The Dice Pool

Unlucky 13?

So little left in this tale. Chapter 16 will be the last one, so the countdown starts here. Do you think it will end well for young Maryk? In today’s chapter he makes a big change and some big decisions. His ambition is re-ignited and plans begin to form in his mind. It’s not all about him, after all, right? The whole world might benefit from his talents. It is his duty to help!

Chapter 13: Fortress

Much of the story of the Fae was unknown to me before the Fae-Mother chanced upon me (I say “chanced upon” but of course there was no chance about it. She knew where I was, why I was there and, possibly even what was going to happen to me there.) She told me all of it. Some of it, I believe, is coloured a little in her favour. The Ens seem unfeeling and destructive in her story except that they wanted freedom, which most humans crave for themselves (I do not think this is a concept which she understands.) Meanwhile, she feels as if her whole world was destroyed by her disloyal creations.

”Where are all the Ens now,” I asked one day after a long discussion about how best to help my people progress.
“They are not here now,” she said, “I assume they failed.”
I had, once again, taken up the habit of sleeping during my years in the wilds. The reason? Well, boredom, mostly. I had lost any and all ambition and desire for knowledge. My efforts to discover new knowledge at the start proved relatively fruitless, so I soon gave up. Other than the contents of the Emperor’s spell book, there was nothing to read. I spent a great deal of time in meditation and contemplation but generally became dissatisfied with my own thoughts after only an hour or two of this. So, I ate my fruit and made sure my home was relatively clean but outside these activities I didn’t get up to much. One night, I thought I would try a little nap and to my surprise, I discovered that the knack never leaves you. I did not sleep for long, no more than a few minutes, but it felt good and I decided to continue with it. Occasionally I have wondered whether this left my mind even more open to the Fae Mother. Lying there at night, mind undefended and dreaming who knows what. But then, of course, I did not know that she was still interested in me and that she would come back to me.

She did come back to me, of course. I awoke atop my pile of skins and furs one morning to find her sitting at my table in the cabin. This was a sight that was difficult to get straight in my head as the Fae-Mother was really too tall and my chairs too small for her to have been able to do this. She seemed to bring her own illumination into my messy hovel. My house was never dirty, my spells saw to that, but when you introduced the ancient nobility of the Fae-Mother to it, it became no better than a hole in the ground, a badger’s sett. “Bugger me!” I said under my breath. “Is that what you wish of me?” Asked the Fae-Mother. I shook my head into wakefulness and tried to remember my manners. “I was just startled, Fae-Mother. Your presence here in my humble home is unexpected.” I flung my blanket back and rolled out of bed. “Is there some way I can be of service?” The book lay closed on the table; she reached out a finger to it and held it a finger’s width away. “Of the humans I have met, you are not the most disagreeable,” this sounded promising already, “but you are very, very young to wield the power that you do. What will you do with it to help your people?” I did not like this turn of the conversation so much. “Mother, I have been cursed, as I told you before. The people could not benefit from my presence.” Her dark emerald eyes stared through me to the wall behind. I actually turned to see if she was looking at something there but quickly looked back. “I did not suggest that your presence among them would be necessary. Why did you bring this, with you?” she gestured, with a flick of her long index finger, at the libram, “The magic in this thing is so great and you use it in such petty, selfish ways.” I looked at my feet and shuffled them, I peered around my little cabin and saw the conjured clothing and blankets and furniture filling it; none of them were special or grand, my food was the most basic I could imagine, water-fruit, berries, some roots that I had found. I was not using the book’s magic to enrich my life so greatly and I told her so. “My life is incredibly simple, look at how I live, this is not luxury, Fae-Mother, this is subsistence.” She stood to her full height, she seemed to grow as she stood, in fact. Her head barely below the ceiling beams, she walked around my house, picked up some silver cutlery, let it fall again, swiped her fingers across a tapestry I had conjured depicting the Great Battle at Hollinhead, rested her hands on the back of a chair and said, “It is your choice to stay here out of the way, doing no harm, using your great gifts without imagination or direction. It is your choice to ignore the plight of the rest of your people and the possibilities, the potential you have to make their lives better and easier. How are they to progress when their brightest hides away in a hovel in a dying forest, subsisting on fruit and fen-crabs? You have luxury you do not deserve. You have the luxury to decide. Your decisions afford you the luxury of apathy. If your curses hurt or kill one or two or ten or one hundred, what of it? You could be helping and saving those most in need of it. Your mortal race has such a short time on the face of the earth, they should not have to toil and suffer, should they? Don’t they all deserve the choice of doing what they want? You did.”

