The Chains of Fate: A Novel of Avonia

By A.A. Night

When tragedy strikes, the victims ask why. Then, they look for someone to blame.

For the Kharar of Beasthaven, the child DarHel is that someone. Born with snow-white skin and blood-red eyes in the midst of the worst plague in history, DarHel is deemed cursed and cast out of his village. Hungry and alone, his only hope for survival is to seek sanct

• Language: English
• Publisher: A.A. Night
• Release date: Apr 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9780578978116

Book preview

I

Dar Child

I

641 Kingdom Era, Winter

The woman screamed in the night. Zaar’n stopped short, listening, sniffing the frigid woodland air. Only the whisper of falling snow broke the silence. He prayed for another scream, for where he found the woman he would find his quarry.

A wolf howled, then another, and another. Soon the entire pack had joined the chorus.

They’d found the trail.

Zaar’n cursed his beasts in envy. He smelled nothing but his own sweat, heard nothing but his own labored breath. For all the gifts granted him through strict devotion to the ways of the KharDar, he was still merely a man.

Crouching in starlit snow, Zaar’n untethered the leather pouch that hung always from his hip. He opened it, brought it to his nose, and inhaled deeply. Crystalline hausche powder coated his nostrils and seeped into his blood. His pupils swelled, irises pulsing against the crimson ink that coursed through his tattooed corneas.

He looked up sharply, watched as jagged silhouettes of birch, oak, and maple grew stark and black against the midnight sky. Celestial embers roared to flame in the heavens above, banishing the shadows of the wood. Within a moment, it was as if he stood beneath a noonday sun.

A moment more, and he caught his prey's scent: blood and birthwater mingling with the reek of terror. The thing in the darkness beckoned him, and his blood boiled with a lust for butchery. Zaar'n would have grinned had his lips been free of their binds, but the scarlet threads that marked his caste held them frozen in an eternal grimace. Securing his pouch once more, he leapt from the earth and flitted through the forest with the grace of a dancer’s ghost.

The woman screamed again. The wolves had found her. Her cries became a hymn of fear and despair, the subtle timber of agony lurking within. Zaar'n sailed through the din on psychic winds, enrapt with the exquisite symphony of sickness.

He came to a small clearing and beheld the woman bleeding in the snow, her back against a gnarled oak. Steam rose from the crimson and amber between her legs while tears tumbled down her frostbitten cheeks. The wolves growled and howled and nipped at her heels, pinning her down while they awaited their master. Clinging to the wailing woman's breast was the hunter's prey itself, a naked, newborn babe.

Zaar'n came forward slowly, his advance as implacable as death itself. Feeling his presence, the pack whimpered and slunk away from his prize. His blade hissed against its scabbard, and the clearing fell deathly quiet.

"Var'Hai al Seraphim!" the woman cried out in a panic, shattering the silence of the wood. Zaar’n stumbled back, aghast. These were words of the Old Tongue, sacred words reserved solely for the holiest of men.

"Var'Hai al Seraphim," she proclaimed once more, her voice swelling with a newfound surety despite her streaming tears. Zaar’n knew the meaning of these words, knew that to slay one whom they had blessed was a sin irredeemable. Yet, he knew, too, the nature of the thing that the woman clutched to her bosom. He knew the evil that it had brought to the world, the chaos that would ever flow from its fingers.

He could kill the demon with a single motion. He could open its throat with a flick of his wrist, and watch as its cursed blood cleansed the plague-ridden earth. He could kill the woman too, and then no man would know of her claim to Var'Hai. But, the shadows would know of Zaar’n’s treachery. And the shadows would not forgive.

* * * * * * *

The winds of the wood had been freezing cold, but the stale, tepid air in the larhaast somehow felt even colder. Shah’Rohk burrowed deeper into the thick sheepskin cloak that hung from her otherwise naked shoulders. At least her captors had given her that much.

Weariness and agony coursed through her body in equal measure, and a dried, cracking melange of blood and birthwater chafed at her thighs. She barely felt any of it. She was numb, hollow in both body and spirit. She had endured the terror of the wolves and the madness of the cold, but all of her suffering had been for naught; the KharLar had taken her son away all the same.

