Dawnbringer: An Epic Medieval High Fantasy Saga

The earth crunches softly under Tilliana's feet as she paces slowly between the ruined buildings of the ghetto. Long already have the burned bodies of her fellows been removed and buried, and the roads—more like paths of loose dirt and stone—cleared of rubble and refuse. But even with this, the ghetto remains, and may always remain, but a skeleton of what it once was, a hollowed out carcass of blackened wood and scorched stone, of lives lost, memories extinguished, and hopes forfeited.

She comes, after much deliberation and hesitation, to her home—her ghetto home after the home that she and her husband first shared, before he left the hæras' service, was lost. And this home too is now gone, but a blackened shape against the earth, where the wooden structure has been reduced almost entirely to ash. Everything that had been inside—all that she and her family possessed—has been destroyed or ruined. Wood and cloth, paper and thread, have been turned to ash; metal and glass have blackened or shattered, but now awaken remembrance in Tilliana of the time when these things had been a part of her daily life: an old chalice that Alsenor's parents had given to him on his wedding day; a window hanging of stained-glass with a design of an elk standing atop a hill in the wilderness, the blazing sun shining red and yellow behind him; a matching set of tin plates and cups with which her family had daily eaten for years, scratched and scuffed by continual use, but now hardly distinguishable in the burnt remains of the house.

Tilliana walks to the center of what would have been the bedroom that she and Alsenor shared, and she crouches down close to the earth. She places her palms against the ground, as if reaching out to touch and to make contact with what is now forever lost, with the life that she had before it was irreversibly changed by violence and death. And as she does so, she feels something underneath her fingers. Pulling it from the earth, she sees a brooch of silver, veined with gold, in the shape of a maple leaf. Without thinking she holds it to her breast, recalling the moment that he had given it to her.

It was shortly after his parents had learned of their love for one another and their intent to marry. Their response was one of strong disapproval, apparently on the grounds that Tilliana's birth and stature—being of the lowest and poorest in Ristfand—was not fitting for one who would be a counselor to the hæras himself, in the long line of those who had gone before him. Alsenor had argued with his parents and tried to convince them otherwise. After a period of time, seeing that their son had no intention of changing his mind, they gave begrudging approval but asked him to wait a further year before pursuing marriage. This he accepted. One day during this time of waiting, he led Tilliana to the coast south of the city, and, in the evening twilight when the water danced red and orange, he gave her the brooch with the following words.

"Your common birth means nothing to me since you are for me the greatest of nobility and the highest in stature. My family has long served the hæras and attended his house, but neither does such position mean anything to me. Benefits it grants us, that is true, and such benefits I wish to share with you, but our country has never been one to be divided by wealth and power. It is a tradition among our people that the influential are no more important than the common, that the wealthy owe their wealth to the poor and the poor have a right to the share of the wealthy. It is long, however, since Ristfand has lived up to this ideal, and the rift that my family imagines to exist between us is but a symptom of this. Yet I give you another sign, a pledge: the seal of my family, that it may be your own, a promise that you share in our inheritance, but even more, that I wish to share fully in yours."

As events played out, that is exactly what happened. Alsenor received his wish: he shared in Tilliana's lot in poverty and even, forsaking his family's long service to the hæras, paid the price of death for his efforts to fight on the side of the rebellion. But only now, after the dust has begun to settle and the smoke to fade away, does Tilliana allow herself to doubt whether his decision to fight with the rebels was the correct one. Certainly she does not wish that he had compromised on the truth by participating in—or even allowing—the injustices of the jarl's court. But the resistance offered by the rebels, the armed resistance, had brought nothing but suffering to the people of Ristfand. It had not built up but only torn down; in addition, it had stirred those in authority to acts of violence in response.

These doubts concerning the person dearest to her, doubts about one now deceased, make Tilliana feel both insecure and ashamed. She fears that she is desecrating her husband's memory, casting a shadow over his integrity in hindsight simply because he is no longer present to defend and explain his own actions. But no, she thinks to herself, she is not doubting his integrity nor even the rightness of his goals. What she doubts, and cannot help doubting, is the wisdom of the path that he chose to pursue toward such goals. Recognizing this, she lets go of her resistance to these feelings and instead allows them to wash over her. As the insecurity envelops her and the shame touches her heart, she realizes that they are simply not true; they are nothing but fears, fears unfounded in reality. Therefore, rather than feeling estranged from Alsenor, she feels drawn closer to him, as if being willing to look at his life and his actions without fear allows her to love him still, to feel both the beauty and the pain, the wisdom and the folly, that mark his life, and yet to embrace him in all and beyond all, in the ceaseless aspiration toward goodness that was always his and which so clearly marked the ending of his life. In the light of this goodness, she finds the courage and serenity to look upon everything else, even those things which were imperfect, and to do so with peace.

