The Elder Days

Out of the KindlersKindlersThe singers who made Aetheria, then went down into it and sleep there, holding it together.’ sleeping came the peoples, as warmth comes off a sleeper. No two of them tell it alike, and each tells it so that it woke first.

The elves woke under the eaves of WhisperwoodWhisperwoodThe first forest, where the elves woke and the trees gossip., where LysaLysaKindler of growing things, gone down into the roots of Whisperwood.’s roots ran shallowest. The trees taught them speech, and have never stopped talking since: it is the trees’ gossip, and not the wind, that you hear in Whisperwood at night, and the wolves there have learned to listen.

The dwarves woke under FrostspireFrostspireThe northern peaks over Hammerdeep, with the Wyrmspire on the highest crag., warm against OrunOrunKindler of fire and stone. He sleeps curled around the fire under the mountains.’s fire, and the first thing they did was sing to the stone, and the second was ask it what it was worth. The minotaurs woke on the high heaths of the StormreachStormreachThe highlands under a veil of storms that has not lifted in nine hundred years., where CorvaneCorvaneKindler of the winds. The ravens are her eyes; the Ravenmother answers for her.’s breath is strongest, and took from it their great lungs and their great tempers. The trolls woke in the far south, where Orun’s fire breaks the sea at SunscarSunscarThe smoking atoll where Orun’s fire breaks the sea; home of the trolls., and ever since they have loved heat and hated hurry, except in battle, where they are very quick indeed.

The TidekinTidekinThe dream-born of the Corsair Reaches, children of Thal’s sleep before it soured. woke in the sea itself, in the shallows of ThalThalKindler of the sea, asleep in the southern trench. A splinter of the Hollow sours his dreams.’s sleep. They call themselves the dream-born, and say that they are the good dreams the Deep had before the bad ones began. Nobody on land believed them until it was much too late to matter.

The orcs woke on the grass plains of the east, which are now the AshfenAshfenOnce the orcs’ grassland, now marsh, since the moonwell soured. Marshes, for the Ashfen was not always a marsh. Of the goblins, nobody remembers a waking at all. The goblins say that they were here before the Kindlers, and are owed several aeons of back rent.

The gnomes were dwarves once, or cousins to them, and lived in HammerdeepHammerdeepThe dwarves’ kingdom of nine halls under Frostspire, burned in a night. until a quarrel arose over a pump. The gnomes held that the pump could be made to run twice as fast. The dwarves held that it had run at that speed for six hundred years and was not in a hurry. The gnomes left for the high places to see the stars, which they wished to count, and measure, and improve.

Men came last of all, and from over the sea, and that is a story for the fourth book. The UnquietUnquietThe dead of the Grey Tithe who woke with their own minds and broke the Lich-Captain at the Leechwater. were not born at all, but made; and that is a story too.

In the morning of the world the elves went out from WhisperwoodWhisperwoodThe first forest, where the elves woke and the trees gossip. across the narrow sea to a green isle in the south-west, and there they raised VaelmereVaelmereThe elves’ city of a hundred white towers in the sea, drowned in a single night.: a hundred towers of white stone standing in the water, joined by bridges so fine that the gulls perched on them in single file. It was the fairest thing ever made by mortal hands in AetheriaAetheriaThe Ember of the Aether: the world., and the elves have never let anyone forget it.

Vaelmere was ruled from the Tower of Tides by a line of queens. The last of them was SeraphelSeraphelLast queen of Vaelmere, who lives among the reflections of her drowned city in the Mirrorhall., called the Fair, and she was fair, and she was proud, and she reigned for nine hundred years.

Below the queens, and in some things above them, stood the ListenersListenersThe loremasters of Vaelmere, who heard Thal dreaming under the sea.. They were the loremasters of Vaelmere, and they had found that if one went out to the edge of the deep water on a still night and put one’s ear to the sea, there was music under it. It was ThalThalKindler of the sea, asleep in the southern trench. A splinter of the Hollow sours his dreams., dreaming. The Listeners learned to hear the shapes of his dreams, as a mother learns the shapes of a child’s breathing in the next room; and they learned what every mother learns, that the breathing had begun to change.

The ListenersListenersThe loremasters of Vaelmere, who heard Thal dreaming under the sea. traced the change to a night when one of SerenSerenThe Watcher. She set the stars as watchfires on the walls of the world, and alone stayed in the sky.’s watchfires went out. Something from the HollowHollowWhat lies beyond the edge of the Aether: not darkness, but the absence of anything to be dark. had reached the wall and fed, and the dead star fell. Most of it burned away in the sky. A sliver did not. It fell into the southern sea, and sank, and came to rest against the sleeping Deep, and lay there like a splinter under a nail. From that night ThalThalKindler of the sea, asleep in the southern trench. A splinter of the Hollow sours his dreams.’s dreams began to sour.

