Of Ashes Born: The Birth of the Taranor
Being the fifth and final instalment of a serialised fantasy novella.
This is the fifth and final instalment. Here are the other instalments, in case you are up to a different one:
Part One: The Janzacs of Hazathsad
Part Three: The Golden Janzacs
Part Four: The Burning Janzacs
(You are here.)
And here is an audio clip for those who’d prefer to listen to a reading by yours truly:
PART FIVE: THE BIRTH OF THE TARANOR
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE JANZAC LEFT BEHIND
My father’s shoulder never fully healed from that crossbow bolt wound. He was still bedridden with an infection a week later when the last galley left Gevala, manned by all those who had only taken the voyage from Hazathsad to ensure the safety of their families—and those who decided after arriving to join the revolution.
Coran spent the following few days feeling miserable and irrationally ashamed as he recovered. He had frequent nightmares about what sick fate Hamborty would subject his friends to when he caught them. He also had nightmares about what the High King of Naranon would do when he discovered that the Praetor of Iantal was harbouring Janzacs—if he didn’t know already.
A few days later, he found, to his bitter disappointment, that he could no longer draw his longbow or wield his axe in his right hand. Useless and distraught, he spent his evenings sitting on the beach, watching the flat horizon of the Steel Waters and imagining the hell his friends were in.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: DARKLING HARBOURS
Knowing that revolution was imminent, King Hamborty’s shape-shifting wife suggested that her husband should turn surprise against his adversaries.
So it was that when the first report of battle came from the harbours, the eternal cerulean light suddenly faded. For the first time in over a century, the entire stormy city fell into darkness lit chiefly by frequent threads of lightning. The king and his wife put command of their soldiers into the capable hands of Rachrinor and locked the doors of their citadel in Mount Hronver.
Disguised as a servant, Galorian only just made it inside the mountain before complete chaos took the island.
Out in the harbours, a very different light was flaring into existence. Led by Toran, Gallamis, Ravunbror and Rebror, the recalcitrant Janzacs were setting fire to Hamborty’s War Galleys. Luckily, the hells were in the mood for a thunderstorm, and the rain only came in thin, infrequent showers. The fires thrived under the electric skies.
Toran heard the horns and saw the torches of the soldiers approaching the Royal Harbour just as the King’s Galley went up in flames behind him. Gallamis, walking beside him, was still staring at the lighthouse, whose light had just gone out. The two were headed back along the wharf towards the docks, their followers close at their heels.
‘The galley returning from Gevala won’t be able to land without the lighthouse,’ he said to Toran, slowly turning to the dark of Whiterock Sea.
Toran nodded. ‘Looks like we’ve got Hamborty’s Guard between us and that lighthouse, though,’ he said.
Gallamis drew his axe. ‘We’ll have to do something about that, won’t we,’ he said, rolling his shoulders.
By the light of the burning galleys and flashing hells, the Golden Janzacs met Rachrinor’s forces. They pushed for the lighthouse, and Rachrinor did everything he could to stop them.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE LIGHTHOUSE
Gallamis clipped his opponent’s hand with his knife—as their axes were locked. Lightning flared over Mount Hronver as the guard’s defence buckled. Gallamis wedged his axe in the man’s collarbone, and the Golden Janzac’s gaze moved on to his next enemy.
The lighthouse loomed only a few paces from him.
A man of intensely charismatic willpower, Gallamis had found himself at the head of a phalanx of a dozen men only a few minutes into the battle. Gallamis was the sort of man who hurled mockery and sweated confidence when he fought—truly, his nerve was more contagious than most forms of panic. If he had ever learnt the Seven Sword Methods of the Tuthervarr legacy, he would have been a master of The Light.
He breached the door of the lighthouse with the heel of his boot and raced into the building. He was bleeding from serpents knew how many places, and his arms were beyond spent as he started up the stairs. Assailing the tower’s many levels, he and his followers arrived in bloody triumph at the blue dome, their number reduced to three.
Rachrinor, and a squadron of the strongest of Hamborty’s Guard, held the darkness there and announced themselves with battle cries as a bolt of lightning struck the glass dome that sheltered them. The room shook, and their ears rang as they converged with the intruders.
Though Gallamis and his two companions fought valiantly against Rachrinor’s men, they were soon forced back to the curving wall of the room, and a minute later, only Gallamis still stood. Rachrinor deemed the Golden Janzac done for and, giving command over to Dallon—the only soldier not fully engaged with the conflict—the old man left to see to more pressing aspects of the battle in the city.
