15 May 760
Some weeks later, I found myself alone with Nathan, and thought to inquire about how he come into possession of the firestone, the Hoon tel’Orod. Here, recorded as faithfully as I could manage, is his story:
We fled the dragon’s aerie, still in shock at the final, disastrous confrontation between Darius and Malfeus. Under cover of the surrounding wood, Draco, Bartemis and I sat in silent bewilderment, trying to focus our minds and determine our next actions. For my part, I wished only to return to the spot where Darius fell from the sky, to seek for him. My passion and my ire were up; and I felt I would rather face death than to leave him behind. But as I made my impassioned plea, I heard Draco’s voice, resonant with confidence, as he said: “Nathan…Darius gave us his counsel, even as he fell. He told us we must go on, for he knew his mission could only be fulfilled when we delivered the dragons to the Alliance. It is clear we must make for Greatwood and find your Sylvan Queen; and do what we may to aid those who oppose the Lord of Shadows. We must delay no longer.”
I heard Draco’s words, and slumped down, defeated – knowing he spoke the truth of these matters but detesting the implications of such a decision. I started to speak, to offer at least a feeble protest, but was stopped in mid-utterance by Bartemis: “Lord Draco, you are quite correct in your reasoning. We must seek the heir to Eyrturheru with great haste, ‘tis true. But I deem we must make one other stop before we do so”.
Draco looked at Bartemis with puzzlement, and urged him to speak his piece. “We must travel, with all speed, to Taur-na-Sylvhara; for the Shadow Lord’s eye is now fixed upon the place…and on some thing of great value that lies lost within the ruins. Word of it came to Gormackh two nights ago – a message borne by a carrion crow dispatched by Nargoroth himself and shared in turn with Malfeus and me. The note was cryptic, speaking of some great power that slept amidst the ruins. Its tenor suggested a force great enough to affect the tides of this great struggle – and both Gormackh and my brother were keen to go and claim it, whatever it was. The splendid irony is that, were it not for the battle we fought this day, our chance might have been lost…but we have taken them by surprise and disrupted their grand schemes. We must take advantage of their confusion and delay, for that window will close all too soon, and we must be away before they know our competing interest. Draco, with the aid of your brothers, we must hasten to Taur-na-Sylvhara and find its treasures before those others do. We must go at once.”
“The Hoon”, I murmured, as Bartemis completed his thought. My companions looked at me, curiously, as if I were speaking in some unknown tongue. “The Hoon tel’Orod… ‘Heart of the Mountain’”, I continued. I had long heard it rumored – this stone that harmonized the voices from the stones that formed the very world. It was said that the Sylvan King maintained, in his court, a Stone Master who had a deep knowledge of all the old arts…an Ondo Tura who could bring forth the power in the stone. If it is so…and the resonance stone is indeed there, lending its strength to the walls, we must lay claim to it before it falls to our enemy. I am not fully certain, but all my senses tell me that this is an object of infinite importance to our cause.”
Draco leapt to his feet and uttered a single shriek that made me clap my hands upon my ears. The air about us was quickly filled with the thudding percussion of heavy, leathered wings pounding the air. We were soon surrounded by a troop of dragons, young and old – many still nursing wounds still glistening with black blood. On still more, we saw the marks of fatigue from both battle and our flight. These last were dismissed by Draco, with kind words of thanks. Of the rest, he picked three strong, young wyrmlings to carry us on our desperate mission. He bade us mount them; and, before I could so much as question or protest, they bore Draco, Bartemis and me upward and to the northeast. We soon set down upon what had once been the southern gate to Taur-na-Sylvhara; and I was at once impressed with the solemnity of the place. It was as if, despite the scars and destruction of the battle once so fiercely waged there, it stood still as a place of peaceful meditation…almost as though some living spirit inhabited it. It was sad, and ironic, to be in a place possessed, at once, of both the imprint of willful carnage and such a lasting quietude.
We searched the ruins for hours, seeking for a passage to the hidden spaces where we might find the stone; our frustration growing more pronounced with each false trail. Our concerns grew as the daylight waned, in our unspoken fear that Malfeus and others – or Nargoroth himself – would not linger long before rushing to this task. My hopes began faded with the failing light, until a thought suddenly flashed into my mind. It was a fragment of memory – a vague recollection of something I had read long ago, in one of the journals of Dalarion, an ancient Stone Master and likely one of the Ondo Tura. His words had always puzzled me – so much so that I had committed them to memory that I might, from time to time, contemplate them as a child does a compelling riddle:
“The bane of the seeker is the search itself, that blunts the mind as the stone might blunt the poorly wielded chisel. To find what you most treasure, turn your eyes from seeking…and see.”
On impulse, I stood stock still, closing my eyes and slowing my breathing in harmony with the calm air around me. The darkness swelled up, consuming the world around me in the pitch of the blackest, most starless night. Lacking a bearing point, I was taken by a wave of vertigo. And then I saw it, the brilliant red beacon floating in the inky sea of my isolation. I reached to my right, my eyes still closed; and grasped Bartemis’ arm and bade him lead us forward until we stood upon the spot from whence the crystalline light blazed forth. I opened my eyes, looked down at the granite slab beneath my feet, and said “It is here, just below us. We have found the stone.”
