Author: Jolinn
Notes: A tale of travesty and love, of war and hope, of...
Lisilia looked at her son on the beach, and was momentarily happy. An uncharacteristically sunny day on the Uthlin, she had brought her son here on the insistence of her husband Caval.
"Go", he'd said, and let her take the carriage, despite the business in Earendam that he claimed kept him from going along.
"Elspa needs it. The boy... the boy's too reserved. He spends too much time in the library, or talking to his imaginary friends - and too little doing the things a boy should."
Her husband had paled, and gotten that worried look on his face that had come ever since the raid last year on their estate that had gutted their fields.
Elspa looked up from the sand castle he was making, and looked his green eyes right at his mother.
"He says that he's sorry."
Lisilia looked up at her son with a quizzical glance. "Who, Elspa?"
"Father does. He says he's sorry"
And with that, the boy got a very odd look on his face, and begun crying.
On the way back to the manor house, Elspa would not stop crying. Reassuring her son, Lisilia couldn't help but wonder - usually the boy had an empathy for the things around him. And, the estate's finances hadn't been well.
The boy rushed out of his mother's arms, up the tall stairwell to his father's study. Lisilia, struck by the silence in the house, followed closely behind, and it wasn't until she actually entered the room that she saw what her son had somehow known.
Her husband, dead, with his bloodstained dagger in his hand.
And all she could think was...
"He says that he's sorry."
In the following year, Elspa grew even more withdrawn. Always carrying his father's signet ring, the boy was never a nuisance, but the finances of what was now his mother's estate grew slim. As the days past into summer, fewer and fewer of the manor's trappings remained.
His mother, desperate, remarried. Agjar Dilis was a burly brute of a man, rumoured by the servants to have kankoran blood. Unperturbed by any pretensions of the fineries of Earendam's older families, the man brought new money and gutter taste to the manor.
Using Lasilia and the family's name and titles, Agjar finally had his access to society, and, in his mind, a sort of twisted respectability. Still scorned for his coarse ways, he began to fixate on Elspa's possession of the family signet ring. Lasilia would hear him muttering over his drink about the boy, and how he came between him and respectability. How the boy was at fault for all his woes, how...
As for Elspa, his father's suicide had touched the boy in a way that his mother viewed as unnatural.
She would often come upon him reading books in his father's library, listening attentively, seemingly to nothing at all. When questioned, he would only look at her in blank astonishment, as if "hearing them" were the most natural thing in the world.
The years passed, and Agjar grew more and more depraved. With his fortunes, he squandered money on the basest acts, often performing merely to shock or horrify his wife. Elspa took to avoiding him, somehow detecting the brute's presence before he would enter the room. Agjar grew more and more jealous of Elspa and his father's ring. One day, in Elspa's fifteenth summer, he came into the manor to find Agjar beating his mother, screaming obscenities about him taking "What was his by right!"
Something snapped in Elspa, and he looked at Agjar, and saw everything wrong with the world. The gluttony, the wanton hedonism, the headlong rush to self-destruction. Everything pure within him boiled to a head, and he raised his hand - in attack or defense he'd never know, but a jagged bolt of pure energy slammed into Agjar, knocking him back to the wall.
Rushing to his mother, he saw that she had already been beaten to death, her frail ribs broken under the drunken Agjar's onslaught.
Shedding a tear, Elspa walked out of the manor, not looking back, with only a single thought echoing through his mind.
Now, there was another voice.
Elspa wandered the Arien plains, traveling far north to the Brintors, passing through ancient valleys and even passing through the fabled tower of Shaendar. In time, though, he tired of his isolation and turned again to the ways of man.
In the silence of his meditation, he had come to master more of his self-taught art. Passing the time in silence, he had learned to channel the mana used by scholars easily and effectively - his meditative techniques coming in handy for filling his body with what he felt was the lifeblood of the universe itself.
Passing back toward Earendam, he was put up in a small village of farmers, who were wary initially at his presence. "You ain't a mollie, are ya?"
"A what?" stammered Elspa.
"Dalith, don't be a damned fool, the boys got eyes, can't ya see? And his skin ain't all wrinkly!" called out the man's wife.
After some confusion, Elspa announced that no, he was not a shuddeni, and yes, he would clean out the stable for the night's rest and a hearty meal.
Tending to the solitude of the barn, Elspa heard an odd moaning from the loft as he worked, and at dinner, he asked Dalith what was the source of the sound.
Growing quiet for a moment, Dalith seemed a bit taken aback.
"Well, that's me brother Stila. He ain't been right ever since the shuddeni near took his head off on one of their raids. One of those devils pointed at him, and he ran screaming. After that..."
Elspa looked thoughtful for a moment, and said slowly,
"I think I can help him."
