Tis Ri: The Dark Concern - eBook: Volume One - "War"

By Layne Russell

From as far north as the frozen Nom’d and south as the warm fields of Glendary, Tis Ri was the only pass to the Bome Desert in Jam Dor’s long, icy range. For centuries, travelers had climbed the strenuous Tis Ri trail to enter the Bome, cross the giant dunes and rob the badlands of its rare salts and bloodstone. Likewise, the Bome reciprocated by stripping men of their lives, for no one could live long in the Bome. Yet, one man sought to make his trek not for treasure but to rid himself of his Insanity fed by his opiate obsession, while the Black Trace cult chased from behind and burned all roads back home.

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Layne Russell takes the reader into the unique and intriguing Tis Ri lore on a new, powerful, epic adventure, "Tis Ri: The Dark Concern, Vol. 1 - War"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781387996582

Book preview

Tis Ri:

The Dark Concern

(Volume One – War)

S. Layne Russell

ISBN 978-1-387-99658-2

Cover designed by MiblArt

Copyright 2022

Text, calendar, whiteboard Description automatically generated

Massive slabs of granite, washed down from the once adolescent Jam Dor Mountains, formed the road to the Tis Ri Pass. From as far north as the frozen Nom’d and south as the warm fields of Glendary, Tis Ri was the only pass to the Bome Desert in Jam Dor’s long, icy range.  Through the lonely portal, travelers climbed to enter the Bome, cross the giant dunes and rob the badlands’ rare salts and bloodstones, a ruby-red mineral possessed with medicinal qualities.  Likewise, the Bome reciprocated by stripping many of their lives, for no one could live long in the Bome.

PART ONE

The leader barked a guttural sound which signaled his traveling band to stop.  It was dusk.  Every tedious minute in the day, he had pushed them and exhausted all.  The camel under him folded to half its height: first its front then back legs, until it comfortably sat with its rider atop. The trailing burro-beast copied. The rider climbed off to stretch out his soreness with routine, protracted exercises.  Ending his drill, he flexed his back and scratched his head as his tired eyes scanned ahead.  Flanked by sheer canyon walls, hundreds of spans apart, the trail went on into the graying light. 

Jam Dor’s legacy, he commented to himself.  The walls rose and vanished in the hanging mists.  The clouds sealed them in and made him uncomfortable.  He strained to see where the walls ended but could find no clear distinction.  Wall and ceiling merged into the dim light. As the clouds momentarily cleared, his eyes rested on a crag an hour’s ride ahead, but impossibly high.  An unusual abundance of vegetation had claimed residence on the precipices. A natural garden? he wondered aloud.

For several days the crew had survived on the meanest assortment of bitter grasses and spongy mosses that grew along the banks of the stony Mag’da river, which presently rushed on their left.  Though their stored provisions were ample, (he had restrained himself to conserve supplies for the ardors beyond the Pass), he could almost taste the lush vegetation, with succulent plants and sweet herbs.  Though the spectacle inspired his food fantasies, they mixed poorly with his sore and empty stomach.  He rubbed his eyes, tried to not think about the unobtainable morsels, and labeled himself a fool for such weak wishes.

Perhaps there are better tasting herbs up there, he blurted out in frustration to his lead camel, but only a madman and his monkey could reach that height. 

Catching his breath, he whistled for the cadre to restart their march.  With the reins of the lead camel in his hands, he led the tethered group to find a suitable camp in the dim glow of the two moons.  However, an hour later, the hanging mists produced a fine drizzle which forced him to stop.  The leader fixed a byre out of the wind for his four-legged mates, attended to them with grass he had pulled and water he had fetched from the passing creek below. Next, he assembled his own makeshift lodging for the wet sleep ahead, like so many recent nights.  Indeed, neither he nor his disgruntled animals were accustomed to sleeping in cold rain, but as they rose higher each day, it was all they could expect.

Under his waxed awning, he choked down his own meal of leafy moss stewed with dried fish and drank the same cold water as his animals.  The edges of the covering were delaminating, thus, he remained dry only if he sat upright in the middle of his hard bed.

With shaking hands, he pulled out a bent pipe and a worn pouch from which he packed the bowl with his favorite, MacLeash’s Golden Spot, a mixture of bright tobacco and the narcotic, spinella. The pungent stench of the spinella in the blend told of his forthcoming release. He hated what was about to happen: the conscious state of defeat.  In every battle, a moment exists when a combatant knows no effort of any kind can change the outcome. The addict lit the bowl, pulled the smoke into his lungs and blew out a dreadful, silver fog.  The hallucinations began.

