they had steered their craft to a shallow mud bank, the rest of the Hochträe it seemed had managed to haul the fallen man from the lake and upon one of the other rafts. Seeing that one of their party had made for the shore, it was not long before the rest came to lie upon the mud bank with Elven, and they had disembarked and made their way uphill and under the cover of trees.

Elven and his companion had had to bodily carry the sleeping Hochträe between them for when they arrived, they found themselves entirely unable to wake him. When they found a small clearing in which to rest, Elven left the sleeping man with the waking one to gather firewood, and had a roaring blaze going by the time the rest of the party found their way to them. He was disturbed to find that they had also had to carry the man who had fallen into the lake, for he seemed equally unable to be aroused.

Now, it seemed, was the moment the Hochträe began looking to Elven as a healer, and far into the night Elven was kept busy searching for herbs, plants and roots, and concocting half a dozen or more brews that he knew ought to have risen the deadest sleeper, through smelling or by pouring small trickles down their throats. But despite his efforts, the two sleeping men remained so, and to Elven’s dismay their breath seemed almost to weaken as time wore on.

For the rest of the camp Elven once more boiled a thin stew with the last of his munadé, and was astounded at the end of the night when the pot was not empty, for the host of usually ravenous men rarely left a drop. It was becoming clear to him through observation that nearly every one of the Hochträe had succumbed to an illness of some kind, and he could not conceive what he would do if each of them in turn fell into a stupor that they could not be roused from.

This thought did not seem to escape the Hochträe themselves, for late into the night they kept themselves occupied by the fire, talking softly and jabbing at each other to keep themselves from falling asleep. This worried Elven all the more, for he knew that if they were to have any chance of recovering, they would need rest; yet he could understand their hesitation to lie down, in case they failed to wake again.

Eventually, one of the Hochträe approached Elven with a small cough and said, “New, this sleeping sickness. Do you know it?”

Elven shook his head. “I’ve never come across anything like it. Everything I’ve tried—munadé, ginger, silverfoil—nothing seems to have any effect. I’ve never seen anyone in so deep a sleep!”

“You can wake them?” the man asked.

Biting his lip, Elven realized the man had understood few of his words. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I might not.”

But the man smiled a grim smile, nodded, and said, “You can wake them.”

Elven did not feel quite so optimistic, and the morning saw only to bear out his fears. In the night, three more of the Hochträe had fallen into a stupor and could not be awoken, although several others had fallen asleep and woke of their own accord, if not without some anxiety.

As the remaining Hochträe tended to reviving the fire in the morning cold, Elven went to see the condition of the first two men who had entered this frightful state of unconsciousness. To his horror, their skin had grown pale and cold in the night, and it was only by listening deeply to their chests that he could ascertain a heartbeat of any kind.

“Help!” he called out, and thankfully this was a word every one of the Hochträe understood. Several of their number came rapidly to Elven’s side. “We must move them by the fire,” he told them, and indicated with his hands. “They are growing cold.” Elven grasped the wrists of one of them, and one of the Hochträe took the man’s feet. Following their example another pair hefted the second sleeping man, and together they awkwardly moved them closer to the renewed flames. Elven then spent many minutes rubbing their hands and limbs, but to no avail—soon their skin felt as cold as the mists that rolled between the dark trunks all around them.

In desperation, Elven managed to get several of the Hochträe to take his place at the fallen men’s sides, rubbing and attempting to keep their warmth within their bodies, and called to them, “I will be back!” Without another word, he set out into the woods, his only thought to find something, some herb or root that was pungent enough to wake the dead, for without it these men would almost certainly be so.

But after an hour of searching under fallen logs and stones and in shaded glens, Elven began to despair. He knew he could not leave the Hochträe for much longer, and turned to set back, when a vision crossed his path that caused his blood to run cold.

Though it appeared only for a moment, he could have sworn he saw a hooded figure deep in the woods, shadowed face pale and staring at him. The figure bore a cloak of deepest black, such that it seemed even to drawn in the light around it and make the forest a little darker in its wake. For a moment—a long moment, it felt—Elven stared at the figure, and so it seemed the figure stared back at him.

After a time Elven found the courage to speak, and called out, “Hello? If you are there, can you aid us?”

But at his words—or at a blink, he was unsure—the figure vanished, leaving only branch and leaf as though it had never been there at all. “Hey there!” he called. “Come back!” He ran a few paces in the direction the figure had been, but there was nothing to be seen. Turning, half-expecting to find the figure behind him, he said aloud once more, “Hello? Please—come back! We need your help!”

But there was no answer save the rustling of the wind and the call of crows, who seemed ever-present lately. Then out of the near-silence came a familiar caw, and Elven saw Sonora drop out of the trees to the forest floor. With a nervous sigh, Elven said, “You frightened me, Sonora! Come—let’s return to the camp.”

As Elven came nearer to where he had left the Hochträe, his nervousness grew, for he could not hear them—not a shout, nor a whisper, nor even a cough. He quickened his pace, his stomach churning, and when he finally arrived it was to a dismal sight.

The fire had nearly died, for not one of the Hochträe remained strong enough now to tend to it. All but three of their number were now stretched prone on the ground, pale and cold, and as Elven laid a hand on the two that had been the first to fall, he felt their skin as cold as ice.

Beside him sat one of the Hochträe, huddling and shivering gently, a blanket around his shoulders. Elven tried to speak to him, but the man seemed unaware that Elven was even there. Elven waved a hand before his eyes, and the man failed to blink, or look his way. Frightened, Elven moved to another and laid his head to the sleeping man’s chest, listening desperately for a heartbeat. After many, many moments, Elven withdrew with tears in his eyes, for the man was no longer sleeping.

“What is happening?” he cried aloud to the forest, and the silence gave forth no answers.

From fallen branches Elven stacked the fire high and rekindled it, and soon darkness had fallen. He made his way from person to person, body to body, checking for pulses and doing anything and everything he knew of, drawing deep upon his training with Sörhend, but nothing he knew of healing had prepared him for this. Finally he retired to the fire himself, wrapping a blanket of his own over his shoulders, and contemplated that the morning would bring with it a camp of the dead.

And indeed, come the dismal dawn, there was not a soul left alive under those branches, save Elven. Some time during the night he had dozed off, for he woke with a start and a panic, thinking for a moment that he had succumbed to the fate of the Hochträe. It was only as the fact that he was awake to have such a thought dawned on him as proof that he had in fact not succumbed that he breathed a sigh of relief, and looked about him.

White, pale faces surrounded him, thin tendrils of mist draped across their brows, and Elven shuddered, for even on the battlefields of the Rein he had not known death in such measure. A dozen strong men struck down in a matter of days, without cause or sign of disease, save a slight cough. He had never heard of such a sickness.

And then, a new and terrifying thought came to him: what was to be his own fate? He was now alone, lost in mountains that were entirely unknown to him. He could tell south from north, and knew that eventually he would have to continue following the path they had been treading up until this point, but how far would he be able to go on his own?

And surmounting all these considerations was the burning question he could not ignore: would he, too, succumb to this sleeping disease? If so, why had he not already? And if not … what was there about him that so differed him from the Hochträe? A hundred thoughts passed through his mind, and none were satisfactory. Other than where they had been born, he could see no difference between the Hochträe and himself. Was it because they were unaccustomed to a lower altitude? Was it because they had eaten something he hadn’t? To the best of his recollection, they had shared in every meal, drank together from every stream, and walked the same path from the highest peaks to the lowest valleys.

Eventually Elven could not bear these thoughts any longer, and stood. The first thing he must do, he told himself, was be absolutely certain that he was not leaving even one of the Hochträe alive. As a healer, and as a fellow man, he would not leave this place while even one of them still breathed.

It was not long, however, before his worst fears were realized, and he discovered he could find not a single breath nor beat of heart among them. To a one, they had died in their sleep. It was then that he came to the realization that he did not know what to do with their bodies; he had not the strength to dig a grave for so many in the hard soil, and he did not know what customs the Hochträe kept to themselves regarding their dead. Should he set them free upon the lake? Leave them where there lay?

