A Star Falls...

[Zadown]

“So, ye would like to know the story about the swords, lad? Ye old man sent ye, he did? Good… I guess yer old enough to hear it, then. Now, let me fetch a flagon o’ mead for me dry throat and make meself comfortable, and I’ll tell ye the tale...”

 

A star falls. A bright spot of fire, trailing a long tail of flames, it glides through the night...

 

“The magic is failing! Take us down as slowly as you can, Ash’aml!”

“I will do my best, captain! But the sails are already ablaze and the hull is burning, too! We need a miracle!”

 

...a patrol camped near the mountains in eastern Ghamaast watches silently as the fire cuts a line across the night sky, staring up in wonder and in fear...

 

“An elf overboard!”

“Stop yelling and do your duty, soldier! The fires will not quench themselves!”

“Aargh!”

 

...a lone mage in one of the tallest towers of Earanedon in Chaman looks to the north, at the trail of fire that looks like a wound in the celestial sphere, and feels how the lay lines of magic tremble slightly; he starts to mutter in various languages, cursing the omen...

 

“I’m losing control, captain! I can’t bring her down safely!”

(Silence and the crack and roar of flames)

“Captain!?”

 

...a hunter in the central Phoenix Island is startled out of his dream and manages to glimpse the burning hulk of something as it speeds across the sky, now too close to look like a star, too fast to see properly...

 

“AAIIEEEEE!!!”

 

...a shaman stands rooted in the darkness, listening the earth, feeling restless. Then she sees the great fiery colossal ship roaring through the air, oh so close now, and somebody drops from it, disappearing to the forest limbs flailing, and the short moment passes leaving only a few embers and a smell of smoke and burnt flesh only for a moment, then the wind takes even them away and the forest is silent for one moment. The shaman shakes her head, doubting what she just saw. And then a loud crash confirms the vision, earth shakes making her almost lose her footing and a yellow glow illuminates the forest in warm hues of bright coals, coming from the direction the thing was travelling. She senses the dying trees and crushed animals and cries once in pain, and then starts to run towards the glow. Stumbling at first, she gets her rhythm quickly and disappears to the forest with the stealth and ease of an owl.

 

A tree grows in the forest. It is a large black oak in the middle of firs and some junipers, standing taller than any of them. Here, in this unnatural place, where a lingering smell of burning still stays, no noises can be heard – the forest is ominously silent. Lying in the grass beside the oak lays a long staff adorned with small bones and little pieces of fur, the trademark of a shaman. The staff looks darker in some places, as if it were sprayed by blood...

 

Nearby, a hunter notices the absence of any animal life, and wonders the reasons for that, but continues on his course thinking that getting to the next village quicker is more important than some squirrel furs. He walks through the silent woods, and a fear starts to grow inside him, bred by the unnatural stillness of the place and some sixth sense. Being a fearless warrior (or so he keeps on telling to himself, as the icy grip of seemingly unnecessary fear tightens) he ignores the unspoken warning that has sent every animal away, and instead turns his course now towards the source of his uneasiness, determined to show no fear.

 

And so he is the second human to stand in the new clearing, to smell the faint aroma of old ashes and to behold the great black oak. And the first to tell anybody else about it, in the village he was travelling to: mutters and moans and curses when rolling around in a bad fever, finally just whispers before merciful death comes. The man who tends his sickness is also a carpenter of the village, and a story about a big black oak sends him to the woods as soon as he could leave the funeral of the hunter.

 

In his haste and excitement, he too travels straight as an arrow through the area permeated by the miasma of fear and appears to the clearing, looking upon the black oak with awe and craving. The tree looks like a carpenter’s dream, or a nightmare, and in the night he starts his work with it, bringing the mighty tree down after hours and hours of work. The wood appears to have qualities he has never seen before. A spark of imagination ignites in the carpenter’s weary head as he rests against the downed giant of a tree in the still hours of dawn, or perhaps the tree whispers to him, fallen but not truly dead. The carpenter falls asleep and starts to dream about swords...

 

Thus, the swords made of darkwood are born – an omen of fire, a lost shaman and a black oak heralded them, and as great as the signs were, they pale compared to with what follows. The carpenter presents his first sword to his chief, the Tir of the village (it’s name now lost in times, erased from all the books to shroud the evils of the past in the mist) and he accepts it gladly, seeing that it is a weapon of might, and names it Bloodthorn. It is the first, and so the most of the essence of the tree go to it, and it shines black and wails when drawn. A weapon fit for the chiefs: a true scythe of souls in a battle, magnificent symbol of leadership in peace.

 

So the other chiefs hear of the mighty weapon, and they see it when they gather to select the new Sjoentir, Chief of the Lake, and a craving is born in their hearts, similar to the one experienced by the carpenter when he first saw the black oak. One by one they come to meet with the maker of swords, as he is now known, and one by one they leave with lighter purses and heavier scabbards. Darkwood sword becomes the symbol of the chiefs and the heroes, and to carry one is to be something. There is only so much of the material fallen from the sky, though, and there comes the day when a warrior opens the door to the workshop of the maker and sees only the pale, dead body of the carpenter. The oak has transformed and needs the transformer no more.

