Prologue: A singer is born

An icy wind whistled down from the crystal mountain peaks, chillingthe souls of those in the tiny troupe following a Path through the dreadedmountain range.  The wind wrapped slender fingers around their heartsand strove to break their will, but they continued on, ever steadily on,following the glimmer of light at their feet and stretching on ahead ofthem. Clouds hung low across the mountains and cast a dirty gray pall acrossthe barren mountainsides around them.

In the lead, a huge bear of a man broke the force of the windwith his massive frame. With his eyes opened only a crack, he pushed ahead,ever following the faint glow in the Path that led onward and marked theirpassing presence with its light. He pulled his heavy fur overcoat moretightly about himself and forced out his breath, feeling moisture freezeinstantly into his thick full beard.

In his shadow, a mere whisper of a boy of about eight, shivered, hunchinghis shoulders and weaving crookedly as the wind swirled about him, threateningto lift him up and fling him over the close-by edge. He hung tightly toa loop of rope tied about the big man’s waist ahead of him.

A sure footed, black harcat plodded along behind him, his own broadhead down and his long silky fur whipping about him. His thickly paddedpaws sent glittering sparks racing through the Path, and his narrow cateyes were completely closed against the fierce wind.

Seated astride his seven foot long body, a small, eight monthpregnant woman huddled within heavy quilts, thankful for the straps thatheld her in the saddle on the monster harcat’s back.  She could feelits long hair lashing against her in the wind.

In the rear, a young man, heavily coated, forced each foot tolead the other, while leaning on a long wooden staff and clutching theend of the longsuffering harcat’s tail. The steely strands of harcut hairwrapped around his hand threatened to cut into his numbed and frozen fingersas he wrapped them more tightly for better grip. The wind eddied abouthis broad, well muscled frame, forcing him to take crooked steps.  The light washed the color out of everything, and the wind howledin fury, striving to turn the small party back.

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As shadow darkness fell across a village, and in the strangelysubdued tavern there, nervous patrons glanced fearfully at the tightlyshuttered windows around the room, shutters that were rattling crazilywith the gale outside.  Though the town nestled comfortably in a hugecleft in the rock at the base of a towering crystal mountain, the windnevertheless sought them out and whistled mournfully in through cracksunder the eaves. A large fire, blazing brightly in the fireplace set intoone of the building’s heavy stone walls, did little to lift the sombermood.

When villagers came in the door, stomping snow off their boots,the wind raced through the room, seeking prey.  And when the dooralways slammed shut again, it jarred many nerves. Torches in brackets alongthe walls wove wicked spells across the captive audience. Mead flowed freely;the rugged folk there stared blankly down into their pewter mugs.

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Aboard the one sentinel space station satellite in orbit about the planet,scanners picked up massive energy buildups on planet’s surface below. Inpuzzled bewilderment, the two men manning the station studied the printouts,trying to comprehend the data, along with everything else that they knewabout this mysterious, forgotten planet.

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In a crystal palace set atop a hill, in the center of the nearlyflat, mountain ringed land, servants whispered fearfully with each other,each wondering what the times held for them.  In the upper corridors,the winds played a mournful song, and it echoed all down throughout torchlitrock and crystal hallways, clear down into the very heart of the castle.

“Why is the ether so stirred up, master?” Deep in the heart ofthe mighty fortress, in a cavern usually lit only by crystal light, a youngapprentice closed his eyes and vainly tried to understand what he vaguelysensed in the essence of the planet around him. Across the room, his master,an old and graying mage, studied the pages of an ancient leather boundvolume spread before him on a large, rough hewn table.  The old onelooked up after a moment and pushed his wire rimmed glasses back up onhis nose with a bony finger.  His white beard flowed down to shieldhis midnight blue garment from the light of a single candle hanging ina holder hung from the dark ceiling above.

“Well…” he cleared his throat, intently watching the boy seatedon a stool across him. The boy opened his eyes and leaned over to lookupside down at the flowing script in awe, trying again as ever to comprehendthe runic script. He looked back up after a moment.

“Well…” the mage began again, and took his glasses off his pointednose to breathe on them and wipe them carefully with the hem of his darkflowing robe. His nearly bald head reflected the candle flame’s silentlight. Thoughtfully, the wrinkles on his face growing deep, he finallycontinued.

“Something is happening to the balance of power in the ether,my son.  Only time will tell what has upset it.” The boy cocked hishead sideways, trying to understand, as he searched the mage’s bright eyes.