The KharLar. The godly men. Oh, how she loathed them. Eunuchs all; what could they know of a mother’s love for her child? For twenty-three winters she had obeyed them, had treasured their teachings and honored their decrees. When, at the dawn of her twelfth winter, they had said that she must service their unshorn acolytes with her hands and her tongue, she had obeyed without question. When, in her adolescence, they had demanded that she lay with wealthy men from other villages, her womanhood bartered over like so many market goods, she had acquiesced without protest. And, when they had ordered her to marry Fah’Rohk after only three evenings of courtship, she had given no argument. And how had her unquestioning servitude been repaid? With knives for her firstborn's throat.

Have you nothing to say then, woman?

Shah’Rohk looked up at her husband. He was leaning against the chamber’s far wall with his arms crossed, gazing at her with simmering ire.

I have said long ago all that needs saying to you.

Fah’Rohk’s auburn eyes widened, then grew hard.

How dare you use such a tone with me! Have you forgotten who spoke for you when you refused the wombrot? Have you forgotten who quarreled with the KharLar when they demanded that I revoke your right to choose? Mine is the only soul in Beasthaven that does not call for your blood! You’d be wise to remember that when next you think of showing me such disrespect!

Aye, you spoke for me! Shah'Rohk snapped. You said that you believed in me! You said that you did not think him the demon they claim! Where is that conviction now, husband? Where is your defiance now that your son awaits his death?

I said what I had to say to shut your flapping lips! You demanded proof, so I agreed to wait for proof. Now we have it, yet still you defy the KharLar!

Shah’Rohk said nothing. Her husband gazed at her expectantly for a long moment before throwing up his hands in frustrated defeat.

Why did you flee? he demanded, turning his back to her. Will you at least answer me this?

They sent for Zaar’n the moment my birth pains began, she spat. "I had to listen to him sharpen his blade just outside my window as I felt my son, our son, pushing free from my loins. They had made up their minds long ago! From the moment that I refused to kill him in my womb, they knew that they would call upon the KharDar to end his life!"

As is their right! Fah’Rohk snapped over his shoulder. The KharLar alone know the will of Divinity! Who are you to question them?

I am a mother! I am KharAii!

Pah! Dust in the wind. A woman knows nothing of great matters such as these.

A woman knows nothing of matters of children? Of birth? Do you hear your own words? You have lost your wits!

Fah'Rohk turned sharply toward her, his face a mask of incredulity.

"I have lost my wits? he demanded. What did you think would happen when you ran into the forest in nothing but rags, with the heart of winter not a moon’s turn past? Hm? Were you so eager to join your spawn in death? Did you think that his freezing in the wood would make a more graceful end than the kiss of Zaar'n's blade? And what of poor Shah'Rahl, your midwife? The woman you so savagely beat in your madness? The Dar drove your hands to violence even before it left your womb!"

Shah'Rahl would have given my son to the KharDar's butcher. She alone stood in the way of my escape. I would do the same again.

"Well what about us, then, Shah'Rohk? What about me? Whether the KharLar honor your claim to Var'Hai matters little. Ours will always be remembered as the house that spawned the Dar. We will be as nothing!"

Shah'Rohk chortled.

So that's it then, is it? she said with a mirthless grin. "Your son, and likely your wife, face their deaths by holy blade, yet you think only of your reputation. Your status. You are a disgrace, Fah’Rohk. The Dar does not dwell in our son. It dwells in you."

Fah’Rohk's jaw fell agape. He slowly uncrossed his arms, scowling as his hands clenched into fists. Murderous fire blazed in his eyes.

What did you just say to me? he demanded.

You heard my words. You are callous and cruel and selfish, and you think only of worldly gain. It is you who the KharDar ought put to death!

Fah’Rohk opened his mouth to curse and rage, but the sound of squealing hinges silenced him. He turned his gaze to the chamber door, incensed at the intrusion. Shah’Rahl stood in the hallway, her swelling, purpling face impassive.

