All That Has Been Forgotten

I'm back with another fantasy story and some good news. Recently, this piece has been published to the 'Free Lit Mag', an online creative writing magazine as the feature piece for their fantasy issue!

Here is a link to the magazine: https://www.freelitmagazine.com

I am beyond excited to have a piece published! It only continues to stoke the fires of creative writing within me. I encourage you to read some more of their issues as well. All of their magazines are free and there are plenty of talented writers and artists in every issue.

Without further ado, here is All That Has Been Forgotten.

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Rolling sand pelted the skeleton's ribcage and the richly embossed wolf's head helmet that sat atop the otherwise barren skull.

"Shayna! Shayna!" Farrall's voice called to her in a low, pointed yell. Shayna's teeth gritted against each other; a bad habit she had never been able to lose.

"What is it, Farrall? I don't have time for this," Shayna called back, but Farrall was already close enough to her that she could have whispered. He knelt on one knee, his opposite fist pressed into the ground, copper skin on brown sand. A long rifle jutted from behind his back like an extension of his spine. Fool's wisdom, Shayna thought obstinately. I still cannot believe they gave my little brother a gun. He is barely out of childhood. The Old Lands were a dangerous place but understanding did little to help the feeling of her stomach being turned upside down whenever she heard the dull thud of the wooden butt of the weapon against her brother’s back.

However hard she tried to deny his manhood, however often she silently protested his holding of the weapon, his alar, the thin red cloth band that held his long black hair back from his face, marked him as a man whether she liked it or not. His hamman, his sand-scarf, marked him a man again just as much as hers marked her a woman.

"They're coming, Shayna! I told you the Dunes-men would find us, I told you-"

"How far?"

"I - umm, maybe five minutes. But Shayna you can't risk getting you killed, we can't risk losing your-"

"That is all the time I need, so long as I start now. Wake me if it is truly urgent." Before Farrall could begin his protest, Shayna reached for the bones, for the memories. In that instant, her tight grip on the femur became feathery, like grasping at smoke.

It was illegal, as all knew, to even talk about the Old Lands, the lightest sentence being death by execution. Much worse was starvation or burning. The High Council decreed long ago that the lands were corrupted; tainted forever by the mad violence and savagery of the old ways of which nobody truly knew. But one should not so easily believe everything that is said.

Shayna knew, as well as the other Seekers, that there was more to the Old Lands, and that walking in them wasn't any more dangerous than walking in the streets of Fahrul. At the very least you had less of a chance of being pickpocketed in the waste of the desert. They truly were safe, save the Dunes-men, the members of the tribes around Fahrul hired by the High Council to guard the land against people like Shayna, against the Seekers, the last organized group of seers that had been forced into silence after... Well, that was the question they sought answers for.

There had been a seer years ago that drew a map from memory, someone else's memory of course, before exiling herself; a common thing among seers to silence and end memories that they held. That began the Seekers, the group of seers that sought whatever it was this woman had marked. At the heart of the map, in the depths Old Lands, was a spot marked as the Monarch. That was what the Seekers called this pile of bones, though nobody knew whose bones they were, or if they even existed. They were the very same bones that Shayna stood over, the same bones that Shayna would see the memories of.

Reaching was what made seers what they were. When a seer reached, sound was lost. That, and feeling, at least of the present. Reaching brought the pains and pleasures of the past as if they were the seer's own. Whoever a seer touched someone with intent to reach, the person would be revealed to them. This skeleton, the Monarch, was supposed to have the answer to all of the questions the Seeker's asked. It was those answers that Shayna dug for, first laboriously through the sand and soft stone, then through the mind and experiences of this forgotten body, the final remnant of an exiled age and the last hope of understanding a past they had been forced to forget.

As the grip of smoke turned to steel, Shayna was no longer herself. Farrall was gone and the Dunes-men sent by the High Council no longer pursued them through the sand on the backs of their tall horses.

Shayna stood tall, but she was not herself anymore. Not at all. She was Riekel Allaren as much as she was Shayna, more so. She was the Monarch in some foreign land at a time nobody remembered. But she remembered it. She remembered it all. Shayna was not her name and when she tried to think about it, it came to her as unrecognizable as birdsong. Shayna? Why do I think of names I have never known now? Battle hunger blinds me! Riekel blinked hard into the bright sun to banish the thought.