I was sitting on the edge of my tiny bed, in my baggy, stained bed-gown, old man’s face raising my young man’s eyes to look far above into the celestial orbs of the Fae-Mother. I was enraptured and enchanted. She had me before she had even started speaking. Her magic was so strong that she did not even need to speak to bind me in her spell but her questions and her statements bound me even tighter. I nodded to her, momentarily dumb-struck, and then swallowed. “Yes. Yes. I see it now. I have been selfish. You are correct, Mother. I must help them! Those poor people! How should I do it? Be the muse to my imagination, Fae-Mother. I need help.” She looked down, looming over me, her shadow leaving me in almost total darkness. I watched her hand unfold from her long flowing sleeve and her finger emerge from the darkness and then she touched me in the middle of my forehead and I fell back on my bed and blacked out.

When I awoke I felt different. I felt a disdain for the man I had been. I felt disgust at the meagre existence I had allowed myself to slip into. Most of all, I felt ill at the waste of my time and my mind that I had perpetrated over the preceding three years. I had had the power of the Emperor of the Fomori the entire time and I built nothing more than a still-crumbling shack and some uninspired furniture. With the magic at my disposal I could build a kingdom, or a better society. I could become the world’s greatest explorer or scholar or sage. I had done nothing but hide in filth and exist in squalor. It was fear. I believe that’s what the Fae-Mother’s touch revealed to me. It was only my fear that kept me low. It was not the kind of bloody terror you might feel when confronted by a rabid wolf when you’re in nothing but pyjamas or the senseless fear certain folk feel at the very thought of speaking in public. The fear that kept me in this dreadful place was the type that exists in all one’s actions every day, the sort that has an effect on every decision one makes and every thought one allows to be consciously considered, it is the kind one never knows is there: fear of oneself.

I was no longer afraid. Realisation of the fear’s existence robbed it of the power it held over me. I remembered then the confidence and even arrogance with which I approached life as a younger lad. I was powerful and potent and I knew it. Primula and Cobbles’ deaths had instilled the fear in me but the Fae-Mother had shown me that my power was not to be contained, it was too important for that, even if it should cost a life or two along the way. My power and my genius were enough to vindicate my actions. I could make everything better for everyone, first in Pitch Springs and then the Valley and after that? Wherever I chose.

How was I to make everything better? How can one person, even one as brilliant as I, achieve such a lofty goal? I did not know then but I hoped the Fae-Mother would agree to be my inspiration as I had asked. I was sure of myself, but I knew what the Fae-Mother was capable of (or at least I thought I knew.) she led her whole people, there could be no greater advisor (please bear in mind that I had not heard the Fae-Mother’s full story at this point.) I had to seek her out again. But first I destroyed my pathetic cabin. I stood outside the mould-ridden excuse for a habitat, The Book of Royal Magic floating beside me open to the spell, earthquake. I never performed a spell so well before. I was absolutely unerring in my words, inflection, timing, movements. The finest dancer in the court of the King of the land could not have found fault with that performance and it opened a crack as wide as Saint Frackas’ Square and swallowed my home and all my possessions except for the clothes on my back and the book by my side. I heard much later that the earthquake was felt all the way in Bakhlvad and destroyed certain of the poorer built houses in Pitch Springs. A wing of the Town Hall was severely damaged and bones were uncovered in the ruins. Perhaps yet more evidence from the time of Mayor Moltotzi. The Creakwood too was forever changed by the quake. The crevasse separated it into two woods. One side had the stream, the other didn’t. The stream side flourished more than it had in decades, the other died but fed the land. The forest that was left was no longer called the Creakwood, it was called The Emerald Wood. As I see it now, that was my greatest achievement.

At that time, however, my ambitions knew no bounds. Looking back, I know it was the effect of the Fae-Mother’s powers on me but back then I thought I could change the world for the better. I thought my power gave me the right and the responsibility to do what I knew was best without interference. I still think there were elements of my plan that made sense and the reasons for what I did were pure but this wasn’t enough to avoid disaster.

I went in search of the Fae-Mother then. I walked the Crabfen where I had first encountered her to no avail. I journeyed to the quarry at the edge of civilised lands but did not find her. I travelled to Lake Brightwater and she was not there. In the end, I returned to the Creakwood, where I thought I would set about building my new home, this time a home fit for a person with my power. I looked to the book when I got there and found a spell near the front which was called simply, Fortress. That sounded like the thing I was looking for but it was an extremely long performance, it was to be started at dawn and there were major steps to include at midday, dusk and midnight and the performance could not be stopped at any time. It seemed physically impossible. I would need plenty of nourishment and rest before I started this spell but I had already destroyed my place of rest, the cabin was crushed in the Creakwood Crevasse. I needed somewhere to go and I knew just the place.

I returned to My World, the farm. The fields had dried up and there were no animals on the land. Even the old chestnut tree was dead. The house was an abandoned ruin. This was distasteful to me; it felt as though I were taking a step back, not progressing as the Fae-Mother had told me I should be. Still, my physical needs could not be denied. The Old Sharpetzi Place had seen better days but it provided me shelter from the cold and the rain and the wind while I stored up strength for the day of performance to come. I had brought some water fruit to stave off hunger and build strength and I produced a magical flame in the grate of the fireplace. A fire had not been lit in it in years and at first smoke billowed back into the parlour, blackening the floor about it but after I sent a levitating brush up the chimney it worked as it should and I was kept warm, sitting on an old sheepskin by the fire.

