Chapter VIII:
The Kingdom To Be
The Decay of Bel Albor
Visions of things past and nightmares of things to come plagued both Agonas and Pelas every night and every day. In the wake of their ambitions the number of those slain and maimed rose to be more than any man could with a clean conscience recount. The record keepers became drinkers or hung themselves from the rafters of their studies, and no man took up the task in their absence.
Rebellions sprouted up in every region and province, but the might of the high elves proved too great for any mortal lord to challenge. The men who dwelt in the Nook of the Talon Mountains poured out into the south against Sunlan in might, but they were pushed back by Gheshtick, who led an army of fifty thousand men against them, burning their country until it was uninhabitable. Zefru's assassinations continued, or so it was said - no man or elf ever was able to prove that Zefru had done aught but that which was honorable and forthright.
Rebels arose in Lushlin, some seeking to make Bralohi and Kolohi their lords, and to march against Alwan and Sunlan both. Bralohi was quick to quell these voices, taking advantage of his own knowledge of the swamplands to rout them.
Goblins swarmed back into the land of Ilvas, tearing the old fortress apart and leaving little beside the foundations of that once mighty kingdom to evidence its place in the history of Bel Albor. Daruvis the son of Falruvis, however, acquired the armory of Amro the Smith, which had lain hidden in Ilvas until its destruction by the goblins. He found and preserved a great many of those famed dwarf-steel, elf-wrought blades, which time would prove to be sharp enough to wound even the spirits of the next world. He told no one of this, however, except for his father and brothers. And he told only his father of the means by which he acquired them.
The city of Inklas, where the sons of Parganas last saw one another as friends, grew prosperous and strong, sending ship after ship into the north to trade with the troubled lands of Bel Albor. The Golden Palace of Sunlan was emptied as gold was sent away to purchase arms and supplies. Seeing so much wealth pass into the south, the people of Sunlan began to pass thereafter, leaving the northern kingdoms behind forever, and carrying with them the legends and tales of the Old World and the Far North - stories that prepared their descendants for the coming of the elves many generations later.
Entire villages left the shores of Sunlan, and many even departed into the west, beyond Mount Vitiai, though none can say for certain what became of these - it is said by some in Lapulia that the Knariss passed through Anatheda, and there learned at the very least to revere the star of Theodysus before leaving Bel Albor's mysterious western shores. These are said to have come to dwell in Titalo along the northern coast of Weldera - but who can say for certain what became of them? Now that the records of the Nihlion are being opened before the world there are many who are scrambling to lay claim to this or that ancient tribe, as if proving that their ancestors descended from Bel Albor would render them more noble than they were without that pedigree.
Pelas could tell no more than his brother the nature of the strange visions that tormented them. They found themselves facing one another on opposite sides of the Esse River. They could make out one another's features clearly, though nearly a league separated them in the place where they stood. A figure appeared, a man clothed and garbed in a brown robe with a rope belt.
In a moment the river seemed to freeze and they stood side by side facing him. The man grew in stature, wings rising from his back and flames bursting from his nostrils as his neck sprouted up like a serpent, revealing beneath the plain robes the form of a mighty dragon.
So troubled were they by these visions that their halls became as silent and somber as the grave.
It is hard to know how to receive the reports that have come to us from the Far North and from the Old World. On the one hand the result of the devastation that befell Bel Albor represented a veritable ending of a world. And there is no reason that such an ending should not be accompanied by visions and terrors and tremors of soul and spirit that exceed what mankind in general ordinarily encounters. On the other hand it is difficult to know how much is mere fancy, how much is truth and how much is allegory - and how much is some combination of the three. The one thing that is certain is that the people who fled the Far North in those days fled as if they were pursued by the great Dragon himself - indeed the greater part of them reported dragons to be the reason their old lands were abandoned.
