Chapter One: A Voice in the Wind

From across the sea they came, from the islands far to the north. Tall, pale, otherworldly beings. They called themselves the Syl, meaning "The First" in their tongue. They fled here, from what they would not say. With open arms we welcomed them to our lands, a decision that we quickly came to regret, for it was they that brought the Mist. It was they that put our Kings in chains.

- Author Unknown, 1106 L.A.

All was quiet in the walled city of Dolemn. The distant white sickle of the crescent moon was long past its peak in the cloudless night sky. A chill late-autumn wind blew through the city streets, which were empty save the handful of guardsmen that stood watch in the utter darkness of the Slave District, clad in black chainmail emblazoned with the symbol of a white star, swords worn at their sides. Two watched the large wooden gates that sectioned off the district from the rest of the city while others patrolled the cobblestone streets that ran throughout them.

The Slave District, as its name suggested, was the district of the city set aside for slaves, housing nearly all of the hundred or so humans that Governor Siranis had purchased some decades ago. Taking up only a fraction of the city proper, it was surrounded in high walls, lined with identical ramshackle living quarters built from clay. At the heart of the District stood only two large buildings, a bath house and a mess hall.

Places like this could be found in one form or another in most large cities throughout the continent. Slave Districts had been created as a place for slaves to be kept when they were not working, for most Syl saw it as improper to keep them in the home. Every evening when their daily work was done, the slaves were escorted through the city back to the District to get what rest they could before the morning came, when they would be led back out and put back to work. This had been the way of things on the continent for over three centuries, ever since the arrival of the Syl from overseas and the fall of the Old Kingdoms.

Most in the city were asleep at this hour, Syl and slave alike, but not the guardsmen, for it was their duty to watch over Dolemn as it slept. Not one of them carried torches; they could see as well by night as by day. The light would serve only to alert those breaking curfew to their watchers' presence. Not that they expected to find anyone walking the District streets at night. The slaves knew that there were eyes in the dark, and the penalty for being found.

Despite the guardsmen and their strict nocturnal vigil, not all was at peace in the District that night. In one of the many houses, a young boy slept uneasily, tossing and turning in his tattered bedroll in a room shared by numerous other slaves, the rest of which slept quite soundly. The boy's name was Roh, and he worked as a servant in the Dolemn Archive. He was smaller than most boys his age, which was fourteen. Tonight, in dreams that seemed all too real, a voice spoke to him.

The road… You must… You must follow the road… It was a man's voice. Roh felt the unsettling sensation of invisible eyes upon him. His presence was powerful, terrifyingly so, though it seemed more desperate than malicious. The voice spoke without a mouth, piercing his thoughts, each word reverberating in the nothingness long after it had been said. Suddenly, he was traveling, the world dark and murky as if seen through a veil, colors oddly washed out.

A road, an endless road, running for many leagues alongside a rushing river. He was gliding, not walking, being pulled through the air by some unseen hand, one in a tremendous hurry. He soared down the road, tree-lined hills looming on either side of him. He caught glimpses of the occasional hut or farm as he went. The trees gave way to a long stretch of marshland, full of tall grasses, reeds and trees that sagged toward the muddy ground. He passed through the marsh and into a forest, a vast forest, with ancient trees so thick and overgrown that the light and warmth of the sun could scarcely find its way through the leaves and branches. At the heart of the forest there was a lake, massive and deep, its waters dark and cloudy, a steady fog drifting across it. He seemed to glide across the lake, consumed by the fog, blind to the world but also hidden from it. Finally a dark shape came into view in the distance, growing larger by the second. It was an island, hidden away at the center of the lake. Trees dotted the island, as well as numerous statues of men in armor, moss-covered, their features marred by time. Between two statues, in the shadows they cast… eyes… golden eyes, glowing in the darkness, fixated on him.

His journey came to an end. He stood on the shores of the island, staring at the eyes as they burned back at him. He tried desperately to move, whether to approach the eyes or to run for his life, he was unsure. To his displeasure, he found that he could not move in the slightest, unable even to avert his gaze from the eyes in the dark.