I had sat there by the fire with my sister beside me, watching my father smoke as he regaled us with tales of Dead Counts, Evil Mayors, Dragon Children, Magic Bears and all sorts of other wonderful subjects. Now, the house and farm were dead, my sister was dead and I assumed my father was too. In many ways it was fitting that I should come back here, I thought. I was the last member of my family and this was our family’s place (no matter the name on the deed.) My plan had been to perform my spell in the Creakwood and build my fortress there but this place seemed more fitting the more I thought about it. I went to the back window and looked up at the top field, now a dusty waste and knew that was the spot for my new home. Was I expecting to need the protection of hill and fortress? At that point, no, although I did foresee opposition from some to whatever I had in store, which I also had not yet worked out. I would be glad of it in the end, though.

I slept that night in front of the fire and dreamt of wonders, flying horses and metal men and fairy musicians. I woke before dawn to start the performance. I walked to the top of the hill and began at the appointed time, just as the sun peeked over the trees in the east. Movement would be constant for the entire day but many of the moves were only slight, I had to do no more than walk around the perimeter for much of the performance, nodding my head and chanting. The chanting was the most draining aspect of this gruelling performance as it had to be continued without pause for the entire day. I had developed a method of circular breathing to cope with that but it was not possible to stop for a break or a drink of water. I began to think that perhaps the Fomorin mages would perform a spell like this in concert, perhaps taking turns to chant and walk to allow them time to rest. This was not possible in my case, of course. Throughout the day I had a number of visitors. A scrawny ginger cat came to sit and bathe and watch my curious work until it grew bored with my repetitions and wandered off. A kestrel circled around my head as I circled the site of my new home. Finally, the Fae-Mother appeared, standing by the old gate of the field as if she had been there all along, supervising. She said nothing, just watched me. She was there when midday came and I stopped my circling and chanting and sang a passage in old Fomori, dancing into the centre of the circle I had described, ending it when I had prostrated myself in the dust, limbs splayed in the four prime directions of the compass. I then took up the chant again and walked back and forth along those directional lines my arms and legs had indicated. This continued until dusk when I repeated the actions of midday. Once I had done this there was a noticeable golden shimmer in the air around the circle. The sparkling seemed to trace the lines of walls and arches and ramparts. I was already exhausted by this time but I drew encouragement from the results I was beginning to see. I went on chanting and walking until midnight although my throat was raw and my feet were blistered. The shimmer became more and more pronounced after the sun had gone down. Now I could make out, not only walls and arches, but also towers and minarets and outbuildings in the courtyard. On and on I walked until the moon was high in the sky and I knew the end of the performance was approaching. I actually wept when the realisation hit me and with tears streaming down my cheeks I croaked the final few syllables of Fortress as I performed the last dance in the centre of the circle, which was no longer just a circle but a courtyard with high sandstone walls around which were dotted the outbuildings, smithy, stables, tannery and in the centre right by my side was a deep covered well. I span and saw the whole thing, the four strong tall towers with banners waving from them in the night air, the great solid wooden doors with black iron trim which led into the keep’s interior, the huge gate and portcullis, the only way in or out of the fortress, the ramparts, the arrow slits, the murder hole over the gate, the flagstones of the courtyard…

I awoke in a four-poster bed draped in the most luxurious bedclothes I had ever seen. I looked around the bright, high-ceilinged bedroom at sumptuous wall-hangings, gilded candelabras and paintings in oval frames of ancient Fomorin lords and ladies all flanked by shackled smiling slaves. “You have slept long enough, I think,” It was the Fae-Mother, of course. She stood at my bedside and touched her fingertips to my forehead as I sat up. “Yes, Fae-Mother. I agree. I have been asleep for three years.” She nodded and withdrew her hand. Then she walked around the spacious room much as she had done before in my old home, touching velvet and gold and solid stone this time. “I approve of this place,” she said. “This is the home of a man of great power. It reeks of power and it was a great physical effort for you to create it. You are going in the right direction. This is progress. But it is only progress for you. What would you do for the rest of your people? How will you better your world?” I threw back the covers and found a set of new clothes laid out for me. They were very much like the clothing the Fae-Mother wore herself. I picked them up and looked at her. “A gift,” she explained “for a new beginning.” Clothing like it I had never felt on my skin before, it was light as leaves and warm as fur, it seemed to change colour depending on the surface I stood upon or the wall at my back. “Most gracious of you, Mother. many thanks.” I bowed low and she inclined her head a little in acceptance. “What would I do for the rest of my people? I want to see them have the time to pursue knowledge and art and music and happiness. I do not want to see them reduced to broken old people anymore just because they had to work so hard all their lives to keep body and soul together. Work, labour, toil, these are the curses of the everyday man and woman. I saw it every day in Pitch Springs and on this very farm as a little boy. You work and work and work and then you die. There is more to life than that. I want others to see that as I do. So that is what I would do; I would remove the need for people to work; to give them freedom.” “Indeed. Admirable. Have you considered the method you would use to achieve this? It seems like an impossible task.”
She was looking through me again. She knew the answers before I delivered them but she knew that it would help me to realise the rectitude of my plans if I could have the agreement of someone like her, a master planner. “I have thought about it, yes. The work still has to be done. Folk need food, and shelter and clothing and ironmongery and defences. It takes work to maintain all of these things that we need, there is no way around that. So, we need someone or something else to do the work,” I looked her straight in the eye, “like the Ens, your own creations.” Again she simply nodded. I thought the voicing of this idea might have elicited a shocked response but of course it didn’t. She has, no doubt, heard it all in the millennia she has existed. “The Ens. Yes. They were my best idea and my worst. You can learn from my mistake. I could teach you how to breed and grow creatures like the Ens but you would have died before the first of them grew into anything useful and they would just betray you. No, not Ens, then. You must come up with a human solution. You must discover Maryk’s solution.” She walked over to where I stood by the window and she took my hand. I felt a thrill of excitement at her touch, a feeling I never experienced with a human girl. I looked up into her eyes. “Let your curses work for you.” “my curses? I do not…” I turned to look out the window and saw the Creakwood in the distance and the sun hanging low in the sky above it. When I turned back, the Fae-Mother was gone.

