Champions of the Scarred Lands

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Excerpt from "Three Dreams of Belsameth" by James Stewart

Published in Champions of the Scarred Lands ©2001 White Wolf, Inc.

Even after 150 years sitting in the darkness of his ruined temple, I cannot remember the name of my dead god. It used to slip gladly from my lips each morning as the first rays of the sun shone in through the east windows and woke me. Now my people call him That Which Abides because we cannot remember calling him anything else. His destruction is so complete that even his divine name has been erased. Not even his most loyal priests can resurrect a memory of what we called him. But it feels like my own fault, like I have lost the name of my father. I awake each morning and feel like I've left something undone. Then I despair. It's a sorry thing to forget the name of your own god.

"Vladawen? Are you still in here, Vladawen?"

Someone calls to me from the darkness. The voice seems familiar. One of my own kind, elvish. A female voice. And a female shape, a red heat in the darkness.

I think it's my wife. "Avlana?"

"Will you be leaving the ruins of your mighty temple today, great Titanslayer? Isn't 150 years long enough to sulk in the dark?"

"The temple is as splendid as it ever was."

"It's an illusion, Vladawen. Your temple's blasted and ruined like everything else in Termana."

"I'd forgotten."

Avlana throws a rude heat gesture. Even in the dark, the exaggerated motion of her hand is plain to me. She threw it the last time she was here, or the time before. She seems upset.

"Have you also forgotten that we're forsaken? There's no time for this misery, Vladawen. You won't live forever."

I don't want to live forever.

"Your mother could have sewn two coats in the time you've spent here."

"Mother's dead."

Avlana throws the heat gesture for surrender. She turns toward the door of the temple, takes a few steps, then stops. With my darkvision, I see her reach toward something near her belt. In her hands are two cold blue spheres. She drops them on the floor. As they fall, they leave cerulean tracers in the darkness.

"Here's your food."

Looking to the door and back to the altar on which I sit, Avlana waits, like she expects me to say something. Like I have anything left to say to her or anyone else.

"By the way, Vladawen, I've been sleeping with Arimel for the last sixty years. We're getting married."

"Really. How many of those deformed wretches have you squeezed out for him? Do you steal away to human towns and swap them with human babies?"

"At least I'm doing something to preserve our people. What are you doing, Titanslayer? You're waiting to die."

"Haven't I done enough?"

"Destroyed a titan, lost a god. I realize now that what my father said is true: You're far better at destroying things than revering them."

I bolt off the altar onto my feet. I see Avlana's body explode with heat, turning from a dull red to the bright orange of fear as I streak toward her in the blackness. My knuckles meet her brow and she falls to the ground. She curls into a ball. A scream catches in Avlana's throat, a stifled choking sound in the dark. Cool blue rivulets wash down her face.

"No matter how hard you hit me, Vladawen, what I say is true. You've destroyed everything, including yourself."

Avlana's fingers splay across the floor. She lifts herself up into a sitting position. She cradles her head. She regains her voice. No scream, just a jagged sobbing. I kneel down and extend a hand toward her face. She bats it away.

"I should kill you for saying such a thing to me. But you're right," I whisper. She looks up at me. "I've been here too long. I've lost too many years. It is time for me to redeem myself. Get up now. Bring me my weapons and my boots."

Avlana stands and walks toward the entrance to the temple. She opens the inner doors. She walks to the outer door, turns the key and throws it wide. I see the sun for the first time in 150 years. Now it's my turn to cry.

"You want your weapons, Vladawen? Come out of the darkness and get them."

The sun floats low and orange at the edge of dusk. The light blinds me and I almost let slip the name of god but I stammer with uncertainty. Termana was once his land. I blink and, as though the last 150 years never passed, the land of That Which Abides lies before me.

Termana looks just like I remember it. Just like the days before the Divine War. The temple of That Which Abides-the home temple of my order, the host of our people's rituals for a thousand years-has lost none of its majesty. Around the steeple, lines of silver swirl in intricate spirals finer than fingerprints. The windows, thirty feet tall and three feet thick, depict the history of my people. That Which Abides, first among the gods, selecting the elves from all of the races to be his champion and the keeper of his ways. Jillian, the First King, returning from the hunt with the hide of Tanil's Fox. Hezra the Eunuch feeding Denev the Fruit of Winter. The league of elvenkind emerging triumphant from the war with the Saints of Black. Jillian's ghost returning the Amphitheater to sing the Song one last time, in the presence of Belsameth, goddess of the darkness, and her daughter Drendari, goddess of I forget.

