I am Mornaric Diniall. Morn to most, Lord Diniall to some. "That accursed Ranger," has been attached to me more than once during my time upon this world. Friend. Hunting partner. "Flight d' Elghinn pholor l' eairthin," by my darker brothers. Even the word, 'Lover'. From a very small number has this been said to me.
But it is the word 'Husband' that I have been called the least. In my history, that word has been said to me three times and meant.
First to say it was Maylana. No finer Bard had I ever heard up to that point and scarcely any after. I felt I had barely began to know her before Tunare herself presented me with a task. When my task was completed, I returned to the bardess, only to find Maylana had decided to leave me. She explained to me that I had already left for another woman. Namely, to always seemingly be ready to do Tunare's bidding. I had no choice but to agree with her, and we went our seperate ways after that.
But when I fully realized what I had lost, I wept. With a voice so clear and pure the gods themselves must have paused in their tasks to listen, she had taught me to sing. Then that other voice was silent because of my unwillingness to bend from what I thought was my duty and not focus on what was...
The last time I saw her, I gave back to her a song that she had taught me, along with the ring she had put onto my finger during our vows exchanged in front of friends. I could not face her now. I slipped the ring onto an arrow of mine, then tied the parchment that contained the hand written verse to the ring and shot the arrow at her feet. I had stayed just long enough to see her read it, then I ran from Freeport for what seemed then like days upon days before I finally collapsed in a tired and wet heap in the Karana's lower plains. The song is here below, reproduced for the readers of this set of scrolls. I can read it. I can write it and I can think about it. But I still can not bring myself to sing it. I don't have...the voice...any more.
I Stand Alone
by Steve Perry
I know the sound of each rock and stone
I embrace what others fear
You are not to roam in this forgotten place
Just the likes of me welcome here
Everything breathes
And I know each breath
It's more than enough for this man
Like every tree stands on it's own
Reaching for the sky I stand alone
I share my world with no one else
All by myself...I Stand Alone
Deep in the darkness my heart
My heart still sees
Everything I'll never be
Behind these eyes I go everywhere
There's no need for sympathy
Everything breathes
And I know each breath
In my world there's no compromise
Like every tree stands on it's own
Oh, reaching for the sky I stand alone
I share my world with no one else
All by myself
Still I will remember
Still I run with you, yeah
And when it's time for you to go
Take me in your heart
Like every tree stands on it's own
Oh, reaching for the sky I stand alone
I share my world with no one else
All by myself, I stand Alone
All by myself
All by myself
I Stand Alone
Emeralza was next, after a time. A Ranger like I was, there was a fire between us that was unmistakable. The fire produced a daughter, Alianya. A name that I still hold close to me even now after all that has happened. I hold it in my hands every time my bow is pulled from it's usual resting place; on my wall or upon my back. I came home one day after the hunt, and they were both gone, mother and child. I never knew what happened to them, although long did I search. It was as history itself wiped them from the records of my mind, so little of them ever after did I find. None that I asked, from the most ancient of my race to the wisest of others had an answer to the mystery that had been handed to me. 'Mystery,' I call it now. 'Tragedy,' I had called it then. Tragedy, and more.
After my second wife disappeared with our daughter, I searched in despair. None had seen them nor even recognized the descriptions I told to them. Even then, I had wondered if some gross trick had been played on me. I had no current enemies and all the old ones had been dealt with, so it never occurred to me beyond the briefest of thoughts that maybe my memories were being manipulated. I even thought that I was being cursed by the gods, so I cursed them back in return.
What I do know for a fact is that after a long while of fruitless searching, I all but gave up on life. It seemed that even the gods turned away when I raised my fists into the air to question them of the sense of all it.
Both women gone from me. Like a handful of grain thrown up into the air. You let it go for only a second before a strong wind scatters to the four corners of the land what you had held onto so tightly only a moment before. You may catch a glimpse of what you had held, but ever after, nothing more.
I had been with other women after those two. Some I had even dared hope that there could be more. "I love you," was said, and it was meant. Lust. Forbidden passion with others outside of my kind. Humans. Drow. A Kerran had caught my fancy once. Even one that I would dare call 'Niece' out loud and 'Lover' in private. Still, there was no peace from the loudness of the emptiness of my soul.
Perhaps my first wife had known something I didn't when she gave me the words of that song. It comes back to haunt me, even now. How alone have I been? Plenty. All the people I have been with, those that I would call friend and those that I would call more, have gone away after a time spent walking in my world. I had felt in that part of my past as if I had been cursed.
Truer words I could not have put to scroll, even were I to sit and think of them for a hundred years. But the explanation for that must wait until further in my tale.
It is here that I must give you a name. One that is not mine, nor does it belong to one that I care about. I must tell you this name before I tell you about my third, and as it turned out to be, final, wife.
Doranianthus.
