Dennis L. McKiernan - Mithgar - Eye of the Hunter

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THE ELFESS CLIMBED TOWARD THE
GOLDEN LIGHT—
Heedless of the enemy, Riatha climbed. Suddenly she called back
to her companions, "Quickly! Aid me!"
Leading Aravan, damman Faeril and buccan Gwylly scrambled
up through the slithering mass of ice, coming at last into the
luminance. The bulk of the glacier loomed high above and the light
from within suffused through the myriad splits and cracks, shining
as would the Sun through a fractured glass window. And even as
they stood up to their knees in the sliding shatter, stood in that
fragmented golden glow—Elfess and buccan and damman, Riatha
with the Last-born Firstborns at her side—overhead the Eye of the
Hunter streamed crimson through the sky.
But neither gold nor crimson caught their sight. Instead, it was
what they saw in the center of the scattered light: for out from the
shattered wall jutted a hand, a large Man's hand . . .
. . . and the fingers moved!
The Eye of the Hunter
Dennis L. McKiernan
ROC
Copyright notice
Contents
Foreword
Notes
1 Out of the Storm 23 Vanishment
2 Mygga and Fé 24 Trek
3 Faeril 25 Lógoi tôn Nekron
4 Gwylly 26 Pilgrimage
5 Glacier 27 Pendwyr
6 Grimwall 28 Avagon
7 Legacy 29 Karoo
8 Journey to Arden 30 Kandra
9 Riatha 31 Dodona
10 Deliverance 32 Prey
11 Aravan 33 Mai'ûs Safra
12 Equinox 34 Crossing
13 Honing the Edge 35 Nizari
14 Dangerous Journeys 36 Extrication
15 Monastery 37 Sanctuary
16 Bolt-Hole 38 Restoration
17 Awakening 39 Mosque
18 Elusion 40 Vengeance
19 Reunion 41 Wings of Fire
20 Urus 42 Passages
21 Flight 43 Retribution
22 Stoke 44 Auguries
About the Author
To Martha Lee McKiernan: Helpmate, Lover, Friend
Acknowledgments
Appreciation and gratitude to the following: to Daniel Kian
McKiernan, without whose help the transliterated ancient Greek used as
the magical language would have never been; to Dr. John Barr, whose
advice on sleds, sledding, and sled dogs proved invaluable; to Al
Sarrantonio, who pulled me from slush; to Pat LoBrutto, who launched
a career; to Janna Silverstein for planting a seed; to John Silbersack for
his faith; and to Jonathan Matson, who moves mountains.
And to Chief Seattle and all the others who heed the words of
Elvenkind.
Foreword
At times I've been asked, "Where do you think legends come from?
Was there ever a time that the tales were true . . . each perhaps in a
simpler form, before some tale-teller's imagination embellished it beyond
recognition?"
Along with those questions come corollary probes: "Do you think
there ever were Elves, Dwarves, Wee Folk, others? If so, what
happened to them? Where are they now? Why did they go? Did iron
drive them out?"
I am a tale-teller, perhaps guilty of embellishing tales beyond all
recognition . . . but then again, perhaps not. Perhaps instead I am
working on a primal level, unconsciously tapping the ancestral memory
embedded in my Irish genes. Mayhap in the telling, or in the dead of the
night, ancient fragments bubble up, knocking on my frontal lobes for
admittance, or slipping over the walls of disbelief like heroes in the
darkness coming to rescue a consciousness entrapped within
humdrummery.
If it is ancestral memory, then mayhap there once were Elves,
Dwarves, Wee Folk, others. Mayhap they did live on earth ... or under
... or in the air above or the ocean below. If so, where are. they now?
Integrated? Separated? Hidden? Extinct? I would hope that they are
merely hidden, at times seen flitting at the corner of the eye. Yet deep in
my heart I fear they are gone. Where? I know not.
There have been times when surely I have glimpsed what my
ancestral memory has safely locked away, visions which come in the
depths of the darktide when the sleeper sleeps and the walls are less
patrolled. Mayhap these are the fragments which help shape the tale in
the telling, glances of the visions seen in the fathoms of the night.
Come, let us together explore the latest ancestral fragment, this
midnight stormer of the bastion, for embedded within The Eye of the
Hunter we may find answers to our questions, can we just riddle them
free.
—Dennis L. McKiernan August 1991
Notes
1. The source of this tale is a tattered, faded copy of the Journal of the
Lastborn Firstborn, an incredibly fortunate find dating from the time
before The Separation. Printed by an unknown printer (the frontis page
is missing), his claim is that he took it from Faeril's own journal.