We worked through the night to find some access to the space below the granite floor, our progress inhibited by the meager tools we had at hand. Little, indeed, had been achieved by the time a rose-fingered glow appeared on the eastern horizon; and our anxiety peaked as the dawn of a new day came upon us. It seemed we would soon face a choice: continue our search as the day came on; or abandon this place, knowing well that the Shadow would soon claim that which we so eagerly sought. I pondered these questions as the sun crept above the far horizon.
Bartemis crawled about the slab on his hands and knees, still desperately seeking purchase with his probing fingers. I felt a surge of panic as the first morning light reached him, pushing back the gloom. At that moment, we heard a bloodcurdling shriek that we had heard not long before – the sound of an enraged dragon carrying its bloodlust into battle. We looked westward, in the direction of the sound; and Bartemis leapt to divine what might be coming toward us in the darkness. I could make out vague shapes in the moonlit sky – high and still distant, and coming toward us with both speed and purpose. Draco turned and said “Well, friends…it seems the choice is now made for us. The forces of Shadow come and will soon claim this place. We must go before they claim us as well.”
We quickly agreed, and Draco called for his dragons to bear us off. We gathered our things, moving briskly; but I froze in my tracks as I saw Bartemis staring fixedly at the stone slab. Looking there, I quickly saw what had captured his eye. “The light”, I murmured. “The stone”. For there, at the eastern edge of the slab, the encroaching light of day had found a seam and leaked below the surface; and the Hoon tel’Orod responded to the soft caress of sunlight with its own brilliant display of brilliant, ruby illumination. We now saw there the edges of a hidden door – a square of about two meters wide. Bartemis and I dropped our gear and drew our daggers, almost in unison, and raced to the spot. Within seconds, we had pried open the thin slab door to find a stone staircase leading downward. We bounded down it into a room filled with the radiant light. In the center of the room, standing upright, stood a flawless crystal piece. Without thought or hesitation, I wrapped my arms about the crystal, yanked it loose from the stone floor and ran back up the stairs two at a time. The dragons were waiting, and we quickly mounted them – and were gone.
As we floated south on the backs of the powerful beasts, and the ruins of Taur-na-Sylvhara fell away behind us, I heard again the high-pitched shriek of a dragon. I smiled, confident in my sense that the shriek had gone from being a terrifying battle sound – to being merely now a frustrated scream of outrage.
We fled the dragon’s aerie, still in shock at the final, disastrous confrontation between Darius and Malfeus. Under cover of the surrounding wood, Draco, Bartemis and I sat in silent bewilderment, trying to focus our minds and determine our next actions. For my part, I wished only to return to the spot where Darius fell from the sky, to seek for him. My passion and my ire were up; and I felt I would rather face death than to leave him behind. But as I made my impassioned plea, I heard Draco’s voice, resonant with confidence, as he said: “Nathan…Darius gave us his counsel, even as he fell. He told us we must go on, for he knew his mission could only be fulfilled when we delivered the dragons to the Alliance. It is clear we must make for Greatwood and find your Sylvan Queen; and do what we may to aid those who oppose the Lord of Shadows. We must delay no longer.”
I heard Draco’s words, and slumped down, defeated – knowing he spoke the truth of these matters but detesting the implications of such a decision. I started to speak, to offer at least a feeble protest, but was stopped in mid-utterance by Bartemis: “Lord Draco, you are quite correct in your reasoning. We must seek the heir to Eyrturheru with great haste, ‘tis true. But I deem we must make one other stop before we do so”.
Draco looked at Bartemis with puzzlement, and urged him to speak his piece. “We must travel, with all speed, to Taur-na-Sylvhara; for the Shadow Lord’s eye is now fixed upon the place…and on some thing of great value that lies lost within the ruins. Word of it came to Gormackh two nights ago – a message borne by a carrion crow dispatched by Nargoroth himself and shared in turn with Malfeus and me. The note was cryptic, speaking of some great power that slept amidst the ruins. Its tenor suggested a force great enough to affect the tides of this great struggle – and both Gormackh and my brother were keen to go and claim it, whatever it was. The splendid irony is that, were it not for the battle we fought this day, our chance might have been lost…but we have taken them by surprise and disrupted their grand schemes. We must take advantage of their confusion and delay, for that window will close all too soon, and we must be away before they know our competing interest. Draco, with the aid of your brothers, we must hasten to Taur-na-Sylvhara and find its treasures before those others do. We must go at once.”