Some called him, 'Doranianthus the Transvoker.' I have heard that he fancied himself a God. Most all that had known of him called him mad. For a time, there was one even called him 'Husband.' Again, a tale for another time and another scroll.
This is where I must ask you the reader to be willing to suspend disbelief in what I am about to tell you. Sparse word is actually recorded about Doranianthus. The little that is known comes from my encounters with him and from the sparse tales about him that others have relayed to me.
It is not known from where he came. Nor is it known what race gave birth to him. Ask one person and they would say 'Elf.' Another would say 'Human' just as quickly. A few, in hushed whispers best suited for a gathering around a roaring fire in a darkened inn room, even said he was not of this world, but from another. Other than a select few of us who crossed his path, no one else seemed to know any great detail about him.
What is known is this. He was male. He was tall, not quite as tall as some of our northern friends, but were he to walk down any street of Qeynos or Freeport, he would been seen to be taller than most men. His physical appearance was that of a human, well tanned but not as dark as my Drowen cousins. He appeared thin in the face, but he was not malnourished. The one time I saw him without his robe, his body was as fit as a warriors should have been. Strange, considering he leaned more towards the darker arts rather than towards the martial. Bald of head, whispy eyebrows that lay above the darkest eyes I had ever seen, and a thin beard and mustache that would not have been out of place upon the face of many of the young and rebellious roaming the streets these days.
His clothing tended towards robes. No particular style, but always of darker browns and greys. When it suited him he wore a hood that was part of the robe, so with a quick glance, he appeared much as a Druid did at times. Boots to match, dark in color and always leather.
A tanner that I knew was able to examine one of his boots and could not identify from what animal they came from.
Doranianthus did not stand out in a crowd unless it served his purpose to do so. As it became obvious to those that were able to observe him, more and more did he not care to hide who he was. He was slowly going insane. He thought himself a 'God' and it cost him his life. And no, it was not me that killed him. Although as Tunare is my witness, I tried. For what he did to me, and for what he did to those around me.
I'm sorry, readers. It has been 6 months since I last wrote here. The life of a father and of a husband tends to do that to you. Not that I regret any minute of it. But I will continue my telling of the story now.
The tale as relayed to me by Doranianthus himself, and others, is mostly as follows. The artistic license is purely mine, of course.
According to him, on another world in another lifetime, I killed his wife. If one is to believe this, I and others stood against him in his conquest for domination. Typical 'Evil High Wizard' stuff. He was thwarted at every turn. A few of us died in our quest to put an end to his madness, but more of those that had aligned themselves with him met their untimely ends than ours had.
It came down to a final battle outside of his stronghold. He was trapped inside with no way out other than through us, and we were ready for that. Even then, I was the best of the archers among us, so it was up to me to deal the final shot if and when it was to come. It came soon enough, but not in the way we had planned. It had started with Doranianthus wanting to surrender.
Yes, surrender. We were all people of peace, and in spite of all that he had done, and all that we had done in return, there was still those of us that had hoped for the best. There had been enough violence and enough bloodshed to last us through several lifetimes. Frankly, I was sick of it myself. I wanted to go home to my forest, and this madman had taken that away from me.
On the twelfth day of the final siege, our leaders rode ahead of the rest of us to call Doranianthus out. I was ready from my position to fire an arrow straight into the black heart of the Transvoker in case he decided to fly his disdain of the rules of warfare in our faces. What surprised us was that he came out along the top of one of his keep's battlements to negotiate. Perhaps he was finally as tired of the fighting as we were? Perhaps not. Perhaps it was just a trick to single out our leaders. Which it was, of course, but not a trick of his devisement.
What did not surprise us was the fact that the woman that was called Camiana was at his side. We had seen her before and had always assumed she was his mate. We had never seen her do anything out of the ordinary, other than to stand there and be distracting. She was a beautiful woman. Long raven hair. Ruby lips that seemed to speak the personal name of every man and woman that had looked at her. The power that she did have, however, was more than just a physical bewitching. We saw evidence of this in the next few moments.
Our leaders paid her little to no attention, so intent was their conversation with Doranianthus. I knew most of what they were going to say, having been in their consul. I could only guess at what our adversary was going to say, but everything seemed to be on track for a relatively peaceful end to it all. What our leaders could not see, but that I did, was this.
While they were talking, it became obvious to me that Camiana was far more than she had at first seemed. I literally saw sparks flying from her fingertips before she turned and somehow saw me looking directly at her. Time at that exact moment seemed to stop. Doranianthus was oblivious to the fact that his wife was preparing to cast a spell, almost as if he wasn't aware that she even had the power within her to do so. I had the feeling of knowing what was about to happen next, and I had to take action.
