In the Service of Serendipity

Imi Vevo i Valima Ecestar leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. His old, old Elven eyes were tired, and the page of equations he was trying to solve kept appearing to squirm over the page like a mass of slender worms. He sighed, running his hands through his long, silver hair and scratching at his scalp. The thaumatological equations were difficult, more difficult than usual, simply due to the highly variable interactions between the new, proposed enchantment and the set of current enchantments. If he got them wrong, the equations wouldn’t solve properly, and the magics would collapse and fail.
Enchantment was a tricky science. But Imi Vevo i Valima Ecestar, which meant “In the service of serendipity”, was a spectacular enchanter mage. He was really, really good at this kind of thing.
But then, he was good at a great many things. Enchantment wasn’t even his primary job. He was actually an assassin. Enchantment was just a way to create the tools he needed. His primary task, the one that everything he did was in service of, was, unfortunately, killing. Killing anyone who could threaten the world with things that the people of the world should not know.
Imi Vevo i Valima Ecestar wasn’t his original name. That had been…he couldn’t remember. Too many other things filled his mind, and he had been Ecestaron (the more expedient version of his name) so long that it no longer mattered what his original name was. It was who he was now that mattered, and the work he did, not what he had been named over a thousand years ago.
The Elves were an old race. The only people older than the Elves were the Kler’naktha, who, due perhaps to their reptilian biology, had been rather stunted socially. They hadn’t developed as a society as fast as the Elves, so technically, the Elven civilization had been the first, despite the head start the reptile folk had.
The Elves had felt a keen sense of connection to the natural world, and it, and everything in it, became something they called “The Eternal”. All of the plants, the animals, the peoples, even the gods, were all a part of the Eternal. While the gods were worshipped as aspects of the Eternal, they were subsumed within it, facets of key parts of it. Partial personifications of it.
This philosophy drove and focused the Elves, and their culture was wrapped around and infused within it. It was the basis of their religion, social structure, and interactions with nature and the planet Velyri as a whole. Everything was in balance, and everything was a reflection of the Eternal, because everything was the Eternal.
But things slowly changed, imperceptible even to the long-lived Elves, who routinely had life spans measured in millennia. Their knowledge grew as their scientists and scholars experimented, developed as inventors tried new and interesting things, and expanded as these new techniques were taught to the following generations. They found new ways to build, to grow food, raise animals, make war. They discovered ways that energies could be used to do work, enabling them to have more time to spend on specialized pursuits. Eventually, their buildings were no longer in the trees, but towered far above them, in spires that touched the sky. Stone and cement came to cover vast tracts of land that had once been forest, those forests being harvested for the voracious furnaces that powered the Elven cities of stone, concrete, and glass.
(insert pic of Elven city)
Mechanized vehicles, no longer pulled by animals, sped from city to city over a vast, sprawling network of roads. The furnaces, no longer burning wood but coal and petroleum products, belched out huge clouds of tainted steam and smoke. Vehicles ran on infernal combustion engines, powered by bound elementals pulled from the elemental branes, or on steam engines powered by coal or petroleum.
And things were good. For a while.
Then some Elves started noticing things. Small things, at first, like the color changes of butterflies. Then other things, like blooms of algae in places that had never had that before, or an increase in violent weather phenomena. With their lives extending into the thousands of years, they started to see patterns. Patterns that alarmed a few of them.
But Elves were slow to change; they always had been. When you can live for thousands of years, you have plenty of time to do things. There was no hurry. But over the next hundred years or so, the increasingly obvious changes eventually meant that something needed to change. Things were happening too fast, faster than the Elves felt comfortable with, and the changes were accelerating. A change in one place led to unintended changes in other places, each one acting as a driver for further changes. Things were getting out of hand, and much more quickly than anyone expected. People were realizing that what had been important, the Eternal, was being damaged on a second by second basis by the Elves’ lifestyle. It couldn’t go on much longer, because the changes being wrought in the Eternal were starting to eat it away. Soon, within the lifetimes of the people living at the time, the Eternal would collapse, with disastrous results. While diviners were busy trying to predict the future, everyone could see where it all was leading.
Already, they had noticed several species dying off, never to be seen again. Others were in decline. Still others had much less room to live due to the land being broken up by the constructions and structures of the Elven civilization. They would run out of wild spaces. And those wild spaces were the reason life could exist on Velyri at all. At some point, the number of Elves and other sentient beings would outpace the planet’s ability to support them. And the tools and systems of the Elven civilization was eating away at those vitally important wild spaces.
And there were many sentients now. The Kler’naktha had developed metalworking, and while their numbers were still low and primarily concentrated in the warmer, drier regions, they were growing and would eventually spread. But that wasn’t all. There were several other mammalian primates that were developing into hunter-gatherer societies: Humans, Orcs, Goblins, Hobbits, and Dwarves were all starting to show signs of developing civilizations of their own, some of it copied from the Elves, however crudely it was done. Soon it wouldn’t just be an Elven problem. It would, in another few centuries or less, be a problem for every single lifeform on Velyri.
But it was still early, and there was time to repair the damage. However, it would take a great sacrifice on the part of the Elves. They had to discard a majority of the developments they had made that allowed their civilization to be what it was. They had to get back to the roots of the worship of the Eternal, because what they were currently doing was antithetical to the Eternal, and damaging to it.
It wasn’t easy; it took time, as social engineering usually does. And it took them having to dismantle a great many parts of their civilization. They refocused on the Eternal, on nature. They kept a majority of their biologic and thaumatologic knowledge, but eschewed most of the industrial knowledge that they had developed. Gone were the engines, gone were the polluting furnaces and power plants. They focused more on what nature and the Eternal could give them sustainably, rather than what they could extract from it. The Elven Reawakening, Atacoivië, had begun.
And that worked, for that generation. But technology was hard to give up, and many Elves continued to use it, despite the general attitude about how dangerous that was. So the Ministry of Serendipity was formed. Despite largely giving up on industrialization, the knowledge couldn’t just be erased, and those tools were difficult to just give up on. Knowledge doesn’t really work like that. It would take a more active player to enforce the bans on technology.
Hidden libraries were set up, just in case the old lore was needed. They were guarded to make sure no one found them or accessed them. It would be a long time before anything was severe enough to need it, at least compared to the damage being done to the Eternal by industrialization. These guards became the guardians of both the knowledge itself, and the primary means of enforcing its disuse. Their job became keeping that knowledge from ever being redeveloped. They became, in essence, assassins, because it was either that, or kidnappers, and they lacked the facilities to keep Elves imprisoned for the rest of their very long lives. Besides, that would have been too cruel. Death was more merciful.
