Many years of peace followed. From their fortresses in the Ring Mountains, the Ishroi of Si?l guarded the Ark. Whether the Inchoroi lived still or had perished, no one knew. C?’jara Cinmoi grew old, for the Nonmen of those days were still mortal. His eyesight dimmed, and his once-mighty limbs began to fail him. Death whispered to him.
Then Nin’janjin returned. Invoking the ancient codes, he appeared before C?’jara Cinmoi begging Mercy and Penance. When the High King of Si?l bid Nin’janjin come near so he might see him, he was astonished to discover his old adversary had not aged. Then Nin’janjin revealed his true reason for coming to Si?l. The Inchoroi, he said, were too terrified of C?’jara Cinmoi’s might to leave their Ark, so they dwelt in confinement and misery. They had sent him, he claimed, to sue for peace. They wished to know what tribute might temper the High King’s fury.
To which C?’jara Cinmoi replied: “I would be young of heart, face, and limb. I would banish Death from the halls of my people.”
The Second Watch was disbanded and the Inchoroi moved freely among the C?nuroi of Si?l, becoming their physicians. They ministered to all, dispensing the remedies that would at once make the Nonmen immortal and doom them. Soon all the C?nuroi of E?rwa, even those who had initially questioned C?’jara Cinmoi’s wisdom, had succumbed to the Inchoroi and their nostrums.
According to the Is?phiryas, the first victim of the Womb-Plague was Hanalinq?, C?’jara Cinmoi’s legendary wife. The chronicler actually praises the diligence and skill of the High King’s Inchoroi physicians. But as the Womb-Plague killed more and more C?nuroi women, this praise becomes condemnation. Soon all the women of the C?nuroi, wives and maidens both, were dying. The Inchoroi fled the Mansions, returning to their ruined vessel.
Ishroi from across E?rwa answered C?’jara Cinmoi’s call to war, even though many held the High King responsible for the deaths of their beloved. Grieved almost to madness, the High King led them through the Ring Mountains and arrayed them across the Inniür-Shigogli, the “Black Furnace Plain.” Then he laid Hanalinq?’s corpse before the unholy Ark and demanded the Inchoroi answer his fury.
But the Inchoroi had not been idle over the long years since the Battle of Pir Pahal. They had delved deep into the earth, beneath the Inniür-Shigogli and out into the Ring Mountains. Within these galleries they had massed hordes of twisted creatures unlike any the C?nuroi had ever seen: Sranc, Bashrags, and mighty Dragons. The Ishroi of the Nine High Mansions of E?rwa, who had come to destroy the diminished survivors of Pir Pahal, found themselves beset on all sides.
The Sranc withered before the sinew and sorcery of the Ishroi, but their numbers seemed inexhaustible. The Bashrags and the Dragons exacted a horrifying toll. More terrible still were those few Inchoroi who ventured out into battle, hanging above the tumult, sweeping the earth with their weapons of light, apparently unaffected by the sorceries of the Ishroi. After the disaster of Pir Pahal, the Inchoroi had seduced the practitioners of the Aporos, who had been forbidden from pursuing their art. Poisoned by knowledge, they devised the first of the Chorae to render their masters immune to C?nuroi magic.
But all the heroes of E?rwa stood upon the Black Furnace Plain. With his bare hands, Ci?gli the Mountain, the strongest of the Ishroi, broke the neck of Wutte?t the Black, the Father of Dragons. Oirinas and Oir?nas fought side by side, working great carnage among the Sranc and Bashrag. Ingalira, the hero of Si?l, strangled Vshikcr?, mighty among the Inchoroi, and cast his burning body into the Sranc.
The mighty closed with the mighty, and innumerable battles were fought. But no matter how hard the Inchoroi pressed, the C?nuroi would yield no ground. Their fury was that of those who have lost wives and daughters.
Then Nin’janjin struck down C?’jara Cinmoi.
The Copper Tree of Si?l fell into pitching masses of Sranc, and the C?nuroi were dismayed. Sin’niroiha, the High King of Nihrimsul and Ishori?l, fought his way to C?’jara Cinmoi’s position, but found only his headless body. Then the hero Gin’g?rima fell, gored by a Dragon. And after him Ingalira, who had been the first to lay eyes upon the Inchoroi. Then Oirinas, his body sundered by an Inchoroi spear of light.
Realizing their plight, Sin’niroiha rallied his people and began fighting his way into the Ring Mountains. A greater part of the surviving C?nuroi followed him. Once clear of their foe, the glorious Ishroi of E?rwa fled, gripped by a mad fear. Either too weakened or suspecting a trap, the Inchoroi did not pursue.
For five hundred years the C?nuroi and the Inchoroi waged a war of extermination, the C?noroi to avenge their murdered wives and the eventual death of their race, and the Inchoroi for reasons they alone could fathom. No longer did the C?nuroi speak of the Inc?-Holoinas, the Ark-of-the-Skies. Instead they spoke of Min-Uroikas, “the Pit of Obscenities”—what would later be called Golgotterath by Men. For centuries it seemed the abominations had the upper hand, and the poets of the Is?phiryas record defeat after defeat. But slowly, as the Inchoroi exhausted their fell weapons and relied more and more on their vile slaves, the C?nuroi and their Halaroi servants gained the advantage. Then at long last the surviving Ishroi of E?rwa trapped the last of their diminished foe within the Inc?-Holoinas. For twenty years they warred through the Ark’s labyrinthine halls, finally hunting the last of the Inchoroi into the deep places of the earth. Unable to destroy the vessel, Nil’giccas instructed the remaining Quya to raise a powerful glamour about the hated place. He and the surviving kings of the Nine Mansions forbade their peoples from mentioning the Inchoroi or their nightmarish legacy. The last C?nuroi of E?rwa withdrew to their Mansions to await their inevitable doom.
C?nuroi—See Nonmen.
C?nwerishau (c. 290—c. 390)—First God-King of Trys?, famed for conquering all the cities of the Aumris as well as forging the first treaty between Men and Nonmen.
“Cut from them their tongues …”—The famous phrase from The Chronicle of the Tusk condemning sorcery and sorcerers.
Cynnea, Braelwan (4059—4111)—Man-of-the-Tusk, Galeoth Earl of Agmundr, claimed by disease at Caraskand.
D
Dagliash—“Shieldhold” (?meri). The ancient A?rsic fortress overlooking the River Sursa and the Plains of Agongorea, raised in 1601 by Nanor-Mikhus, High-King of A?rsi, upon the ruins of Viri. It changed hands several times in the wars preceding the Apocalypse. During the Great Ordeal, it would be the site of the Scalding.