C is for Cendriane

From the road journal of Legen Elmsworn...

Nola 5th
Today the Lady’s eldest son returned from the eastern theatre, a colonel on short reprieve from conflicts in the Soveros. He brought with him spoils, stolen and blood-flecked, presented as gifts much to everyone’s delight. They included several gruesome sets of points. The severed ears dangled about his neck on a braid of elven hair, worn as proud trophy, and the children clamored to pinch them for good luck.

Before mother was stoned, she often ruminated on the old empire and man’s slavery under the Highking’s decree. She thought it just punishment for a history of savagery and stupidity. She saw the current state of the Heartland as proof that Men should be firmly under heel. I am not so vindictive, and despite my foolish risk-taking putting these thoughts to paper, I do not wish the Lady or her people back into servitude. I wish them only death. Cowardice and periods of deep apathy have ever prevented my acting on such desire, but sometimes...

I’ve had decades to ponder mother’s stories and the hyperbole of human recounting and I’m convinced my people’s mastery over humans a thousand years ago wasn’t half as horrible as life under the Nors today. Elves endure hard labor, thankless service, switches and clubs and lashes, dreadful summons in the dead of night by lustful house guards and gentry alike, the heartless murdering of newborn eluvan, and the perpetual hell of inherited slavery, that with each brief human generation, we long-lived elves are condemned to serve the next, and the next, on and on, unable to ever adequately work away the wrongs of our eldest. What of the wrongs against us? What of the innocents born after the old empire?

Seventy-seven years ago I was sick over the whole business. As a boy I wept for such gross injustices. My mother fanned the flames, sometimes crying with me, sometimes singing stories of ruined Glorian and the battles against the God King. However despair and anger gave way over the years to fermenting hatred, and even that sinks and surfaces in the daze of numbing service. To my soul’s hardened shame, I no longer bat an eye at the wickedness about me. No one does. We accept it with grim resignation, another chilling wave in an ocean of sorrows.

Yet today something caused me to stir. The Lady’s son brought back amidst his spoils an elven charm, a long, flat piece of bark writ in the language of the trees, Ogham. Enticed by the fact these runes were lined in gold, the Lady demanded I go about deciphering its contents in hopes of uncovering the location of some unclaimed elven fortune or equally lucrative site. Yet I am no more versed in Ogham than I am in Dwarven. She is convinced my mother’s old stories somehow give me special insight. How badly I want her to be right.

I will utilize the manor library and resources available to me, if for nothing else than to honor mother, but more so to sustain this feeling of genuine curiosity, of life.

Nola 10th
After several days of puzzlement, old Hrava proved more valuable than all the rubbish provided me, books writ by clueless hurmas on subjects hardly pertaining to elvish language at all, much less ancient Ogham. The old elf remembers more than I thought possible. His mind, sound as ever a mind was, is comparable to a hidden vault of elvish lore. Had I but known sooner, I might have come to him as a boy, asked so much, asked everything. He was always so reserved, and mother often dismissed him as a fool. She must not have known his true wisdom.

Sadly the vault is locked and well guarded, and Hrava is hesitant to share any deep knowledge. Perhaps he’s become so used to burying his memories that he’s reluctant to unearth them for the pain or danger of it. Or maybe he does not wish to torture me with fancies of the golden era. I admit my time in quiet study has altered my perceptions some, made life here seem all the more unbearable.

Nola 14th
Hrava said he was only helping me so as to spare me the Lady’s punishment for failure. He shared several runes and the elementary mechanics of reading strands, though most of the charm is of a much more complex nature. I watch closely during the hours he examines the wood, runs his fingertips along the grain, murmuring to himself too low to hear, or at least hear well. I made out some of what was spoken, enough to piece together the charm contains a brief synopsis of the elder days, when the sacred mothers and fathers battled Desdemona and the Emperor of Death for the fate of Creation. The slab goes into great detail on the fall of the World Mother, who elves cherish as Marimonda.