She herself confirmed my thoughts a moment later. The one mistake that she made then was to glance down upon the field towards where our leaders were engaged in barter with her husband. That told me all I needed to know. While they were distracted in talk, she was going to kill them. She looked back at me then and I could see it in her eyes that she knew the mistake she had just made. She then fully turned towards me and began to raise her hands in preparation of attack. Kill our leaders, and I may still be able to shoot her. But kill me first...
As fate would have it, Doranianthus chose that moment to turn to speak to his wife. By then, my first arrow had already left my bow, with the second being drawn back and released as he completed turning his head. The shock in her eyes was nothing compared to the shock in her husbands. He watched as first one, then the other, entered her chest and pierced her heart. Camiana, the wife of the Transvoker, was dead.
She started to fall in slow motion, her spell aborted. Doranianthus reached out for her but missed as she dropped to the stone they were upon. Standing there, he seemed frozen in place, much like a statue in a gallery. He bent down out of sight for a long moment, then stood back up. In that time I had drawn and readied a third arrow. He looked straight at me and as I felt it, through me. What he did next, none of us present that day could have guessed.
He started to laugh.
A slow laugh that grew quickly into an insane yell. It was at that moment that I believe Doranianthus the Transvoker finally went that last step over the edge of his already diminished sanity. His yell was deafening. It covered the field of battle and brought terror to all save the most steadfast among us. The very ground started to shake as if the bass of his voice trembling around the land was causing the rock we stood upon to tear itself apart in protest. From where I was, I could see a change overcoming him. It seemed like his eyes were glowing a bright red. That became obvious a few seconds later to those that did not have my eyesight.
That, and the fact that he started to lift up off of the wall, unaided, caused one of our leaders to order something we had not discussed. The taught rope of the trebuchet's being released was as unmistakable as was the sight of the half ton rocks flying overhead and hitting the keep of the madmen. Someone had made the decision to end this, once and for all, by bringing the keep of the madman down upon him.
And it seemed to work. Rock after rock slammed into the keep, along with many thousands of flaming arrows from other archers. We eventually lost sight of Doranianthus, so much smoke and fire was in the air. The last I saw of him was him hovering a foot or so above where his wife's body lay, reaching down to her as if to help her up after she had taken a small stumble on an protruding chunk of masonry.
When it was over, we had searched the keep. We found hundreds of dead and dying. Prisoners were took, mercy killings were administered. We even found what we believed to be the dead and damaged body of the wife of the Transvoker himself, she who was called Camiana. But with the exception of what most agreed was torn fragement of the last thing we saw him wear, namely his brown and grey hooded robe, nothing more was ever found of him. Peace had come at great price though closure did not. This other land was never troubled again with the rantings and mechanizations of a madman called Doranianthus.
Most of this is what was told to me during the time of my capture and incarceration in the stronghold of the man that was known as Doranianthus, here, in this world of ours now. I did not have any personal memory of what had transpired then in that other place, so I had to take his word of it along with the proverbial grain of salt. I did not have confirmation of the events until much, much later after I had released from his grasp and I had been healed, both physically and mentally, from what he had caused to happen to me.
It is here that I must pause and apologize to you, the reader of this scroll. I know it seems that I am jumping around in my narrative, and that in doing so it may cause the tale to be hard to follow. My memory is not what it should be. Not due to old age, but due to what Doraninathus had done to me in his quest for vengeance. Over the course of time, he manipulated my life and my mind in such a way that I could not be sure of anything. Even to this day almost a thousand years after the events I'm describing, my memory of some of them may still be off, especially in the finer details. The obvious errors will be corrected during the proof reading by my friends and family. As for the unobvious ones? Well, I'll try and keep those to a minimum.
I need to inject something here into my tale. Two falsehoods that you, the reader, may still believe. One - Elves do not grow beards. This is false. It just takes an elf a far longer time to do so. Humans have lived and died before they have ever seen an Elven beard. And two - Elves do not get drunk. This is also false. They do. I know this from personal experience. I know how long it takes...
...and how long it takes to become sober, afterwards. Ask a Dwarf about this, and they will snicker and take another draw from their tankard. Ask a Human, and they will shrug. Ask an Elf? Well, expect a long silence that is not broken save only by the sound of the wind blowing the leaves around glade.
So this is where I put to rest the notion that Elves do not get drunk. I searched out those that seemed to be experts at it and asked them how does one properly lose themselves. I got several answers that made no sense, all up until the last one. A man in an alley shook his head in response to my question and simply handed me his bottle and said...
"Here, try this. I've found many answers in here."
I took a long draw from the bottle, then another. To this day, I still do not know what it is I let slip down my throat. It burned, so maybe it was liquid fire.
That was just the first bottle. When that one was done, I bought my new friend and I another, then another when that one was finished. After a while, I had handed the latest bottle to my new friend, but he did not reach for it. I looked, only to see that he had quietly passed on during the night. I sat there for a moment, not realizing what I should do.
