Sixteenth of Harbinger
There had been a time when the dwarves were feared throughout the lands. They had dominated the mountains of Nimura, unearthed the treasures of the northern ocean, and tamed the wilds of the east. When they marched to war, they bore heavy golden cuirasses, wielded the finest steel, and marched behind great machines that could not be withstood by any catapult or fortress. They had crushed their enemies without mercy, compromise, or remorse.
That had been before Palia. Before the imperialist fleets arrived from across the oceans. For all the ferocity of the dwarven legions, they had been steadily pushed back by the Palian regiments, their strongholds crushed underfoot until only Nimura remained. The surface was colonised, the mountains given to the dwarves as a peace offering, which they had shamefully accepted. They reasoned that it was better to accept a little and await the day of vengeance. They signed the Mirzali Compact, restricting their armies to Nimura lest they be destroyed by Palian might. Then, after the cataclysm that eradicated Palia, those rulers' sons renewed the Compact with the newly independent kingdoms, heaping shame upon shame. It was during those dark days that an elven prophet living in Nimura had given the Song of the Ascendant, singing it to the dwarven kings and vowing that it was the key to their future glory. Every dwarf learned it from birth. In the halls beneath the rocky mountain of Mirzali, the words were inscribed in gold:
The Ascendant will rise
With fire in his eyes;
To liberate the land
And bring oneness again;
The liars will be silenced
The fruit of the Ascendant’s defiance;
All who stand will fall
The proud will cry forevermore.
Every dwarf watched the sky for the falling star that would unearth the Ascendant and declare their victory. For a thousand years they waited, longed, and lost hope. Then Ashelath fell, and hope was rekindled. The only question was whether the kings of Nimura would seize the opportunity to restore their former glory.
Nizali Amaroth was the firstborn son of Zimari Amaroth, King of the Seventh Dynasty of Nimura. He was ninety-six, young by the standards of dwarves who lived up to three hundred years – more even, if they lived healthily, which was rare enough. He was about four feet tall, and his light brown beard was tied in a plat that ran down to his chest. His ‘common name’, used for those outside the clan, was ‘Greywall’. It was as such that he was known to the Lord of Narandir. His meetings with this Belkai Androva were at the forefront of his mind as he stepped through the golden doors that opened up to the throne room. The floor was solid black obsidian, the walls and ceiling the purest gold. Statues of dwarves, dragons, and subterranean beasts were spread throughout the room, made of gold and embedded with emeralds, rubies, and diamonds. The rear of the room was taken up by a raised platform covered in crimson carpet, upon which sat the throne of King Zimari. He sat tall upon the throne, diamond-tipped sceptre held in one hand as he looked upon his son. His beard nearly reached the floor, the colour of rust indicating his age. Nizali stopped at the foot of the steps leading to the throne and bowed. He waited until the sceptre tipped, then raised his head and looked upon his father.
“I live to serve, Lord Zimari,” he proclaimed. Even the king’s son was not excepted from due reverence. He wasn’t alone in the room. Beside him stood Desuri, the king’s senior advisor. On his left was Milfaz, the senior military commander. He was wearing bronze armour but had no weapons on him. No one but the guards could bear weapons near the king – and their families would be punished should they try to harm him. The guard himself would be unharmed, only chained in the dungeon with his family’s bodies. There would be no martyrs, only shattered families. Zimari had learned well the lessons of the past.
Milfaz glanced over at Nizali and gave him a respectful nod. There were no lazy dwarves, their existence was too hard for that, but Nizali was particularly well thought of. The son of the king, he had never taken advantage of his status, instead earning every position and working as hard as one of the lowliest miners. Milfaz was a veteran of the long wars to claim the lowest depths of Mirzali from the dark creatures that had once dwelt there, and only respected those who earned their place.
“We have come as requested,” Desuri said softly. “What tidings do we have from the Lord of Shadows?”
Zimari didn’t answer at first as he studied the three men. None of them showed any sign of weakness or hesitation. They were his most trusted officials, handpicked for service and to lead what was to come.
“Our Lord granted me a vision. Our enemy was laid before us naked and bloody. Her land burned. Mirzali stood tall.” Zimari smiled grimly. “Our victory is declared.”
Desuri took his cue. “The tunnels are proceeding as scheduled. We have had minimal cave-ins. We will breach the Forest in a matter of days.”
“I am still concerned about these tunnels,” Nizali said, ignoring a sense of fear as all eyes turned to him. “This witch can sense all life. We do not fight a mere Svaletan or an elf. She will know our tunnels are there. She will respond.”