A Fae Tale

I often find it strange and somewhat embarrassing going back to these older examples of my writing. It was so long ago that I don’t have any clear memory of writing it and yet, I know I did. There are glaring flaws in it for me, but I present it more-or-less unvarnished for your judgement. This time, Maryk tells us the tale of the Fae, their rise and fall. In an incredibly round-about way, he explains the origins of the Fae-Mother and why she is all alone. Is it true? Of course not. But there are nuggets of truth in there, just like in any story.

Chapter 12: The Story of the Fae-Mother

Fae folk populated the world, or at least this part of it, long before man sprang forth to build and burn and breed. The Fae did none of those things. They grew and performed and were. It is said that there were Mountain Fae and Tundra Fae, Beach Fae and Fae of the Plains but the only ones who concern us here are the Woodland Fae of this valley, they called themselves the Giarro and the river which man later blackened takes its name from them.

In those days beyond antiquity the valley was ornamented with trees from northern mountains to southern sea and from eastern to western hills. The Creakwood was not even a handful of acorns back then, and it would have been swallowed twenty times over by the Valley Forest. The Giarro lived there amongst their trees. Their lives were of magic. They were magical beings themselves, immortal and unimpeded by the base physical necessities that so bedevil our crass existence. they consumed the world’s natural magic energy which, it is said, they harvested from the forest itself. They affected and manipulated their world with magic. Civilisation is not what you or I would have called their society and community. They had no houses or writing or domesticated beasts. They did not wage war on other Fae folk or other races. They did not use currency or, indeed, truly have a need for any worldly thing. They did not have ranks and all in the forest were considered equal, well, except for the first among equals, the Fae-Mother.

It was said that the Fae-Mother was the first and the leader, not only of the Giarro, but of all Fae in the world. So it was said but it was not true. There were other Fae-Mothers in other regions and lands but they are not important to our tale. The Fae-Mother of our tale was just like the other Giarro except for one very important difference: she, and only she, was capable of creating new Fae life. Fae were not birthed, not in the traditional human sense. As I have stated, they were without a messy, organic form like that of the forest beasts and, later, the humans. Without womb, they were born, instead, out of the thaumaturgical aether. Only the Fae-Mother knew the secret of this birthing and she required the merging of magical essences from at least two of the other Giarro Fae. Those Fae were diminished greatly in puissance and were forced to go into hibernation to regain their strength for a time after the process. During that time the rest of the Giarro gathered around the “new-born” Fae and taught her the way of the world. All Fae were created with equal potential and were assigned roles in their society as they were required. In this way, the Fae community was a perfectly homogeneous one.

The role of the Fae-Mother was not just to facilitate procreation but also to lead and direct the Fae. She had no advisors or sages or ministers or Fae Lords (though all of those exist in the myths we have about the Fae.) She led alone. She made all the decisions on the path her folk should take and how they should take it. Their success or failure was solely up to her.

A society like this one, so integrated and single-minded should be easy to lead. No cajoling or flattering or threatening would have been necessary to have her folk do what was required. All worked harmoniously and for the greater good of the Giarro, and their home, the Valley Forest. Being the first, however, made the Fae-Mother different to her children/followers/subjects. She had never been indoctrinated into the Fae way of life and she wanted more, she wanted improvements, she wanted progress. Progress, the Fae-Mother knew, was the very meaning and point of life. Why else would she have the ability to create more of her race from out of the very aether? As a race of immortals there was no need to replenish their numbers as humans do today, balancing life and death.