Without moving his head, he turned his eyes left to catch the movement.

Well, what is this?  A rare visitor. Are you alive?

A figure entered.  It felt feminine.

What is that in your hand, her face inquired.

You have no fear on this forlorn trail? he said, as her presence was an unnatural occurrence.  Well, that is fine, he changed his mind, as the old desire returned. Another bowl, perhaps. His hallucinations’ phantasms were generally harmless, but he pulled away, and to his surprise, his visitor edged herself closer.  She paused and inhaled the aroma from the pouch. It’s the best in Glendary and, I’m sure, the world, if a man could search that far, he babbled.

His delirium flowed in and out, like a changing tide, reshaping his assumption that the intolerable vision was not a danger.  Though keenly conscious, he floated high on the drug’s deception.  His craving recklessly drove him onward.  He repacked another bowl and deeply inhaled the smoke.  His legs jerked so strongly he thought they would fly off his body.  He fought an overwhelming urge to smash the brains of his visitor to eliminate the apparition and move forward with his high.  The agitation from the second dose would worsen until the drug sufficiently heightened his peripheral thinking. He took another long drag off the pipe and blew.  Finally, he arrived.  He could see her without opening his eyes.

If you’re going to locate yourself here, he griped, I’d better introduce my comrades and myself.  My name’s Randal from Glendary. There’s Tok and of course Dinky, he said, chatty from the narcotic’s effect.  The burro-beast, disturbed in his repose, bellowed his offense at Randal’s muttering.

Aye, and there goes the no-good-trouble-maker.  He has complained ever since we left home.

Dinky was quite inappropriate for its owner, for the animal weighed twice a camel’s mass.  The burro-beast belonged to Randal’s father and was on loan, quite against the beast’s will.  Ox-like, with dull grey flanks and a flat black ridge, Dinky was slightly wider than tall.  Thus, one rode on him sidesaddle and sometimes on flatter runs, cross-legged.  His most attractive feature was his large, roundish floppy ears, black as the night, chiefly used to communicate his distemper by swinging them starchily to and fro.  Randal had grown up with the aging animal, but there was only one master for each burro-beast, and it wasn’t Randal.

After his introduction, Randal closely re-evaluated his visitor. Each night a different one appeared.  Some wore frightening faces; still others were excessively polite or even timid. Others came as animals, randomly altering form.  Tonight’s guest appeared as a small, human-like woman with terrific claws, such as for digging, and nondescript ears.  Her round, black-as-oil eyes, were situated as would a woman’s beneath sumptuously black, paisley eyebrows.  Shoeless feet supported her frame, silhouetted by her long, sable cloak-like hair.  Randal noticed flecks of gold in the highlights.

While Randal liked her peaceful demeanor, he was uncertain he could trust those claws.  Was she a cordial creature by instinct? He mused over his assumptions, lit his third bowl and went euphoric.

He asked, What name do you wish?  Randal titled his visions as a sort of fairy-tale game. He eyed the road and forgot he had asked.  You remind me of the road ghosts, he rambled.

An unusual feature of the Tis Ri Trail was the arrangement of erect, oblong boulders which lined the road to the Pass.  On reaching the First Level¹ of the Trail, at the Trail’s true head, Randal recognized the man-shaped boulders, lined up shoulder to shoulder.  Glendary lore described how crews carved faces in the stones over untold days.  A few remained untouched from the harsh ice and rain. Early on his trek, Randal frequently stopped to study the outlines of those long dead.  The familiar features of several, Randal noted, were bothersome but he could not place where he had seen them before.

In Glendary, my home, Randal remarked to his ghost, the Tis Ri Trail is a month’s journey away.  Yet everyone knows the tales about the army that lines the path into the Jam Dor range. My village decorates buildings and homes with beautiful carvings, wood and stone, of these soldiers.

When I was a child, he expounded, my uncles Jake and Bunshan told dark stories of wizards who concealed themselves in the mountain pass and conjured the frozen armies.  With their stone eyes and ears, they waited for wandering children. We were not exceptionally bad, mind you, but when we were, my uncles spoke of lifeless figures marching from the mountains to seize us with their unforgiving, stony arms. ‘Never to be seen again,’ my uncles said, which usually sent us shivering to bed -- even in the middle of summer, Randal jested.