“The shades will block her senses,” Zimari promised. The Arcane had gifted them the service of dark, shadowy creatures from the earth’s depths to build the tunnels. Slaves to the dwarves, they were bound to bring an end to Narandir’s self-proclaimed guardians and grant Nimura access to its long-lost treasures.
“We know little of their abilities,” Nizali pointed out. “Nor how they will withstand a Child of the Wind.”
“The shadows serve their master,” Zimari assured him. “They are not living, and their presence will disrupt whatever senses the witch may use. We will have secrecy until the moment we strike.”
Nizali bowed again in submission and Zimari waved for Milfaz to make his report. The general quietly cleared his throat before he spoke.
“As you are aware, we have seven regiments in Mirzali, with triple that in the other mountains. I do not anticipate requiring their assistance, but they are prepared for that eventuality. The regimental commanders have been fully briefed.
“The shades will complete the tunnels in twelve days. They will breach in six locations and lead our forces. We will overwhelm the elves through sheer numbers, and the shades themselves will deal with Belkai. Have we determined the location of the Source?”
“There is no way of finding it without breaching the Forest,” Zimari told him. “The shades will have to scout before the main assault.”
“That will be risky,” Nizali warned, ignoring the glare that he received from the king.
“We cannot afford to invade the entire Forest searching for it,” Milfaz replied. “The only reason I am willing to launch such an assault is to stretch the elves thin. We cannot afford an extended campaign. The Mirzali Compact will be enforced, and we would have war on all sides.”
“This has always hinged on our ability to stay undetected,” Desuri noted. “If we lose that surprise, we face a wider war than we can afford.”
Zimari nodded gravely. “Nizali, your concern is appreciated. We are entering the most crucial stage. Monitor the shades and keep me personally updated on the progress of the tunnelling. It cannot fail.”
“As you wish,” Nizali said with a bow. What else could he say? The king’s message had been clear. He did not approve of Nizali’s questioning of the Arcane’s gift, so now he was assigned to watch them, study them, and learn the wisdom of their Lord. Nizali did not lack faith in the divine. The Lord of Shadows, as he was known by the dwarves, who praised him as the one who led them to the earth’s hidden treasuries. Other races called him Falkar, fearing him as the lord of the darker beasts. Nizali knew what he had unleashed upon Svaleta and the Aliri in an attempt to draw out Belkai Androva to her death. Without its lord, Narandir’s magic would have failed and Nimura would have marched north and seized the Source, the name that they had given to whatever had created Narandir’s magic and would in turn create the Ascendant that they had spent millennia waiting for. Falkar’s plan had failed, that much was clear. So now Nimura would go to war and risk everything to attain their destiny. Maybe it was inevitable, but Nizali worried about the response of the other kingdoms. The Mirzali Compact was clear; if any dwarven soldiers left Nimura, the kingdoms were bound to wage war against them. The dwarves had been that powerful once. They would be again. The Song of the Ascendant had made that clear. Nizali Amaroth would ensure their success – or die trying.
***
The fires had stopped burning, though the intertwined smells of burned wood and flesh still lingered. The survivors of the Citadel had split into three groups. Some manned the remaining walls to watch out for more threats, while the others either gathered the dead or tended the wounded. Arak and Salatia walked side by side through the compound as they surveyed the devastation. Of the hundred mages who had been in the Citadel, only fifty remained – thirty-five of whom were unharmed. All to kill thirteen werewolves and one spellcaster. It had been a bloody battle, one that surely enter the songs of the Order. If we survive whatever is still to come. Without thinking, Arak drifted back to the building where they had laid their dead. Their attackers were piled outside the compound to be burned. He stared unblinking at his wives, laid side by side upon a stone altar.
“Arak.” Salatia’s gentle voice broke his reverie. With tears welling, he turned to face her and nodded.
Stolen novel; please report.
“I know. We need to organise.”
“No.” Salatia smiled sadly and put a hand on his arm. “We need to leave. The Arcane only care about us because Belkai is one of us. She will need the Brilhardem for what is still to come. She will need all the mages.”
Arak looked up as a familiar horn sounded, the signal of a returning raiding party. His eyes brightened as he looked back to Salatia.
“She will need the Dominion.”
He quickly made his way to the gate with Salatia close behind. They were met there by a female orc, a head taller than Arak and with darker green skin, red warpaint splashed across her eyes. Two thick teeth jutted up from her lower jaw, and her chin had been pierced by an ornamental bone. She wore only a sheepskin covering, and carried a battle-axe strapped to her back. She looked around the Citadel in surprise, then gave Arak a quick nod.
“I’m sorry we were so late,” she said in a deep voice. “We were moving east when we got reports of the strangers.”
“Your blades would have been appreciated, Barilax,” Arak confirmed.
“How bad?”
