Moria
In the silent dark morning hours, the tribe awakened to the metallic echo of a magpie's song.
The bird perched on a relic stone at the edge of the darkened village, fluttering and twitching, warbling and screeching, the oldest omen of disaster. It twitched and fluttered and squeaked, and watched the village with eyes that were nothing but depths of hollow emptiness.
When the magpie sings on the ancient stone, flee the wakening mountain.A blanket of gray clouds above dimmed the flashes of lightning. In the distance, thunder rolled.
A stone fell from the height of the mountain; it snapped and cracked and bounced its way down the craggy rocks below.
A flock of dark birds surged out of the woods and darkened the sky, screeching as they fled in a mass of glimmering black.
The Northern wind had been called away to the desert. The mountain breathed.
More stones slipped down the fissures in the rock like riverbeds; their clack and clatter echoed among the mountains. Something was Happening.
The hollow-eyed magpie sang.
Ila
The sun had barely risen over the edge of the ice, and the Iqniq hunters set off with their spears and canoes to search for the whales of the frigid water. These were fearsome hunters, all of them keen and quick and determined, and all of them knew the sea routes like the backs of their mittens; nothing could ever escape their notice -- not a ripple of water nor a bird on the wing -- even in the dark of early morning, when the ice reflected like ghosts in the gray water.
Before long, one of those brave hunters noticed that a calved glacier had a curious shadow inside it. At first it was only a shape in the early morning shadows -- maybe a trick of the light or a patch of discolored ice, they thought -- but as the hunters' canoe rowed closer and closer, they saw a great towering beast trapped and frozen behind the ice.
It looked like a bear, one of the hunters said: a colossal bear with shaggy brown fur reared up on its hind legs in an icy prison, black curved claws poised for attack, angry jaws open wide in a silent, frozen roar.
The telltale
crack and crumble of ice warned the hunters to back away. The glacier thundered and rumbled. A huge iceberg, the size of a house, broke away from the face of the glacier and crashed into the churning, foaming water.
The hunters knew that something was wrong: this glacier was thousands of years old, and in all their ancestors' lives it had never calved so much and so frequently. As more pieces chipped away from the blue wall of ice, the beast trapped inside it was closer to being freed.
But surely, said another hunter, that monster in the ice is dead!
A bird flapped overhead, soared over the ice and lighted gently on the edge of the glacier. The little magpie ruffled its feathers, no doubt cold in this foreign place so far from home.
The hunters heard another thunderous rumble, but this time it came from the sky. A pod of narwhals poked their horns out of the rippling water. A storm was coming, and the clouds were moving, and a raider ship was at that very moment making its silent way toward the Iqniq village.
Matin Dripwood
"Just like a woman, always changin' its mind, never the same way twice," the old healer ranted gummily. He clacked his walking stick on a rogue tree that had snuck closer to the village overnight. The trees were always getting cheeky like that: switching places, destroying pathways, creeping into places they had no business living in, all to make an old man's life as unnecessarily difficult as possible. He thumped the leaf-strewn ground and shuffled forward, garumping under his breath about tricks and games and spirits.
"Pay attention, boy, and don't wander off," he snapped for the thousandth time, just to ensure the brat didn't get too comfortable. "Drea knows the Witch-Mothers have enough to worry about without you getting yourself lost."
Wouldn't be much of a loss he muttered, and he pointed at a clump of crow's foot growing between the roots of a tree. He fully expected Matin to collect the herb and store it properly without a word. It was good when the boy simply did his work and didn't make a bother of it.
The morning mist lingered in the green-heavy trees ahead, and the jungle smelled like wet weeds and moss. Swarms of insects chirred and buzzed and clicked among the dense branches and fan-leaves. Outwardly it looked just like any other morning -- but there was an electric tension in the air that made the old man wary. It wasn't the feeling of being watched -- no, that was too familiar -- but it was an
intention, indirect, that moved somewhere beyond their line of sight. There was someone or something else here, and it was nothing good.
While the healer shuffled and squinted at the shadows between the trees, wondering whether it was at all possible he could be going a tad senile, Matin's proximity to the ground at the kapok's roots showed him a very different scene. Tiny yellow lights -- mere pinpricks to his eye -- floated and danced in single-file across the forest floor. They lingered underneath the illuminated leaves of the crow's foot, then marched onward into the depths of the jungle in a more-or-less straight line.
