Tales from the Last Seasons in Eorde: The Ealdspells, #1

By G. Randolph Harris

In the Ages before Europeans crossed the sea to scar its beauty with highways and cities, animals ruled North America. Birds and beasts lived according to the laws of nature, not the strange rhythms of humanity. Kingdoms rose and fell. Heroes fought and perished. Wars were waged and the winds carried magic.

 

The six tales in this book are set in the final seasons before the animal nations collapsed. Unlikely creatures, big and small, confront a strange upheaval in the natural order and the rise of a new kind of magic. Will they stand and fight for their way of life?

 

The Sparrow and Warhorse
A prairie sparrow named Mya makes a promise to a dying crow with a magic secret. Keeping her word leads her far from her flock and into the middle of a war between the bison and horsekind. 

The Peacekeeper's War 
A wolf pack invades the border territory protected by Nutby, a squirrel with a fat tail, and his best friend Bean, the largest bear in the forest. The wolves are on the hunt for the High King's assassins but not all is what it seems. Nutby and Bean soon discover something is very wrong in the Woodland Kingdom. 

Siege at Sancta 
A young beaver named Olam is trapped in Sancta, the great fortress and spiritual home to beaverkind. An army has arrived to lay waste to the stronghold and steal the magic hidden at the bottom of the lake. Before the final wall is breached, Olam must find her courage and protect the magic.  

The Witchhorse and  Windsong
Ebba is the spoiled son of the Southern Horselord. Taxos is the ruthless forty-first offspring of the Bison Warlord. They come face to face when the bison army invades the Horselands. Neither will ever be the same. 

The Last Flight of Crowkind 
Juna is a flicker, the lowest rank in the secret Order of Crows. He joins a princess on a mission to reach the eagles in the mountains. The journey across the Woodland Kingdom is long, hawks and owls hunt them day and night, and Juna learns the mission is not what he thinks.

Treason in Tunum 
A rabbit named Ned dreams of being a hero and hates the strict rules of his warren. When the magic imprisoned deep underground gives him a gift, he abandons his post and discovers the enemy is planning to attack. Ned returns home with a warning and is arrested for being a spy. Worse still, no one in the warren believes in magic. 

Take a journey back to a time of magic and high adventure.

 

Tales from the Last Seasons in Eorde is Volume 1 of The Ealdspells.

• Language: English
• Publisher: G. Randolph Harris
• Release date: Jul 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393594086

G. Randolph Harris

G. Randolph Harris lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia with his wife, two daughters, and two dogs. He works in education. Tales from the Last Seasons in Eorde is his first book. It is based on the stories he created to entertain his daughters on the way to the cottage each summer.

Book preview

Author’s Note

In the Age before Europeans crossed the sea to scar its beauty with highways and cities, our continent was a wilderness. Birds and beasts lived according to the laws of nature, not the strange rhythms of humanity. Kingdoms rose and fell. Heroes fought and perished. Wars were waged, and the wind carried magic. Today, all that survives are the legends animals whisper to each other at sunset.

The tales in this book come from a time known among the animals as the Last Seasons in Eorde. Someday soon, I will put pen to paper and write about the greatest heroes of that era. Their legendary adventures involve many of the animals you will meet in the pages of this little book.

I hope you enjoy your first trip back to a time when animals and magic ruled the continent.

G. RANDOLPH HARRIS

Story Chronology

The tales in this book are presented in the order the author told them to his daughters. For those who want to know the sequence of the stories, the following list is provided:

The Old Moon of Summer

The Witchhorse and Windsong

The Middle Moon of Autumn

The Peacekeeper’s War

The Old Moon of Autumn

Treason in Tunum

The New Moon of Winter

Siege at Sancta

The Old Moon of Winter

The Last Flight of Crowkind

The Middle Moon of Spring

The Sparrow and Warhorse

The Sparrow and Warhorse

The grasslands shivered , but the rhythm was all wrong. Mya, a sparrow with dusty brown wings and a coal black face, wanted to know why.