In the end, he could not bear the thought of leaving them for forest animals to feast upon, and did the only thing he could think of: he stoked the fire as high as he could, and with sick tears, he hauled their bodies one by one upon it. A word of forgiveness passed his lips with each one, and with every moment that they burned he questioned himself: had he given up on these men too easily? Had they truly been dead? In the end, only his training with Sörhend was able to comfort him, for he had been taught that a man can live only a few minutes without breath, and each of these poor souls had now been more than day in such a dreadful state. There could have been no reviving them, no rescuing.

It was long into the evening by the time his horrible work was done, but Elven could not remain in that same place another night. By the poor light of a burning branch he packed what provisions he could onto a single donkey, and set out into the woods, leaving the smoldering pyre behind him. Great tears rolled down his cheeks, and he found himself longing more than ever for the comfort of Talya’s touch, or even Brandyé’s words. Through the night he walked, stumbling here and there, and did not rest until the miserable light of day crept upon him once more, though a part of him dreadfully wished that it would not.

In the daylight the world became more real, and the consequences of his actions began to settle upon him. He knew he had food for some days with him, and had with him as always his bow for hunting. He had reckoning of survival in the wilderness from many previous occasions, and was not concerned with his ability to feed himself. However, what he had no reckoning of was how far he might be from Vira Weitor, nor what direction it might lie in.

Eventually he decided his best course of action would be to follow the lake to the river that drained from it, and from there take the river downstream. Eventually it must lead from the mountains, he told himself, and once in the plains he might find some direction. There was even the possibility, slim though it was, that the river he sought was the very same that he knew ran not two miles from Vira Weitor’s western edge.

So began the first of many lonely days, and Elven began to appreciate what Brandyé must have suffered when he had been exiled from their home land of Consolation. Here, at least, he was well equipped, with a donkey to carry his burdens and a companion in Sonora who could, if not speak with him, at least be spoken to, and so Elven was kept from madness. Still, his predicament gave him cause to wonder as to the fate of his friend, and whether he had found what he was seeking for.

Chapter 25: The Eternal Snows

 

It was soon spring among the Hochträe, and Elven would not delay his leaving any longer. This was not to say that the snows were gone, for they were not; so high in the mountains, the Hochträe’s villages would not be free of ice until well into what would elsewhere be summer. But this did not perturb Elven, for he was anxious to be on his way, and as long as the worst of the storms had abated, he would be fine, he said.

Despite himself, Brandyé did not doubt Elven’s resilience; he knew his friend was strong, and with the aid of the Hochträe he was soon well-prepared, with warm clothing and food to last weeks. The hardest part of his journey, they said, would be the first week, where he would have to contend with valleys of deep snow and lakes of ice, cut through with bottomless crevasses; after that, he would find himself in places where the snow had already melted, and the grass grew green.

Here he would once more be under the clouds, though, they warned, and although they knew not of any creatures of Darkness that dwelt along his proposed path, the dangers of the dark world would nonetheless be present. It was this, more than anything, that gave Brandyé cause for worry, for although he knew Elven was well-trained and strong, he did not have the same sense of Darkness that Brandyé did, and he worried that fierundé or other dreadful creatures might come upon him unawares.

“I still have Kayla’s bow, and her Illuèn arrows,” Elven said when Brandyé spoke to him of his concerns. “And Sonora will keep me alerted of danger.”

Something Brandyé did not speak to Elven of, nor even to Nisha, was his dream. It had frightened him in a way even his disturbing dreams of the past had not. It was not the unsettling premonition of death, for it was hardly the first time he had dreamt of such things. In fact, the absence of figures such as Schaera might have reassured him, except for the sensation that what he had encountered was beyond the realm of of the powers of Erâth, and that it represented a very real danger somewhere in his future. In the past, Death had arrived to rescue him from destruction; this time, there was no such salvation.

For the first time in his life, in fact, it gave him cause to consider his own mortality. At twenty-four, he was still young, and while he had never consciously considered himself above death, nor had he ever truly contemplated its reality. Even when he had been scratching at the earth for bugs to eat by the Black Sea, or in the darkest pits of Abula Kharta’s dungeons, he had never truly believed he might die. In part, he thought, it was Elỳn’s parting words to him, from a dream long-past: You will live, and you will be strong.

In part, though, he came to realize that his youth had blinded him to death’s reality. Despite having witnessed more death in his life than he could ever have wished for, he had always failed to recognize his own frailty, and how easily his own life-force could be snuffed.

And now he was setting out to seek a weapon whose very purpose was the extinguishing of all life in Erâth. He wondered that the voice’s words from his dream were perhaps entirely valid: That answer is not for you to know. To find Namrâth is to find your death. What did the voice know? He feared that he might only too soon find out. And would that discovery claim his life?

He knew why he did not want to broach this subject with Elven; he was afraid it would only lead to further argument, with Elven insisting that the dream was evidence that Brandyé was not meant to go forth on his own, and should return to Vira Weitor with him. He would not risk another argument with his friend, for the time of their parting was drawing rapidly near, and he would have as peaceful a time with him as he could.

But why he was reluctant to speak of it with Nisha was a mystery, for certainly the old man ought to have some wisdom to share with him on its meaning. He felt a vague anxiety when he considered the topic, and wondered if he was afraid of what Nisha would say. For all his stories and wisdom, Nisha was often practical, and his advice was at times less than comforting.

In the end he decided it was merely a personal subject, and dwelt on it in private, the voice’s rumblings filling his ears and the flame filling his sight behind closed doors late at night, when the moon cast brilliant shadows on the floor. He wondered at times if he might not return to that place in his sleep, but for the rest of his time with the Hochträe his rest remained deep and uninterrupted.

When the skies had remained clear for two weeks and crocuses began to peek through the melting snow, Nisha said it was finally time to leave, and early in the morning they left the warm comfort of their dwellings and assembled at the dock of an airship, though it was much smaller than the one that had borne them hither. The balloon that rose above them was large indeed, though it would have bee dwarfed by that of the great ship, which was away on some errand or another. Instead of a vast boat hung what seemed more like a great basket, woven from strong branches and suspended from the balloon by thick cord. It still held a cauldron of hot coals, and Brandyé understood the heat from this somehow kept them aloft.

To him, these flying baskets were miraculous, and since his time among the Hochträe he had but seen them float past, and never had ridden in one (he did not count that which had brought him there, for he had been unconscious). They were to use this one to take them to the village in the valley below, from where Elven would set out; it was faster and safer than the snow-covered path that wound down the mountainside from the Hinari’s homes. Sonora perched on the edge of the basket as they set out, and seemed to think it curious to be flying without using her own wings.

For an hour they drifted onward and down, the cauldron of coals mostly covered so that their weight pulled against the lift of the balloon’s temperate air. During this time Brandyé could but stare out in wonder at the passing mountain rock and snow, and was distracted from the fact that in only a short few minutes he would be saying farewell once more to his life-long friend.

But before long, he began to spy curious black specks against the white snow, dots of ink against the mountain’s paper that seemed almost to be moving of their own accord. He turned to Nisha and said, “What are those objects on the mountainside?” and pointed to them.

Elven followed his finger. “I see nothing,” he said. “Merely shadows.”

“Perhaps they are goats?” suggested Nisha.

But Brandyé looked to the sky, and saw there were no clouds. He could see the shadow of their own balloon against the mountainside, in fact, and these shapes did not line up to any rocks he could see. He continued to watch them, and became uneasy. As they continued to drift lower, the shapes became ever so slowly more resolved, until he could discern them certainly as moving beasts, prowling slowly across the snow. For a while he could not tell their provenance, though they seemed to be moving as a herd, in the direction of the village.