Not all Elves wanted to be Reawakened. They fought against the mandates, saying that the damage being done to the Eternal wasn’t as bad as everyone claimed, or that the Eternal would be able to recover even if it was. So the Ministry was very busy early on, until the number of dissidents had been reduced, and eventually, eliminated. With extreme prejudice in most cases. With the increasingly obvious damage being inflicted on the planet’s ecosystems, they couldn’t take any chances. Elves can be rather thick; it comes from their long lives. They don’t change quickly. There wasn’t enough time to just let the dissidents continue to discourage repairing the Eternal. They had a generation, maybe two.
That was over twenty thousand years ago, before most races had learned that they could plant their own crops, when their best tools were just knapped flint tied to a stick.
Over time, the Ministry of Serendipity became more organized. Because of their unique position and requirements, they still retained much of the old knowledge. They had to. They had to recognize it when they saw it, and make sure it didn’t develop again. They developed specialized techniques to find out when forbidden knowledge was being used, primarily using divination and other informational magics as tools. Having an insight into the future gave them an advantage, allowing them to get into the general area soon enough to make a difference. Once there, more mundane espionage techniques could be utilized, allowing them to find and evaluate the potential targets and determine a solution. Often that solution was to destroy the knowledge, often resulting in the offender’s death. After all, it wouldn’t do to have them just recreate the knowledge. It was too dangerous to give them that chance, even if they promised not to develop it again in the future.
Now, the Ministry of Serendipity both guard the knowledge, and keep anyone else from finding out about it.
Ecestaron gazed up at the ceiling, the rough stone of the cavern shedding warm, soft light from the Continual Sunlight spell. To his right, where most of the cavern lay, there was a forest of mixed deciduous and conifer trees, complete with undergrowth, the plants originally planted by him and his wife over a thousand years ago. Since then, the forest had done what forests do: propagate and grow. It not only included trees, but animals and fungi as well. While it started out artificial, it had since grown into a full, mature ecosystem. Birds sang in its trees, squirrels looked for nuts in the duff, and mycelial threads wove their way from plant to plant.
(insert pic of forest in cavern)
The cavern was vast: this one was over a mile across, and about eight hundred feet high. It had taken him decades to expand, using the Shape Earth spell, until it was large enough for him to get a fully balanced ecosystem. A stream ran through the middle of it, about a half mile away from where he sat on a little shelf of stone like a little raised patio. From his vantage point, he could see a couple of the massive support pillars of stone that flared at the top where they met the ceiling, supporting it. Tunnels led off to his living quarters and his labs, and another ran off towards his research library and the Hall of Records, where the Forbidden Knowledge was kept under lock and key and magic.
The Elf stood, unconsciously straightening his silversilk garments as he did so. He was wearing a light cream colored shirt and pants, with a tan lightweight robe over it, belted at the waist. He was nearing 1500 years old, and he was starting to feel it. He was still healthy and spry, for the most part, and only felt old occasionally. Today was one of those days. But perhaps he was just tired. Perhaps adding a Movement spell to his Elven silversilk armor wasn’t the best idea. What he had enchanted onto it worked well enough. It was plenty protective, besting that of even full plate harness, despite being very much lighter and easier to wear.
Besides, in his line of work, he was almost never in any danger. If anyone even knew he was around, he was doing it wrong. His targets never knew they were even being targeted, until they died. Most had no idea of why they might be being attacked in the first place, although most died before realizing an attack had even happened. It was better that way, and it left them no opportunity to pass on the secrets they weren’t even supposed to know to begin with. Besides, he wasn’t a cruel man, he preferred that his victims (and he was honest enough with himself to know they were victims) didn’t feel any pain. Just quick oblivion.
He’d set the armor project aside for now. It passed the time between jobs. But he was tired, and so he went to bed. His wife, Culuináriel, was already asleep. He smiled at her softly snoring form, curled up under the lightweight blankets. Ironically, her name meant “Daughter of Orange Sunlight”, and she spent her life living in caves under a mountain with him. It was certainly not the way Elves were meant to live. He and Culuináriel lived like Dwarves, a thought that amused him, even after so many years. At least they weren’t trapped underground; they could still go outside, and often did.
He disrobed, then slid under the silversilk sheet and snuggled up to Culuináriel’s warm, sleeping form. She sleepily mumbled something unintelligible, then settled back to sleep as his arm curled up over her hip and belly. His head lay on the pillow next to hers, his nose in her hair at the back of her neck, and he breathed deeply, inhaling her scent. It was warm, slightly musky, and comforting, and reminded him of open spaces, wildflower meadows, and the forest. And it still made his brain fire off hormones that gave him the urge to squeeze her tightly to him and never let go. After a few minutes enjoying the rhythmic, steady breathing and warm body of his wife, he rolled over, reluctantly releasing her, and let himself fall asleep.
That night, he dreamed. As usual, before he went to sleep, he cast a Divination spell. He would often get prophetic dreams this way. Not all members of the Ministry used dreams; some used flames, some used rune stones, some used crystal gazing. In the Service of Serendipity used his dreams.
He didn’t remember everything about his dream. While he could be a lucid dreamer, and often was, being lucid during a divinatory dream messed up the divination. After all, what good was a message if, by your own volition, you changed that message? This evening, he let himself be carried by the winds of Dream, wherever they were to take him.
He dreamt about an eddy, that grew until it was a whirlpool, the ocean waves spinning as he slid down the sloped funnel during a thunderstorm. The bright flashes of lightning were almost constant, lighting up turbulent, white-capped sea that had started rotating faster and faster until the sea sloped up around him. The thunder was unrecognizable as individual instances of noise, and instead was a constant roar easily heard above the rushing of the water around him.
A ship, long and lean with three masts, broken off like twigs, slid over the edge of the whirlpool, caught like a fly in a web, the prow hovering over the drop for a long moment before tipping, slowly at first, then suddenly, until it was vertical, its rudder in the air, spray blowing off of it in the wind. It spun around the gyre, like a log, as if it was stirring the whirlpool instead of the other way around. It seemed to be spinning around the gyre faster than he was, and he worried that it would slam into him, but he sank towards the center faster than it did, so every time it swept by him it missed by a space so slim he could have reached out and touched it as it went by.
