THRICE ADVENT
A NEW
ROMANCE
BY
THE AUTHOR OF
A SONG UPON THE FLAME
AND THE ARMS THAT HOLD
AL PARR
'Thrice Advent is a new philosphy.' Joseph Young editer of PSST.
'Dreams and Quests and Warnings and Prophesies.' Freeborn
Kawalskie author of The Prophesy of O Volume One.
'A simple book, a wise book, and a book, that is a song a suprise to the soul.' Pendrick Chrichten, editor of From Culter With Love and author A Stranger Leaving.
Dalrosse, the Shouel, a neat compact figure,
not much bigger than a small boy, lay curled up on the sand fast asleep. He was on one of the less rocky beaches that
encircled the Lake , only the gentle plashing
of the waves disturbed the peace of this early morning. Petals from the pungent thelin bush had
caught in the thick wires of his beard.
Their aroma engulfed his senses and in the wandering of his dreams they
heightened his awareness of the details as Crow took him home over the
sea. Down below, seagulls flew in
flocks above the small trawlers until a mist, like a haze from the Lake,
clutched the boats and they disappeared as Crow sped against the dream-night to
get him back before he woke. It seemed
to Dalrosse that he saw a leviathan in the depth below, a silhouette
overshadowed by a volcanic eruption deep below the waves. The water boiled mad red and the leviathan
was obliterated.
The Crow dropped
him into his lightly breathing body.
Letting go he said goodbye, although Crow knew that the Shouel would not
hear the sound or ever remember the time they had spent together. But, finally exhausted Crow knew that the
task was finished whereas Dalrosse was only beginning his.
The sound of the
gentle waters of Lake Leme quickly brought Dalrosse out of his spell of sleep
and although he tried to rescue the wonderful images of the dream and the
bright adventure he had there, he couldn’t take them with him into the new day,
diamond lit already with the sun rising over the Island. The island was known as Ashenmoire and today
Dalrosse would set foot upon it for the first time.
‘Strange, thought Dalrosse, ‘I see it every
morning, say kada’- which is the Morning Prayer-‘and live with the Island always
in view. Yet I’ve had never been there before.’
Stranger for the young Shouel was that he had
never met another Shouel in all his sixteen years. Today, though, would be different and
despite his joy at the day finally arriving, his stomach was already churning
with anxiety and he felt a nagging doubt at the back of his mind like something
he’d forgotten.
Sleep nearly took
him again but he roused himself and got up, went to wash his whiskers and tan
burnt face at the lake shore. He wanted
to see his step-sister, Shaneal, before he got on the boat, at the other end of
the village from his father’s Inn.
Shaneal was not only his sister but Dalrosse’s closest friend. When he’d been smaller she had protected him
from the village bullies. In the last
few years he had hardly ventured into Delgdreth and Shaneal had stolen supplies
from the Inn and brought him clothes when he
looked too wild. When she couldn’t come
he would fish in the shallows of the Lake or
swim down for waterweeds and thelin leaves which he would make in a tea as his
mother had shown him, so long ago, and the days would pass until Shaneal came
again. Dalrosse would then gorge
himself on the scraps of meats and wine that she’d stolen from the kitchen,
days old fruit, and as he got tipsy Shaneal and he would dance upon the fine
sand hidden from Delgdreth by the dunes, gorse and long grass, their singing
and laughter wafted away from the staid folk of the village by soft breezes
from Lake Leme.
He hadn’t seen her for sometime, almost a week
in fact. His stomach rumbled and he
knew fish or thelin tea would not still his hunger. For once he would go to Delgdreth, get
something to eat, maybe see Shaneal and say goodbye before he went to
Ashenmoire. Dalrosse knew he would miss her once he
was there, and that perhaps, he may never see her again.
Then in sudden
alarm, like a rabbrat protecting her cubs extending her ears in alarm, Dalrosse
knew there was something wrong. Instead
of the calling shrieks of the lakebirds or the singing of the wave dancers,
instead was the harsh crackling call of the carrion, the hideous laughter of
the corpse birds. He looked over the
tree line and could see them circling over Delgdreth, marring the mornings gold
haze and hard blue. Then, almost like
an afterthought as sleep wore off him, he saw the smoke from the village and
the smell of burning flesh in the
air. The Shouel raced home, up the
dunes and through the pined forest, tripping and cutting himself on sharp rosic
bushes and jagged rock, or roots, in the hushed dark of the forest in his haste
to get to Delgdreth.