Though his stories had only begun, Randal’s energy lagged, overcome by the drug.  Speech taxed him.  His memories, however, poured as water from an open spigot.  Specifically, Randal remembered his home, where he and other children listened to the town Storyteller, Stephen Tagdla.  One of Tagdla’s fables had no end in popularity among his mates.

It was the Beginning, Tagdla said, when Music was born, and the Voices of Souls filled the skies.  The Voices made the Air and that which is above the Air, the very Heavens we sing to.  All was Harmony. But other sounds came and sang without Harmony, indeed, out of tune, as they wished.  And, when they sang against the Melody, they turned to rock and dirt, and they fell to our world to form solid ground.  These are the lamentable First Sounds.

At seven years old, Randal envisioned brown and grey debris falling out of the sky.  In his mind, he could see where the pieces landed to form Creation. 

Tagdla continued. When the other Voices saw the confusion, some became sad for the unhappy, silent clumps.  Those with compassion sang out of tune likewise to join their brothers.  Out of the sky, the Second Voices fell as before with the First Voices.  Yet less discordant than the prior, less dissenting, the Compassionate Voices (for that is their name) became all living life.  Trees, plants, and races of beings sprouted out of sympathy for the First that had fallen.  The benevolent actions of the latter pleased the Melody.  Seeing such charity for the Lost Voices, the Melody permitted True Harmony to remain in their souls.

But, Master Tagdla, the youth said, where did the Voices of the Souls come from?

The Storyteller played with an idea in his head as if he had heard but had forgotten it.  He pointed his finger at the tip of his ear. Such a fine question, and I have heard, he exclaimed, that as it was so long ago, no one knows, except for Grandfather (who is very old), who then told it to me.  I do remember one matter, he hesitated for effect, In the Beginning, when Music was born, out of the stuff of our Dreams came the voices of our souls – and made all.

Randal loved this memory, but it faded, and another vision took over.  He was in his home for Catechism.² His teacher began the lesson.

Long ago, during the Regents’ Wealth, legions of forgotten roadbuilders reared up the heads of the shaved slabs and ordered them side by side in tribute of the Great Pact, a treaty before the Golden Peace, which, as you know, lasted two hundred years.  Since Jon the Dauphin, Lord of the Regents, had authorized the collection of tribute to re-build the major cities in the Realm, the Regents Council had proclaimed this tribute in honor of the Dauphin’s own mountain people, decimated in the Fire Wars.  Xex, Paire, Faire and Glendary funded the reconstruction based on population and those willing to give in honor of the struggle for accord.  Tomklin was not made part of the Pact, for it is a wild people.

When the Regents removed capital punishment as one of the many reforms in the Regents’ Wealth, the Nom’d received all criminals and treasoners except for the barbarian HartBorns, whom the Regents exiled in the Nom’d.

The fire in the pipe smoldered, as Randal’s haze quavered. Soon his stupor would dissipate into sleep without too ill of an effect.  Half his wits still functioned, and he tried to move away from his visitor.  His efforts stirred the strange woman, who re-lit his pipe and asked him to recite more tales.  The smoke again dispatched Randal into rapture, and he resettled into his delightful disability with his benefactor.

Randal told her, I am thankful to have been born in the Silver Peace, although the advent of civil strife in Tomklin has added a band of corrosion. In the last few years, judges have suborned their justice with demands for kickbacks.  Their dockets are over ten years unresolved. In other parts, organized corruption has sprung out of trading groups, backed by violent gangs in Xex and Paire.  Yet it is not as bad as before the Golden Era, Randal droned in his preachy monologue.

Prior to the Regent’s Wealth, massive wars had eradicated the cultures between the lesser mountains of the Four Divides. Faire and Glendary, Paire, Xex, and Tomklin were cut off from each other. 

Not until Randal was in his fifth and final Catechism did his teachers reveal the complete history of the Fire Wars.

His opiate-inspired visitor listened quietly as Randal sermonized.

"My older sister, Josephine-Rin, sat down next to me, and our Teacher offered a prayer to each Regent.