It was cold, punctuated by oddly hot flashes, as if there were little pockets of nearly boiling water scattered randomly through the whirlpool. He spiraled down, increasing in speed, as the sea and the world around him blurred into a smeared rush before his eyes. Faster and faster, lower and lower, until--
He was on the beach. He wasn’t on sand, but sharp rock. Shale, if he wasn’t mistaken, tilted, broken, and sharp from geological uplift. There was blood on his hands; the sharp shale must have given him the cuts that laced his palms. He looked up, towards the cliffs that stood about thirty yards from the surf that lapped at his legs. They towered about sixty feet high. He couldn’t see much else from his vantage point.
His dream self stood up, and despite the height of the cliffs, could now see the landscape beyond their edge. Like a quilt, it stretched out, tilled fields and geometrically shaped chunks of forest. No, not forest, woodlots. The trees were too regular, and pollarded on one side of the lot. Past them, he could see a city, stone and wood and red roof tiles. An immense bridge, arcing up to a city built on a distant cloud bank, towered over the city in lacy mass of silvery metal.
He took a step forward, and suddenly he was in the city, its streets cramped and narrow, the buildings rising tall on either side of him. Dark alleyways opened up on both sides of the street. There was a sense of crowds of people, yet at the same time the streets were empty. What kind of people was unclear; he couldn’t get a sense of what race they were. The buildings were lacking detail, but he couldn’t tell what kind of architecture it was, besides not being traditional Elven designs. They looked like any other city in a relatively modern country on the continent of Endrica.
The sky was cloudless, and a brilliant blue color. Thunder boomed, despite the clear sky. A moment of relative silence, then another crack of thunder. He could smell brimstone, and felt heat in the air. Thunder rumbled again, very loud, coming from what seemed to be all around him.
He woke. He pushed the sheet off of his sweaty legs, and swung them over the edge of his bed. He cradled his head in his hands, elbows on knees, as he tried to hold the imagery of the dream in his head. He reached for the journal that he kept on the bedside table, opened it up, and began to write down everything he remembered about the dream. He paid particular attention to the imagery, where he could. Every little detail mattered, and could be a clue. He just had to figure out what they were.
He made himself sit there for a while after he finished writing down the dream, just to make sure he got everything he remembered down on paper. He would need that later. When he did the research. He had to determine three things: who was doing it, what it was that they were doing, and where they were. Then he’d be able to take care of the problem. Culuináriel would help with the research. She was good at that kind of thing. She was the other reason he had to make sure he got everything down right. His notes had to make enough sense to be helpful to her as well.
He stood up, then went to the stream that flowed through the cavern he used as his privy, and washed his face. He had planted a rinqualastë here, to take care of his waste, and he checked it to see how healthy it was. Some of the leaves showed some yellowing around the edges, which indicated that he and Culuinárien weren’t getting enough protein in their diets.
That wasn’t surprising, he reflected, he hadn’t been out of his cave in a couple of weeks, which meant he hadn’t done any hunting in a while, and hunting really wasn’t this wife’s hobby. He had been living on the vegetables they were growing in forest cave. They weren’t growing enough legumes, evidently.
No matter. Going hunting would allow him the time to process this latest dream. Perhaps his subconscious would make some connections. He got dressed, got his bow and quiver, and left the cavern complex to hunt as dawn lightened the eastern sky. As he entered the forest, he almost completely disappeared, his enchanted silversilk clothing shifting in color to match the surroundings.
The caverns that he called home were on the western edge of the Northern Expanse, at an altitude of some six thousand feet, high up in a dense alpine forest. It was deliberately hard to get to, harder to find, and nearly impossible to get into. The way in lay nestled between a pair of large boulders, between which a thick tree grew, blocking the entrance. Those wishing to enter had to pass through the tree to get in, using either Plant magic to pass through the tree, or Gate magic to bypass it. Then there was the reinforced door, enchanted for strength and durability, magically locked with a passphrase that only he and Culuináriel knew, and requiring at least one of them to be touching the door at the time the phrase was uttered.
Guests were never invited. He and his wife’s lives were solitary, even lonely. But they had each other, and both had known what their lives were going to be like, and accepted the restrictions and necessities that made them that way.
The entrance tunnel, shaped to look natural save that the floor was smooth, opened into the living spaces: a great room, combining areas for relaxation and cooking, opened up on one side to the forest cavern. To one side was a pair of bedroom caves and the privy. While they never had guests, they had made two bedrooms anyway, in case one or the other needed some time alone. It happened occasionally, but not often. He and Culuináriel had been together so long that long comfortable silences were the norm. They could be alone while in the same room as each other, if they so wished.
An opening on the other side led to their workshops and enchanting lab. Both of them had several hobbies, mostly crafting, as they had to be relatively self sufficient. While they could go into towns and trade, they preferred not to, because the less time they spent in the presence of others the better, for several reasons. They didn’t want external relationships, either with ephemerals or with other Elves. The less anyone knew about them, the better. They also didn’t need any external links that might influence their duties. They were always “on duty”, even when they didn’t have a current mission. Culuináriel, while not an assassin like Ecestaron, was still a member of the Ministry of Serendipity, and held the same duties as he did. There had been some times when she had needed to kill someone.
They had woodworking, stone working, and metal working spaces, but his favorite was the sewing cave. In it was an enchanted loom for creating and weaving the Elven silversilk they wore as their preferred fabric. It wasn’t its own cavern, like the other crafting halls; it was actually part of the forest cave, since the loom required live spiders, and they needed food.
(insert pic of Culuináriel)
Culuináriel was a gifted crafter and artist, and had used the workshops to create the furniture, tools, utensils, and decorations that made their living space habitable. She had also, over the past thousand or so years, added permanent illusions to the cave walls, mostly in the forest cave, to make it more expansive, adding forested mountains as a background, blending it seamlessly with the actual cave to give it the impression that it just kept going. She was doing it piece by piece, and was about three quarters of the way to full completion.
The enchantment lab lay past the workshops, a large cavern that was dominated by a large waterwheel that was fed by the stream that flowed through the forest cavern. It was the height of three tall men, and wider than his outstretched arms. It was undershot, the curved buckets catching the high pressure jet of water and redirecting the water in a smooth arc, absorbing the energy and transferring it to the wheel. It turned an astrolabe through a complicated set of gears when he wasn’t tapping its energy for enchanting purposes.