“Oh…”  He slid down off the stool and jumped nimbly overa three foot wide stream cut in the rock floor, that ran the length ofthe forty foot domed room, to disappear through a hole in the far rockwall. Racks of chemicals and rows of books lined the circular walls. Tablesoverflowing with glassware, scales, open books, and assorted equipmentfilled the rest of the room. The mage returned to his book.

Kneeling over the stream’s far edge, the boy peered down intoits rippling waters, trying to fathom once again all that the mage hadtaught him. “I feel it stronger now!” he almost whispered, and he lookedup at the mage, his eyes fearfully excited. The old one raised an eyebrowup over his glasses at his young apprentice.

“The mage gift is strong within you. Develop it carefully. Alwaysrespect its power, “ and he returned to his reading. In concentration,the boy narrowed his eyes, unfocusing them, staring off into space, balancedon the balls of his feets, his arms around his knees.

“I can feel it!” he whispered again to himself.

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Up in the mountains, the evening light began to wane, but evenin the descending darkness, the wind continued its relentless attack onthe figures and their harcat still following the Path.  It whistledthrough the rocks and blasted into their faces with all of its icy strength.

Before long, the big man in the lead signaled a halt and led themall to a nearby deep overhang, up the slope a little bit, back away fromthe cliff’s edge below. And not daring to pull crystal energy, he builta fire using his flint and tinder, using wood already stacked there, leftthere just for them and other weary travelers by monks belonging to a monasteryseveral mountains away. The four all gathered in close around the fireand stretched out their frozen fingers to its bright flames. Darkness fell.

Standing guard at the front of the overhang, the big man studiedthe dark, angry sky, feeling a sense of deep foreboding weighing heavyon his heart.  Behind him, the fire had died down to coals, and theman, woman, and boy all lay nestled snugly within the circle of the harcat’swarm body. Quilts covered them all.

As the night deepened, the big man saw that first lightning boltleap from a distant crystal mountain peak, to reach high into the cloudsto explode there in a beautiful starry pattern.  He drew in a suddendeep breath.

Soon a second mountain did the same thing, and he rubbed his armstogether, feeling goose bumps popping out all over his skin inside hisgarments. A third mountain fired, and he could hear a distant rumble ofthunder. A fourth quickly followed suit, and soon the sky lased with anangry blue light, as each mountain fired off its energy.  Here andthere too, a bolt of light would streak across between two or more mountaintops simultaneously, and heavy thunder would rumble through the ground.The hair on the back of the big man’s neck stood on end.  His senseof foreboding grew. The wind howled, and the dark clouds above glowed faintlywith pale blue light.

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In orbit, the station’s computers scrambled to collect and analyzethe data coming in.

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In the middle of the strange night, the woman’s baby was born.The other youngster slept through it, curled up between the calm harcat’sfront paws. Gently, the big man delivered the tiny baby boy while the youngerman looked on, his eyes bright, yet worried.  At the child’s first cry, the crystal embedded in the overhangwalls screeched an awful note; it nearly sent the big man into convulsions. Then the child was quiet, and stayed that way the rest of the night.  Towards morning, the wind died down, but lightning continuedto fill the sky. Watching from the edge of the overhang, the young boyand big man could both feel the stillness and hear the continually roaringof thunder high in the heavens above and around them. Behind them, thenewborn child nursed quietly.

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In the dark castle at the center of the land, a girl child wasborn to a sickly queen about that same hour. With the newborn babe in herarms, the queen kissed her tiny daughter, spoke a blessing on her, andclosed her own eyes forever. In fear, the midwife snatched the babe outof the dead woman’s arms and stole away, hoping against hope to break anancient curse.

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“What do you make of it?” one of the two men manning the satellitestation spoke, still watching the lightning display far below them on thedark side of the strange planet’s surface.  Dawn approached.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. It defies explanation!” Soberly,the first man nodded in agreement, turning back to stare at his computerscreen as he rubbed his tired eyes briefly.

***********

They spent the day under the overhang, the tiny troupe followingthe Path through the crystal heights. After eating the last of their provisions,the two men, with the youngster between them, sat at the entrance of theiroverhang and watched the dark and angry sky. Ominous clouds blocked outthe sun, and a strange silence filled the air. Lightning continued to fillthe heavens and distant thunder surrounded them.  The woman continued to nurse her newborn quietly off and on,regaining her own strength. Restlessly, the harcat paced the small area,his ears flattened back against his head; low rumbling came from deep insidehim.

“What do you think?” the young man spoke quietly to his big olderbrother. After a quiet minute, the big man began to idely run his fingersthrough his thawed out beard.