They’re ready for you, she said flatly. She flashed Shah’Rohk a look that might have frozen the sun, then stalked off without another word. Fah’Rohk spat on his wife, then strode from the room. Slowly, wearily, as though she held the weight of the world itself upon her shoulders, Shah'Rohk rose and shambled after him toward the heart of the temple.

She was overcome by a thick and turgid immensity of hausche smoke as she stepped inside the altar room. The noisome vapors settled instantly into her lungs, quieting her thoughts and enflaming her senses. Before her, upon the altar itself, lay her infant son. He stared up blankly, eyes open and jaws clenched. The hausche trance was upon him, just as it had come upon her.

The seven KharLar of Beasthaven were seated just behind the altar upon richly hewn and ornately carved wooden thrones. Across from them, their backs to Shah'Rohk, sat three individuals, all cross-legged on the earthen floor. Though she could not see him, she could feel Zaar'n's presence. He lurked somewhere in the thick shadows that pooled in the chamber's corners and crevices, his head-to-toe tattoos concealing him in the darkness.

She gazed toward the altar for a long moment, transfixed in her trance by the babe's brilliance. His skin held no pigment, and his eyes shone a feeble, whitish pink. The only color upon his body was the faint, rushing purple of veins thrumming beneath his skin. Shah'Rohk could not deny that her child bore what the KharLar called the Mark of the Dar. To them, his very being was a mockery of the Pale Folk; a wickedness deserving of death.

The eldest of the KharLar arose from his throne. He spoke in deep, resonant tones, reciting an arcane litany in the Old Tongue. It was an invocation that Shah'Rohk had never heard before. When he was finished, he spoke again in the common tongue of the Kharar.

"In the Dawn of Time, the Pale Folk spake unto us: Four shall be thy number, Four Paths for thou to tread. First, the Path of divine light and just rule; a path for the hearts of the KharLar. Second, the Path of sacred shadow and holy judgement; a path for the blades of the KharDar. Third, the Path of the forest and field; a path for the hands of the KharAist. And last, the Path of the hearth and home; a path for the wombs of the KharAii.

"In the light of the Pale, we have assembled, Four Paths as One, to initiate a council of contested Var'Hai. I am Fa'Kann, KharLar'I of Beasthaven, and I speak in the name of just rule.

Behind me, he gestured to the throned men, are my charges, my fellow KharLar. Zaar'n of the KharDar stands with us in shadow, unseen but known, the divine justice of our dark brothers present in his person. Who, then, has come to speak for the KharAist?

A shadowed figure rose from the floor, placed his right hand over his heart, and bowed his head.

I am Fah'Khul, he said. I have been chosen to speak for the horsemen and laborers of Beasthaven.

And who has come to speak for the KharAii?

The second seated figure struggled to stand, rising crook-backed and trembling.

I am Shah'Rhee, she croaked, eldest of all Beasthaven. I speak for the mothers and wives and daughters of our village.

And finally, Fa'Kann said, his voice dripping in disgust, the initiators of this congregation. Fah'Rohk and Shah'Rohk, father and mother of the Dar Child. They have come to protest his fate. You may be seated, all of you.

Fah'Khul and Shah'Rhee took their places before the altar once more, and Shah'Rohk found her own beside her husband. He would not look at her, nor she at him.

Shah'Rohk, Fa'Kann said when all were seated, you have invoked the rite of Var'Hai on behalf of the babe. What is your defense of speaking such sacred words, words that are not meant for the likes of you?

My child is afflicted, Shah'Rohk said clearly and confidently, the hausche in her veins fueling her conviction. In accordance with the strictures of Var'Hai, I will bring the boy to the White Wood, home of the Pale Folk. It is through them that the Lar springs forth, and it is through them that my son will be cured and made whole.

There was a long and heavy silence. Finally Shah'Rhee spoke, her voice trembling and cracking with age.

In ninety-three winters I have never seen such a thing. It is impossible.

"Nothing is impossible for them!" Shah'Rohk snapped.