Salatia stepped forward to give the answer. “Fifty dead, fifteen wounded. Arak’s wives have been lost.”
Barilax grimaced and took a firm hold of Arak’s forearm. “They will be grieved with blood, Arak. Who did this?”
Arak grunted. “If Belkai is to be believed, Delorax himself has turned his face against us.”
Barilax had long been a friend of the Order, having grown up in the nearby village. It was a little-known fact that the Ikari had immense magical abilities, though they had always emphasised physical strength. Barilax was not afraid of tapping into either strength, and had been quickly marked as one of the clan’s best hunters. She was a good friend of Belkai Androva. Her credibility was not in question.
“Then we know why a dragon was unleashed,” Barilax said, enraged that she had been so easily tricked. “Belkai must be informed.”
“Precisely.” Salatia looked at Arak. “The wounded and their carers must stay here. But the others need to come with us.”
Arak nodded before asking Barilax,
“How many are with you?”
“We have seventy in our party,” she answered. “But we weren’t the only to respond. We could have another hundred and fifty by morning.”
“We still need to alert the other Brilhardem,” Salatia pointed out. There were a good fifty or so members of the Order on assignment across the kingdoms. Arak sighed. By the time he reached Belkai, he would hardly have a force to offer. He would have to compromise.
“I will send riders to Svaleta, Torleight, and Timarna,” he said, giving the capitals of Svaleta, Lustria, and the Tios Principality. “They will entreat the kings to give us passage. But they will move openly. Our students will find them and join us.”
“We don’t have many horses. It will take time to reach Narandir,” Salatia noted.
“We will do what we must,” Arak declared. He looked to Barilax. “We will wait until dawn. Then whoever is here will march to Narandir. The riders will leave tonight.”
***
There was no noise other than the gentle rustle of the breeze in the leaves above. Belkai had demanded total solitude, not even allowing Loranna to follow her into the dense western regions of the Forest. The elves seldom came this way, leaving it to the trolls and beasts that flourished there. Some of the bravest members of the clan were known to come out here to hunt, but the word had been spread; the Lord of Narandir had declared it off limits for this day. There was no motivation to argue with such a decree. This was the woman who had freed them from Mishtar and his slavery, killed an Arcane in the middle of their Forest, and fought and killed a coven of vampires and their werewolf lords. Her judgement was trustworthy.
Belkai sat on the damp grass with her legs crossed, hands on her knees, eyes closed as she let her mind drift. Her breaths were few and far between as she drifted somewhere between asleep and awake. To anyone watching, she would have looked frozen in time amongst the trees. She didn’t reach out to track anything, as would be her usual custom. Instead she waited for what would come to her. There was powerful, ancient magic within Narandir that defied the authority of the Arcane and was foreign to any of the official orders. She had told Davos those months ago that Narandir held the power of creation. That was true, but she didn’t understand it. Nor had Mishtar, but at least in taking his power she had managed to gain a basic knowledge of how to access it.
She slowly lifted her hands off her knees and leaned forward to rest them in the grass. She could feel a tingling start in her fingertips and slowly move up her arms, filling her as she shuddered with an unexpected ecstasy. She fought to keep her mind clear, the unfamiliar magic threatening to overwhelm her. It was one thing to control Narandir, she was starting to realise, and a whole other beast to truly understand it. The magic seemed to probe her mind, searching for the source of her authority. Unbidden, she relived the moment that she had taken Mishtar’s life. She felt no emotion. The magic drew back for a moment, then rushed back in stronger than before. She gasped at the assault on her senses, and only regained control after long seconds of struggle against the flooding in every nerve. You need to focus, she told herself, and pictured a Blackwing, the simplest construct that she had met in the Forest. A child-sized creature with leathery wings and deadly teeth and claws. She felt the power surge through her like a raging river, and concentrated every sense on slowing it down. Eventually it dropped to a stream, and she directed it, picturing the Blackwings that she had seen and remembering the feel of their heartbeat, the feeling of their bloodlust. She felt the magic drain out of her, and slowly opened her eyes, expecting to see the creature sitting before her.
Instead, there was a small black cloud hanging in the air before her. She frowned, thinking at first that it was an illusion. A slight shift in the cloud, however, told her that it was a living thing. She moved onto her hands and knees and crawled over to it. She reached out a hand and it drew back momentarily before coming back and wrapping around her finger. It wasn’t a threat, just an act of curiosity.
What am I? Belkai blinked, not expecting to sense the question. She shook her head sadly.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. Or did she? It was familiar. She closed her eyes as the cloud wrapped around her finger and let her senses investigate. Its ‘voice’ was a whisper in her mind, a connection made by ancient magic. Her eyes flew open, and the cloud leapt backwards as if startled. She looked up at the trees and whispered a curse. Turning back to the cloud, she whispered,
“You’re a shade, aren’t you?”
