Alex Irvine - The seal of Karga Kul

“Pretty clear which roads find travelers and which don’t, eh?” Lucan said. “Here we go into the real wilderness.”

“At least we’ll get out of this damned desert,” Iriani said.

Kithri waved toward the Serrata. “In the foothills, before we start the climb up into those,” she said, “the country is beautiful.”

“What about after?” Remy asked.

“After? You mean on the Crow Road?” Kithri shook her head. “Never been. Never wanted to go. But,” she sighed, “here I am, going. You can thank Biri-Daar for that.”

“There is no collar around your neck,” Biri-Daar said without looking back.

Kithri rolled her eyes. Around them, the flatness of Crow Fork was giving way to a more broken country. Monoliths of ancient rock stood angled against each other, product of no mortal’s work. The ground, flat enough to bowl on back near Crow Fork, was heaved and crosshatched with small gullies. The road cut through some of them and wound along the edges of others. The sand that maddened travelers on the road to Toradan disappeared and clumps of hardy scrub sprouted at the bases of rocks and in the shelter of gullies. Around them the landscape came to hard-bitten life.

And ahead of them, far ahead, the highest peaks of the Draco Serrata gleamed white in the morning sun.

“I thought the Crow Road was some kind of demon-infested gauntlet of horrors,” Remy said. “This isn’t terrible-looking country.”

Keverel made a sign in the air before touching his heart and his forehead. “Do not joke about it.”

“We’re not on the Crow Road yet,” Lucan said. “This is the road that leads to the Crow Road. It comes to an end at Iban Ja’s bridge. Once we cross that, then we’re on the Crow Road.”

“Who’s Iban Ja?” Remy asked. That was the third or fourth time someone had mentioned the name. “And why is it his bridge?”

The series of great wars between the dragonborn kingdom of Arkhosia and Bael Turath, that of the tieflings, brought down both empires in the end, but amid the blood and suffering shone acts of impossible heroism. Travelers knew these stories and traded them over mugs of ale and the picked-over bones of supper. Remy, who had traveled little and paid less attention to the events of the world beyond Avankil’s walls and docks, had yet to hear those stories. His five companions looked to each other with slight smiles at his naivete; by acclamation Iriani was chosen to tell the story.

“Why me?” he asked.

Kithri pointed to each of the party in turn. “Biri-Daar has no sense of romance and would only fume about the tieflings. Lucan is the only elf in the world who can’t sing, and he wouldn’t be fair because the story involves both Melora and Corellon. Keverel is a cleric and you should never have a cleric tell your stories. I know too many different versions of the story and am not honest enough to be trusted. Remy doesn’t know any versions of the story and is probably too honest to tell it well even if he did. That leaves you, Iriani, even though you have elf blood in you as well.”

“I’ll tell the story as it came to me,” Iriani said.

Kithri nodded. “So start telling. It’s a long way to the bridge.”

The Solstice War between Arkhosia and Bael Turath was not its own war at all, but a change in plans. Yet it was called its own war because of the periods of quiet on either side of it, and because it decisively changed everything that came after. Both combatants were exhausted and winter was on the way; they fell back to their lines, entrenched, and got down to the business of preparing themselves for spring, when snow would retreat from the mountain passes and the gods would give their signals for the great war to begin again.

Then a midwinter thaw changed everything.

Later, the survivors would blame a dispute among the gods Melora, Corellon, and the Raven Queen. The Queen, it was said, was angry that the fighting had stopped so soon because the battlefields were so very good to her black-feathered subjects. But she loved winter too, and was torn between the pleas of the ravens and the immutable paths of the sun and stars.

“Melora,” she said. “The wilderness is yours to command and to love. What of this great bridge the Arkhosians have built across the Gorge of Noon?”

“The Arkhosians are builders,” Melora said. “I cannot interfere with their nature any more than a beaver’s.” In truth, though, her heart stormed at the thought of the bridge.

“But surely the gorge’s majesty would be restored by the destruction of the bridge,” the Raven Queen purred. “Surely you could bring this about. The Arkhosians and the forces of Bael Turath are camped not twenty miles apart, in the lower vales of the Serrata with the bridge between them. Neither force wants to move farther away lest the other claim the bridge and the only passage over the gorge for fifty leagues in either direction.

“In these lower vales, winter is not so bad,” she went on. “But it is still deep in snow, and the passes choke in avalanches. Here is what I need from you.”

Melora’s temper was as wild as the wilderness and seas that she commanded on the earth. She knew what the Raven Queen was doing when she leaned in a little too close and spoke with a husk in her voice. She knew what the Queen was offering and what she was asking in return.

And wild, untamed Melora thought it a workable bargain.

“All I ask of you,” the Raven Queen said, whispering into Melora’s ear as her heart leaped and tossed like the storm-driven surf, “is that you ask a little favor of Corellon…”

Corellon who could sing stones into life! Corellon who lent power to the singer’s voice and the artist’s eye, the mage’s spells and the sculptor’s chisel!

Corellon, who when the seasons were divided at the beginning of the world begged for spring and received it because along with it came the knowledge that everything must ultimately die, that the green abundance of spring is the flare of a candle cupped against the everlasting wind and dark of death. This knowledge is the fuel of art, of thoughts of beauty, of all sorceries light and dark. Corellon is the patron of those who know they will die but are determined that they will bloom and learn and love first.

It is said that Corellon lives in a castle whose rations and dimensions haunt the dreams of artists, adorned with tapestries telling stories the troubadors can never find tongue to repeat. Vine-haired and stone-toothed, Melora strode through the arches of this castle and found Corellon, eyes closed, listening to the music made by dust motes dancing in sunlight.

“How would you like to push the Raven Queen a little?” she asked. Corellon’s eyes opened. Melora scattered the motes and their music jangled into chaos. “How would you like to have a little spring in her winter?”

“If she has sent you, there is more to this offer than what you’re telling,” Corellon answered. “And I can smell her on you, which makes it a simple matter to guess what is motivating your wild little heart.”

“To each her reasons,” Melora said. “Spring in the high country, just for a week. Think of it! What new life might grow, what stories might the peoples of the world tell of your strength in the face of the Raven Queen’s deepest winter?”

“And why is she willing?” Corellon asked.

“She is a good queen to her subjects, who belong to me as well,” Melora said. “The ravens are hungry.”

“Well,” Corellon said. Already he had begun to think of the songs that might be sung. “What the Queen offered you, will you offer me?” he asked, archly, as the sculptures around them began to dance.

That the gods have human desires is known to every child-else why should they have given those desires to us? Ah, the wilderness is fickle!