Madness! Fah'Khul exclaimed from beside her. You are selfish and arrogant, Shah'Rohk. You think only for yourself, not for the Kharar. When the stars hid themselves from us, the KharLar said ‘the Dar comes.’ When we became fevered and sick and our children died, the KharLar said ‘the Dar is in you.’ When the cattle would not eat and the wheat would not grow, the KharLar said ‘the Dar is coming forth.’ Yet you would not listen to them! Only by their mercy was the child born, and now the truth is laid bare for all to see! They were right and you were wrong, and it humiliates you. You failed when the Dar was within you, and now it has been born as a thing of flesh and blood. It must be killed!

By divine right he may seek the Pale Folk! Shah’Rohk insisted, seething in mounting desperation. ‘No man who seeks Divinity shall be denied Its presence.’ Tell me, wise Fah'Khul, are these not holy words?

One of the lesser KharLar audibly cleared his throat. All turned their attention toward him.

The rite of holy pilgrimage is indeed sacred and eternal, he said thoughtfully. The Dar threatens our people always, and only our bondage to the Lar delivers us from its grasp. If we break the covenant of Var'Hai, the chains of that bondage will weaken. If they break, we will be left naked and alone, engulfed by the Dar. He looked to the infant on the altar, then to his fellow KharLar. We must not deny her invocation of the rite.

Fa'Kann looked across the faces of the remaining KharLar. All were impassive, and all refrained from comment. The KharLar'I loosed a long and mournful sigh, full of defeat. Shah'Rohk's heart swelled; the debate was leaning in her favor.

Each has spoken, save for you, Fah'Rohk, Fa'Kann said, turning to Shah'Rohk's husband. What does the father of the Dar Child say in this matter?

I am but a lowly KharAist, Fah'Rohk replied, bowing his head in submission. The sycophancy in his voice was sickening. I assent to the will of the KharLar, whatever it may be.

Fa'Kann nodded and turned to his fellow KharLar. He raised his right hand, calling for a vote. Each of them nodded their consent to the child's pilgrimage. Shah'Rohk let out a shocked, exultant gasp.

The Skyfire comes in seven winters’ time, Fa'Kann said, audibly angry with his subordinates' dissent. Only under its light may the rite of Var'Hai be initiated. He turned to Fah'Rohk. You will build for the Dar a shelter away from Beasthaven. It will be kept there, confined. Build this shelter of timber and stone, and say to the trees while you fell them: ‘I have struck you down so that the Dar may live. I have killed you that I may curse my own.’ For you, Fah'Rohk, are the father of the Dar Child. Remember this when the Dar consumes us all.

Fah'Khul cursed and spat and stormed out of the larhaast in a rage. Shah'Rohk looked to Shah'Rhee and saw that she was weeping.

* * * * * * *

Fah’Rohk watched his breath escape from his lips as smoke. He shivered, as much from exhaustion as from the cold. He'd spent the past three days on this hilltop, laboring over the Dar Child's shelter. He had gathered up stones from the surrounding hills and laid them as a foundation, gathered sticks and grass to make thatch. All the while he had cursed himself, for the thing that he had fathered would bring ruin to his people.

He cursed his wife's name, for she had delivered unto him a thing of darkness. She had been stubborn beyond reason, refusing the wombrot even as the evil brewing within her had brought plague, famine, and woe. He longed for an escape from his bondage to Shah'Rohk, but his soul had been bound to hers long ago. He knew that there were villages where the KharAist had, aping the faithless foreigners in the west, adopted the practice of divorce. But the KharLar of Beasthaven were steadfast in their adherence to the Way; never would they allow such heresy.

Fah’Rohk grew hungry from his labors. He left the hilltop and headed west, to where Beasthaven lie by the plains. He shivered as a fierce wind blew through the standing husks of dead trees, victims of the Dar-poisoned earth. Branches creaked and cracked against one another, echoing through the hills. Even the wind protested him, it seemed.

It is not I that condemns you! he cried aloud. It is Shah'Rohk who brings the Dar! But the trees and the wind are deaf to the words of men, and thus they carried on in their terrible dirge.

Soon Fah'Rohk came to the clearing in which Beasthaven had been built long ago, in the time of his great-grandfather's grandfather. It was less than a mile from where the forests and hills opened onto the sprawling plain of the Kharas, where Fah'Rohk and his fellow KharAist kept their herds and crops. The town itself was circled by a wall of bones and antlers, its only entrance a wide archway adorned with a great bull’s skull. The thing seemed to watch Fah'Rohk as he passed beneath it, its empty eyes hard and cruel.