But the temple lacks one window in particular, and this omission makes the rest of the story nothing more than a lie. There is no depiction of the titan Chern laying waste to That Which Abides. There is no depiction of the moment our race was forsaken; of the moment god's name was lost.

The glory of Termana is nothing more than an elaborate illusion; a closed coffin at the funeral to make us forget that what lies beneath is rotten and will soon be dust. Fake opulence conceals crumbling ruins. To see the windows of the temple as they truly are is to see a zigzagging mess of boards covering the holes where my kind's greatest art once stood. Half of the structures in Termana, intricate in their detail and sturdy beyond the limits of their stylish construction, are unfit for habitation. Even those buildings that survived the Divine War mostly intact still show hints of their ruin-a draft noticed in the night or a rain of shingles and rafters when a storm blows through. All of Termana's lies have such inconsistencies.

As I walk through the streets, my forsaken brothers and sisters stare at me as though I'm the most majestic of all of Termana's illusions. They look at me like some legend that just stepped out of its stain-glassed world. I avoid their gazes and walk with a solemn purpose, aloof, my posture telling the lie that I am the Vladawen they once knew.

My former home offers no false faces to the world. Even before I left for my mourning, I refused the wizards' illusions. Most of the second floor lies in charred tatters. Only a few support beams, splintered and burned, remain of my parent's chambers. The first floor remains inhabitable, but the inscriptions that my great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather spent 3,000 years carving into the rock are worn and unreadable. What remains of my house would seem dull and unadorned even in a human settlement.

When I enter my ancestral home, Armiel-who I have known since birth and expected to know until That Which Abides called the last dance-sits at my table. He is not my ancestor. Armiel looks like he doesn't know whether to hug me or dash my brains out with a rock. He takes three steps over to the doorway from the foyer to the dinner hall. He gives a false smile.

"Vladawen. You're back."

"Get me a drink."

Neither of us says another word until long after the sun has set. Armiel backs away from me toward the kitchen, never taking his eyes off my hands. He busies himself preparing me a mixture of ale and ganjus tincture. He finds other jobs to distract him while I drink. He takes hurried steps to the other side of my table and picks up a book, closes it, and puts it on a shelf. He stokes the fire. He takes his plates and flagon to the kitchen. He disappears up the stairs. I hear him arguing with Avlana. He returns a few minutes later, his false smile a little worn at the edges.

"Avlana's not feeling well, Vlad. She needs to sleep a little"

"I don't care Armiel. I really don't. Let's talk about That Which Abides."

"He's gone. Dead. Broken."

"I can fix that."

"No, you can't. He's gone, Vladawen. No one observes the old rituals. Even I can no longer bear to honor him. I feel almost embarrassed after after we failed him. The favor of That Which Abides is useless. All but the simplest of his blessings fail me. Yesterday I rebuked the ghost of a pit bull that haunted the mill, but my wounds were so severe that I had to see the physician afterward. When was the last time you invoked his aid?"

"Not since that day. Not one little spell. Not one."

"Nothing? Are even the first lessons of the temple lost to you? It must feel"

"Numb."

"That Which Abides used to be so generous with us. There used to be so many temples in Termana."

"And there will be again."

"Vladawen, the darkness has driven you mad."

Armiel grabs my glass and finishes the rest of my drink. Though the night is cool and dark, he sweats like a field hand. He turns away from me and stares into the fire. "How could you possibly do it, Vlad?"

"Begin in Ghelspad. Talk to our kin on Uria or Vera-Tre. I'll need my weapons."

"Some of the years during your sequester were hard years, Vlad. Most of them. We sold both weapons."

"To whom?"

"A black-haired stranger. A human woman. Pretty sure she was human. But that was fifty years ago."

"What about my boots?"

"Sold those too."

Armiel resumes his nervous fidget, as though I would allow him to steal my wife but not my boots.

"Be calm, Armiel. I will reclaim them later. It's more important that I leave tonight, immediately, before I decide to lock myself in the temple once more."

"Take me with you."

"No. But I'll take your boat."

Continued in Champions of the Scarred Lands.