In her short life, she felt the rumble of the bison herds countless times. When the giant creatures were on the move, the ground shook with slow thudding music. This song was different. It was sharp and came in bursts. Something strange was happening.

Mya vaulted into the breeze with the rest of her flock. Up into the crisp air of a spring morning, they swirled as a single living creature driven to flight at the first sign of danger. When stillness returned to the hillside, they landed and went back to building their nests deep in the thatch.

By midmorning, Mya was tired of taking to the sky. In truth, she was in a bleak mood and feeling reckless. Even the smell of rich earth and new grass could not lift her spirits.

The flock had reached the nesting grounds two days before. The flight, a full moon’s journey north across the vast Brodlands, left many exhausted. It was not the reason Mya’s wings felt heavy.

Halfway through their migration, her mother fell.

Each spring, many elderbirds did not complete the trek. Some could not keep pace with the flock, dropping behind and disappearing forever. Others died in the air and plummeted from sight, the strain overcoming their hearts.

The Anmitta, the life-balance in Eorde, demanded this tragic end. Death renewed the living, but each passing was a loss to someone.

All winter, Mya begged her aging mother to stay in the south. There were others who spent the warm season waiting for the flocks to return, and she could have joined them. But instinct proved too strong. The song of the nesting grounds, heard deep in the bones of migratory birds, called to her and Mya’s mother could not ignore the music.

This spring, Mya was finally old enough to lay her first eggs. It was all she talked about with her friends as they waited to begin the long flight north. Now, without her mother’s guidance, the thought of having hatchlings was unbearable.

Since reaching the flock’s warm weather home, Mya avoided her friends and toyed at building a nest. She wanted to fly far from the season of new life. She wanted to be alone with her grief.

After the latest tremor faded away, the flock returned to the hillside. While the others lined their nests, Mya smelled the air, felt the breeze through the fine feathers on her head, and made a decision. If the grasslands shook again, she would investigate. It was better than pretending to care about the mating rituals of her kind.

She did not tell anyone. It was dangerous to fly alone, and her flockmates would not let her go. 

The Anmitta, the life-balance in Eorde, provided sparrows with only one form of protection. When the flock twisted and spun through the air as a living cloud, most predators were scared off. But a single sparrow, alone in the sky, could attract the attention of a sharp-eyed hawk. Those ruthless hunters were a constant danger. They floated high above, on the air currents that circled the Brodlands, and could strike at any moment.

A short time later, the ground vibrated again, and her flock launched into the sky. Mya did not join them. Whirling across the hillside like a billow of smoke caught in a windstorm, the other sparrows took no notice.

She waited until the flock was a good distance away and took flight through the narrow valley. 

The Brodlands, lying between the Woodland Kingdom in the east and the Spine Mountains in the west, was an ocean of grassland. Here and there, foothills rose like island chains across the otherwise flat expanse. Some of these hills were the slightest of inclines. Others offered steep slopes and summits with views in all directions. 

Seldom did a hill stand alone in the grass and where many clustered, secret valleys hid meandering streams. Mya’s flock had nested in a fold of one such family of mounds for generations beyond counting.

Racing down the valley as fast as her wings could carry her, Mya flew low across a little creek and up the opposite slope. She crested the hill and climbed straight into the air. The white feathers on her chest flashed in the morning sun.

He’ll see you, a voice called from the turf on the hilltop. 

Mya glanced down but saw no one. A moment later, she forgot about the warning. The sight on the flatlands stole her attention.

In the distance, a herd of bison attacked a troop of horses.

The bison, auburn mountains of muscle and shaggy fur, outnumbered the horses and surrounded them in a wide circle. Stamping their hooves and bellowing war cries, they took turns racing through the center in threes and fours. They charged at the horses with their massive heads down so their horns might find flesh.

