When his brother had told him about finding this world, Gulamendis had been half-convinced that Laro was either feigning the discovery or perhaps deluding himself, but one breath here and he knew: this was Home.
There was a resonance in the air, a feeling of solidity underfoot, of being in touch with something fundamental, a faint but almost palpable energy that seeped into the core of his being. This was the world upon which his race evolved, the very core of their existence began here. Emotions he thought he no longer possessed rose up and threatened to sweep him away. It took him a moment to take another breath and step away.
‘It strikes everyone that way,’ said a voice to his right. Gulamendis saw a magician named Astranour standing beside the gate. He was an aremancer, one who specialized in creating and controlling the translocation portals and transporting devices employed by the taredhel. ‘My wife wept when we arrived.’ Looking out over the valley, he said, it is . . . remarkable.’
Gulamendis nodded, saying nothing as he looked down the trail - now a road - to the walls of the city. He remembered his brother’s brief description of the valley, but what he saw now was something entirely unexpected. With a cursory farewell to Astranour, Gulamendis moved purposefully down the hillside.
Massive walls had been erected, already encompassing a third of the vast valley floor. The geomancers would have exhausted themselves and their apprentices to accomplish so much in so little time. Not too far away, at the end of the wall, he witnessed half a dozen geomancers enchanting massive piles of rocks, moving them into place with their minds; others readied spells that would cause the stones’ fundamental essence to flow into a liquid, be coaxed into any shape the magicians desired, and then re-hardened. The magic was complex, requiring decades of study, and the force it required and the artistry employed always impressed Gulamendis. Basic rock was not simply turned into building material, it was lent a beauty and elegance that was the hallmark of the taredhel. The wall was an off-white colour, topped with a parapet, but the merlons between the crenels were a deep yellow. From a distance, they looked white and gold. Barely a tenth complete, and their new city already spoke of its future splendour. It would be the new capital for all elvenkind on this world.
In less than a week the outlines of the new settlement could be seen. He had heard people call it, ‘e’bar’, home in the ancient language, and suspected that might come to be its official name, no matter what the Regent’s Meet might decide. As he walked, Gulamendis could sense the magic everywhere, a faint vibration in the fundamental fabric of this space, what the mancers called ‘the loops of being’. All around him, elven will was being imposed on rock and mud; vast boulevards were being cleared, with flashes of blinding white light, and he could only imagine the heat as the incendiari, the magicians specializing in fire magic, burned away acres of undergrowth and detritus. Arboris had already worked their arts on the trees, commanding them to uproot and walk to their desired locations.
Gulamendis understood the scope of his people’s power, he had seen evidence of it all his life, but never before had he witnessed so many practitioners of the arcane arts expending their skills so vigorously at the same time. It was positively intoxicating.
As he watched, Gulamendis saw a team of drovers divert their carts down a pathway towards a levelled patch of land. The building pad had been fashioned with magic only hours before; the geomancers completing in minutes what picks, shovels, and drags would have taken hours to accomplish.
The massive horses were urged forward slowly, while the cleverly contrived carts gently tipped, depositing large rocks on the ground in a roughly straight line. Gulamendis lingered, fascinated by the unfamiliar magic. These masters of the arcane controlled the very stuff of the world: the rock, soil, crystal and sand.