Dalith's head jerked up. "What, ye one of those devils after all!"
"No - gods no, not like that. I... I think I can heal his mind."
Looking doubtful, Dalith scratched his head. "That... That water scholar from the city that does free work was here. He said there warn't nothing he could do"
Elspa looked up with a grin.
"You might say I work on a different plane."
Following Dalith to the loft, Elspa saw his brother, wasted and mad. He seemed to lack the strength to move, but he still twitched nervously at everything in the room. As Elpsa approached, he began to froth at the mouth, trying franatically to get away from him, even gathering the strength to stand up and begin darting about the room.
Elspa looked at him, and in a moment could see the pain in the man. The pain - and the fear. "It's.. it's ok, Stila"
Filling the room with his inner stability, Elspa calmed the madman down. He no longer jerked about, but his eyes still shone with the madness.
Putting his hand to Stila's head, Elspa met his gaze.
"Think of your soul, Stila. Think of this as... as a dark knot in it, twisting everything good and right away from you. We're going to undo the spell that made that knot.. and we're going to give you clarity. So.. so you can see the light from the dark"
Slowly, Stila closed his eyes. Elspa concentrated for a minute or two more, and when Stila looked around him, tears streamed down his cheeks, and he stood in wonder.
"Thank you", he said, in a voice that croaked voice.
Elspa crept down the loft's ladder, leaving the two brothers to a tear filled reunion.
As Elspa grew closer to Earendam, he came to realize that not everything was right in the capitol of the Republic. Villages had been abandoned, or the occasional field was scorched bare. The spirits told him of barbarian raids, attacking the fragmented and overextending holdings of the Republic. Most spoke of red-furred Kankorans from the other side of the Uthlin, or the other side of the Brintors. More alarmingly, the occasional lone shade spoke of chaja seen amidst the wolf-men.
Elspa was troubled by this news. Near seven hundred years previously, the chaja and their eyeless masters were defeated in the War of Endless Night. Still, the chaja and shuddeni were supposed to be gone - and there had been Dalith's reference to an eyeless one.
What was transpiring in the world?
Elspa eventually reached Earendam the grand, and came in through the north gate and onto Tyril Square. Taking lodging in an inn on Cetilin Way, he spent his time offering his services to those who needed them,earning the gold to keep his lodging. Traders sought him out for his ability to know the hearts of men,and several times his services were used by the healers to awaken those who lay in magically induced comas.
Outside the great capitol, guardsmen brought more word of the most violent of the kankoran tribes raiding Earendam's trade routes. The decline of the Republic which had begun with the articles of independence of Var Bandor and Ashta Harrud several hundred years ago began to accelerate. Fragile alliances sprang up and fell over night, as the roads and rivers became less safe. The senate had warned that Earendam had overextended itself in protecting outlying provinces, but the patrician had ordered it, citing the titular responsibility of Earendam for its vassals.
In the midst of this was Elspa, content, perhaps, in his meditations to let the world slip by, doing some small part to aid the people of the city, and yet lost to his actual role.
As he slept each night, however, he began to have the same dream - he walked the streets of Earendam, but its citizens had vanished. Its towers layed ruined, its walls breached - all in the pattern of the newly come barbarians. But the absence that echoed through the streets was not the natural pattern even for such brutality - everywhere, there was a sense of dread. Of ... decay.
And yet there was another presence that walked the city of his dreams, and it seemed to share his concerns over the fate of the city. He would see a figure walking the streets, that would vanish just as he turned a corner. A faint flash of light, on a corner. At first he only felt the worry of this other figure, but eventually it was as if he could detect words - words reaching a crescendo each night, until he could bear it no more: "Meet me at south Tyril Square"
The next day, he awoke, picked up his things, and left the key to his room at the inn with the innkeep.
He went to the square, and spent the day watching the illusionists and bards there. Amidst the crowd, he could soothe his own feelings by immersing himself in what the crowd felt - wonder at the illusionists from the Silver Griffin, and hope. In truth, he didn't know what he expected to find there, and, as the sun began to set, he felt he had made a mistake.
Truding out of the square, he nearly tripped over a ch'taren woman, lost in thought herself.
Scintillating gold skin covered her spare frame, wrapped in robes of deep gold. Looking up at him, a light came into her eyes, and she mouthed one word.
"You"
Alaria and Elspa fell madly in love. Both naturally gited with communication with the spirits, they spent their days teaching each other the magical tricks they'd each learned. Alaria taught Elspa about the spirit stones she made her living with - crystals imbued with magical essence, used as receptacles by mages to quickly cast their spells.
In return, Elspa offered to share mana with her, sharing their most intimate grasp on the structure of life itself.