Jumping over stiles
and fences, slipping in the mud, as last he made it to the path that was a shortcut
into Delgdreth. At once he began to
retch at the sick stench as if the air had been murdered. Here the pathways and then the high-road
were littered with bodies. Buildings in
the lanes off the road were smouldering, still on fire. Despite the choking dark smoke Dalrosse
raced on keeping his eyes away from the bodies, hacked down and dismembered,
pierced by arrows. He glimpsed, in the
sickening haste to get to the Omelyn’s Inn, to Shaneal, neighbours hardly recognisable.
Dozens burnt as if they’d been dressed in flame as they’d crawl from memories, joys
and those good loves to the empty blight of murder .
Finally Dalrosse
came to his step-fathers inn.
Dalrosse dreaded
going inside although he knew he must.
He hesitated. The Shouels mind, filled with the desolation about him,
the ugly distorted faces ran through with swords, the shock and surprise of the
faces of folk pierced with arrows, the burning smells of livestock, the
slaughtered horses, the festering of flies and the feasting of the corpse-ids,
lurched and tumbled through his mind. He could not enter. He stood in the doorway motionless, as if he
couldn’t, as if he had no will to move forward or back but to collapse on the
muddy ground, as dead as the others.
Dead like Shaneal? At the
thought, a small candle of hope grew in him; he had not seen her body, not yet
at least. With a cry of effort he
entered his step- father’s inn. He
searched the kitchens. Here there had
been a riot of theft, barrels of wine gone, knifes taken, haunches of cured
meat, the fish from Lake Leme, all gone;
only the acrid stench of black and burnt dry smoke. The kitchen though was empty of bodies and
in all this unexpected death he felt a slight hope that Shaneal had hidden somewhere
and was still alive and there was no sign of his step- brother or father.
He went into the bar could he smell the
burning, except it was much worse in the confined window-less bar. Dalrosse saw his step-father immediately,
although almost unrecognizable as Erafian Omelyn, the vintner, a kind-hearted
man who owned the only inn at Delgdreth.
He was skewered to the bar, drenched, probably in his own wine, and set
to burn. The heavy mist of death and
smoke sent the young Shouel into a fit of coughing and retching. He managed to reach the back of the kitchen,
flung open the door and escaped into the garden to the rear. He fell to the ground feeling pity and with
it an awful feeling of rising rage and the need to take revenge. Somehow he controlled the adrenaline of
action, to kill, to maim those who committed this slaughter and before he leapt
up to find weapons, he thought:
‘Where is
Shaneal!? Where is she?’
Slowly he rose
up and searched the village rigorously, despite the sights of many horrors and
tragedy that had befallen Delgdreth. He
forced himself to look at all the bodies, calling Shaneal’s name, and keep
looking, holding back the tears and the nausea. He couldn’t find any sign of her or
Aflarien, the eldest of the three children.
He gave up at last, long after dark, and returned to the Lake . The Shouel
washed himself in the water but did not feel clean. He built a fire but it did not warm
him. He lay awake all night. As the sun
rose over Ashenmoire in the night a plan was forged in his mind. He pledged at kada,
as the weak sunlight miserly fell upon the small stones he had gathered, that
he would find Shaneal and Aflarien. They needed him.
Looking down Crow
was sad though he knew that the villagers, lost in the smoking morning, feasted
upon by his raven kin, half cousins, twice and thrice removed, had remained,
continued on in some place, somewhere even Crow couldn’t imagine.
Crow looked down sadly, just at the edge of
his gaze, at the half boy, Shouelkind who looked forlornly at the Lake. The last boat had come and gone that would have
taken him finally to Ashenmoire. In
days a swift winter would be falling so there would be no way through the
storms and icy fogs of the lake.
Dalrosse, Crow noticed, fully laden with supplies, turned his back from
the sight of Ashenmoire, from his people and began his search, long as life,
that would one day lead him back to his true home, his true name, to the Island
that was the jewel of Lake Leme.
Chapter Two
Shaneal
It was the previous night, early on.
A special night as Jon Esierk was coming to Delgdreth for the first time
in years. All the fishing boats were back
early from the lake, the fisher folk, sprucing themselves up with high
excitement as they remembered all the tales and songs he’d told them in the
past. Obviously there would be drinking
and dancing and food galore. That was
if Omelyn was in a good mood.