I eventually raised my hand and closed his eyes, took a final drink from the bottle and placed it in his now still hands. Taking my cloak off and covering him, I stood and walked out of the alley, pausing only long enough to wish the man I had just left a happier life in his next one. I did not stop to think of telling anyone about him. I didn't know who I could have. I walked down the very same alley a few days after that and he was gone. I stopped to nod my head in remembrance then continued on myself.
There were many more alleyways after that. Many a drunken fit in a bar or the day room of a local inn. I could imagine the mirth of many when they realized that the person that was the source of most of the yelling and the cursing while they were trying to have lunch or supper or whatever meal it was at the time, was not a dwarf or a man or even one of the northern folk, but an elf of the woods. Here, no doubt, was a curiosity to be seen by all.
It went on for so long that it became commonplace. The drink kept flowing though I am sure my gold ran out long beforehand. Perhaps it was my by then off pitch singing that paid for my state of being? Perhaps out of respect of some sort for me? I don't know. I was told later that business in what was my last...
I have to use a human term here. My last watering hole...
...had picked up considerably. Perhaps the establishment was paying me in drink and board in return for the curiosity that I had truly become. I don't know in reality. The drink, and not some wizard's spell, had caused this memory lapse.
"Why do we fall down? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up again."
I was told this by a wise man once, and it has stayed with me ever since. In my drunken despair I had fallen about as far as I could from my former life with no desire to even be picked up on most days. I had been there in that place where I had become a local landmark long enough to prove the first of the above rumors wrong. I was growing a beard. I heard more than once while I was there,
"Och, laddy, THAT'S not a beard! That's more like the fuzz off of yere mum's arse..."
Funny. I almost never heard the end of that statement. A drunken brawl usually ensued next with me at the center of it, swinging and flailing to little effect. If I had been sober, I could have almost danced around anything swung at me. But as it was, I garnered more bruises then than I had on most of my previous adventures.
One day. Sorry, one night as I sat there not caring about myself or anyone else for that matter, my world changed. At that time, I did not know it. But I know it now for a fact and a truth that is inescapable. Fate, as it seems, was not done with me yet.
Dear reader. I have not told you this until now, but here it seems I must. We all have things that we enjoy in life. I like a good hunt, good music, friends to share life with. I tend to be happiest when I am around and/or doing these things. I like my time spent with the fairest among us, that which is called 'Woman.' The ones that get my attention the quickest are those that look a certain way. Taller than average with red hair bordering on the longer side of style. My first two wives looked like this idea of whom I'd want to be with. In fact, they looked almost identical. My third wife, whom I adore more than anyone else save my now grown daughter, looks exactly like this. Coincidence? I do not know. I am happy, I do not question.
She who is now my wife comes into my tale now. One night among many, I am sitting in the inn's lower room. A table all to myself as it were...
...because I smelled funny, as I am reminded...
...with the business of running the inn going on around me, ignoring me for the most part. Barmaids going to and fore, the occasional slap when an unwelcome comment was made. The smell of beef roasting upon a turning spit over an open fire...
...and she walked directly up to me. She stood there for I don't know how long, waiting for me to respond. I was in no hurry to do so, but...
...have you ever tried to sleep with someone standing over you?
I was at least mentally able to reason the fact that the longer she stood there, the less likely I was to take my nap. I figured out that, boring as it may have been, perhaps I would get rid of her quicker if I actually spoke a few words with her, then she could be gone. I made the decision and raised my head to do just that.
The first obvious fact that I noticed was that she was a Ranger, like I had been. A younger, less traveled version, judging by some of the equipment she was carrying. She carried herself correctly, so I reasoned she was not new at it. Various marks upon her armor told me that she had seen and had won through combat.
The second and what should have been to me more obvious fact was that she was by far the most beautiful female of my wood elf kin that I had ever seen. If I was given a wish by the gods but was told to wish for the perfect female, she would be the one standing in front me at that table right then. Her hair was red, the same color red as the morning sun. It was long, pulled into a warriors braid of sorts but it was still hanging down to her weapons belt around her waist. There has never been an emerald with the same color as her eyes, so intense they were as she seemed to stare right through me. She was fit. That she was nimble was a given and I couldn't help but wondering what if she...
...I've just been reminded to focus on the matter at hand. Rather pointedly, I may add. So be it.
Anyway, I stared for a less than appropriate long moment then asked, "Come to stare, lady ranger, or come to play? Either way I could care less. Just leave me be..."
I don't think it was my glass of the house ale she threw in my face. More than likely, she reached out and appropriated it from a passing barmaid. Either way, I was wearing it, not drinking it. Being wet all of a sudden does wonders to ones sobriety.
"Lady, what in the hells is wrong with..."
Someone started playing music. At least that's what I thought then. There was no house band on the stage at that moment. SHE had started to speak.
"You are Mornaric Diniall, yes? If not, then perhaps another mug of this foul smelling brew will help you remember who it is you are supposed to be?"
