A map remembered

It began in the high mountains. It whistled through holes it had slashed high in the rock, and sent squirrels hurrying to their burrows and monkeys chattering to their nests. It raced down into the valleys, meeting and whispering shared secrets with the other winds it found there. Here people fled into their homes, piled high with stones. The wind began to slice at these, whistling in the holes it made, where weak stone broke but strong remained. Sand sifted down to join the endless landscape, dotted with curling sand sculptures and twisted trees. The wind whipped and swirled its new found sand around in dizzy patterns before dying.

It began in the high mountains. It crashed down steep ravines sending fish flying and gulping for something to breathe. It rushed through holes it had formed deep in the rock where weaker stone had given way, but the stronger still remained. Sediment poured downstream, crushed fine by force until it found some resting point in the wide banks of the lowlands where trees edged close to the water but not so close the floods would take them when they came. There the river, now swollen fat with water, slowed and sank into deep reservoirs beneath the earth. Slowly it drifted into a greener place, a swampland, where slowly the river stagnated and died.

It began in the high mountains. Men migrated slowly along the rivers avoiding the slicing shardwind and the death it brought. Soon tribes formed, and began to trade with one another from one winding stream to another. They built shelters for merchants to safely spend a night,  trade grew faster, and in mere generations small settlements formed to facilitate travelers and milk them of their tales.

One such settlement was the small city of Beiltzahvhr, built between the mountains and the rivers that sprung from them. Beiltzavhr was full of tales - from those told in the earth sunken inns, to the gossip and scandals whispered in the marketplace. Each night the wind blew and each day the men repaired the great stone walls that held the wind at bay. Beiltzahvr was by and large a normal place. It was first in Beiltzavhr that strange things began to happen.

They all happened at once. The elements began to take interest in human affairs, and soon men and women were born with strange powers and awesome gifts. Some in each generation could move an element from afar - enhance its power and bend it to their will, or so it was first assumed. Soon people began to notice that wielders began to bend to the element’s will. Shadows became sneakier, light grew bolder. Fire grew ambitious and water grew gentle. The priests, the keepers of memory said this had happened before, a long long time ago. They said the magic was safe.

People with gifts emerged as well. Fire burst from fingertips. Men saw into other men’s dreams. The priests, the keepers of memories, were not the only ones with gifts anymore. People began to neglect them. They began to battle for power where before the old ones had always kept them in check. Kings rose and fell. People learned that sacrifice sent the power on to another, but only if it were willing. They learned that magic could be linked from man to man like a chain.

Then rumors came. They told of great doings on Mt Muraka. Of a man who could not die, who wielded fire in his right hand and water with his left. The Kings sent armies against him. The keepers of memory whispered warnings and prayed to the great mother to let this man fall. The armies returned. The man was at their head. He was named Seivah.

Beiltzavhr fell and in its ashes arose a new city shaped by Seivah’s hand. He told the people he was father sky come down to collect his magics. All but the keepers of memory believed him. They spoke against him and he burned them. The few remaining priests fled to the swamplands far to the south before dying.

Seivah God Emperor ruled with a kind but stern hand. He collected magics and linked them to his people until even the poor and the meek were chained to him with the small magics they possessed. His empire prospered, and the land grew to enjoy his peace. The elements settled down into cycles, taking turns claiming children as their own. It was a still time. The kind of time history books pass over in a single sentence. The kind of time that takes thousands of lives to build and perfect. Men grew strong in numbers, fed by wielders of the power of plants and wood, and healed by those who could bend the very blood within.

The wielders of these powers, called Tszain by most, built forms and practices around their elements. Metal Tszain learned how to protect, Wood to feed, Fire to fight, Water to sooth, Earth to build, Air to learn, Ice to think, Lightning to serve, Shadow to sneak, Light to seek, Blood to heal and . . .

. . . Void to kill.

All things must come to an end.

Reviews

[Suzanne Sonderleigh]

Wow! This story is well outside the stories I usually read, but your words are so poetic. It all flows with the wind and spirit you describe so well. Thanks for posting it.

[Silvanus Silvertung]

Thank you for reading!