Which means more work for me, Shaneal thought angrily. Aflarien was off in the woodies collecting
mushrooms. He was never here; he
wandered all day and would all night if he could. Her brother was probably stuck up a tree
hallucinating but, he was so nakkin lazy.
She drank the dregs from a bottle of wine and threw it in the rubbish,
feeling just so much rubbish herself.
She rose from the chair as she heard the irritating voice of her father
out on the porch.
“What are you doing in here?
There is a lot of work to be done.
Go and sweep the floor quickly and sort the tables. I want six or seven chairs on the far
wall…Well why are you standing there?
They’ll be here any minute.”
Shaneal went to the wine rack and opened a new bottle and took a long
swig.
“Best wine in the world, eh daddu?”
He took the bottle from her, hit her on the ear and pushed her into the
bar as if she were an incontinent dog.
“Just get on with it. No more. Or
you won’t even be able to serve our guests…who’ll be here any time now.”
Erafian Omelyn raced out into the Delgdreth main by-way to crane his
neck northwards for sight of Jon Esierk and his chelah. Shaneal went back into the kitchen, retrieved
her bottle and sat at the table in the bar, her feet stretched out on a chair.
Omelyn banged on the table when he saw the stupid wench, soused up and
dirty, her hair, dirty tatters like a wind was blasting her face. She swigged
from a bottle of the black rose petal and his
forty year old port. That bottle itself
could purchase the whole of Meringal and the largest mansion in Tasen,
apparently. As she slurped, Shaneal spit
and spat gobs of the wine on to her father’s special shoes; fine, purple
stitched leather boots.
“Best wine in the world, eh daddu?”
He went to grab the bottle and tried to batter her face with an angry
fist yet somehow, out of nowhere, she tripped him up and Erafian’s head almost
cracked on the oak table. He just
missed by inches. Pity, Shaneal
thought. Still she kicked his fat
behind and the vintner cried out as she smashed the precious bottle of black
rose.
Shaneal put it’s jagged edges to his throat, “I need a holiday and I want one now!” she
demanded.
“I promise. My rose. Wherever you like as long as you put down
that bottle and help until Jon and Misha arrive,” he pleaded.
A few hours later, Shaneal slumped at the table, her glass and supper in
front of her. She had tidied up the
kitchen, fed the horses, slapped far too many drunken fishermen she cared to
remember, and been at her father’s beg and bellow all night. Above the din of the dancing and music she
clearly heard her name uttered. She
rose slowly and went back through to the bar.
Jon stood tall and alone except for the light of the fire on his
robe. He opened his mouth.
“Listen. When Lady Shaneal of
Demorel walked in her gardens on the south side of paradise, in the far west
over the furthest of the faraway oceans, a flock of birds flew in the bright garden
wherever she went. They taught her
their language and she would sing to them every day. But, her father, the King, grew very jealous
and forbade her from singing with the birds.
However, Shaneal sometimes went out into the garden, wreathed in snow
and ice, and there were no birds there for they had all left thinking the lady
had abandoned them. Shaneal sang and
called to her friends until her song became a dirge of lamentation and the King
heard her. He commanded his guards to
bring her back to the Keep and take her to the highest tower of Demorel
“Very like Lake Leme when the ice comes,” the story teller said of that
winter in Demorel tipping another of one of Erafien’s finer blends down his
neck. I’d better hide a few just in case
this story takes all night, thought the vintner as he surreptitiously took a few
through to the kitchen.
Despite himself Erafian felt a tinge of anxiousness. His son, Aflarien, had not been back all
day. Aflarien was always at the front
of the group, listenting intently and laughing at Jon’s jokes. As the old fool droned on about Shaneal this
and Shaneal that her father snorted, almost in mirth, his particular Shaneal
was no virgin princess, he went out to the stables.
Aflarien’s horse wasn’t there and the other horses were hungry and
restless. The Innkeeper threw down some
oats for them and filled up their water troughs. He went into the clear night, bright with
cold stars. He could still hear the
crowd’s laughter coming from the bar and the restless neighing of the stabled
beasts, yet the anxiety grew within him.
He searched the horizons and the cracks into the woodlands, even turned
to the wind from the Lake but there was no
sign of Aflarien. Where the nak was he?
I enjoyed this. Hope to read next chapter soon!
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