Saturday 23 November 2013


Chapter Seven

The Death of Ket

O Ket the Beautiful

Joy to behold.

Fallen on the thorns of Ashenmoire

fodder for Tasen.

None rest

until Ket the Dead is renamed.

 

Countess Krostic had instructed Aflarien exactly where to find a rusty, bloodied dagger and how to gut the stomach of her Sergeant Belagar.   She could tolerate that bumbling oaf no longer.   He was lazy, a thief, and couldn’t possibly be clever enough to organise the attack, a day away, of Ket and her plans to massacre the Shouels that lived there in harmony with humans.   Ket was a city of truce, a place without weapons, of peace.   She scorned the fabrication of peace, especially as it got in the way of her plan to dominate the fertile lands of The Meringal.    She could no longer allow the fallacy to continue.   Ket sucked the wealth from the Meringal and those lands she coveted, and were hers by right, long lost from the dominion of R’thera of old.   Ket desperately needed her firm hand. She would the control of all the trade routes and eventually the domination of the languid greed of Tasen and end of its inconsequential rulers and their fey games at the kingship of Menerth.

                Belagar had been lax in his attack of Delgdreth and had left the spoor of the Countess’ swords and emblazoned shields.   The attack was supposed to show the rising war-likeness of the Shouels and he’d left the evidence that reeked of the stench of her designs.   He’d failed for the final time.   His death was the task she had put upon the naïve Aflarien, as a test, to either fail in cowardice or obey her every command.

                Aflarien fell to the deed with gusto and soon the sergeant’s entrails and exposed heart coloured the traitors drab office.

                “You little mushroom picker will lead my army to Ket,” she told him on the mound one long night in the walled garden.

                “The preparations are well under way and you will leave with the vanguard of a thousand men when the sun rises.   But, tonight, the strength of your body will please me for you shall not sleep until the Shouel flesh is piled high upon the market place of Ket.”

                Even by morning her lust was not satisfied.   He was finally allowed to dose between  her spread pale white legs.   Yet not for long.   She dragged him up by his hair and fed him some theem, then took him to the stables where her soldiers awaited her command to depart.   The rush of the drug to his head propelled him onto his black stallion.   He took the reins of the horse and Krostic commanded the vanguard of her finest men to mount their own steeds then slapped the flank of Aflarien’s horse and the cavalry of silver armoured men followed after their galloping leader to wage war upon the defenceless of Ket the Beautiful.

***

                After the burning of the Shouels in the Market place there was the rounding up of the humans that lived, after indiscriminate slaughter.

                Alfarien wept.   Countess Krostic’s voice had diminished from his mind, as if like the skittering shout of an absentminded god.   The thrumming of her thoughts upon his mind and body had switched to other needs, urged, as she made new evil prayers or the culmination of new and perverse plans.

                The lack of her coaxing brought only a void in him as if he were as forgetful as a lost child.   He blubbered with tears and streaks washed some of the Shouel blood from his eyes.   What had he done?   What had he become?   He had beheaded the wounded yet could hear the crying agony of those that they’d burnt alive, piled, the pig stench encompassing him.   He began to run, slithering in the patchwork pools of blood until he came to a group of three Shouel children.   They rushed to him blindly as if he were some sanctuary yet she’d not finished with him and a new strumming music of her voice returned.   He picked one up, clung a moment to her as if there was still hope.   He swung her around almost as if he was playing and she giggled between hiccups of held back tears.   Faster, he spiralled her around.   Then he grabbed her ankles, swung her swiftly and smashed her head into the stone wall.   Then he slit the other two’s throats.

                He ran from them as if he could leave the past behind.   The echo of the Countess’ voice rang after him,

                “You will love none but me.   You are mine.”   Then he became a boy again.

                “She made me do it,” Alfarien cried at the nothingness, maybe he had but he didn’t speak the words.   Pitying and hating himself he ran into a high building and stood upon a balcony needing to jump.   It was not me.   It was not meant to be like this.   How he despised her.   A rain storm fell upon the city and washed his face clean.   None of his own blood had been spilt that night yet i his lonely heart was empty even of ashes.   He saw the sword that she had given him, at his belt, and he threw it off the balcony.   Yet it did not take away the anguish in his veins.