Many also reported visions of strange and mysterious creatures, the chief of which were the Sirens. It was said that in those days a Siren appeared in every village, speaking words that were, to their ears, nonsense, but which filled them with a sense of dread and foreboding strong enough to drive them from the homes of their ancestors, across the cold sea to lands where they were not known and not welcome. Beautiful women, each clothed with white so brilliant that the sun seemed to become a dim ember beside them, and with skin as clear as glass, appeared in the northern kingdoms, warning of great calamity with mysterious songs and poems. Some said that the stars themselves descended to give warning, and to drive men from the north. Our own learned men have long maintained that the Sirens were invented by men of later ages in order to make it out that the gods had given the people of the North due warning before burying their land in ice and water. In this way the destruction of Bel Albor would not seem so utterly cruel and unjust, and neither would their gods. But whether there were Sirens to warn them or not, men fled the North in those days. Let it be whatsoever you must believe it to be - something drove men by the thousands out of Bel Albor.
The Dragons appeared first in the Talon Mountains, and they were thought to be the spawn of the Fire Bird, or to have been lizards who hadgorged themselves upon its carcass and over time become beasts of monstrous proportions. The outposts of Sunlan were attacked first, and nothing was left of them when the dragons descended upon them. Fire and storm rent stones from foundations and men and elves flew through the air as if they were leaves in a hurricane. Mighty men marched forth to challenge the dragons, but there arose among the people of Sunlan no heroes and no victors.
The borderlands of Alwan fared little better when dragons began to enter their own lands, passing first through the valley of Thedval and then into Ilvas near the root of the Esse River. Their progress, though unstoppable and sure, was slow, and the elves therefore allowed themselves to believe that it meant something other than the end of all they had built in the North.
Almost as soon as the reports of these monsters grew cold, Pelas and his brother renewed their plots and strategies.
Weakness
Nihls struggled to raise himself from the ground. His side burned with pain and he clutched a strip of cloth tightly to his bleeding side. His cheek was so swollen that he could see it quite easily through his left eye. His right eye was so swollen that he could not even open it.
'Nihls!' a voice came from behind him. He turned to see Meidi coming toward him, holding a weeping baby in her arms.
'Stay, Meidi!' Nihls called out to her, 'is it safe?'
'I am safe,' she said as she approached, her voice torn between anger and compassion.
'What did they take?' Nihls asked, limping toward her with difficulty.
'Oh, husband,' she said when she reached him, brushing his bloodied hair from his face. Through his swollen face her worried eyes looked like they were far away. 'Why will you not fight? You saved me, and you have since saved many lives. Why will you not fight?'
His breath left him and he grew silent, slumping down to rest upon a rock. 'I can't,' he said. 'I will give my life for you or for any other, Meidi.' His lips curled into a frown. 'But I cannot kill them, Meidi. I don't know why, but I can't.'
This was far from the first time he had been abused in this way while fending off brigands or theives. He fought bravely, but he refused to take another man's life, whatever the reason. 'When I see them, even as they ga
ze upon me with murderous hatred or cold disdain, I see only my own eyes gazing out through their faces. When I wonder if they will kill me, or if they will take all that I own, I wonder also what sorrows have driven them to act the animal. When I consider slaying,' he swallowed, 'I can hear the sound of their women weeping over them.'
Meidi sat beside him and put her child on the ground, tearing a strip from her dress to tend his wounds. With a start the babe stopped crying and looked around in amazement, suddenly taking interest in tearing at the grass. Meidi sighed, and Nihls thought the greater part of her anger left her. 'You need a trick Nihls,' she said, her lips revealing the smallest hint of a smile.
'A trick?' Nihls asked, grimacing as she dabbed the blood from his face.
'Yes,' she said. 'Just as you have taught men to lie, so also must you teach yourself to kill.'
'I don't know that such a thing is possible,' he said with a chuckle quickly to be regretted. He clutched his side and shut his eyes as the pain came over him in a wave.
'What do you know of the possible?' Meidi said sternly. 'Are you in communion with the Dragon himself? To know what is not?'