Conversations ceased and evil looks were given as Fah'Rohk strode through the village. No one spoke to him any more, and his name was uttered only in curses and condemnations. When he came to his modest one-room home, he saw that Shah'Rohk was sitting cross-legged on the rushes. She was nursing the Dar Child. Fah'Rohk bound towards her with a snarl. She did not resist when he gripped her shoulders and threw her across the room.

I will not have that thing feeding where we sleep! Fah’Rohk roared. You would curse even our bed, you devil woman!

Shah’Rohk gazed up at him with silent, tired defiance as she righted herself. The thing continued to suckle while Fah'Rohk devoured the last chunk of bread in the house.

The KharLar have allowed him a name, Shah’Rohk uttered, her voice barely a whisper. They say he will be called ‘DarHel.’ Child of darkness.

A fitting name.

Perhaps.

Something strange in her voice gave Fah'Rohk pause. He turned and gazed upon her. He was struck suddenly by her beauty, as if he was seeing her again for the first time. Her skin glowed softly in the afternoon light, and her hair cascaded over bare shoulders in rich, chocolate waves. She met his gaze with icy blue eyes, a color so rare among the Kharar. Their depths called out to him. She was the most beautiful woman in Beasthaven. How could a demon be born of such perfection?

Why are you doing this, wife? Fah'Rohk pleaded, his voice cracking with desperate woe. The cattle are dying, and the fruits of last summer’s harvest are waning already. This thing curses us! Let us be done with it! Zaar'n’s knife thirsts.

The Pale Folk will heal him. He will be a healthy boy. He will be our son.

At what cost? Fah'Rohk demanded. The Skyfire does not come for seven more winters! We will all be dead and Beasthaven will lie in ruin before his Var'Hai may begin! Let us end this now. We can have more children. We can have more sons!

Shah’Rohk looked away, ashamed.

I spoke to Fa'Kann this morning… she said, choking back tears. Once the Var'Hai has been invoked, it must be completed. The blades of the KharDar are denied us henceforth. And…and I shall bear no other children. My womb has been defiled. From this winter on, I shall be barren, and your seed shall be as dust. A leering, lunatic's grin, born of woe and despair, crossed her trembling lips. It is as you claimed upon the night of his birth, Fah'Rohk. There is only one legacy for you. For us. From our house shall be born only the Dar.

II

642 Kingdom Era, Summer

Shah'Rohk's bones creaked and her muscles burned with fever-ache as she struggled to rise from her rushes. Fah'Rohk's bedding lay bare on the far side of the room. Rumors spoke of him buying comfort from the foreign women of Blackhill, the Northerner town that had sprung up in the Kharas two summers past. The gossip's veracity was questionable, but not unlikely; Shah'Rohk had not felt her husband’s touch in months.

She wavered as she stood, steeling herself against collapse. She had not eaten in days. Food was scarce in Beasthaven, and the other Kharari villages refused trade with the town that had borne the Dar Child. She made for the door on unsteady legs, taking with her a pail, a clay cup, and the last strip of dried rabbit meat in the house.

As she came to draw water, she heard three of her fellow KharAii speaking to one another beside the village well. She diverted her path and slipped behind the nearest house to listen and wait. She had neither the will, nor the energy, to face their scorn.

Of course she erred, one of the women was saying. Her voice was too hushed, and Shah'Rohk's ears too clouded with fever, to tell whom was speaking. I myself partook of the wombrot before my fah and I were prepared to bear children. It was a painful thing, but then it was over and done. Shah'Rohk is no doubt a fool for foregoing the chance. But to stifle the womb and to kill a living, breathing child...these things are not the same!

Well something has to be done, another faceless woman retorted. How many have we lost? We will not survive six more winters of this! We've all seen the KharDar kill for less. My sister's own Rellen was taken for stealing a trinket from the larhaast, and he'd seen naught but nine winters. Surely bringing ruin upon our people is a greater sin than this! And what of the Skyfire? None living have beheld its light. What if it does not come? What then?