                Tiredly he slunk away from the building and wandered, exhausted, down a dimly lit side street.   Here he saw a drunken whore still looking for business as if the world had not crumbled away from him.   Aflarien wandered desolately past her, his hatred of himself growing with every step.   Yet, he turned back to the pock-marked hag who bared her black teeth at him.

                “Want something sweetie?”

                “No.   Yes, I want a drink.”

                “Well I’ve done all mine.   There’s a jug shop two blocks down.   Maybe you will come with a tipple for me and we can have some fun.”

                He almost struck her but stalked away.   I’m not that man, he told himself.   Before long he found the jug shop.   It was closed and he banged determinedly on the door until a white faced terrified man came to the window.

                “Let me in,” he commanded, somehow his voice full of force as one who would not be disobeyed.   Thankfully he heard clinking keys in the lock as he looked at the multi-coloured vessels in the window.   He realized beer or spirits would not help him, not bring a quick death.

                “What do you want?” the man asked.

                “I want poison.”

                “Bit late in the day but I’m sure I can cater for you.”

                “It must be strong and quick.”

                He left with a vial of poison and wine.   The Apothecarist banged the door shut and locked it behind him.   Aflarien sought a place to kill himself.   Yet, as he walked alone in the dark, a new thought came to him.

                He took the wine to the woman.   As if in thanksgiving she fell to her knees groping for him. Once more the void of thought and emotion took over his body and like a marionette in a butchers hand he hit her, then again and again screaming at her as if he were saying the world had no hope.  

               Aflarien found himself standing over her pulped flesh, his boot prints left in the blood muddy earth beneath the shattered architecture of her ribcage; he stood there breathless as if waking suddenly from a dream. He ran then, calling back the way he’d come:

                ‘It was her, not me, all of it, all it was her, please make her stop.’  Before he reached the main throng of the soldiers from R’thera he could have taken the poison.  Yet an urge to remain alive, once more, returned to him fed by a need for revenge.   Not me, but she must die.   He stuffed the vial of poison and the wine into his pocket and found his horse whilst Krostic’s soldiers still looted and revelled in their victory.

                Aflarien rode all night back to R’thera.


Chapter  Eight

The River Grule

 

                Dalrosse said goodbye to his escorts from the cave city of Thet.   They had led him to a set of steep steps down the cliff face of Mull Mountain where, grey in the early morning mist below, the River Grule languidly flowed.   The three Shouels who had accompanied him had hardly spoken as they walked through the Forest of Soen and he had been left with his own thoughts.     Naturally he was still concerned about his brother and Shaneal.   It annoyed him that his journey was taking him away from them.   He should be looking for them, trying to protect them from the world divorced from the simplicity of their life in Delgdreth and the slow life by the Lake.  Yet the ancient Shouel had insisted Dalrosse go his appointed way and leave them to their own fate.   In his mind, his words seemed like a voice of reassurance that they still lived and that one day he would find them again.   However, he felt divided.   He yearned to ignore the Shouel’s words and turn back but in his mind he knew he should go on the path the Shouel had insisted upon.   He started down the cliff.

                The way down the five hundred steps was reasonably easy as they were obviously made for Shouels with their short stature and thin, agile feet.   As the morning brightened and the mist rose, slowly dissipating above the valley, he could hear a multitude of melodic and joyful music as the birds sang.

                He remembered how surprised he was when the ancient Shouel had told him that Jon Esierk was his father and he had thought the Storytellers never took wives.   He had always known that Erafien Omely was not his father as he had not loved Dalrosse as he had Aflarien and Shaneal.   Erafien begrudged having a Shouel in his house and was ashamed of what the people of Delgdreth thought of him.   Shaneal had once told him that Erafien had been in the vineyard, after his mother had died, when an old woman had come up to him with the tiny bundle of Dalrosse in her arms.    The woman had told him not to weep any longer for his dead wife and that soon he would find another and know love again.   Yet this future, she had said, was determined on the fact that he take the infant Shouel into his house and take care of him for he was precious and bound to the Fate of the Five Roses and the destiny of Menerth.   However, soon Erafien became the laughing stock of the villages.   If he had not been so wealthy and once, so well respected as a leader of the village, they would have forced him to leave and take the dirty Shouel from their sight.   As the old woman said, Erafien had fallen in love and took a young wife into his life, yet, sadly she had died and the vintner and innkeeper had suffered Dalrosse’s presence as he was so young and helpless.   Only when he was older Erafien did not hide his resentment and many times beat Dalrosse, in savage rages, and the rest of the time would treat him like a serving boy, confining him to the kitchen.   He didn’t go to school or spend any time with the other children of Delgdreth but this was mainly out of choice for he was continuously bullied.   So, all in all, he was not missed when he went to live on the beaches beside Lake Leme nor did he miss Delgdreth.