2. There are many instances in this tale where, in the press of the
moment, the Warrows, Elves, Humans, and others spoke in their own
native tongues; yet to avoid the awkwardness of burdensome
translations, where necessary I have rendered their words in Pellarion,
the Common tongue of Mithgar. However, some words and phrases do
not lend themselves to translation, and these I've left unchanged; yet
other words may look to be in error, but are indeed correct—e.g.,
BearLord is but a single word though a capital L nestles among its
letters. Also note that waggon, traveller, and several other similar words
are written in the Pendwyrian form of Pellarion and are not misspelled.
3. From my study of the Journal of the Lastborn Firstborn, the
arcane tongue of magic is similar in construction to archaic Greek, but
with a flavor of its own. With help, I have rendered the language into
transliterated eld Greek, with uncommon twists thrown in here and
there.
4. I have used transliterated Arabic to represent the tongues of the
desert since no guide was given in the Journal.
5. The "Common tongue" speech of the Elves is extremely archaic. To
retain a flavor of this dialect, in the objective and nominative cases of the
pronoun "you," I respectively substituted "thee" and "thou." Also, in the
possessive cases, I included "thy" and "thine" in the Elven speech, along
with a few additional archaic terms such as hast, wilt, and so forth.
6. To avoid minor confusion, the reader is cautioned to pay heed to the
dates denoting the time frame of each chapter. In the main, the tale is
told in a straightforward manner, but occasionally I have jumped back to
a previous time to fill in key parts of the story.
7. This tale is about the final pursuit of Baron Stoke. Yet the story is
tightly entwined with three earlier accounts concerning the hunting of
Stoke; these prior tales are recorded among others in the collection of
stories known as Tales of Mithgar.
"Auguries are oft subtle . . . and dangerous—
thou mayest deem they mean one thing when they mean something
else altogether."
Map
Chapter 1
Out of the Storm
Late Winter, 5E988
[The Present]
Predator and prey: the sudden blast of snow interrupted the race for
life, the race for death, the boreal owl taking to the swirling branches of
a barrens pine, the arctic hare scuttering under the protecting overhang
of a rock jut. And driven before the wind, a wall of white moaned
across the 'scape, while both hunter and hunted sheltered, waiting for the
storm to end, for the race to begin again, for flight and pursuit, for life or
death.
But now the race was suspended as snow and ice hurtled across the
land, hammering upon anything standing in its way, the wind sobbing and
groaning and filling the air with the sound of its agony. And the hare
crouched beneath the rock and closed its eyes against the snow pelting
inward, while high in a distant tree, a furlong or so away, the owl blinked
and turned its head northerly, and deadly talons gripped tightly, disputing
the lash of the branch.
And they waited.
Yet these two were not alone there in the Untended Lands, there
along the north face of the Grimwall Mountains, for something deadly
raced across the icy waste.
Perhaps the owl sensed it first, or mayhap the hare—who can say?
Out from the north it came, there where the owl stared:
Dark shapes bobbing in the distance, obscured by the storm.
Nearing.
And an eighth of a mile north of the owl's tree, under the rock the
hare felt the vibrations, not the occasional shaking of this unstable land,
but a ragged drumming upon the ground:
Feet pounding, furred, clawed, racing southward, down from
the north. Killers.
In the thrashing branches the owl peered at the oncoming running
shapes, ready to take flight should the need arise.
More than one. Through the storm. Coming swiftly. Still
obscured.
The hare opened its eyes but made no other movements, relying
upon snow and white fur and utter stillness for protection.
Thudding paws. Many. A pack. Racing, running.
Onward they came, the owl watching.
Three of them. In a line. One after another. Long, flowing
shapes. Each with something large racing after.
And mingled in with the sound of the wind came strange cries and a
sharp cracking, and the ears of the hare twitched.
More than a pack. Several packs. Killers all. One after another.
Hammering. And something calling out.
Now the first was close enough for the owl to see.
Wolves, or the like. Running in a line. And behind, another pack.
Or so it seemed. And another pack after.
Past the hare's shelter they raced, mere yards away.
Flashing legs. Wolf legs. Killer legs. All running. Grey fur.
Black. And silver. Bound together. Running before something large.
Something gliding upon the snow.
One after another they passed the hiding place of the motionless
hare. First, nineteen racing animals, then another nineteen, and another.
And something crack! snapped in the air, and something called out Yah!
Yah! as they thundered past, killers running through the wind and snow
and hauling the gliding things after.
And though they had hammered past and away and were gone, the
storm swallowing them up, still the hare remained motionless.
And a furlong beyond in the wind-tossed tree, the white I owl
watched as the three teams emerged from the whirl and hauled the sleds
across the frozen white, the drivers behind standing on the runners and
cracking their whips and urging the part-wolves, part-dogs onward, the
passengers on the sleds bundled against the chill.
The owl's head rotated 'round as they came on and past and away,
racing through the blowing snow and toward the south, through the
blowing snow and toward the looming Grimwall Mountains standing
ominously in the distance, barring the way.