Her mind and heart carry her back to the life that they shared together and to the family that was born of their mutual love. Many scenes pass before the eyes of her imagination, indelibly impressed there through deep feeling and now also through the intensity of her grief. She remembers when they first met: after bumping into someone in the busyness of the outdoor market, she had dropped the basket of groceries she was carrying, and Alsenor, standing nearby, had rushed to help her pick them up again. This was not only an act of kindness but of chivalry, as the market was a place where pick-pocketing or other forms of petty theft were commonplace. A woman's goods, which were scattered across the ground, littered between people's legs and uncaringly trodden underfoot, were rife for the taking. Looking up at Alsenor as she hurriedly gathered her things, she said, "Thank you, kind...sir," adding this last part as she saw the hæras' crest upon his breast. He replied, with gentle eyes, "It is my pleasure." Then, after returning to her what he had salvaged, he said, with a wave of his hand gesturing to spilled grain and crushed fruits and vegetables, "Perhaps I could help to replace those things that have sadly been trodden underfoot?" "Oh no," Tilliana said. "I could not ask such a thing of you." "I do it not because you asked," he replied, "but because I wish to do so. It is I who ask for your permission to aid you, and not you who beg for aid. Surely there is no shame in that?" "Aye, sir," she answered, lowering her gaze, "then I accept." And he, "Very well. But you may dispense with the sir. Simply call me Alsenor."

The image within her shifts now, and she recalls the birth of her first child, Annar, and the exuberant joy that Alsenor had showed. "A precious gem in a crown of love or the first flower in the garland that we are weaving," he had remarked, looking on the fresh face of his newborn son. "Or in the garden that we are planting," Tilliana had replied. "And may our home always be that," Alsenor had said, taking the child in his arms and holding him close against his chest. "A garden where flowers freely bloom." As this memory and a thousand others confirm, Alsenor was a kindhearted man, and this was revealed most visibly in his attitude toward his family and his relations with children, his own children most of all. Even after the new Imperial counselor had arrived, replacing a predecessor who was both cruel and unjust, Alsenor had decided to abide by his decision to leave the hæras' service, thus perpetuating the break with the role the first son of his family had filled for generations. Since the situation had so drastically changed only two years since his leaving the hæras' service, and for reasons that were obviously just, it is likely that Alsenor would have been received back had he asked. But he did not ask. And his reason was not now that the Imperial counselor usurped his role as advisor to the jarl, nor that wickedness was perpetrated against his intent and desire to aid—for the new counselor seemed much more liable to cooperation—but because Alsenor had come to cherish the time spent with his family and would lose a great deal of this time were he to return to his previous role. Realizing this, Tilliana allows herself to ask a question for the first time that she could have asked years ago: Was Alsenor's decision to leave the hæras' service and to persist in this departure the right decision? And this question leads to another. It comes to her in a memory of the conversation she had shared with Elmariyë, Rorlain, and Eldarien not long ago. Why had Tilliana not shared the detail of the Imperial counselor's replacement with those who had been at her bedside during her illness? She had not lied to them and had told them truly that her husband left the service of Glendas because he felt his aid unwanted, or at least ill-received, in contrast with the strong voice of the current Imperial counselor. But she had not told them that a couple years later the counselor was replaced—for reasons she did not know—and that Alsenor still insisted on the new path he had chosen rather than returning to the old. Did she avoid saying this simply because it was irrelevant to the conversation at hand or because there was something inside her making her reticent to speak of it, even perhaps to think of it?