“The Hoon”, I murmured, as Bartemis completed his thought. My companions looked at me, curiously, as if I were speaking in some unknown tongue. “The Hoon tel’Orod… ‘Heart of the Mountain’”, I continued. I had long heard it rumored – this stone that harmonized the voices from the stones that formed the very world. It was said that the Sylvan King maintained, in his court, a Stone Master who had a deep knowledge of all the old arts…an Ondo Tura who could bring forth the power in the stone. If it is so…and the resonance stone is indeed there, lending its strength to the walls, we must lay claim to it before it falls to our enemy. I am not fully certain, but all my senses tell me that this is an object of infinite importance to our cause.”
Draco leapt to his feet and uttered a single shriek that made me clap my hands upon my ears. The air about us was quickly filled with the thudding percussion of heavy, leathered wings pounding the air. We were soon surrounded by a troop of dragons, young and old – many still nursing wounds still glistening with black blood. On still more, we saw the marks of fatigue from both battle and our flight. These last were dismissed by Draco, with kind words of thanks. Of the rest, he picked three strong, young wyrmlings to carry us on our desperate mission. He bade us mount them; and, before I could so much as question or protest, they bore Draco, Bartemis and me upward and to the northeast. We soon set down upon what had once been the southern gate to Taur-na-Sylvhara; and I was at once impressed with the solemnity of the place. It was as if, despite the scars and destruction of the battle once so fiercely waged there, it stood still as a place of peaceful meditation…almost as though some living spirit inhabited it. It was sad, and ironic, to be in a place possessed, at once, of both the imprint of willful carnage and such a lasting quietude.
We searched the ruins for hours, seeking for a passage to the hidden spaces where we might find the stone; our frustration growing more pronounced with each false trail. Our concerns grew as the daylight waned, in our unspoken fear that Malfeus and others – or Nargoroth himself – would not linger long before rushing to this task. My hopes began faded with the failing light, until a thought suddenly flashed into my mind. It was a fragment of memory – a vague recollection of something I had read long ago, in one of the journals of Dalarion, an ancient Stone Master and likely one of the Ondo Tura. His words had always puzzled me – so much so that I had committed them to memory that I might, from time to time, contemplate them as a child does a compelling riddle:
“The bane of the seeker is the search itself, that blunts the mind as the stone might blunt the poorly wielded chisel. To find what you most treasure, turn your eyes from seeking…and see.”
On impulse, I stood stock still, closing my eyes and slowing my breathing in harmony with the calm air around me. The darkness swelled up, consuming the world around me in the pitch of the blackest, most starless night. Lacking a bearing point, I was taken by a wave of vertigo. And then I saw it, the brilliant red beacon floating in the inky sea of my isolation. I reached to my right, my eyes still closed; and grasped Bartemis’ arm and bade him lead us forward until we stood upon the spot from whence the crystalline light blazed forth. I opened my eyes, looked down at the granite slab beneath my feet, and said “It is here, just below us. We have found the stone.”
We worked through the night to find some access to the space below the granite floor, our progress inhibited by the meager tools we had at hand. Little, indeed, had been achieved by the time a rose-fingered glow appeared on the eastern horizon; and our anxiety peaked as the dawn of a new day came upon us. It seemed we would soon face a choice: continue our search as the day came on; or abandon this place, knowing well that the Shadow would soon claim that which we so eagerly sought. I pondered these questions as the sun crept above the far horizon.
Bartemis crawled about the slab on his hands and knees, still desperately seeking purchase with his probing fingers. I felt a surge of panic as the first morning light reached him, pushing back the gloom. At that moment, we heard a bloodcurdling shriek that we had heard not long before – the sound of an enraged dragon carrying its bloodlust into battle. We looked westward, in the direction of the sound; and Bartemis leapt to divine what might be coming toward us in the darkness. I could make out vague shapes in the moonlit sky – high and still distant, and coming toward us with both speed and purpose. Draco turned and said “Well, friends…it seems the choice is now made for us. The forces of Shadow come and will soon claim this place. We must go before they claim us as well.”
We quickly agreed, and Draco called for his dragons to bear us off. We gathered our things, moving briskly; but I froze in my tracks as I saw Bartemis staring fixedly at the stone slab. Looking there, I quickly saw what had captured his eye. “The light”, I murmured. “The stone”. For there, at the eastern edge of the slab, the encroaching light of day had found a seam and leaked below the surface; and the Hoon tel’Orod responded to the soft caress of sunlight with its own brilliant display of brilliant, ruby illumination. We now saw there the edges of a hidden door – a square of about two meters wide. Bartemis and I dropped our gear and drew our daggers, almost in unison, and raced to the spot. Within seconds, we had pried open the thin slab door to find a stone staircase leading downward. We bounded down it into a room filled with the radiant light. In the center of the room, standing upright, stood a flawless crystal piece. Without thought or hesitation, I wrapped my arms about the crystal, yanked it loose from the stone floor and ran back up the stairs two at a time. The dragons were waiting, and we quickly mounted them – and were gone.
As we floated south on the backs of the powerful beasts, and the ruins of Taur-na-Sylvhara fell away behind us, I heard again the high-pitched shriek of a dragon. I smiled, confident in my sense that the shriek had gone from being a terrifying battle sound – to being merely now a frustrated scream of outrage.
> Chapter 8