We went back and forth like two kids trying to one up each other. Her asking me if I was who I was supposed to be, me denying it at first, her threatening, then acting upon, throwing another mug of ale in my face. This went back and forth like this for a long while that night, and for a few nights afterwards.
Basically, what she wanted was a teacher to help further her skills as a Ranger and someone had remembered my name as a possibility that she might be interested in. I had taught a select few in my past, but not for years upon years now. This female who had a name that when said sounded like the wind blowing around the leaves of autumn, seemed determined to get what she wanted. I even made the stupid move of challenging her to an archery contest. If I won, she'd leave me alone. If she won, she'd have her teacher.
So...
Months later, we were training in a small, out of the way glade in Kelethin. Her form, her archery form, was nothing short of perfect. In all honesty, I didn't think there was much more that I could teach her. Experience in using what she knew would have been of the most help, and I told her so.
We talked. At first, it was mostly her talking and me listening. Since she was determined to have her teacher, she was just as determined to sober him up. Which she managed to do with shocking clarity, I might add. She had challenged me to more than a few matches that she easily won, then made sure it sank into my brain that I could never be the person she knew I could be while in the state I was in. Once, she even threw me into a river that carried me over a waterfall. Almost drowning sobers one up extremely quickly, although I do not recommend it as a remedy.
Later, we found we actually could tolerate each other. As my mental clearness came back to me I found that she seemed less annoying and more a lovely young Ranger that I found myself caring about. Before too long, it seemed that we craved each others company. Each of us in our own separate ways found any reason to be closer to each other. When the first kiss between us came, it was both a shock, and yet not unexpected.
After that, our relationship changed. It became less of teacher and student, and more of a pair that were calling themselves each others love. We became inseparable. In spite of all the battles and the hunts that we fought together in, we were becoming a much needed part of each other's lives. We seemed to be there for each other, even when we were not. When we were together...
...no finer magic would have ever been found in the land. The words that we said between each other, even when we did not speak, were obvious to all that could see. It came to the point where we were ready to become mated in more than profession. In name was next as we knew we were already together in spirit. I had hinted at this; then I became bolder and actually asked her in the traditional manor of our people. She accepted with tears in her eyes. Tears to match those in mine.
But it was not to be. Not then at that point, anyway. Reality came snapping back into focus around us. Our union was not to be for many, many years later. Something the both of us think about to this very day, and I'm sure until we make that final journey that all must eventually go on.
Certain names should stay dead and buried. Doraninathus was one of those names.
One day while training our skills out in the forest, the sky split apart. A clap of thunder louder than either of us had ever heard heralded what happened next. It was as if the very sky itself split open and shown a spotlight down on the both of us. Before either of us could think, a fiery rock the size of a man of Qeynos's house appeared from the middle of the impossible light in the sky and headed straight towards us with a speed that was not describable. Pushing her in one direction with me screaming "RUN!" and myself jumping in the other, this all happened in the space of 2 seconds. Perhaps less, but I do remember drawing a breath to yell out my warning.
The sound of thunder was loud. The explosion of the rock hitting the ground not more than a few feet away from me was deafening. At first I had wondered if I was dead. Checking my senses, and seeing that all of my body's parts were still there, I knew I had not moved on to the next realm. I could not hear nothing save for a loud ringing, and all that I could see was a fiery smoke around me.
The next thought that came to me was of my Ranger friend. Screaming out her name, I received no answer. The crater that was before me made it impossible to search the immediate area, so I headed around the other side, still yelling out for my lost companion. I know I pushed her out of the way even though I did not need to. Her reflexes were as good as mine if not a hair better. Still, my need to protect her was as great as my need to find her. I started searching frantically.
Which is why I did not see what hit my jaw just then. Pain was all I knew for a moment as I flew back against a part of small grassy hill that was not on fire at that instant. Shaking my head clear of the sudden drowsiness and surprise, I tried putting the pain in it's place so I could turn and deal with what just attacked me. What I was not ready for was what I saw before I was struck again and feeling a pain I had never felt before.
Doranianthus was standing there in the middle of the smoke and the fire, seemingly unaffected by it. His brown and grey robes billowed in the smoke and in some parts looked to be a part of the fire. I more sensed what he said next than I actually heard him saying the words, but all the same, it felt like his voice was rolling along the ground waiting to crush anything it came across.
"You tried to stop me. Bring me to justice for crimes committed against the crown. That I can understand. You destroyed my house, burned my lands and murdered those that served me. All costs to pay in the game of war that we all take part in. But you...YOU...KILLED...my wife...and for that, you will never be forgiven. Everything you have held dear, I have taken away from you. The red haired BITCH whose name you even now want to scream out? There, see that pile? Her bones, turning to ash..."
