The Silence and the Song
Before the first word there was the Aether, and the Aether was bright, and it was empty, and it was very quiet. Then someone hummed.
In the beginning there was no ground to stand upon and no sky to stand beneath, only the Aether: a sea of light without shore or bottom, bright beyond all seeing and silent beyond all hearing. Out of that brightness, by no cause the wise have ever agreed upon, came the Kindlers, whom the elves call the Aethari, the dwarves the Old Smiths, and the common folk of Highcrest, when they swear by them at all, the Lamps.
There were many of them, and most are forgotten. Seven are remembered by name, because seven had a hand in what came after. Orun the Forgefather, who loved heat and weight and the patience of stone. Lysa of the Thousand Leaves, who loved all things that grow slowly and do not hurry to be finished. Thal the Deep, who loved dark water and long sleep. Seren the Watcher, who loved distance, and the cold clear places where one can see a long way off. Corvane of the Wings, who loved the wind and everything that rides it. Maelis the Mender, who loved what is broken, because it can be made whole. And Vesk the Laughing, of whom the less said the better, and of whom a great deal is nevertheless said, mostly in taverns.
The Kindlers sang. That is all the oldest books will say of how the world was made, and they say it with the stubbornness of books that know they are right. Where one voice met another the Aether thickened and cooled, as breath thickens on a winter window, and where the voices wove together it set hard. Orun’s low note became the roots of the mountains, and the fire that sleeps beneath them. Lysa’s became the first forest. Thal’s became the sea, and the trench at the bottom of the southern sea that no line has ever sounded. Seren’s became the sky, and the lamps in it. Corvane’s became the wind. Maelis wove the threads that bind a wound to its healing, which is why, say the priests, a cut will close if it is left alone, and a lie will not.
Vesk sang out of time. He could not help it; it was his nature, and the others had known it when they let him in. Out of his discord came all the things nobody had planned: weeds, weather, cats, the common cold, and luck.
When the Song was finished the Kindlers looked upon what they had made, and it was a spark of the great Aether grown dim enough to live in. They named it Aetheria, the Ember of the Aether, and for a long age they were glad of it.
The Hollow Beyond
But the Aether had an edge, as every sea has, and beyond it lay what the Kindlers did not make and could not sing into. The elves call it the Hollow. Their loremasters were careful to write that it is not darkness, for darkness is a thing, and can be lit. The Hollow is the absence of anything to be dark.
And in the Hollow, at the sound of the Song, something stirred. It was not alive as we are alive. It had no shape, and wanted none. It was a want, and nothing else: and hearing music for the first time across the long nothing, it learned what it wanted, and it hungered.
The oldest texts give it no name, for to name a thing is to sing it, and the Kindlers would not sing that. The name we use is a dwarvish word, cut into the oath-stones of Hammerdeep long after: Nhal. It means the mouth that is never full.
Seren saw it first, being the one who looked furthest. She did not set her lamps in the sky for beauty, whatever the bards say. She set them as watchfires on the walls of the world, each a ward and each a warning, and every star you see is one of them still burning.
Look up on a clear night from the Stormreach Highlands, if there is ever a clear night there, which there is not, and count the stars. Then count them again in a hundred years. The astronomers of the Starfall Observatory did exactly that, for eleven generations, and kept the tallies in a book bound in brass. The number has never once gone up.
The Sun and the Two Moons
Within the walls of the world Seren hung three greater lights to walk the inner sky, so that the peoples to come would not live in the dark between the watchfires.
The first was the Sun, the Dayfire, which the elves name Solara and the dwarves, who see little of it, the Rumour. The second and the third were twins, and Seren loved them as daughters. Ilun the Silver waxes and wanes and draws the tides after her like a train. Morrow, the Shadow Moon, had a dark face, and shone not with light but with a deeper colour the druids called moonshadow, by which hidden things grow: mushrooms, secrets, and the patience of seeds.
For ten thousand years both moons crossed the night together, the bright and the dark, and the songs of every people speak of them as a pair. In the year this book is written, there is one moon over Aetheria.
Of how the other was lost, see the Night of the Missing Moon, in the third book. Of those who pray to it still, see the Shadowmoon Temple in the Ashfen, and pity them, or do not.
The Going-Down of the Kindlers
When the Song was done the Kindlers were weary, and the world they had sung was young and would not hold together on its own. Mountains slumped. Seas wandered. The first forest kept forgetting which way was up. So the Kindlers went down into the world, each into the thing they had loved best, and bound themselves there to hold it.
Orun went down into the fire under the mountains, and lay curled about it like a smith banking his forge for the night. Lysa went into the roots of the first forest, which men now call Whisperwood. Thal went down into the deepest trench of the southern sea, and lay down there, and slept, and dreamed. Corvane scattered herself into the winds, and the ravens are her eyes still, which is why it is unlucky to lie in front of one. Maelis went into every living hand that binds a wound or sets a bone.
Seren alone would not go down. She stayed in the sky among her lamps, to tend the watchfires and keep the walls. Some say she is there yet, very tired, and that a falling star is her nodding off.
As for Vesk, nobody knows. The goblins of the Warrens claim he went into them, and that he runs a book on how it all turns out. They will tell you the odds for a copper.
Thus the Kindlers became the world, and the world became their keeping. And this is the root of all that follows: that the guardians of Aetheria are not above it, watching, but under it, sleeping. And a sleeper may be woken. And a sleeper may dream.