In her time in this world she had moved the Giarro Fae from where they had begun on the hills to the east of the river, down into the forest because she knew the very trees of this forest could nourish them all for as long as they wanted to remain there. She devised the process by which certain Fae harvested the magical energies of the trees and then distributed this amongst all the Giarro. She devised a new spell every day (it is still unclear as to the exact nature of Fae casting though it is known to be the progenitor of human magic. It is believed that, as they had no system of writing, ideas were communicated and disseminated by thought without the clumsy necessity for words.) These spells transformed the world of the Giarro. They would use magic to grow great tree towers, bridges of creepers, musical instruments, river-going vessels and artefacts like magic amplifiers, beacons, clothing and walking sticks. No grown Fae item was without a magical quality of some kind.

Human emotions can hardly be applied usefully to the Fae but for the purposes of our story let’s say the Fae-Mother felt pride at the progress of the Giarro. She often looked down on the Valley Forest from the tallest of the tree towers atop the highest of the hills in the west and was full of pride but was she satisfied? Oh no. She was an immortal, magical matriarch whose sole purpose was the eternal progress of her folk. She would never be satisfied. What she saw from her high perch was the movements of the Giarro about the Forest floor and through the branches and along the vine-grown walkways and up and down the river. The most time-consuming industry to which they applied themselves each day was the harvesting and distribution of magical energies. The Harvesters would use a spell of her own devising to draw out the energy from the forest’s trees. This magic was then stored in a kind of pod-container, an item bred and grown specially at the Fae-Mother’s design by the Gardeners. These containers were passed on to the Boaters who brought them up and down the river to jetties (also grown by the Gardeners) where they were handled and distributed by the Handlers. Each handler brought the pods during the day in giant leaf sacks (that’s right, the Gardeners again) to all the Fae in their part of the Forest. The following day the process started again.
The Fae-Mother herself had developed this system and although the harvesting and distribution of magical energies had been greatly improved over the years she could see that there would have to be a change if real progress were ever to be made. Her folk had too few musicians and poets and historians and she began to see the logic in filling more roles for these activities and fewer for the manual labour of harvesting. Their society flourished while their culture stagnated. Balance was required and would not be simple to achieve for anyone but the Fae-Mother.

Plans came easily to the Fae-Mother. That was her purpose after all. Her latest plan involved a whole generation of new births. With these births would come twice as many hibernations. There would be fewer old generation Fae left in the Valley Forest than new generation ones, in fact. This new generation would have more face to face time with the Fae-Mother than any generation previously. For a time, the Giarro society slowed down and entered a long winter. The magical energy in the trees was allowed to build up and then disperse naturally for the most part. The Fae remaining to teach the new generation their ways had plenty to survive on by simply providing for themselves. No matter what their role they absorbed the energy through touching the trees, this was not as efficient as the Fae-Mother’s previous system of absorption and distribution but it was only to be a temporary measure. The new generation of Giarro would be taught a new way.

Next, the Fae Mother decided to address the problem of her people’s manual labours. She was not willing to cull her own folk so she had to come up with a way of completing the work by other means. She needed servants but it would no more have occurred to her to domesticate the animals of the wilds than it would have occurred to you or I to sell our parents into slavery. No, there was really only one option, she would have the plants of the earth do the work for the Giarro. She would breed and grow plants that could walk and gather and contain and transport and distribute. They would be combined with the essences of animals to allow them to achieve these feats. These plants would have minds of their own. These plants were called Ens as an “en” was the Fae word for energy and that is what they provided freely. The new batch of gardeners would grow the Ens and then settle back to enjoy the freedom to explore the world, its beauty and magic and birds and beasts as new Ens replaced them in their work. The Ens were to be capable of doing any manual task that Fae could do and never require rest or wish to be entertained or have to consume magical energy themselves and even replicate themselves as necessary.

Hibernating in the half-aether caves beneath the far eastern hills, the old generation did not have an inkling of the actions of the Fae-Mother but, by the time they emerged, the new Giarro society was to be in place. The Fae-Mother knew that this new system would be difficult for the majority of the old society to accept as most of them had never known any role but that of Harvester, Gardener, Boater and Handler. She was uncertain of how they would react if she introduced the Ens while they were waking and this worried her greatly. Uncertainty had never invaded her consciousness before. Her only option was to create new Fae and send the old ones largely to the hibernation caves. Then, when they emerged, she would have the new generation introduce the old one to the new world. She was sure that, in time, the old generation of Giarro would see the benefit of their new roles and their way of life and not think of them as simply alien and wrong. If they would not accept it, the Fae-Mother did not know the consequences. There had never been anything so absurd as a war between Fae, that would be impossible. There had been some disagreements but only ever between Fae from different bordering lands; these were always settled amicably. She had no reason to expect unpleasantness but she had every reason to expect obedience.

The Ens were a thorough success. As they gathered and delivered, the Fae entered a new Age of Art. Music and song filled the Valley Forest from morning till night. The grandest and most beautiful of tree towers and sculptures dominated all corners of the valley The new generation of Fae experimented with the elements of air, water and fire to make works of unimaginable magnificence. And the Ens laboured on.