As he looked into the eyes, a sudden understanding came over him. Absurd as it seemed, despite never having seen these places in his waking life, he knew with absolute certainty that they were real places, glimpses at things that waited far beyond the walls of the prison that was Dolemn. Waited for him, but why?

Why do you show me these things? What use are they to me? A long moment passed before at last the eyes spoke.

This island… great things happened here, in days forgotten, and great things will happen again. You must escape. You must find me. You will be safe here.

Escape? Did the voice know what it asked of him, how impossible a task escaping from Dolemn was? Perhaps the road he had seen could carry him to freedom and safety, but a city full of armed guardsmen and towering, unscalable stone walls lay in the way of it.

I cannot leave! Their eyes are upon us, even at night! I would be captured before my tenth step out the door! It's impossible! He began to feel something approaching anger. He felt certain that the voice wished to taunt him with these visions of sights and freedoms he would never know.

Impossible… for most… but not for you… The voice was growing fainter, more and more distant as it spoke, though the eyes remained brilliant as ever.

A flame sparked to sudden life between Roh and the golden eyes, burning wildly in the air between them. It grew in size rapidly, air its only fuel, becoming brighter and brighter until it became blinding. Even at a distance, he could feel its intense heat on his skin.

I have seen what you are, what you will become. But you will need guidance. The Syl are protective of their art. Stolen or stumbled upon, it makes no difference to them. If they find you, they will take you, and death would be a mercy.

"You are mistaken, whoever you are. I am nothing, and I will become nothing. I was born a slave, and I'll die a slave. There is no changing that." As he finished speaking, Roh realized that he had slowly been lifting into the air. He yelled in surprise as suddenly he was pulled backwards, as if an invisible rope had been tugged. He flew in reverse through the fog, the island rapidly dissolving back into it.

Do not be so quick to abandon hope, or it will abandon you. He had left the lake and was once more upon its shores in the dark forest. Your chance at freedom will present itself… He was back on the roads now, continuing to gain speed at an alarming rate as he soared through the marshes. When it appears, you must be ready to seize it… Suddenly he was looking down at what he recognized to be Dolemn. It had been years since he had seen the outside. Seeing it all from above, he thought that it was not nearly as massive as it seemed from within.

Remember what I have shown you… and seek me out, when you are able… He fell, plummeting to the ground, to the Slave District, to his eternal prison. He shut his eyes and waited for the impact.

Roh woke with a start, drenched in sweat and strangely out of breath, feeling as if he had run the many leagues that lay between Dolemn and that unknown island on foot. He sat up and looked around the room, as if expecting those golden eyes to be watching him from some dark corner. This was not the case. There were only his fellow slaves, all of them still fast asleep on their tattered bedrolls.

He turned to look out the lone, cracked window of the large bedroom to find that the sun had not quite risen. Unwilling to drift back to sleep and risk another encounter with the voice, Roh rose to his feet and quietly exited the room.

The quarters he lived in were laid out in the same fashion that the rest of them were, with a large room full of bedrolls meant for sleeping and a smaller entrance chamber with a number of tables and benches, meant for whatever other activities the slaves chose to engage in during their limited leisure. The entrance chamber was dark and empty, four lit but dying torches the only source of light, two hung on each wall on either side of the room, casting just enough light to make out the crack-strewn clay walls and rough, dirt-caked floor. The sound of howling wind through the cracks made Roh shiver and realize for the first time since waking that he was positively freezing.

The living conditions of the Slave District did little to keep out the bitter night air, and the thin hide wrappings of his bedroll were a minor comfort at best. Cold claimed many of the older slaves, particularly in the winter months. Roh rubbed his hands together for warmth, walking across the room to the fireplace. Some hours ago a modest fire had been burning, but it had been neglected, and now only a scarce few embers remained, flaring resiliently beneath the scraps of wood. He kneeled down by the fireplace, eyed the embers for a moment, and then reached in, raising his hands over them, finding that they provided disappointingly little warmth for his frigid hands. He looked behind him, out the windows built into the wall on either side of the door, looking for any sign of a passing patrol. Seeing none, he turned back around, eyeing the flame intensely.

