The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [136]
“Tarras,” Lirith murmured.
“That’s right,” Falken said. “Now, the founding of Tarras and the other cities along the south of Falengarth sent a tremor through the Old Gods and the Little People like a wind through a forest. They did not understand these people who came across the sea in red-sailed ships, who piled stone into high towers and worked bright metal into sharp swords. But it was not just iron that men brought across the sea. For they brought their gods as well—strange, new gods.”
Melia folded her arms. “I resent that, Falken. We are not strange. Nor are we particularly new.”
“And yet the Old Gods are more ancient still,” Falken said. “They were deities of forest, stone, water, and sky, called into being by the runes spoken by the Worldsmith as were all the things on Eldh. However, the New Gods of Tarras were different. The Nindari were gods of men, granted their godhood by the belief of their worshipers, and their birth was a mystery. League by league, the men of Tarras pushed farther north, bringing their gods with them, and the Old Gods sensed that their days upon Falengarth were waning. One by one, along with the Little People, they began to fade into the Twilight Realm, the land that is no land, which is everywhere and nowhere at once.
“However, there was one among the Old Gods who refused to fade into the Twilight Realm. The sight of men marching into Falengarth filled him with a burning rage, and he accused Olrig, leader of the Old Gods, of treachery and cowardice for his unwillingness to fight.”
“And this god,” Durge said, “it was Mohg?”
Falken nodded. “And in his words, the other Old Gods sensed at last the ancient jealousy Mohg harbored for Olrig. Mohg felt that he should be leader of the Old Gods, but they turned their back on him. Yet that only fueled Mohg’s hatred, like wind on a flame. He went in search of one who might yet help him—a dragon. Now from the beginning of the world, the dragons were ever the foes of the Old Gods, seeking to bring down and destroy everything brought into being by the Worldsmith.”
“Or Sia,” Lirith murmured. She met the bard’s eyes. “In some stories, at least.”
Falken gave her a sharp look. “Or Sia, if you will. Mohg went to the Barrens and climbed a mountain so high it pierced the sky, a mountain which has since been cast down into rubble. The sharp stone sliced his hands and feet to ribbons, but at last, bloodied and battered, Mohg reached the top, and there he found the dragon Hriss.
“Now Hriss was a great and ancient dragon, for she was one of the brood of Agamar, who was the first of the dragons, and she was terribly wise. Like all the Gordrim, she coveted knowledge and hoarded it, and in Mohg’s coming she saw an opportunity to gain knowledge she had always craved.
“ ‘I will grant you the knowledge you require,’ Hriss told Mohg. And with her own talon she cut a deep gash in her belly, and blood flowed, and she bid Mohg drink it, which he did greedily. Her blood was hot and thick with wisdom, but even as he drank, Hriss stretched her neck so that she might reach Mohg’s body, and while he was drunk with the taste of her blood, she ate his living heart from his breast, for she had always wondered what the taste of a god’s heart would be, and at last she had that knowledge. Satisfied, she flew from the mountaintop, leaving Mohg to be picked at by vultures.
“God though he was, Mohg would have died there on the mountain but for the pity of a witch named Cirsa, who saw Mohg in a vision. Cirsa climbed the great mountain with a lump of Tarrasian iron, and this she placed in his breast, enchanting it with spells, so Mohg lived.”
Falken’s visage was grim. “To drink the blood of a dragon grants the drinker great wisdom. But the price of that wisdom is that it darkens the vision, so that never again can one see good in something, or beauty, or kindness. Rather, all the world becomes cold, hard, ugly, and cruel—a thing ceaselessly in decay. Seeing that in Mohg’s eyes, Cirsa realized what a terrible