Luthiel's Song: Dreams of the Ringed Vale Read online

  Copyright © 2005 by Robert Marston Fannéy,

  All art © 2005 by Siya Oum

  Original maps, runes and symbols copyright © 2005 by Robert Marston Fannéy

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Convention

  Published in the United States by Dark Forest Press

  Edited by Matthew Friedman

  www.luthielssong.com

  Original copyright of first written materials

  Copyright © 1997 by Robert Marston Fannéy

  Cover art and interior art by Siya Oum

  Cover design by Matthew Friedman

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Fannéy, Robert

  Dreams of the Ringed Vale/ Robert Fannéy

  p. cm. (Luthiel’s Song ; bk. 1)

  SUMMARY: In the elfin land of Minonowe, a fifteen-year-old orphan named Luthiel embarks on a dangerous journey to save her beloved foster sister Leowin. On the way, she encounters sorcerers, werewolves, dragons, monstrous spiders and Vyrl. Through her adventures—both in the world of Oesha and in the world of dreams—she learns that nothing, not even her own life, is what it seems.

  ISBN 0-9764226-0-3

  To all of those women ~

  Strong enough to be heroes;

  Fair enough to be ladies.

  This song is for you.

  CONTENTS

  The Lilting

  Prologue: A Dispatch of the Lord Tuorlin

  Book I

  Luthiel

  Leowin

  The Wyrd Stone

  A Blade Dancer Comes

  The Chosen

  Silent Farewell

  Into the World of Dreams

  Race to the Vale

  The Sorceror’s House

  A Night Terror

  Spiders and Werewolves

  Into the Vale of Mists

  The Cave of Painted Shadows

  A Castle in the Mists

  The Vyrl

  Book II

  The Mists’ Changing Magic

  Melkion the Dragon

  Summoned by Monsters

  The Blood of Vlad Valkire

  Rendillo the Grendilo

  The Pools of Ottomnos

  Ashiroth’s Army

  Luthiel’s Promise

  Seven Ride To Ottomnos

  A Darkness in Dreams

  A Black Curse

  Lady of Ottomnos

  Gift of the Bond

  A Brief Rest

  Cutter’s Shear~the Sword of Vlad Valkire

  Armies Gather

  A Secret Council

  Vaelros’s Tale

  A Piece of a Shadow Crown

  Of Thrar Taurmori the Demon Lord

  Do No Harm Without Need

  How The Widdershae Came to Be

  Escape Plans

  Farewell to Ottomnos

  Appendices

  Appendix I: The Elfin Runes

  Appendix II: The Suns and Moons of Oesha

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Bonus Material

  Preview of The War of Mists

  Luthiel's Song Concept Art

  The Lilting

  Silver slips that ringed Vale

  The mists that curled the air

  Cupped in stone like snowy fists

  All wreathed in gossamer

  Lunen danced,

  Her silken beams

  A gauntlet to the night

  And nine they rode

  Their fiery steeds

  To brave false mornings’ light

  Hey ho! Said he

  The grim faced god

  Whom winds named Vlad Valkire

  His fist clenched strong

  His sword—slim, long

  Cold—wrought

  Dubbed Cutter’s Shear

  Which clove the air

  And set the night

  Ablaze with starlight fire

  Shear clove to heart

  Undid Undeath

  Damned Vyrl

  And slew desire

  The nine danced

  Sacred lilting shades

  To Vlad In rebel’s song

  Who reigned over Vyrl

  Brought death to life

  And freed the cursed chained long

  When all was won

  The battle done

  Of nine

  But three remained

  A pact they made

  An oath of blood

  To purge the murderer’s stain

  So they grew

  Again to shine

  Like angels

  Of Ëavanya and Ëavanar

  Aedar

  Of old,

  Daughter of Elquellia

  And sons of Evanestar

  From his charred glass throne

  Vlad reigned O’er all

  Goblin, elf and Vyrl

  For three hundred years

  Summer to summer

  With neither blight nor quarrel

  Till black moon dreams

  Scarred his nights

  And in winter’s nightmare

  He roamed

  So he returned

  To Lenidras of old

  To craft

  His last two stones

  Of wyrd they were

  Of dreaming sighs

  Of fancies strange and light

  Dim colored one

  Cool as breezes

  A drifting rim of night

  The second danced

  Like starshine lingers

  Upon the ocean’s hair

  One for his sire

  One for his mother

  Both old wounds to repair

  But with her first touch

  The lady fell to sleep

  And dreams of Gorothoth

  Where she yet fights

  The strange lord’s spell

  Of winter cold and dark

  But with her loss

  Into madness

  His grim sire fell

  His cry pierced the forest

  Aroused the Sith

  His words a demon’s spell

  From tree and vale

  From crag and rock

  His might flew out to do battle

  But Vlad received him

  Cast down his Shear

  Ordered his soldiers

  “Bare no metal!”