 

The swords are done, and new as they are, they are thirsty, too. They whisper to their owners in the night, creating dreams of conquest and heroism, and peace starts to chafe all those chiefs and heroes. They walk around restlessly and watch the sea, trying to see the lands beyond. In the autumn, the longest trees of the Island start to fall. The chiefs want boats.

 

Winter comes and goes and spring, the time of the swords, starts. The black swords rise and fall in a countless of bloody raids, making heroes out of those who were just wealthy enough to buy one before, and elevating the true heroes of old to legendary status. A brotherhood of sword carriers seems to start out of nothing, a legion of heroes like the Island has never seen before. The spirits are high, and the star of the Phoenix Island seems to be on the rise. Blinded by the success and fortune in battle, only a few see the shadows lurking in the corners of the future...

 

While the sword carriers are waging war, everything is as it should be. The ancient debts to the gloomy folk of Ghamaast are paid in blood once and twice, some of the more bold seafarers venture out as far as Lam-Roo, and one successful raid against the wizards of Chaman is done, the only one in the memory of even the elders of the tribe. The berserks of the Phoenix Island bathe the nearby shores in blood and they do it well.

 

When the fires burn themselves out and the heroes return, a tension grows. First it is a mere hint of violence in the air, a side effect of the war, a battle returning to haunt as a nightmare. Then a sword carrier quarrels with a warrior, the warrior shouts to his wife, the wife to the children. Violence is now the other common language. The shamans speak first against the new way of diplomacy, but the tribes are as enchanted and ignore the wiser ones, and so they fade into the woods. The voice of the forest and reason is silenced.

 

The time of the swords ends, and then the time of the blood starts. Man is wary of another man, and no one trusts the peace of Djaenorl, the capital city, any more. Dead bodies bearing the wounds of a weapon, more often made by a sword than an axe are found. Phoenix Island turns upon itself, clawing and gnawing. And it grows worse every passing day: blood feuds, duels and drunken brawls, whole raiding parties killing themselves, dark shapes prowling the summer nights, deaths, deaths, deaths.

 

Eyes open, finally, to the wrongness of the situation, and some seek the guidance of the shamans, but they are nowhere to be found. In many places, nothing is done – the swords are in the hands of the leaders and heroes, and they speak through them: nothing is wrong. Still, it takes months for most to connect the Curse of the Phoenix Island (as it will be known) to the swords. Many of the too wise are slain in the night, and in some places pure terror paralyses the villages. To add to the destruction and chaos, the raided lands retaliate. Ghamaast sends it’s finest men, clad in metal and hardened in the mountain battles against orcs and trolls; from Lam-Roo comes a single attack aided by the mages of Chaman, an attack of raining fire and skilled knights leading their best man-at-arms. The forests of Phoenix Island are soaked in the blood and this time most of it is their own.

 

The last straw is the stories about the transformations. Travellers tell tales about chiefs (always of some distant village, left unnamed) leaving in the night, carrying their blood-soaked darkwood swords, and becoming as beasts, howling to the moon. The listeners touch their axes and pointedly look away from each other, wanting to doubt but knowing very well the truth. The separation of the axes and the swords starts.

 

It happens first in the south, where the swords are few and the axes hear disturbing tales from the north. The chief, the only warrior in a small village who is a sword, is confronted and he changes in front of the whole village, in front of a dozen warriors from other places, in the glaring and exposing light of the sun. The burly warrior roars as his flesh grows and twists into a new shaped, growing horns, muscles and thicker skin, turning into a monster. It is the beginning in the battle against the Curse, and this time the enraged axes bite deep and quick.

 

One victory is not much in this war, but it is the start. Axes travel south and join the tribal army surging north, killing the chiefs and heroes of the island, wiping out the new legends that had just born, and doing it with a righteous fury. Among the chaos, new heroes are born and die and entire villages burn to ashes and are lost - Phoenix Island pays for it’s folly, and it pays a dear price. Many of the dead are more fortunate than their living brothers and fathers, sisters and mothers. The War of the Curse walks over the island and turns it from a working tribal nation to a charnel house of nightmares...

 

...and after a long, dark night, the nightmare finally ends. It all started in few months and the disease spread fast, but now curing it takes longer. The actual war burns out in mere months, but half of the swords just fade out to the woods, and open warfare turns to a game of hunter and the hunted. From time of blood to the time of the shadows; and the shadows have teeth and claws, they stab with swords and drag you away to where ever they came. And so the Curse continues as a beast in the forest, a fear in the eye of a warrior and distrust toward any stranger.

 

“There was an end to it, aye, and I know that story too – but still, it is another story, the story of the last heroes of the axes, of the hunt and the final battle, of the great shaman and his sacrifice and of the green oak. Perhaps, I’ll tell that story too … some other day, that is. Now ye know the story of why we don’t use swords, lad, and beware of any of us who does. There might be a shard of the Curse still around...”