The Greyhounds of Aeravon
by Mik Wilkens
Excerpt from “Influences of Elvish Magic on the Developments of Man” by Appolinaire Forbes, Master Scholar and Scribe, University of Thalos:
Millennia ago, the human tribes of Ahmeldan tamed the wild desert canids that shared their homeland. From these creatures the Ahmels bred a sleek hound to help them hunt the fleet-footed desertbok and sand hare, and to serve as guards and companions. In time, these loyal, keen-sighted animals came to be called greyhounds in the common tongue of man. As the centuries passed, other races learned of the unique qualities of these swift hunters and devoted companions, and greyhounds spread across many lands.
As their range continued to expand, greyhounds came to the attention of the elven clans of Tanjista. The Tanji elves discovered magic within the greyhounds and taught them to use it, granting them the gifts of windrunning and thoughtspeech, and the long lives enjoyed by elves, wizards, and other creatures of magic.
To date, these Tanji gifts have been employed by many peoples for many purposes, but the greyhounds’ foundation as a hunter and companion remains intact.
(This map is not finished yet...but it’s better than saying “Map goes here”)
CHAPTER ONE
Doyle was dreaming again, and he knew it. Occasionally, if he tried hard enough, he could affect what he was dreaming about. Most of the other greyhounds in the Gifford Keep pack thought it was a strange ability. The only one who never questioned it was Fala, yet whether that was because she was the pack leader or Doyle’s dam, he did not know. Sometimes her dark eyes watched him with an intensity that suggested there might be another reason, but he had no idea what it could be.
In this dream, Doyle was chasing a great dark stag through the thick woods of north Dusan. He had outdistanced the rest of the pack long ago, leaving him alone with the steady rhythm of his paws on the damp forest floor, the exhilarating rush of air past his backswept ears, and the crash of the stag through the underbrush ahead.
His quarry leaped a fallen tree with a graceful bound. Filtered sunlight painted the stag’s rich brown fur with dapples of bright light, and then it plunged into the shadows again, its flagged tail a dull gleam between the trees.
Doyle kept after it, his breath and blood pounding joyously in his ears, the exhilarating scent of the stag and the forest filling his head. He sailed over the fallen tree, his sleek white coat shining briefly in the fall of daylight.
Ahead, the forest opened into an expanse of bright spring grass. Doyle watched for the stag to change direction and remain within the cover of the forest, but the great beast charged on, straight into the seemingly endless stretch of open land.
And then he was no longer chasing a stag. Before him bounded a swift, long-legged hare, its cloud-puff tail flashing white behind it. Doyle gave the transformation barely a thought; such was the way of dreams.
Free of the need to navigate the hazards of a forest (even a dream-forest), Doyle ran faster. He watched his prey intently, seeking the slightest hint that would tell him which way it would dart. Sudden changes in direction were a favorite trick of every hare he’d ever chased, either awake or in dreams. Yet rather than swerving and diving, darting this way and that to throw off its pursuer or make him overrun a sharp turn, this hare kept to an unerringly straight course.
Sensing imminent success, Doyle pushed harder, tucking and stretching, paws pounding, claws digging deep into the soil beneath him, all but flying as he arrowed after the hare.
A stand of heavy brush materialized directly ahead and the hare dove into it. Doyle had barely enough time to grumble to himself about his dream-mind’s traitorous betrayal—creating cover for the hare out of thin air—before he plunged into the thicket behind his quarry.
He dug his paws in hard against the ground to shed his forward momentum and found himself standing still, barely panting from his run, surrounded by dim gray nothingness. Dark, featureless shapes wafted past him like small black clouds blown by a sluggish wind. He smelled nothing and felt nothing, not the grayness beneath his paws nor the air upon which the amorphous forms drifted.
A dim shape grew before him, rising like a misty shadow. It took the form of a black greyhound that stood even taller than Doyle’s own significant height. The stranger’s golden-brown eyes met Doyle’s.
«Heed me,» a deep voice spoke in his head, using the thoughtspeech with which all greyhounds communicate. «The key is in the world again.»