It is, she realizes now, because she feels guilty for Alsenor's decision, or at least because she does not feel comfortable with the fruit that it ultimately bore, whether it was her fault or not. For if Alsenor had remained in the service of the hæras, perhaps he could have been more a part of Glendas' inner counsels, both in receiving and in giving, and thus could have prevented the uprising rather than participating in it. He could have pursued his goals of justice peacefully rather than through siding with the violence of the rebels. He was such a loving man, so tenderhearted, but in the last analysis, he had not only failed to protect his family but had been the indirect cause of the death of both of his children and of the bereavement of his wife. With these thoughts, Tilliana's eyes burn with tears, and her throat catches with spittle. How can she think such a thing of her spouse, of the love of her heart? What ingratitude such thoughts express concerning everything that he had sought to give to them and did indeed give to them! How could he have known where his path would ultimately lead and the fruits of the fateful decision that he had made? Is it not true, rather, that sometimes a person is asked to simply do their utmost, to walk in integrity as best they can discern, even if their path leads into a place that appears as utter failure? And if that is the case, is such failure perhaps, just perhaps, a stepping stone to something that lies beyond failure, born not of success but of fidelity and of sacrifice?

† † †

The city of Ristfand lies bleached in the sun beneath Elmariyë's gaze as she stands atop a watchtower to the southeast of the city: a structure of large stone slabs standing over a hundred yards tall and giving a splendid view of the surrounding landscape. Feeling a growing pain in the expectation of the coming attack—as if the fear of the citizens was encroaching upon her and making it difficult to breathe—she spoke with Cirien, and he suggested she spend a day walking in the countryside. The west and the north, however, do not promise safety and security, but to the east and the south little danger exists of encountering anyone who could be called an enemy. And so she has walked, through the trees and hills of the plains that swell down from the mountains in the west and the high steppe to the north, until they meet the sea. To the sea she has not ventured, content to walk among the sights and sounds of the woods and the quiet farms and homesteads that speckle the land.

And in the late afternoon, her journey led her to stop at the great eastern watchtower. It is a narrow building erected as a wall thirty feet thick and one-hundred long, with barracks on the bottom floor, a refectory, library, and crafting area in the middle, and, rising as a conical protrusion from the center of the building, a lookout and warning-fire on the top. The watchtower, for its size, nonetheless houses no more than ten soldiers. It is not designed nor purposed for defensive use; it seeks only to give a vantage point over the surrounding areas from which the guards may alert others of any impending dangers. But rarely do any dangers come into the plains of Melroc, or indeed anywhere east of the great Teldren and Yjind mountain ranges. The Relihim—a threat real though infrequent and mostly invisible—focus their infrequent raids upon small settlements and isolated hamlets. These brigands avoid the larger towns and cities, as such locations have their own means of defense, their own watchtowers or guards, while the smallest habitations often have nothing at all. The Empire, as is its duty for an occupied state made a member of its own cultural and political structure, helps to quell these raids, though the soldiers of the Empire have never been able to eliminate the Relihim entirely, as a life of vagabond banditry is both elusive enough and, apparently, desirable enough to endure even armed resistance by those whose role it is to keep the peace.

Yet the danger that the people in Ristfand and its environs now await is not something that the Empire can help to quell or prevent; rather, the enemy they await is the Empire itself or those who claim to fight in its name. Even so, as Elmariyë looks out upon the city laid before her in its entirety and on the lands that surround it, she feels keenly the sense of both beauty and fragility that marks the life of man upon the earth. The beauty is all the more poignant because it stands on the brink of a great threat to its existence, and the fragility highlights the beauty in a special way since it stirs the heart to care for that which is threatened, thus awakening a deep and conscious love for things which before were loved unconsciously or even taken for granted. And Elmariyë's sense of both of these aspects has only deepened—both in quality and in expansiveness—since her encounter with Eldarien and the bearing that she experienced from him. It was the first time that another bore her as she had so often done, mostly unconsciously, for others. In this experience, not only did she learn a great deal about the nature of bearing that she could only learn from receiving it rather than giving it, but she also felt her very capacity to "feel" grow within her. Now she is aware that she has become more sensitive, as if the sinews of her heart have been both stretched and softened, so that she can feel what she felt before more keenly and more widely. She is still trying to come to terms with the influx of feeling that flows in upon her both from a greater distance as well as in a greater fullness than she had known until that moment.

