Ok, here is another world building piece that explains the nature and history of some of the various monsters/expendable soldiers in my fantasy story. As far as questions, I'd mostly just like to know what you thought of the whole piece (especially Danel) and what you thought of the creatures/monsters introduced so far. I'll post the rest next week. Enjoy:
The old man arrived in the tall hours of the night, on the wings of a storm.
He had to have been pounding on the dog-door for hours by the time Jarrod roused himself enough to realize what all the banging was about—poor old blighter’s right hand was raw and bleeding at the knuckles and his thread-bare cloak clung to him, soaked through by icy sleet that was howling in off the sea, wind screaming near fit to cover the lower noise of the thunder.
“Well don’t ye be standin’ out there, sir,” Jarrod hollered, raising the lantern higher and letting go of the latch long enough to beckon to the stranger. “There’s worse coming behind this rain, or I’m a five colors of a fool. Come in! The master won’t like it if you lay down and die against his wall.”
“That’d be me, sir,” Jarrod admitted, trying—and failing—to hide a frown. Blast the rain and the dark! He couldn’t see a thing behind the stranger, try as he might, and the lantern was less than a help. Where could the old blighter have come from? Folk didn’t just wander the wilds between manor houses. That was a good way to wind up dead.
Turning back to the old man, he tried again. “Will you not come in sir?”
Shaking his head, the stranger used his bloody hand to motion Jarrod closer. “I’ve seen you before, wandering between here and Daerondal Hold.” The man’s voice was deep and vibrant, so at odds with the fellow’s cadaverous appearance that it gave Jarrod a start. “Do you know the lay of the land to the west?”
Jarrod should have held his tongue—honest Faith fearing folk had nothing to do with the dark hills and darker ruins of tumbled stone that lay westward—but he was nodding almost before he knew it. “Aye, sir,” he half shouted over the rising storm. “I do at that. My da and I have wandered our fair share amongst the hills.”
“Your father?” the old man sounded surprised. “I’d never noticed him about.”
Part of him wanted to demand just how long the stranger had been spying about the manor; instead he found himself saying, “Da went missing two summers back. He’d gone to the hills hunting. We--we never found his body.” The pain welled up inside Jarrod, like old wounds breaking open, and he was suddenly grateful for the darkness—it wouldn’t do for a stranger to see the gate warden crying like a wee girl barely off her mother’s aprong.
“Forgive me for prying,” the stranger continued, taking a hesitant step closer. Jarrod knew he should have put a stop to that—no one approached the gate without permission from the Master, especially not at at this Faith-forsaken hour—but again, he did nothing. The old man extended his hand—again the one he’d worn bloody with knocking; his left hand he kept tucked beneath his cloak—and Jarrod shook it reluctantly, insides still churning.
“My name is Danel Terram, boy,” the old man said, and his eyes burning with an inner fire like blue starlight. “I’ve come to ask a favor of you, and give one in return.”
“A favor?” Jarrod repeated, unable to look away from those brilliant eyes. “What favor?”
“I’ve a burden to carry,” Danel said, gesturing to his hidden left and hefting something weighty beneath the folds of his cloak. “A rather heavy burden and no strength to carry it in this weather. Come with me, share my burden and some of your good light, and I’ll show you what happened to your father.”
Jarrod was two steps out the door before he came to his senses and pulled up short, heart pounding fit to match the thunder. His da? This old man knew what had happened to his da?
“How could you possibly know what happened to my da?”
A thin smile split Danel’s lips. “Come and see.”
West of the manor the land rose in long, tumbled steps towards the distant peaks. The pitted lane that Danel followed wound ever higher among scattered, wind-stunted elderoaks and huge bone-gray boulders that dotted the slopes like half-buried skulls pale in the darkness. The rain held steady and the tall curtain walls of the manor were soon buried in shadow, but the old man ordered the lantern shuttered until they had topped the first ridge and passed out of sight of any prying eyes.
“I’ll take the light now, my boy,” Danel said, pausing at the base of a particularly large outcrop of stone. “And you may take my burden, if you please.”
Passing the old man the light, Jarrod in return received a bulging water skin that Danel produced from the depths of the cloak. It was much heavier than it appeared—much heavier than it should have been—and it was only luck that kept Jarrod from dropping it on the ground.
Danel must have seen the fumble, for he hissed and gritted, “Careful, boy!” But Jarrod barely heard the man.
The waterskin glowed. Eyes wide, Jarrod stared at the light—pure, clean golden light of the kind you only saw in autumn and that if you were lucky—shone through the tight seems of the sack, and he couldn’t help but wonder if a miniature sun was trapped within the leather.
Danel’s weathered face was hard in the gentle light, but for a half second his sky-blue eyes gleamed hungrily, then the old man jerked his gaze away and grunted, “Cover it up! Quick lad!” Then he spun on his heels and marched into the night, the lantern opened just a crack to light the path before him.