Riekel sat atop his strong dappled white war-horse who wore its armour as he did, heavy as stone, carried lightly as a feather. To his sides were his banner-man Shiraen, a young and unwavering Thielenan who had just earned his sword, and Igren, an old soldier with a single eye and scars that held tales longer than most books. Igren fought alongside his late mother as her Honour Guard and now alongside Riekel as his. All three of them were mounted on their war-horses on a podium above the stalwart mass of Thielenan soldiers.

Riekel watched his people from the podium overlooking the courtyard, lined either side with the crenelated roofs of tall houses where archers sat at the ready in case the walls were to be breached. Beyond that, the buildings rose higher until they reached the peak of the Great Watch, the keep of the Allaren family, all wrought with solid stone from the surrounding mountains.

Every King and Queen of the Allaren line addressed their people from the grand podium before a battle, and Riekel was doing just that. He held the hilt of a light silver throwing-spear that glinted in the full morning sun, his longsword fastened tightly to his back alongside four more spears of similar weight, each wrought of hard steel with simple efficiency. The morning was hot, all in front of him in the far expanse of the courtyard were his trusted troops, the battle-hardened Thielenans, bathing in the midday sun, their gleaming armour matching their silver swords and tall shields. They were a city of soldiers whose parents and grandparents had fought under his mother to unite the nations of Khaladin. They had fought for his bloodline to the beginnings of Thielen itself.

Some of his mother's soldiers were still alive, serving now as aged commanders marked by the wolf's head emblazoned on their chest plates. They lead the legions of two hundred; soldiers brave beyond courage and hard beyond steel. Riekel held the War Crown under his arm, a helmet forged to resemble a wolf's head. It was the greatest embellishment of position in the army. He would not put it on until his first charge so that his soldiers could see his face, implacable and unmoving as stone and as steep as a cliff.

Silence reigned in the wide courtyard; an expected, tense quiet that Riekel knew he had to break. He did so in a great sonorous voice that shook the earth and roused courage.

"Good people of Thielen, the time has come to stand at the guard of your home." At that, swords raised, and a cry of confidence filled the air. Scouts had returned from Thielen's nearby villages several days ago and hawks had been sent from the northern mountain cities where the solitary Mekarhi resided, as well as messengers from the southern marsh-lands days after. An enemy approached Thielen and took everything as they moved. All that Riekel's mother had worked for in the unification of Khaladin was being swept away in the crashing flood of a great army which had not yet been named.

Riekel's mind raced and his heart beat faster than it already was. There was little time for thought anymore and certainly none for this pomp. He itched to be on the field with his soldiers behind him, to face this enemy and stomp them down with the unmet force of the Thielenans. They will learn the power of our people. If it must be done in their death, all the better. With a stern, lock-jawed gaze, he spoke again with words that came to him in a howl of eager ferocity that was the standard of his blood. He could only hold a stolid exterior for so long until his heart boiled with the hunger for action.

"We will waste no more time! Open the gates, for war has been brought to our doors!" Another cheer shook the air into fervency as the line of soldiers parted for him. Riekel urged his horse on through the thin gap in the opening gates onto the fields of Maradon where no enemy army had stood for hundreds of years.

Outside the walls of Thielen he urged his horse to a stop before the hilltop the great city rested upon began to slope to the valley of Maradon. Though Thielen sat atop a high hill, no enemy could yet be seen. Riekel peered as deep into the Maradon valley as he could, ridged with mountains and cut down the middle by the rapids of the river Galderan, renamed after his Mother's admirable ferocity. It was an easily defensible place, a walled city where one man could hold ten, where one battle-hardened Thielenan could hold fifteen, but now there was nothing to hold but great swathes of empty land. By the wetted edges of my blade, I will have my scout's heads. Riekel ground his teeth near to dust.

Riekel turned his horse around only to see the confusion on his soldier's faces as they emerged from the gate and looked around, coming to the same realization as he, yet none so much as stirred the air in front of their mouths with speech. Battle was not a time for anything but focus and purpose. Riekel ordered Shiraen, his banner-man, to raise the standard of Thielen high into the air. Shiraen did as he was commanded with eagerness to follow as all felt at Riekel's word. The double-sided image rose to embolden allies and strike fear into enemies. The Silver Wolf of Thielen, backed by a rising sun, arched its head into a howl that one could hear just by gazing upon it. The wolf was a symbol of the Thielenan's ferocity in battle, known in every corner of Khaladin; a symbol the other nations had bowed to in the struggle of unity; a symbol that was as much respected now as it once was feared.