A tunnel leading off from the forest cavern led to their library, and, beyond that, the Hall of Records, where the forbidden knowledge was kept. Both he and Culuináriel were familiar with a lot of that information, both to be able to recognize it when needed, and to understand why it was forbidden in the first place. There was a failsafe in there, as well, set to destroy the chamber and everything within it, if necessary. If it had to be used, then things were dire, indeed.
Three hours later, he came back with three rabbits and a small deer. It would do, for a while. During the hunt, he had let his mind quietly dwell on the dream’s imagery. He got the impression that alchemy might be involved.
After dressing the game and storing the meat in a series of preservation boxes, he went into the library. It was a large cavern, shaped into a rectangle eighty feet long and forty wide, with a ceiling thirty feet high. Two story bookcases filled the entire chamber save a smallish area with a sofa, a pair of easy chairs, a low table between them, and some side tables. Wheeled ladders were in every aisle to give access to the books on the higher shelves. Glass globes on slender chains hung from the ceiling, lit via Continual Light spells. One was out. He, or Culuináriel, would have to relight it at some point. For now, there was plenty of light.
Culuináriel was already there, curled up in her favorite chair, writing in her journal. She looked up at his approach. “Alarin, melda,” he said in greeting.
“Good day to you too, love,” she replied, setting the journal on the table. “I was just writing down notes from my last projection session. There is a beautiful seaside town on the western coast in Lower Jemal.”
He nodded. He’d never been out there, and there were likely other Ministry members closer who would handle any problems out that way, but one never knew when her observations might come in handy when trying to decipher a divinatory dream.
“Have you read my description of my dream, yet?” he asked.
“Yes, I have. Have you figured any of it out yet?”
He shook his head. “Not really. Only that it might involve alchemy. But that’s just an impression, rather than from any specific clue.”
“It seemed pretty vague. Whirlpool, beach, city with a bridge, thunder. Not much to go on.”
“Cast it on me tonight as well. Maybe one or both of us will get something more to work with.”
He nodded. It seemed like a good idea. He turned, and went down one of the aisles of shelves.
The books in the library were organized by subject, alphabetically in Tengwar. Culuináriel was the primary librarian, although he had had some input when she organized the volumes. He started with the city, figuring geography would be the easiest place to start. He was looking for a city with a large bridge.
Many of the books were written by him, travelogues from his own journeys, others were penned by Culuináriel, mostly from Projected viewpoints. She often spent time using the spell of Projection, sending her mind out to various locations and examining what was there. Many go the books were nation-specific, others were lists of descriptions of key features of specific cities. Here was a book detailing the city of Ahnki Lokiiri Davonn, a port city in the nation of J’radi, most notable for the miles of docks and wharves seemingly filling the Davonn Bay. Here was another book about the city of Hamabili Osagawe, a large settlement in the Essimine Monarchy, situated on the shores of Lake Osagamali. It was known for its colorful fishing fleet made up of brightly painted boats with colorfully patterned sails. A third detailed Kredach Adhor, a Dwarven undercity, constructed in a vast collection of caves underneath the Malasul’abbad Mountains. That one even had a bridge, crossing over a vast chasm that was hundreds of feet deep.
Hours later, they found a book about Port Karn, the Tondene Empire city on the mouth of the Altasirya River. It also had the River Bridge, a miles-long bridge connecting Port Karn in the south to Port Karn North on the other side of the river delta. The bridge wasn’t silvery metal, it was wood and stone and cement, but the sheer length of the bridge made it the most likely candidate. The River Bridge was actually a series of bridges hopping from island to island in the delta, rather than a single long span. There were several drawbridges along its length. Visually, it wasn’t that impressive. It was just a long, long road constructed over a shallow river delta.
So, the problem was in Port Karn. Most likely. It was a place to start.
Next, he had to figure out the what and who. Maybe he could have another dream that would refine his parameters. It might take a few days, even with Culuináriel’s help. Prophetic dreams were iffy at best.
He ate a late dinner, then cast Divination on Culuináriel after she got into bed, then spent some time replenishing his mana reserves by absorbing some ambient mana. He cast the spell again, on himself, and went to sleep.
If he had any dreams that night, he didn’t remember them. He awoke disappointed, but resigned. Sometimes it was like this. Fragmentary, incomplete, and thoroughly annoying. Most of his job was research. Culuináriel hadn’t dreamt either, a doubly disappointing result. He would have to wait for her perspectives.
He decided to try the alchemy angle, trying to see if he could figure out what was being developed that should be curtailed. He approached it in reverse. What wasn’t it? It didn’t seem to be machinery; there was no imagery that would have indicated any industrial processes being explored. Just loud noises, thunder, specifically.
In this case, he had to go into the forbidden archives, and see what kinds of alchemy were forbidden. There weren’t many; alchemy was a difficult science, often using materials that were rare enough in the world to naturally limit what could be done with it. But he spent the day in there anyway, poring over the volumes of alchemical data. There was a lot of it, most of it perfectly fine, and not forbidden at all. But it had to be in there for context, if there was ever any reason to open up the forbidden archives and make the knowledge known again. In his almost 1500 years, he had yet to come up with a reason they should ever be made public again. Not even “saving the world” was a good enough reason, because opening up the archives would just lead to its destruction again.
He had a very frustrating day. Nothing clicked. There were no alchemy techniques or recipes that he found that he could make fit the dream. He found some forbidden biology-affecting elixirs, one that created a poison gas so lethal a single bottle could kill everyone in a city, and one that gave the user the ability to see into different, alternate universes. That one had been made forbidden because it usually caused some severe mental illnesses. The reward wasn’t worth the risk, and there was no reason to allow it to be known. Mental illnesses weren’t a plague the population needed. They had enough plagues already, and the number of mages they had weren’t high enough to deal with all the cases they already had. Unlike Elven townships, the number of mageborn inhabitants were a much lower proportion of their populations.
Culuináriel had cast her Projection spell again, targeting Port Karn. The last time Ecestaron had been to Port Karn had been over two hundred years ago, when a Dwarven artificer realized that steam could do work, and had planned to power some looms with it. The artificer had been dead in a week, before he could fully explain his ideas. His three investors had all died within a month of the artificer.
The city hadn’t changed much, physically. Some new buildings, taking the place of older ones. A bit more sprawl south of the walls. At first, she chose vantage points above the city, and she noticed that there were several Aarakocra in city guard uniforms circling a few hundred feet above the town. Every now and again one would dive down between the buildings, or drop to just above the rooftops. From what she could tell, they were coordinating ground forces and acting as “eyes in the sky”, in much the same way that animal mages use birds as spies, riding along and seeing out of their eyes.
