Winter’s
frost crackled over the storm-washed stones and streets of the city, the icy
grip of the season battling with the sun’s warmth and retreating with every
notch that passed. Even as Doddul’s crystalline blanket was rolled off of the
city, so too was the old year swept back, making way for the promise of the
new. The Celebration Days were almost upon a city with much to celebrate, for
the year to come would see promises fulfilled and the land reborn.
Near
the city’s center a courtyard sang with the echoes of metal striking against
metal and wood, and the rhythmic shouts of a warrior’s cadence. The soldier’s
within were going through a basic routine of practice, one done every morning
since they had arrived here and joined up. The rote defenses, the killing
strokes, all ingrained to the point of instinct and interleaved with
skirmishes, with mock ambushes and magical assaults, all keeping them prepared
for the unorthodox combat most often seen by the city. Leading them in this
routine was an ork, tall and scarred, bearing a rounded shield and a sword more
wedge than blade. As they lowered their weapons and rested a moment he allowed
himself a small smile; they had been ready before, and would be ready when the
city’s enemies next struck. He then straightened out the smile and lifted his
blade once more, his voice ringing across the courtyard as he shouted “Again!”
The
ship circled high above the city, its watchful passes serving not only as first
lookout but to give its crew a chance to stretch their sky legs. Shore-leave in
this city had lasted for months between fire and storm, and even if they were
going nowhere it was good to be in the air again. Yet even as they turned the
ship about for another pass, the newly minted captain giving what few orders
the old hands of this ship needed, meanwhile an elf who was once captain and
now styles himself an admiral sat in his old quarters, bottle in one hand and
blade in the other. These last months in the city, full though they were with
the recruitment of new crews and plans for the armada he’d dreamed of, had yet
been covered over by a gloom, by a pall of darkness. Something had lurked in
the corners of his mind, a wager made and yet unfulfilled, a challenge
unanswered. Now this last month he had started at a figure that seemed to lurk
in every shadow, and even the winds in these glorious heights carried on them a
gale of mocking laughter. Staring at his own shadow cast upon the wall for a
moment, he stood up with a sudden resolved and drained the last of the bottle
before smashing it against the far wall, a whoop of laughter answering that
which had hounded him these last weeks. Drawing the brother of the blade
already in his hand he started toward his shadow on the wall, turning a drunken
stagger into a blurring wall of steel, the beginning of an ancient ritual that
would last the next half notch. All the while, he pictured not his own shadow
at the end of his blades, but a figure dressed all in ragged black.
In the
city below a man sat at the center of a web, though unlike the spider it is he
who plucks at and rattles the strands, seeing what will come forth to be
hunted. This day has brought a missive from a Theran spymaster, intercepted by
his operatives in Kratas and decrypted within an hour of receiving it. Hardly a
challenge, but what he hoped would lead to the location of this elusive agent,
one who has shown a great interest in the city and most especially in six of
its inhabitants, himself among them. He folded the message carefully and
slipped it into a pocket, though were one to look there one would find that it
had never arrived, having made its way instead to this man’s kingdom. He walked
to the window and looked out over the city. Though the small puzzle of the
message had been satisfying to solve, he still felt restless; his place was out
in the field, sowing havoc and discord silently among his enemies. Had anyone
been watching at that moment they would not have seen the window open or shut,
but might have noticed the absence of the figure in the window, who now stole
over rooftops toward the city’s edge.
In a place far distant a
clockwork dwarf paces out its days, tidying up after the seemingly endless
comings and goings of its master. Useless though it may be, it still finds some
pleasure in keeping things so orderly, a keeping out unauthorized intruders. It
had been very careful to only let authorized intruders in, and so far those who
had passed had been very convincing indeed. The dwarf pottered its way into a
large laboratory, cluttered with a wide variety of devices mechanical and
magical. Here it found its tidying impulses stymied by strict instructions to
leave its master’s various experiments alone, but at least it could survey the
room to make sure that everything had been left alone since the last time it
checked. Passing glowing crystals, clockwork eyes and noses, and a rather large
series of alembics that seemed to constitute a glass sheep, it reached a device
akin to an orrery, with several glowing arcs circling around it, marked by dots
in blue and red. And now by one white dot, which seemed to be barreling along
its own line, bent on reaching a point where it intersected with the others.
Truth shrugged at this, assured by the light crust of dust on the surrounding
counter that this was the result of no meddling hands, and turned back to its
duties patrolling its master’s mansion.
The
stone sat in darkness, as though in a universe by itself. Small and charcoal
black, shot through with veins of violet crystal, it looked as though someone
had grabbed a fistful of the night sky and balled it up into this strange mass.
Alone in an endless void it sat still and silent, every vein and edge upon it
looking as though it were waiting some command to act, to pour forth with life,
for all the dead rock that it was. Time passed, and in its own dark world there
was nothing to say how much. Then gently, it pulsed. Once, twice, the veins
were shot through with the faintest glow. Then all was still again, as the
stone waited.
Fires
burned just beyond the edge of the city, in the small verge of woodland which
poured out from its gates. A small company of elves gathered together there as
they had on the long journey which had brought them to this place, and to the
promise of a new beginning. They spoke quietly of small things, of the passing
of the season and the coming Celebration Days, knowing that at this moment
others stood their guard and they could think upon other things than those
battles fought and those yet to come. They traded stories long into the night,
knowing that such moments of respite would grow fewer as their plans blossomed
and bore fruit. As the conversations and the fires died they departed in ones
and twos, until only a half dozen remained. Reminiscence long since spent they
sat in silence, each consumed by their own thoughts of what was to come. Among
their number was an elf whose narrow frame would seem more at home on a scribe
or bookkeeper, though his weather features told the tale of a year and more of
wandering. His thoughts dwelled upon the five companions sitting about the fire
with him now, and on the five friends scattered throughout the city behind him,
on the reconciliation of past with present. Even as the silence seemed to grow
and take on a life of its own it was broken, as he began to softly sing the
words of an ancient war hymn, taken from far to the north. Soon the night was
filled with sound of six voices singing as one.
The ork
stood at the wall of the city, staring out at a land scoured clean by fire and
by storm, by his hand and by his will. His flame scarred body hardly seemed
that it could contain the strength he had poured forth into the land over the
last year, and yet there was more. Always so much more. He could hear the slow
pulse of the land beneath him and the whispers of the air above, both crying
out that time had come. He could feel the steady pounding of waves within his
heart, and the burning promise of fire pouring through his veins. The voices of
the elements spoke through his every waking moment. They had waited, so long had they waited and
slept, but now their power would be awakened and poured forth into the world.
Let nations rise or fall, it was time that battle be joined. The storm had
ended, but The Eye of Storm would be born from its fury. And all the might of
the city’s enemies would tremble at the name.
The
city slept, the promise of the first day of celebration and of the new year
thick upon it. And as they awakened into the new year, all within the city knew
what fruit this promise would bear, knew what this year demanded. All that they
had built, all that they had fought for had come to this; that they be pitted
against the might of an empire, to the breaking of its power or to their own
ruin. There could be no holding back in the year to come, and so there was none
in those five days of celebration, when the renewal of the earth and the
changing of the seasons marks also the renewal of promises made but not yet
kept. The city shouted forth its joys and wept loudly its sorrows, reveled long
into the night and laughed at the dawning sun, poured into those five days all
of life that the demands of the year to come would wring from them. For they
knew that in this year Ak’mal must rise
or fall, and that what once rose and fell in a day might live forever in what
they now grew, in the Heartwood.