Nihls sniffed, and was comforted also, for she was slowly coming to understand him, and to understand him well enough to contradict him with his own ideas - or with old Abbon's ideas, more properly speaking.
'It is not a lie,' she continued, 'to tell a man that you are telling him something, even if that something is false; for you are not telling him that something, which is false; you are telling him only that you are telling it to him, which is true. That is what you taught us, Nihls, and we will never forget such a useful truth.'
Nihls grunted, both with pain and with frustration. This was not the first time that he regretted ever sharing this nonsense with his friends. In truth the whole thing had originated because of a disagreement between he and Noro over the evil of lying.
'You cannot be held responsible for every death, Nihls,' Meidi continued. 'The dried meat we lost to those bandits this very day, for instance, might be tainted with a plague or sickness - is it then murder for us to have lost them in this way? If the men who stole them eat and perish?' She sounded, to Nihls' frustration, as though she wanted that very much to be the case.
'That would not be our doing,' Nihls protested.
'Is it not?' she said with mock amazement. 'We prepared the food, we preserved it - if it has gone bad, is that not our doing? Are we not the causes, then, of their deaths?'
'Yes,' he began, but Meidi continued right on talking.
'Whether we wished them to die or no, we are the cause of their death. But yet we are blameless for it. Or if we dug a trench,' she said, shifting her thoughts, 'to protect our home, and a man perished attempting to leap over it, would his blood then be on our hands?'
'No, it would be his own folly,' Nihls replied. He made as if to go on, but Meidi's glare silenced him.
'You must make yourself fatal, Nihls. Not fatal like a warrior,' she looked tenderly at his swollen face. 'I know that your heart could never be a warrior's heart. Make yourself fatal like that trench. Weild your blade, not to kill, but so that a man might fall upon it. Speak to your foes; warn them, tell them that your sword is perilous - and if they do not believe you, then they have died for their own ignorance, and not by any device of yours alone.'
There was some sense in what she was saying, Nihls realized. But there was no trick of thought that could take from him the sense that the men he might slay - or cause to be slain - were in a very real sense men just like him, though raised up in darkness. He did not realize how much the thought had upset him until he saw the sadness in Meidi's eyes as she watched him struggle with the idea.
'I will do anything for you, Meidi,' he said. 'I would die for you a thousand times, and suffer a thousand wounds.' His chest rose and fell as he struggled.
Meidi put her finger on his cheek, 'Think no more of it for now, husband,' she said soothingly.
This was far from the first time that Nihls had such ill fortune. As the whole frame of Bel Albor shook with the tremors and pangs that accompanied the fall of Ilvas and the coming of the Dragons, the number of those who made their fortunes preying upon the weak seemed to double. Whole tribes seemed to spring up, raiding and pillaging wherever the forces of Alwan were too few to prevent them. Many of the Enthedu had even been slain by these. Some insisted that they leave their wandering lives and cast their lot with the Blest once more. But Nihls would not return to Noro, and those who were yet loyal to the pupil of Abbon remained. The chief among these was Teacher Eren and his wife. Eren had more or less taken charge of the Enthedu after Nihls' marriage, but he sought counsel from the younger man constantly. Eren was a wise man, but he was not possessed of a great deal of confidence. Men therefore overlooked his wisdom and saw only the weakness of personality; and they took advantage accordingly.
But no matter how many men left them, and how many harsh words were directed at Nihls, the young man would not budge from what he had been taught. And the more men argued the more convinced he seemed to grow.
Strength
Noro, on the other hand, grew stronger by the day it seemed. There was nothing Pelas could do to prevent those who lived on the border of the kingdom from passing over into the lands of the Blest. This problem became all the more pronounced when he made his treaty with the lord of Anatheda, since those who passed over into his lands could defend themselves with the claim that they were not leaving Alwan after all., but only seeking opportunity in another region.