River traffic seemed about the same, with lots of boats and ships all along the wharves. The Tondene Navy base in the river delta was larger, with twice the number of dry-docks than before. There was a higher number of military vessels as well patrolling the river. In addition to the extra repair slips, the docks had been extended as well to service the greater number of naval vessels. The increased military traffic disturbed her a little, as it seemed to imply a greater threat of military action, and neither she nor her husband had seen any wars in the future. But then, they didn’t really look for that sort of thing, so it could be due to a blind spot they had. She would have to talk to Ecestaron about it.
But nothing obvious jumped out at her, regardless of which viewpoint she chose. And she chose many, spending her day in the enchantment lab, using the waterwheel to power her spell casting. That way, she didn’t tire; she wasn’t using her own mana, she was drawing it from the energy of the waterwheel. It provided more than enough to allow her to cast her spells.
The problem was that she didn’t know what she was looking for. At least her scrying allowed her to improve the maps they had of the city. Those would be useful later, when her husband had to go there to put an end to the problem. Only very rarely did he require her to join him, although she was always watching him, just in case, via her scrying abilities.
She made some notations on the translucent page that overlaid the map of Port Karn that was clipped to the drawing board on her lap. For the most part, the streets were the same, except at the edges. Old buildings had been repurposed, but they hadn’t changed their positions. And neither had the streets. She placed a few labels on the overlay. The location of a mage guild; of a converted warehouse, now with a large opening in the roof, that seemed to be the dwelling place of the Aarakocra she had seen flying around; the positions of some sewer outflow pipes near the wharves. Mostly things that hadn’t been there hundreds of years ago, when they had last looked at the city.
She was mentally exhausted. Since her spell casting had been powered by the wheel in the enchanting lab, it wasn’t a physical tiredness, unlike most spell casting. No, this was purely a “mind used too much today” kind of problem. She shut her eyes, and leaned her head back over the back of the chair, her golden blonde hair cascading down almost to the floor. She had unwrapped the silk ribbons that had bound it into a convenient braid, since she wasn’t doing any crafting, and it felt good to not have it pulling on her scalp like it often did when braided or pulled back into a pony tail.
She massaged her scalp, running her fingers through her hair. It felt good, although it didn’t really help her feeling of fatigue. She opened her eyes as she heard Ecestaron enter, seeing him upside down from her tilted vantage point. She raised her head, and turned towards him as he came over to her and placed his hands upon her shoulders, bending down to kiss her neck.
“Any luck?” he asked. “For I have had none today.”
“Not really,” she answered, “although I did fill in some changes into the maps. There is a lot more naval activity, and I am wondering if there is any talk of a war. You know the Tondenes; they have a history of expansionism.”
Imi Vevo i Valima Ecestar frowned, contemplating. “Yes, they do. Or did, anyway. They have been pretty happy with their current borders for centuries. And their territory is still mostly empty. Do you think there are resources they have found out about that they don’t have already?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s all implications anyway, based upon the military traffic. I didn’t follow any of them to see what they were actually doing. I had just noticed that it seemed busier since the last time I had checked.”
“Hmmm. Still, something to watch for. If a war is coming, we will want to know about it.”
“Think it might have anything to do with the increased incidences of sudden magical incidents?”
It was his turn to shrug. “I have no idea. Those are related to that crystal fashion that everyone seems interested in all of a sudden, right?”
“Seem to be. I’ve watched several gaming dens using crystals, but only peripherally. I haven’t made any kind of study of them. They look like quartz. But every now and again something happens in their presence. It would be foolish not to think that there might not be some connection.”
He nodded, “I agree,” he said aloud. “Another thing we should watch for. Although I know of no Elven secret technologies that used crystals in such a way.” A thought occurred to him. “Do you think it’s something we should be controlling?”
“I don’t know. All of the records about the Atacoivië never mentioned such things, as far as I am aware. If either of us had seen something in the records describing this, I would think we’d remember it.”
“Well, it’s not our main concern at the moment. Might be in the future, though.”
“It’s not just an Imperial thing, you know. It’s all over Endrica, and likely the other continents, too.”
He paused. “It sounds like it’s too late to close the stable door, now that the horses have fled.”
“Probably,” she agreed. “They seem to be part of Calanorië.”
“I miss that little moon. Pity something destroyed it.” He saw her concerned look. “It probably got hit by a comet or a falling star. Or perhaps the gods did it.”
“Hmmm, yeah. Moons don’t do that spontaneously. That also means that little ‘Racing Light’ acted as a shield, protecting Velyri from whatever was coming its way.”
“Indeed.” He paused, then, with a bit of levity, said “Hey, if the gods did do it, it means that those crystals are part of some divine plan.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s a plan that is in the world’s best interests, dear.”
He sobered. “Good point. Even the kindest deity can be capricious, at times.” He headed towards the exit. “I’m going to start dinner. I was thinking salads, with strips of venison.”
She nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll help you chop.”
That evening, he cast Divination again, specifically with the goal of figuring out who was the problem in Port Karn that he had to deal with. With any luck, knowing who it was would help him figure out what it was.
That night, he did indeed have a prophetic dream.
He was on a wagon, trundling down the crowded street of a city. The streets were narrow, the buildings overhanging the street, making the space overhead very narrow. He was in a cage, in the back of the wagon, perhaps a prisoner. Without checking, he knew the cage door was locked. The driver, a man in a brown robe, sat hunched over the reins. A thick book was manacled to his right wrist.
The crowd threw tomatoes at him. Some were ripe, most were rotten. They smelled of decomposing vegetables, decay, and rotten eggs. What had he done to warrant the cage and the crowd’s anger?
He looked forward, up the street. It ran straight for several blocks, then went up a hill, towards a castle with high towers. His hands gripped the bars, testing their strength. They didn’t move. He sat back, resigned. The cart bumped over uneven stones in the road as it made its way toward the castle at the end of the road.
He passed under the gateway; it towered above him. It was tall enough to let in the largest ship without it having to unship its masts. The walls on either side were even taller than the gate opening, and they stretched up improbably tall: grey walls of stone blocks larger than the cart he was in.
The cart moved silently down the causeway and into a dark tunnel, lit by flames that hovered in the air. And all of a sudden, the space opened up into a larger room, and the flames were enclosed in glass globes.