Gallamis, summoning the final dregs of his will, yelled after the retreating general, ‘Fight a moment longer, coward! That is all I will need to slay you!’
As Rachrinor turned to give some mockery in return, Gallamis felled one of his guards and leapt over his body with his axe raised. Rachrinor, only slightly taken aback at the brash nature of his opponent’s gambit, drew his belt knife on reflex. He stepped past Gallamis’ axe and rammed the blade into the Golden Janzac’s stomach.
Gallamis dropped his axe, crumpling on the floor with his hands clutching at his wound.
Rachrinor nodded once more to Dallon. ‘Finish this wretch,’ he said, wiping his knife on his tunic, ‘and keep guard here with three others. The rest of you, follow me.’
He turned on his heel and left the room, descending the shadowy steps.
Dallon, staring at the heroic man kneeling on the sapphire-tiled floor, didn’t move for a few moments. One of the three that had stayed with him was also watching Gallamis, though his eyes were full of hatred and relish rather than indecision and grief. Glancing at Dallon, the soldier said, ‘I’ll do the honours if you don’t mind.’
Taking Dallon’s silence as ascent, he knelt beside Gallamis, checking the edge of his rapier. As he lowered the blade towards Gallamis’ neck, the Golden Janzac rose a final time with a roar that contested the thunder itself for its strength. The other guards fell back apace at the outcry, and Gallamis set both his hands on the blade of his enemy’s rapier. At his own bloody expense, he wrenched the sword from the guard and struck him across the chin with its pommel.
The guard staggered away two steps before he fell unconscious.
One of the other guards leapt forward with an axe. Gallamis, left hand on his injured stomach, was struggling to his feet. The axe would have ended him if Dallon had not thrown his bulky shoulder against the guard, sending him flying across the room.
Alas, Gallamis’ eyes were on the axe, though, for the third guard had advanced again with a spear. He planted it in Gallamis’ chest a moment before Dallon broke his sternum. Dallon pulled his axe free as Gallamis fell for the final time, and the guard toppled, wheezing.
The guard that Dallon had shoulder-barged was on his feet again, screaming something in rage that Dallon’s throbbing head couldn’t comprehend. Dallon went after the man, hardly believing his own actions. Their axe heads locked. The guard switched his grip, twisting Dallon’s weapon out of his grasp.
Dallon leapt back as the guard lunged for him. The huge man tripped backwards over Gallamis’ fallen body as the guard advanced. By chance, his right hand fell on the hilt of Gallamis’s axe. He swept the weapon up and, sitting on the blood-slickened sapphire floor, threw it at the guard.
It cracked the man’s skull, and he fell lifeless.
For a few minutes, silence reined in the dome of the lighthouse. Dallon found his feet and, chest heaving, he stared at the battle-ravaged room. He wondered, then, whose side he was on—for he felt that he had reached his final chance to choose.
At length, he realised that Gallamis was murmuring something. He knelt by the man, rolling him onto his back. Gallamis’ eyes found his, and through his blood-clotted throat, the Golden Janzac grumbled, ‘Give me axe back.’
Dallon nodded solemnly, though Gallamis had said it in humour. He set the warrior’s axe on his chest and clasped the warrior’s hands beneath its beard. Gallamis smiled weakly once Dallon was finished.
‘You’re a good man after all, Dallon,’ he mumbled. ‘Lezli’s all yours if you want her—though, fair warning, she couldn’t keep her mouth shut if someone was threatening to fill it with broken glass.’ He chuckled at his own joke, then, and sighed. ‘Light the fire, would you?’ he asked and closed his eyes.
His breathing ceased.
CHAPTER TWENTY: HRONVER CITADEL
The lighthouse was yet unlit when Toran, Ravunbror and Rebror brought the battle to the very gates of Hronver Citadel.
Rachrinor took charge of the final stand of his troops there. He fell into a berserker rage, striving with everything he had to end Toran, who was fighting like a bear with the strength of a dozen men. The revolutionary’s axe had been broken asunder, and he controlled the centre of the battle with gauntleted fists alone.
The general of Hamborty’s troupes was thwarted by his own sons. Ravunbror and Rebror stepped between him and Toran, and the two fought him, swords on sword. Their meeting was brief, though. For all the strength of a berserker’s rage, men possessed of the simple knowledge that their cause is true will always have a greater determination.
When Rachrinor fell, concussed by Ravunbror’s pommel, the battle began to fade.