The little lights drifted toward a figure that stood in the distance, silhouetted in the mist and partially obscured by leaves and brush. The figure swayed, and it moved slowly, trancelike, one step at a time. The shape of her would become clear to Matin as she moved between the trees so far away: It was Lena, sleepwalking alone through the jungle, far from any trail or shelter.
The old healer noticed nothing, and could see nothing even if it were pointed out to him; perhaps his eyes were simply more aged than he cared to admit. But those eyes were just keen enough to catch sight of a magpie picking at a cluster of bright bibak berries just off the trail, and he leaned heavily on the walking stick as he pushed his greedy way toward the queenberries, obstinately oblivious to anything and everything else.
Lena, meanwhile, stepped sleepily through the dewy forest. To her eyes, everything was calm, slightly blurred with warmth, beckoning. Her feet were bare, her hair was loose behind her, and she wore naught but her nightclothes, but none of this occurred to her, so much was she filled with warm serenity. Every breath of the misty air was like sunlight in her chest; every step was like fresh cool moss between her toes, unable to feel the burrs and stones in her trance. Little pricks of light danced in the air around her, and she smiled a hazy, distant smile while they swirled and swarmed and lifted her hair.
She couldn't feel her feet anymore, but she couldn't seem to care. Then, she couldn't feel her knees. She smiled and stared with an absent gaze at the dancing lights while she slowly disappeared. As if she were being swallowed by nothingness, her feet, then her legs faded away. The nothingness would creep up her body until there would be nothing left but her eyes -- and then, eventually, nothing left of Lena at all but a swirl of little lights and an imprint in the soil where she had stood.
The ground began to shake and crack. Fissures raced along the soil as tree roots pulled and popped out of the weeds. The jungle shook. Squirrels and deer skittered and fled. The old healer yelped and stumbled backward, scraping his hands on the trees to keep himself from falling -- but a root pulled up behind his ankles and he ended up on his back, staring in wonder.
The tree which held the elderberries had begun to lift out of the breaking ground and rise into the air.
Nina Sari
Meanwhile, far at sea, the afternoon sun shone bright while the turquoise ocean breathed and foamed. It was a rare peaceful day, not a cloud in sight, and the fishing boats ventured farther than they normally dared. In the distance, a net spread in the air and fell down into the clear churning water. A fragrant breeze sighed in the thick green of the ever-flowering jungle.
There was talk among the village of celebration: a day without storms or omens was a day to rejoice in and remember. The island was filled with laughter and excited shouts and the gentle rush of the ocean. Children ran barefoot across the sand with baskets of fish and fruit, but did not disturb the Shaman meditating there by the waves.
Something moved in the shadows under the hanging jungle boughs.
A young girl stepped out of the jungle, a mittened hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun. She was dressed thickly in layers of seal fur, padded boots and furry gray mittens that were far too warm for the hot winds of the island. Her hood was pushed back against broad shoulders, her black hair shone and her copper face was calm, determined, and purposeful in her mission.
Before her, instead of the village she had been expecting, was a wall.
While she stood in contemplation of this obstacle, a glimmer of movement caught her eye, and she looked down. Little yellow pinpricks of light -- only visible under the shadow of the wall -- snaked in slow single-file out from under the jungle leaves. The tiny lights trickled gently along the ground, and then began to scale the wall.
She squinted up and watched as a magpie flapped into view and landed with a flutter on top of the wall.
Below the songbird was a door.
The stranger approached the Gate of the Lost and laid a firm hand against it. In the corner of her eye, she kept track of the slow progress of the climbing lights.
"Nina Sari," she called in a gentle, steady voice.
"Nina Sari," she repeated in a thick accent, and she recited a Chus-Cande phrase she had memorized. "Find Nina Sari. Brother Sanjo sent me. Rosario must leave."
The girl did not understand a word of the language, but she believed wholeheartedly in the meaning of what she said. Her brown eyes were insistent, and she refused to see anyone who was not Nina Sari.
But even when Nina was found, the girl knew no other words than those she had already spoken: "Brother Sanjo sent me. Rosario must leave." She would point to the boats along the beach, and then to the open blue waters beyond, toward the next island, where the waves were highest and the ocean beasts were hungry, and she would repeat herself once again.