And then, without warning, one of the creatures lifted a head and although the distance was far too great for Brandyé to make out the beast’s features, he nonetheless caught a glimpse of crimson and terror fell upon him like a lead weight. He felt a tightness in his throat, and whispered, “They’re not goats!”

“Moti kuiriko![ Bring us lower!]” Nisha called to the navigator, who in response closed the coals over completely, and the balloon began to plummet. Closer they came to the beasts, and soon Brandyé’s fears were confirmed, and they saw collectively a pack of fierundé making their way stealthily toward the Hochträe’s village. At their pace, Brandyé estimated they would be upon the unsuspecting people in less than ten minutes.

“We must stop them!” he said to Nisha.

Nisha nodded. “Yes; they try to harm you.” His voice was calm.

At these words, Brandyé turned to him, perplexed. “What about your people?”

But Nisha merely raised his eyebrows. “We are safe – they are of Darkness.”

For the first time Brandyé though Nisha was being utterly foolish. “The fierundé don’t care who they slaughter!”

Yet Nisha was placidly adamant: “The Duithèn do not for us, and so we are safe. You are not.”

“I can sight them!” cried Elven. “We are close enough!” And he slung his bow from his back, and began to dig into his back for the bundle of Illuèn arrows that he had ever carried with him.

But apparently Nisha’s order had not merely been to bring them within bow range of the beasts, for they continued to descend, and within moments they were merely feet over their heads. “What are you doing?” cried Brandyé.

And then they had settled upon the snow, the basket making a great trace as it was dragged along by the balloon’s momentum until their navigator flung out a thick pike to which was tied a rope, and they were in an instant anchored to the ground. They had set down in the very midst of the pack of fierundé, and Brandyé was too terrified to speak.

Elven, on the other hand, had finally found his arrows, but just as he was about to bring his bow up to aim, Nisha put a hand on his arm and pushed it down again. “Do not harm them,” he said softly, and stepped from the basket lightly into the snow.

Eyes wide, Brandyé watched as the old man approached the nearest beast, who took a step forward, baring its teeth and growling low in its throat. And then, to his astonishment Nisha held out a hand to the beast, and said, “Vû vèraé na vèra yèt. Yin mèn vèraé na tin. Vayé na tin. Teruthaé Duithèn.”

Brandyé could not understand his words, but knew that Nisha was not speaking his own tongue, but that of the ancients. For a long moment, the fierund seemed to consider his words, and even sat back slightly on its haunches. “What is he doing?” Brandyé whispered to the navigator.

“He calms the beast,” the man said. “They leave.”

But the remainder of the fierundé seemed less than calm, and were slowly circling the balloon; to Brandyé’s eye, they seemed poised to strike.

“Goèd,” Nisha said. “Ruthaé, è gitaé.”

But then the beast looked away from Nisha, and for the briefest of moments Brandyé felt its gaze settle directly upon him. His body froze, and as they crimson eyes stared into him he stared back, and then almost without looking, the fierund raised an enormous, clawed paw and in the blink of an eye crushed Nisha into the ground.

“No!” Brandyé screamed, and in a heartbeat Elven had loosed a glowing arrow upon the demon, and it struck it clean between the eyes. As the fierund fell, Brandyé leapt from the basket himself, dashing across the snow toward Nisha’s fallen form. The snow was powdered and deep, and it seemed to him that he was trudging through a bog as he waded toward the old man. In the meantime, the remainder of the fierundé were howling furiously, and only Elven’s lightning-quick bow was keeping them at bay. They understood, it seemed, that his arrows were not ordinary arrows, and they retreated to a distance at which Elven could less easily score a direct hit, but did not leave.

This gave Brandyé the time he needed, however, to grasp Nisha’s inert form, turn him over, and discover both blood and breath. “He’s not dead!” he cried out, and began to haul with all his might upon Nisha’s body, pulling him back toward the balloon. When he reached it Elven and the navigator helped to pull them both aboard, and in an instant the navigator had opened the coal chamber and they were lifting once more, the fierundé leaping and howling after them.

To his credit, the navigator held them steady, and despite his fear, kept them low to the ground and speeding on their way toward the village.

“Why don’t we return to the Hinari?” Brandyé called to him desperately.

“No healer,” the man said brokenly. “In village, healer.” And Brandyé understood that Nisha was the healer for the Hinari.

In the meantime, Elven had dropped his bow and arrows, and knelt beside Nisha. He had one hand on the old man’s wrist, and the other cupping his face, his eyes searching his body for the source of the blood. “His pulse his strong,” he said, “and it seems the claws missed his arteries.” He looked up at Brandyé. “He is beyond lucky – not only alive, but well. He will heal swiftly.”

“If the fierundé don’t return to finish their job,” Brandyé muttered bitterly. “What was he thinking?”

“Never, this happens,” the navigator said to them. “At peace, we are.”

“No longer,” Brandyé said. “Your peace is gone.”

Before long, they were touching down once more in a snow-filled field outside the Hochträe’s village. At their sighting, many villagers had come to welcome them, and at the news of Nisha’s injury many more arrived as well. Soon Nisha was in the comfort of a healer’s home, and Brandyé and Elven were forbidden from seeing him until he was awake, and speaking.

“What will you do now?” Brandyé asked Elven as they walked slowly through the village. Folk would stare after them often, but Brandyé ignored it.

Elven sighed. “As unfortunate as it is, there is little I can do for Nisha here. He’s in good hands. I must still look to myself.” He turned to look at Brandyé. “As must you.”

“It isn’t safe to go out there into the mountains now!” protested Brandyé.

“It was never safe,” Elven replied, shaking his head. “Whether we see the fierundé or not doesn’t change that they’re there.”

“You won’t reconsider?”

“Will you?” Elven looked at him intently.

And so it dawned on Brandyé the conviction of his friend, that he under any circumstances must return to Erârün, even to the point of risking his life at the claws of the fierundé. And he knew that, in spite of all that had occurred since he had first been reunited with his friend, he could not go with him.

Later, in the evening, they were approached and informed that Nisha was awake, and they hastened to his bedside to speak with him.

“Most strange, this is,” Nisha said to them weakly when they asked after his condition. “I am well, of course, but never am I attacked by them.”

“You’ve met with them before?” Brandyé asked incredulously.

“We avoid them,” Nisha said, “but sometimes this cannot be done. We leave the creatures of Darkness, and they leave us.”

“You should be dead!” exclaimed Elven.

“I am old,” Nisha dismissed him. “No great loss, if I am dead. Learn something, we do.”

“We’ve learned you’re a fool!”

But Brandyé held out a hand to silence Elven. “No, wait – he’s right. He’s saying that they’ve never been attacked by the fierundé before. That they’ve even come across them, and been left in peace. Something is changed!”

“Something is new,” agreed Nisha. “Darkness is rising. The Duithèn become bolder.”

“The fierund attacked after it saw me,” Brandyé said. “It’s me they’re after.”

Elven shook his head. “Nonsense. We’ve seen them attack wantonly. Perhaps it didn’t like how you looked upon it, but it would have struck Nisha all the same.”

“There is risk in the air, now,” Nisha said. “Darkness may come to the Naiya once more; are we ready for it?”

“I would stay and help,” Elven said, “but I still feel my calling is elsewhere.”

Nisha laughed a little. “So it is, young man, so it is! You are not to stay here, no. But you do not leave on your own, either.”

Brandyé shook his head. “I’m not going, Nisha.”

“No, you are not! But we are.”

Both Elven and Brandyé looked at him, confused.

“They tell me you are skilled with a bow,” Nisha said to Elven. “But one bow may not hold back ten enemies at once. We help you with your journey to Erârün. Long it is, since we see the plains. Perhaps it is time to visit our cousins to the south.”

And so, not more than three days after their escape from the fierundé in the balloon, it was finally time for Elven to leave, accompanied this time by a dozen of the Hochträe – some Hinari, some mere villagers. There were donkeys and mules also, and together they were quite a band of folk, well-prepared for the long journey ahead of them. To see his friend so ready to go, so certain of his path, brought tears to Brandyé’s eyes, and he could not find the words to say.