Warm… Burn bright, burn warm… More suggestions than commands, he directed these thoughts at the dying flame. A long moment passed silently until finally the flame obeyed, roaring to sudden new life and a powerful heat that surpassed even a freshly lit fire. Roh smirked with satisfaction, warming his hands near the glorious blaze.

Working in the Archive had its benefits. Traveling mages from across the continent came to study there, thinking little of the servant boy dusting tables and running stacks of books around. Had they known what he had heard them discuss, how much of it he eventually came to understand…

When the Syl first arrived in the Old Kingdoms, their army had a thousand strong or less. But they had never meant to fight a war against man in the traditional way. Their greatest strength lay not in numbers, military tactics or skill with a blade, but in their mastery of an art the likes of which humanity had never seen. The Syl had the power to bend the basic elements of the world itself to their will, to rework reality, leveling and raising entire cities at a whim, as they had when their army brought the rein of Humanity to an end. They called this art magick, and with it, conquest of the continent had been a simple task.

Magick, he had learned, was half training and half natural talent. All Syl possessed basic magickal abilities, though some had more proficiency in its use than others. The greatest magick users in Syl society were known as Mages, and their powers were vast. Roh had overheard tales of Mages capable of manipulating fire and water, traveling great distances in an instant, turning ordinary stones into precious metals, and even reading the minds of others. Those who chose to pursue these greater powers dedicated their lives to the art, taking on the title of Initiate, spending years studying at the Great Academy in Marvaine, the flying capital city. Knowing what he did of magick and what it could do, it came as a tremendous shock to Roh when one day he made the discovery that he himself was capable of very similar things.

He had discovered his own talents completely by accident, one particularly cold night some weeks ago. It had been very late, and he sat at the table closest to the torches reading a scroll he had managed to sneak out of the Archive. A wind had blown through the cracks so strongly that the torches had all been snuffed out, making it impossible to read. With only a single match available to him, he had tried to relight one, only to have the wind blow out the match before he could do so. Infuriated, his thoughts became focused on the torches and how desperately he wished to relight them. To his tremendous surprise, they obeyed, springing back to life simultaneously all around the room.

So he had discovered his unusual gift, and had since then often tested them in the dead of night, where the eyes of the guardsmen and his fellow slaves would not be upon him. He quickly realized a natural affinity for fire. It bent to his will with incredible ease, unlike when he tried to perform other tasks such as lifting objects by thought, something he often saw Mages do in the archive. Whenever he attempted such things, he felt a very noticeable physical toll on himself, as if the energy were being drained from him. Using magick for more than a few seconds at a time usually left him feeling exhausted, but this was not the case with fire, which seemed all too eager to obey his command, following orders before he had scarcely had time to give them. It was for this reason that he focused his practice on fire. He could increase or decrease its size, heat and intensity with minimal effort. He could shape it and even touch it without being burned, so long as he remembered to remind it not to burn him every now and then. Roh reached down to the fire he had just fed and plucked it off of the log with one hand, cradling it in his open palms. It continued to burn fiercely as ever, despite lack of fuel. A moment later it had taken on a perfectly spherical shape. He admired it absentmindedly, thoughts drifting to his reason for waking.

Escape, the voice had said, follow the path that it had shown him to the island at the center of a great lake. Escape… It was a strange word to one such as him, a boy who had grown to accept the idea of a lifetime of servitude as being his only future. Did the voice know what it was asking of him? Did it know how impossible such a thing was? In the five years he had spent in Dolemn he could not recall a single successful attempt. Most slaves were too terrified of punishment to even think of trying, the memory of the last failed attempt still fresh in the minds of every last one of them.

It had been planned in the quarters four doors down from his. A dozen builders had conspired to construct a tunnel under their quarters that would run beneath the city. Stealing small shovels, hammers and other tools used in their work, they toiled late into the night for weeks before finally they were discovered, their quarters raided in the midst of their work. The dozen builders and their families were executed on the spot, the pit they had dug serving as a mass grave. How exactly the builders' plot had been uncovered remained a mystery, but there were whispers of an informant amongst the slaves, perhaps more than one. Fear and mistrust ensured that it would be some time before another organized escape attempt would be planned.