He pointed with the morning star and my pain ridden head turned weakly to look. There was a pile of something smoldering where he pointed. I started to cry, but couldn't. The fire around me took all the moisture from the air. Just before he reared his hand back a second time with the evil looking morning star, he said a final line in an insane sounding voice.
"YOU will wake EVERY morning from now until I tire of your existence and YOU will beg for mercy. There will be NONE!"
He hit me again as he said the last word. I almost didn't feel it. Almost. If he said more, I do not know. With his next strike he broke my jaw and I slipped in an unconscious hell.
The events after that are sketchy to me, at best. What I know I have been told, so it is more thoughts of others than my own I write next. I was taken to the stronghold of the Doranianthus of this, our world. I was imprisoned. Beaten, tortured to the point of death only to be brought back again. Mentally stripped of all that I held dear until I could no longer define the line between what was real and what was not. I screamed until I no longer had the voice to. I cried. I begged and I pleaded after my defiance had all but left me. Still, Doranianthus was not pleased with what he had done to me so far and every day seemed to bring something new to his mind that he had not already thought of in ways to bring about an ultimate suffering and have it land about me in it's dark horror.
But my hope remained. Somehow, deep within the areas of my mind and my soul, far away from anything the mad Transvoker could heap upon my tortured body. It kept me alive more than anything that was being done to me by himself or by his twisted clerics when he could not be there to administer the suffering himself. My hope had a name. Single, pure, musical and magical. I said it when I was alone, chained to the wall of the dungeon, with nothing to keep me company except the fleas and the rats that were determined to make me their next meal.
The name was that of she whom I loved.
I don't know how I knew, but I knew that she was not dead. It came to me one day in between beatings. It was as if the wind from the outside found the smallest of passages through the dark rocks of the keep, following along in the twistings of the ancient building only to find at the very bottom that which was locked away. The smallest of whispers seemed to say it into my ear, and from that moment on, no matter what else happened, I knew he would not win.
I will not go into the detail of the days between my first glimmer of hope and the day it actually shone upon me. It will be sufficient to know that any terror you can think of would not have come even a tenth of the way to approaching the horrors visited upon me. Know that the time involved was a span of years, and that will be all I say about it for now.
Some of the scars I received then I still bear to this day...
I was not in total solitary confinement during that time. A man that fancied himself a god dared show me off to those he invited into his home. Oft, would I share my cell with others that had fallen under the wrath of the Transvoker. Word would thus reach my ears of outside events. Some said the gods were not happy. Some thought they were leaving us, others thought they had already left. Perhaps the gods wanted to war against each other, with the world below them caught in the crossfire? Who knew the truth of it all?
Still others were worried about the increasingly diminishing amount of news from the lands around us, and especially from Luclin, the moon above us reopened to exploration. No news of a rescue, of course. None knew I was here, and those that I once shared a cell with, I never saw again. Somehow, I endured. My hope was still there, even though it felt at times my body, and my soul, were not.
A day came finally, many years after my capture, that I was brought into the main hall of the keep of Doranianthus the Transvoker. Against one wall I was chained. Hand, head and foot. Then I was left there. A banquet was being thrown that night and I was to be a centerpiece of attention of some sort. All sorts of vile and loathsome creatures made their way into the hall and to the large table occupying most of it. Doranianthus himself sat at the head of it, not far from where I was held captive against the stone wall. The throne he sat on easily could have bought with it's sale any number of kingdoms.
The feast began, along with the obvious questions about me. I ignored most of them; they were pointless and asinine. Besides, the smell of the food had me more distracted than anything any of them could say.
Save one question that caught my curiosity.
"So. When does the entertainment begin?"
I don't know who said it. I do know that he who thought himself a god finally clapped his hands and servants came from the darkness behind the curtains hung between the pillars to clear away the evening's supper. In place of everyone's plates, a glass of wine and two daggers for every chair that was there was laid upon the white cloth covering the hard wood of the furniture. Doranianthus lowered his voice then, and I could not hear what he said.
A servant just then, Orc of some sort, judging by the smell, came up to me and forced my mouth open. "Here, bite on this, and try not to move around too much," was all he said before leaving me.
Whatever it was that he put into my mouth was hard like a piece of treated wood, and it had a foul taste to it. I had the sudden feeling that if I spit it out things would be worse for me, so I kept it in my closed mouth, biting it as hard as I could.
That's when I realized what was going to happen. The game was obvious. Those that came closest to sticking me with the daggers that had been placed at their spots at the table without actually sticking me would win the prize of gold that Doranianthus was just now showing them. Considering how drunk most of them were, I knew I was in for my fair share of damage. Good thing I had something to bite on.
I held on to consciousness after the first two dagger hits. I lost it after the third.
The repeated punching of my face actually woke me up. Something I had done, perhaps me not dieing, had angered Doranianthus. I had felt this type of fury from him before. But there was an intensity to this beating I was receiving that had not been visited upon me any time before now, or any time after.
