Teller of Fate
First Movement: The Birth of a Teller of Fate
Chapter Five, Part Two
When Tathar was done, Davida sat for a time, entranced by the tale. Eventually, “The Templars discovered the Færie Doors?”
Tathar nodded.
“How did Phæthon come to find them?”
“Here we come to it. There is a part of Templar history that is not generally known. When Phæthon and Paris were still quite young, not even Templars yet, they were shown the Færie Doors—and Færie itself—by a Fæ.”
“Who?”
“This is not known, though we believe it was an Æs Sidhe.”
“Why did they do this?”
“To understand that you need to consider what the Fæ are. The Multiverse evolves, just as the life in it does. A short time ago, as Nature measures such things, a new kind of Aion appeared. It was called Færie, and it contained a new kind of life. It was the beginning of a new stage in the evolution of Nature, one where entropy and death would no longer hold sway. For a long time, it was hidden from the other life in the multiverse. Slowly, however, the inhabitants of this new kind of reality made themselves known. One of the first such introductions was to the Templars. This is important to understand as, due to the deliberate efforts of the Templars, the histories of that time assert a falsehood about the Fæ; that the Fæ first appeared as the offspring the Templars had with other races.”
“Why lie about that?”
“The most commonly accepted theory is that they wished their dominance over all other species be accepted as inevitable. The Fæ being their chief servants, it was especially important that their subservience be accepted as natural.”
“This fancy seems an unusual way to go about establishing dominance.”
“Well, it wasn’t entirely a lie. The offspring of the Templars and other races were fæ. The lie was only that the fæ first appeared as these children. You see, the race that spawned the Templars had a rigid prohibition against consanguineous relations. Why is anyone’s guess. The Templars themselves took the taboo further. They were forbidden to mate with any member of their own species. This falsehood of theirs likely served to further encourage the practice of mating with members of conquered species. This was likely at least partially responsible for their exploratory and later colonizing efforts. The particulars are not known as they were a secretive group right until the end.”
“It still seems odd to me to lie when the truth could so easily be discovered.”
There were opposing factions of Templars, remember. They all understood what the emergence of the Fæ and Færie meant. The Golden and later the Ebon Temples embraced this change and sought to help it along, the Silver opposed it violently. As the latter effectively ruled the former two, their narrative became the official one.”
“Why oppose it?”
“It is hard for us to understand, but most of the older kinds of life are resistant to change. It is frightening to them. The Silver also likely thought that the Fæ would be harder to control. Lying, even to us about our origins had the effect of making us more pliable. If they were our elders—”
“We’d be more likely to defer to them.” Davida frowned. “How cynical.”
“Getting back to the important bit, most of the children of these unions were Æs Sidhe, other types of Fæ appearing much less often. Wild most of the latter were. We elves were most like the Templars in temperament and mindset. It quickly came to pass that the elves were their chief servants, managing the day-to-day of the Shining Empire.
“There was a startling difference between the first-generation elves and those of us who followed as elven born. These original elves were withdrawn and secretive, seeming to see farther and, consequently, were—I’m not sure how to describe it—melancholy, perhaps. It seemed to those who knew them that they were almost in mourning.”
“Did you ever find out why?”
Here Tathar shook his head. “Speculation divided into two theories. Either they truly were mourning a past loss—if that is possible— or they foresaw a future one. Though it’s possible that both were true. I am of the latter view.”
“And I am one of these…?”
“ ‘Seandaoine’, they were called.”
“Sages.”
“Quite right. You are a Seanduine, Davida. The only one known.”
“The others are dead, then.”
“In truth, we do not know. Though some of them seemed to age, not one recorded death of a Seanduine could I find. When the Templar War ended, they just vanished, swallowed, perhaps, by the very doom they foresaw.”
“You said ‘most Fæ’ came from the Templars. Which one’s didn’t?”
“There was a type of Æs Sidhe known as ‘Leannáin’.”
“‘Lover’? That wouldn’t have anything to do with me, would it?” Mirth sparkled in her eyes.
“Just so. You are a Leannán. The only one, in fact.”
“They’re gone, too?”
Tathar nodded. “Vanished, just as the Seandaoine did at the end of the Templar War. Just before, in fact.”
“What happened back then? Where did the Leannáin come from? Where did they go?”
“In all the time the Shining Empire existed, not one Leannán was born of a Templar union with another race. The Leannáin were always there, classed with the wild ones born of Templar unions and ignored. As to where they went, the aftermath of the Templar War was the dissolution of the Pleroma. The Dark Age followed. Only the Order of Hermes kept records of most of that time.”
“Why didn’t the elves?”
“All this—” the older elf waved his hand indicating Ælfen and, by extension, all the Aions of the Elven Convocation—“only came into being after the end of the War. We were scattered, many had died, most others were homeless and wandering. It took over a thousand years to gather the tribes of the Elves into their respective Aions. No Leannáin were found. The making of these worlds was the last act of the Seandaoine before their disappearance.”