Swiftly the sights and sounds of the intruders faded away, lost in the
storm.
And only the yawl of the wind and pelting of the snow remained.
And time eked by.
Still the owl gripped the branch.
Still the hare crouched below the stone. . . .
The storm blew itself out sometime after nightfall. And the Moon
rose and cast its argent light across the snowy 'scape. In the silvery
luminance the white hare warily sniffed the air, its long ears twitching,
listening for danger.
Nothing.
Cautiously, the hare emerged from under the rock jut. After a hop or
two, again it stopped and listened, ears turning this way and that, eyes
wide and gazing.
At last it set off for its burrow, some distance away.
And from the high branches of a remote tree, a white owl quietly
launched itself into a long, silent glide.
Chapter 2
Mygga and Fé
Late Winter, 5E988
[The Present]
"Yah! Yah!" called the sledmaster, urging the dog onward, Shlee in
the lead, maintaining the pace.
Gwylly leaned out and squinted past Faeril sitting before him. How
can they see where to run?
Snow blew horizontally across their direction of travel and Gwylly's
vision ahead was baffled by the storm. He could see all the dogs, swift
and true, tails straight out ears laid back and flat, running hard against
their tug line fastened to the gang; but ten yards or so beyond Shlee
Gwylly could make out nothing but whirling white. Glancing back, the
Warrow could see Laska, lead dog of the team behind, and he could
barely see Riatha's sled gliding after; but of the third team, the one
hauling Aravan, there was no sign, although now and again he could hear
the crack! of Tchuka's signal whip.
Leaning forward, he called out to Faeril above the stead; shssh of
the runners. "The dogs—I hope they know when they are going."
Behind, B'arr, the sledmaster, laughed, a sharp bark "Shlee know,
little ones. Shlee know."
Both Gwylly and Faeril twisted about in the sled basket to look back
at the Aleutan's smiling face, with its bronze features and dark eyes and
straight black hair and moustache and beard. The sledmaster was
dressed in a fur-lined parka with matching breeks and mukluks, his
mitten-gloved hands firmly gripping the hide-wrapped handlebar, his feet
well-planted on the sled runners.
In turn, the Aleutan saw before him two beings of ancient legend,
dressed in quilted down: Mygga he had named them, though they called
themselves Warrows. A small, slender folk, with tilted, jewel-like eyes,
and pointed ears, and a ready smile—eyes and ears and pale skin much
like that of the Fé, the "Elves," in the sleds behind. But unlike the Fé, the
Mygga were small, child size, no bigger than six- or seven-year-old
Aleutan children, standing as they did somewhere between three and
three and a half feet tall, with the male Mygga, Gwylly, being slightly
larger than the female, Faeril; why, they were barely taller than Rak or
Kano, B'arr's great power dogs at the back of the team.
The Fé, the Elves, on the other hand, with their tilted eyes and
pointed ears, stood slightly taller than an adult Aleutan, perhaps five foot
five or six for the female, Riatha, with the male, Aravan, a hand or so
higher.
But no matter their height, both Mygga and Fé, they were proud,
like Chieftains, standing erect and walking with purpose and looking you
straight in the eye, as if they owned the world.
And they were dangerous, with weapons of steel and silver and
starlight and crystal:
The Warrows, the Mygga, bore missile weapons: The Myggan
female was armed with two belts of throwing knives crisscrossed over
her torso, five steel blades to a belt, ten steel knives in all; but there was
more, for one belt held a silver blade—yet, strangely, on the other belt
was an empty scabbard where the silver one's mate should have been.
The Myggan male, too, bore a dagger, yet his weapon of choice
seemed to be a sling, and he carried two pouches of bullets at his waist:
one filled with steel spheroids, the other, smaller one with bullets more
precious, bullets of silver.
On the other hand, the Elves, the Fé, bore weapons suited to close
combat: The Féan female was girted with a long-knife and with a
splendid sword whose blade glittered like starlight. The Féan male also
wore a long-knife at his waist, yet the long-knife seemed insignificant
when compared to his black-hafted spear with its marvelous crystal
blade.
But it was not only the features and bearing and stature and
weaponry of the Mygga and the Fé that told the Aleutan these were
folk of legend, for even more telling was that the dogs allowed these
strangers, these strangers, to approach and pet them, ruffle their fur,
fawn over them— even Rak and Kano, feral savages that they were,
even haughty Shlee. The same was true of Ruluk's and Tchuka'sj teams,
with their leads, Laska and Garr, and with their! power dogs, Chenk
and Darga and Kor and Chûn, and with all the others, too. Yipping and
yammering in excitement whenever the Fé and Mygga came near.
