Craig Saunders - Tides of Rythe

The night passed far too quickly. Without the motion of the moons to tell time by, it seemed as though she had been reading until sunlight. She sat and rubbed her eyes. She had read until the candle wax blossomed. An hour, at the most.

Tirielle sat back in her chair and stared at the candle burning low, insane dribbles of wax standing in stark disobedience against the regimented backdrop of tidy manuscripts and scrolls neatly packed into alcoves and dark wood shelves. All around her a millennia’s worth of noble thought stood idle, waiting for the writer’s progeny to find the words again. Not one looked happy to be forgotten.

“We’ll never find it, even though we know it’s here.”

“I never thought I’d see you despair,” said j’ark uncertainly. “You seem to find strength where others of us merely fail.”

Tirielle stretched her back and stifled a yawn. “There’s just so much. It could take an accomplished reader years to find it.”

“We’ll find it, don’t worry. Here, this is the last of them.” He placed a gold-covered scroll beside the others on the desk. There was a considerable mound. The ones she had finished with she had returned carefully to their tubes, and placed on the floor beside the desk. Too many in one pile, not enough in the other.

“I’ll join you. Between us, we should be able to read these before daybreak.”

“I hope so…I don’t think we have much time left.”

“Time enough. There’s always enough time for what really matters. It’s everything else that gets in the way.”

He placed his candle on the floor and sat cross-legged beside it, pulling a scroll from its cover. He fell silent, and began to read. Tirielle watched him for a minute. Always time for what really matters, she thought to herself, and turned her eyes to the scroll she was reading.

Outside, Hren hid Gern from sight, and the moonlight was muted. A pane of glass fell to the street above them, wrapped in cloth, unheard by Typraille or the readers. They were too engrossed in their task.

Time passed, and Tirielle felt she had laboured hard all the night. She was on her second candle, and that too had burnt low. She glanced at j’ark. He seemed tireless. As she watched he set one scroll aside, and took up another. He did not even take a break to rub his golden eyes. Tirielle’s eyes were almost too sore to continue. Meagre candlelight was not good enough for any but a reader to read by for a long time. But then, as she was about to take a break, a name leapt out at her.

CAEUS…

She did not know why, but the name resonated within her, a distant memory, a memory of some long forgotten tale heard in the crib, or perhaps whispered in the night. It was a name to instil fear, but instead she felt…hope. She bit her lip and carried on.

There was a note rolled up inside the account. It fell out onto the floor, and she bent to pick it up. Her back ached from long inactivity. She took the time to stretch out her creaking spine as she read the note.

This is the true and accurate account to the last days of the wizard, penned by Ir Mar Surillion.

Finally, she thought with a grin, she had found it!

She read on, eager and silent.

Great was the sundering of the world. The Sun Destroyers were driven from the world by a mere trick. A band of wizards, of a race known only by the title Sun Destroyer, committed the ultimate act of treason against their own kind. The only knowledge of this time comes from oral tradition of the people of Sarth Island. Its people have been long forgotten by civilisation, but they have not forgotten civilisation.

There is much evidence to support this story, although as a scholar I must be wary of convenient explanations. The remnants of the Sun Destroyers people, the Hierarchy, although rarely seen, remain upon Rythe. They have little to do with the day to day life of mankind, remaining aloof in a city of minarets, far to the north. The city is called ‘til’a’thon’ by the barbaric peoples of that distant region. In the common tongue of scholars, this translates to ‘stone tree home’ — there is no word for tower, or even city, among those people. Yet their tradition of story telling is far the richer for the lack of vocabulary.

It is a common tale among the Sarth Islanders that tells of the end of the old world, and the beginning of the new. A great wizard, whom they refer to as ‘the blood wizard’ stole his masters’ power, who fed off the light of the sun, making the world dark. He banished them to the pits of hell (quite an imaginative alternate realm, considering the backward nature of the people. I could go into the supposed nature of this realm, but to do so fully would require considerable commitment. Should I complete my studies on the legends of the Sarth Islanders, I might devote another year to the study of their fascinating mythology) for all eternity. From this pit the Sun Destroyers scheme to return to the world of Rythe one day, and feed once more on the glory of the sun, bathing the world in darkness and ruling over mankind. There are several interesting points thrown up by this tale. It is both a creation and destruction myth, cyclical in nature. There is no mention of the ‘red wizard’ in the tale, his fate, when asked, is unknown. In three hamlets which I visited none of the elders could tell me where he is supposed to have gone.

Finally, it is worthy of note that throughout the story, there is no mention of a second sun, even though their language is able to express gender, varying degrees of honourable address based on age, and tellingly, plurals.

I, for one, intend to examine the legend more closely, for I feel that the study of the origins of the world can, like the sun to which the myth alludes, shed light on the future of the world.

Tirielle put the scroll down and smiled to herself. At last, a mention of the red wizard. Now she had a name. There was value in these scrolls. But, she thought, glancing into the shrouded gloom on the underground chamber, the night must nearly be done.

“j’ark, I’ve found his name. The red wizard. He is called Caeus.”

“You’ve found it! Does it say where he rests?”

“I haven’t read it all yet,” she replied, and set the scroll down, taking care to keep it clear of the candle.

“Whatever it is, must be fiercely interesting,” said a voice from the stairway. The words slithered like sidewinders over burning dunes, and Tirielle spun to face the doorway. J’ark was quicker.

She had been so engrossed in the scroll she had not heard the assassin.

As she spun, knocking the chair aside, she let a knife fly toward the voice, but heard nothing but the clatter of her steel. The stairway was dark once again. The assassin must have put out all the candles as he descended. They were in the light, he was in the dark. He had all the advantages.

J’ark seemed momentarily confused — the assassin was not there. Then a whip-crack broke the still air, and j’ark tumbled to the floor, holding his neck. His hand then fell limp against the flagstones, and his breath stopped in his throat. The assassin leapt from his hiding place, against the roof of the stairwell, spinning to his feet. In his hand was what looked like a whip — in the gloom it was easy to miss — but it was no whip, but a long, thin snake. It undulated along its length, dancing as the light danced around it. Tirielle drew another blade and crouched, ready.

“I’ll kill you for him!” said Tirielle through gritted teeth.

“Oh, he’s not dead. Just paralysed. It’s you I came for. I don’t kill people I’m not paid to kill. Poor form.”

“Bastard!” spat Tirielle, keeping her eye on the snake, not the man. If j’ark could snatch an arrow from the air…she pushed thoughts of j’ark from her mind. She could not afford the distraction. “Who paid you? At least let me know that.”