Hibernation ended for the old generation of Giarro and they emerged from their half-aether slumber. Their confusion and frustration was felt throughout the Forest and the new generation’s art took a distinctly grey and twisted turn during this time. The old Giarro were addressed by the Fae-Mother, her mind to theirs, “Your world of labours is gone, welcome to your new world, my Giarro. You will all receive new roles, artists, historians, musicians, poets. You will make our culture what it has always had the potential to be. You will make it beautiful.”

“What if we do not desire this?” There was a dissenting mind. It was strong and decisive and felt like only one other mind among all the Giarro, her own. Another Fae-Mother! Another creator! Another leader! The Fae-Mother was reeling still from the realisation when the Other spoke again, “You are aware of my existence and my role, yes? Then you know what it must mean. Your leadership is flawed. These Ens you have created are beings like us and cannot be used in this way. The Fae you tricked into hibernation may not want these new roles you are forcing upon them. What should they do now in your new world? I am here to lead where you have erred and failed.” The Fae-Mother severed the thought link between her new generation (the confusion and fear of whom was rank and patent in her mind) and the old. She cut herself off also from the Other. She also felt fear at the appearance of this imposter who wished to lead with ideas other than her own. This was impossible. Only she was the Fae-Mother of the Giarro. Having two was not possible. It could only bring disharmony and even conflict. A leader still, she anticipated and planned for this potential strife. If conflict arose they would need defence. Violence was alien to the Fae but not so the Ens who were created through the magical commixing of tree and beast: the natural world thrived on conflict. She had seen this many times. They were not grown to be defenders but they would do in a pinch while the Fae-Mother worked on a more final solution to the old generation problem. She summoned the Ens together so they could feel the power of her presence when she spoke to them.
“You were grown to serve the Giarro and you have done so with loyalty and excellence. You will continue to serve us by defending us.”
“What do we defend you from Great Mother?” The Ens asked as one. Looking down upon them from her tallest of tree towers she felt intimidated herself, with their huge wooden bodies and their thick wrapped vine arms the thousands of them looked as though they could certainly cause an enemy great hurt. “You will defend us from the Old Giarro who have come back to destroy our community and way of life. You will destroy them if they come here and give you cause. The New Giarro must not be made impure by their thoughts. I will prevent that. You must ensure that they are not made impure by their words or their touch. For this time, you will cease your current activities and go protect my Giarro from the taint of the old. Keep close to them and watch for the Old Ones. I do not know how they will move against us, but they will.” She reached out deeper into the minds of the tree servants. There was confusion there, just as there was in the minds of the New Ones and the Old Ones. And yet, there was also obedience and loyalty. They had been bred and grown well. Ens dispersed, the Fae-Mother set about constructing a wall of thought around her folk. They might have done this themselves and so spared her the energy but then, she would have to alert them to the existence of the Other and the reasons for cutting them off from their former fellows. She did not wish to deceive them. As she reached out with her mind to seal off the New Ones she could feel the Old Ones creeping amongst the trees of her Valley and congregating still at the caves of hibernation. At the centre of the congregation there was a mind that appeared to her as a void…The Other…she could sense nothing of her but saw her briefly In a glimpse from one of the New who had already fallen under her corrupting influence. She looked just like the Fae-Mother herself. She truly was an imposter then, some trick…somehow a trick… Or perhaps an unnatural aberration. She felt vindicated in her stand against this Other and endeavoured to close the minds of the right-thinkers as quickly as she could.

Attacks began to be felt through the aether as they occurred throughout the Valley Forest. A Fae life snuffing out is like a single candle of magic being doused, from a distance it is undetectable. Ten lives can be seen extinguished from quite a distance. One hundred Fae destroyed is like a great bonfire being put out all at once. The first few moments of the war felt like that in the mind of the Fae-Mother. It was over long before she might have expected it to be. The Ens had destroyed all of the Old Ones and brought The Other before her for judgement. “What judgement would you have me make on this being? She is an imposter and a fraud. There can be no other Fae-Mother. Destroy her and return to the harvest in the trees; our reserves run low,” said the Fae-Mother. “But she is you, Mother. We look at her and we see you, just as you are. If we would destroy her then why would we also not destroy you?” asked the Ens as one, The Fae-Mother discovered her error then. The Ens were thinking for themselves. They had followed her instructions until they had reached an impasse in the logic of them. Now they were left with the ability to question, they were left with no other choice but to question. She had made them too perfectly, had given them too much freedom. They should have been simply plants with the ability to do the tasks she assigned them but she had instilled in them the beast’s ability to learn and grow and ask. “You cannot destroy me, I am your creator. She is not your creator.” There was a pause from the Ens and a collective mental nod. “That is a fact we cannot deny and yet she could have created us just as you did. We can see the magical potential in her and the energy available to do it.” The Ens threw the Other to the ground and circled her. “We will do as you ask, but we will not continue to do it. This is the last time we shall do your bidding. We will not harvest for you and we will not deliver for you. We will bring progress to the Ens instead of the Giarro.” The Fae-Mother was taken aback. She had never even considered that her creations might rebel, might want something other than the betterment of her Fae. “You…you cannot do that. You are only here to serve us, your role is-” they interrupted her. “Our role has changed. Our minds are not like those of you Fae. Our fates are not sealed. We can destroy and we can build and we can decide for ourselves what is best for our people now.” With that the circle of Ens raised their mighty vine-tentacles above the Other. She looked at the Fae-Mother and smiled faintly before bowing. The mighty Ens crushed her. “We have decided that the Giarro are not best for our people now. Your decision to destroy the Old Ones was correct and now we carry it one step further. We have decided to destroy the New Ones also.”