"Well I have faith in my KharLar, the first woman condescended. Fa'Kann says the Skyfire will come, and thus it will come. The bitch will take her get and leave. Whether or not the Pale Folk cure the child matters little. He will be gone from this place and the earth will heal."

It's not up to Fa'Kann any longer, the third woman said. Have you not heard?

Heard what?

The KharLar have not been seen for days.

And? What of it?

Larhaast'I.

There were shocked gasps around the well. An icy chill crept up Shah'Rohk's spine, raising the hair on her neck. No, she thought, impossible. The Larhaast'I, the ancient gathering place of the KharLar, was a thing of mere legend; the priestly caste had convened in its entirety less than a dozen times in the history of the Way. Besides, two winters had passed since Fa'Kann and his fellows ruled Shah'Rohk's claim to Var'Hai legitimate. The matter of the Dar Child's fate was settled.

Shah'Rohk put her fellow KharAii's gossip aside as idle chatter. After a few moments, the women dispersed and Shah'Rohk went to the well. She drew up a pailful of vile-smelling, gray fluid. Her nose wrinkled as she took a long draught. It tasted of metals, minerals, and rot, but it was the only water for miles around.

Villagers showered her with hateful gazes and whispered curses as she shuffled through Beasthaven, her shaky grip splashing fouled water about her feet as she went. She had grown so accustomed to their abuse that it no longer stung her.

Finally she came to a little-traveled path that wound deep into the hills. Her legs trembled as she labored up the trail, and she questioned whether or not she would make it to the miserable, ramshackle hut where her son was confined. She wondered how soon she might succumb to the hunger and fever, how soon death's embrace might silence her suffering. It was a comforting thought.

After what seemed an eternity, she collapsed in fatigue beside the hut. The cool earth was soft and inviting, and sleep nearly took her. There was a muffled rustling from within, and she looked over to see two pale, skinny hands reaching through a slot in the hovel's wall. They were like the paws of an animal, mindlessly clawing for carrion.

She hefted herself up and drew a cupful of fluid from the pail. She placed the clay mug in the child's tiny hands and watched it disappear into the darkness behind the wall. A moment later it was tossed out, empty, and the boy's withered arms emerged once more. She gave him the rabbit meat and listened in silence as he tore and gnashed at the desiccated flesh. Then the hands were back again, clambering for more.

It’s all I have! Shah'Rohk cried out desperately. It’s…all I have.

She wept then, lamenting the cruel twisting and twining of fate. Long ago, she had been the pride of Beasthaven. Her beauty was renowned throughout the Kharas. Her hands were strong and able, her mind nimble and quick. But now, everything had changed. Now, she was hated and reviled. Her strength was sapped by hunger, her wits clouded with sickness, and her beauty withered by both.

She wanted to loathe the child who had cursed her womb and brought her so much suffering, for if the boy was at fault she might unburden herself of guilt. Yet she had only herself to blame. Had she drank the wombrot as Fa'Kann had commanded, she would be hale, healthy, and strong. She would be respected. She would be loved.

And DarHel would have been spared a life of disgrace and isolation. Cold and alone, he was. Abandoned.

What curse is this, she thought, that a mother ought not love her child?

She thought of the antelope in the field and the wolves of the wood; she thought of all of nature's mothers, grooming and nursing their young. The beasts looked not to holy men to guide their fate. Why should the Kharar? Should her will as a mother not be stronger than that of the priests? Yet she was weak, too weak to defy the KharLar. The thought enflamed her shame, and her tears ran anew.

Suddenly, a host of men appeared on the hilltop. All bore knives and cudgels. Fah’Khul, he who despised Shah'Rohk most, emerged from their midst.

"The KharLar require your presence, DarAii."

DarAii. Woman of Darkness. It was an insult that she had not yet heard, but words no longer wounded her. She did not fear the KharAist and their crude weapons, for much of her longed for the peace of death. But, to refuse the summons of the KharLar was to invite reprisal upon DarHel, and this she could not abide. She straightened her shoulders, dried her eyes, and strode through the mob with the most dignified gait she could muster. Her son wailed for her in wordless, starving pleas as she descended the hill and left him alone once more.