Most of all though, they learned more and more about their ability to speak in dreams. Almost as an extension of this power, they learned that their souls could not only wander the dream realm - they could actually leave their bodies!
Wandering in the astral never-neverland and the borders of reality, they saw the barbarian hordes, and the battles fought by the armies of the Republic. Scattered and defeated, they saw the fingers of Earendam's influence pull back from across the Brintors, withdrawing to a few scattered villages on the Arien.
More troubling, they saw that the Senate and the Patrician knew of aid the Shuddeni had been giving the barbarians, but seemed to have no inkling where the threads had lead them. Kor Thrandir still protected the main shuddeni route to the surface, and the shuddeni's numbers were still decimated from the war. Known for their slow breeding and careful plotting, the world might well see another five centuries before the shuddeni acted in force on the surface again - or so conventional wisdom indicated.
Elspa, though, was troubled by Earendam's complacency toward the shuddeni - secure in the knowledge that Kor Thrandir would keep the Shuddeni down in force, and no more than scatter pockets could come to the surface through other means.
One night, realizing what they had to do, they both left their bodies and descended into the bowels of the earth. Heading to the nearby city of Yithoul, they evaded the watchful eyestalks of the Shuddeni beasts which could glimpse even into the astral plan, and slipped into the temple.
There, they watched the rituals of the shuddeni, following the high priests into their studies. With long hours of looking at the plans, Espa snapped back to his body with a shock.
"They not going to going to attack Kor Thrandir, Alaria. They're going to Earendam!"
The next day, Elspa left a small ruby in the sand outside Earendam. Marking it with a rune learned from the writings of Alaria's people, he linked himself to the place, preparing for a journey.
He and Alaria took off for Kor Thrandir, moving through the air using borrowed wands from their friends the illusionists. Moving into the Brintors, taking less than two days to reach Kor Thrandir.
The Lord Protector was skeptical of their claims.
"Shuddeni? Attack Earendam? They'll have to get through me, first!"
"Lord Valis, they aren't going to go through the surface - they don't have the military might to go through the seal. They've built.. some... some sort of nexus, and they're going to use it to join their barbarian allies on the surface - when they attack Earendam in two days time!"
Valis looked at him skeptically.
"Even if this were true, what would you have me do?"
Elspa looked straight into Valis' eyes. "Bring your army to Earendam, sir. Or the city will fall in three days time."
"Protecting this keep is my sacred duty. Twenty generations have guarded it without fail. I have sworn that no shuddeni will pass."
"My lord, can't you see? Why not let the water scholars scry? Let me teach astral travel to one of your spirit mages..."
"We have been unable to scry the Shuddeni for the past six months. "
"What do you mean, unable to scry?"
"Some new sorcery, perhaps. An ill configuration of the stars, says Loril. I'm sorry, Elspa, but without more evidence...."
Elspa pounded his fist on the table.
"Are you blind? The shuddeni are helping the barbarians! If you sit and do nothing, the Republic will fall!"
Valis looked at Elspa and the shockingly beautiful Ch'taren women beside him. The Ch'taren were their staunchiest allies, and if this one found this man compelling......
"I cannot bring the army, Elspa. But... the men who are not on watch the next day or so. Ask among them. Those who wish to volunteer can go. I know the barbarians will reach Earendam in a day or two's time. That much, at least, I owe the Republic."
At dawn the next day, Elspa, Alaria, and one hundred Kor Thrandian men-at-arms marched out of the gates.
The sergeant looked at his men, and said.
"Well, it's going to be a hard march past enemy lines. But if we force march, we should be there before the.."
"No need!" said Elspa with a grin.
"Gather around in a circle, captain."
Used to the ways of mages, the sergeant obeyed without questioning exactly what would happen, perhaps expecting the wind to sweep them to Earendam, or to travel through a puddle. What he saw he was completely unprepared for.
With a "whoosh!" of imploding air, they popped out of existence by Kor Thrandir and outside the north gate of Earendam.
Staggered, the soldiers looked about in disbelief.
Now it was Alaria's turn to grin. "And they said the wheel was a good idea...."
Marching into Earendam, whose northern half was now filled with the remnants of the Republic's troops that had made their way back to the city, Elspa realized the depths of their predicament. The city looked as if it might survive the barbarians, but a full scale shuddeni war party?
That night, atop the walls of the city, Elspa and Alaria were wed. Exchanging vows, they knitted their life forces together, using the magic that had served them so well for this last affirmation of love.
"If our plan is to work, Alaria... we can't rely on the masses of military light. Everything we do - everything has to matter. Everything has to be done right."
Dawn broke over Earendam with a warcry.
The red kankorans were lead by Rjaal Kalas, a sinister wolf-man who had fought his way to the top of his people by every conceivably atrocity. Uniting a series of already bloodthirsty Kankoran tribes, Rjaal became Thane, and lead his people across the Uthlin to bring a bloodshed not seen in this part of the world for quite some time.
