Prologue
Prologue
The oak called me.
From as long as I could remember, its song had lulled me. And it was its magic, heavy in the air, which pushed me to go running into the forest that my mother had forbidden me to enter.
“Prudence! Prudence, come back!” she called, rushing after me.
I was already too far away, and I kept going, determined to follow this voice that sung for me, and me alone.
“Prudence!”
The call of my mother became a faraway sound, more panicked, and I hesitated. I slowed down my run and tripped between the roots of trees thousand times older than the village where we lived. In front of me, small blue flowers shook in the breeze. The voice carried by the wind resonated louder and louder and made the star-shaped burgeons dance.
I was about to pluck a few when my mother arrived, panting.
“Prudence! Don’t run away like that! You know you are forbidden to go too far into the forest!”
She came closer to help me up. I ignored her words to point at the bed of fascinating flowers:
“What flower is it?”
“Forget-me-nots,” she answered after recognising the plant.
I wanted to bring back some to the inn when we heard horses approaching. My mother’s face darkened. In an instant, she picked me up in her arms and stood up to run as fast as possible. She only made it a few steps away when horsemen arrived and surrounded us to block our path. Their green and blue armours merged into the landscape. They rode in circles around us, like a threatening carousel.
“Taŵth da’kashä faneirkes!” the first elf ordered in his language.
“Kalä’keh, ir…” my mother stammered, looking for the little vocabulary she had in elvish, “I had no intention of doing any wrong! Please pardon me! I am Catherine Bunker, the innkeeper at the entrance of the village of Lamania!” she continued.
Silence echoed, smothering even the faraway song that I was the only one to hear. We couldn’t distinguish the face of the elf, hidden behind his helmet. His voice remained hard, even when he spoke in the common tongue:
“What are you doing here? You are beyond the border of the Kingdom of Belo. The access to Lómáwen is forbidden to strangers.”
“I didn’t mean any harm! It’s… it’s my daughter’s birthday and she… she ran into the forest.”
The elf turned his attention towards me. He raised his hand and immediately, the half-dozen of horsemen stopped. The wind shook the trees.
“An ek silmalari othi lelöri, maïke ŵth af bogirkes,” he ordered to two of his men, “My companions will accompany you to the border. Do not come back. Times are dangerous.”
My mother hurried to follow the two guards on their rides. They accompanied us beyond the bridge that crossed the river Calnaïa marking the frontier between the Kingdom of Belo and the elven lands of Lómáwen. Our village stood at the crossroad of four great countries and the roads were always crowded with merchants… but for the first time, an endless line of dwarves, walked through the hills. Their expressions were dark and miserable, their faces were covered with dirt and stricken by tears still humid. They weren’t merchants, but entire families, soldiers, wounded carried in chariots that had been filled with as many personal objects as possible…
My mother held be closer against her. More than the dread of this vision of exode, I clearly remembered the absolute distress on her face.
“What… what is happening?” she asked in a breath.
One of the elves who had accompanied us turned towards us with a distraught expression.
“The Empire of Sombor has decided to attack. The dwarven Kingdom of Dharndum has fallen. Those are the survivors, they are surely looking for asylum with the dwarves of Mulrim. From now on, do not enter the territory of Lómáwen without authorisation… we will not be as merciful the next time.”
My mother ran to the little hill at the top of which the crowded inn stood. A few dwarves were there, telling stories of battles and the escape, the terrifying orcs and the anguish of having lost their families and friends. The few merchants who had crossed the border of the Kingdom of Belo, and almost the entire village of Lamania, had gathered to listen to their horrifying tales. My mother, and the rest of the family of the inn, were busy and she sent me to my bedroom, to not hear all these stories. Instead of going to my room, I kept climbing to the attic to open the window turned northward. The endless line of the fallen people spread to the edge of the horizon, where black smoke still rose, far, far away beyond the expanse of hills that I couldn’t quite comprehend yet.
I was only five years old when I witnessed this event. And even though it belonged to the history of Dareia, a dark and sad line for the fallen dwarves, I was too young to understand the horror that I was witnessing. The vision of this procession of dwarves shattered by the loss of their kingdom continued to haunt me.