Head spinning, Jarrod plunged the waterskin under his cloak and hurried after the strange old man.
The trail climbed higher and higher, and however old he seemed, Danel showed no sign of flagging. Soon, Jarrod was lagging behind, shifting the strange waterskin from arm to arm and regretting ever having left the manor.
Three hours passed without a word passed between the two, and then Danel paused in the middle of the trail and asked, “Why did your father take up hunting in these hills, boy? Your kin and neighbors avoid this place.”
Jarrod nodded, eyes on the trail. “Ten years back the crops failed and then kept failing, a famine or some-such—I was too young to remember much—but we had no rains for three seasons.”
“I heard tell of your troubles,” Danel muttered, tugging at his beard, “But I was far to the south at the time.”
“All of the freemen on the estates pulled out after the second year,” Jarrod continued, “And by the third year many of the serfs had too. The Master kept promising that the High King would send aid, but none has ever come. Food was so scarce . . . the-the lowlands had hunted nearly clean so my da started stalking the game up here . . . what little there was.”
“Your father was wise not to wait on the High King’s help,” Danel said, and then: “Arvad Telmar was murdered on his throne five years ago, his wives and children slaughtered not long after. Even now a traitor—the fifth since the High King’s death—sits on the Last Throne and all Ellandar’s High Families and generals are carving out kingdoms of their own. Help was never coming.”
“I-I can’t believe . . .” Jarrod had to clamp his mouth shut to stop blathering. The High King dead? Ellandar fallen? The sun might as well refuse to rise tomorrow.
“With the High King’s fall,” Danel continued, “The watch on the northern marches failed, and the Blood Lords”—Danel ignored Jarrod’s fearful hiss—”the Blood Lords have sent their spawn forth, down from their mountain holds. Dark things now range freely between the holdings of men, wandering the marshes and wild places. Wild places like these hills.”
Jarrod jerked around to stare at the old man. “Are you saying my da was killed by . . . by darkspawn?”
When Danel turned to face him, his eyes were haunted.
“Yes.”
Jarrod had seen the ruined tower from atop the manor walls, a shattered ring of stones and a tumbled tower that crowned a far hill on the edge of the horzion. But now, standing in the shadow of the broken arch of the wall’s ancient gate, he was struck by how large the ruins really were.
The storm had broken only minutes past, and the clouds were thinning overhead. The full moon was a bone-white eye framed in the only whole window of the old tower. Danel was already threading his way between fallen blocks of stone into the shadows beyond.
“I can feel their stink even now . . . it’s coating everything like oil on water.” Danel gestured to a far corner, “Some of the ilk camped there. Can you see the firepit?”
Stomach churning, Jarrod turned away from the corner and tried not to imagine what ‘spawn had been cooking. “What were they?”
“You mean what breed were the beasts that killed your father?” Danel turned ‘round long enough to frown at him. “What difference does it make, boy?”
“I just need to know.”
Heaving a sigh, Danel turned around and strode back to Jarrod. “And what do you know of darkspawn, boy? What could I tell you that you’d understand? Your father is dead, killed by darkspawn. Accept it and be done with it.”
“Just tell me. Please.”
The old man shook his head in exasperation, then walked over to the darkened corner where he’d seen the firepit. He paused and toed the ground, head cocked to one side as if he was listening to something. Then he began sniffing, edging back and forth, nose thrust out like a hound on the hunt.
“Rukai camped here, though I cannot say how long.”
Jarrod edged closer, apprehensive of what he would find, but unable to keep away. “What are rukai?”
“Soulless,” Danel said, and it came out a growl, “Life-reaved, some call them, the Dead Who Live. They are the remnants of men and women taken captive by the Blood Lords.”
“Remnants?”
“The Black Kings feed on mortal souls, yes. The life energy of mortals is the source of their power, though it was not always so. What is left after the . . . feeding, is an empty husk, neither living nor dead and bound to the will of the Blood Lord who consumed its essence.”
Sniffing again, Danel moved closer to the crumbling wall. “But there were others here.” The old man unlatched the shutter on the lantern, spilling light across the broken stone face.
Stumbling backwards, Jarrod bit of a hoarse curse. The wall was drapped with thick strands of dark, mold-covered webbing that stirred fitfully in the cold breeze. The jagged rim of the wall was crusted with rough spheres of mud, some crushed and broken, only a thick rind remaining, others were whole—two paces tall and half again as wide. Dark holes gaped at the bottoms of the spheres, almost like they were huge . . .
“Nests?” Jarrod said in a strangled croak. “Are those nests?”
“Gholem prefer high places . . . cliff faces, dead trees and the like.” Danel said, and he shuttered the lantern again, plunging the wall back into shadow. “Gholem usually follow Soulless packs, feasting on the dead, but they too serve the whim of the Blood Lords. They are spies and assassins, winged and cunning.”