So the Listeners built the SanctumAbyssal SanctumThe Order of the Hush’s cathedral over the trench, sunk in the Drowning. It opens when the Wyrm falls., on a reef above the trench, where the water was deepest and the music clearest: a cathedral of pale coral and moonsilver, with a nave a thousand feet long and a bell tower you could see from the Tower of Tides. It was not then abyssal. That came later.

Within it they founded the Order of the HushOrder of the HushThe Sanctum’s order of monks, who sang the Lullaby every night for two thousand years.. Its abbess was Isolde, a Listener of great gentleness, whom history knows only as Mistress SorrowveilSorrowveilIsolde, abbess of the Order of the Hush, still grieving at the bottom of the sea.. Its jailer was GorvathGorvathJailer of the Sanctum, who wrapped its chains around himself and went down into the dark., a giant of the southern isles who had sworn himself to the Order, and he kept the ChainsChainsNine chains of moonsilver let down from the Sanctum to hold the Dreamer’s dreams.: nine great chains of moonsilver let down from the Sanctum’s floor into the dark, for the souring dreams had begun to take shape and weight, and some of them tried to climb.

And its heart was the ChoirChoir of WhispersThe three voices of the Lullaby, drowned mid-verse, still trying to sing the next line.. Three voices, the alto, the tenor and the soprano, sang the LullabyLullabyThe endless hymn that kept the Dreamer asleep, until it was stopped mid-verse. every night from dusk to dawn, a hymn without end whose purpose was to keep the sleeper’s sleep deep, and his dreams heavy, and the things in them down. For nearly two thousand years the Choir did not miss a night. It is said that the fishermen of SaltwindSaltwindThe coast where the Hundred Keels came ashore: wrecks, smugglers and crabs the size of carts. used to hear it on still evenings, very faint, from three hundred leagues away, and would put down their oars until it passed.

The TidekinTidekinThe dream-born of the Corsair Reaches, children of Thal’s sleep before it soured. had their own name for the dream that the Lullaby held down. They called it Xal'zarithXal'zarithThe dream that dreams itself: Thal’s sleep, soured by the Hollow. Woken in the Abyssal Sanctum., which in their tongue means the dream that dreams itself, and they would not speak it aloud.

While the elves listened to the sea, the dwarves listened to the mountain. Under FrostspireFrostspireThe northern peaks over Hammerdeep, with the Wyrmspire on the highest crag. they cut HammerdeepHammerdeepThe dwarves’ kingdom of nine halls under Frostspire, burned in a night., a kingdom of halls stacked nine deep, lit by lamps that never smoked, and governed by the oath-stonesoath-stonesThe pillars of Hammerdeep on which every oath was cut. They cracked in the Burning.: great pillars on which every oath ever sworn in Hammerdeep was cut, and which no dwarf would lie in front of, any more than he would lie in front of his mother.

At the bottom of Hammerdeep, where the rock was hot to the touch, they built the EmberforgeEmberforgeHammerdeep’s great forge, heated by the root-fire. Its fires still burn, without fuel.. Its heat came up through the stone from the root-fire where OrunOrunKindler of fire and stone. He sleeps curled around the fire under the mountains. lay, and the dwarves who worked it were the finest smiths who have ever lived. The rule of the Emberforge was cut on the first oath-stone of all, in letters as tall as a dwarf: Take heat. Never take flame. The dwarves drew on the warmth of the root-fire, and swore that they would never dig down to the fire itself.

They kept that oath for four thousand years, which is longer than any other oath in history has been kept, and dwarves will tell you so whether you ask or not.

When OrunOrunKindler of fire and stone. He sleeps curled around the fire under the mountains. went down into the fire under the mountains, a single drop of that fire fell from him, as a drop falls from a smith’s ladle. And the drop was proud, and it would not go out. It lived.

So was born IgnarothIgnarothEldest of dragons, born of a drop of Orun’s fire. Bound atop the Wyrmspire, and back every week., the eldest of the dragons and the first, whom the dwarves call the Wyrm in the Root and every other people the Wyrm Eternal. He grew in the root-fire as a pearl grows in an oyster, and slept curled against the sleeping Forgefather for an age of the world, and the warmth that came up through the stone to the EmberforgeEmberforgeHammerdeep’s great forge, heated by the root-fire. Its fires still burn, without fuel. was his breathing.

The dwarves knew it. That was why they cut the oath.

He is called Eternal, and the name is earned. The fire that made him cannot die, being the Forgefather’s; and of every dragon that has ever been slain in AetheriaAetheriaThe Ember of the Aether: the world., he is the only one that has, as the dwarves put it, declined to stay slain. Of this, more in the ninth book.

