Four days in the temple. Four days of prayer and supplication, days of censured smoke and raw-throated psalms. Four days without a sign. The four days after the new moon, sacred to the goddess Lucia and at the end of the fourth day, as it had for untold years, the temple was still, their cries ignored.

The High Priest set aside his miter just as the flagstone at the Oracle's base cracked, a single fault bisecting its length. It was a small, almost invisible mar, but the sound echoed in the temple like a death knell, and the assemblage froze, stunned. A roar like wind-driven rain boomed through the building, driving some to cover their ears in pain, so loud it was; and mixed within the roar were the haunting tones of aeolian harps.

After sound came light, blazing from the slit in the altar like the blue-white rays of a newborn sun, blinding, burning, all-consuming, and they fell into it.

Below them in the grey void, a city hung, torn from the earth, denied the heavens. Above it rose the anguished ghost of a man torn in twain, lifted as though by an invisible claw about his chest his life’s blood flowing like a river through the city’s streets, pouring over its edge. The blood smelled of lilac as the grey mists turned it under and set the witnesses adrift again.

They felt rather than saw a great hand grasping, hungry as a mouth, straining just beyond the walls of being, filled with longing, and fear caught their breaths within them. A form approached with the fog, shrouded in the black robes of the desert witches. The robes curled back from a fiery figure who stretched out her hand, and the robes became a spear thrusting forward, through them and then gone and they, untouched.

And in the void, there came a singing, the voice of a girl-child, a simple tune, the lullaby of their youths, the words now twisted strange, sung by granite stones.

Hordes race forward from the north, screaming in fury, crying for blood, numerous as the sands of the desert, black shrouded women within their midst, screaming for vengeance with soundless tongues, a world flamed in their wake.

And at their head came a man with their own face, wounded unto death yet moving without falter, black flamed daemons at his shoulders, riding in a chariot of beaten brass, sweeping down as the scythe of death.

A creature rose from the seas to the east, a centaur with the bodies of two men, not one, and the two did battle above their single body and when one struck the other, both fell as dead.

Two women stood with hands clasped together and one shone as a new dawn and the other wore seraph wings as a guardian cloak. Behind them old robed men sat within a boat upon the sand, bailing water from within to without, sinking slow into a flood not there.

A king in the west wrung water from his hands into a washbowl and turned to face the dawn. The water in the bowl became blood and cried with the voice of a newborn child as the king walked into the sea.

A blind man wept at the base of a tree, speaking truths in a tongue unknown, but none listened as the tree replied with the ringing of cymbals and calling horns.

In the center stood a man before the horde. At his side, a child in rags, a great jeweled scepter cradled to her chest. The man held out in either hand a golden mirror and spoke first to one, “Dexter”, and then the other, “Talus”, and the chalk white cliffs beneath him shattered like glass, falling away into the void like raindrops of melted snow, and darkness rose up on leathered wings to engulf them all.

And the temple was as it had always been, save a hairline fissure in the stone, as the supplicants stood, as if awakened from a long sleep, and were afraid.

One friend turns on another. A great city at the edge of a desert is besieged from above as well as below. A dark and ancient power awakens and the fate of the world teeters on the edge of a sword. That which was great shall be cast down or rise again.

—Common paraphrase of the prophecy of the Oracle in Talishara, 1408—

Prologue: Qaiyore1412

Somewhere within the depths of the Dreaming, awareness reawakens. Moments later, consciousness, sentience, cognition, then entity in rapid succession. A flame in the darkness and a new life begins.

No, it knew it was not new as soon as the thought entered its mind: it was something old, come again. With this, knowledge and concepts began to flood to it from the ether like a flood tide.

"Stop!" A command in the stillness, unspoken yet heard, and the overwhelming surge of half-remembered histories subsided. "It is not yours to take, not yet. The memories of another will overwhelm you and you will be lost before you have begun. Wait until you are stronger in yourself." The unspeaking voice was another flame, different from the first, larger and darker than the white hot glare of the newly reborn.

Another flame joined "them", large and dark as well. "We were almost too slow. Any later and they might have had him."

"Time is not relevant. You limit yourself by outmoded concepts. I'll stay with him; summon the others."

"We are already here." Suddenly the greyness was alight with fire, the distant nothingness replaced by spectrums of light in seconds. They were large and old, fading flames of orange and red, and one other, barely a spark, and almost as bright as the newly reborn.

"Leave us, little flicker. You have no place in this," a thought boomed out, and the small one began to fade.

"No," thought back the reborn. Overwhelmed and confused by the presence of forceful authority, it felt a strange, obstinate defiance, a visceral need for independence, if even in this small thing. "It stays if it wishes."

The reply was surprisingly deferential. "As you will," then another added, "On your head."

"Be still," commanded the first arrival, apparently addressing the assembly. "There are things you must know; things of the corrupted and the pure; the Eerith and the Valerian.