                “Jon Esierk is my father,” he said aloud.   Then he remembered the Shouel saying that a Princess Marriamme was his mother.   Would he ever meet her?   With this thought he found himself at the base of Mull Mountain and on the bank of the River Grule.   The air was alive with wasps, honeysuckle bees and clouds of midges.   The water was clear and butterflies, white as clouds, flew over the river.   On the sandbanks of the river lethargic storks and grey-green herons grudgingly awoke to the new day and stretched their wings like a bush yawning.

                The river itself was almost thirty sages wide; across it the valley rose less steeply than the cliff behind him.   The sunlight seemed imbued with vitality, the vibrancy of bush and trees shone like a many coloured cloth cloaking  the contours of the land ahead, the red earth of the far bank of the river healthy greedy with life.   Here in the valley he felt, after the tiring walk through Soen the long climb down to the river, such a peace, a buzzing joy of life and a new springtime.   Each step he took Dalrosse felt he was an explorer venturing into an uncharted world.   All about him there was a diversity of a new world, uncountable animals and birds, flowers that he had no names for.   He felt that he had fallen from a world of hate and bloodshed into a paradise.   The Shouel sat upon a rock beside a pool and became entranced by a water snake, twisting and turning like a black necklace.

                Now the heat of the morning made him feel lethargic.   He lay back and closed his eyes, recalling a story Jon Esierk had told the lake folk in the Inn.   Dalrosse was hidden, forgotten by the enraptured listeners.   The sound of his real father’s voice echoed in his ears.

                Shush now and listen. 

 Long, long ago in a mountain cave beyond the Wastes of Drendunde a child, Astor, was born.   His parent’s names were Ely and Maronel. They were herders of the great half-horned goats in the pasture in the high plateau above their simple home.   Unfortunately, there was a vicious storm of fierce ice and snow which lasted for months.   One by one their flock died and Astor’s parents feared that he would die.   The storm never seemed to abate and for over a year it raged and raged.   Soon the whole flock was dead and soon the family would die of hunger.   So, Astor’s parents decided, although it broke their hearts, that they should travel through the storm down the mountain to a caravan site where they could sell their son to slave traders in the hope that he would be sold to some people who could take care of him better than they.   Ely and Maronel returned to the mountains and Astor never saw them again.   Since he was only five years old he only recalled them in lost dreams and déjà vu.   He was whipped and beaten across the Wastes of Drendunde, yet survived on the long march along the slave route that passed through the forest of Soen to the market town of Eaun.

Astor was sold to a priest of Ashenmoire, Han, and became an acolyte of the Black Rose which he served and tended.   As he grew older Astor became a priest and in middle age was appointed the Guardian of the Rose, the highest priest of Ashenmoire because he was knowledgeable of the subtleties and needs of the Black Rose.   Under his guardianship the power over the Rose grew and there was a summer time in the land that the people of Menerth had not known before.   Since the death of Astor, no priest or guardian could truly fill his place.   The Rose diminished and the poison in the hearts of men and Shouels took hold once more in Menerth.   Yet, it is foretold, or perhaps a mere wish of a mourning world, that a new Guardian, as powerful as Astor, and as pure in heart, shall come to Ashenmoire and heal the sickness in the Rose.   One, it is said, will come who has gathered the fruits of the Five Roses and with his healing hand imbue new sustenance into the Rose of Ashenmoire and once more heal the sickness of Menerth.

                Dalrosse woke from his reverie.   When he had first heard the tale of Astor he’d thought so little of it, a pleasing child’s story to bring false hope into men’s hearts.   Only a story.   Yet, in the echoing memory of it he had felt Jon Esierk’s eyes upon him and the piercing blue of his gaze instilled a hope in Dalrosse’s heart, a kindling of purpose.   The ancient Shouel had said that he would find the path of his destiny at the foot of the Mull Mountain and it seemed that despite his need to search for Shaneal and Aflarien, in truth, he should go in search of the fabled Five Roses and somehow heal The Black Rose of Ashenmoire.