The Silver Wolf was a symbol of his family. He was the Silver Wolf, as was his mother before him, and all of his ancestors. It was under this banner that Riekel ruled all of Khaladin with a benevolence that brook no revolt. From the White Sea in the East to the impassable waste in the West, from the tall mountain peaked cities of the Ygdragani in the north to the low marshes of the Salaane in the South and everything in-between. He ruled them, but his rule was quiet. People did as they were inclined to do, so far as it did not injure any other. Life was peaceful so long as the Silver Wolf banner hung above every noble house and city wall, uniting all under one.

As the banner rose, the very same one that had risen in every battle the Thielenan's had fought since they had been named Thielenan's, the faces of the soldiers hardened. Outlined by the late morning sun, the banner looked as though it were framed in golden thread. Riekel looked back to the vast ordered ranks of archers, cavalry and foot soldiers. He frowned. Among the masses was a sea of flinching reflections, glittering silver armour accentuating every eager tick, every unsure look cast upon the empty valley. Riekel looked across them, his brave army who he had led to war in the first uprising of western Arrent people after the unification. They all stood ready for battle, a battle Riekel began to doubt was coming. The gods hear me, I will- but before he could finish his thought, the glimmer on the soldier's sharply polished silver flattened and the banner began to waver in a fresh wind. The eyes of some of the soldiers shone white more than the blues and deep browns common to their people.

"Monarch, you will want to see this," The spry voice of Shiraen reached his ear with a tone surrounded with unease. Riekel squinted and turned his horse around.

Great brown and red clouds formed far away in the Maradon valley as if the vast desert of the Allent waste had risen to the sky. He looked below the to the valley, but it was still empty. He looked to the river Galderan, his mother's river. Where it was usually capped white at its high ridged banks, flowing with a ferocity that reminded him of her, it sat still, glassy and lifeless as water in a cup. Mother, you are never this still. What has given you cause to rest, for I cannot believe you would do so on your own.

"What is this witchery? Can it be the grave women of the Allent?" Riekel said to himself, studying the land below him, combing every blade of grass and boulder that bordered the now still river and outbound road with equal consideration for any sign of movement all while the sandy sky continued approaching in a curious wind.

Then, like heel-thorn sprouting from a deep winter frost, a figure became clear where the road of the Maradon valley ran out toward the south, out of the surrounding mountains, at the spot on the ground shrouded by the shadow of the heavy cloud. The figure was small in the distance, but its gaze came to Riekel under a black hood from eyes darker than the shrouded sky above. The eyes felt warm and touched him closely as if the figure had been standing right in front of him, as if Riekel could reach out and touch him. The cloak of the High Council? Another thought came in that strange voice, certainly not his own. Hunger! You will have your fill of blood man, stop thinking of fantasies. Riekel's mouth twisted into a snarl and he rose his spear high into the dim day that now felt as cold as early autumn.

"Cavalry!" He twisted his horse around. "We ride forth, at my lead!" At that, the lines of cavalry began a trot up to his further rank.

"Monarch, excuse my asking, but at what? What are you riding for?" Igren asked in a low voice.

"That figure, the one at the-" Riekel stopped. The figure was gone. He watched the space where the hooded person had stood with an open mouth and wide eyes.

"Perhaps we should wait, the hill is far more defensible if anyone is approaching," Igren said.

Riekel blinked. "Perhaps you are right," Riekel said without looking away from the place the shrouded figure stood. He called off the cavalry and the returned to their places with quick looks from one to another, still obeying his words as all did without question.

They held their position as the sky continued to darken above them and the sandy clouds rested above the army's heads. With the sand came a buffeting wind that grew as the shadow approached. The sun was but a candlelight behind a sheer curtain now. Horses began to fill the air with their cries and soldiers shifted from foot to foot, idle in heavy armour, heads pointed to the sky. Riekel scanned the valley fervently, holding his horse hard against its wishes to run.

"Monarch, we should consider returning. This is not natural, not natural at all!" Igren shouted with more than a hint of panic in his voice.

"We will make our stand here!" Riekel shouted. He realized he had to shout above the growing wind to be heard, even by Igren who was only a few feet away from him. "No enemy has entered Thielen before and they will not now. I will not let that legacy die with me."

"What enemy, Monarch? I have yet to see another soul but our Thielenans!" Shiraen shouted, fighting with all of the strength of his youth against the wind that threatened to rip the upright banner from his hands.

