Elizabeth Kerner: Song in the Silence

To the glory of God

and to

Alan Bridger

heart's-friend and support

and survivor of many years of rewriting

Deborah Turner Harris

treasured friend, longstanding and patient mentor,

terrific writer ans top-notch kicker-in-the-pants

(bare in the back without a brother)

and

Margaret Lynn Harshbarger

dragon-souled friend, moral support,

ace plotter and desperately needed teacher

of the realities of being an artist

I dedicace this work

The powers of order and chaos are in all things, and in the life of all races there comes a time when they must learn there is a Choice to be made. When Kolmar was young there were four shakrim, four peoples, who lived there: the Trelli, the Rakshi, the Kantri and the Gedri. They all possessed the powers of speech and reason by the time the Powers were revealed to them.

This is what the Four Peoples made of that Choice.

The Kantri were first. It seemed to their EIders that although chaos is the beginning and end of creation, it is order which decrees this. Thus they decided to serve order, indeed to become the representatives of order in the world. For this, they were granted long lives and a way to remember all that had gone before.

The Trelli chose not to choose. They did not wish to be governed by such Powers. They had only the merest beginnings of speech, but managed to convey their denial of both chaos and order. In that decision was the seed of their ending, for to deny the great Powers is to deny existence.

The Rakshi were already of two kinds,the Rakshasa and the smaller less powerful Rikti. Both unhesitatingly chose to embrace chaos. In this they balanced the Kantri; but chaos cannot exist in a world of order without the two destroying the world between them. The Kantri were eldest, so the Raksi for their choice were gifted with length of life to rival the Kantri, and a world within the world for their own, with which they were never content.

The youngest race, the Gedri, discovered after great turmoil that they could not reach a single decision, but unlike the Trelli they did make a choice. They desired Choice itself, giving each soul the chance to decide which to serve in its own time. Thus they had the ability to reach out to either Power and bend it to their own wishes; and although both the Kantri and the Rakshi were creatures of greater power, it was the Gedri who inherited the world.

A prose rendering of the opening

verses of the Tale of Beginnings,

as transcribed by Irian ta-Varien.

My name is Lanen Kaelar, and I am older than I care to remember.

I have heard the bards call me Queen Lanen in their tales, and that I fear is the least of their excesses. I cannot stop the songs they sing or the stories they tell, but at least I can write with my own hand a record of those times, in the slim hope that anyone might be interested in the truth.

Now I put my hand to it, I would I knew how the trick is turned. Where should I begin? Wherever they start the tale seems the only possible place, no matter how much has gone before. I suppose the only sensible beginning would be at Hadron' s farm.

I was born at Hadronsstead, a horse farm in the northwest of the Kingdom of Ilsa, which was the farthest west of the Four Kingdoms of Kolmar. The stead and the village nearby were a few hours' ride from the Méar Hills to the north, and two weeks to the south and east lay Illara, the King's Seat. Farther south yet the fertile plains of Ilsa began, a land full of farmers and crops and little else, and west over field and mountain lay the Great Sea.

Ilsa does not encourage women to go beyond the narrow boundaries of home, but from my earliest memories that was all I ever wanted to do. As a child I lived for those times when I managed to escape for a few hours, taking my little mare north to the Méar Hills, walking among the great trees that marked the southern edge of the Trollingwood, the vast forest that covers all the north of Kolmar. But always I was fetched back to the farm, and a closer watch kept on me.

Hadron was a good man, I do not say otherwise—he simply did not care for me. My mother had left him soon after I was born, and for some reason I decided that his close hold on me was because he feared I would do the same. When I came of age the summer I turned twelve, I asked to go with him to Illara, to the Great Fair in the autumn. By then I was grown nearly to my full height, and since I was clearly no longer a child—I stood nearly as tall as Hadron even then—I thought I was due some of the privileges of being of age. Instead, Hadron brought my older cousin Walther, his sister's son, to live with us. When autumn came; Hadron calmly announced that he and Jamie would go to the Great Fair, and that Walther would look after me until they returned. Hadron never understood why I yelled and fought with him over that decision; to him it was obvious that I needed a keeper, and Walther was enough older than I to make sure Hadron's words were obeyed. Needless to say, I hated Walther from that moment.

I wasn't overfond of Hadron, either, but then I never had been. He always kept his distance while I was a small child, and when I grew so tall so young he seemed appalled. From the moment I came of age he despised me, though I never knew why. I could do nothing right in his eyes. Sometimes I gave in to despair, knowing I was an evil creature who had no heart, since my mother had left me and my father did not love me. The worst of it to me, the true darkness in my heart that frightened me most and that I whispered to no one, was that I did not love him either.

But there was one bright light in my world, one beacon of hope and love and caring in all the desert of indifference I saw around me.

Jamie.

For me, any words of Hadronsstead must begin and end with him. He was there from my earliest memory, Hadron's steward and his right hand on the farm. Jamie managed the crops and the other livestock while Hadron ignored his child and made a name for himself as a breeder of horses. But to me, Jamie was ever love and kindness.

When as a child I needed comfort, it was always his small, dark, wiry figure I looked for, not the cold tree-height of Hadron. It was Jamie who made sure I was always looked after when Hadron forgot, Jamie who was a quiet friend when I so desperately needed one, Jamie who later taught me to see my strength and man-height as an advantage instead of a curse. When at fourteen I began to walk stooped over, trying to lessen my (I thought unnatural) height, which I feared made Hadron hate me, Jamie it was who took me aside and told me kindly that I reminded Hadron of my mother, it was nothing I had done, and he persuaded me to stand tall. Against Hadron's wishes Jamie taught me to read and write, and when I begged him he also taught me in secret how to fight without weapons; and how to use a sword and a bow. He was always there, never complained through all my needing him that I can remember, had a soft word for me even when my temper lashed him instead of its true target. He loved me as a daughter, as Hadron could not, and in return was given all the love I could not lavish on a heedless father.