Rise of the TaiGethen

Prologue

For a hundred and twenty years, the forest bled unchecked.

Serrin of the ClawBound

They stood together on the cliffs surrounding the Ultan and stared out across the rainforest. Helpless anger set Auum’s teeth to grind and his body to shiver. The scale of the desecration was so vast it was hard to comprehend.

In the early years following the human invasion, when the elves were desperately weak and scattered throughout the rainforest, their enemy had been ruthless in their exploitation of the resources they had come to steal. The damage was appalling, perhaps irreversible. Next to Auum, Serrin was trembling and his panther was nuzzling him, trying to comfort him.

‘Why do you put yourself through this?’ asked Auum.

‘Because you must understand what you allowed to happen. It is my duty to make you see.’

The rainforest had been obliterated for a full two miles from the borders of Ysundeneth. Magic had been used to clear the undergrowth. The devastation to the west had only been halted by swamp and cliff, but then the humans had turned south and used the River Ix instead.

Roads followed the river for over seventy miles and barges pushed yet further up, carrying slave gangs into the heart of the forest to log wherever the banks offered a landing point. The river was choked with the trunks of great old trees outside the lumber mills of Ysundeneth, which worked day and night.

Ships departed every day, taking Beeth’s precious wood north to Balaia, returning packed with more tools to commit yet greater atrocities at a yet greater pace. Auum knew it was the same outside Calaius’ second and third cities. The forest was under attack across the northern coast. And where the trees still stood, the most valuable plants and flowers were harvested before the axes began to fall.

Where the elves had always farmed the forest the humans destroyed it without a shrug, for reasons which held a horrible logic. An elf must necessarily look forward hundreds of years and would always desire to look upon the beauty of the canopy. A human, whose life was over in a blink, required no such foresight.

Humans saw the vastness of the canopy and an endless supply of timber. They failed to realise the ramifications of harvesting so much of it and apparently cared less. Elves knew that the balance, once critically undone, was gone for ever. It had not happened yet, but that time would come. Not this year, not the next, nor in the next decade. But it would come.

And so Serrin of the ClawBound had brought Auum to see what he knew in his heart but did not want to admit.

‘We are helpless to stop them,’ said Auum. ‘We are so few, and the cost our enslaved pay for our resistance is so great.’

‘So you will sit by and watch the humans destroy our world. You. Arch of the TaiGethen. Sworn to defend your country, your people and your faith.’

Auum sighed. Serrin had been running the rainforest with panthers and the other ClawBound for a hundred years, and it had taken a huge toll on his pure elven side. His reasoning seemed affected; his vocabulary was diminished, and his faith was linked far more closely to Tual and Beeth than it was to Yniss.

‘You know it’s not that simple. My responsibility is the survival of the elven race. I have to look ahead, beyond the present and the crimes I am forced to witness. We can’t defeat man, not yet. We have to build our strength in combat and magic. I hate it, but it’s reality.

‘Of course we could delay man’s rape of our forest. But for every man we kill, an innocent elf dies in agony in Ysundeneth. I am responsible for those lives, just as I am for those elves who remain free.’

Serrin regarded him evenly and shrugged. ‘When the cities are empty of slaves, who will they visit their revenge upon?’

‘Look beyond your hunting grounds,’ said Auum sharply. ‘When the cities are empty of slaves, there will be too few elves to rebuild our people. We need them and the Katurans or we will die out.’

‘The Ynissul are immortal.’

Auum faced Serrin and the sadness that swept him was akin to grief. ‘You do not believe that the Ynissul can hope to survive alone. You were a Silent Priest, an adept of the harmony, a lover of every elven thread.’

‘Look at our forest,’ said Serrin. ‘Look at the pace of desecration. The humans will kill us one way or another. There will come a day when your words will no longer hold the ClawBound at bay. I hope you will be ready to stand by us when that day comes.’

Auum watched Serrin and his panther move smoothly away to the narrow paths down to the forest floor. Night was falling and Auum watched as it covered the enormity of man’s crimes. He remained, and prayed to Yniss for guidance, until the sun kissed the land once again and recoiled at the horror it touched.