The room was large, open and brightly lit. It seemed, simultaneously, both opulent and mundane, and he couldn’t quite underwent why. Glass columns supported the high, unseen ceiling, wrapped in a brass latticework.
At one end of the room was a throne, again both opulent and plain at the same time. Seated in it was a man, the king, dressed in silken robes with a crown of glass on his head. It glinted in the light of the englobed fires.
Standing next to him was a robed figure, their face hidden by the shadows of their cowl.
And he was no longer in the cart, or the cage. He stood at the base of the Dias the throne was on, the steps up to it looking like a small hill.
The King spoke, his voice a firm and haughty. “You have been brought here because you trespassed upon our territory. What do you have to say about that?”
The King was middle aged, Human, with a dark, well-trimmed beard and dark hair that fell to his shoulders. His blue eyes were narrowed under his brow, his lips firmly set in an attitude of privileged annoyance. His heavyset body, the result of plenty of food and a dearth of exercise, sat slumped in the throne chair.
Ecastaron was at a loss. He didn’t know what to say. He stalled for time. “When did I trespass? Where?”
“The sentence is death. Is there any reason I shouldn’t have you killed right now?”
“Now, wait a minute, you majesty. That would be rather hasty, and I would like some details about what I have supposedly done.”
“I just told you what you’ve done.”
“Well, my memory isn’t what it used to be. Tell me where I trespassed, because I don’t remember going anywhere.”
The advisor spoke up. “You were found in the Glittering Forest. It’s off limits to any but the King.”
“I don’t recall going into any forest, glittering or otherwise. How do you know it was me?”
“Silence, trespasser! Your memory is not our concern!” the advisor shouted, and his cowl, dislodged by his sudden movement an exclamation, fell to shoulders, revealing his face. It was the King’s face, and he spoke with the King’s voice.
The walls were on fire now. Or they were fire. Ecastaron’s dream self wasn’t sure. Maybe it was because the King was angry about his supposed trespassing.
“It’s treason!” the King exclaimed. “You coming in here. Begone, criminal, and trouble the kingdom no longer!”
“Guards!” the advisor called. “Take him away to the dungeons!” He turned to the King. “Now, sire, we can get back to what’s important! Your legacy!”
Ecastaron was grabbed from behind by faceless guards he could feel but couldn’t see. They, for he know that there were tow of them, dragged him down multiple twisting corridors until they arrived at a door set into the end of the stone corridor. It was the only door he had seen.
They opened it with a large brass key, and the door squealed on its hinges like a stuck pig. Even after it stopped moving, it continued to squeal like a dying animal. The two guards threw him into the cell, and he stumbled across the space until he collided with the stone wall on the far side.
And he woke up.
He fumbled on the nightstand for his journal. Cracking it open, he dated the page and started noting down what he could remember about the dream. He included sketches of the King, and the advisor. He also sketched out the throne room and the cart and cage. He tried to draw the throne, but when he put the pencil to paper he couldn’t remember what it looked like, exactly. All he knew for sure was that it was tall. He shrugged and kept it empty of detail.
He thought about the dream, trying to tease out its meanings. The city had a castle on a hill. Port Karn had that, so maybe they have the right city already. But then, most castles were put on the highest point of an area, for defense. So perhaps that clue wasn’t really much of a clue at all.
The cart and cage? He really didn’t know. But he had been released when he spoke to the King. His brow furrowed, and he set that clue aside for the moment.
Flames had been everywhere, first as lights, then as lights in globes, then the walls themselves had burst into flame. Lines of flames, turning into an inferno. Well, crap, he thought. I think someone is trying to reinvent explosive powder! Great. That’s usually the first step to all kinds of problems. And the King and his advisor. Twins? Or something more esoteric and metaphorical?
It was one of the more frustrating aspects of divination. The message was always clouded in potential metaphors and ambiguous symbology. Teasing out the actual meaning could be difficult, and really it was only obvious in hindsight, when it was often too late. Prophesy seemed to protect itself from being wrong by being inscrutable and vague.
He set the journal aside.
Culuináriel was still asleep, her golden hair spread out like a halo around her head. It was still pre-dawn, and even though she was an early riser, it was earlier even than that. He watched her sleep for a little while, a slight, loving smile on his face as he gazed at her ethereal beauty, despite her face being smushed in her pillow.
He got out of bed, made his way to their kitchen, and started a fire in the oven. Then it was out into the forested cavern, where, over a small rise, was a chicken coop. He gathered the eggs, and went back to the kitchen, where he started to make a pair of omelettes, with chopped vegetables and mushrooms. It was still dark in the cave, as he hadn’t opened the shutters on the Continual Sunlight globes attached to the cavern ceiling. He’d do that after breakfast. He set water to boil for tea.
His wife arrived, sleepily rubbing her eyes. She made her way over to the teapot, grimaced momentarily as she noticed that Ecastaron hadn’t yet steeped the tea, then proceeded to do it herself. In a little while she sat at the table, sipping from a large cup.
He slid her omelette onto a plate, setting it in front of her with a fork. “Here you go, love,” he said, before putting his own on a second plate.
They ate silently for a few moments, then he said, “I dreamed last night.”
That got her attention. Her eyes, previously gazing blankly into the forested cavern, snapped over to him, fully awake now. “Oh?” she replied. “What did you find out?”
It was his turn to grimace. “Some things, but not as clearly as I would have hoped. I think I know who I am looking for; I have a basic sketch of him. There may, or may not, be a second person. I’m not sure; the dream made him look the same as the first guy. As for what, I’m not sure. Lots of fire, in different ways, and glass seemed to be a common motif as well. The ‘main character’, if you will, fancied himself a person of power. He was a king in the dream, and his doppelgänger assistant was his advisor. Twins, maybe? Or just more dream symbolism for something more esoteric? Hard to say.”
“Huh,” she said, leaning back, the omelette eaten. She wiped her mouth on a linen napkin that was likely over six hundred years old. It was fraying at the edges, and might need to be retired to a life of simply being a rag. “Any idea where this was all happening? Port Karn was a first approximation.”
“There was some visuals of the city at the beginning of the dream. While none of the streets looked familiar to me, the architecture and overall layout of what I could see matched Port Karn. So whatever is happening, I think we are correct in assuming it’s there.”
“I’ll need to look at the sketch you made. See if I can find him.”
“I’d like you to refine it, if possible. Perhaps your artistic skills will tease something out of my memories of the dream.”