At length, Toran’s army stood victorious before the barred doors of the citadel. Ravunbror and Rebror led a few companies away to find something that might serve as a battering ram. As they were returning, Toran saw Hamborty watching from a balcony above the citadel doors.
Toran then sang for the first time the song that would become the battle chant of his people. The men around him learnt the words quickly and joined him as the battering ram began to pummel Hamborty’s oaken doors.
In the west, we see the light, as it leaves us.
In the east, we see the moon, as it greets us.
To the south, we hear the ocean roar.
In the north, we see the mountain, far away.
Farther away from me.
As the stars come down to find us
And the fire threatens to fade,
We will fight throughout the night,
To bring the dawn, to bring the light.
Night! Burn!
Day! Burn!
Foes! Burn!
Brothers! Burn
Cleave! Awake!
The sun is risen!As they sang that final line, the lighthouse suddenly came alive in the distance, and on their next charge, the doors of the citadel broke.
Now, within the citadel—when the very first ram shook the mountain—Galorian was ordered to take Hamborty’s wife her dinner, for he was still disguised as a servant. Hamborty was busy fleeing to the uppermost rooms of the citadel, and his wife was maintaining her solitude in the heart of the mountain where the halls of the citadel met the dark of Durnam’s endless caverns.
There, for months past, she had been quietly preparing her master’s vicious reply to Toran’s revolution, and, I’m afraid to say, Galorian came a little too late to the completion of his task. She had already spawned a great host of Vonhoroth’s most fearsome followers—her own kind, in their first form—great, black-scaled lizards that could burn or freeze a man with the breath from their maws of needle-sharp teeth.
They met in a dim corridor while Galorian was still searching for the Inferue’s chambers. Her swarm of dark drakes ran before her, scuttling towards the sound of the battering ram that shook the mountain. So it was that when the citadel doors broke, the juvenile Inferue burst into the antechamber from the other direction and met Toran’s recalcitrant Janzacs with fierce jaws filled with fire and ice.
Galorian, hearing their hissing approach, ducked into a side chamber just before they rounded a dark corner and came in sight of where he had been a moment before. Their eyes of red and blue flashed by him as he watched through the window of the room he had dodged into, and his heart fell as he saw the enormity of the horde.
Then at the rear of their swarm, he saw the human Inferue approaching, the only monster walking in their final form. The only weapon he was permitted to carry, as a servant, was the steak knife meant for the Inferue’s meal. Once she too had passed, Galorian burst through the door and buried the steak knife in her neck—for his master had told him that it was the only way to be assured of their death.
The Inferue screamed, and the draconic monsters at the back of the horde turned on Galorian as their mistress died. Galorian ran, steak knife in hand, and a great number of the lizards took off after him. He fled into that maze of Durnam’s dark caverns with fast feet, fighting his foes with knife alone.
Meanwhile, Toran’s army was suffering a bitter defeat in the lighter halls and chambers of the citadel—where the reptilian swarm was emerging. Wrestling still with only his hands, Toran took to the stairs with a single, desperate and irrational hope remaining: if he could kill Hamborty, those monstrous abominations might be somehow stilled.
He was wrong, of course, but his imagination maintained his vigour and his valour.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE SECOND MIRACLE
We must leave that desperate situation now, for but a moment, to revisit my father, miserable on the coast at Gevala. It happened that on the fourth day after the last galley left Tinoyamen, the praetor’s second gift arrived.
Coran was watching the ocean from a grassy headland, as he had grown accustomed to doing in the evenings. When the sun sank and a flash of green met Coran’s eyes, the man hung his head a moment. Then he turned back towards the tents and bivouacs of the Janzacs who had fled Hazathsad. Many were already busy planning their new homes and milling timber for their construction.
Then, past those dwellings, Coran saw an armoured horseman emerge from the Fallwood. Behind him, another emerged, then another, and yet another … They were Knights of Iantal, and their number was six hundred—one of the largest mounted armies the province had ever marshalled.
Coran, eyes filled with wonder and surprise, descended the headland to meet them, and the commanding officer dismounted before him with a salute and offered an envelope sealed with an ‘I’ set in blue wax. The letter within read simply:
My daughter is very convincing. I hope these men arrive in time and that the Janzacs are soon ended for good. Faithfully, Lord Oliverador Praetor of Iantal
Coran broke down in tears when he had read the letter for the fourth time—so far beyond his wildest hopes was this second miracle that the praetor wrought.