…

When news reached the outer parts of all the known world, the instructor began, that a plague had spread over the civilized regions, that legions had died, and cities had been burned to dispel the diseases, out came the despots to rule over the weakened peoples.  As tyrants enslaved populations from as far as the grassy plains to the deltas and marshes, the known world divided. Brothers, sisters, and cousins turned into strangers, for travel across the Four Divides became too dangerous. 

Randal sadly pondered the thought of being unable to visit his loved cousin in northeastern Faire, Oksana Somalin, whom he had nicknamed The Red, for her fiery red hair. 

The teacher went on. A simple thing like a river became a territorial boundary that hewn down good-natured brotherliness.  Suspicions and fear of the unknown, bred by the conquering tyrants, grew among those who lived on the ‘left’ and those on the ‘right.’ Alliances of closed minds formed among the increasingly callous people. Yet no single clan could maintain the delicate balance of their power, and each, within a generation or less, easily imploded.

…

Through the exciting haze of MacLeash’s Best, Randal recited the repulsive names of the tyrants to his hallucination. "There were the Hectors of Shmi-Tah Valley³ the Clarz-Del of Hindsfeet Highlands⁴ and the Punjirib, who controlled the trade in the City of Jisrib.  Yet the ugliest of the lot were the HartBorn Clans.  Too numerous and schismatic to ever number, the HartBorn Clans stole and pillaged from all and rose to become the strongest contestant among the wicked. Some, they say, horded vast wealth in the Bome from their raids, but I do not believe the tales.  All the while, learning and meditation fell by the way.  Within seven generations, ignorance became as vast as the Great Seas."

Indeed, after the Reconstruction, Hopefuls, (their nicknames) had departed the fairer lands to search for the rumored stashes in the Bome, but each returned empty handed, spent, with bruised bodies, and some without full company.

The old ones never left any clues or maps, Randal told the fairy companion.  For all anyone knew, Glendary itself could be sitting on the Clans’ hidden caches.

Randal’s effort at rational thought rejuvenated him. Their own ignorance is as vast as the Two Nights across the Bome, Randal quietly spoke to the small, womanish figure. The fabled Two Nights was Randal’s sole interest in traveling to the Bome, his journey’s end.  After six month’s preparations, Randal began his time-consuming goal not to find the buried wealth from the Fire Wars but to find a priceless treasure: the riddance of his damned, nightly visitors. Since Randal’s puberty, an illness had infected his mind.  Vivid dreams racked his sleep, not ordinary, smokey, unstable ramblings most dreamers have, nor those constructed from random pieces spewed up from the raw mind, but tangible, uniform events. Amazingly clear and distinctly uncluttered dreams oppressed his slumber.  Perhaps average people encounter such vividness once every two full moons and relish the intensity, yet for Randal such recurrences night after night diseased his mind.  In his early years, the conscious and the unconscious worlds blurred or collided. He confused reality with indistinguishable but false dream-scapes. He distrusted everything he perceived.  Dreams burdened him, or, rather, their reality disturbed him.  As soon as sleep fell upon him, graphic scenes filled his head.  His dreams had all the necessary ingredients for drama, tragedy and comedy. 

Later in his adolescence, Randal learned that it was best not to fight the alternative realities that composed his nightly imaginings. Indeed, they became a force to respect.  Rather, he learned how to distinguish dreams from wakening reality by the continuity of ordinary reality. As his dreams ended at dawn, never to repeat, Randal learned, ordinary reality maintained a constancy that dreaming did not. Unfortunately, upon reaching the age of nineteen, that conviction crashed and Randal turned to MacLeash’s Best for his nightly opiate.

After his nineteenth birthday, Randal awoke from his usual menu of alternative reality, in this case, a dream in which a robed figure spoke to him in a desert ocean of sand.  He went to work with his father in their seaside, furniture shop.  At the end of the day, he returned home, ate, and prepared for early bed.  Before dropping off, he looked around and fixed the picture in his mind, with the aim to recognize the familiar scene in the morning.  However, upon falling asleep the second night, Randal encountered the same figure from the previous night.  The dream had continued. The place, time, person and events had not changed with the previous day’s dawning. Each night, thereafter, for an entire month, Randal dreamed one long interconnected story in nightly sequences.  While Randal had regulary spoken of his visions with his family, he did not reveal this dream, for Randal began to fear that his condition worsened.  He wondered how long he would remain connected to a rational world. Thus, talking about his oncoming insanity provided no comfort. 