The Fae-Mother fled. She was protected by their promise not to hurt their creator, perhaps, but she could not stand to watch as they cleansed the Valley Forest of her children. The fires of thousands of Fae were extinguished before that very day was done and the forest belonged to the Ens.

The story goes that the Fae-Mother retreated to the Caves of Hibernation and stayed there and sleeps there still.

I know better now.

Moving

I hate moving. It’s one of the most exhausting and stressful experiences in life. All that organising and physical labour and long days and nights of work to get all of the stuff you have but are not sure you need to a new place. Maryk’s moving in today’s chapter. He felt he had no choice after the events of the last chapter. But at least he doesn’t have much stuff to move, I suppose. Just the clothes he stands up in and that one big old book he procured from his master.

Chapter 10: Life in the Wilderness

Twelve years is not a very long time in the grand tapestry of the world and, though I had been of the opinion that my own depth and breadth of knowledge and learning was vast and fathomless, in my own twelve years I had somehow managed not to learn a single thing about woodsman-ship, orienteering or foraging. I also had little to no knowledge of the town’s surrounding countryside. Countryside is rather a generous word for the scrubland, ancient forests, swamps and bogs of which it consisted, in all honesty. I eventually spent rather a long period of my life amongst the stinking fens and mouldering woods of the Giarri Valley and grew to know them even better than my first home on the farm but I never learned to love them. They were harsh and I was soft. My muscles had weakened to such an extent that I could walk for no more than an hour at a time and if my levitation spell gave up the ghost I could not shove the libram even an inch from where it had been deposited. To put it mildly, I was in trouble out there.

I was in trouble before I had even left the town boundaries. I stopped at the crossroads on the other side of the bridge, staring at the signposts in the middle of the junction. Priest’s Point was twenty-four miles away to the south and Holdtbridge thirty-eight miles to the north-west. I had never been to these places so I thought that it would be safe enough to go to either one and be left to myself. I started towards Priest’s Point since it was the closer but soon realised the mistake in my decision. It was not a matter of living in a town where people would leave me alone. My curse would be no respecter of the choice of a hermit’s life-style. Proximity alone could be sufficient to kill those around me and destroy the lives of my unknowing neighbours. No, I could not be allowed to do that again. Murdering my sister and transforming her into a dreadful form of walking corpse were the actions of a person who no longer deserves the company of other people. I would live a hermit’s life, thought I, but out here, in the wilderness amongst the other animals, far away from the lives of others.

Leaving the main road of dust and stone walls, I took a track, which was made mainly of roots and puddles of dull, stagnant water, into the Creakwood. The wood was a thousand years old and I had heard so many horror stories about the place as a lad that I was in possession of a deep dread of its crumbling, creaking boughs and its moss bedecked trunks and its canopy from which seemed to peer a host of malevolent eyes. Still, I had made my decision, yet another decision of life-changing importance in the space of no more than a few hours. The woods were as good a place to start my new life as any, and better than most.

Dropped foliage conspired to hide the path from me before I had gone a mile down the track. The confidence I had had in my decision waned and I felt sweat trickle down my back. What had I been thinking, I thought as my pace slowed, I had no business out in the wilds, fending for myself. I could barely fend for myself in town. How could I have thought that this was going to work? I’ll barely last a day without starving to death or having my liver eaten out by a rabid badger or my eyes by a vicious pigeon or my soul by a wood wraith. The fact was, however, I saw not another living thing moving in those woods that day. The story goes that the woods perceived my puissance and quieted its denizens in respect. Looking back, however, the atmosphere was one, not of respect but of fear. Of course, at that time, my fear was all I was aware of, well, except for a vague sense of being watched.

