The Castle Оf Hape. Caves Оf Fire Аnd Ice. The Joining Оf Тhe Stone

Part Two: The Gods

There stood in the heart of the Pellian nation a wood of ancient twisted trees so dense the air beneath did not know sun; a wood so old it had seen the first coming of men into Ere; a wood chill of spirit as death is chill. No one ventured there save the Pellian Seers. In the center of the wood rose a black stone wall, and inside this wall the Pellians had wrought a castle, grotesque in design, shaped like the jointed heads of a snake, an eel, and a horned man, their grinning mouths serving as high portals, their eyes leering windows. And a creature lived within the castle, a creature named Hape. This was the castle of Hape.

Below the three grinning heads that formed the upper castle ran three rows of windows narrow and dark, and beneath these again was an arched place whose door was carved with the Hope’s runes and with signs of death and adversity.

At first, three years earlier, the Hape had been no more than a whispering dark reaching from beyond the mountains to summon BroogArl. Heeding its call, BroogArl had sent Seers north into the dark mountains to seek the Hape out, an expedition that traveled past the gods’ city of Owdneet, past the mountain Tala-charen, and past Eresu itself, far, far into the unknown places, led on by the Hope’s soft urging: twelve Seers and apprentice Seers traveling two years, and returning at last to Pelli not alone. The Hape rode with them, rode the winds above them, nurtured on their dark thoughts as they traveled, and grew stronger than ever it had been. It ran beside their shying horses as a great six-legged cat, or it strode beside their cringing mounts as a giant with head of goat and deer’s horns; or it housed itself in the dark of their minds only and rode there. When the Seers arrived in Pelli, it housed itself in the castle they built for it at its own instruction, and BroogArl knew he had captured a creature of evil beyond his wildest dreams. There in the wood, Hape would come out at night in the shape of a horned man or an eel or snake, or in the form of a thousand chittering creatures slithering unseen. This was Hape, potent, feeding on the dark Seers’ minds and nurturing their evil wills, slave to their wills—or was he slave?

Who ruled now? The Seers of Pelli, or Hape?

Perhaps it did not matter who ruled in this coupling of evil.