A waking god may be asked questions. A sleeping god may only be overheard. We have overheard enough.

In the latter days of Vaelmere the ListenersListenersThe loremasters of Vaelmere, who heard Thal dreaming under the sea. grew proud, and tired of listening. Their First Listener, Aelthir, a scholar of terrible brilliance, held that the LullabyLullabyThe endless hymn that kept the Dreamer asleep, until it was stopped mid-verse. only delayed what must come, and that the Order sang a god to sleep each night while the splinter in him festered. Better, said Aelthir, to wake ThalThalKindler of the sea, asleep in the southern trench. A splinter of the Hollow sours his dreams.: to rouse the Deep while he was still himself, and let him draw out the splinter with his own hand.

Queen SeraphelSeraphelLast queen of Vaelmere, who lives among the reflections of her drowned city in the Mirrorhall. forbade it. The Abbess forbade it. GorvathGorvathJailer of the Sanctum, who wrapped its chains around himself and went down into the dark., who was not consulted, would have forbidden it if anyone had asked a jailer anything. Aelthir and his followers went down to the SanctumAbyssal SanctumThe Order of the Hush’s cathedral over the trench, sunk in the Drowning. It opens when the Wyrm falls. anyway, on a still night in midsummer, and at the hour before dawn, when the Lullaby is at its softest, they silenced the ChoirChoir of WhispersThe three voices of the Lullaby, drowned mid-verse, still trying to sing the next line. in the middle of a verse.

It is not known what they hoped Thal would say. It is known what happened. The Deep turned over in his sleep, as a sleeper turns when a sound he has heard every night of his life suddenly stops; and the sea rose up.

Vaelmere drowned in a single night. The water came up the towers faster than the stairs could be run, and the bridges went down with the gulls still on them. The Sanctum broke from its reef and slid into the trench, with all its monks and its abbess and its bell, and became abyssal. The three singers of the Choir drowned where they stood, still trying to finish the hymn. In the middle of the southern sea a mountain of fire fell in upon itself and the sea poured into the hole, and the storm that rose from that boiling has never stopped; the sailors call it the MawMawThe storm-belt round the Drowned Caldera, born in the Drowning: the Dreamer’s breathing., and the TidekinTidekinThe dream-born of the Corsair Reaches, children of Thal’s sleep before it soured. say it is the Dreamer’s breathing, now that he breathes nearer the surface.

Gorvath held his chains until there was nothing left to hold them to. Then, it is said, he did the only thing a jailer could still do, and wrapped them around himself, and went down with them into the dark, and the things in the dark have been trying to get them off him ever since. He is called the Chainbreaker now, by those who have met him, and it is not because he broke them.

Seraphel lived. She was carried out of the Tower of Tides by her guard on the last boat, with perhaps one elf in ten of all Vaelmere, and they came ashore in WhisperwoodWhisperwoodThe first forest, where the elves woke and the trees gossip. weeping and did not stop for a hundred years. The highest towers of Vaelmere still stand above the water, white and broken, wrapped in fog. Men call the place MistveilMistveilThe fog-wrapped tops of drowned Vaelmere’s towers. Isle, and go there to hunt ghost lights and to argue with the tortoises, who are very old, and remember, and will not say.

In time the elves of WhisperwoodWhisperwoodThe first forest, where the elves woke and the trees gossip. stopped weeping and began to live again, as people do. SeraphelSeraphelLast queen of Vaelmere, who lives among the reflections of her drowned city in the Mirrorhall. did not.

She went deep into the wood, past the last of the elven villages, and there she made the MirrorhallMirrorhallSeraphel’s palace of mirrors in Whisperwood, holding the reflection of drowned Vaelmere.: a palace whose every wall, floor and ceiling is a mirror, angled so that, standing at its heart, one sees not the forest but the white towers of VaelmereVaelmereThe elves’ city of a hundred white towers in the sea, drowned in a single night. as they stood on the last evening before the DrowningDrowningThe night the Lullaby stopped and Vaelmere sank, about 3,200 years before the Crown., reflected and re-reflected to the end of sight.

She has lived in it ever since. She does not age there, for the reflections do not age; but she has been a long time among reflections, and she has come to love them better than anything that casts one. Every reflection in the Mirrorhall is a little more hostile than the one who made it. The first a visitor meets are the Twin Reflections, which are the visitor’s own, and which have opinions about them; then the Warden of Glass, the Queen’s captain, who drowned keeping her door and stepped into the mirror after her. Those who go in to speak with the Queen come out, if they come out, with the uneasy feeling that something wearing their face stayed behind.