“We will see each other again,” Elven said instead, his own voice choked, as he embraced Brandyé for one final time. “I knew this when we parted the first time, and I know it still now.”

Returning the embrace as hard as he could, Brandyé could but sob gently. Eventually, Elven pulled away, and took Brandyé’s face in his hands. “Do you remember that word you taught me once – Reuel’s word?”

Brandyé nodded gently.

“It is what I feel for Talya, but more so it is what I feel for you. My life is incomplete without you, Brandyé; I ask you one last time, will you not return with me?”

Brandyé’s tears fell down his cheeks and over Elven’s fingers. “I…I can’t. I had a dream, Elven; it spoke to me of things to come. I will not find those things in Erârün.”

“How do you know?”

But Brandyé could only shake his head. “Bear my best to Talya, Elven. And I hope…” he sniffed. “I hope that you will find greatness in your journey. You deserve it.”

“And I hope you find peace,” Elven returned. “You deserve it also.”

And there were no more words to be said, and after an eternity Elven released Brandyé, and after a few backward steps turned, and walked away.

For the remainder of the day Brandyé spent his time in solitude, wandering the outskirts of the village in the snow and weeping, the tears freezing often to his eyelids. He wondered if it behove him to spend so much of his time in tears, but he had truly believed that when he and Elven had been reunited it would be for the remainder of their lives. To be now so torn apart was more than his heart could bear.

Yet he knew, felt it more truthfully than anything he had ever known, that his destiny, his fate, was to find Namrâth. Whether to use it or destroy it he did not know, but he knew that he had to find the blade before the Duithèn did, or the world as he knew it would be ended. Even here, among a people who had for centuries upon centuries shunned Darkness and been left to their own devices for it, were now subject to the fear of the Duithèn’s creatures. If the fierundé would attack one such as Nisha, they would attack anyone, and anything.

As the day wore on and he became cold and tired, he began to realize that the Hochträe must see he and Elven as important figures, or they would not have spent their own resources in sending a force with Elven on his way south to the kingdom of Erârün. He did not know how frequently they had visitors from outside their land, but he suspected it was not often. As such, he began to become afraid that Nisha would insist on sending a force with him also, in his journey north, and that was a thing he knew he could not allow.

Later that evening, when the sun had set and the sky was lit with stars, he sat in the home where Nisha lay still, the walls flickering with firelight and the glorious scent of curries and smoke mixing in the air, and knew in his heart that this was the last time he would see this old man. For a while he stayed by his side and they spoke of trivialities, but eventually Brandyé could not keep his tongue any longer, and asked, “Nisha…what is to the north? What will I find?”

“You are going, then,” the old man sighed.

“I must.”

“It is a dangerous road. There is no road, in fact; you are on nothing but mountain.”

“I am going to set out tomorrow,” Brandyé told him. “Where should I start?”

“Take the valley to the north,” Nisha replied. “It leads to a pass under Kashahi, and from there, to the Yukaino – the Eternal Snows.”

“How far must I travel?”

“I do not know,” Nisha shook his head. “There comes a place where we no longer call the mountains Dragoshi, and they become very unknown. But the Yukaino stretch for many miles, under sun and cloud. A hundred miles? Two hundred?”

“What will I need?”

Nisha curled a lip in a smile. “Our help, I think?”

Brandyé looked down and away. This was what he had been afraid of. “I can’t accept it,” he said. “I would bring many others to their destruction.”

“You bring yourself to yours,” Nisha pointed out. “Why not take protection that offers itself?”

But Brandyé was insistent, and eventually Nisha sighed. “Tomorrow, we discuss. Now is time for sleep. Kesi kasha!” he called out to the attendant in the room, and the fire was soon snuffed, and they were left in quiet darkness.

But Brandyé could not sleep. He knew that if he waited until the morning, Nisha would begin once more to insist that he be accompanied by his own people. Might even force it upon him. He saw in his mind the blood of dozens on the snow, fierundé prowling triumphantly; he saw the dangers of rock and snow claiming lives. More than anything, he saw the cave and the fire, and knew that he could not risk any other’s life in his endeavor.

And so it was that Brandyé quietly left the house that night, taking soft steps through the moonlit snow, and never returned. He stole some bread, wrapped himself in two cloaks and set out in the dark, and by the time the first light of morning began to creep into the valley from the east, he was far into the north valley, nearing the top of the pass that Nisha had spoken of.

The going was difficult, pushing himself step by step through the deep snow, and he soon discovered that as the sun warmed the snow it became soft, and slowed his progress all the more. He began to make his way along the edges of the mountains then, rather than in the depths of the valleys, where the shade kept the snow and ice hard.

He had also stolen a pair of thick woolen gloves, and of these he was most grateful. The rock and ice were dreadfully cold, and once he made the mistake of touching the stone with his bare hand, and left skin behind when he pulled away. The cloaks performed well in keeping his body warmed, and he was soon sweating with effort and exhaustion.

By noontime, however, he had crested the pass, and looking out to the great ranges of mountains beyond, he felt a great sense of peace and beauty come over him. As far as he could see were endless hills and peaks of snow, filled between with vast glaciers and seas of ice, the sun glinting here and there off all of it. It seemed that not a soul had ever been here, and as he took his first step down the opposite side of the col, he thought that the tracks he was leaving were indeed marring the serene perfection of the place. It never occurred to him that those same tracks would make it easy for another to follow him.

By the end of that first day, he estimated he had travelled at least five miles, though if that were the case then by Nisha’s reckoning it would be nearly a month before he saw the end of the Eternal Snows. He sheltered in a tiny cave made by the falling of rocks, and that night he came to realize just how dire his predicament might become. There was no wood and so no fire, and as the air dropped steadily to freezing and below, he began to shiver and the dread came over him that he might very well freeze to death long before seeing grass or earth again.

The cave kept him sheltered from the wind, however, and come the morning he was dreadfully cold but whole and well, and so he continued onward, passing that day onto an enormous glacier. He soon realized the mistake in this as well, for there was here no shelter from the sun, and in its burning reflection off the snow began to cause him to become dizzy, and he realized that in the midst of ice and snow, he could just as easily succumb to heat.

He rested that day in the middle of the glacier, hoods pulled low over his face and eyes closed, and when he awoke at first was unsure if he was looking at snow or sky, so similar had it all become. Only with the reddening of the sky as the sun set did he come to his senses, and set out to pass off the glacier and into the shade of the mountains around it even as the sun sunk and the moon rose.

In fact, he spent the rest of that evening moving, and did not stop for rest again until the morning. The dim, blue light of the moon he found helped him see better, though the shadows were black and motions were blurred, and he decided that it would be better to move by night and rest by day, for fear of the sun’s burning him to death. This helped also with the cold, as he found that by continuing to move, he did not feel it quite so much.

After some days, however, a new fear sunk in, for he realized that the cold was not the only thing he could not feel. He made this revelation one day when, climbing the stone of a short cliff, he dislodged a large rock which fell and bounced hard off his foot. Startled at the lack of sensation, he paused for a moment on a steep patch of gravel and removed his boot.

He was shocked to find his toes as white as the snow around him, a deep cut in his foot that was hardly bleeding at all. He reached out to touch his frozen foot, and found he could feel no sensation at all. Frightened, he took off his other boot as well, terrified to think what might have happened to his body without his knowing it.

Luckily the other foot was in slightly better condition, though he still felt very little when he rubbed his gloved hands against his toes. Quickly, he put his socks and boots on again. As he handled the socks, he realized he could feel ice crystals in the wool. He looked around him, wondering if there was anywhere that would provide enough warmth to warm him, and saw only more rock and snow.

