Chapter 1

Lakhyna’s eyes blinked open to a scene of unexpected circumstance. The marble container within which she normally slept was gone, and the entourage of devoted celebrants who should have greeted her wakefulness with reverent praise were nowhere in sight. The living altar of the gods sat upright to gain a better sense of her surroundings. She was sitting on a wide plain of tawny sand, naked except for the sacred tattoo and chain-link body harness unique to her station. The hot sand felt good on her skin. Scooping a palmful, she watched it sprinkle through her fingers. This was too real to be a dream, but if it was otherwise, then, where was she?

There was blue sky, white clouds, hazy dunes, and eroded plateaus—the desert landscape of her country—but where was her city, Toronomoc, and its dense populace? More shocking than that—Tylaruun, the golden sun, was blazing vigorously, but where was his radiant brother, the white sun, Ahktaruun? They should have been side by side, sailing the azure heavens and warding the planet against doom, as they had since time uncounted.

Gauging correctly by the distinct silhouettes of the barren horizon, Lakhyna should have been at the very heart of Toronomoc, where stood the splendid temple complex dedicated to the pantheon of creation. Chief among the many shrines was a soaring tower called The Sunspeak—Lakhyna’s home since early childhood—but it was all gone. Profound worry thumped in the girl’s chest. How could this be? How could an entire civilization, never mind a celestial god, disappear without a trace during the span of a single night?

No more time to wonder, a dire thirst was chapping her lips. Lakhyna stood with a grimace, her joints were stiff as though she had not moved in a long while, but each step was a little easier than the last. Where did one find water if not from a fountain? Lakhyna, whose monastic upbringing imposed strict confinement, knew almost nothing outside the context of her spiritual function.

Even so, she was not without reason. She understood that gravity forced water to pool in low depressions, especially where the surface was impermeable. With respect to the latter, Lakhyna headed for the nearest bit of rocky terrain that she could see. Her feet sank in the soft sand, each step taking the effort of three, and the windswept dunes swallowed the signs of her passage long before she reached her objective.

Water…not a lot—barely enough—but enough for the moment. The living altar of the gods stooped at the bottom of a narrow cleft and licked a small puddle right down to the gritty bottom. Relief was fleeting, hunger was next in line and came swiftly. There were a few scraggly looking shrubs scraping a living from the bare rocks, but they were mostly thorns and rough bark, inedible.

Sound reason prevailed again. All animals needed to eat. They would show her the way to food. Distant birds baited Lakhyna across another stretch of sandy dunes. The heat was insufferable, but there was nowhere else to go. After all the effort, she found the birds feeding on some sort of rotting carcass. Sickened by the putrid stench, and tired from the arduous trek, she withered to the ground with a sigh of disappointment.

Lakhyna could not help but wonder what offense she had committed to incur this unfavorable punishment? Had she unwittingly offended the gods by neglecting her spiritual obligations? The living altar of the gods was a station of singular prominence bestowed by the Arch-Cleric of Toronomoc—the highest religious authority in all the lands—failing at so great an honor was intolerable.

This inner strife was rudely interrupted by a searing pain on the bottom of her foot. Lakhyna winced in agony, clutching her swelling appendage as the scorpion that stung her scurried away. Anger prompted the girl to give chase, even if only to look it in the eyes and scold it for wanton cruelty. Rounding the corner of a stony crag, she came upon a column of marching ants. The scorpion was nowhere in sight. Strange, there were no obvious nooks by which it could have escaped.

It was then that she noticed the ants were coalescing on a fleshy plant. A closer inspection showed they were feasting on a sticky secretion on the surface of the plant’s leaves. She gathered a dab with the tip of her finger and sucked it clean. The taste was sweet with a hint of tanginess. Without a second thought, the girl plunged her face into the bush and joined the ants in their sugary banquet. When the honeydew was depleted, she harvested a leaf to sample a bite. The texture was spongy, and the flavour was palatable.