"We wait!" Riekel yelled back with a command that would allow no response.

More minutes passed and sand began to pelt Riekel's chest like thrown rocks. Riekel looked still into the slowly disappearing Maradon valley, searching for that figure, looking as far as his eyes allowed, but a thick cloud of sand and flecks of small stones began to curtain the lowlands. Reveal yourself dammit! Behind him, several of the riders had been bucked from their horses and were off trying to get their hands on a reign or stirrup, the braids of some of the women flying wildly in the wind. Those that hadn't been bucked fought their well-trained steeds as if they had been reduced to wild untamed horses. The orderly units of legions stood still but were so far back they were almost lost to Riekel's sharp eyes. Nothing at all of Thielen's high walls marked it as ever having been there through the sandy fog.

"Ah!" Riekel shook his head and tried to blink sand from his eyes. "This is useless, fall back!" Riekel shouted frustratedly to Igren and Shiraen. They rode back with him with the grainy wind, the banner lowered.

When they reached the front lines of the foot-soldiers, Riekel looked down upon them from his tall horse. Faces met his, stern and desperate, waiting for his command. These were men born of steel as a sword is born of a forge who trained and sparred as soon as they could heft a tree branch above their waist. Now, their eyes held the wan impression of brittle, cast iron that would shatter at the touch. They were not trained to face this. Whatever this is, we will have to fight it. For Thielen we will have to fight it until our end. At any other time, Riekel would have delivered a speech, at least a few words of encouragement to the great army, but the wind had picked up even further on their way towards them.

"Monarch, we - the gates - shut fast!" Riekel strained to hear the man, marked as a commander with the wolf head emblazoned on his chest plate, but he made out enough. The gates were shut. It was a Thielen custom, to fight until you could not. Retreat was a word unknown and untaught within the tall stone walls of the city.

Calling upon his ground shaking voice was all he could do to reach even the closest commander. "Igren, Shiraen, commander and soldiers, spread the word to those around you that we will make our stand. Stay vigilant and shout if you see anything. We must be each other's eyes, Glory to Thielen!" Riekel roared.

"Glory to Thielen!" Those few that could hear him shouted back in stolid response. There may yet be a chance.

"Monarch," Igren said in a gruff voice that grew clear with yelling. "Shiraen is gone, the banner is gone!" Riekel stiffened. Without words, Riekel donned the war crown and turned. He was the Silver Wolf and his noble blood boiled underneath the great helm. I will find you Shiraen, and I will find that banner. The Silver Wolf spun on his horse, drew his great sword from his back, and rode into the wall of sand.

"For Thielen!" He shouted and disappeared into the thick, gritty air.

Riekel was rocked from Shayna as she elbowed hard sand, the still sand that no longer pelted her hard chest plate or clouded her vision more than the empty air in front of her did. Shayna gasped, wide-eyed, but the only sand around was that which rested on the ever-shifting dunes of the Old Lands and the ever-present sandstorm that eclipsed the bright sun.

"Shayna! We have to go!" A familiar voice filled her ears and an even more familiar man was beside her brushing handfuls of sand over the skeleton. For some reason she wanted to think him a boy, though he looked a man. His eyes were wide and as white as linen sheets, looking back and forth from her to the top of the crater of sand they rested in. Hoofbeats, dim and still reached her in stiff vibrations.

"Riekel Allaren. The Monarch. The sand. The banner. The sun. The..." Shayna said under her breath, thought manifest in quiet words. Her thoughts trailed off as memory bounded off of reality, trying to make sense of where she was, who she was.

"Take my hand Shayna, get up. Come on!" Shayna, yes. I am Shayna. The familiar man urged her on as he grabbed her arm and pulled her up to support her.

"My... Brother...?" She said to the man, placing his identity. She was almost herself. A look of pain flashed in the face she now recognized as her brother, but it was quickly replaced with tight concern.

"Shayna, I'm Farrall, your brother!" He stared into her with hard, tense eyes then gave a defeated sigh. "You looked too deep Shayna; you always do! You can't-" He licked his lips. "You are no use to the Seeker's dead. Do you have the answers? Do you know?"

"Yes, enough. I know enough. Farrall..." Shayna said weakly through strained breaths. She remembered him now. She remembered herself now. You really are a fool, Shayna thought. To look so deep? Seven lashes…

"High Council and Dunes-men order you, stay where are you!" A thickly accented voice of the far tribes of the Dunes-men of Fahrul crested the sand and assaulted Shayna's ears like a hot wind. They spoke a foreign language, a twisted and isolated version of Fahrulian. Farrall's grip tightened around her shoulder, but Shayna jerked back away quickly.

