Paul Kearney: The Mark of Ran

“The world is not what you think,” Psellos said, and there might even have been an edge of sympathy in his voice. Had he, too, once been a bewildered boy confronted by the strangeness of his own nature?

“What do you want with me?” Rol asked wearily.

“That is difficult to say,” Psellos said. “I tell you what, young Cortishane, as a gesture of goodwill, I will give you some of this precious knowledge of mine for free. It may help your aching head. Now, bear with me.

“Once, this world of ours was a different place. The gods walked openly upon it, and the Weren communed with them, learning from them wisdom that had been handed down by the Creator Himself. The Word of God, if you will. But it is in the nature of all sentient things that they must remain dissatisfied with their lot, and mighty and noble though the Elder Race might be, yet they hungered after more knowledge always, and felt constrained by the waking world that bound them. The gods withdrew their friendship, and thus the spinning of the world was hastened, and all things within it felt their mortality more keenly.”

Psellos paused. “What that must have been like, that Elder Time, when the stones still remembered the footfalls of the gods. It was so long ago that the ages since can barely be quantified in years. What a world to have lived in!” He smiled, eyes staring out into empty air. “But of course, it passed, as all things must.” His voice changed, grew harder.

“Man came upon the world in this waning era-the last gift of the Creator, some say. Others believe he is a curse, set here to complete the destruction of the Weren, and short-lived though he might be, he is fecund, and curious, and impatient. At first the Elder Race tutored the early men, but as time went on a rivalry grew between them. Man was envious of the Weren even as they envied the gods. That is the nature of things. But many of the Weren, as they declined, interbred with Man. The two races are very close, physically, save that the Weren are more robust, longer-lived of course, and not subject to disease. In every way superior to the lesser race that came after. In every way but one. They were few, and mankind had become a teeming multitude. So they thought that by merging the two races they might have the best of both. But there was a problem with this… interbreeding. While it boosted the dwindling numbers of the Elder Race, it had its dangers. Some of the first hybrids went awry. They issued from their mothers’ wombs as twisted monsters, sound in mind but warped in body. These Fallen ones were meant to have been destroyed at birth, but a parent’s love is a strange thing. Many of the Weren who had these maimed creatures as children fled the cities of their peers to keep the changelings from being killed. They took to the seas, to compassionate Ussa of the Swells, and she took pity on them, and brought them to a place far in the south of the world where they began life anew, where their poor offspring might be raised without prejudice or ridicule. These Weren had a leader, a gray sorcerer whose children were all of the Fallen kind, but who loved them nonetheless. His name was Cambrius Orr.”

Something in Rol stirred at the name. He looked up, frowning. Psellos nodded. “Always that name conjures up a shadow in the memories of men, even if they do not know why. He is a myth, a dark children’s tale. He is a story, nothing more. I have been seeking out references to him in half a hundred libraries and word-hoards up and down the known world for over forty years now, and I can tell you that he actually existed, as did the kingdom he founded, out there in the wastes of the limitless sea. The kingdom of Orr existed, and the gods know Cambrius’s great palaces and observatories and ballrooms may molder yet, stone upon stone in some lost jungle untrodden by man.”

Psellos poured himself more wine, and paced up and down before the windows without tasting it. There was a passion about him, an honest enthusiasm Rol had never seen before, like that of a man chancing across a stranger who shares the secret obsession of his life.

“The Orrians dropped out of recorded history over ten thousand years ago, and in the rest of Umer their kin the Weren dwindled further, and intermarried with the sons of men, and declined, and became not much more than legend themselves. One by one the great kingdoms of the Weren fell into obscurity, their lands ruled by princelings and chieftains of the race of men. New kingdoms arose, and the world we know now came slowly into being. We were left merely with the ruins of their great cities, now jumbled piles of marble and stone dismantled and quarried by those who came after. But that was not the end. The Mage-King arose, in the land of Kull, and around him the creatures men name Banemasters. Some say they are the last of the Weren, others that they are some awful Third Race visited upon the world of men by the jealousy of the gods.” Psellos paused again.

“They struggle among themselves, the Lesser Gods, now that the Maker has left them. They have their feuds, their cabals, their underlings flitting about the world and doing their business. But the Mage-King is not one of these. No mortal man has ever set foot on Kull, and the Banemasters go about their master’s business for the most part in anonymity. What are they? What hidden knowledge does the Mage-King hoard in his Halls of Bronze? I believe he is a Were, the last great scion of an ancient race whose blood flows in you and me. But he and his minions frown upon the use of sorcery by anyone or anything not of Kull. And they do not like those who ask questions, who seek out the truth behind the myths. Thus have I had to keep one step ahead of them all down these years. But my time is running short.”

Here Psellos paused in mid-stride, fixing Rol with a piercing eye. “The blood of the Elder Race still flows in the veins of a few who walk about our waking world. Stronger in some than in others. Our eyes give us away, it is said.” He smiled. “It was in the man who called himself your grandfather, in Emilia, his lovely wife. The Lesser Men will kill you for the ichor that beats within your heart, Rol.”

“Why?”

“It extends life.”

“Extends- How old are you?”

“I have seen out two centuries. I hope to see a third, if the gods are kind.”

Rol was dumbfounded. “Where are you from?”

Psellos’s face closed over. “No place of significance. I am not a prince in waiting or the heir to a lost throne. I am not of noble blood-not as it is deemed noble in this day and age. I began as you, a lost boy. I was lucky enough to find a pair of mentors who trained me as I will-as I am training you.”

“My grandparents.”

“Emilia and Ardisan. Yes. Emilia died at the hands of a mob in Perilar. They collected her blood in pots. Her body Ardisan recovered and buried on Dennifrey, where he made his last home. He was always something of a romantic. I mourn his passing, but I am not surprised by it.

“So you see, Rol, we are brothers beneath the skin, you and I.”

Rol was repulsed by the very thought. “You have taken my blood these last weeks, but not for some experiment or treatment-it is sold to the highest bidder.” He remembered the sight of Rowen tied to a bed down on the waterfront. “Do not try to tell me you took me in out of charity. You set a price upon everything-one I will no longer pay.”

Psellos halted, and in a heartbeat he had crossed the ten yards separating them and was leaning in close to Rol’s face. There was a feral sheen to his eyes, and his lips were drawn back from his teeth.

“You ungrateful little wretch. Who do you think you are? I make the rules here. Others abide by them. Including you. Especially you.”

Rol was not cowed. “What if I say you and your knowledge and your training can go bury yourselves?”