The Way of Edan (The Edan Trilogy, #1)

by Philip Chase

A distant thrush greeted the day with song.

No wizard or sorcerer in all of Eormenlond, whether east or west, or even beyond the seas, knew the song of origin for the elves.

A moment came of stillness, an instant of bright clarity in which Dayraven perceived the life around him with a new crispness. His senses sharpened, and the world unveiled itself for the first time. There were the musty trees on the edges of the grassy lea with their translucent green foliage, the glaring summer sun warming his body, the pungency of his sweat, the iron tang of the red blood beading on his hand, the wind’s whisper, and the song of the distant thrush.

Like tendrils of mist in the sun, the sensation that he was in the others’ minds and the echoes of fear dissipated.

The scene unfolded as if time had meandered for untold centuries only to reach this single point of Dayraven’s fate. The world had come to this. He still shook his head in protest and pleaded with his eyes, but none paid heed.

Don’t speak of death now, child. The world is greater than the Mark. You’ll live to look back on this day.

But then the stars reminded him of something. At once, instead of flickering points of light in the night sky, a pair of deep blue eyes loomed over him, and he gasped at the flash of memory. Time stood still, and the eyes grew larger and brighter until they became a white light. The white light, he recalled, was irresistible, and it spoke to him of the bliss of annihilation. His life began blurring with the light.

“Yes. Like life itself. No one knows the song of origin of the elves, for they’re outside of time. Yet they’re of this world, though they don’t live in it as you and I do. They show themselves in the forests and waters, where life is strongest. Oh yes, long ere our people came to Eormenlond, long before the Andumae came, and even long before the Dweorgs, elves dwelled in Iltharwyn, the ancient forest that became the Southweald and Northweald after our ancestors came and clove it in half. The Andumae say looking upon an elf brings the death of Anghara, or as we here call her, Angra. The spirit returns whence it came without the body’s death. The body’s end is the death of Oruma, or Orm, as we call him. Few suffer the death of Angra, and for some reason your spirit traveled that path but came back.”

“My child, something happened this day that never happened before: Your spirit survived a meeting with an elf. I don’t know how, though I’ve always known you have the gift. Anyone with an understanding of the gift could have seen it even before today. You’d have made a fine wizard with proper training.”

“Think of how you’ve always perceived others’ minds. Yes, Dayraven. You’re not like your father, though you’ve always wanted to be. It’s your mother you take after. I saw it in poor Eldelith too. Though my little sister, your true grandmother, had little trace of it, your mother could have been a great sorceress. But she married your father, so I said nothing. Then we lost her. I watched you grow up, and all the time I knew what was inside you. But I also saw you wanted to be like your father, a great warrior and a good man, and to have a family with that dear girl. So I let you be. A wizard’s life is hard and lonely, my child, and you must want it. But this day’s passing has changed everything.”

“You have a purpose, Dayraven. You did not ask for it, but it has fallen to you. That is the way of it. You may have a role to play in the future of Eormenlond, and the lives of many will hang in the balance. But the first thing is to get you to safety. Then, you must see if you can learn to control what is in you.”

Few in the Mark owned even a single book, and few enough could read. But all regarded such objects as treasures, and Dayraven knew Urd’s books contained much lore, for she had taught him to read from three of them. The others, she told him, were written in High Andumaic, a language different from the Northern Tongue. What lore they held he did not know.

wizard, she said. She said I must want to become one. If I don’t, then what? As if in answer to his question, the air in the room shifted, and, beginning as a shaft of energy that quickened in his mind, a potent force invaded him, ripping his mind from his body with such unexpected and dizzying power that he gasped.

Dayraven’s body lay on the floor of Urd’s home, and nearby lay Imharr and Urd. Like a vapor caught in a breeze, he floated through the roof of the turf-covered mound and rose above it. His consciousness expanded so much that he became insubstantial as he mingled with the night air. The oaks outside in the darkness awaited him, and the wind hissing in their leaves was the voice of the land speaking to him in a slow and ancient language. As he drifted through the oaks and felt the centuries of quiet strength in their rough flesh and the quickening of life in their leafy veins, the voice of the land echoed in his mind and all around him. Join me, it whispered. The strange voice was familiar.

will rid myself of this. I will take my life back. I am Dayraven of the Mark, son of Edgil, and I will wed Ebba.