I walked deeper, mind still a web of terror. Determination and a lack of options drove me on. The darkness was distilling itself down to a cruel, iron-dull fog. I no longer knew how long I had been walking and I could not tell the time of day or evening anymore. I stopped for a brief, terrified rest and wished I had thought to bring food or, at least, water along. I glared at the useless floating libram, accusingly. It had no response to my blame and could do nothing for my hunger and diminishing physical strength. Was that true? I took hold of it and drawing it nearer to me, I opened it. Only a faint glimmer appeared and only if one of the rare droplets of light in Creakwood’s gloom happened upon one of the book’s gilded characters. I stood to cast a Light cantrip and seconds later I was searching the book of Royal Magic for food conjuration. Now, obviously I had only been burned by this book so far and the idea of performing another spell from it at this point actually formed in my stomach a little brick of fear and loathing but I was desperate, lost and alone and I was out of ideas.
“Nourish” was the name of the spell I found. I could find none better suited to the task of feeding me than that. I chose a small patch of relatively flat forest floor and began the casting. Its movements were complex and the timing incredibly subtle but I was just about up to the task. I finished the performance and brought into being a tendril of green-tinged energy which escaped from my cupped hands, seeming to drip through them and into the ground at my feet. Rumbling emanated gently from the earth beneath me so I stepped back, just in time, as it happens, to watch a bush grow before me from a sapling to the height of a tall man in a matter of seconds. It was laden with an abundance of large, heavy, red and orange fruit the like of which I had never before seen. Green illumination glowed out of the plant’s leaves away from which the trees in its vicinity drew. The branches above creaked and groaned with such a racket that I was sure they would start to break and fall all around me. Instead, a gap formed in the canopy and honest sunlight streamed through rendering my meagre Light sphere redundant. I stepped into the rays of sunlight and picked a fruit from the new grown bush. I bit into it savagely. Lightly citrus flavoured water poured into my mouth from the centre of the fruit while I chewed the soft mauve flesh which tasted much like the water and had the texture of a perfectly ripe pear. Water Fruit seemed the ideal name for them so that is what I called them. Success! Finally success to celebrate. I sat on the forest floor in the sunlight by the water-fruit bush and smiled to myself, one hand grasping a second fruit and the other resting lightly on the libram. “Perhaps,” I said aloud, “I shall survive this after all.” Even then, before I was aware of her existence, the Fae-Mother heard my words, spoken naively, like the child I was still. Back then I knew nothing of her, despite all the power in the pages beneath my left hand. Why was she paying me any attention then? I wonder often myself. I like to think that, just as the Creakwood did, she felt the potential power in me but I can see now that she desired power, certainly, but it was not the power inside me, it was that inside the Emperor’s Libram. In hindsight, she seems very short-sighted but I would only say that now because I know she is no longer spying on my words or my thoughts.

I had created the water-fruit bush which would feed and water me, it had even provided precious sunlight through its effect on the dry and cracking trees that stood about it. When I finished eating I began planning. Realising that I should try to discover more about my surroundings I set off on a walk around the perimeter of the newly created water-fruit clearing. My floating Light sphere bobbing along at my right shoulder I found a few useful things. The first and most important was a woodland stream. The stretch of it in the immediate vicinity was choked and swollen with reeds, dead tree limbs and long-ago fallen leaves but I thought I might know a spell or two which would make short work of that particular obstruction. I also came across an eminently climbable horse chestnut of a venerable age and a profusion of sky-reaching branches. Finally, I found signs of life, or, if you can’t put it that way exactly, signs of a human presence nearby: a graveyard. It was an ancient place; you could tell there had once been engravings on the stunted, rounded stones but they were so weathered and covered in lichen and moss that whatever the ancient mourners had wanted remembered of their loved ones for generations was now unrememberable. Perhaps this wood had once been no more than a grove on the outskirts of the cemetery. Maybe the people all abandoned the area or were killed. It is possible they were all enslaved by Fomorin invaders leaving their rotting ancestors’ last resting sites to become annexed by the trees, which once shaded the dead’s living visitors. I continued on my patrol of the area and found the last item of interest, the wreck of a shack. Damp and mould had had their way with the roofless emerald and black log cabin. It was home to a multitude of birds, bugs and rodents.

I returned to the water-fruit bush, looked about the clearing around it and decided that this was the place for me. To the average twelve year old, obviously, there would be nothing about any of my discoveries that would lead them to think this would be the place in all the world where they would want to live. No bed, no toys, no mother, no father, no blankets, no bread, no tea. No matter, thought I and looked to the book, still where I had left it, floating by the bush.

My first priority, since I already had food and water, was to attend to the cabin. I started with a simple Clean and Tidy cantrip, one of the first I had learned to help me in my work in my master’s house. It achieved little but the removal of the mould from the wooden walls, the weeding of extraneous growths and the clipping of the grass around its outskirts. The fallen-in roof would have to be replaced, a door attached, floors and walls repaired and brickwork rebuilt. It would take me a lot of work to complete all of these tasks. Not muscle-work, not leg-work, but brain-work. I sat on the step of the house and began. As I studied, raindrops started to drop as thick, round pearls through the canopy above, falling on the precious pages of the libram. I cast a quick Umbrella and then continued. It would not be the last time I sat on the front step of my new home and studied the Emperor’s book until the small hours of the morning, no, not by a long, long way.