Most of what she has felt has been anxiety, anxiety and fear. For these, since word came of the impending assault, have saturated the atmosphere in the city and in the settlements surrounding it. The anxiety that has grown in expectation of the coming of war is dense and tangible even for the inattentive; thus, it is even more so for Elmariyë, who has always felt things many others do not feel and has hurt intensely for things that others seem easily to brush off or ignore. But anxiety alone has not marked this deeper awakening catalyzed by Eldarien's presence and his bearing. No, Elmariyë has also tasted a deeper and wider joy and a newfound wonder at the very beauty of reality, which permeates her heart and surges often to the surface with profound gladness—something like the wonder-filled awe of a child discovering reality for the first time. She looks out upon the city and the plains now with a mixture of both of these experiences: anxiety at the uncertainty of the future and pain at the coming suffering of thousands, on the one hand, and a wonder-filled awe at the very miracle of existence itself, fragile as it may be, on the other.

She leans absentmindedly against the stone wall to her right, at the top of which is a stack of thick logs ready to be set to the torch as a beacon of fire visible from the city, should the occasion arise. The warm stone against her shoulder, sharing in the same light and warmth that pours down upon the city in the distance, stirs in her unexpected thoughts. She thinks that during the daylight, as long as the sun shines bright in the sky, all things share in equal measure in the radiance and consolation of the light; but at night, as shadows fall, the earth is shrouded in darkness, and smaller lights are necessary in order to counteract the dark, to give radiance and warmth in small pools of light where before everything was bathed in the universal shining of the sun. Like the watchtower itself, the light is there to ward off danger or to warn against it; it is there to stand tall and glorious as a beacon for all to see and to guide their way. But the light is there also to guard the intimacy of life and love, to illumine home and hearth, and to dispel the nocturnal chill with the welcoming warmth of belonging. The light is home, and the darkness is alienation. The light is security, and the darkness is fear. The light is clarity, and the darkness is uncertainty. The light is closeness, and the darkness is distance. The light is expansive radiance and the darkness is shadows that close in tightly to suffocate the heart.

Light is thus the sole longing of the human heart, which has been born of light and made for light. And yet in this world marked by pain and loss, the path into the fullness of the light passes also through darkness and is as it were hemmed in by darkness. For just as the stars send forth their rays through darkness to strike the eyes of those who look upon them in the glistening firmament, and as a torch burns more brightly, more visibly, in the dark than it does in daylight, so the darkness itself is permeated by the light, gripped by the light, in the unfolding of all things toward the everlasting dawn and endless day. But the choice lies in every human heart: to seek the light undimmed, with all the aspiration of the soul, or to compromise with the darkness and to yield to its domain even within the depths of one's own self. Only in the former choice is darkness itself pervaded by light, and to light does it yield, whereas in the choice of darkness, when darkness is desired or accepted, one finds instead that balancing the darkness and the light (as if some agreement were to be struck between them) leads only to the loss of light and entrapment in darkness. For the beauty of darkness, if beauty there is, only comes from its standing over and against the light, as a space for the light's illumination, as the expectation, the longing, and the capacity for the fullness of dawn and of day. But the darkness of evil, of wickedness, of the powers of violence that seek to set themselves against the light of goodness, will only steal, kill, and destroy. Thus the darkness of longing and expectation, like the darkness that allows the stars to be seen, is replaced by the darkness of loss and isolation, like the darkness of a dungeon buried under the earth, from which there is no escape.

These thoughts lead Elmariyë again to the vivid awareness of her surroundings, and she begins to think of the watchtower's beacon as a kind of symbol. As darkness descends upon the land of Telmerion, the need for beacons of light grows—beacons that not only give warning but guidance, consolation, and warmth. But to be a source of such light—or at least its vessel—the beacon must confront the darkness head-on, must pass into and through the darkness, so as to illumine the way for others, or to find them where they are, lost in the night, and to lead them back into the light once again. This, she knows, is what Eldarien is destined to do, and he bears the marks of such light already. He is gripped by it, possessed by it, and, in this possession, is made absolutely poor, destitute, with nothing in his hands save openness and emptiness. Only in this way can the light shine in and through him, in the way that it must, for others. Reflecting on this, Elmariyë realizes that she is invited to the same poverty, the same utter openness, which she has not knowingly or willingly rejected but which invites her now with a depth and expansiveness that she has not known until now.