Praising the gods for their merciful bounty, Lakhyna leaned back against the foot of the crag and slept through the afternoon. It might have been the scorpion’s venom, or something she ate, but when she woke during the night, she was haunted by ghostly figures wandering in the darkness. They were little more than drifts of wispy vapor, but the chilling tone of their mournful whines caused enormous fear. Lakhyna could do nothing but curl up, close her eyes, and wait for Tylaruun to banish the apparitions come morning.

Who knows for how many days she carried on in this manner—blown like tumbleweed from one dried out gorge to the next? Days became weeks and still there was nothing to help explain the disappearance of the white sun, nor her city. If Lakhyna were truly the last of her people, she would charge herself with the wellbeing of their restless souls. For this, she besought the gods’ benevolence, praying feverishly that they guide the dead to a proper afterlife.

A storm of tremendous violence was gusting in from the ocean. Green clouds, earth-rumbling bellows of thunder, and a tsunami of airborne sand. Lakhyna sprinted across the desert plains—the raging elements were hot on her heels. A tempest like that could easily suffocate or bury anyone caught within for too long.

Rescuing the living altar from such an end was a limestone cavern, but the shadows inside were terrifying in their own right. The menacing, fang-like shapes of the stalagmites and stalactites did nothing to improve this impression. This was surely the abode of a monstrous demon, or perhaps it was itself a demon waiting patiently for a hapless meal to stumble in. Still, she favored her odds inside the grotto, and so, ventured deeper as the storm’s wrath probed the cave’s gaping mouth.

 As feared, the cavern contained more than just shadows and rock. Lakhyna was not alone. She was awoken later that night by a party of mysterious entities closing in on all sides. Magic lanterns illuminated their strange features. Short, stout, hairless, grey skin, stony ridges on their brows, cheeks, and chins, and milky irises.

Dwarves—a race of subterranean dwellers completely unknown to the people of Toronomoc. Their underground cities were scattered along the length of the Frawdstyn Mountains, a geographical landmark that bordered the western edge of Lakhyna’s desert homeland.

The living altar of the gods discovered quickly, and appreciatively, that these people were not to be feared. They brought her to a magnificent city carved from the marble innards of a humble mountain. She was fed and clothed, indescribable luxuries after weeks of starvation and exposure in the desert. At first, the language barrier made complex communication difficult, but for the girl’s benefit, the dwarves spoke the continental common tongue—the grammar was virtually identical to that of Lakhyna’s tongue, and so it was only a matter of learning the vocabulary. Her speech was adequate some months later, and hoping to repay her hosts’ kindness, she volunteered to work for a cobbler named Pronome. It turned out that his mother, Itheglene, was a respected oracle, and when she learned of Lakhyna’s whereabouts, she sent a written invitation to meet.

Lolkyn was only a medium-sized city, but Lakhyna could never come to grips with its layout, which felt an awful lot like a labyrinth. Pronome, who was as much a friend as one could hope to make among the dwarves, was happy—if a dwarf could be happy—to guide Lakhyna to his mother’s dwelling. Like many nooks in Lolkyn, the doorframe was embossed with decorative patterns and lit by magic bulbs. Dwarves had an aesthetic fondness for textures.

“Should I knock, or?” Lakhyna was unsure how an oracle aught to be treated, but the door opened just then.

“Come in,” beckoned Itheglene. She was dressed in robes of grey wool and a long scarf trimmed with bone baubles.

Aside from the distinctive ridges of cartilage that protruded from their facial features, dwarves were difficult to distinguish from each other. That there was no outward difference between the males and females only added to this problem. A tonal variance in speech was the only indication of gender.

“Mother,” Pronome acknowledged Itheglene with a subtle bow, and then encouraged Lakhyna to enter.

The oracle’s home was strewn with strange items. Implements of prophecy, spell components, obscure artifacts, clay tablets, and piles of crusty scrolls. She seated her guest by the cooking hearth in the kitchen and poured a cup of mineral water.