Nola 15th
He stopped abruptly several hours into his reading today, and a peculiar look came over his face, a frightened one. He dropped the charm. I was terrified it would shatter and leaped to rescue it, missing by several arm lengths. We’d both be beaten awfully, maybe worse, for it’s careless destruction. However, it clattered like steel against the stone floor, unbecoming of such delicate wood. Could it be magical? The golden runes did catch the light in odd ways during Hrava’s quiet recital, seemed to hold it a fraction too long to be natural luster.

When asked, Hrava grew angry and dismissed the charm as nothing more than a poetic account of Creation. I did not believe him, and he stole out of the study with his fists balled and his jaw set. He hasn’t spoken or looked at me since.

What did he read? I must know. Something to do with the goddess, it must be, that was about where he stopped. I know she created the forests and the creatures that live within them, most dangerous of all the cursed humans, beasts with cunning enough to master the forests, to ruin them. Had she any inclination her most prized creations would be such spoiled and unruly children? Could she see all they would accomplish, how they’d pillage, murder and rape all the other gods’ works? Marimonda, perished sacrificing herself to preserve Creation, but she may have died in vain. Her own children continue to destroy the world one day at a time.

Night
I heard my mother singing softly while I slept just now. I often hear her voice faintly in dreams, but this time was different. She was so close, her words so vivid, and they came alive in wondrous visions, like watercolors struck with rain, one melting into the next in colorful cascade. Marimonda in all her glory fell upon a barren plane, and her blood made it green beyond all earthly green, more fecund than nature. The blood and the growth enveloped her still form, consumed her, and from the fertilized Wyld, birthed like toadstools and mould, emerged the fey- a parade of strange, beautiful and horrible creatures. Could that be what has old Hrava so nervous? Faeries?

I must know. And soon. The Lady is growing impatient.

Nola 17th
Raya above! I know the secret of the charm! There is a hidden message between the grains, written so minutely on the raised slivers only the most discerning elf could possibly sense them. I admit I am more than discerning, I am obsessed, and it has served me well, for the charm is truly a key to Faerie, key to my salvation, and a way to lost Cendriane.

Mother never sung of such a place, and I wouldn’t bother asking tight-lipped Hrava now, but from what I gather, Cendriane was a city of my mother’s people, Gloriandelines, unbowed, untouched high elves, who escaped the ruin of the old empire by phasing their city into the Wyld. Ingenious! Miraculous! The magic prowess necessary, never mind the foresight, astounds me.

There is no guarantee Cendriane still exists. It has been over a thousand years, but even the faintest chance of finding an independent Gloriandeline civilization spurs me into gathering the necessary components. I will steal the Lady’s diamond pendant from her vanity this afternoon, the herbs from the kitchen pantries before dinner, and carve the Ogham on the oldest tree in the yards come nightfall. At dawn’s first light, I will be gone from here, or find myself a hopeless fool. It does not matter. If this does not work, I welcome death. Gladly.

Nola 18th
The charm was real! Raya above, mother smile upon me, I have crossed! I mixed the herbs, sacrificed the diamond, and spoke the lengthy incantation writ upon the bark. As the first rays of pink dawn washed over me and lit the Ogham upon the ash, they seemed to catch fire, and the trunk became more like a gap, an alley, through which I squeezed into splendor the likes of which no song or account could ever have prepared me.

I’ve collected dozens of different flowers, leaves, bark and seeds. I’ve sketched vistas that redefine my understanding of beauty. Here is a green, rolling realm like nothing in the Heartland, where trees grow the size of towers, where fragments of moon hang low in the many-colored skies, where deer, hare, bird and fox more exotic and cunning than any Othyrian counterpart leap and bound. I may have seen a faerie, small, winged darling, dancing on a branch, but she fled when she noticed my wondering stare.

Despite the colors, the air, the vital aura risen all about me, there is no sign of Cendriane. Where could she be?

Nola 20th
Not all is idyllic in Faerie. I am being hunted. There is something tireless and hungry which breathes deeply and snaps branches in distances beyond my sight. I feel dangerously under-equipped. I did not think to bring much in the way of supplies, nor did I count on being stranded alone. I know almost nothing of the hunt. How I curse the notion I could fold a dinner napkin seven different ways if my life depended on it, yet cannot adequately track a meal.