  So Vlad Valkire

  Met the rage of his sire

  Whose name may never be spoken

  Vlad gave up his Shear

  With words of love

  With words of wrath

  The cold wrought blade was broken

  Now Shear all shards,

  His hand once strong

  Now weak in dying strains

  Unleashed blood,

  And his wraith

  Cries out to kin

  From those gleaming stains

  For now my friends

  Of Vlad Valkire

  And his Love

  Merrin of ocean waves

  We know but this—

  She sleeps in grief

  As he lingers

  On tongue of father’s blade

  The three they grieve

  With starving wail

  The loss of their boon lord

  And twist to bind

  Their long held oath

  Sealed by the bite and sword

  To dance in mists

  To hunt their bond

  To grant, guide and receive

  And sing with songs

  The dance lilt long

  With kin and sow fate’s seed

  Pro
logue: A Dispatch

  of the Lord Tuorlin

  Mithorden ~

  Old friend, if there were ever a time when I had need of your counsel then it is now. My trouble comes from the Vale of Mists where a great vapor builds, boiling over the hills that encircle it, creeping out into the land, molding the flesh of every beast or branch it touches. Now, creatures of strange magic walk abroad both day and night. I fear that this anger in the mists is merely a sign that the Vale’s terrible gods ~ the Vyrl ~ have become enraged. They dispatched their messenger to Ithilden only yester-eve demanding us to send another child. She will be the fourth sent this year ~ as though one a year were not enough! Now they demand four! When word gets out, I’ll have all the swords in Ithilden screaming to me for war.

  The Vyrl have brought too many years of loss. Too many mothers weep over children sent, far too many, who now lay dead in the vapor. Far too few returned, and those like me, who have, bear scars that serve only as angry reminders.

  In all my years, I’ve never seen such fury among the lords. They call upon me to loose the Blade Dancers, to bid them hunt the werewolf Othalas before he takes another to the Vyrl’s waiting mouths. The Kingdoms who received the message just tonight send emissaries of war to Ithilden. Zalos, Lord of Ashiroth, sends word that he is coming to address me, personally, and has already pledged a thousand of his most fierce wolf-riders.

  My friend, I have long dreaded this day! For though I hate the Vyrl more than most and I judge Valkire’s promise to them for what it was ~ the last desperate act of a dying god, I, of any, should know that to fight them is folly.

  The lords, I fear, will not be turned. When they look at me, they see only what the mists have marred. But with the Vale’s gift I have glimpsed a danger, more terrible than any I have yet foreseen, rising up from the ashes of this war. My counsel will be for peace but I fear that even my voice will be silenced.

  So it is, in this darkening hour that I call you, my friend. Your wise words and steady hand are needed, more than ever. Perhaps you, who walked with Valkire, could sway the lords. Zalos’ mind is already set and to my advice its windows have long been shuttered. So I ask you to come with all speed to Ithilden! I will wait and watch. Come soon! Though it is summer, I fear the light is already starting to fail.

  Yours in need,

  The High Lord Tuorlin

  Master of Ithilden, Keeper of the West Wind,

  Bearer of the Sacred Eye, Who sits on the Starlight Throne

  Luthiel

  To be me is to be different, she thought as she watched them, from her place apart from them, upon the hillside.

  And there was much to watch. For everywhere across the Minonowe, and where she lived in Flir Light Hollow, elves were preparing for celebration.

  They were festooning trees with glowing flir bug bulbs, baking delicious almorah cakes, and rolling out giant gourds filled with the best summer’s wine. Master Alderdalf’s pixies were hard at work under the woven canopy of his voluminous fae holme turning out specially prepared fireworks. Loud popping tindersnaps, eek-eeking neekerbeeks, bright flaring fizzleflashes, and the scaly Romas Dragons lay in red, green, orange and silver stacks outside. Lady Lutendrah was busy tying ribbons to her famous pandur’s boxes (you never knew what would pop out). Even the otherwise grim-faced elves of the Dark Forest seemed to brighten as they drank toasts to the day—First Summer’s Eve.

  As she watched them, a lively wind rose up, dancing through the trees, swatting gold and silver ripples across the lake shore, before riding up the hill on which she stood. The breeze played in the branches about her, but the swaying of her arms and the gentle curves of her neck were just as graceful. From her head flowed hair the color of moonlight. It spilled over leaf-shaped ears before falling down shoulders so supple they belied the gentle strength that lay beneath. Clothes of forest green embroidered with silver lay across skin as fair as a cloud. Eyes, which shone like green-blue stars, rested beneath softly sloping brows.

  Even elves thought of her as beautiful—if a little strange. And sometimes she would hear them teasing that she’d arisen from the wyrd of sea foam or was born to earth in the cradle of a crescent moon floating down upon the gloaming. For she was an orphan and no one knew her parents.

  Though the elves welcomed her, accepting her as one of their own, she could always sense that they held her apart. She bore it with a kind of sad resignation. But she always wondered:

  Why do they treat me this way?