This was something new, something different. It was as if he had finally, irreversibly, stepped over that last line between sanity and madness. My left eye became swollen shut, blood threatened to cloud my right. My nose was broken again and I knew that three ribs were also. The pain threatened to spin me away from reality, but I didn't let it. If I was going to die, I was going to stare my death in the face. If I was going to feel it, then so was he.
A quick glance around the room told me we were alone. The guests were gone as was the table that had taken up much of the space in the center of the hall. Couldn't have been more than an hour or so later, judging by the shorter heights of some of the candles I saw. When he noticed I was looking around, I received a hard, open handed slap from Doranianthus. He spoke then, close to my head. His madness was obvious, even to my addled brain.
"We are ALONE! There is no one here, save you and I, and soon, it will be just ME!"
"Get on with it then. Your breath stinks enough to cause me to want to leave this world for the next." Yes, I was trying to provoke him.
Not surprisingly, it worked. Or so the fourth broken rib just told me so.
"You think this is funny? FUNNY? Even now you joke about your impending death? HAH! What makes you think I'm going to let you die THIS time?"
I shrugged. I actually shrugged. I didn't have an answer for that. But he did.
"Because I tire of you. Because every night when I go to sleep I see your disembodied head laughing at me, mocking me. Every time I dream about my wife I see your arrows enter her body time after time after time until I can no longer count them." He started walking around the room just then, randomly talking to himself and the shadows.
As some of my younger human friends would have put it, "He's lost it, bub."
"Oh, by the way. I have something to show you. Do you recognize this?"
His hand reached down into a box that was next to his throne. Pulling something out of it, I saw that it was a bow. Elven made, but I did not recognize the workmanship until he brought it closer. The carving and the woodwork was unmistakable.
Mine. I had made it for she who was to be my future wife. It was the bow she was carrying the day she died.
"Ah, you DO recognize it then? Good. I knew you would. I held onto it for you, much as you have held on to something inside you. Hope, maybe? Yes, by the look in your broken face I can see that was it. Here then. Here is what I think of your hope, much as I thought of your woman when I burnt her down to a smoking cinder..."
With no effort, he snapped the bow in half and threw it at my feet. I stared at it for an eyeblink's worth of time, then tried launching myself off of the wall. I must have surprised Doranianthus with that, for he stepped a half step back then. Even with my jaw in the condition it was in, I started leveling curses at him in several languages that I knew, and some that I thought I had forgotten.
"You have some strength left then? Some spirit? Perhaps you wish to be unchained from that wall to test yourself against me? So be it, I grant you your wish..."
With a motion of his hand my shackles popped and I dropped to the floor. I was not about to fight even a child, let alone this Transvoker who had all of his power about him. Yet, somehow I stood and faced him. This actually seemed to please him. I raised a hand slowly to my jaw, and while I felt and saw the stars above when I touched it, it actually felt like it was still capable of producing sound. So, foolish me, I spoke...
"With what weapons?" I tried to put strength into that, but even I wasn't convinced. After his laughter, I could have written word for word what he was going to say next, if I'd had scroll and quill then.
"Why, with bows, of course. You may use...that one." He raised a finger to point at the broken bow at my feet. At least I had one, and he didn't seem to.
He walked over to the box by his throne. Opening it up and reaching down into it again, he next removed from the inside one other bow that I recognized immediately. The curves of any lady I had lain with would not have felt more familiar were I to run my hands over both of them.
"With your own bow, I will kill you. Fitting, to say the least. Pick up that one, and I shall end this. I grow tired of this game."
The events that happened next seemed to happen in slow motion. If my record of them seems spotty, I apologize. The pain was finally overcoming me at that point and I was finally sliding backwards into dark oblivion. Again, I have to relay what happened using the thoughts of others.
I managed to reach down to the broken bow at my feet. I would have been able to repair it, of course, where I elsewhere and I had the time. Neither was an option open to me. Nor did I have an arrow. This was not to be a contest, this was to be an execution. I stood there, broken bow in my left hand. I all but begged him to shoot me then. It had finally started to feel as if the hope that had held me together had left me and I should prepare myself for what lay beyond.
"Do it, Doranianthus. Send me on my journey. We will not see each other again after this, but I can only hope that you see my face every night as you sleep in your chamber." I managed to lift my head at that last part, even as I felt my knees weakening.
"So be it," was all he said.
His unfamiliarity with my bow must have thrown his aim off. He drew back and let fly the first arrow. Instead of the killing blow I expected, it hit me in the left shoulder. Still, it was enough to make me cry out in renewed pain. I spun backwards with the force of the impact and somehow, came to rest upon my right side, staring directly back up at Doranianthus. I waited for the next and final shot.
I could see that his aim was perfect this time. It didn't take him long to adjust to the unfamiliar bow in his hands. The next shot would enter my heart and exit my back only to bounce off the stone floor I was laying on. I closed my good eye and said a simple prayer of, "Tunare, may I sit with you a while?" It was all I had time to say before I heard the snap of my bow as it released the last arrow I would see in this life.
