Ciara's Song

A Word About the Chronicles of the Witch World

What seeker of knowledge can say with truth that the history of Witch World has been wholly preserved, even in the masses of parchment rolls, the wood-bound books, or those metal plates of yet earlier date engraved in tongues that have not been used for a millennium or more?

Where lie the life stories of those who raised the walls of that ruined city in the far South, site of a battle waged but yesterday? Whence came all the flotsam and jetsam of clans and races, whose only memories and records do not stretch back even to their arrival through one of the world gates?

Yes, even though those portals giving upon all the other dimensions have been closed, still there are many tales worth the telling to be found by delving into the Archives at Lormt. For centuries, Lormt acted as a depository for the histories of families and the keeping of clan lines, so that kinfolk widely separated by war or witchery might possibly find those of their blood again. There also, far in the past, the custom began for clans, families, and even solitary rovers to leave accounts of their own journeyings, battles, and victories, thereby illuminating some small facet of the history they knew, having acted within it—and, perhaps, upon it as well. Thus, records left by even single wanderers are to be found there, piled against official reports of vanished kingdoms.

It has now absorbed the attention of some of the burrowing scholars to search out accounts concerning events that they may have been involved in themselves but which they found hard to comprehend as being experienced simultaneously by unknown others. These seekers have included those tied to forceful action in the past and determined to leave for the future some detailing of the roots and branches of the tree of their tale. Such enlargers of the Witch World’s store of lore are Ouen and the Lady Mereth.

In a time of relative peace, when the inroads made by the Dark from without are no longer to be feared (though still, and ever, guarded against) these earlier tales are mined by songsmiths, and some mighty sagas have been wrought from even modest accounts. Thus, Lormt is now not only what it has always been—a treasure-house of ancient knowledge—but, in this day, it fosters new wisdom as well, spreading over the land a web of such stories as will make clear to the survivors of a past in which many went armed how well their kindred bore those weapons and to what end.

So, from out of their safekeeping at Lormt, different ages of the Witch World come to life again. In this way, those newborn can learn what passed before: actions of not only potent sorcerers and great lords and ladies but of folk like themselves, meant to live untroubled lives but prevented by fate from so doing.

One such tale, humble in origin only, is that of Ciara, who had to make her life anew under the very shadow of the Dark.