He began moving again, slower this time for fear of injuring his foot yet further, even though he could not feel it; after a great time, he reached the top of the cliff, and looked out on what was beyond: nothing, but more snow. Despair began to creep upon him, and he wondered just how smart he had been to leave in the middle of the night, alone.

Another day came and went, and it seemed to him almost that he was revisiting the same landscapes over and over again, for white became white, and rock became rock, and nothing ever changed. He recalled the strangeness of the forests of the Trestaé and how he had returned upon the same stream three times in a row, and wondered if the same was happening again here.

And then, to worsen matters, the weather turned. It happened slowly, so that he at first did not notice the lessening of the sun, but soon the sky was cloaked in gray, and the wind grew bitter and chill. Before long the first flakes of snow began to fall, and he knew he must find true shelter before long or he would die.

But time went on and he began to grow faint, and there was no sign of a cave or crevasse, or anything that might protect him from the devouring elements. Finally, in desperation as he was wading against the wind up a steep bank of snow, he collapsed to his knees, and felt the wind lessen. Struck by this, he dug out a small hole, and found that the deeper he went, the more protected he felt.

And so he dug a bivouac, and crawled inside, and in the pale gloom of the snow cave, he fell asleep. For hours he remained motionless, and could have been mistaken for dead. But his life was not spent yet, and in the night he awoke in a panic, hitting his head on the low ceiling of his snow cave and causing a flurry of flakes to fall upon his head. He could see nothing at all, except for strange lights that danced across his vision all the same whether his eyes were closed or open. The weight of his solitude bore down upon him, and he began once more to weep.

It was not long before his tears had frozen his eyelids shut, though in the dark he hardly noticed. For a while he drifted once more in and out of sleep, and visions of Dragons, Darkness and Death flooded his waking thoughts.

Eventually the day came, though it was a miserable one, and to Brandyé’s horror he found he still could not see, even after having cleared his eyes and opened them. Instead of a solid black he saw nothing but dull gray, could not even see his own hand held out before his face. He had to touch his own eyes to convince himself they were open.

His hearing, though, was still apt, and he could hear the wind continue to howl outside the tiny, cramped cave. He shuddered, and imagined he heard the howling of fierundé in the distance. He could hear his own breathing, shallow and rapid. He could hear the creak of snow around him as he moved and shifted, becoming colder by the hour.

And finally, after an hour or a day, madness began to take him, and he found himself digging futilely at the snow beneath or above him, or shaking his head to and fro without reason, or talking words that were meaningless to his own ears. In amongst it all, he thought he began to hear his own name being called out, as though someone were searching for him over the wind. Folly, he thought – no one would have followed him here.

But the sensation of being sought after would not leave, and so he finally turned in his cave, and began to crawl mindlessly toward its entrance.

To his dismay, the entrance was not there. Everywhere he touched, he could feel nothing but a wall of snow. Fear, panic, despair…all washed through him with churning stomach and dizzying mind, and he began to flail wildly at the snow, crying out, shouting and cursing. He chose a wall of snow at random and began to dig through it, feeling the closeness of the air and thinking he might suffocate.

By sheer chance, he had chosen to dig in the direction of the free air, though he could not have known it. Within minutes he felt the wind once more on his face, and he cried out in agony and triumph, and realized that even here in the open world he was still blind to all that surrounded him.

It was still blowing, still snowing, and he took one step forward and fell, forgetting the slope that he had dug into. Down, down he tumbled, an avalanche of snow surrounding him, carrying him powerlessly to his unseeable fate. He was dizzy, disorientated, could not tell up from down nor left from right, and by the time he felt he had stopped moving, he realized he could not move himself, for he was trapped and buried in snow.

The air grew cold; the ground grew still. Brandyé’s breath grew short, and he began to whisper in his mind that he was sorry, sorry for all he had done to the world, and that if he was to die, let the world move on in peace without him.

And then, as his mind began to collapse inward upon itself, he thought he could see something far, far in the distance. A tall, black figure approached, and as Brandyé gave in to madness and death, it spoke.

Chapter 24: A Parting of Ways

 

Brandyé and Elven soon discovered the Hochträe, or Naiya, were a generous people, with food, time and stories. They learned that the majority of their population lived in the highest valleys that existed between the peaks of the Reinkrag, which they called the Dragoshi, which meant Dragon’s Teeth. These valleys were often filled with snow except in the warmest summer months, and he came to understand that they lived in harmony with the weather.

In the peaks, though, lived a much smaller number of their people, and this was where they had been taken when they were rescued. Here, amid impossible structures and high towers, lived those who had chosen to renounce the daily struggles of life, and here they spent their days thinking, meditating and, as far as Brandyé could tell, enjoying life.

There was a certain reverence that seemed to be held for these folk, for every so often people from the valleys would ascend to the high places, and when they did they were treated with the utmost respect and courtesy. The high folk, or Hirani, of course returned this respect and invited them into their lives, to partake in their daily routines of meditation, exercise and rest.

So relaxing was the lifestyle here that Brandyé soon found himself quite at home, despite struggling to understand much of their language. Their speech was so different to either his own or even that of the Cosari that he was just as lost in their conversations as he had been when he had first met Khana, but he found that their manner of speaking was rather poetic, and filled with imagery, when they spoke with him in his own tongue. They continued to refer to him as the ‘gray one’, which he found odd, though not in the least offensive, for indeed his gray hair and eyes were certain justification, although he would have preferred to be known simply as Brandyé.

Elven, on the other hand, seemed less than satisfied among the Hochträe, and grew ever more restless as the days and weeks progressed. He sent Sonora with a letter to Talya, and could be found pacing the stairways and platforms of the Hirani’s abode, wringing his hands and muttering to himself for the days it took for Sonora to return with a reply. Once he had read it he seemed to calm somewhat, though Brandyé could nonetheless tell that he was unsettled here.

It was not long, therefore, before a tension began to grow between Brandyé and Elven – one of whom would have been content to spend the rest of his days here, and the other who had no desire but to return. It became such that the two friends spoke less and less to each other, much as they had done amongst the Illuèn. Brandyé was saddened for this, and knew that sooner or later the subject of their future must be broached, but in the meantime he was enjoying his time with Nisha and the others too much to be overly concerned.

Nisha in particular seemed to be seen as a kind of elder master, and was greatly respected even by the other Hirani. Brandyé felt privileged to have been taken into his home and cared for by him, though the others insisted it could have been no other way – Nisha was recognized as the most accomplished healer they had ever known, and Brandyé could not deny that in the few days he had spent with him, the pain in his chest had all but gone, and his coughs were now few and far between. He wondered sometimes what Elven thought of that, but again felt too good in himself to worry overly about it.

Nisha was full of stories, also, and it was from him that Brandyé learned the history of the Hochträe, and why they, among all the peoples of Erâth, seemed uninfluenced by Darkness.

“The Duithèn come to us,” Nisha said, “but we turn from them. No strength they have, we say.” He smiled. “Angry, they are – one other people only, they cannot turn.”

“When was this?” Brandyé asked. He was perplexed that the Hochträe seemed to have no concept of the past – their speech centered always on the present, and occasionally, on the future.

Nisha shook his head gently, his long beard swaying. “I know not. Many thousands of years.”

“Before the War of Darkness,” Brandyé said to himself.

“War, yes,” Nisha said. “There is war, and death…we do not make war.”

Brandyé was intrigued. “Yet you train yourselves in the arts of battle – I see how strong and powerful your people are.”

“Ah – do not mistake strength for war. Many people believe, if they can fight, then they must. We know that, if you can not fight, then you die.”

And so Brandyé learned that the Hochträe were masters of martial arts, yet chose not to use their skills in battle. This fascinated him, and over time, he came to learn some of their skills, though he was never even close to as adept as the masters of their arts, and Nisha was considered a master among masters.

For a while Brandyé pondered Nisha’s words, and something he had said stayed with him. Once evening, as the sun was setting and the stars to the east were beginning to show, he asked him, “You said the Duithèn tried to turn you – and others, as well. One other, you said, they could not turn. What do you mean?”