For their part, the horses looked untroubled. With their coats shimmering in the morning light, they spun and danced away from the bison. Nor were they defenseless. The angry beasts were kicked in the head and haunches as they passed. Some stumbled and fell, breaking their legs in the process.

But for all their skill, the horses had suffered too. Here and there on the battlefield, some of their comrades lay in the grass, never to rise again.

Mya flew in big loops, absorbed in the distant spectacle.

The voice shouted again. You need to land.

She dragged her attention away from the battle to find out who was calling her. Though it was still early in the middle moon of spring, a quilt of bent straw and new greenery hid the source of the voice. The only movement below came from her shadow, fluttering across the landscape. 

He’s coming, the voice yelled.

A second shadow appeared at the bottom of the hill. It was a speck of darkness, no bigger than the dragonflies that filled the air during summer sunsets, but it grew as it swept up the slope.

Mya knew in an instant that she was in danger. A hunter was coming out of the sky to take her life.

She forgot the battle. Her wings started to shake. A desperate urge to flee to the nesting grounds, to rejoin her flock, overwhelmed her.

The shadow swelled.

"Draíocht faoi bhun an domhain, Deonaigh a misneach"

Strange words, whispered in a raw and unnatural voice, pierced Mya’s panic. She did not understand their meaning or where they came from, but something deep inside told her they were older than Eorde itself.

The breeze picked up, and her fear vanished.

Was her imagination playing tricks on her? No. The calm spreading through her belly was proof she heard the words. Mya had a shocking thought. Was the Scinnlac, the magic imprisoned deep underground, reaching out to help her?

The idea steadied her wings.

The shadow raced up the slope, growing until it was larger than her own. There were only seconds left.

She did not look up. Mya did not want the hawk to know she was aware he was coming.

As their shadows merged on the ground below, she glimpsed huge talons and red feathers. Mya flung herself in the opposite direction.

The hunter missed.

Wheeling and spinning, she hurtled down the slope and plunged into a thick patch of grass at the bottom of the hill. She burrowed deep between last summer’s broken stalks, shut her eyes, and waited. If the hawk marked the spot where she landed, there would be no escape.

Time passed. Mya opened her eyes. She studied the air through a gap in the thatch. High above, the hawk floated in a lazy circle. His feathers, the color of dried blood, were a sharp contrast to the pale blue beyond. He climbed higher with each rotation and soon was a speck in the cloudless sky.

The morning slipped away. When the sun was at its peak, a windless quiet descended and the ground stopped trembling. The running battle between the bison and the horses had taken the combatants beyond the horizon.

Mya settled into her hiding place to await the safety of darkness before returning to the flock. She wondered about the arcane words whispered on the wind.

All animals in Erode knew of the Ealdspells, tales of legendary heroes in ancient times. These stories always included a moment where the Scinnlac, the magic imprisoned deep underground, helped someone who undertook a significant deed, or was important to the hero. Neither made sense in her case.

Mya did not know anyone who was remotely heroic and had never done anything significant. As far as she knew, no sparrow in the history of Eorde had either. Why would the Scinnlac help her? She spent the afternoon trying to figure it out.

The battle on the flatlands filled her thoughts as well. Mya had encountered many bison, their herds sometimes spreading out as far as the eye could see. She had also watched horses in small troops, prancing and grazing in the deep grass. But she had never heard of a clash between the two and wondered what it meant.

As for the mysterious voice that warned her from the hilltop, Mya did not recognize it. She knew many of the animals that lived in the tiny valley where her flock built their summer nests, but it did not belong to any of them. She decided to stop and thank the stranger before hurrying home. She was in his debt.

WHEN THE SUN SANK TO the horizon, and the hills cast shadows across the flatlands, Mya scanned the sky. There was no sign of the hawk. The air currents at the heights he soared were in constant motion, and she hoped they carried him far away.