And although such a path frightens her, she also spontaneously recognizes that it corresponds with the deep aspirations of her heart, an unsealing and maturation of desires that she has always held within her, and not as an imposition from the outside. Nonetheless what frightens her even more, what causes her heart to ache immeasurably more profoundly, is simply the awareness of great evil and suffering that encroaches upon her consciousness, as if the coming pain of the war is already resounding in her being before it has even begun to play itself out upon the stage of history. Never before has she known war or bloodshed, except—as she now knows—in that earliest of memories forgotten but not without effect: of the slaughter of the traveling company, her family included, of which she was the only survivor. But in waking consciousness, what she knows of war and violence is little, learned only from books and conversations and the heart's compassion. Only time will tell how much these, in particular the compassion of the heart, have prepared her for what awaits.

With these thoughts filling her mind, Elmariyë descends the stairway from the roof of the watchtower and follows the path in the direction of the city. The sun is beginning its descent in the lower portion of the sky in the west, and she finds herself looking into its brilliance as she makes her way back to Ristfand. As she walks, sounds enveloping her—the song of birds and the chirping of crickets, the rustle of the breeze in the boughs of the trees, and the soft crunching of her own footsteps against earth—a thought comes to her, which in a way sums up all of the thoughts leading up to it. My life has been marked by solitude, she thinks, and yet I feel also more viscerally than I have before, that this solitude has been a meeting-place of deep encounter with others. And I mean not so much that it has allowed me to meet others explicitly in person-to-person contact, though this is true as well. I mean that the solitude itself is a place of encounter. It is precisely in my aloneness, or rather in the sanctuary of my heart where I am most silent and poor, that I feel most deeply and expansively the reverberations cast from others' hearts, as if they were my own.

There is a directness here which, in a wholly unexpected way, is even more direct than the contact possible through words, through glance, through touch. All of these matter, of course, and are essential, the shared life intended for us in this world and the concrete service that responds to the desperate needs of our time. But in this place of solitude, in this hidden inner sanctuary, it is like our hearts touch directly without anything between them. Or rather...it is as if the divine itself is our meeting-place and the living-space of our encounter. These thoughts subside for a moment as Elmariyë continues to walk, and a wolf's howl sounds from somewhere far to the north. After a moment, it is echoed by the howls of others. Even the animals communicate at a distance, she thinks, stirred on by the sounds she hears, and the air itself is their medium. But inside man and woman, inside each one of us, lives something so much deeper, richer, and fuller. Inside us lives a flame that surpasses the animals, surpasses indeed everything within this world. In this secret fire we communicate, and not only in the direct commerce of voice and sight, in the manifold interactions of daily life, but...in spirit flowing into spirit like ripples intermingling in a single ocean...in heart throbbing into heart in a single circulation, two hearts, a thousand hearts, as if in only one body.

Thus to find Eldarien living somehow "within" me when I have felt all others to be "without," this has changed something within me. Or rather, it has awakened me to something that was present all along, but of which I was unaware. For they are all within me, each one of them, near and far, as I am in them. To "bear" another, therefore, is the lot of every person in this life. It is the very nature of love. After all, a mother bears a child in her womb before bringing him to life in the world. And we are all borne, in numerous ways throughout our life, by those who uphold us, guide us, and care for us often far beyond our sight. To have the gift of "bearing," as Eldarien and I experience it, therefore, is not something entirely special or unique. It just summons into a fully grown tree what exists as a seed in all of us.

But... her thoughts falter for a moment, and she looks around in the light that is now beginning to turn the oranges and reds of twilight, glistening in the leaves of the trees and pervading the clouds with the richness of its color. But this gift we have received—wherever it comes from—is an entrustment and a task. For some reason, we feel what others do not feel or feel it much more intensely. And this means that we can aid others in a way that only we can. I have felt this for so long but was unable to name it. And Eldarien...he has searched for it without knowing it. This much I saw in his eyes immediately when I explained to him the reality of "bearing." Once he heard this, it was as if his heart cried out, "Finally, a way to help those whom until now I have felt powerless to aid!" I feel it too, Eldarien... I feel it too...

And yet...and yet this capacity is not a power. No, it is more like powerlessness. And the more powerless we allow ourselves to be, the more it is allowed to harness us. The more trusting and vulnerable and surrendered we become, the more we are allowed to feel and to carry others, that the pain may be eased from their shoulders, the yoke from their hearts, making space for the light to shine within their darkness, making all things new.