The words came to Doyle in an odd rhythm, some rushing together, others seeming to take the space of several heartbeats to form; some even came to him out of order. Yet, somehow, they made sense.
«What key?» Doyle asked.
An image wavered in his mind, a circle within a triangle. Short lines stretched inward from the midpoint of the triangle’s sides, suspending the circle in its center. An instant later, the image vanished.
«Shadows seek it,» the black hound said. «They must not find it or all is lost.»
Doyle glanced apprehensively at the dark clouds that surrounded them. Fala had spoken of encounters with Shadows, but she always described them as creatures not clouds: short-muzzled and heavy-bodied, with long cat-like tails, sooty black skin, and dead white eyes.
«Are these Shadows?» he asked.
«Your dam, Fala, is the last of the greyhounds Arden brought to Aeravon,» the stranger continued as if Doyle had not spoken. «The last of the Shadow fighters.»
«She taught us how to fight Shadows. We—» Doyle hesitated as the black hound began receding rapidly.
«The Shadows draw near,» the stranger said, his voice diminishing with his form. «They must not find the key.» Then the stranger was gone and the dark, drifting shapes began to move closer, bringing with them a wave of cold so intense it burned.
Terror sped Doyle’s heart. He tried to run, to dart between two of the encroaching clouds of chill darkness, but his legs would not obey.
Go away, he thought at the shapes, willing them to move back, his body trembling with fear and cold. You’re only a dream. Go back.
But the shapes continued their relentless approach.
A whimper rose in Doyle’s throat as he stood frozen, helpless, while the lightless clouds enveloped him, filling his mind with a terrible blackness and his veins with ice . . .
***
Doyle awoke with a muffled yelp, heart pounding. He lay still, shivering slightly, until his heart calmed and the room’s warm air eased the chill that seemed to follow him from his dream. He raised his head from the thick bearskin rug on which he lay and looked around the familiar stone-walled bedchamber to be sure nothing else had followed him. The only shadows he saw were those cast by the pale pre-dawn light that shone through the room’s lone window.
He breathed a relieved sigh. Already the details of the strange dream were fading to little more than a vaguely disquieting memory.
The other five greyhounds that made up the pack—Doyle’s four littermates and their dam, Fala—lay around the room, lounging on the furniture or curled on furs scattered across the carpets that covered the wooden floor.
As usual, Felix had crept onto Master Darian’s bed sometime during the night. He lay stretched across its foot, his slender black body blending into the dark coverlet, only the white tips of his toes standing out in the dim room. Master Darian snored quietly from the bed’s opposite end, the faint lines that time and the elements had etched into the tanned skin of his bearded face smoothed away by sleep.
Joey sprawled in his favorite place on the padded and upholstered settee beside the window, dreaming. His feet twitched, his eyes darted behind half-closed lids, and his white-and-fawn form shuddered in time to a series of muted barks of excitement.
Across the room, Skye curled on a sheepskin by the door, her light brindle coat an almost perfect reflection of dark brindle Abby who lay beside her, head up, ears perked. Abby was watching Doyle, her brown eyes shining from either side of the white blaze that ran the length of her delicate face. She stared for a moment, and then lowered her head to rest between her white-stockinged paws. Her eyes shifted to look behind Doyle.
He followed her gaze.
On the far end of the bearskin rug, nearest the hearth, lay Fala. Her fawn coat glowed in the banked embers of last night’s fire, her almond-shaped eyes dark pools in her pale face. Seeing her swept away Doyle’s remaining unease.
«Are you all right?» she asked.
Sensing more than her normal maternal concern, Doyle considered the question carefully before answering. «I had a strange dream. It scared me a little.»
«You dreamt of Shadows,» she said.
Doyle whined softly at the flurry of disturbing images Fala’s statement sent swarming into his head. «How do you know?»
«You spoke of them in your sleep.»
A single sharp image flashed into his awareness. «There was a greyhound, too. A black male. He . . . I think he spoke to me.»