Before dawn, the following day, the tide waxed favourable, and two more Janzac galleys left the haven—each carrying three hundred knights and a few willing Janzacs, Coran included, to help navigate the Hellspring. And thus, the decision of Dallon to set a fire in the lighthouse proved most important—for the ships would never have been able to find the harbour without that blue beacon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: THE DREAM THAT WAS
The mounted knights of Iantal charged through the city under Hazathsad’s hellish thunderstorm, and Coran followed on foot.
Now, at the very moment that the knights joined the battle in the citadel, Toran burst upon Hamborty’s balcony. The king, braced against the railing as if he were about to face a charging boar—and not something far worse—pulled the trigger of his crossbow with a fearful shout.
The bolt took Toran just below his collarbone, and he stumbled, his right arm limp for a moment. Then, as the pain filled the Golden Janzac, it seemed to drive out all the desperate hope, imagination and strength. Pain, fear and sorrow overtook him as he sunk to his knees. The king cursed as he tried to reload his crossbow.
Toran took a long, shuddering breath, and it seemed in that moment that the stormy hells stilled above him. The whispering wind cooled him—and like vitalising water enveloping vulnerable red steel, it hardened his bruised and battered will to achieve his dream.
He forced his feet to bear him, and as he approached Hamborty, the man quailed. His crossbow fell from his trembling fingers, and he drew a silver knife from his belt. Even as he was lifted off the balcony tiles, he stabbed at Toran with his knife in a kind of crazed fever.
Toran threw him from the balcony, and his body broke on the unforgiving rock of Hazathsad below.
Only in the moments afterwards did the missionary’s warning against regicide come to him. Though he couldn’t say exactly why, he became certain that Burn was right and that this final act was a mistake that his people, his descendants, would pay dearly for. In meek desperation, he uttered a prayer for mercy. Hells above and Hellspring below, he prayed to a nameless god who fortified men with cold, quiet winds.
Toran then turned and collapsed, sitting against the railing with his feet outstretched before him. He looked dazedly at the many wounds that marred his stomach and his chest, and he sensed that he was breathing his last. And in the long moment of that recognition, his brother appeared through the door of the balcony.
Coran said something, rushing to his side, but Toran did not hear the words. Toran saw his brother recognise Hamborty’s body on the street below, and he began, with slightly gibbering words, to tell of all that had happened. He spoke of his dreams and his plans, his hopes and his hopelessness, his successes and his failures, the fruit of his imagination.
Coran then reassured him that his dream was fulfilled and that Hazathsad was purged, and that the Janzacs in Iantal were safe, and that he himself would live and see Gevala again, and that the world would forever be in his debt and that a time of joy and honest work was before them … And he spoke in turn of many other things, but he knew not how many his brother heard before his spirit left him, his eyes closed and his chest ceased to rise and fall.
My father’s words were, themselves, no more than his own dreams, for the battle was still loud and uncertain in the halls below him. He crossed his brother’s arms upon his chest and stood, looking out from the balcony at the stone houses in which still dwelled the many Janzacs who were not of Hamborty’s Watch and had not left the island in defiance of him.
With a voice wracked by grief, he cried, ‘The tyrant is dead! Be free of your evil!’
The battle in the citadel seemed itself to pause.
For a moment longer than you would imagine, there was silence. Then something moved in the hearts of the men there. Those who fought for what they did not understand began to gain clarity. Those who fought for what they knew was right gained vigour …
‘We need not live in the decay of a bloodthirsty civilisation! We need not live for things we now know are worthless. Passion for coin and blood and domination need not drive us. We may live for what we have lacked before. For fairness. For honour. For peace.’
Searching in vain for more words, Coran said again, ‘The tyrant is dead. Be free of your evil.’
Injured as my father was, he then descended to join the desperate battle against the horrible Inferue. Those that were willing came out of their houses in the city and, carrying what weapons they found scattered in the streets, they too joined the fray.
Burn was the fiercest member of that final fight. If not for the missionary’s falchion cleaving countless lizards to death, all would have been lost. At last, ere an hour passed, the halls of Hronver were rid of the monsters. After a silence had settled for a few minutes, Ravunbror and Rebror began to chant.
‘Victory!’ they cried, and many joined them. ‘Victory to Toran. Victory to Gallamis.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: THE WEDDING-GIFT
The victorious—Galorian among them—left the stormy island soon after.
On those vessels that braved the return journey through Whiterock Sea, there were also a few infants that you know well from the Balizon Bard’s tale of Vonhoroth’s Final War. There was Redock, only a few months old, who went with his father, Dallon, and his brother, Jeren—who was three. There was Navesda, of a few months also, with her father—a blacksmith who crafted many weapons for Hamborty’s army. Finally, there was Tearco, who was one and travelled with his father and brother.