It didn’t answer, but it made sense. She hadn’t managed to create a Blackwing, but she had conjured a rudimentary life force. Its ‘voice’ was identical to the whispers of the trees. She stood and walked over to one of the bigger trees and rested a hand on it. It was the same sensation. She looked up at the branches and said softly,
“You were the first ones, weren’t you? He wanted to create an army, but you were all he summoned. He trapped you in there. No wonder you didn’t serve him.”
Can we be freed?
She stepped back, shocked that they spoke.
“Not yet,” she admitted. “I cannot feel you, not in the way that you need. That is another level of magic.”
She looked over at the newborn shade and felt a tear welling up in her eye. She couldn’t imagine what they had felt, brought into existence dazed and confused, only to be locked into a tree by the fury of a vengeful mage. After a thousand years, they had truly merged with the trees that had been forced upon them. If she released them, they could disintegrate into nothing – or they could seek vengeance themselves. After so long locked away, there was no telling what their true motivations were.
“Give me time,” she whispered to the tree. “I will find a way.”
Her shade was drifting away, and she didn’t stop it. Be free, she thought, and it seemed that it heard her as it twisted in the breeze. Find me the answers I need.
“What was that?”
Belkai turned slowly, her hands spreading as she summoned her magic. She took a breath and relaxed when she recognised Syndra, a young chestnut-haired elf whom she had met only fairly recently. She wasn’t surprised to see her. If there was anyone who would ignore Belkai’s restrictions, it would be her. Syndra was an avid hunter and would not look kindly on anyone trying to stop her movements.
“That was a shade,” Belkai told her, settling back into the grass. The elf sat beside her, watching as the cloud disappeared into the trees. “It seems I walk the same path as Mishtar. I now know how to create rudimentary life. But it is empty, it knows nothing.”
“He did the same?” Syndra was only a hundred years old; Mishtar had seized control of Narandir over a thousand years earlier. She had grown up under his rule but knew little of the Forest’s history.
Belkai nodded. “The magic in these trees, the way they speak…he trapped the shades in them. So they have sat in captivity for a millennium.”
Syndra looked around with a new appreciation for what she saw. “Can you free them?”
“Not yet.” Belkai shook her head sadly. “I don’t understand this magic well enough yet. Nor do I know what they will do should they be freed.”
“Would you do it? If you could, and if it were safe?”
Belkai thought for a long moment. In the end, though, the answer was easy. “Yes. Narandir deserves to be free. They are still trapped by Mishtar. I would end that if I were able.”
Syndra studied the trees and sighed. “There has been much death here. It is good that you seek life.”
Belkai smiled sadly. “You want to leave, don’t you?”
Syndra shrugged. “Not forever. This is my home, my people. I could never truly leave. But I would do a pilgrimage and see the world for myself. We never had the chance under Mishtar.”
“The time will come when you can,” Belkai promised her. “Our storms will not last forever.”
Syndra shook her head. When she spoke, her voice was mournful. “What you did was right, Belkai. Mishtar had to die. You are the rightful lord, and I am grateful. But the Arcane will not rest until you face judgement. I fear that Narandir will never know peace.”
Belkai turned and took Syndra’s hands in her own. Their eyes met, and Belkai forced herself to smile. “You are young, Syndra, full of life – and promise. We are not locked in eternal war. I have a feeling that darkness is coming, but on the other side is dawn.”
Syndra squeezed her hands. “You speak of hope, but we know that every week you slip away to visit that ruin. Yet you have not found the answers.”
Belkai felt her pain. Syndra had led the expedition that had found the dwarven ruin, and she had lost good friends making their way through the tunnel that led to the ancient dwarven door. There was no way of accessing it without consulting Nimura, and Belkai wasn’t ready to reveal the secret. Still, she had often made her way to the tunnel to reach out to whatever was on the other side. She hadn’t known that she’d been spotted, but she shouldn’t have been surprised.
“No, I haven’t found them,” Belkai finally admitted. “But I have faith.”
“In what?”
Belkai released her hands and looked around. “I have faith that Narandir will endure. That will keep us all strong in the days ahead.”
“The elves have faith in you, Belkai,” Syndra assured her. “We have always obeyed Narandir’s lord. But we have never before loved them.”
Belkai swallowed nervously. She knew that the elves looked up to her, but it had never been so clearly stated. It was a mighty standard to live up to.
“I love Narandir and her people,” Belkai replied, and smiled at Syndra. “I will not allow this Forest to fall.”
Whatever it takes, she silently promised the Forest around her. Whatever it takes, you will be free.