She nodded. “We can do that first thing. I’ll get my drawing supplies.”
By the time he was finished with his own breakfast, she was back, with an easel, large piece of paper, and her charcoal pencils. He showed her the sketches, and she studied them for a few moments, then handed the journal back to him. Then she began asking questions, teasing out small details about eye shape, fullness of the lips, the coarseness of his hair and beard. He answered her quickly, trying not to think about the answers he gave, not wanting his conscious mind to distort the imagery from the dream. The purer the memory, the better. It was all too easy for his conscious mind to add details that weren’t there, especially given the malleability of dreams.
But she had been doing this for a long, long time, and had developed ways to ask for details that, hopefully, made as few distortions as possible. She spun the easel around so he could see. A highly detailed charcoal drawing of the King stared back at him, his expression of impatient privilege evident. It matched his dream exactly, as far as he could tell. It would at least give them someone to find, if someone like that actually existed.
He knew the man wasn’t a king; the Tondene Empire didn’t have any kings. They had an emperor, and several Archdukes, and a bunch of dukes, counts, barons, and baronets. But no kings. If he existed, then Culuináriel would find him. And when she did, hopefully, she would also find out what he was doing. He left it to her. She would likely spend the day in the enchanting lab, using the water wheel to power her spell casting. Which gave him some time to work on that potential upgrade to his armor.
It was mid-afternoon when Culuináriel came to him while he was working on the formulae for the armor and said, “I have found him.”
He set his work aside, his entire attention upon his wife. “Who is this man?”
“His name is Lenarr Woodson. He’s an alchemist.”
“Well, that might explain the glass imagery.”
“Indeed. He works alone, as far as I can tell. So I don’t know who that second figure might be. He also seems prosperous enough, as befits an alchemist. He also seems to be working with something that burns faster than oil. He looks like he trying to make fuzes for oil bombs.”
“Why not just use oil-soaked rags? Those seem to work fine for flasks of oil as weapons.”
“I couldn’t tell. He wasn’t one to talk to himself as he worked. Much like you, my silent love.”
Ecastaron harrumphed. “This stuff he was working on. Could you tell what it was? Solid, liquid?”
“A solid. Powder. Much like black burning powder. I’ll need to watch more to be certain; I came to you once I had an idea of what he might be doing.”
He nodded. She had made the right choice. “It sounds like he has reinvented a black powder variant. That could get really ugly.” He grimaced. “Another inventor of explosive powder. Those seem to crop up at least once a century. I’ll get my gear together and head out tonight. I assume you have his location?”
“I do. I’ll show you on the maps.”
They went into the library, where she pulled out the updated maps of Port Karn. She traced her finger around the central area of Old Town. “Here,” she said, tapping a place between Third Street and Ugloch Lane. “He’s in a house on this block. His lab seems to be in his basement. Which would at least reduce the damage if he blew it up with his experiments.”
“Hopefully, I can get to him before that happens. The less fuss, the better.”
“Agreed. Good luck.”
He gathered his usual gear. He wasn’t sure what he would need, so he took everything. His handcrafted Elven longbow, which he used for Quingalindië, or Elven Bowsinging, which was one of the Elven styles of martial arts that focused on the bow. He took his longsword and long knife, both given to him over a thousand years ago by a village elder, who had smithed them herself. He took a collection of enchanted arrows, whose enchantments were powerful and varied. He donned his Elven silver silk armor, masterfully tailored by his own hands, decorated with gold and silver thread. Not that anyone would see it, as he normally used the Spell of Illusion Disguise to make him seem like a common beggar, or a merchant, or, occasionally, a city guard. Several other enchanted items went around his neck, on his fingers, or on his wrists or in his bag.
If all went well, he wouldn’t need anything but his knife. It would be best if he was able to dispose of the body, without anyone being the wiser about the man’s fate. But, fortunately, murders were common in the city, especially in a Tondene city. They were known for their diversity. And mixing races in tight quarters resulted in tension, which led to, among other things, murder.
Not always, of course. Racial tensions had decreased a lot in the last 800 years or so. It used to be a lot worse. Now, after centuries of living together, trying to get along, the homicide rate was dropping to nearly background levels. Oddly enough, racially-motivated violence was actually starting to be more common in rural areas, where the populations were more homogenous. The big cities in the Empire the Tondene’s started had about the same murder rates as other big cities in other polities. It was quite remarkable, Ecastaron had to admit.
The upshot was that if a body was found with its throat cut, it wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary. And that was his usual method. Just a quick slice, and it was done. With a little help from the Spell of the Distant Blow.
He kissed Culuináriel. “I’ll be back in a while, my dear,” he told her.
She smiled. “I know. I’ll be following along, watching. Are you sure you don’t want some back up?”
He shook his head. “No, I will keep a low profile. And I’ll be careful, just in case he’s paranoid.” He paused, calculating. “I figure it will take me about five days to make the trip, using the ring. I’ll spend at least a few days getting the lay of the land, finding Lenarr Woodson, and neutralizing him. Then five days back. So, about two eightdays.”
She kissed him again. “Be careful,” she admonished. “You aren’t as young as you used to be!” Her teasing smile took the sting out of the words.
“Oh, I’m still spry enough. Don’t you worry.”
He left a few hours before dawn, stepping out from the hidden cavern opening into the forest that carpeted the side of the mountain. His home was located in the mountains of the southern tip of the Northern Expanse, the high, craggy mountain range that separated the Empire from the rest of the continent. Technically, his cavern abode lay in territory claimed by the Maegorod Confederacy, an Elven “nation” made up of independent villages, towns, and cities. Only when threatened as a whole did they join together into what, on a good day, with favorable weather, and a distinct lack of linguistic precision, could be called a nation-state.
But he wasn’t going to be spending much time in their territory. He was going north and a little west. That would take him into the Northern Expanse proper, the lands of the sky folk—the Aarakocra.
Aarakocra were sentient birds, with wingspans up to twenty five feet. They lived in small groups in the mountains, usually at the higher altitudes. They were simple folk, specializing in leather, textiles, and wood. Stonework, while not impossible for them, wasn’t comfortable, either. They had hollow bones, so the repetitious striking of hard materials such as stone and metal wasn’t something they were skilled at. Most of their metalwork they imported from merchants in exchange for beautifully woven rugs, fabrics, and the occasional wooden carving. They were primarily carnivorous, preferring hunting to keeping livestock, although they did herd mountain sheep to have a source of wool.