Now, at the height of his power, Rjaal had brought his horde to the very gates of Earendam. A sea of red fur, axes, maces and spears, the horde approached the north wall in a rush, heedless of loss of life or limb.
Archers let loose with a sea of arrows, but the tide of bodies kept coming remorselessly at the wall.
Heaving an enormous battering ram, the Kankorans begin hammering away at Earendam's gates, trying to batter their way into the great city.
On the east wall, Elspa, Alaria, and the archers were making a daring effort.
Clambering down the wall like many of the other sortie parties, they struck for the east flank of the army.
There, hidden under a cloak of invisibility, were the scattered shuddeni remnants which had supplied the kankorans with enchanted weapons and protective spells.
Now, the shuddeni were hurriedly constructing a strange artifact, surrounded by the east flank of the horde.
Touching their hands to the heads of the men from Kor Thrandir, Elspa and Alaria fed every hope, every dream they could muster into driving them to a zealous frenzy.
For their part, the men of Kor Thrandir were if anything bred in their opposition to the shuddeni, and were more than eager to put paid to their hereditary enemies.
Alaria raised a shield to protect against the magics of void about them, and they charged swiftly into combat. Letting slip with bolts of pure energy, they tore into the souls of the shuddeni they faced, blasting them back toward their eldritch device. Although unsuspecting of the attack, the shuddeni and kankorans reformed their lines, hacking viciously at the men-at-arms they drew close to them.
Elspa and Alaria cut through the lines, dropping visions of damnation onto the wolf-men, and subduing the battle-crazed berserkers. With luck and the skill of their companions, they and some ten of the Kor Thrandians broke through the lines and approached the device.
Running low on mana, Elspa found himself drawing power from a source unsuspected - his father's signet ring! For so long had he kept it near him, it now served as a focus for his power, allowing him to draw more than he though possibly into his spells.
Blocking his mind from the fear spells of the shuddeni with a mental shell, he blocked one void scholar from his spellcasting, and tainted the flow of magic to another with sharp stabs of light.
Alaria, however, had no such focus - instead, she drew on her dwindling supply of spirit stones.
One of the shuddeni raised his arms, calling forth a giant elemental out of the ground. Alaria turned to spiritwrack it, but the spell fizzled on the great thing, which was busy pounding away at the Kor Thrandians.
Elspa shouted to her "Alaria! It doesn't have a soul!"
Nodding, Alaria drew deep within herself - rather than striking at the soul of her opponent, she drew her own life force into a bolt of pure energy, and blasted away at the golem.
Supported by no less than four shuddeni scholars, the massive scholar took bolt after bolt. Finally, with Alaria gasping for breath, the elemental crumbled into dust!
Elspa leaned to signal affirmation to her, but his smile collapsed into a tortured yell as he saw the shuddeni swordmaster come behind her. Striking with at her chest with a cruel blow, she fell to the ground, golden body slashed and battered.
Elspa raced to the body, but found himself surrounded by shuddeni. Hoping only to join his beloved, he raised his staff defensively, mind nearly exhausted.
The shuddeni closed in, sensing weakness.
What they found, though, was beyond their wildest expectations. Rising from the body of Alaria was a golden seraph, wings of light with a sword of flame, striking at them with wild abandon.
Elspa could not watch as the seraph destroyed the shuddeni - he could only hold Alaria's body and see the scene of her death reflected over and over again.
While his love's killers had been slain, the seraph had vanished after its task of vengenace was complete.
The remaining shuddeni had rallied to the device, which was now pulsing with a deep black light. Mad with grief, he looked at Alaria one last time. With disbelief, he saw her last spirit stone had returned to his hand - one last, affinity, perhaps for what had been hers.
Crumbling the stones, he channeled the mana - and what he did with it was something never done before.
He drew the energy into him, and instead of discharging it as a bolt, he became the energy. The avatar of all the magics of spirit, his body was no longer even flesh - a pale wash of blue energy, he ground his way through the enemies' - holy power severing everything evil, ripping shuddeni limbs from bodies - tossing Kankorans like rag dolls, and only when the infernal device was gone did the spell's magic end, and he collapsed, gasping for air, to the ground.
That day, the north of Earendam burned. The horde and Rjaar were decimated and slain, but the city had suffered grevious wounds. Centuries old institutions had fallen into rubble, and the stink of the dying filled the streets.
For Elspa, the city was now a barren place. Rather than leaving the city, though, he built a shrine to his magic, with the aid of the grateful people of Avendar.
Years later, when his own life reached its end, his students looked up from his deathbed.
Where there had been one voice there was now two.