«What did he say?»
Doyle struggled to remember. Glimpses of the dream sparked in his mind and then slipped away. It was frustrating, like trying to bite water. He growled in annoyance and concentrated harder.
Finally he caught hold of one dim memory. «He said, “The key is in the world again.” But it wasn’t real, right? It was just a dream.»
«No, Doyle, it was real,» Fala said with assurance. «The black hound was Mael.»
«Mael?» Doyle asked, surprised. All of the pack knew about Mael. He was Fala’s sire, Doyle’s grandsire, forebear to many of the Aeravon greyhounds. Doyle recalled vague bits of a tale Fala had once told to Abby and Skye. They’d all been rather young at the time and he hadn’t paid much attention, being more concerned with chasing Joey and keeping his tail out from between Felix’s sharp little milk teeth. In the story, something bad had happened to Mael. «I thought he died.»
«No one’s sure what happened to him,» Fala said, «but I do not believe he’s dead.»
The entire pack was awake now, watching and listening.
«It’s time you heard the whole story about Mael,» Fala said to all of them. «You’re old enough to know the truth about the Shadows.»
Joey snorted and lifted his head from where it rested against one arm of the settee. «Old enough?» he said. «We’ll be two soon. That’s old enough to know everything.» He yawned and rolled onto his back, one foreleg stretched straight up for balance. «You taught us what to do if we ever meet a Shadow. What else is there to know?»
Fala gave him a long look. «Not if you meet a Shadow, Joey, when you meet one. It’s time you learned why the Shadows are here and why we must fight them.» She paused and cocked her head slightly to one side, holding Joey’s gaze. «Of course, if you don’t care to hear about it, you’re welcome to leave. The cooks should be getting to work in the kitchen by now. I’m sure you can beg a scrap or two from them to hold you until breakfast.» She lowered her head and licked delicately at one front leg.
Joey rolled off the settee with a quick twist of his body and stood staring at her with wide eyes. «When we meet a Shadow?» His tone rang with trepidation.
Doyle shared his brother’s concern. Clearly Fala had not taught them to fight Shadows for no reason, but Doyle had never taken the time to think about what that reason might be. Something told him that his comfortable, carefree adolescence was about to come to an end.
Eyes downcast, Joey lowered his haunches to the carpet and leaned against the front of the settee. «I’ll stay,» he said.
«Good choice.» Fala crossed her paws on the rug before her. «It all began with Mael. Like me, he was whelped in a far-off land across the Great Sea. One day he met the wizard Arden and joined him in his travels. Mael and Arden visited many lands together, including our island of Aeravon—»
“Fala, what’s all this talk of Mael and Arden?” Master Darian interrupted in a voice rough with sleep. He propped himself on one elbow, bright blue eyes blinking blearily around the room. His gaze reached the window and he groaned. “And whose idea was it to wake up before the sun?”
«Doyle dreamt of Mael,» Fala told him. «And Shadows.»
“Oh,” Darian said, his tone suddenly serious. He blinked hard, ran a hand through his long, wavy brown hair, and scratched his short beard.
Felix wagged his tail, thumping it against the covers. Darian reached to the foot of the bed to rub his ears.
«It’s time to tell the pack about Arden and Mael,» Fala said, «and what happened with the Shadows. Begin the story, Darian. You know more of what came before than I do.»
Master Darian sat up and stretched. Felix slapped a paw onto his leg and Darian resumed petting him. “I first saw Arden and Mael at the palace in Faeron when I was a lad of about thirteen.” Although Master Darian could use thoughtspeech better than any human Doyle knew—nearly as well as a greyhound, in fact—he preferred to speak aloud unless circumstances dictated otherwise. “At that time, there were no greyhounds in Aeravon, and I thought Mael was some fantastic, magical creature. Not that you aren’t all fantastic,” he added with a brief smile, “but Mael was the only greyhound I’d ever seen, and he was the companion of a wizard—the only wizard I’d ever seen.”