  Am I not an elf like them? she would think. Why can’t they see me as Leowin does?

  For her foster sister Leowin was the only one who treated her as though she were no different.

  Luthiel smiled at the thought and sniffed the air. She sighed and let all the happy sounds, all the various smells, wash over her. It was going to be quite a party. Fitting, because this was the day she turned fifteen, or near enough as her foster parents Glendoras and Winowe could reckon. Some asked her if she cared that her birthday also fell on the night of First Summer’s Eve. But she only laughed.

  “Can you think of a better day?” she would ask them in return. And what better day to be born than on the day that the world shook off the darkness? What happier time to celebrate than when everyone else was celebrating?

  She secretly fantasized that the reason for all the hubbub, the cause for all this happy commotion, was her birthday. And she smiled to herself when the first thing they said to her was—“Happy Birthday, Luthiel!” followed by “Happy First Summer’s Eve!”

  Leowin

  Luthiel felt a hand tap her shoulder and turned around just in time to glimpse Leowin’s ruddy face before she sprang up into the leafy canopy.

  “You’re tapped!” she could hear her cry from her hiding place among the leaves. A shower of laughter soon followed.

  Her sister, though a year older than Luthiel, was three inches shorter. Wild strands of gold spilled down to her shoulder blades and light blue eyes shone at her from the shadows. Leowin wore colors that made it easier for her to hide—green and brown—and her sure footed, supple frame was well practiced in the arts of jumping, climbing and hanging.

  “Leowin you flutterfler!” Luthiel cried and bounded up after her.

  Leaves smacked her face as she sprang, faster than a tree frog, from branch to branch. Some of the branches were more than ten feet apart. Luthiel’s springs were long and her balance sure. Her tiptoes found purchase on each branch for only an instant before she was flying off through the air again leaping as surely and gracefully as a bird on a rope.

  When it became plain to Leowin that Luthiel had found her, she shot up from her hiding place like a thrush flushed from the bushes with a happy cry bounding from limb to limb as if they were stairs.

  “Can’t catch me!” Leowin taunted.

  “You’re not getting away!” Luthiel cried back, then leapt gracefully through the air skipping two of the branches Leowin had just used and landing on a third. Luthiel was catching up to her fast. Soon now, she’d tap Leowin and then it would be her turn to run.

  Leowin loved to play tap-and-turn and she’d found a hundred little tree hollows and crevices to hide in. Luthiel was often surprised by Leowin’s cunning; by the sly tricks she’d play and by a hundred planned escapes. But Luthiel was faster. So each played to their advantage. Luthiel was almost within reach of Leowin. She stretched her hand before her— mere inches away from Leowin’s back.

  “No you don’t!” Leowin gasped.

  Sudden as raindrops, Leowin leapt off the branch she was standing on and into mid-air.

  The Wyrd Stone

  Luthiel felt her heart rise into her throat. She watched helplessly as Leowin’s body rushed toward the ground, more than fifty feet below.

  She lunged, stretching out a hand to grasp her, but the plummeting Leowin was already out of reach. Before she hit ground, Leowin lifted her arms above her head and pointed her toes. Her face, staring up at Luthiel, bore a wide grin.

  What was
she doing?

  Suddenly, Luthiel’s eyes refocused and she saw the lily pads beneath Leowin part as her toes touched them, revealing a sparkling pool of water.

  Splash! Leowin disappeared beneath the surface and didn’t come up. Luthiel sighed.

  “That puk,” she said.

  Luthiel didn’t give up easily, though, so she ran along, hopping from tree-limb to tree-limb, tracing the lily pads that were disturbed as Leowin swam beneath the water. Luthiel hid herself in a thick patch of leaves, watching from the shadows as Leowin pulled herself from the water, made her way through a moss patch, then turned toward East Wind Road.

  Luthiel was quiet—silent as any ghost fly—but Leowin was quieter.

  Luthiel dropped from branch to branch like a shadow. Staying within sight of Leowin was the real trick. She dared not to even blink lest she lose the sneaker. Little by little, she closed the distance between them. Within a hundred heartbeats, she was a mere ten feet behind and above Leowin, gathering her legs beneath her for a pounce.

  She shot through the air, spreading her arms wide like wings. An instant later, her arms encircled Leowin and they tumbled through the underbrush.

  “Aaaaeeeeeaaaaaaa!” Leowin yelled in surprise and fought to escape. Luthiel struggled to grasp the flailing Leowin. Head over heels they tumbled, rolling back and forth, this way and that, until; at last, they somersaulted onto the speckled cobbles of East Wind Road. Luthiel ended up on top. She grabbed Leowin’s shoulders and pinned her against the stones.

  “Caught you!” Luthiel cried.

  With those words, Leowin stopped wriggling and looked up at Luthiel with a big grin on her face. With her free hand, she started digging at her belt.