“Thank you kindly,” said Lakhyna.

Itheglene sifted through the pile of scrolls.

“I have never met an oracle before…actually, I’m not so sure I know what an oracle is,” said Lakhyna, whose nerves were not helped by the enduring silence.

“An oracle’s thoughts are the mortal parchment upon which the gods describe their vision of the future. At least, that is what my great, great grandfather told me,” Itheglene replied evenly, and then after locating the scroll she had in mind, sat across from Lakhyna. “Do you know what this is?” she asked, raising the scroll.

Lakhyna glared at the aged document with genuine curiosity. “No, should I?”

“It is a volume from The Glayd Scrolls. A compendium of prophecy going back many thousands of years. This one speaks of a sun-kissed girl driven from the sand by a storm of lost memories,” explained Itheglene.

“Wow, do you think I am that girl?” speculated Lakhyna.

“There is only one way to know,” hinted the oracle.

Lakhyna waited patiently for the dwarf to elaborate, but the latter appeared to be pending a response. “And that is?”

“Magic,” declared Itheglene, throwing a handful of crystalline dust onto the embers of the hearth. Radiant smoke, violet and cyan, billowed upwards, twisting around like a pair of wrestling snakes.

Lakhyna was startled by the explosive reaction and pressed backwards against her chair.

Itheglene inhaled the smoke with great enthusiasm and then chewed on a fibrous root of unknown nature. A bright green froth bubbled out from the corner of her mouth. The smoke shifted into a stream that spiraled around the oracle like a coil of rope. “You have lost something, what was it?”

Lakhyna was filled with awe. It took a moment to answer, “My city, my people, the white sun.”

Mild convulsions shook Itheglene’s body as the spell of divine truth imbued her mind with celestial notions. “Heaven’s duty awaits thee north, where frozen tears embrace the heart of Uuinta’s love below. Glaydanah’s Forge with embers bright shall forge anew the truth of light.”

And not a breath later, the smoke returned to the coals of the hearth. Itheglene wheezed for air as the magic receded from her lungs. Lakhyna tried to help by patting the dwarf on the back, but a steady hand waved her off.

“What does it mean?” wondered Lakhyna.

“The gods need your help,” Itheglene muttered weakly.

“I don’t understand,” Lakhyna admitted apologetically.

“When the time is right, the true nature of your task will unveil itself. You must go north.”

It was an ambiguous destiny, to be sure, but how could the living altar of the gods deny a vocation like that? This was her chance to atone for whatever sins might have caused her people and beloved sun god to vanish. She would need time to prepare for the journey—Glayd was not without its perils.

“I will do as you say, but I should warn you, I don’t know much about the outside world.”

“You are welcome to stay with us for as long as you wish. Take your time, learn what must be learned,” answered Itheglene.

Many months would expire while the living altar practiced the basic skills of survival, and all the while, her grasp on the common tongue improved steadily. When she was finally ready, the dwarves brought her to the northern limits of their kingdom, six hundred some odd miles away from Lolkyn. It was the least they could do to advance her fated quest before she ventured out on her own.

Metal gears rattled and banged as the granite slab constituting a gate lifted open. Lakhyna squinted when Tylaruun’s golden rays pinched her pupils for the first time in over a year. The radiation on her skin was immediately soothing and did much to assuage her apprehensions. Sprawling out from the foothills of the Frawdstyn Mountains was a vast forest doused in a glorious palette of autumn colors. From so lofty a vantage in the hills, the changing leaves looked like a dragon’s hoard of precious gems. Riding the brisk winds in the sky above were puffy clouds and flocks of geese migrating south to their winter feeding grounds.

A sharp gasp and wide eyes were vivid testaments of Lakhyna’s wonderment. Hailing from a barren sandscape, she had never beheld so much life, even if it was on the brink of winter’s dispossession. It was an encouraging omen at the start of her mission, a sign of heavenly attendance.

