Sons of Ironstorm - Book 1: Griffon's Rise

Chapter 7: Seer

                                    “A protector of secrets was his calling and his destiny.

                                    The guardian of the past, present and future of the world.

                                    He would walk in the shadows, blinded by reason

                                    until the world stands in danger of ultimate darkness.

                                    Only then will he flee with a warning to the north.”

                                                - from the Kata Na’Sylvinor’s ‘Book of Fates’

 He groaned and blinked away the last vestiges of the vision that had filled his veins with ice and his soul with foreboding.  What madness has reached from the Abyss to embrace them??

Far to the north of Tal Morun and its bewildered king, in a land of brooding hills of weathered stone and ancient forests of evergreen, a pinnacle of stone was illuminated by Ri’im’s renewed embrace.  While tall and majestic as it reached for the sky, the forces of nature didn’t shape this pinnacle, not rough and ready weather nor smooth and steady erosion.  No this turret, this tower of gray granite had been fashioned by skilled and dedicated hands, a great work of craft that rivaled the natural towers of distant Akana Zuthdar, the Mountains of the Giant’s Teeth and the nearer peaks of Akana Yatual in its height and strength.

Beneath the watchful eye of this great and mighty tower, raised in the continent’s very heart sprouted smaller towers and places of craft, fashioned from living stone into dwellings and out buildings, a veritable village huddled at the tower’s feet.  Few in that village, built to serve the tower and its inhabitants, had climbed to the tower’s very top in its many long cycles of existence. 

If they had this day, however, they would’ve found a slender man, dressed in a sleeveless tunic, snowy white shirt and comfortably loose leather breeches, the laces of his tunic undone in the early spring heat, slumped against one of the many bookshelves that crowded the topmost chamber.  The man’s thick white, close cropped hair, usually well groomed, was in disarray from his rough fall against the bookshelf.

Unsteadily the man pushed away from the bookshelf to stand once again on the well-worn wooden floor near the chamber’s northern wall.  And thus he was fully revealed in the light that now streamed in through several of the handful of windows that pierced the tower’s thick, stone walls.

A tall fellow, lean and athletic beneath his loose clothing, the man had the appearance of a human male.  But if one were to look closer, examine the detail of his visage, they would quickly see that this man was no human.  The almond-shaped eyes, upward sweeping brows, high cheekbones and chiseled jaw, and the pointed ears belonged on no human.  Nor did the strange flecks of what looked like metal floating in lazy circle around the man’s irises.  Normally paradoxically both penetrating and distant, the sharp blue eyes were now misty with confusion and fear.  Sensations and emotions that were only heightened by what he sensed approaching the village from the south, moving swiftly through the ether towards them.

Ignoring the crowded study all around him, the chamber bursting at the seams from the multitude of books, scrolls and other paraphernalia that filled it wall to wall, including a small telescope pointed out a northern window, heaped about by star charts that listed visible stars and diagrams that showed their locations in the sky in all four seasons, the lean man turned towards the chamber’s only door.  On either side of the south-facing portal stood chart shelves, each a set of diagonal boxes attached to each other, each box holding a chart or map in a oiled leather case for protection against the elements.  Each shelf stood easily as tall as the slender man and many of the maps coiled inside their protective leather tubes within were older by far.