As Shah’Rohk neared Beasthaven, Fah’Khul grabbed her shoulder and forced her violently to a halt.

This way, he grunted as he shoved her down a forgotten, overgrown path.

This is not the way to the larhaast! she objected, wrenching herself from his grasp. This is...this... Her protest died in her throat as terrible understanding overtook her. She stammered, looking across the mob's cruel faces with a silent plea. They ignored her, instead forcing her down the trail in silence.

Shah'Rohk knew this path only from girlhood games and dares, for its passage was forbidden to all but the KharLar. It wound for miles into the deepest, darkest bowels of the forest, far deeper than Shah'Rohk had ever wandered. At its end stood the Larhaast'I, chief of all larhaasts and anointed gathering place of the KharLar caste. The woman at the well had told the truth; the KharLar entire had been convened.

And Shah'Rohk had been summoned before them.

The forest grew denser as the mob drew closer to the dread thing at the end of the path. Branches and roots crowded the trail with seemingly asphyxiating intent. Shadows played cruel tricks on Shah'Rohk's eyes, while the distant cracks, creaks, and groans of the wood spun terrible visions of formless monstrosities lurking unseen.

The mob marched on even as the sun fell in the west. They walked in utter darkness when the night came in full, for the light of the moon was obscured by a thick canopy of entwined branches and dead, drying leaves. Shah'Rohk was guided only by the feel of the earth beneath her feet, and the occasional shove from one of the men.

Hours passed, and with each moment Shah'Rohk grew weaker. She stumbled and tripped through mile after mile of sylvan darkness, forced on by kicks and prods whenever she came close to collapse. Just as exhaustion and fatigue threatened to consume her completely, great fires swam out of the shadows far ahead. One by one the KharAist fell away, leaving only Fah’Khul to accompany her.

They came to a clearing. The fires that Shah'Rohk had seen from a distance blazed wildly around the lip of a great pit dug into the earth. A miasma of hausche vapor overwhelmed her as she approached them. She coughed and gagged as the drug seized hold of her.

Shah’Rohk had felt the sacred crystal's effects many times, but never to this extent. Every aspect of her being was elevated, accelerated. Her perception expanded exponentially, and her awareness was flooded with sensation. Her emotions were deadened, the fire of her spirit consumed by cold, calculating analysis. She was, for a moment, taken aback by the extreme seizure of her psyche. But later, when the ordeal was through, she would be thankful, for if she had strode in this place with an untainted mind, madness would surely have taken her.

The pit in the earth, the Larhaast'I, was lined with descending tiers of stone benches. At its base lay a great slab of obsidian, and from the obsidian there sprouted an uncanny array of standing stones, all of unique shape and stature. The twisted menhirs and the black glass beneath them invoked within the spirit a shapeless, formless terror, and to look upon them was to be consumed by the horrific despair of the void.

As she was led toward the shadowed stair that descended the Larhaast'I's depths, Shah'Rohk felt upon her shoulders the unbearable weight of eons gone by. This was a place older than the First Mothers and First Fathers, a place as old as the Pale Folk and their Wood. Forged in the fires of Creation, this place was older than time itself. Its antiquity was tasted in every breath, felt in every step.

The KharLar filled the stone benches in their hundreds, their glazed, hausche-twisted gazes expressionless. Beneath and around them, carved into every surface of the Larhaast'I, were strange runes and arcane symbols without number. Arcless circles, spirals without centers, lines and angles with no beginning or end; a forgotten language of principles unbound by spatial or temporal dimension.

When she reached the base of the the pit, Shah'Rohk beheld a naked figure chained to one of the rune-inscribed standing stones. He hung limp, gazing at his feet, his weight supported fully by his binds. Thin red cords ran from a thousand skin-deep wounds, and his bare torso was bruised and purpling. At the sound of her approach, he struggled to lift his head. When their eyes met, she saw within them a silent, burning plea.

So, Fah'Rohk, you long for me once more. Alas, my touch would give