She drew a deep breath, vaulted out of the thatch, and took to the air. Flying so low the grass brushed against the feathers of her chest, Mya skipped the twists and turns that saved her earlier. Instead, she sailed straight up the hill. She hoped the growing darkness would keep her safe if the hunter was somewhere nearby.

At the hill’s crest, Mya landed. Are you here? she called.

The air was still. Nothing stirred among the clumps of grass, both old growth and new.

Hello?

Nothing.

Thank you for the warning. 

No response.

Mya’s thoughts turned to the flock, and she spread her wings to fly home.

Over here. A whisper, dry and hoarse, came out of the gloom.

Mya studied the shadows until she saw movement. A dark shape struggled to rise but did not succeed.

I need your help, the whisper said.

She drew near, and the shape became a crow. He lay on his side with a wing bent beneath his body. The feathers on his other wing glistened with blood as he raised it out of the shadows. The copper smell swimming around him told Mya he had been bleeding for a long time.

I have a message for my friends, the crow said. Will you help me? His voice strengthened, and Mya could see the determination on his face despite the fading light.

I have to get back to the nesting grounds, she replied.

My friends need to know. The crow tried to flap his wing and rise from the sod, but his body was broken. All he managed to lift was his head.

I have to go home, Mya said. She had no idea where his friends might be, and there was nothing else she could do for the crow. The Anmitta, the life-balance in Eorde, had decided his fate, and his injuries were bringing unwanted questions to mind. Did her mother suffer like this? Did she linger alone in a clump of straw not yet softened by new growth?

The shadows were growing longer, and the urge to be safe among her flockmates made Mya’s feathers twitch.

Wait, the crow said and took a long breath. He raised his beak and spoke with dignity. My name is Kabca Monca Dundca Habanoca Crow. I’m the third hatchling of Cato Habanoca, the one-eyed Seer to the High King of Onweald, the Woodland Kingdom, and ranking elder to Eorde’s crows.

His head dropped to the thatch, and his voice weakened. I’m a prince among my kind, and I request your aid. To balance this debt, I offer you the service of the Engelcynn, the Order of Crows, should you ever need it.

It was absurd that as the crow lay dying on a hilltop far from the Woodland Kingdom, or anywhere else important, he acted like he was at a royal court. She was not surprised. Her mother had talked of crows when Mya was a hatchling. She said they were the prickliest of birds, infatuated with honor, fancy titles, and appearances. Was the Engelcynn part of their foolishness?

And yet, Mya hesitated for a moment. Was Kabca the one who warned her about the hunter? Was she in the crow’s debt?

A wet cough shook Kabca’s chest, and it was a moment before he spoke again. I mean . . . what’s left of the Engelcynn will help you. I doubt many are still alive. The massacre of Onweald’s crowkind began during the new moon last autumn.

A massacre? Kabca’s words made her nervous. Mya decided she could not help him, and the sun was low on the horizon. Darkness was loose upon the Brodlands and coming fast. Mya wanted to get home. Like most birds, she feared to fly at night.

Please, Kabca said, frantic with sudden energy. The bison have allied with the wolves of the Woodland Kingdom. I must warn my friends. If this news dies with me, we might lose the war.

What war? Mya asked, thinking of the battle she witnessed that afternoon on the flatlands.

Tell me your name, Kabca said. You have mine. It’s rude to continue speaking without naming yourself.

Mya, she replied, taking a step closer.

Mya has a virtuous ring to it in birdsong. Kabca blinked slowly. Energy seemed to leave his body and his voice faded back to a whisper. Are you a warrior among your kind?

We have no warriors, Mya said. I’m just a sparrow, and my flock comes north to this valley to lay eggs. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, desperate to return home. But something stopped her from leaving the crow to his fate. We’re not seers or warlords. Kings don't know us. Sparrows live in peace and quiet.

Peace has died, Kabca said. The quiet is shattered, and many have been murdered. The High King’s bones lie scattered across his realm. Mya heard the sadness grow in his voice and knew his death was not far away. "Sit