«You weren’t Baron Titus’s guard captain then, were you?» Doyle asked. Greyhounds matured in just a few years, but Doyle had heard that it took close to two decades for humans to reach full growth; he thought it unlikely Darian would have achieved his current rank when he was only thirteen years old.
Darian chuckled. “No, Doyle, not back then.” He gave Felix a final pat and climbed out of bed. “But that was almost twenty-five years ago, at King Deverel’s coronation. Poor Deverel was barely nineteen. He’d been raised to be king some day, but no one expected his father to die so soon.”
As he spoke, Master Darian put on his brown leather pants and boots, a cream-colored linen shirt, and his long burgundy suede jerkin with the golden stag emblem of Dusan stitched on the left breast.
«What happened to the old king?» Felix asked. He’d moved to the head of the bed and made a plush nest for himself among the pillows. He lay with his chin resting on a soft mound, following Darian’s movements with his eyes.
“King Coryn was on a summer tour of the island. He’d finally succeeded in uniting all of Aeravon—the human portions anyway. The elven lands remained under elven rule, as they do today. While fording a river, part of Coryn’s retinue was swept away by a flash flood. Coryn rode in to save them, but he was swept away as well. His death left young Prince Deverel in charge of the newly expanded Aeravon with little experience administering such a large kingdom.”
Master Darian crossed the room to the window. “Arden and Mael had advised King Coryn for years,” Darian continued his story, his back to the room as he gazed outside. The eastern sky glowed with the promise of sunrise. “After his coronation, Deverel asked them to stay and advise him as well. A few years later, Arden announced that he and Mael had to leave. Word in the court was that Deverel had come to depend on the wizard too much and Arden wanted to break his dependence. Arden promised he would return in a few years with a gift for Aeravon, and then he and Mael left the island.”
Turning back to face the room, Darian leaned one shoulder against the window’s stone casing. Joey padded over to him and pushed his head under Darian’s hand.
“Arden knew a kingdom as large as Aeravon now was needed a way for all of the far-flung parts to communicate, not only with the king, but with each other,” Darian said, scratching Joey’s ears. “Arden planned to bring greyhounds to Aeravon to act as messengers.”
Fala took up the story. «I was one of the greyhounds Arden and Mael asked to go with them to Aeravon. They wanted me to help windrun messages across the kingdom. They asked many others as well. Finally they found fifty of us who agreed to go with them.»
«Fifty!» Doyle tried unsuccessfully to imagine so many. The only greyhounds he had ever known were Fala and his littermates.
«Yes,» Fala said. «Fifty greyhounds, from a dozen different lands. Many of them were Mael’s progeny—sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, and some even more distantly related.»
«Arden brought all of you to Aeravon?» Skye asked.
«Yes, all of us together, to serve Deverel and the kingdom.»
«How did you get here?» Felix asked.
«The elves gave Arden one of their weavings, a tapestry called Sulahn. He told us he would cast a spell to make us all sleep and become a part of Sulahn. When we awoke we would be in the palace at Faeron. To us, it would feel like no time had passed. When we woke up, however, we were at an estate several leagues outside of Faeron. Arden was badly wounded and Mael was gone. Arden said someone had opened a Gate to the Shadow realm in the palace. He told us how to fight the Shadows, and said we must go to Faeron to try to keep them from spreading. He was going to a place where he could heal, but he promised to return soon and find a way to close the Shadow Gate. That was nearly fifteen years ago.»
«What happened to him?» Doyle asked. «And to Mael?»
«Who opened the Gate?» Skye added to Doyle’s questions.
Fala looked toward Master Darian leaning beside the window, idly stroking Joey’s head. The sun had risen and its first rays shone into the room, painting an elongated rectangle of light on the carpets and scattered furs.
“Soon after Arden and Mael left Aeravon to find the greyhounds,” Darian said, “a wizard named Marrik arrived in Faeron. Over the next few years, he managed to win Deverel’s trust and turn him against the Council of Lords. Apparently Marrik had come to Aeravon looking for a magical device that would allow him to open a Shadow Gate, but he needed the king’s help.”