They filled Gevala, and much of the Fallwood, with their number, and Coran journeyed north with the Iantalian Knights who had survived. He returned to the Praetor of Iantal, who asked him with eyes full of mischief, ‘Are you a Janzac?’
‘No,’ Coran told him. ‘I was once, but now I am of the people who have settled in Gevala. They are called the Taranor, for they were followers of my brother Toran, who has overthrown the Janzacs.’
The praetor smiled. ‘And for what purpose have you come, Coran of the Taranor?’ he asked.
‘To ask for one final gift that I still have no right to even beg for in prayer,’ answered Coran. ‘Your daughter is very fair, and very wise, and very dear to me, and I would ask for her hand in marriage and your blessing.’
‘I know of none more fitting to make such a request,’ said the praetor, to which the only response Coran was capable of was to weep. The tears welled up unbidden behind Coran’s gaze and broke forth with the immense release of a dam breaking its walls—the relief of desperate years of anxiety and toil suddenly revealed to be worthwhile.
On the day that my parents were married, the praetor gave one final gift—a wedding gift—to them. All the land along the Fen River and the Blue River, from the Abnoran Mountains to the settlement of Gevala, was open to the Taranor and under Coran’s praetorship.
In the time that followed, the land was named Torin, the lake was renamed Gallamis, and the northern waterway was renamed the River Rador. Gevala grew into a vast city of trade very quickly for the position it held—being the closest port to most of the other islands of Durnam. Many Iantalians chose to stay and live among the Taranor in the villages north of the Bluewood, though more chose to leave.
The sons of Rachrinor refused the office of warlords over the two northern districts of Torin, taking their own paths instead. Ravunbror founded a guild for the many children that the Battle for Hazathsad had orphaned—and for all others who wished to learn under him. Rebror became a Golden Janzac, a rover who travelled much between Iantal, Chestron and Torin. Rachrinor himself was exiled—after a few months in prison—and wandered further northeast in search of provinces less tortured by the brutal warriors he had trained.
The following year, I was born, and the year after, my brother, Poldorain, joined me. Iantal’s praetor, Oliverador, passed away from an unfortunate illness when I was four, and my father became Praetor of Iantal and Torin. It was arranged that the provinces would split once my brother and I were fit to rule. In the meantime, through Olivanin, my father became fast friends with the Praetor of Chestron …
But things did not go as neatly as many would have liked—and as Burn prophesied—and as you well know. Indeed, you have heard already of all that followed, and if I continued this story, it would turn into the tale that the Balizon Bard has already written.
The vark were amassing in the Abnorans, the Eramon tribes were sharpening their scimitars and the Sattinew were forging their armour. The board was being set for Vonhoroth’s Final War; in fourteen years, the pieces would begin to move.
POSTLUDE TO OF ASHES BORN: MY STORY
I suppose I play one small part in this story though.
Those years have passed, and Vonhoroth’s Final War has passed, and there is one final journey through the wild Heavenspring that I shall tell of, and the journey was my own.
I wrote, at the beginning of this book, that whitewater rises here in raucous froths and spurts as if heaven itself is filling the sea with its jubilance. These words, I stand by. My voyage through Whiterock Sea was terrifying, indeed, but there are many terrors in this world that make the beauty shine brighter, and a stormy ocean is not so terrible as a demon from Cthartarus or a maven with a torn heart. So I say that Whiterock Sea is a place not filled with the vindictive, malicious nature of hell but with the untamed joy of heaven itself.
The island of Hazathsad has changed. It is a beautiful place with rocky mountains that are governed by the wind’s voice, quiet forests that are governed by peaceful reverie and a thriving city that is home to the Taranor who were exiled as though they were ashes—when in truth, they were only of ashes born.
(END OF NOVELLA.)
Dear Reader,
Thank you for your time and attention—I know they’re often in short supply. I hope you have enjoyed this story. I very much enjoyed writing it—and listening to the excellent criticism and encouragement that was offered.
The first book of Flames of the Exiled (Silent Skies) is set about fifteen years after the conclusion of this novella. It is progressing nicely with the help of proofreaders, and I’m having some fun drawing maps and thinking up possible cover designs. I have a few little thought pieces and poems tumbling around as well, some of which might appear in your inboxes soon.
In the meantime, if you can think of anyone who might enjoy a little fantasy novella, do send them a link for me.
~
Peter Harrison