Ink on vellum. The bark of hawthorn branches processed with wine and iron salts to make the ink. The flesh of a calf, cleaned and bleached and stretched and scraped, to make the vellum. All to form words, which were nothing more than metaphors agreed upon to contain and convey truth. Such were the elements, mundane and intellectual, of the volume before him. Yet, brought together in this particular form to convey these particular truths, they became something far greater. They became sacred. Imbued with Edan’s truth.

Thick and nigh impenetrable was the darkness in the passage, and silent was their going.

The crowned man scowled and slouched in his seat with his legs crossed on the table, showing the soles of his boots.

The supreme priest chanted, “Druanil ecthonias di andyon dimniathon. Abu mihil inghanias mi rakhyon inlorathon.”

His five high priests in their blood-speckled white robes beamed at their leader as he continued. “For, my beloved brethren in Edan, the long awaited time comes soon. I have foreseen it. We will live to see the accomplishment of the Kingdom of the Eternal. All the signs are in place. A mastery over the eldest of powers I will reveal, and through great strife shall we bring about Edan’s will. The promised day of peace and bliss is nigh, and you will all stand next to me as we look on the glory of Edan.” “Blessed be the Eternal!” they cried in unison.

Dayraven splashed water on his face from a basin, he and Imharr used old strips of cloth to grasp the handles on the sides of the cauldron, which was full of steaming water, and carry it outside. It was still dark out, and Dayraven welcomed the light breeze fingering his kirtle as he glanced up at the glimmering stars. The position of the moon and stars told that it would not be long before dawn began bleeding into the sky.

Dayraven knew the song, for Urd had taught it to him when he was young. It told how Folcwalda and his people broke out of Ellond over the Theodamar River and conquered the now vanished kingdom of Riodara, a name forgotten, but Urd told him it once was among the mightiest of the kingdoms of the Andumae. The land that had been Riodara became Torrlond, whence the folk of the Mark came. Folcwalda made himself King of Torrlond, and Ellond he gave to his eldest son, Fullan. Hence the kings of Torrlond and Ellond, descendants in unbroken lines from Folcwalda, were kin. Such glory placed Folcwalda among the greatest of heroes in all of Eormenlond’s history. His was a story of bravery and new beginnings, and Dayraven wondered if the old woman sang it to strengthen him. He did not feel brave, and his own new beginning seemed more like an end.

Along with the persistent whisper of the shard the elf had implanted in his mind, a pang of worry for the old woman spread through his chest.

But before he finished his counter spell, a deep rumbling invaded the air and the ground quaked. The rumbling rose at once to a furious pounding like a thousand giant drums. The priest ceased his spell as the three men looked at each other. Then they turned around.

At first in ones and twos and then in large groups, the swarm of birds left off attacking the men. They flew away from the oak ring in sundry directions, diminishing to specks and then disappearing. All was quiet. Eight bloodied and battered figures with feathers sticking to their wounds and in their beards and hair descended with little grace from the oaks. Bagsac groaned the loudest and fell off his oak branch. When he picked himself up, a grimace stretched his face, and he bent over and held his hand to his backside. He began hobbling toward the nearest farmstead. “Not my fault,” he mumbled to himself as he began rehearsing protestations. His eyes took turns at twitching.

The High Priest Joruman passed from a columned, sun-lit cloister through a door leading into the scriptorium of Torrhelm’s monastery.

The patter of his sandals on the stone floor reverberated as he walked through the room.

A man could spend the rest of his life gleaning knowledge from the books and scrolls packed into those shelves.

Pious notions of purity based on denial of human nature held no appeal to him, though he was wise enough to tread carefully.

The true power — with access to all the knowledge he needed — was in Torrhelm.

“Joruman. I don’t need to tell you that when we become priests, we swear a vow. A vow of dedication. We devote ourselves to Edan and to the Way, and to nothing else, for there is no greater purpose in this life for those blessed with the gift. This vow includes obedience to the faith and to the laws handed down through Edan’s divine voice, which speaks through the priesthood, and most especially through the supreme priest. Needless to say, such laws apply with greater strictness to those few elevated to the office to which you and I have been called to serve.”

And the High Priest Heremod does unspeakable things to the poor wretches he tortures down in his dungeon. Well, I suppose the last is hardly a rumor.” Let him chew on all that. “The Supreme Priest Bledla believes Heremod’s work is important.”