When Falruvis and his sons reported a decrease in their forces as a result of those young men who took their families into the west, Pelas very nearly spat he was so furious. His face turned crimson, but he retained his composure. He was the Immortal King of Alwan, and time would always be on his side. He set his anger to simmer and called upon the people of Alwan to fight for him in his eternal war against Agonas.
He called upon all the people, and so for the first time a portion of the followers of Theodysus were compelled to fight in the wars of Lord Pelas. They were assured, however, that since they fought for the preservation of Alwan, they also therefore fought for the preservation of the Blest who dwelt therein, and so for the Eternal King himself.
When these warriors, fighting as if their lives were nothing in comparison to the glory of their cause, made a name for themselves on the battlefield, Pelas' anger grew still hotter. For he, by trying to draw the Blest fully into the kingdom had only made the name of Noro more famous.
Noro himself led them, and he gathered under his banners men by the thousands, until he had ammassed one of the greatest mortal armies that had ever marched in Bel Albor. All of this he did in the name of Lord Pelas.
But as his reputation grew, so also did Lord Pelas' unease at his success and popularity. He sent order after order, demanding more and more of the army of the Blest, until the people could no longer prudently believe that he wanted anything other than their destruction. 'Secure the banks of the Esse River,' he demanded in the spring, and then in the summer he wanted them to, 'gain a foothold in north Sunlan itself.'
But Noro had grown to be as cunning as any other lord in Bel Albor. On the last day of summer he sent emmissaries to Sunlan, suing for an alliance with the Golden Palace and its lord.
Gheshtick was sent to him and under a clouded sky the noble elf spoke to him in the open air, the two of them riding side by side along the shores of the Great Lake.
'Rain is coming,' Gheshtick said with his eyes raised toward the heavens.'
'Rain and flood,' Noro said with a nod.
'What quarrel have you with your master Pelas?' Gheshtick said, passing quickly from formalities and slowly bringing his horse to a halt. His eyes were full of understanding, and when he looked at Noro the lord of the Blest felt as though he were an apple being turned over in the market place, weighed and considered by prudent hands.
'He has murdered,' Noro answered sharply.
r /> 'All warriors murder,' Gheshtick said. 'But what do they murder for? That is all that we care to know.'
'Lord Agonas woud make Bel Albor glorious; Lord Pelas wishes to keep all such glory for himself.'
'How do you know what my master wishes for Bel Albor?' Gheshtick asked, narrowing his eyes to look more closely at Noro.
'I can only say as I have been informed,' Noro answered. 'But you are his emmissary - I hope you can assure me that my suspicions are correct.'
'Lord Agonas is not like his brother,' Gheshtick said honestly. 'That much I can say at least. He does not seek his own glory; at least not as Lord Pelas does, at the expense of all other men. Is that sufficient enough reason for your betrayal?'
'Betrayal?' Noro answered defensively.
'In the halls of a king there are many who murmer and complain,' Gheshtick said, 'but woe to those who do not take care to whom they complain! If a man will come to you privately and whisper a secret against another man, they will whisper a secret against you as well. It is the nature of a betrayer to betray; who then will you betray next?'
Noro was startled by the elf's questions at first, but he soon regained his composure, his certainty in himself overcoming his doubtfulness. 'I have only ever been for the good; and if I serve a man one day and then turn against him the next, it is only for the good. He whose heart is pure has nothing to fear from my zeal.'
Gheshtick nodded, realizing the only way to oppose Noro's reasoning would be to say that Agonas was not, after all, striving for what was good. To himself he was quite ready to admit this. He said, however, 'Then it would seem that you and your Blest have very little to fear from Lord Agonas.' His tone seemed to indicate, however, that there might be some in Sunlan they should fear.
Noro was quick to understand that he meant Lord Morta and what now remained of his godhunters. At the thought of these he smiled; for only the Enthedu knew who had broken the ancient strength of Xanthur's men. It seemed to utterly pass out of Noro's thoughts, though, that he who broke them was a Lapulian Black Adder - a man not yet a follower of Theodysus.