 

Chapter Nine


 

Wednesday 13 November 2013

Thrice Advent Chapters 5 and 6


Toward Tasen


            Marik, the slave trader, took a fancy to Shaneal. The captured villagers of Delgdreth thirsted in the heat of the desert, as the fertile lands of The Meringal diminished; they wearied, scourged by whips.   Shaneal enjoyed the luxuries of the slave trader’s opulent carriage.   He lavished her with sweet meats and the brains of goats while Misha and Jon Esierk starved but for some old bread and the occasional trickle of water.   When Misha finally succumbed to the heat and lack of food, the slave minders unchained him and left him to die in the desert.   Shaneal looked at his body from the back of the wagon, a slight tear in her eyes, then returned to her master’s bed and drank herself into a sex filled orgasmic oblivion.

                She dreamt that night of her father; the image of the murdered burnt offering to dark gods on the bar of the Inn was eviscerated from her mind.   She was six or seven and the whole family were arriving at Ket on holiday.   Dalrosse, tiny in her arms, like a doll, she would never discard.   Their mother, in the back was scolding Aflarien.  Daddy stroked the horses as they waited at the line before the gates of Ket.   The line was long but diminished rapidly and he led the horses at last beneath the carved gates on the sunset lit city.   He gave her a silver coin and took them both down from the carriage and with Dalrosse in her arms she went wandering.   In her dream she knew that Erafien Omelyn watched as she wandered amazed and bemused by the circus of the market, the smells and laughter, the hubbub of no silence as breathtaking as the silence of Delgdreth by the Lake.   He heard her as she laughed aloud at the jugglers and the poets, dancers and dream tellers, as she told the child of each new thing and described to Dalrosse the colours and told him the names of the spices he could smell.

                The dream faded as she felt Marik penetrating her once more like she was pierced by scalding needle sewing through every inch of her being.   She woke as he began to slash her face with dirty fingernails and felt as if she was half dead in the sea swell of the falling and rising of the carriage.    Plaintive, yet like an awful scream, she called out Misha’s name.   Marik’s hand was at her throat.

                “Who the nak is Misha?”  Her eyes bleached upon her skull fell, pulled down from the awful sickness but it was only the slave owner grabbing her hair tight in his fist and forcing her to meet his gaze.

                She sighed.       

                “I was dreaming Marik of a song I used to sing.”   She remembered one of the stories told to her when she was young.

                “Not a just song but the story of Misha and Elan.”   Starting with a whisper she sang the story into his ear as the song unfolded she wove together the melody, a harmony to still his wants he slowly loosened his grip on her hair and the wind of her words and the  songs delicate fingertips stroked his face.   Before she had come to the end of the song the wrinkled, sun blackened man had fallen asleep.

                Misha was not quite dead.   The theem Jon had given him before they rode into Delgdreth, spaced out the beating of his blood starved heart and the pounding in his head.   Still into an electric piercing, like the cries of the corpse-ids, but constant, he was wrenched back into a semblance of life.   He rose like a ghost and walked towards the moon on the rise above a parched plateau that began at the edge of the sand dunes.   In the labouring of his breathless body, as in a moment, heartbeat, lungs stopped by the sudden shock.   An orange star like the Two Wheels of Astor’s Eyes peering into the moon eclipsed night. Then the light burnt the sky and tarnished the land cold green.   The moon returned and there was nothing. He breathed.   His senses alive again after being so long immersed in the shackles of pain, the pain was lost and then came a deafening roar, a thrice booming then the sound of a falling of a mighty stone, once more he seized in shock.   Then Misha ran swiftly to the new fires that seemed to melt the sand into a sea of molten glass.

                Later near to midnight Jon Esierk and the other slaves from Delgdreth were at last given a break from the long march of the day, after the bread and water, as usual, Jon told them a story before they fell into a heavy dreamless sleep.

                “Shush everyone, I have a story.   This is the tale of Misha and Elan as it was told to me by the young chelah on our way to Delgdreth.


