White Order
IX
The white mages, powerful in the paths of peace and wary of war, girded their robes and invoked the hopes of peace... but all were doomed.
For Nylan, the dark angel, again lifted his hands, and he unbound the Accursed Forest of Naclos, and the forest rewarded him, and rendered back unto him the fires of Heaven and the rains of death. And Nylan laughed and cast those fires and rain across the west of Candar. And Ayrlyn sang songs that wrenched soul from soul and heart from body.
The Mirror Lancers found their light lances turned upon them, and the very earth rose and smote them, and the righteousness of the white mages was for naught as their glasses exploded before them, and death rained upon all...
The very ground heaved, and... the Grass Hills were seared into the Stone Hills, so dry that nothing lives there to this day ...
The few white mages who remained, they slipped away to the east, far across the Westhorns, and even beyond the Easthorns, fearing that the west of Candar was no place for the goodness of white.
Indeed, they were sore justified in their fears, for the demon women of Tower Black, the heart of the evil kingdom of Westwind, grasped the Westhorns as a constricting snake seizes its prey. Their metalled roads pinioned the very peaks, and all trade bowed to their black blades.
The dark forests of Naclos swelled back over their former domain, those lands that the ancient white mages had freed, and the forests once again swallowed the lands in darkness. Therein dwelt the evil druid Nylan and the songmage Ayrlyn, and their offspring made Naclos their own, and the shadows of their power shaded all of Candar from the Westhorns to the Great Western Ocean.
... and in the fullness of time came the white mages to Fairhaven, to begin again the struggle to reclaim all of Candar from the grip of darkness...
Colors of White
(Manual of the Guild at Fairhaven)
Preface