'We fear nothing of this world,' Noro assured him. His confidence impressed Gheshtick.
The elf nodded approvingly and asked, 'Will you serve Agonas faithfully? Do you now swear fealty to him and his golden throne? He has been betrayed too many times to accept anything less.'
'For all to hear I tell you that I swear my life and people to his service - only let us avenge Lord Pelas for his wrongs!'
In two months' time, however, when Agonas and his armies had crossed the Esse River and with the aid Noro's spear and the might of the Blest pushed Pelas once more from the old lands of Ilvas, Noro turned against his new master and the falseness of his oath was made manifest for all to see.
The army of Gheshtick marched through Lushlin, driving the sons of Lohi from that land, and the army of Agonas himself marched northward toward Thedua. But Noro gathered a great host from amongst the discontented mortals of Alwan and Ilvas, from among the Lupith, the Knariss and especially among the Essenes and attacked Agonas and Gheshtick from the east, pinning them between the forces of Pelas and the Blest. Bralohi and Kolohi took this to mean that his defection had been false, and in fact he was loyal after all to their master. They pushed hard at Agonas, and many lords of Sunlan fell in the battles that followed.
As the forces of Pelas pushed eastward, eager to make a slaughter and perhaps even to capture the dark rebel Agonas himself, a great host marched against them from the west, where the remainder of the army of Anatheda had lain waiting for Noro's command.
Heads swirled in confusion; shields shattered and mighty men fell in heaps, weeping for the terrors that fell upon them. Noro charged about the battlefield that day, with Athar ever at his side, piercing and slaying elves and men with the spear he now named Cataclysmos, a name that has only been preserved for us in the most fanciful of legends.
Shortly following this battle Noro marched forward and lay seige to the Palace of Alwan itself, wherein Pelas now tore his hair in anger and amazement. Agonas, however, was driven into hiding in the wilds of Lushlin with naught but a band of elves as a guard, and the high elves of Sunlan and Alwan alike were scattered. All the power of the Immortals seemed to vanish in an instant.
As the dust of battle cleared Noro stood before a teeming host of mortal warriors, kingly.
The Kingdom
In all the world's history, I do not know that there has ever been a kingdom founded which was not meant to be THE Kingdom - that one government and one law that would at last endure though all other attempts might fail. Even the wise men of my own land, though they do not pretend that Lapulia was founded at the behest of a god or goddess, are thoroughly convinced that their kingdom in some sense ought to endure. In fact this motive alone is the reason the Magi preserved the Star Seers and took such pains both to hide them and to gather their predictions.
Men bemoan and bewail all the evils of their masters until they, by rebellion, become the masters themselves. They do not recognize, however, that the willfulness of heart that made their old master a tyrant is the very same quality that made their own hearts rebellious. They slay the tyrant and then place the crown upon their own head, and then clothe themselves in all the regal attire as if to make it all the more clear that they are of the same lump as he who they overthrew.
Noro and his shortlived Kingdom of the Blest was not different from any other dominion in the end. The teachings of Theodysus were to be the foundation of the law, and the histories of the Essenes were to replace the lies of Parganas. Freedom for all mortal men was to be decreed, and all lands were to be united under a common rulership, centered in a city to be built along the Esse River. Highways would be built to bring the decrees of the city's lords into the north, the south, the east and the west, so that every man in Bel Albor could hear the laws of the land. The lands that had been for so long naught but battlefields would be cultivated, and no child would go hungry and no old man would lay abandoned in a ditch.
All that now stood between Noro and the fulfillment of this goal was the seige of Alwan Palace and the hunt for Agonas, which he had given over into the hands of Athar.
'Truly the Eternal King has judged between you and I,' Noro said, remembering the division that lay between he and Nihls. 'When Alwan has fallen at last I swear I will find you, and I will take back from you what you have stolen.' He was very nearly a king; and he meant not to make Giretta's son his heir.