Rolling on the! ground. Nuzzling. Bouncing. Dropping down on their
forelegs, inviting play. Savages acting like puppies! Aye, these: were the
folk of legends told by the lore tellers while gathered 'round the fires; of
that, there was no doubt.
"Yah, yah!"
Onward hammered the team through the storm, the sled shsshing
after.
Faeril looked at Gwylly, her gaze of amber capturing his of emerald.
"Shlee knows," she said, smiling, glancing up at B'arr and then back to
Gwylly. "Shlee knows." Then the damman turned to face front once
more.
Out before her ran nineteen dogs, two by two, except for Shlee
alone in the lead, the dogs of each pair running on opposite sides of the
tow line, each fastened to that gang line by their individual tug lines. Had
Faeril measured, she would have found that the team was evenly spread
out over a distance of nearly eighty feet from the first dog to the last,
giving them room to run, and Faeril could see at most ten yards beyond
the lead dog ere her vision gave out. Hence she knew that if the eyesight
of Shlee in the lead was like her own, then the dog could be seeing no
more than thirty or forty yards beyond into the storm, and the wee
damman wondered what would happen should there be a crevasse in
the way?
They came to the old stone ring atop the low hill within a half hour,
Shlee somehow finding it in spite of the storm, Ruluk's sled with Laska in
the lead, and Tchuka's with Garr, running in on their heels. Still the snow
blew and swirled in the moaning wind, and the stone wall of the ruin was
but a vague darkness on the crown of the tor.
And as the Aleutans separated the three teams a distance from one
another, and began driving widely spaced individual stakes into the
frozen ground and tying a dog to each Gwylly and Faeril were joined by
Riatha and Aravan, and they began unloading the sleds, carrying goods
through the blow and into the tumbled remains of a small round building,
the ruin open to the sky, snow swirling in.
Her voice nearly lost under the groan of the wind—" 'Tis from the
eld days," murmured Riatha, setting down her burden, the golden-haired
Elfess running her hand over the stone, her silver-grey eyes gazing hither
and yon, her head turning this way and that, as if seeking unseen sights
and listening for unheard voices.
"A watchpost, I would say," responded Aravan, placing his bundle
next to Riatha's, the Lian Elf slender and dark, his hair as black as a
raven's wing, his eyes deep blue, as were those of other Elves of his
kindred.
A faint tremor ran through the earth, and Faeril placed a hand against
the rock. "Dragonslair?" she asked, receiving a nod from Riatha.
"Aye, wee one. From Kalgalath's ruin thousands of Springdays
agone. As a bell remembers its ring, so too does the world remember
the Dragon's destruction."
Faeril said nothing in return, for she had read the ancient diary of her
long-dead ancestor, some thirty generations removed; and the faded
writing spoke of a region of quakes, there in the Grimwalls. Even so, to
actually feel the earth shudder gave her pause. And words from a
thousand years back rose up in her mind and her heart raced, for she
knew that when they reached their goal they would be at a place where,
now and again, the world shook even more violently than these faint
echoes from afar. And that would be soon now, for they were but a day
or so from their destination: the Great North Glacier, a wide, deep river
bound forever in ice, imperceptibly flowing out of the Grim-wall. And
though it lay only a day or so away, time was of the essence, for she
knew as well that in the dark of the night the Eye of the Hunter now
streamed overhead, and an eld prophecy stood due, the augury of a
seer cast more than a millennium past. Faeril shivered at the thought.
Aravan raised up his hand, reaching for the top of the standing wall,
falling a foot or so short. "Not very tall, this guardpost, yet the land
about is lower. A platform atop or mayhap a tower would give a place
to stand and yield warning enough should foe draw nigh."
Gwylly cast back his hood and looked up and about, his red hair
tumbling out, the coppery color in sharp contrast to his eyes of green.
"Foe?" The Warrow gestured out toward the storm-swept plains. "What
foe? It's deserted out there."
Aravan smiled down at the Wee One. "Look not to the empty plains,
my Waerling. Instead, thine eye should be turned toward the Grimwall,
for there it is that the Foul Folk dwell, there in the mountains ahead. And
it is that which this post once guarded against: Spaunen. For those were
the days before Adon's Ban, and the Rûpt ranged far and near, and this
land was at risk. Yet the Great War changed all, and now the Foul Folk
remain in the grasp of the Grimwall, nigh the places where they take
shelter when the Sun rides the sky."
摘要：

[versionhistory] THEELFESSCLIMBEDTOWARDTHEGOLDENLIGHT— Heedlessoftheenemy,Riathaclimbed.Suddenlyshecalledbacktohercompanions,"Quickly!Aidme!"LeadingAravan,dammanFaerilandbuccanGwyllyscrambledupthroughtheslitheringmassofice,comingatlastintotheluminance.Thebulkoftheglacierloomedhighaboveandthelightfro...

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