«Why would anyone want to open a Gate to Shadow?» Felix asked.
Master Darian shrugged. “I don’t presume to understand what drives wizards to do what they do. Whatever the reason, Marrik found the device and tried to use it. Arden and Mael returned to the palace in time to try to stop him, but sometime during that encounter, Mael disappeared and Arden was wounded. No one knows where Arden went after he awakened Fala and the other greyhounds, or why he never returned. Marrik and the king haven’t been seen since that day.”
«What happened with the Shadows and the Gate?» Doyle asked. «And the other greyhounds?»
«We went to Faeron, as Arden instructed,» Fala said. «Shadows had already filled the palace. A dark cloud hung over it, and it was spreading as the Shadows moved out through the city. The citizens were fleeing, along with many of the city guards. The rest of the guards were trying to stop the Shadows, but as fast as the Shadows fell to the guards’ weapons, they rose again. Shadows can only be banished permanently using magic. That is why Arden sent us against them. Using our ability to windrun, we can sever their ties to our world. We fought beside the guard soldiers, but the Shadows kept coming. We held as long as we could to let the citizens escape, but then we had to run, too. We lost many in that first battle.
«Over the next several months we continued to fight, trying to slow the Shadows’ expansion beyond the city. Some of the guards stayed to help, and soldiers came from all over Aeravon. We fought on, expecting Arden to return any day. We clung to that belief as months and then years passed, and the Shadow War continued. The Shadows kept coming, taking more and more territory in an ever-growing circle around Faeron. All we could do was try to slow them, to give those in their path time to escape. And all the while, we kept losing more of our own.»
Fala closed her eyes with a sigh, as if reliving the struggle against the Shadows, «Eventually the Shadows’ advance slowed and the human soldiers returned to their holdings. We patrolled the edges of the Shadowland. At first we traveled in small groups, but as we lost more fighters, we were forced to patrol in ones and twos, and then each on our own. There came a time when months would pass between the times I saw another greyhound. After one such stretch, I came across Gabriel, your sire. He hadn’t seen another greyhound in almost eight months, and we realized Aeravon needed more of us to help guard against the Shadows until Arden returned. We knew it wouldn’t be safe to raise a litter so close to the Shadows’ territory, so Gabriel convinced me to go north, as far from the Shadows as I could get. And so I came to Dusan, and Darian found me and took me in. You five were born a short while later.»
«That was almost two years ago,» Abby said. «What’s happened with the Shadows since then?»
“Their area of control has stopped growing,” Darian said. “However, groups of them venture out regularly. Baron Titus and I keep some troops patrolling Dusan’s borders, watching for signs of Shadows. The other holdings do pretty much the same. The Aeravon Council still meets occasionally to discuss the situation, but the lords usually end up arguing about whether or not to choose a new king, and which of them has the most right to the throne. As far as the Shadows go, I think the lords keep hoping—as we all do—that Arden will come back.”
«He’s not coming back, is he?» Felix asked.
“Nobody knows. We don’t know where he went.”
«What of Doyle’s dream?» Abby looked at Fala. «You said it was Mael who spoke to him.»
«It was,» Fala said.
Doyle glanced at her. In the flood of information he’d just learned about the Shadows, he’d nearly forgotten what had prompted the discussion in the first place. «You said Mael disappeared when Marrik opened the Gate. How could he be in my dream?»
Fala’s dark eyes met his. «A few of the greyhounds Arden brought to Aeravon dreamt like you do, Doyle—aware they were dreaming and sometimes able to control what they dream. Occasionally Mael would appear in one of their dreams. He delivered warnings that saved lives, and gave information that proved correct. Maybe it’s not the Mael I knew, but something has been aiding us through messages in dreams. We have to try to understand the one in yours.»
“What was the message?” Master Darian asked.
«The key is in the world again.» Doyle repeated the black greyhound’s cryptic words. Thinking back over everything Fala and Darian had told them, he sensed a possible connection. «Keys open things,» he said, putting his thoughts into words. «Could this key be the thing Marrik used to open the Shadow Gate?»