They had good eyesight, and were very, very fast. They would be able to fly many times faster than his ring, enchanted with the Flight enchantment, could. If they were of a mind to harass him, he might not get much of a warning. But he didn’t think it would come to that. He has been through this way before, and he had managed to get by without killing any of them.
Which was good, because of all the races, theirs was the least likely to cause the kinds of issues he was supposed to deal with. They were just not physically built for industrialization. They would be able to handle it if it ever became established, but they likely wouldn’t begin the process. No, that was the specialty of Humans, Dwarves, and Goblins, if history had any bearing. Oh, Hobbits might do it too, and maybe the Kler’naktha, and even the Elves might fall back to their old, old habits, but the chances of that were much lower.
He activated his ring, rising up into the air and gliding northward up the forested valley. He had enchanted it not only with the Flight enchantment, but also some self power as well. It pulled that power from the ambient mana all around him, instead of him having to use his own. While he did have to use some of his own power to start it up, maintaining the spell cast by the ring was something it could do on its own.
He stayed relatively low, a mere hundred or so feet up. If he could hide in the ground clutter and not be noticed, so much the better. His path followed a twisting pass that wound its way through the southern portion of the mountain range. Staying low would help him to not be seen by the sky folk. But at some points on his journey, he would have to rise higher to go over ridges or peaks.
Sun dawned to his right, although he mountains hid the sunrise. He only saw the lightening of the sky. He wouldn’t see the sun until midmorning, when it would be high enough to be seen over the mountains. Puffs of cumulonimbus clouds lay scattered about, under rows of high altitude cirrus clouds. Over a couple of mountains, lenticular clouds sat like aerodynamic mushroom caps.
The landscape scrolled under him at a leisurely twenty or so miles an hour. He enjoyed the views; mountainsides covered in green trees; waterfalls cascading down rocky bluffs, streams flowing over rocks into mountain lakes that reflected the sky. Snow covered peaks, glinting bright in the sun and bluish in shadow rose on either side of the valley he was flying through. A river, fed by myriad streams of snowmelt, flowed beneath him.
Glancing upward, he saw eagles, hawks, and several other birds sharing his airspace. No Aarakocra yet, as far as he could tell. Although some of those far off raptors might just be even farther off Sky Folk.
He thought about his target. Who was this Lenarr person, and how far down the path of forbidden knowledge had he gone? Was he a family man? A wife, kids, pets? Who would be left behind?
Imi Vevo i Valima Ecestar was doing what he always did. Exploring the consequences of his actions. He’d started doing it centuries ago, as a way to not become a heartless killer. Now it was habit; he’d been protecting the world from the forbidden knowledge for so long it had become second nature. A part of him realized it was a way of mapping out potential witnesses and loose ends. There had been several incidents where the spouse or children had needed to be neutralized as well as the primary target.
He chuckled inwardly. The language he thought in showed the irony of his thought processes. “Neutralization”, “loose ends”, “primary target”. All terms designed to dehumanize the victim. That terminology was also second nature, and a part of him was amused by this. Despite that, he was unwilling to dehumanize them. No, he wanted to make sure, at least in his mind, that they were fully fleshed out people. Victims, yes…needing killing, yes…but people with lives he was determined to cut short.
Storm clouds were forming to the north as the sun started to set. It would be a wet night. He sighed, unhappy about it, but he’d spent many a night in wet mud. Tonight he was actually planning on sleeping in a tree. There were plenty of dangerous animals and plants out here that he didn’t want to have to deal with.
When it became too dark to continue, he dropped in altitude until he was touching the treetops, then searched for a tall tree with what could be comfortable-enough branches to perch in. It didn’t take him long to find one, and settled into the crotch of a tree formed by three upward branches. He wrapped his cloak around and over him, ate some lembas, and slept.
He was up at dawn, stiff from sleeping without moving. The rains had indeed come in the night, and everything was wet, but the storm itself had been short and had ceased dumping water hours earlier. He relieved himself, buttoned up, and activated his ring of flight again. He floated up out of the tree canopy, into the cold air of the mountains.
The sky was overcast, although he suspected that the sun would be burning it off fairly soon. He clutched his cloak around himself, trying to warm up. It helped, a little. It would be warmer if I just walked, he thought grimly. But then this trip would take forever. He flew on.
As he expected, the clouds started burning off at midmorning. By midday, the sky was a bright blue, with scattered cirrus to the west. In the distance, he could see a set of threadclouds clustered around a mountain peak, looking like a white scribble over the peak, as if drawn by a child.
Roarers, he realized. He’d “met” them before, extremely fast carnivores that expelled hot gas that powered their flight. They ate Aarakocra, and were just about the only things that Aarakocra were afraid of. He didn’t blame them; their flight speed was an order of magnitude above even the fastest of the Sky Folk, and would often be on top of them before they could react. Then the spear-like forearms would lance through them and they would be consumed on the wing.
Roarers had spindle shaped bodies, with swept wings. At the root of each wing was a huge nostril that fed oxygen to both the body of the roarer and the burning chambers that ignited methane, expelling it out a siphon with enough force to propel the beast upwards of two hundred and fifty miles per hour. In a power dive, they were known to reach almost twice that. Tucked up in the forequarters, just ahead of the wings, were a pair of limbs reminiscent of a praying mantis’ forelimbs. They too were barbed, and the roarer would fly by its prey and strike out with the striking limbs, impaling the victim on their barbed length. Then the toothy mouth would chew chunks off of the writhing prey while it flew.
They were tough, as they would have to be, both heat resistant and impact resistant. After all, they had to stand up to relative winds in the hundreds of miles an hour. That kind of abrading would shred just about any other life form he could think of.
They were related to the firesaurs, bird-like flyers that were more like pterosaurs, but, like the roarers, used methane in burning chambers to give them spurts of speed when they needed it. Unlike the roarers, however, they couldn’t keep those speeds up for more than a few seconds.
He looked at the threadclouds, watching them for signs of the roarers that created them. When a roarer flew through the air, they left a trail of cloud behind them. For that reason, one of the names the Elves had for them was fanyahto, or “cloud maker”. Given the amount of clouds there, Ecastaron suspected that a roarer family group lived there. As he watched, two lines of clouds arced downward, following the line of the slope, then disappeared behind a ridge. He had been too far away to see the small dots at the front of those clouds, even with his Elven eyes.
To be conrtinued....