“I think something happened last night, and that only time willtell what it portends. Something important. Something with eternal consequences.”The youngster’s eyes grew wide and he glanced up at his uncle. His ownfather said nothing. The big man’s knack for reading the ether was notoften incorrect. The big man continued.

“And your new son,” he paused to glance back over his shoulderat his brother’s wife now sleeping against the harcat in exhaustion. “Bothof your son’s destinies are wrapped up in whatever happened. Their lifeforce resounds with each roll of thunder that we hear.

The youngster glanced up and looked back and forth between hisuncle’s and father’s faces, seated on either side of him. What they spokeof meant little to him, but he filed it away anyway. He returned his gazeback out the sullen panorama before them.

They spent that night too in the overhang, opting to wait fordaylight, in hopes for better traveling weather. Lightning continued tofill the sky, though its intensity finally began to subside.  Throughoutthe night, the youngster repeatedly awoke to what he thought was somebodycalling out to him. But each time that he awoke, the voices retreated intothe darkness, and the distant sounds of the wind and thunder still in thepeaks above drifted down to him. It made him restless. His uncle’s bigsilhouette filled the entrance of the overhang, and the harcat seemed tensetoo, not at all relaxed. His stomach rumbled, empty.

At first light, the lightning faded completely, and even the winddied away too, leaving behind a deathly silence that threatened to deafenthem as they ventured forth. A high ceiling of unbroken clouds hid thesun, and again, the gray light cast a somber pall across the icy landscapeof barren mountains.  In absolute silence, they followed the Path, and even the lightin the crystal that marked their passing seemed somehow subdued. Theirfootsteps crunching in the thin layer of snow that now blanketed the groundsounded loud in the stillness, and their footprints faded into nothingnessbehind them. They continued south, crossing finally through a high passabout the fourth hour of that afternoon.

Before them, more mountains stretched away to the south, but thesemountains had forests and rivers, birds and animals. And in the far distance,the end of the mountains beckoned to them.

They started down, and ahead, the Path led beneath colossal tressthat loomed up before them.

Taking deep breaths, they stepped finally into the shadow of themighty monoliths that stretched a good two hundred feet over their heads.And as the evening light began to fade, they made camp in the hollow belowa hill that rose up near the Path. Pine needles and leaves covered theforest floor with a thick spongy carpet that muffled their every sound.

That night, the youngster heard the voices again, and awoke. Theydidn’t go away. He slowly climbed up from between the harcat’s two frontpaws.  Their harcat opened one baleful eye and watched him a moment,before closing it again and returning to sleep. The voices, quiet, driftingto him on the breeze, continued. He crept away from his family’s camp towardsthem through the trees.

A short distance away, he came to a complete stop, and froze inplace near the Path. Nearby, he could sense a long shape glide slowly pasthim in the darkness, and where the huge beast’s broad feet touched thePath, splashes of fire spread through the crystal with brilliant color,stronger than the youngster had ever seen before.  Then another shadow, darker in color, twenty feet long, alsoglided by in the near darkness in silence, also oblivious to his presence.The mental voices surrounded him with unintelligible babble, and he heldvery still, watching the shadows slide past him, another and another. Theirbreaths glowed with luminous light, and their ponderous steps seemed somehowgraceful.

Long after the last of fifteen silent shadows had passed him by,the youngster stayed frozen in place, breathing slowly. In vain, he listenedfor their sound again, trying to understand it all. But the unintelligiblevoices in his mind slowly faded away, and he eventually returned to hismeager bedroll and harcat.  The next day, still without any food inside them, they continuedon in silence, and the woman’s strength began to flag. On and on they continued,going more slowly by the hour, up and down and over the endless mountainridges, always following the faint markings and light of the Path beneaththe forest floor. Their pace continued to slow.

The young man finally shot a deer with his bow near sundown, andthey feasted in continued silence. The baby remained unusually quiet.

That night, they all awoke suddenly to the sounds of a terriblestruggle between creatures unknown, not far away. Horrible screams andangry snarls rang and echoed through the forest, and in the distance throughthe trees, flashes of fire and brilliant light flickered and shone to them.They all stayed very still.

With one final scream of anguish, the struggle ceased and theforest fell silent once again; they heard nothing more. Nobody slept muchthe rest of that night, and the harcat disappeared into the darkness neardaybreak.

Cautiously, they continued their journey at first light, hurryingthrough the forest with unbidden haste.  The harcat rejoined themabout midmorning.

When they finally reached the edge of the mountains near sundown,they ended their frantic rush and breathed easier, before descending downout of the dreaded mountains to their home below. The newborn continuedto nurse off and on, in complete silence, never crying once.