There is another place, beyond the eyes of Astor, only known to a few, and from the world came a stranger to the lands of Menerth.   He was a singer.   For a while he sang of the place he had lost, but, as he wandered the length and breadth of the world he half forgot where he had come from.   He entertained the villagers with his songs in the markets, in Ket and other big cities and one day he came to the sea and the towers of Tasen.   Misha was singing in one of the many markets when a  princess, Elan, walked by, looking for a particular gold threaded black silk to make a gown for her mother, the Queen of Menerth.   Then she heard a song like the canticle of a lark and all earthly things seemed to be washed away from her as she rushed to the group he was singing to.   His song seemed as endless as the spray of the ocean and it seemed as if the moon and the stars and the sun and moon again wheeled above her as she stood listening and unfelt tears rushed down her face.   There was exquisite warmth in her heart, a whirling dance in her mind, slowing time as he sang into a crescendo of silence.   Elan remained statue like as the group of listeners about her dispersed when she felt Misha’s cold hand on her shoulder.

She returned, at once, a Princess, to the authority of her everyday poise of responsibilities for the nation.   What a time she’d wasted.  Elan ran from the singer and went to the Palace before the gates closed.   She dreamt of the singer and his songs night after night.   So one morning she spoke to her mother of the minstrel and the kindly Queen, flowing in a silk design of the five roses said:

“Bring him to entertain us.   If he’s as good as you say perhaps he will bring the King from his worries and fears.”

That afternoon Elan went back to the market place and a new sweet song rose above an immense crowd.   The mass of silent people parted before Princess Elan once they realised who she was.   She took Misha by the hand and led him through the corridor of the enraptured people back to the Palace and here she told him to kneel before the King.

Unbidden, Misha began to sing.   He set a slow melody, paced it seemed by the throb of the multitude of expectant heartbeats within the Palace, then his voice rose and quickened, the words of his world an orchestra of untold instruments.   He sang of the beauty and simplicity of that world, where once so long ago he had lived, of the half-forgetful people dwarfed by the powers and leader.  They however, seemed unconcerned with the day or the morrow, but the multiplicity of the moment and Misha threaded into this music the spider webs of the people who shone bright as the dew in the morning sun.

“Who are they of whom you speak?” the King demanded   And Misha confessed.

                “There was a land once of richness and fertility.  It held a fecundity of love but they were betrayed and an end came to them.   A great war came and few survived.   The laughter of the minions of deceit echoed about the world but it was silenced as the Rex Mundi of that world died in its’ destruction and those few that remained cherished the world. Alone I was sent forth as a beacon into the nightmare sky to tell of the sorrows that had befallen our world, so that it would not happen again. I remained alone for aeons of lightless dark and soared into a deeper sunless dark until I came to the new land of Menerth, before the Roses were born.   I roamed alone until I basked in the eyes of Astor, the gardener and the new whole was re-made.   I came before your castles and your kingships, before your lordlands and your peacekeepers and I sang the only song that kept you whole but you were deceived by the darkness of the past, an urge of me. The loss and sadness in the thread of my song that ever urged me to return to the loves I knew. Even now I can’t forget them or give them up for they hold me to the world I am from.   I sing my song in remembrance of them, for myself alone, but as time unfolded I found new glory in your world before war returned and the Roses withered. My songs brought joy and hope to the people and the offspring of the people and to their kin, in Menerth so unlike the World where I was born. Yet with my song I brought here memory of Rex Mundi alive.   I deceived the world of Menerth thinking that it had rediscovered purity anew but no I was I mistaken.  You are of my kind and I am of you.   Before the death of my world and my sending here I was corrupted by grief and my song infected this world with memories of those old times. Now it cannot change except in my death and the silencing of my song which you will forbid and keep me enthralled in the Song of the Old before Rex Mundi died and give him a new hold upon your hearts and spirits.”

And Elan wept for him.  His songs in the marketplace Misha had given her hope.  But as the singer had predicted, the King kept him as a puppet for the amusement of courtiers and the minor kings of Menerth, to sing of lesser things.   Of butterflies songs and the trampling of the deer in the forests that entrenched the King’s memories and he would not hear the truth of Misha’s plight and past and only Elan sang together with Misha of that world gone array.

“Take me back,” she cried one night.   “So I can understand why this world was forgiven.”

“I am the corrupt’” Misha exclaimed.

“And I am the corrupted” she wept. “Perhaps if we can return a joy will return to this Menerth, not the endless fear of our people.”

“It will be the death of us both if we return. I have lived a thousand of your years, and you, my love so few. I have no words for your mourning dirge except tears.”