“That makes sense, but why would Mael say it’s in the world again?” Darian asked. “If Marrik used it to open the Gate, hasn’t it been ‘in the world’ since then? And why does it matter whether or not it’s in the world now? The Gate’s already open.”
«Maybe Marrik wants to open another one,» Doyle said.
«Can he do that?» Felix asked.
Doyle whined quietly. «I don’t know. I don’t even know if that’s what the key is for.»
“Did Mael say anything else?” Darian asked.
Doyle thought back through the brief series of vague recollections. «Maybe. I don’t remember much. After I woke up, most of it went away.»
Darian gave a half-smile. “Dreams have a way of doing that. Do you think you can remember any more?”
«I’ll try.» Doyle closed his eyes and brought to mind the one clear image he remembered—Mael saying the key is in the world again. He tried to think forward from that point, and then tried to remember what had come before. He recalled a stag that became a hare, and remembered chasing it—or, now that he thought about it, being led by it—into a dark thicket that opened to a gray nothingness inhabited by dark, drifting forms. A dim mist rose before him, and the dream came rushing back.
«I remember.» He opened his eyes and looked at Master Darian. «Mael appeared and told me about the key. He showed me an image of it—at least I think that’s what it was. It looked like a triangle with a circle in the middle.»
“Could you tell what it was made of, or how it big it was?”
«No. It was just a shape. Mael said Shadows are looking for it and they can’t be allowed to find it. And then he said—» Doyle hesitated as the meaning of Mael’s next statement struck him. His ears drooped and his heart felt as if it had slid into his belly. «He said Fala is the last of the greyhounds Arden brought to Aeravon.»
Fala stared at him for a long moment. «The last . . . ?» She turned her head and looked toward the embers glowing from the hearth.
Master Darian frowned and started toward her with Joey at his side, but she turned back before they took more than a few steps.
She climbed to her feet and stretched slowly, extending first her front legs, and then her back, a faraway look in her eyes. «If I am the last of Arden’s greyhounds, then we may be the only greyhounds left in the kingdom. It falls to us to keep the Shadows from finding the key.» She looked at Doyle, strong emotion smoldering deep in her eyes. «Did Mael say where it is?»
«He only said the Shadows are drawing near.»
«That’s enough.» She closed her eyes and Doyle sensed her reaching deep within herself in preparation for a windrun.
He stood and took a hesitant step toward her, wondering what she was doing. Abby and Skye moved up beside Doyle, and Felix jumped off the bed.
“Fala, what—?” Darian began.
«I can find the Shadows this way,» she said. «I know what they feel like.»
The air around Fala began to ripple and warp, and her body became semi-transparent as she slipped into the airy realm just beyond the physical world. But rather than launching into a windrun, she stood in place, ears cocked, her attention riveted on something Doyle could not see. He remained where he was, unwilling to interrupt whatever she was doing. Master Darian and the other greyhounds stood still as well. Finally, after several minutes, the rippling around Fala stilled and her form became solid again. She took a stumbling step forward, and lay down heavily on the bearskin rug.
«The Shadows are to the south,» she said, her voice tired, as if she’d windrun a great distance. «They’re near the border with Lommar. We must find them.»
“The border’s a two-day hard ride away,” Darian said. “Can we get there in time?”
«We can make it before nightfall if we windrun.»
Darian studied her for a moment, lips pinched into a thin line. “Are you sure you’re up to that?”
«I’ll be all right. What I did is draining, but my strength will return soon.»
“What did you do?”
«Something we learned while patrolling the Shadows’ border. When windrunning, we could send our awareness out to sense for Shadows. It’s hard to do from such a distance.»
Darian crossed the room to the door. “I’ll let the baron know what we’ve discovered, and then get Bridget saddled and ready to go. She’s been on windruns before. We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.” He looked back at Fala. “Will we be able to stop the Shadows?”
She met his gaze, and then looked at the rest of the pack. «We must.»
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