Elizabeth Heydon - Elegy for a Lost Star

It was a sweet relief to them, and a horrific dishonor to their clans.

Those Archons that had survived the training came now, one by one, to the black tunnels of the Hand, where no light entered or escaped.

The first to arrive was Harran, the Loremistress, a Finder who had been selected by Rhapsody and trained by her personally until she had left Ylorc to rule the Lirin realm of Tyrian. Harran was thin, even by wiry Bolg standards, and her shadowy form barely disturbed the darkness at the bottom of the tunnel in which she hovered, waiting.

A few moments later came Kubila. His long shanks made him a superior runner, and generally guaranteed that he would arrive before most who had to travel to the Hand, even though his abode was the farthest away. He nodded to Harran in the dark, then came over to the finger in which she lingered and sat down before her to wait.

One by one they came, Yen the broadsmith, training to hold the position of Armorer, whose responsibility for building the unique weapons that armed Ylorc and were sold for trade already had made him one of the most powerful men in the kingdom; Krinsel the midwife, who came from a long line of respected clan mothers that managed all the medical needs of the realm; and Dreekak, Master of Tunnels, the brilliant young engineer who was in the process of inspecting and renovating the hundreds of miles of passageways and underground complexes that the Cymrians had built a thousand years before. Additionally, he had restored a number of the systems that Gwylliam had designed to make life within the cavernous mountains more civilized; the Cauldron, the great inner city of the guardian mountains, now had working ventilation, sanitation, and irrigation systems that circulated heat and air, provided rainwater for drinking and cooking, and channeled waste into vast central cisterns at the base of an unoccupied mountain crag, where once it had been ubiquitous and uncontrolled. In these matters, the demi-human Bolg were considerably more advanced, more civilized, than their neighbors in the human nation of Roland, who had long considered them monsters beneath contempt.

Until the arrival of King Achmed, the Earth Swallower, the Glowering Eye, the Night Man, Warlord of the entire deep realm, that had in fact been true. But he had changed all that, had forged the Bolg as he had Trug, into something greater, for a greater, if unknown, purpose.

A whisper of sound was heard at the arrival of Vrith, the Quartermaster, whose duties included the inventory and supplying of the entire kingdom, in particular the Bolg army. Vrith had been born with a clubfoot, a deformity that had resulted in him being left out on top of Kurmen crag to die on his tenth birthday. Rhapsody had rescued him and, seeing in him a fastidiousness for detail and an impressive head for numbers in his early lessons, had trained him to keep track of all the kingdom’s stores as Ylorc was evolving from a wasteland of loose marauders into a realm whose army was feared, its leadership respected, and its goods coveted.

Greel, the mining Archon known as the Face of the Mountain, arrived in the company of Ralbux, who had been trained as a scholar to oversee the education of the Bolg populace. They took their places on the ground at the index-finger tunnel.

Finally, the only Archon who was not Bolg arrived. Omet had been rescued from slavery in Yarim by Achmed and Rhapsody three years earlier. A human child whose mother had given him over to the mistress of the Raven’s Guild to broil in indentured servitude in the tile factories of that desert city, he had adopted Ylorc happily as his home. Somewhere in those mountains greatness is taking hold , Rhapsody had said upon setting him free. You can be a part of it. Go carve your name into the ageless rock for history to see . They were words that had echoed in his heart, and in his own words now, and led him to his post, the most secret of all the Archonic responsibilities.

Omet was the builder of the Lightcatcher.

After a few moments’ silence, the ten Archons became simultaneously aware of the presence of the king among them. Each knew that had Achmed not wished to be observed he would not have been, but the static hum of the tunnels indicated silently to them that their attention was being commanded. If any of them had been deaf to that hum, they might have also been made aware by the seven-and-a-half-foot-tall shadow that lurked behind the shade of the king in the darkness.

They crowded into the Hand, and the king motioned for them to sit. Grunthor stood in the Thumb, with Krinsel the midwife seated on the stone floor in front of him. Kubila and Harran sat at the opening of the next passage, the index finger, he with his lanky legs stretched out and his hands spread behind him, she crouched, knees drawn up as if she felt cold this deep in the mountain. Omet and the broadsmith Yen chose the next passage, while the others grouped into the last of the fingers. When they were in, silent and motionless, Achmed took his place in the large central passage, the palm of the Hand, on a stool that had apparently been waiting for this ceremony. He looked at them for a dozen breaths. “My children,” he said, his sandy voice as flat as any of them had ever heard it, “your trials are nearly over.”

Half a score of exhalations echoed through the chamber, and the Archons sought each other’s eyes in the blackness.

For Harran, the Loremistress, who was barely fifteen, this was especially welcome news. She had been commanded to recite a hundred genealogies, Cymrian, Nain, Lirin, and Bolg; read and memorize pages she was never allowed to see more than once in seven languages, a few of them long dead; commit to memory the names and leaders of every Bolg clan, as well as each soldier of the army; and manage a score of resources scattered or buried in the Great Library of Canrif, where the librarians and lore students under her direction researched meticulously in shifts that never ceased.

Seeing the relief in her eyes, Achmed smiled slightly. “That does not mean the tests are over, Harran,” he said dryly. “That is not the way of things. The tests of your knowledge are to come soon, and for the rest of your lives. The sword is tested when it leaves the forge, before it is finished and cooled in water—but that is not the real test of the sword. That comes later, in clashing and blood. But for now I am satisfied.”

He stared at the broadsmith.

“Yen. I know the metal from which you were made, drew the hammer across your edges myself, but have not yet cast you to the stones to see if you sing or shatter.” The smith swallowed visibly, but said nothing.

The king then turned to the Archon he was training in diplomacy and the ways of trade. “Kubila. I know your stock, taught you speed for the great mountain race, yet you will still need to show whether you or the coming storm shall prevail. But enough of tests for now.

“You are my Archons, keepers of our thousand and one secrets. Remember to count and hold them carefully.”

The young trainees turned to each other in puzzlement. None had ever heard him refer to anything by that name before. Achmed took notice of their confusion, and turned to Trug, who would one day be the Voice, and nodded his permission to speak. Trug cleared his throat.

“We hold many secrets, sire,” he said in a voice that had been trained to lose the harsh tones of the Bolgish tongue. “Which, my lord, are the thousand and one secrets?”

The king’s mismatched eyes, one light, one dark, gleamed with intent. “Who can answer?”

The Archons looked at each other again, then returned their gaze to their leader.

“The secrets of the fortifications, the breastworks and trapped tunnels,” the Master of Tunnels, Dreekak, whispered nervously.