"Shayna, what-!" Farrall protested angrily, but his voice calmed as she went to pick up the wolf's head helmet. For Thielen! For the victory and preservation of the great kingdom and vast empire! A thought came to her as she touched the fully wrought metal from a voice and mind that was no longer hers alone. The Silver Wolf will rise again as long as blood still sows the vast lands of Khaladin. History is lost, legends are born. Names vanish, legacies remain. The Silver Wolf will rise with the rebirth of a world long forgotten.

Suddenly, Shayna was all herself and shaking with the weight of the knowledge she carried, with the clarity of all she remembered. She held the truth of the Old World and a remnant of it under her arm. She remembered it all. The bright sun, bare and full without the thick film of sand, the tall grey-stone buildings that crept into the sky, closer to the white clouds than any building she had ever seen, and the city full of people who seemed at peace with one another. It ached so sweetly to recall and hurt so badly to remember what waited for her in Fahrul. The grim slums where City Guards reigned upon streets like kings and queens, issuing beatings and public floggings, poor stealing from poor, rich stealing from poor, and the High Council overseeing it all as a twisted pariah of virtue. She wanted to spit. I have to survive. I have to, more than ever. I can't let them have me. I can’t let them have the Monarch. She jerked free of Farrall's supportive grip that had long since turned stale in her arm and picked up her shamble into a brisk jog. She was herself again, herself and more.

"The horses are ready?" She whispered sharply to Farrall as they went.

"Yes," Farrall said without looking at her. Shayna cocked an eye at his coldness but kept on beside him, still a little slow from fatigue.

They crested the dune of sand on their bellies so they wouldn't be seen, opposite the fast approaching Dune-men. Their horses stood idly on the flat of sand several metres away, staring into the distance. Once they passed the ridge of the dune, they ran for their horses. Shayna tucked the wolf's head helmet into her saddlebag and mounted her horse. The stems of thick smoke gave away the far-off location of Fahrul, far into the distance over vast swathes of the Old Lands. She started on her horse, but when Farrall did not follow, she turned.

"Farrall!" She said in a low voice that held a lash like a whip. "You wanted to go so badly and now you won't move? Come on!"

"You must go. Alone."

"What are you talking about Farrall? I have the memories! I have what we need!" She said sharply. "There is no time for this foolishness. Sometimes I think that alar has blinded you, we have to go, you lout! We have to-"

"You have to go," Farrall said sternly, a tone that shocked Shayna. It was a voice he never used with her, or anyone for that matter. "I have none of the memories and we cannot fight them or outrun them. There are ten of them. Better riders on horses faster than ours with weapons better equipped for riding," Farrall looked out into the far waste as he spoke, but Shayna’s eyes rested on his face. She looked at him deeply, searching, but the boy she insisted on him being was not there. His alar held his black hair from his bronze face showing a look hard with duty. She knew the truth of it as he said it but refused to admit it.

"Farrall, I will not let you. I-" But she knew it was not much use. If her brother was anything, it was stubborn.

"I am your Guardian! You will do as I say,” Farrall said, looking deeply into her eyes. He is a man. “I love you sister. Now go!" Farrall said in a low shout as he spanked her horse hard. Her mare gave a sharp whinny and raised onto its hind legs. Shayna gripped the reins tightly. The horse took off with a trot that gave way quickly to a gallop.

Shayna crested a few dunes, looking back over every ridge to try and catch a glimpse of Farrall. When she did see him, he was riding hard in the opposite direction and shouting, clashing with the distinctly accented whoops and cries of the Dunes-men who yelled amongst one another and after her brother in their foreign tongue, cries and shouts near to joy. As she crested another dune, a gunshot beat through the sky like lightning. Many followed, each one filling her eyes with tears like rain. In several strides she was sobbing hard into her. History is lost, legends are born. The Silver Wolf will rise again. The voice came to her in a thought that wasn't her own. She shook her head and tears fell from her eyes. Thoughts never stayed with her this long from a reaching, but there was little time to think about that now. She urged her horse on and promised not to turn around again.

"You will not be forgotten brother. Not ever. Thank you. Thank you,” She said into her scarf as her horse took long strides over the tides of the sand sea back to the home of the Seekers. “Wisdom take you brother, thank you.”