The dream made no sense. A strange man dressed in a series of short robes approached him.  Both he and the robed figure were in a singular desert upon a charred mesa overlooking shifting sands, like oceans moving in their currents.  Behind was a canyon, which cradled an ampitheater of uneven pinnacled rocks, columns that spread across a blackened depression. Haze obscured the figure. Although the voice was pleasant, Randal could not understand it. Yet when Randal spoke, the character understood.  All night the shrouded figure talked to Randal.  At times, it would raise a finger in anger, pace profusely, or laugh with a throated, beautiful sound. The oddity’s pathos flowed directly into Randal’s blood and brain.  When the speaker wept in his anonymous words, Randal moaned.  Likewise, when the personage proclaimed victory or triumph, Randal cheered.

During the succeeding days without sleep, Randal grew unwell and irritable.  He cut off all social contacts until finally the dream of the robed figure ended.  Yet Randal’s depression continued.  He lost weight and gained moodiness. Pan, his father, observing his son’s odd behavior, squeezed the cause out of him. The singular, tormentous dream had upturned Randal’s life. His family, too, had begun to question his sanity. With Randal’s confession, the family agreed that Randal should temporarily leave the shop on the pretence of visiting relatives, but in fact, isolate himself to quarantine his troubles. They suggested seclusion on a small island, part of the Sea Wall Islands, where their extended family owned a cottage.  Indeed, Randal had often ventured to the camp as a teenager.  He could feed himself by fishing and scavenging. To ease his sleep, he purchased a packet of MacLeash’s Best upon the advice of a friend, which did help his apprehension. Even better, the drug’s opioid, apathy-inducing effects fractured his dreams.

He was about to embark on his solo retreat, when a unique episode rerouted him to his current journey through the Tis Ri Pass.  The evening before his planned, extended leave, a sailor of unknown rank dropped into the family’s shop to purchase an ensign’s table⁵ for his ship’s captain. The traveler’s lively discussion included an adventure in which he described a phenomenon that occurred in the Bome every five years when dreams and reality merged. He called it, the Two Nights of the Bome. The customer, himself, had never witnessed the Two Nights, much less ever been to the Bome, for he was a seaman, a merchant carrier of goods, who never left the water. The story he told belonged to someone else, but he said he had proof. 

While his ship was in port in Shattered Bots,⁶ one of the northernmost harbor towns, the seaman met a grizzled, near-giant of a man who spoke of the magical nights.  He had shown everyone his small cache of bloodstone which he was selling, and which evidenced his presence in the Bome, the sole source of the mineral.

The seaman explained his tale.  He told me every five years, before the sun can rise in the eastern sky, the second night pushes out the day. Thus, two nights are merged.  During what would have been the normal day, the stars die, and blackness fills the heavens. However, the real wizardry is that one’s dreams and reality consolidate.  Any man standing in the Bome on such event, would thereafter have power and understanding to control his own dreams and the dreams of others.

Pan and Randal stood silent.

Power to make dreams alive! the sailor roared.

How did your giant friend support his theory? asked Pan the skeptic.

Not a giant, half a giant, the sailor protested at the interruption.  He was not my friend either.

Yes, but why would you put any truth in that irregular fellow? countered Randal.

Ah, it was that night in the tavern that he promised to visit each one of us while we slept.  It were no ordinary promise by trickery, like that which I’d make, then come and wake you, and thus fulfill my bargain.  Ah, no, it weren’t that.  He said he’d come in our dreams, while we slept in our very own beds, locked tight in our rooms!

And did he? the father pressed.

And did he ever! answered the storyteller.  Here I was bunking with the crew’s mate, and into my dreams he jumped like a bloody nightmare.  I couldn’t say a word, but he had me by the throat and said did I believe him now?  I shook myself to waken but couldn’t.  I thought it was the most powerful dream I’d had in a great age. The more I tried to disbelieve, the more the man laughed at me.  He let go and sat down on something.  I couldn’t take my eyes off the fellow.  True to his words, he was there in my dreams. His skin looked like bronze or copper, and he was dressed in the feathers of a raven. Suddenly he disappeared and I jumped up in my own bed with sweat rolling down to here, he said pointing to the middle of his chest.

"And about that time, my bunk mate, who also had heard the boasting of this villainous man, screamed at the top of his bloody lungs, and did the same as I, that is, he was up out of his bed, sweating like myself. We both knew, as sure as I’m standing, we each had met