“How did they make them?” Davida asked.
“The Aions were made using magick that had never been seen and has not been seen since. It’s not that it was more powerful, though it was more powerful than even the Templars could have boasted. It was just…different. We were used to the magick of the Templars. Our magick is like theirs, though of a lesser order. But this was something altogether new. I don’t know that any of the witnesses or any of the ones who researched it came up with any explanation for what it was and how it worked.”
After a pause, “What does it mean? Being a Leannán?”
“The Leannáin were exceptionally free spirited, even by the standards of the Fæ. They radiated a powerful sexuality and were reputedly fantastic lovers. In just the time since you awoke, you have proven all that true.”
Davida seemed troubled by the information.
“What’s wrong, child?”
Davida told him of her mother’s death and of the vow she took never to engage in sexual behavior to honour her memory.
“If you were just a Leannán, I’d conclude you could no longer maintain that vow. You are also a Seanduine, though. The juxtaposition of those two very different types of temperament might aid you there. In truth, I’m curious as to how this coupling will manifest in you. Thus far, you seem to strongly favour the former.”
“I will try to keep my promise.” Her expression told Tathar she doubted she would be able to.
“One last question.” She seemed troubled.
“Of course. What do you wish to know?”
“Where is Færie? Can I visit it?”
Tathar knew this was coming. He didn’t want to lie to her but feared the truth would drive her to despair. He hadn’t been told himself until he was much older than she and, even with the wisdom that age had gifted him, it had almost broken his spirit.
He decided to tell her only a part. “Færie is hidden from us, now. It cannot be found.”
“The Templars?”
“No. It’s vanishing happened during the Dark Age.”
“Does anyone know why?”
“There were theories, but no information emerged to test them.”
“Maybe…it had served its purpose. It seeded this new kind of life and like a seed, died giving birth to it.”
Tathar was impressed. The young elf’s thinking was quite close to the truth. “That was one of the leading speculations. I favour it myself. We will likely never know, though.”
“Well, let’s leave it, then. What I really want to know is—”
⁂
Davida spent those early days peppering him with questions about this world and her new people. He’d answered with enthusiasm, reveling in the role of teacher.
The young Æs Sidhe took to her new status with élan, learning most of her new strengths and abilities in days and exercising them vigorously.
A surprise for him had been her literacy. She was fluent in six different languages, both spoken and written. The intensity of her joy when she got her first view of one of Ælfen’s libraries had been comical.
A mile-high chunk had been removed from one of the trees to supply the space for the public archive. So wide was the tree that the room didn’t seem overly tall.
Bright and airy, the place seemed made mostly of tall, gracefully thin pillars, arching at their tops to support the ceiling. They looked so like trees themselves that Davida was not surprised to discover they were living parts of the great tree.
Exquisite coloured floor-to-ceiling windows defined the space’s perimeter. The resulting light, coming as it did from all directions, tinted the space within. It dimmed only slightly toward the middle of the room.
Floating shelves circulated in stately and precise rhythms offering whatever type of written knowledge one desired to elves who themselves stood or sat on floating platforms at all heights of the titanic space.
Outside, other great trees receded in the distant light of the perpetual day.
Printed books had been a rare thing on her world. Oddly, they were most plentiful in the poorest areas, the wealthy of Scorn preferring less bulky methods of information storage.
Davida’s mother, and later she herself, had collected dozens.
She picked up the written Elven language as quickly as she had the spoken. After only weeks, there was no way anyone other than Tathar would have suspected she had ever been anything other than elfkin.
They agreed on a story to explain her presence, hiding from the others the truth of her origins. Tathar had no intention of telling most of his fellows that she’d been human, and was therefore a Seanduine, until she was well gone. The only thing that remained was a name befitting an elf. One seemed to leap out at them, based on how Tathar’s accent made ‘Davida’ sound, anyway.
So, she became Dævara, a name for the Red Honey of the Mystics, that bestowed spiritual ecstasy on those who consumed it.
Her appearance startled most of the elves who met her during her stay. That and the powerfully erotic musk that wafted from her whenever she moved. Tathar recalled her determination to remain celibate and found the continuation of the latter unsettling.
The effect she continued to have on him and the other males—no few of the females—might become a problem, as the Leannáin were well known among elves.
He remained concerned about what her reaction to developing the legendary Leannán libido would be. The former Davida had told him that her early exposure to sexuality had meant little in the way of mystery was left to her when puberty had begun. She remained adamant that she would keep her vow.
Most of her friends had been whores who lived in same the alley she did. They had comforted her after her mother’s death and largely supported her decision to abstain. They were trusty and supportive as she set out to make her own way in life, protecting her when she needed it.
Though every day she was exposed to sex, she barely noticed it going on all around her.
That indifference, Tathar suspected, could not last much longer. He was concerned about how she would handle the inevitable breaking of her vow.
His fears seemed confirmed when she disappeared for four days.
— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, July 2026
© Gideon Jagged
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