Silverthorn (Riftware Sage Book 2)

“The gwali come to us again because they say they don’t like the place they lived in anymore. It is hard to make sense of them at times, but we know they came from the north.

 

“What you have told us, Prince Arutha, causes us deep concern. First, because we share your sorrow. Second, because the manifestations you tell of bespeak a power of great evil with a long reach and far-flung minions. But most of all, because of our own ancient history.

 

“Long before we drove the moredhel from our forests, for taking to the Dark Path of Power, the elven people were one. Those of us who lived in the forests were farther from our masters, the Valheru, and because of this were less attracted to the intoxication of power dreams. Those of us who lived close to our masters were seduced by those dreams and became the moredhel.” He looked to the Queen and Tomas, and both nodded. “What is little spoken of is the cause of our divorcement from the moredhel, who once were our blood. Never before has any human been told all.

 

“In the dark era of the Chaos Wars, many changes in the lands occurred. From the people of the elves, four groups rose.” Martin leaned forward, for as much as he knew elvenkind, more than almost any man alive, this was all new to him. Until this moment he had always believed only the moredhel and elves were the sum total of elvenkind. “The most wise and powerful, numbering the greatest Spellweavers and scholars, were the eldar. They were the caretakers for all that their masters had plundered from across the cosmos, arcane works, mystical knowledge, artifacts, and riches. It was they who first began fashioning what is now Elvandar, lending it magic aspect. They vanished during the Chaos Wars, for they were among our masters’ first servants, and it is supposed that, being very close to them, they perished with them. Of the elves and Brotherhood of the Dark Path, the eledhel and moredhel in our tongue, you know something. But there were yet other kin of ours, the glamredhel, which name means ‘the chaotic ones’ or ‘the mad ones.’ They were changed by the Chaos Wars, becoming a nation of insane, savage warriors. For a time elves and moredhel were one, and both were warred upon by the mad ones. Even after the moredhel were driven from Elvandar, they remained the sworn enemy of the glamredhel. We speak little of these days, for you must remember that while we speak of eledhel, moredhel, and glamredhel, all elvenkind is one race, even to this day. It is simply that some of our people have chosen a dark way of life.”

 

Martin was astonished. For all he knew of elven culture, he had, like other humans, always supposed the moredhel a race apart, related to the elves but somehow different. Now he realized why the elves had always been reticent in discussing their relationship to the moredhel. They saw them as being one with themselves. In an instant Martin understood. The elves mourned the loss of their brothers to the lure of the Dark Path.

 

Tathar continued. “Our lore tells of the time when the last great battle in the north was fought, when the armies of the moredhel and their goblin servants at last crushed the glamredhel. The moredhel rampaged, obliterating our mad cousins in a terrible war of genocide. Even to the smallest infant, the glamredhel were supposedly slaughtered, lest they again rise and challenge the supremacy of the moredhel. It is the single blackest shame in the memory of our race that one segment of our people utterly destroyed another.

 

“But what concerns you is this: at the heart of the moredhel host stood a company called the Black Slayers, moredhel warriors who had renounced their mortality to become monsters with but one purpose: to kill for their master. Once dead, the Black Slayers rise again to do their master’s bidding. Once risen from the dead, they may be halted only by magic means, by utterly destroying the body, or cutting the hearts from out of their bodies. Those who rode against you on the road to Sarth were Black Slayers, Prince Arutha.

 

“Before the battle of obliteration, the moredhel had already gone far down the Dark Path, but something caused them to descend to these new depths of horror, the Black Slayers and the genocide. They had become a tool of an insane monster, a leader who sought to emulate the vanished Valheru and bring all the world under his dominion. It was he who had gathered the moredhel under his banner and who had given rise to the abomination that was the Black Slayers. But in that last battle he was wounded unto death, and with his passing the moredhel ceased to be a nation. His captains gathered and sought to determine a successor. They quickly fell out with one another and became much like the goblins— tribes, clans, families, never able to combine under one leader for long. The siege of Carse Keep, fifty years past, was but a skirmish compared to the might the moredhel mustered under this leader. But with his passing, an era of moredhel might came to an end. For he was unique, a charismatic, hypnotic being of strange abilities, able to weld the moredhel into a nation.