“You know the strength of the Duithèn,” Nisha said. Brandyé nodded, for he knew it only too well. “You see the low peoples – Erârün, Kiriün – always in cloud. Never happy, always scared; this is the Duithèn. They make the land dark, and so the people are dark. It is their wish to make Erâth dark, from east to west, and north to south. They are almost finished.”

“They are trying to kill the people of Erârün,” Brandyé said.

“They try to kill the light. If men resist the Duithèn, they must die.”

“Then why do they leave you alone?”

“There are things the Duithèn can not do. They can not turn minds that have no Darkness. We try, every day, to live with no Darkness. Some days, better than others.” Nisha chuckled. “Even I am not perfect.”

“But surely they could kill you?”

“Ah – you see, the Duithèn do not wish to kill. They wish to be masters of Erâth, above all other peoples. When they kill, they hope to frighten. And we are not frightened by them.”

“So your people don’t fear death?”

Nisha shrugged. “Death is part of life, like birth. It happens, and man is fool to think he can stop it.”

“You know Death?” Brandyé asked.

“I know the Namirèn,” Nisha replied. “They visit us, sometimes.”

“Death have visited me, also. And Light. Do your people dream?”

“Ah – a powerful word! Inasa-Hinari, we call it – inner light. We dream, sometimes.”

“I saw Death, in a dream. I have seen many things in a dream.”

“You see the answer to your question, I think,” Nisha suggested.

For a moment, Brandyé was confused, having forgotten his original question. Then he recalled, and said, “I have seen the other people the Duithèn could not influence?”

“You know them well, for you ride on the back of the beast.”

For a moment, Brandyé felt the familiar tingle he would get whenever Ermèn said something about him that he had never revealed. He had himself nearly forgotten the images he had had as a child, of soaring high above plains of battle and death, of speeding downward toward his foe, unleashing great jets of flame and heat…

“The dragons,” he breathed.

Nisha nodded. “Drago, indeed, and the Dragomi – Dragon Lords.”

“I thought they were myth.”

“Brandyé,” Nisha chided, “you should know better. Myth is but fact that becomes story. And stories of the Dragomi, we have many. Even your grandfather tells these stories.”

“How do you know so much about me?” Brandyé asked. “Do you know someone called Ermèn?”

But Nisha shook his head. “I am afraid I do not. You reveal much of yourself, Brandyé; it is easy for an old man to see.”

For a moment Brandyé felt as he had done with Ermèn: transparent, as though every detail of his life was exposed to Nisha without his being aware. It was unsettling, and he wondered what an enemy would make of such obviousness. Then his thoughts turned once more to the Dragon Lords, and he opened his mouth to ask Nisha about them, but almost as if to prove his prior thought, Nisha spoke first.

“You wish to know more of the Dragomi,” he said, and Brandyé could but nod. “Our myth, our monari, says that the Dragomi live far to the north, after the Dragoshi and the dead lands beyond. But they may live no more, for we do not see them for many ages.”

“Have you ever seen a dragon?” Brandyé asked, uncertain how long ‘many ages’ might be, nor quite how old Nisha was himself.

Nisha laughed. “Oh, no – not in my life. Many thousands of years, it is. I am old, but not so old! A dream indeed, to see a drago.”

“What became of the Dragon Lords? What do your stories – your monari – tell?”

“Of their ending, it is not known to us. When the Duithèn fall, the Dragomi return to their home, and there they stay. There they live, there they die – who knows?”

“And now that the Duithèn are returning?”

Nisha shrugged – a common gesture, it seemed. “Perhaps they return, perhaps not. The Dragomi have little interest in Erâth.”

“Yet…they fought. They fought against the forces of Darkness in the great war. They must have some interest.”

“Do you know where the Drago come from?” Nisha asked him. Brandyé shook his head. “Other creatures turn into Drago, formed in Darkness. An old Darkness this is, and not under the power of the Duithèn. Older than the Naiya; older than our monari.”

Brandyé felt a small shiver in him. “They are powerful, the dragons.”

Nisha bobbed his head. “Do you know the tale of Goroth? How it is a Drago that brings him down?”

Brandyé thought back to the record of Daevàr he had read in Vira Weitor. “A dragon and its lord brought Goroth to his knees, so that Daevàr could slay him.”

“Some monari tell of how the Dragomi takes the sword of Goroth, and not Daevàr. Think of such power as is Goroth, and think of what power defeats it!”

“Namrâth,” Brandyé said aloud. “You think the Dragon Lords took it?”

“Where is it?” Nisha pointed out. “Does no one know?”

“They say it fell into the sea.”

Nisha shrugged again. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Who knows? Perhaps it is hidden in a cave of the Dragomi, waiting.”

Brandyé felt another chill. “Waiting? Waiting for what?”

“What every sword waits for: to be wielded.”

For a moment, Brandyé thought long and hard. He tried to recall what he knew of the final battle between Dark and Light; how the dragons had come, how Goroth was brought to his knees and slain with his own dark blade. He recalled Daevàr’s words, that he had awoken in a tent, with no knowledge of the terrible sword’s fate. What if the Dragon Lords had in fact taken the blade with them, hidden it in a place no one would dare to venture? But the Dragon Lords might well be no more, according to Nisha; and then a dreadful thought occurred to him.

“Nisha – what would happen if the Duithèn found Namrâth?”

At this question, Nisha’s expression seemed to sober. “I do not believe the Duithèn can find it,” he said. “It holds their power, yes – but it is a creation of man. Man only can wield the weapon; man only can find it.”

Unbidden, the thought of the black dagger in the marketplace of Daevàr’s Hut came to Brandyé’s mind. He had found that blade instinctively, as though it had called to him to grasp its hilt. The same blade that now stood, alone and abandoned, in the floorboards of Reuel’s old home. He had lost it as easily as he had found it; what if it had not been meant for him? He recalled the knifemonger’s words: That’s a bad blade, son – you’ll not want that. And if it had not been meant for him, who should have found it? Who in Consolation would have been so invested in Darkness that the Duithèn would have wanted them to find the blade?

Slowly, he turned his gaze to Nisha again, his eyes cold and serious. “What would happen if the armies of Darkness should find Namrâth?”

Nisha, however, seemed calm as he said, “It finds its way into the hands of a man, and like Goroth, that man becomes an akushi: a demon.”

“And what if someone else should find it?”

“It is a powerful weapon, against the Duithèn or for them,” Nisha said. “Maybe they can be defeated, even.”

For some days after this conversation, Brandyé considered Nisha’s words. He felt dreadfully unsettled, and wondered at his feeling that he looking for something, though he knew not what. Some small voice in the back of his mind told him that that thing was Namrâth, that somehow he needed to find Goroth’s black blade. He was unsure even what he would do with it if he did find it, and he had not a clue where to begin. But for the first time in many months, Brandyé felt as though he had discovered a genuine purpose, something that he – and he alone – was meant to do. Somehow, he told himself, possessing the great blade of death would help him in his resistance against the Duithèn.

Eventually, he came to discuss his thoughts with Elven, who listened carefully as Brandyé explained the fate of the Dragon Lords, the possibilities of finding Namrâth, and the pull he felt to set out on a new journey, one with a true purpose this time.

And when he was finished, Elven said to him, “Brandyé, you are my friend. You always have been, and you always will be. But you are being a complete fool, to think that you can find some mythical sword that may not even exist.”

Brandyé had not been certain what Elven’s reaction would be, but he was nonetheless hurt to hear such words. “It isn’t a myth, Elven! Namrâth exists, I am certain of it. It wasn’t destroyed during the War of Darkness.”

Elven gazed upon his friend with a look that was almost pitying. “What war, Brandyé? Something that may or may not have occurred some thousands of years ago? What do you know of these things? What you read on a piece of paper?”