“Here, take this,” said Pronome, who had become one of Lakhyna’s dearest acquaintances. His mother was there too, along with dozens of tribal representatives. This was a momentous occasion that deserved proper decorum.

“What is it?” asked Lakhyna, taking the canvas backpack.

“Tools and food, mostly, but I crafted something special too,” replied Pronome.

“Thank you, friend, I will miss you most of all,” said Lakhyna, kissing the dwarf’s wrinkled forehead.

He wiped the girl’s spittle with the cuff of his sleeve. “I would go with you, if it was permissible,” he stated.

“I wish it were so, then I might not be so frightened,” admitted Lakhyna, glancing out at the wide world of Glayd.

Itheglene interjected then, “Trust the quakes of intuition, the gods know as well as I do, you’re a clever girl.”

“I will do what I can,” Lakhyna pledged with a curtsy. “Now then, which way is north?”

“At dawn, plot your course with Tylaruun on your right, and then, in the afternoon, let him sit on your left. At night, look for the great worm living in the sky and follow the stars in its eye,” advised Itheglene.

Pronome pointed northwards. “That way,” he clarified.

“Bless you all,” prayed Lakhyna, and then, with a final wave goodbye, she started out.

Dwarves were not known for sentimentality. They did not weep at her departure, nor cheer with exuberance. There were drums, the steady beatings of which evoked the pulsing heart of The Mother Goddess, Glaydanah, and there were cavernous nasal chants in homage to her benevolence.

The sparsely vegetated slope outside the dwarven gate was a hallowed cemetery. Lakhyna meandered through the field of remains with a bowed head. Unlike other living organisms, whose bodies decomposed into earth and dust, dwarves became solid stone, monuments of their former selves. These tokens of mortality were carried out from their subterranean homes and exposed to the elements. In time, they would disintegrate, and in so doing, return to the mountain whence they came.

It was already dark by the time Lakhyna reached the bottom of the slope. Unfamiliar with this strange environment, she jumped at every little noise and shadow. A squirrel dashing over dead leaves sounded like a pack of hyenas, and the groans of trees bending in the breeze inspired nightmares of hell. A shelter and fire would have helped, except, she had pushed too long into the night, and it was now too dim to set camp—a mistake she would not soon repeat. The only barrier from the darkness was a knitted blanket and fervid faith in cosmic providence.

Exhaustion might have induced a few episodes of sleep, but come morning, Lakhyna felt no less tired. The pre-dawn glow of the rising sun roused the girl to action. She rummaged through her pack in search of breakfast, and in so doing found Pronome’s parting gift. It was a pair of high-heeled shoes—peep-toes, platforms, and pink satin straps—the exact styling she had wistfully described to her crafty friend in a bygone conversation. A joyous smile spread between her cheeks as she tried them on. The fit was perfect, and despite the rugged terrain, she felt completely stable—a consequence of magic, the shoes were enchanted.

As per the oracle’s directions, Lakhyna shifted the sun’s radiance onto her right shoulder and then continued the journey north. The ceaseless solitude afforded much time for introspection. Itheglene had given Lakhyna direction, a vector of purpose that spanned the mysterious gap between a hidden past and a vague future, but months of preparation and tutelage now felt thoroughly underwhelming. The realities of wilderness survival were far harsher than Lakhyna ever imagined. It seemed like no matter where she stepped, her feet got soaked; no matter how she tried, wood gathered from the forest would not kindle; and, somehow, her improvised shelters always leaked, even when it was not raining.

These troubles were not enough to dissuade the girl’s progress, however, for as the oracle had so ominously stated, the gods were calling her forth. Whenever her stomach grumbled with dissent, she would nourish herself with holy hymns; and when her feet ached, she thanked the pantheon of creation for contriving a destination, even if it were an obscure one.

Still, she was not without those lowly moments when despair coaxes tears of self-pity and wallows of doubt. The mystery of her lost city, her people, and the white sun, Ahktaruun, remained unsettled.

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