Thorald smiled at me. The preparations are almost ready. My people have allowed me to come to talk to you. And to eat.
I stood up.
Stay seated, please. You need to eat, and then rest. We have war ahead of us. I need to ask you some questions, but I promised my wife and niece that I would not pry your head until your stomach was full.
It’s getting full fast. But I can put a little more in.
Thorald chuckled. You will be able to sleep it off tonight, in any case.
Helga came in from the kitchen with more food. The smell of vegetables and spices filled the room. I hope you have room f
or one of my pies. They are very fortifying. We Kriek do not eat meat, but they are filled with root vegetables and mushrooms, that will give you strength for the battle ahead.
The battle. Everything always came back to that. And would I be able to release my parents from the spell that enchained them? Probably not, I thought. If the dark lord would not engage himself, as the others thought, he could not be defeated. We can defeat his army, but we cannot defeat the dark lord. Not yet.
I had not meant to think aloud. After all the shielding I had practiced with Elias, it was embarrassing to have let my worries slip out.
Thorald looked me straight in the eyes. Even a small defeat for the dark lord would be a great victory for you and the Kriek, Anders. For too long now he has terrorized the country, and thought himself invulnerable. But you worry about your parents. Woltan’s family will take care of them, of that I am sure. And if we are victorious, this victory will not be our last.
I thought I was supposed to be trained here; how can I fight wizards when I know little more than how to swing a sword?
Thorald paused for a moment, and looked first at his wife, then at his niece before answering. Your blood knows what your mind knows not.
Kara nodded. It is time for you to read from the book of Id, Anders. Here, now, in this room. It is not a long book, but reading it will fill your mind, and what is in your blood will then be in all of you… So speaks the prophecy — as your sword was made whole in the reforging, so shall your body and mind, your blood and brain be made whole in the reading.
But... how will I read it?
We will read the first few lines together. You should be able to read the rest on your own. The script is similar to what you read on the pillars. Today you will read it, and Kara will share your reading, and tomorrow you will fly into battle. Together.
Thorald put an old leather and gold bound book in front of me. And then Kara spoke out loud, in an old tongue: “We will begin on the first page, Anders, and read without stopping. Drink one last draught, for this is no ordinary, casual reading. We will realign your body — your blood and brain will be separated no more.”
Helga filled my cup, and I drank. My stomach was full of food; my mouth and throat were wet; my skin was clean; I felt warm, and I felt ready.
I nodded to Kara, and spoke: “I am ready.”
She opened the book, and we began to read; she held my finger under the characters that swam before me. Slowly I pronounced syllable after syllable with Kara. Gradually we went faster and faster, and in my mind I heard a tale that was in my blood already, and now filled my entire body and mind: the tale of the three races, of the dragons, of the demons of the many levels, of battles, of the trolls, and the kobolds, and the goblins. And the fairies, and the djinn, and the demons once again. There were instructions for the raising of fairies, incantations to control the djinn, and spells to bring forth all but the highest level demons. But all that seemed little more than an introduction for what came after. The fall, the lost ages, and the new age to come.
The prophecy.
The old tongue now seemed almost as clear as the language I had learned at my mother’s feet years ago. We must have been reading already for hours, but my throat and tongue remained wet and the words flowed fluidly from my lips. The words of the fall and the future flowed from my lips:
“As all of the knowledge falls now into darkness, as the connections between the nations that were our strength are now lost, so then all of our past and our future is in this book that you hold in your hands. The wars between what the grey lord stirred up from the deep and the rest of humanity will end with a dark age that will last a millennium. With my ancient art of seersight I see a thousand years of darkness and confusion; the great city of Duln will be forgotten; the merpeople’s underwater homeland will be lost to dark sea creatures of the deep, and fall into ruin; and when the creatures die the merpeople will return, but their city will never be the same; its written art and culture, along with most of its magic, its machines all will be destroyed.”
“In the forgotten city the once proud race of Duln, those who survive the goblin wars and the attacks of the 6th plane demons, will forget most of their history and allow many lines of magic to be forgotten. And in the Black forest, where once at Freiburg the princes of the Kriek sat in their royal halls, there will be flames and destruction and nothing will remain except the royal family and those who serve them; and they will become people of the forest. They will retain their magic, and this book, but their days of finery will be over, forever. They will become one with the forest and be forgotten or feared by the rest of the world. The dragons, the proud race that once worked in harmony with men to rid the world of evil and make it safe for all, will withdraw to the mountains of Yslien, to guard the great mountain passage and wait for the world to turn again. Even for the longest lived of races, the wait will be long, painful and tiresome.”
“Instead of battles, they will have only rogue demons to break the long tedium. Their symbiotic relation with humans will be over, until the new era. The great dragon magic, that flourished in the thousand years that they worked freely with humans to protect the world, will be all but forgotten, left only in their blood memory. The magic of faerie, that flourished for a thousand years, since the princes of humankind and faerie made their alliances, will be lost to humankind. Only a few swords will remain, and the art of their use will be all but forgotten. The pixies will grow bored and sullen, and forget their ties to humankind. But their memories are stronger, and their lives much longer.
“Then there will come into being a new era, in which a dark lord attempts to turn the chaos of the old world into the order of his new evil. And he will bring terror onto the land, but one prince, a blood relation, will rise up against him. And this prince will be of three bloodlines, and he will reunite them: the Kriek and the city that was forgotten and the merpeople will one by one accept him as one of their own, and he shall wield a sword, reforged from those of the great blood lines, and the sword shall sing in his hand. He shall reestablish contact with the dragons, and fight with them against the dark lord. And the dark lord shall not engage himself until the final battle… And the end will be definitive.”
I closed the book.
“And the end will be definitive? What is that supposed to mean?”
Thorald smiled a faint thin smile. Prophecies cannot be complete, the future cannot be completely written until it is lived. We have studied this last line with all our art. We believe it means that only you or the dark lord will survive, that either the dark lord will perish along with his evil forces, or… he will survive.
And we will perish.
Thorald shook his head. We won’t perish. This is an era of change, after all. And we feel it is change for the good. We all feel it, even you, Anders, if you examine your heart. There is hope in the air, for the first time in our memory.