Brandyé felt himself beginning to turn red in the face. “It was an account from Daevàr himself, Elven. Daevàr – the same person Daevàr’s Hut is named after. You can’t deny that there is a connection there.”

“It’s myth and legend, Brandyé; these things are not real anymore.”

“How can you say that?” Brandyé protested. “The wolves and beasts we fought in the Rein are not real?”

“But they are!” insisted Elven. “They are real, not some notion of Darkness long past.”

“You told me only too recently that you believed there were powers that influence the world – that there’s an unnatural Darkness settling on Erâth! Were you only placating me?”

Elven looked shocked. “I would never lie to you. I do believe in these forces, these…creatures, the Duithèn. But to hold faith in stories from the past, that some mysterious sword can somehow defeat them…it’s folly, Brandyé! The armies of Darkness don’t care what sword you wield – they’ll kill you all the same. It’s there, in the Rein, in the face of the enemy – that’s where Darkness will be defeated. And all you’re doing is running from it!”

“I can’t go back,” Brandyé said bitterly. “There’s nothing for me there.”

“And I can’t stay here,” Elven replied, shaking his head. “I’ve come this far with you Brandyé, to protect you, to help you; but my calling is behind me, with the people of Erârün. They’re dying, Brandyé – and that is something I can do something about.”

“Your calling is with Talya,” Brandyé spat, knowing even as he said it that it was an unfair thing to say.

“You have no right to speak about her,” Elven said, a sudden danger in his voice. “For months I’ve put up with you and Elỳn—”

“Elỳn is a higher creature than either of us,” Brandyé interrupted. “You owe her your respect. She fought the enemy before you were born – she made it possible for all of this to be at all!” He gestured wildly around him.

“And what if she did?” Elven retorted. “What is she doing now? She courts the politicians and counsellors of the king, while real people are dying! Where was she when your own soldiers were ambushed? Where was she when Talya nearly lost her life?”

“I don’t want to hear about Talya!” Brandyé knew he was succumbing to a fierce jealousy, and found he did not care. “Go, and be with her, if she’s so important!”

“She is important to me,” Elven said, his voice suddenly soft. “But no more important than you, Brandyé. I fear for you. I’m afraid of what will become of you if you insist on chasing old tales of the past.”

Brandyé could feel a wealth of emotion flooding through him: anger, jealously, sadness, regret and guilt. “What else do I have?” he cried. “Everywhere I have gone, I’ve brought death and Darkness. I can’t continue to hurt everyone around me! I won’t bring destruction on an entire kingdom!”

“You give yourself too much credit, I think,” Elven said with a hint of derision. “The armies of Darkness would be prowling the Rein without you.”

“Then why only when I arrive do they mount their first organized assault? Why when I arrive do more people die than in the past hundred years?”

“Listen to me,” said Elven fiercely. “There is no knowing what could have, or would have been. There is only what is. This is something your friends here, the Hochträe, understand instinctively. Have you not noticed? They do not speak of the past!”

“Then what am I to do, when the past consumes me? Why can’t you understand what I need to find?”

“I can’t! I can’t understand why you need to find some stupid sword!”

“It isn’t a sword, Elven – it’s my salvation. If I can find a way to rid this world of Darkness, then maybe…maybe I can find a way to live with what I have done. Maybe I can find redemption!”

“What in Erâth do you need redemption from?”

“Don’t you know?”

“You can’t mean…after all these years? After my forgiveness, and my family’s?”

“Her death haunts me every waking moment of every day!”

“Sonora’s death was not of your doing! We’ve spoken of this!”

“It was my bow! My arrow!” Tears were in Brandyé’s eyes, and they hid the tears in the eyes of his friend. “There are only two ways I can see to right that wrong! Either I must rid the world of Darkness – I, myself – or…”

“Or what?” Elven asked, after Brandyé failed to speak for a moment.

“Or her death must be redeemed by my own.”

“So that’s what this is really about! Your insistence on pushing yourself beyond your own limits, rushing into places that are beyond dangerous…you’re trying to kill yourself!”

Brandyé felt his lip quiver. “What else can I do?”

“You can live! You can come with me, return to Erârün, and fight Darkness in a very real way, in a way that matters!”

But Brandyé shook his head. “I can’t.”

A look of great sadness came over Elven’s face then, and he said, “And I can’t continue with you. I won’t watch as you destroy yourself.”

And then there were no more words to be said, and with a profound sense of loss that mirrored what he felt for his grandfather, Brandyé walked away and spent the rest of the day in solitude. He knew, he was certain, what he could and could not do, and did not know how to convince Elven of this fact. Likewise, Elven seemed just as certain of his own destiny, and it tore at his heart that they did not seem to share the same one. It was only then, at the closing of the day as the sun’s crimson light flooded over him, that he recalled Khana’s words, from what seemed now so long ago: Still… again we may meet, my heart speaks. By no chance it is, that we should have met. By no chance was it that he and Elven should have met again in the forests of the Trestaé, and thus it was by no chance that they now seemed to be parting. He could only hope that it would not be for the last time.

As it happened, they did not part for some time after their argument, for the season was growing cold, and the Hochträe insisted that Elven would not survive a journey alone through the Reinkrag in the snows. For once Elven’s stubbornness was defeated, and for the following months as the days grew short and dark, Elven remained among them, and nonetheless kept Brandyé company. They did not speak of their imminent parting, and took the opportunity rather to speak tenderly as friends, as they had so rarely had the opportunity to do.

Brandyé also spent much time with Nisha, seated near his warm stove on cold nights, sometimes with stars gleaming in the windows and sometimes snow falling fast and furious against the glass, incensed tea and spiced curries filling the air. He was enthralled by Nisha’s stories of things that were, or rather that are, for as Nisha said, “All things are, now and then. Who are we to say what is and what is not?”

It was on one of these evenings that Brandyé had a dream, unlike any that he had had before. Nisha often smoked a heavily-scented pipe in the evenings, and Brandyé had come to share this with him on occasion. The smoke lightened his mind and made him feel quite giddy, and often he would find humor in things that during the day would have passed him by as quite serious, and he and Nisha would laugh together long into the night.

On one particular evening, Brandyé had perhaps partaken more of the weed than usual, and the thought of Elven’s leaving once more entered his thoughts. The worst of the winter had passed, and it was likely that come the end of the current snowfall, Elven would begin his preparations to return to Erârün. They had spoken only briefly about it, but it was the consensus of the Hochträe that Elven ought to take a path due south, that would quickly lead him to lower mountains and eventually into the vicinity of Vira Weitor itself. The journey would be one of several months, but it was suspected that no creatures of Darkness roamed those lands, and that his passage would be quite safe.

His own journey, however, he thought would not be so unchallenged. Brandyé was still uncertain what he was do to from here, his only certainty being that he must find the remains of Namrâth, wherever it might lie. It continued to frustrate him that Elven could not see the importance of this, and he spoke of it to Nisha.

“Every man has a road,” Nisha said in reply, “and you know this. Elven’s road is not yours. Your destination is hidden from him. He sees only his own.”

“And what is that?” Brandyé asked. The room was gently spinning around him, but he relaxed into the stuffed sack that was his chair, for the sensation was not unpleasant.

“Only he knows. And perhaps not even then. Is your destination known to you?”

“I know I must find Namrâth,” Brandyé insisted.

“Ah – Owar-Shi. You are bound to it.”

“It seems to be.”

Nisha made a gesture with his hands, palms open and outward toward Brandyé. Brandyé, in his fluid state of mind, hardly noticed. “But you already have a sword – Fahnat-om. What do you do with another?”

“It isn’t for me,” Brandyé said lazily. “It is for the ending of the Duithèn.”

“But it is not their end you find. End of Eternity, in your tongue; Eternity’s Death, in ours. What does that mean?”

“It had another name, once,” Brandyé said.

Nisha nodded. “Peace, its other name is – Hai. But which will you find?”