"Time is the sequential passing of events and, in the beginning, before the creation, nothing occurred, and there was no time. Time began with the first action: creation. And what, then, is time but movement of the elements? The elements too are but another form of movement—the dancing of fire, the crumbling of earth, the winds of air, and the waves of water; especially the waves of water. If this is indeed the case, all of creation is simply movement. We know this as a surety, for we are beings of energy who don solid flesh for our own uses. We are not physical beings. Speech is but movement of the mouth and ripples in the air and movement is the whole of creation. Would it not follow, then, that the Word spoken of creation was simply that—a word, a word of such divine power that all of existence is but its echo, and time shall last only so long as the word of creation echoes in the silence? Is it any wonder that the first among the races have such love of story and song? The echo of creation sings loud within us and loudest in the sound of the waves upon the shore. Thus it was that the Creator spoke the Word and all things known to us began. First among that creation were the Host, all manner of angel and archangel to do the Creator's bidding.

"Is not Creator a description and not a name, you ask—a title such as King, but greater? Yes, but what name then has the Creator of all creation? That name was spoken only once—when the Creator named himself, all of existence began. Pray then that the true name be not spoken again.

"To every song there is a harmony, to every note, an overtone; and so it was with the sound of creation. That overtone was called the Valeria, a race of spirits rivaling the greatest in power, but without freedom or choice—our essence purely reflections of the land from which we arose. We wove glamours. We strove to create a world for ourselves, for we had no place in the Creator's work. The Valeria then created a race to serve; and this race, created, not by the Creator, but by us, was the Great Wyrms. The Creator cursed the land, that it would be a strife and toil to man. Thus it was that man lost much of his magic and contact with the realm of spirit, and thus was the doom of the Valerian foretold. As the land turned against man, thus did its truest children—falling into madness. Some passed quietly; others lashed out in their fever of spirit, and thus it was that many of the Valerian were put aside ere they could destroy creation."

The fire radiated an ill-humor then, amusement tinged with the gentle frustration only age and grief can bring. "Aside. A pretty term for exile, for being thrust blind, deaf, and dumb into a mundane hell. Where could we exile these corrupted spirits? Their only crime was being too strong to die when the world which they echoed changed too much. Did they change it? Were they to blame for man's hubris? We who remained unchanged debated ourselves and each other. What exile for the innocent? At last, we did the only thing we could. We sent the corrupted into the world which corrupted them. We sent them to find harmony there and bring about their own salvation. We even sent the Wyrms to aid them . . ."

A new harmony spoke in the reborn's thoughts then. The new tone was different, fiercer, filled with suppressed anger and latent rage. "They failed. We do not know how or why nor do we care. They failed. Captured and enslaved first by one race then another, they even lost control of the Wyrms."

The first continued, then. "That they failed is not a concern. Their fate was their own as much as any of us have control of this. The concern is this. The disharmony of the Creator's world becomes ever stronger and the enslaved aid of the corrupted hastens this dissonance rather than impedes it. Deny it as we may, the pure are reflections of this world as well. It is simply a matter of time before we, too, become mad."

Finally, the Reborn replied. "What am I to this?"

"Spirit does not die. It may change. It may fade to ash or even smoke, but the fire can always be lit again. Substance follows spirit, not the reverse. A body may die among the corrupt but the spirit is, in time, reborn."

The Reborn searched half-formed memories and asked, "I am of the Eerith?"

"Yes. The err-tith, the spirits which walk the earth. Even now we shield you from your inextricable attraction back the Creator's world. Soon it will flood over you and all the memories will return. If we are fortunate, you will remember what we have told you. If we are fortunate, your return foretells change for the better."

"Who am I, was I?"

"You are the reflection of something not seen in a very long time. You are their hope; a voice they have not had for eons."

The angry voice interrupted. "You are also fear; an overdue and well-deserved fear, the fear of the Sorcerers of Mir."

"Remember," whispered the first voice, and the Reborn was gone.

****

The memories of a thousand lifetimes besieging his mind paled in comparison to the crushing pressure of the physical world. He was a being of spirit trapped in a world of substance and—insult to injury—the heat was suffocating. Eventually he was able to stand and was surprised to find a slight, dark man covered in swirling tattoos holding out a tangle of cloth.

"Wrap them about you," the man said in an all too cheerful voice, strangely refreshing, like the sound of flowing water. "They will help to keep you cool while we find your people."

"You are?"

The man laughed and shrugged. "A tributary. I quote, 'No. It stays if it wishes.' I wish."

He stood slowly and did as the other man indicated. "I am Eerith. What are you, then?"

"I am the echo of a small stream which flows into a river which flows—well, somewhere I'm sure. I support. I assist. That's my nature."

"You're Valerian. Pure."

"I don't know. I think we elemental types are more like semi-corrupt. The natural order keeps us in harmony, but we are still flawed by connection to mankind."

The Reborn held up a hand, signaling the other man to stop. "Enough philosophy for now. You are not an enemy. It is enough."

"Indeed, my friend. Let us find your people and leave this desert. Where are we bound?"

The Reborn looked at the dark city which floated in the sky to the north of them. "There."