His magick would be useful if he were to attempt it, but it would not be enough to get him out of the city. There were trained Mages amongst the ranks of the guards, and they would make short work on a boy with mere months of practice. He grasped the fireball tightly in his hands, feeling the flame lick his fingers harmlessly.

Roh knew nothing of the methods of Mages. He wondered if they could indeed discover a human using their art. How long could he evade their notice? Did minor acts of magick such as this put him at risk? He thought about the slaves that shared living quarters with him. Many innocent people died the night the builders were found. Would they suffer a similar fate for harboring him under their roof?

"The sun is rising, you know. I'd put that back before the others wake." Roh wheeled around in surprise to find that he was not alone. On a bench directly behind him sat Dain, his wild mane of black hair a mess, his expression one of great amusement at Roh's surprise.

"Dain! I- Ah!" his concentration broken, he suddenly felt a jolt of pain as the fire he had been squeezing tightly was suddenly free to burn him. Quickly reasserting his influence over it, he returned it to the torch it had previously occupied.

"You're getting reckless. Do you know how long I've been watching? What if I'd been a guardsman come to take a head count?"

"Reckless? I… you knew?" Dain stood up and walked toward him. Four years his elder, he stood a full foot taller than Roh, with dark brown eyes and a powerful frame built from years of hard labor. As he spoke, Dain put an arm on Roh's shoulder.

"I'm a light sleeper. I've known almost as long as you. A human Mage… a strange thing indeed" Roh began to examine his burned hand, more as an excuse to look away than out of concern for it.

"I'm a fool to be doing it. They'll find me if I do, and that would be bad for everyone. I'll stop, I promise."

"Stop? No, that won't do. That's the opposite of what you should be doing actually. In fact, I want you practicing more." Roh looked up at Dain in surprise.

"You… Why would you want that?" Dain's amused smirk grew wider. He patted him on the shoulder.

"Because Roh, your… talents… present exciting opportunities, and the more you master them, the better our odds."

"Our odds? Our odds at… what, exactly?" He couldn't mean-

"Why, our odds at escaping of course."

"Escaping? Nobody's made it through that gate in years. Why would we be any different?" Dain removed his arm from Roh's shoulder, shaking his head.

"Because they didn't have what you have" he replied simply.

"What I…? I have nothing that they don't. What I did just now, with the fire… That's it! That's all I can do, and that's not going to get us past a city full of guards!" Dain's expression underwent a sudden, drastic transformation. He wasn't smiling, he wasn't amused, he was angry now. When next he spoke he was as close to shouting as he could be without risking waking the others up.

"What you have is something we've never had to work with, you damned fool! You've been given a gift that just might let us take back our freedom, and I won't let you throw it away!" There was a long pause. The sun had almost risen now. The room had begun to fill with the golden light of the early sun.

"If you won't do it for your sake, do it for all the rest of us. I'm not asking you to storm the wall with me tonight. Keep practicing, master whatever you can that might help us. Give me time to work out the details and I'll come up with a plan. If I do that, can I count on your help?"

Dain had always looked out for Roh, as he had looked out for all the slaves. Ever since Roh had been brought to live in Dolemn as a child, Dain had been someone he could rely on. When the Collectors had tried to send a ten year old Roh to work in the smithy, where many a slave had suffered grievous injuries, accidental or otherwise, it had been Dain who stood up for him, taking his place. If anyone could lead them to freedom, it was Dain, and if Dain had a use for him, how could he refuse?

"I…" he tried to break eye contact, but Dain refused to lose his gaze. "I'll do what I can." As quickly as it had come, Dain's temper subsided, a slight smile returning to his face.

"That's all I would ask. Now go back to sleep. The Collectors will arrive soon enough." Roh complied, starting back towards his bedroll in the other room. As he neared the doorway he turned back to look at Dain, and found him looking out the window at the streets of the Slave District, taking in every detail, no doubt already at work on a plan of escape. Once more he turned his back, lay down and shut his eyes.

Put to death for a failed escape, or free to follow the voice in his head to an island he'd never seen before. These were his possible futures, and he didn't like the sound of either of them. He slept, but did not dream.