At night, shadows larger than ship sails pass overhead, and the screams of beasts dying or in revel has me questioning my presence here. I’ve had little reprieve for writing, but I spare time now only as a means to calm my frayed nerves, in the light of glowing mushrooms taller and wider than me which serve as a hasty shelter. They’ve a pungent, rotten odor to them. I hope it discourages anything hungry from coming close.

Still no sign of Cendriane. I hug the charm to me even now, run my fingers along the grains, hoping to uncover a vital clue I may have missed upon my first several readings. So far no luck.

Nola 21st
I saw an elf in the woods, or at least I think I did. He was covered in blue-gray woad and cloaked in a forest fog, yet the glint of his eyes and commanding posture betrayed a humanoid form. I called to him and he did not answer. I approached and he disappeared. Was he Gloriandeline, or some disapproving fey? I’ve never felt more helpless than at this moment, not in all my years of service. I am lost. I’ve exhausted the supplies I brought with me. I’ve gotten little sleep.

Cendriane...

Afternoon
Horns. They shrill every several minutes, sometimes miles off, sometimes little more than an arrow’s flight from my hiding place. I’ve yet to see who blows them. More of those elves, I suspect.

Night (written sloppily)
Horns. Motion. Leaves kick outside. Voices murmur, a strange language, fluid but not song-like, more akin to the weaving of blades. They mean me harm. I know it. Frightened.

Nola 22nd
I should turn back. I could retrace my path back to my point of entry and see about performing the ritual. I have no great wealth to substitute for the diamond, but perhaps it will still work. I must do something. I am a slow and witless game and I fear the elves grow tired of playing with me.

No more horns call in the forests, no more eyes glower in the mist. I pray they have given up on me. I will forge ahead through this terrible wilderness, seek its end, seek Cendriane.

Night (written sloppily)
This accursed wood has no end. A day’s wandering has led me nowhere.

I have dug a hole with all my strength, buried myself in detritus and dirt at the base of a pine. I could find no other place. The horns call for me. The eyes search for me.

I have eaten a few mushrooms and a large worm. It’s been awhile and I have felt no deadly effects. This place. I am putrid. Maybe they won’t recognize me.

Nih (barely legible)
I am doomed. Mother save me. Hrava forgive me I am doom. I know why terrified the old Hrava. My fingers found in the grain. Curse charm like a puzzle. Hidden and hidden. Each story a darker one. Mother sing to me...

Nola 22nd
This may be my last entry. It is morning. I have survived the night through some miracle, a last lingering mercy of decomposed Marimonda in whom I hid. They came very close, so close I could smell them, could hear their small chuckles. They hunt me still, quietly in the daylight, in the mists. I can sense them all around me.

I will be dead before tomorrow if I do not do something. I have chosen a fragment of the static moon and will set course unerringly by it. It is my last chance.

Last night I was touched by true dread. Life under the Nors has been a hell, but those black hours ripped into my primal fears. I am a slow, scared, wondering thing and I know it. They recognize my realization, and take pleasure in it. These creatures are sinister, these Cendriani.

In my horrified hugging of the charm, my absent stroking of the grain in the dark, I discovered the tale which inspired Hrava to cast it aside. Cendrianne was a city of the old empire, long before the God King, when most elves and man still lived in harmony. But not all of them. The Cendrianni and their sorceress queen Ceridwen held little love for Man, and ill things befell those who stayed too long in her city. Small things at first, ruined property and cruel pranks, and then certain fatal accidents which discouraged much visitation beyond necessary mercantile and political dealings. And then people would go missing, until the unexplained murder of a human duchess inspired the Highking’s involvement.

What he uncovered was unspeakable, the torture and dismemberment of human beings, rituals of blood and screaming, and a celebrated practice called the Great Hunt. Gloriandel confronted Ceridwen and demanded explanation for this abominable situation, to which she replied with cool malice that which inspired her and her city’s banishment. “Humans are not but clever beasts, and beasts are meant for slaughter.”

These monsters cannot be equated to Gloriandelines or the old empire. The Highking imprisoned them here, in a land of predators, to compete with the primal hunters of the Wyld and the more vicious of the fey. It chills my bones they somehow endure. Freezes my heart so too endures their traditions.

The Great Hunt is on. They hunt the only elf in these woods.