I hear your warning, old man. “Rumors are stubborn things that take on a life of their own. Even the Prophet Aldmund was not immune to them, I’m sure you recall. There are stories that he kept a secret wife and had three sons by her.”

All he had of her now was the gold ring with a small garnet he always wore on his right hand. Death was a cruel thief indeed.

Those craftsmen were great masters. In the presence of those doors he could almost suppose the gods were real. When he was a little boy, he had pretended to believe the stories of the gods were true, hearing Bolthar’s heavy steps in the thunder and seeing Glora’s hair in the rainbow.

But even passing through the city whetted his imagination. It was his first view of a world larger than his home. And the Folkmere seemed to him endless, a place wrapped in the mists of history and large enough to spawn great legends and stories to tell over a fire.

Dayraven and Imharr could have passed many days in Wolvendon had they not remembered the urgency in Urd’s warnings about Bagsac and other priests of the Way. “We’ll stay one night,” said Imharr. “First thing is to find an inn. We can buy some food there since ours is running low.” “And a hot meal?” “Of course. Accompanied by some of Wolvendon’s finest ale.”

This is fantasy.

His eyes still shut, Dayraven tried to let the fear loose, but it stayed lodged where it was. But something else did happen. Instead of finding the focus he needed to wield his blade, he seemed to have summoned the sleeping force within his mind. Its whisper morphing into a roar, the thing the elf put there awakened, and a pair of vast eyes flashed before him.

The shadow presence swelled and pierced his fractured thoughts like a shard of glass. It erupted to blur the boundaries of his being. The force swept him outside of himself, and in his place the disembodied elf-state arose. His body shuddered, and he tore away from it. No! Not now!

But it was too late. Those last shreds of his thoughts and fears dissipated into the night. Just as had happened in Urd’s home, he expanded into the world around him. Even as his own emotions spun away and left him detach...

He did not know whence — mayhap it came from the foreign presence that he could no longer distinguish from himself — but in this state of mind a strange new perception sprang to life in Dayraven.

The priest. His body no longer contained him. Like Dayraven, the energy that normally dwelled in his body spread outward. This perception did not belong to Dayraven’s ordinary senses, nor did it belong to time and space, but nonetheless the feeling was as strong as if he saw or felt the man’s energy as a visible or tangible thing. When the priest uttered the song of origin, his expanded mind reached and flowed into the energy inhabiting the horses. A part of him became the horses. At the same time, a part of him remained in touch with his individual will, and that will, having connected with the beasts’ minds, now overpowered and wielded them. Confused and frightened, Rudumanu and Hraedflyht could not resist — for they could not perceive it — the will making their bodies move.

In that other state he had not needed vision.

When she emerged from the tavern’s door, dawn revealed East Torrhelm’s filthy streets.

The presence of the gift was strong. Someone powerful was nearby. The idea that this meeting was a trap seemed more plausible than ever. She headed for the open doorway.

which hung large spools of fabric, some unfurled to the floor. The little shop was a chaos of cloth that threatened to smother the old man, who smiled cheerfully but was looking a bit to Sequara’s left. After a moment, she realized he was blind.

Here was a man who knew the songs of origin with depth few in Eormenlond could match. She was not sure she could match him, but she readied her mind as she closed the door.

The dark room was void of distractions, but Sequara had to cleanse herself of all thoughts. For a mind as well trained as hers, this was not difficult once she made the decision to learn the song of origin from the priest. Thus, when he chanted in his gravelly but steady voice in the eldest of tongues, her thoughts and memories wrapped around the words and made them part of her:

Urkhalion an dwinathon ni partholan varlas, Valdarion ar hiraethon im rhegolan wirdas. Gholgoniae sheerdalu di vorway maghona, Dardhuniae sintalu ar donway bildhona.

Back to the beginning their minds went, to creation time, where those with the gift traveled to behold the nature of things and with such understanding could influence them in the world of forms. While he sang, a song of origin like no other she knew unfolded. She perceived in its dangerous vastness a cold cunning and angry heat, and at the heart of the words was wisdom both ancient and sharp. A keen intelligence differing from humankind’s dwelled in the words. It was foreign but somehow akin. But most of all, the immense strength in the song ...