This thought struck Brandyé as suddenly profound, and for a moment he lost himself in it – what was the difference, he wondered, between peace and death? And as he began to drift into sleep, it occurred to him that they might in fact be the same thing.

Before long Brandyé was turning gently this way and that, his eyes moving behind closed lids, and deep in his mind he was suddenly in another place, far from the Hochträe and their mountains, far from Elven and his destiny, and in a place that was unlike any other he had known, whether dream or reality.

Around him as far as the eye could see was rock, towering high into great peaks and mountains. Yet they were not the granite of the Reinkrag or the smooth stone of the Trestaé; these rocks were black, and sharp, and even the gravel Brandyé stood upon was as tiny shards of glass. The air was thick and hot, and scented with sulphur, and Brandyé found it difficult to draw breath. The sky was red, thick with black clouds, and here and there ash drifted through the air.

Yet as oppressive as the atmosphere was, as dark as it was, Brandyé did not feel the presence of Darkness itself, of the Duithèn. A different power was here, once he could feel in the air, and it was dark, but not evil.

As he stood and looked about him, he began to feel a draw upon him to move, to climb these sharp rocks and search for something, and he wondered if it might be Namrâth. Unlike the dreams of his youth, Brandyé began almost to feel a sense of excitement, for he had come to recognize his dreams for what they seemed to be: premonitions of things to come. And he wondered what was to come in this dream.

But for a long while, it seemed, nothing at all was coming. For an age he walked among the rocks, climbing up and down then here and there, cutting his hands and fingers on their edges so that they bled openly and hurt terribly, but there seemed to be nothing to find – no sign that he was meant to go in any one direction or another. Unlike the great, abandoned city by the sea, there was no sorrowful statue to tell him which way to go; unlike the dread plains of Darkness, there was no Schaera to guide him.

And so he went on, for hour after hour, until finally, exhausted, he came to rest by the mouth of what seemed to be a shallow cave. The light was poor and the depths of the cave in utter black, but the curve of its walls suggested it did not go deep into the mountain. Brandyé sat with his back to the rock, and gathered his breath, and was perplexed.

Never in one of his dreams had he gone so long with no sign of what he was there for. He was just beginning to think that perhaps this was nothing more than a delusion from Nisha’s pipe-smoke, and that he would return to the Hochträe empty-handed, when out of the silence came a greeting, of sorts.

It was a voice – so much he was certain of. But it was unlike any voice he had ever heard. Out of the silence it came, yet the silence somehow remained unbroken nonetheless. The tones were guttural and savage, and yet Brandyé heard them and knew their meaning as though they were spoken in his own tongue.

What are you, small-one?

Brandyé sat bolt upright and looked about him, but there was nothing to be seen.

I see you move, small-one. Answer to me.

Brandyé began to feel a shiver of fear, for he still could see no speaker, and the voice was not peaceful. “I…I am Brandyé.”

There was silence for a long moment. That is not all.

“Do you mean my name?” Brandyé asked timidly.

That is not all, the voice repeated.

“Brandyé Dui-Erâth is my full name,” Brandyé said, “grandson of Reuel Tolkaï.”

Ah, said the voice. A name of the ancient speech. “THEETAE-TÛ ERÂTHEET?”

The voice roared so loud and so sudden that Brandyé jumped, and let out a small cry of surprise. “I’m sorry?”

Perhaps not. Whence come you, Brandyé Dui-Erâth?

“I…I am from the land of Consolation,” Brandyé replied, uncertain if this was exactly what the disembodied voice meant.

What is Consolation?

“Comfort after sorrow,” Brandyé said, suddenly remembering words from long ago.

Ah! A good answer, said the voice. There has been much sorrow.

This was something Brandyé thought he could agree upon. “Too much,” he said. “I am looking for a means to end it.”

Once again, there was a great silence. You are curious, small-one. This is a world of sorrow. You seek to end the world?

“No,” Brandyé protested. “I seek to put an end to those who insist on its being so.”

Hm. What if I am one of those?

This was a thought that made Brandyé suddenly very nervous, for this voice, as-yet unseen, sounded dreadfully powerful. “Are you?”

I have dwelt in sorrow for longer than you can imagine, small-one. End what you will, this will continue to be a world of sorrow for some.

“Perhaps I misspoke,” Brandyé said hastily. “Do you know of the Duithèn? I am looking to end Darkness in the world.”

Perhaps you do misspeak, the voice said, and there was a dangerous threat in it now. Darkness may not be ended. It is as eternal as Light, Life, Death, Power, and Wisdom.

“You speak of the original powers of Erâth,” Brandyé whispered. “But then you must know that many of those powers are now ended; Darkness, the Duithèn – they triumph over all!”

Then they triumph. It is of little concern to me.

“Why is that?” Brandyé asked, half-afraid of the answer.

Because I am the original Darkness! the voice roared. The Duithèn have no power over me.

Brandyé flinched to hear the fury in the voice’s words, and began to take a step back from the cave.

Why do you flee? the voice said, suddenly soft. There is no escape.

“You are very powerful,” Brandyé said truthfully, “and I’m frightened.”

Brandyé thought he heard a faint laugh. You have some wisdom in you, small-one. Frightened indeed.

“Will you show yourself?” Brandyé asked tentatively.

Then you will be frightened indeed.

“I’ve seen some of the most dreadful creatures this world has to offer,” Brandyé said with false bravery, for he wanted to see this voice despite all. “How bad could you be?”

Then there truly was laughter, an echoing, dismal sound that rang in Brandyé’s mind and caused him to shut his eyes in pain.

You close your eyes at my voice, small-one – how will you see my form?

“I think I know you,” Brandyé said. “I would have my doubts proven.”

Your fate is mine, small-one. I hope you have wisdom enough to see it.

Despite the knowledge that this must only be a dream, a vision, Brandyé nonetheless felt a genuine fear in him at this. He wondered what would happen to him if he were to die in a dream. “If you will not show yourself, will you answer a question?”

Why should I answer any question of yours?

Boldly, Brandyé put forth, “You have not killed me yet – you must have some curiosity. Answer a question of mine, and I will answer any of yours.”

Hm. Wisdom and perception. Perhaps I will only maim you. Speak your question, and we will see.

Taking a deep breath, Brandyé asked, “Do you know where I can find Namrâth?”

For such a long time was there silence that Brandyé thought perhaps the voice had left, unwilling to answer such a question. But finally Brandyé felt a stirring from the cave, and then came: That answer is not for you to know. To find Namrâth is to find your death.

Frustrated, Brandyé insisted, “But do you know?”

Enough! commanded the voice. I will not answer that question. Ask me another.

“That’s the only question I have,” Brandyé said.

Then I will ask one of you. You say you seek to destroy the Duithèn. How do I know you would not restore the black blade to them?

“Ah-ha!” Brandyé cried. “You do care about the fate of Darkness in this world.”

He felt another stirring in the cave. Do not presume to trick me, small-one. I said I do not care, and care I do not. The black blade is lost, and lost it must remain. Any who find it are bound to fall to its power, and so must die. Only a fool or a servant of the Duithèn would seek it. And, despite everything, you do not strike me as a fool.

“Then why does it matter if I find it or not?” Brandyé pressed.

I am not beholden to you to explain, said the voice. But the blade is hidden, and so it shall ever remain.

Brandyé breathed a sigh of frustration. “Then I have nothing left to ask of you. I will leave.”

You will not leave, the voice insisted. Your answer was not satisfactory.

“Nor was yours!”

Silence! I am lord here, and you will never leave this place!

But Brandyé turned, and began to walk away from the cave. Suddenly an enormous roar followed him, and a wave of heat singed his back. YOU WILL NOT TURN YOUR BACK ON ME!

Brandyé turned again, suddenly furious. “Then show yourself!”

Very well. And then, from deep within the cave, there came a rustling, and movement, and then before Brandyé could even move, a fierce, flaming wall of fire was expelled from its depths, and as the giant hove into view, he was consumed.