“Take me back with you Misha.” She demanded is if they had no choice. So Elan and Misha escaped from the Palace and searched for many days as for as the parched plains on the edge of the desert until he found the craft that had taken him away from the home he loved. Together they rose into the palaces of star, together they died upon the lands of the old planet lost on the edge of time in one of the piles of corpses of Rex Mundi’s wrath”. No-one upon Menerth ever knew of Elan and Misha or felt their heart slowly break when Jon’s chelah sang of Misha’s lost home.

This is the story my young chelah told me, he said that a wind from between the two setting stars had a memory of the song and had whispered it to him when he was young.

Jon was silent then and the slaves seemed freed for a while by his words, until the whips once more lashed out at them from the song of love that branched throughout the stars, and on bleeding feet they continued on through the burning desert towards Tasen.


Chapter 6

Dalrosse Goes North


Dalrosse washed himself in The Falls of Armoreth at the northern edge of Lake Leme, but still felt grubby as if he would never be clean. Yet he bathed in gahrthine reeds until he was rubbed raw by their hairy stems and floated like flotsam or a log with nowhere special to go.

By Bayle’s Reach the Shouel was purified by the sound of birdsong and in the pools of the waterfalls he consumed enough thelin to keep awake for a thousand days. Finally he dried himself on another sandy cove, lifted his pack and went in the direction of the town of Eaun. Dalrosse knew there he would find the nearest Peacekeeper.

The first long night of winter had begun to fall and with it a torrential rain.  The small figure struggled through the muddy road to where the Peacekeeper’s office was signposted. It was closed.  It seemed apart from a bar where drunken yells broke into the night and a half-light splattered the mud; the whole of Eaun was closed.  Purposefully he walked into the bar.

‘It’s a nakkin’ Shouel, oi bunnyhumper come here,’ a fat drunk tried to grab him, but with the unfamiliar sword he’d found in one of the bodies he warded the human away from him. Dalrosse called out to the other people in the bar. ‘There’s been a massacre in Delgdreth. I need to speak to the Peacekeeper.’ With his words the drunk who had tried to grab him, seemed to grow two or three feet taller, knocked the sword from his hand and with a glass of grogg hit him in the face.

‘You just found me bunnyhumper. Now before we kill you, Merve here will take you to my office, and you can tell me why a Shouel is telling tales on his own murdering kind. I’m sure Merve will hurt you quite a lot while I have my last drink of the evening. The nakker broke my favourite glass.’ A sneer of laughter spread across the bar room.

An older, more timorous human lifted Dalrosse up from the floor and struggled with him through the mud to the Peacekeeper’s office.  Merve hit him a few times, almost half-heartedly, then without a word threw him into a small cell.  From the cell, before the Peacekeeper appeared, Dalrosse tried to explain to Merve what seemed to have happened in Delgdreth, of his stepfather’s death and his quest to find Shaneal and Aflarien. Yet the words unhurried and concise seemed to fall on deaf ears.  Hours seemed to pass in the company of the guard who remained consistently silent as he whittled away at a piece of wood, as Dalrosse paced impotently, also falling into silence, but screaming angrily inside his head.  Then the heavy boots of the Peacekeeper kicked open the door of his office.

‘I thought you would’ve killed the bunnyhumper by now.’

Two other heavyset men came in behind him. Merve glanced at them with a half smile creasing his face and showed the object he had carved in the time he had spent alone with Dalrosse. He had made a rose. ‘Now ain’t that pretty. Best one you’ve done yet,’ one of the men said and grabbed it from his yielding fist. ‘My wife’ll love it,’ then he smacked the older man about the face. ‘Get out of here muteman and watch the road case anymore Shouels turn up.’

‘Yeah scoot Merve.’ The peacekeeper said.  Merve humbled away out into the rain.  One of the men unlocked the cell door and all three went in, towering over the Shouel. Dalrosse brimmed full with the power of the thelin stood to face them.

They questioned him for hours.  The Peacekeeper toying with the sword that Dalrosse had brought from Delgdreth. ‘He’s right about one thing, this isn’t a Shouels weapon, the nakkers only use bows and adren tipped arrows.  My brother got one in the throat and he was dead before he hit the mud.’

As they talked among themselves a vague remembrance of the dream of the Crow flew into Dalrosse’s head that whispered of a way to escape.

‘Mindcall your brethren, my king, they are not far and if you urge them they will come.’


                                                            *****************

In the dark forest about Eaun a small band of Shouels led by Mithrish were on to their home in the foothills of Lower Soen. Suddenly they were stopped in their tracks as a bright light in the gloom of the rain soaked trees that illuminated their dirty, bearded faces and they looked ahead in wonderment.