"Rosario must leave. Erksinartok, umiartortok nakkertok. Brother Sanjo sent me."
Rosella Burke
The day had dawned bright for once -- no storms, no rain, no hail or tornadoes or hurricanes crashing against the walls -- and the city was loud with laughter and shouting, trading and working as soon as there was light in the sky.
The guild library, however, was as stiflingly silent as it always was. Even the chatter of the marketplace didn't reach through the book-laden walls, and for hours all was well and peaceful.
At mid-morning the door smacked open, letting in a chorus of shocked screams and murmurs. Collin Jacques stood in the doorway. "You're going to want to see this," he said before he rushed out again into the light of the street, where all sign of normal activity had ceased and every quiet face was looking up.
By the city wall that bordered the forest, the ground rumbled like distant thunder. Above the top of the wall, the canopy of a huge tree rose up steadily. From this side of the wall it appeared that a tree of the forest was growing at an alarming rate; its thick foliage rose like a green sun over the wall's horizon. The guards that manned the wall's parapets leaned over the edge to watch.
The tree rose higher, and the wall shook as the ground under it broke. The branches cleared the top of the wall and the trunk lifted up into the air. Masses of dirt-tangled roots followed, dripping clumps of soil and rocks.
The tree had yanked itself out of the ground and floated higher into the air.
Those who watched from high vantage points reported that there were more trees -- at least a dozen scattered throughout the forest -- lifting their roots and rising into the air; the entire forest shook and clamored. Flocks of birds screeched across the sky. The tree's roots rose above the top of the wall and continued to float higher as if pulled upward by a string in the sky.
While the city was captivated and every eye was locked on the rising roots, a brown-skinned, sandaled man slipped along the alleys and crept along the wall of the guild library, where a single magpie perched above the door. He turned his eyes to the rising tree as casually as possible, shifting closer to the open library door until he was certain he could slip inside without being seen. Everyone, he hoped, was outside, and no one was left to stop him.
He was after a certain map -- a recent one which detailed a safe passage to the ruins. He shuffled recklessly through the scrolls and maps, unable to read the Cantran labels, forced to open each one before discarding it for the next, with only an occasional glance afforded to the sunlight beyond the doorway.
Cyrus Rouhani
In the small dark hours of the morning, the sands blew and shifted in the North wind. The worms were restless in the dunes. The sky over the desert rumbled with electric clouds that flashed and roiled like a sea of gray. The dogs of the village threw up their chins and bayed to the absent moon. In the distance, hyenas yipped. A single magpie darted over the sands and perched in a lemon tree.
A jumbled clamor rang out among the stars and planets. Something was stirring. A lock had been weakened and a door was ripe to be opened. Around the world, trees took up their roots, ice shattered, mountains crumbled, the Lost Ones returned to the living. The bright veins of the Ruse flowed once again. What long ago had threatened the celestial gods -- what had been quelled and conquered -- was opening its eyes. The stars were afraid, or enraged, or pompously curious to see how far the madness might spread this time -- and then they went silent.
The voices in Cyrus' head snuffed out like a candle, leaving nothing but a ringing in his ears. Only Naveed was still with him.
Through the howling dark village, a woman walked. Her skin was pale as snow, with long black hair and flowing black robes that trailed in the strong winds that swirled around her. Blood trickled down her arm.
A strong cold wind whistled through the village. Stronger and stronger it blew, threatening to yank the tents from their stakes. The wind spun, and the flashing clouds above swirled and funneled.
The tornado touched down just outside the village, sucking up the sand and pulling down the clouds. Villagers screamed and rushed to secure their belongings and livestock while tents whipped and trembled, but the whirlwind moved quickly away into the open desert, dragging the clouds with it. The stars once again peeked through the openings left behind, and the voices returned roaring in Cyrus' head.
The woman in black stared up at sparkling Ursa Major while a gentler swirl of cold wind wrapped around each of the villagers in turn, puffing the tents they sat in, sweeping sand around their feet. The searching wind found Cyrus and chilled him to the bone, and the woman's glacial blue eyes rested on him alone. Her gaze was intense, scrutinizing, and silent.
Above, the clouds began to gather again with a flashing, thunderous ferocity.