I heard a voice next. If it was not Tunare's, it was still a pleasing voice, but it sounded distant. What it said did not make any sense.
"Doranianthus, my husband. Don't do this."
Enough time passed, a second or so, where I realized that I was not dead. I did not feel the last arrow and I heard a voice I should not have. I dared open my eye and what I saw was impossible. The arrow that was released was hovering, motionless, less than an inch away from my chest. I saw the Transvoker look at it then slowly turn his head to look at someone else that seemed to form out of a fog that had been blowing in from an open window. Tall she was, long black hair and lips that a sane person would have given anything to feel their full redness upon theirs.
I was told later this was Camiana, the wife of Doranianthus.
I was also reminded that she was dead. By my hand, if any of us is to believe that fact. Regardless of who she was, she gave pause to the actions happening around her. Left hand slightly raised, she motioned towards the arrow hovering in front of me. It dropped to the stone floor and and did not move again. It made the slightest of sounds after it fell.
It was not a loud sound, but it was enough to make Doranianthus snap his attention away from the vision that was his wife for a split second. Just as quickly, he turned back and raised his hand to her, only to have it pass through to the fog that she had seemingly formed from. Slow realization set in as Doraninathus knew he had been tricked. He moved to raise my bow again...
...only to have it ripped from his hands. No shriek had I ever heard chilled me more to the bone than what I heard come from his throat just then. Except for the scream of rage he let loose next.
Next to me, the mist of the fog seemed to gather again, faster than before. When it parted this time, a figure bent down to me to see if I was still alive. I was, barely, but I did not recognize who it was. Apparently Doranianthus did.
"YOU'RE DEAD! I KILLED YOU MYSELF!" His voice went up a half octave, so I was told. At this point I wouldn't have really cared. All that I knew I felt then was that spark of hope that I had all but thought lost coming back to me stronger than I had ever felt it before. It embraced me and held me back from certain death. With a sigh, I finally passed out and thus was not witness to the final battle that must have taken place.
That tale is told elsewhere, and not by my hand. What I will tell is this. Doranianthus was so outraged by what happened, he tried casting a spell of some sort upon my bow that he had in his keep for so long. He did succeed in snapping the string, but the bow, I was told, was still used in my defense. I am still here, this much is obvious.
I sit here now, almost a thousand years after these events. After the Shattering. After the world changed for all of us. I think about what happened and I put my thoughts to scroll so as never to lose them again.
Doranianthus the Transvoker is dead. I know this as fact. How he died, I am not sure. His keep was destroyed in this world much as it was in that other one. Some say the gods were finally offended at his impertinence and his thinking he was able to stand at their level. Some also say he was chained and cast deep into Luclin as it exploded. Who knows, except the gods?
My wife, perhaps. She is the one who saved me that day. She has told me what transpired, of course, but there always seems to be a new detail that she remembers, or one that I mis-remember and she corrects for me. She is the one who is here now, asleep next to me. I look down at her bared back and her long sunrise red hair and realize what it is that she means to me.
As I reach over to brush my fingertips lightly across her back, she shifts almost imperceptibly, her body knowing my touch even when her sleeping self does not. I smile. As I always have when she has been this close to me, awake or not.
Dearest reader. For now, my tale is done. There is more to be telling, for sure. but others have requested that they be allowed their voice in this. As for what happens next, now that my writing of this scroll is done?
Well, that is between my wife and myself, and it is something I will not transcribe to parchment.
However, I will leave you with another song. One that I find myself still singing to this day. Perhaps simply because it speaks to me of hope, whereas the first song above came to mean to me the darkest thoughts of being alone.
Learning To Fly
by Pink Floyd
Into the distance, a ribbon of black.
Stretched to the point of no turning back.
A flight of fancy on a windswept field.
Standing alone, my senses reeled.
A fatal attraction is holding me fast,
how can I escape this irresistible grasp?
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I...
Ice is forming on the tips of my wings.
Unheeded warnings, I thought I thought of everything.
No navigator to find my way home.
Unladen, empty and turned to stone.
A soul in tension that's learning to fly.
Condition grounded but determined to try.
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I...
Above the planet on a wing and a prayer.
My grubby halo, a vapor trail in the empty air.
Across the clouds I see my shadow fly.
Out of the corner of my watering eye.
A dream unthreatened by the morning light.
Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night.
There's no sensation to compare with this.
Suspended animation, A state of bliss.
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I...
I am anything but alone now, and I never will be again.
I thank you for your patience in the reading of these scrolls. May Tunare light your path to and from the hunt, this day and every day.
Mornaric Dinall, head of House Diniall. Father, husband, survivor.
...And thus, by my own hand, do I put both word and thought to these series of scrolls...