Before them was a dream of butterflies, a conglomeration of a million colours that was formed by a corolis swirl of wings that crafted a beautiful woman, tall, slender.  A flowing hair of silvery wings cascaded down her naked body. Her eyes the cornflower blue of the grass of Upper Soen.  Her slight nose, her entire face aglow with an ethereal radiance as she smiled as if the band of Shouels had been ushered into a new world.  She only spoke four words before the butterflies flew apart and disappeared in the rain.

‘Go quickly to Eaun.’ In silence the Shouels began to run between the raindrops, as swift as the wind.  Half an hour later the stoic form of Merve stood before them.

Merve had never spoke since he had been seven years old when his mother, father and small sister had been murdered by Shouels such as these. Sodden with the rain he realized there were too many to hold back and he could not call for help. Over the years Merve had learnt that all of the cognitive races where in part cruel. The baptism of the winter rain seemed to clear a mighty boulder from the cave of his mouth. As if in an occasional dream when he could speak Merve turned in the rain and pointed to the Peacekeeper’s office and meekly said:

‘Dalrosse is in the cell, he will be dead soon if he is not already.  There is nothing but anger and hate in the village for your sort. Yet I remember that it was not always the same.’ Marrana, his nurse before the death of his family, had loved him deeply and despite all that had happened since, hers, the old Shouel’s, was the only love he could remember.  He guided the Shouels to the office where Dalrosse paced in his cell, the men gone.  Merve released him.  Mithrish and the others went back with Dalrosse Omelyn to the boundaries of Eaun.  He watched them vanish into the dense dark of the forest and for the first time in his thirty-five years Merve laughed until tears of ecstasy ran down his face.  He too walked away from Eaun, opening his dry mouth to the cold rain and drinking deep. From those parts of the world no-one but Dalrosse ever saw him again.


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Dalrosse started to tell his story of the massacre to Mithrish, but the older Shouel told him shh and slow down, that he could tell all when he got to the cavern city of Thet.

So in silence they walked drenched through for miles until the forest receded and they finally reached their caverns.  Thet was a wonder to Dalrosse.  He had never seen s single Shouel before, now they were all around, lithe females cooking on stone fires and little ones playing. Here at last was a multitude of his people.

Mithrish told the others to go to their rest while he led Dalrosse to the counsel room where the elders sat in a pungent smoke filled cave.  Some of the Shouels stood and greeted Mithrish with long hugs. Dalrosse lingered at the entrance as if a step forward would seal a future he was not willing to take upon himself.

Nearest the fire, unmoving, sat an ancient Shouel.  He seemed made of the rock about him and his voice was imbued with wisdom from beyond the strictures of time.

‘Who is the boy?’ The wizened Shouel squinted and an ecstatic look of recognition filled his eyes. ‘The lost one, Esierk’s son.’ Dalrosse wandered through the flickering light of the fire and sat as if bidden beside the Shouel.

‘My father’s that old storyteller?’

‘Yes child. We lost you from our world and sent you to the human’s. If you are interested your mother is Marriamme, Princess of Thet,’ he looked at Dalrosse sadly. ‘But she has gone to Tasen as an ambassador. A new war is coming to the Menerth because Tasen and the king there have become corrupted by the solitariness from the rest of the Menerth.’ He spat a glob of phlegm into the fire. ‘Yes, child, you are the lost one and though you have found us you must remain lost for a year or two more. You must go northwards instead of to Ket where the war will start. At the base of the Mull Mountain your destiny and a new strength will find you.’

He continued as if he were in a need to rush, to be rid of Dalrosse. ‘I will send a few arrowmen to guide you to the cliffs of Mull Mountain, but they will leave you then. Know that your journey will take you across the broad river at the base of the cliffs. Child, remain lost, until we and the whole of the Menerth is in the direst need, for only then will you be strong enough defeat the sickness of the world.’ The Shouel then lowered his head as if he had fallen into sleep.

Dalrosse was escorted out of the fire chamber by Mithrish. He and some of his arrowmen led him through caves to the hidden entrance of Thet. Dawn light had broken over the forest as they emerged.  Dalrosse scrambled down the rubble of rocks at the edge of the city, then ahead of him Mithrish entered the light rippled sea of green and soon they were lost in the confines of the woods.