At this time
the Empire of Visneoria stretched from east coast to west coast on the great
western continent. It lived in peace, except for incursions of the Algharian
nomads in the south and other barbarous human tribes in the north. It built
great cities, and its culture and learning were unparalleled. This scholarship
was centred on two major university cities – Vyrnia in the west and Arianis in
the east. The east and west were connected by a marvel of that age, a
continuous paved road that stretched more than two thousand miles, from
Hesperos in the West to Gorodnikov in the east.
The Great West Road was once one of the most traversed highways in the
world, and was a thriving trade route. It gathered wood, wool and meats from
the northwest, and grapes and spices from the southwest, and ferried them east
to Melloreis, the second city of the empire. In return, the great grain farms
in the east provided wheat and maize for the more populous west. For very many human and numerous elven
lifetimes the road was a mundane wonder, and it bound the two halves of the
empire together.
Then, on one hot August day, the Tlaxacan hordes, that are called in
the Tlaxacan language the kinaam,
emerged from their holes and hideouts and covered the far eastern land. They
were ill disciplined, poorly armed and disease ridden, but there were
uncountable numbers of them. They were
more a force of nature than an army, and no unwalled settlement could resist
them. They poured across the landscape – no-one knew where they had come from,
or whether they had any leaders. They seemed without reason and stopped nowhere
for long, destroying or looting everything. They killed all livestock and burnt
all crops, and then stopped to feed on the dead bodies and charred soil. In
appearance they were incredibly variable, all humanoid, less than five foot
tall, somewhat dwarf-like but with strangely modified jaws and digging hands.
They appeared to be able to eat anything that was dead and decomposing and so
they were the perfect destroyers, feeding on the remains of all things
biological: flesh, bone, wood and soil.
Within a few years the whole of the fertile lands of the east were
reduced to charred soil. Only three conurbations survived – Melloreis;
Monurbis, the city guarding the Kaghr pass into the Far East; and Ortia, the
home of the goddess known as The Lady. By now the Far East was renamed Tlaxaca,
and it had its lords, who had revealed themselves as the leaders and creators
of the hordes. These were the Cloaks, creatures apparently constructed from
pure energy, who manifested themselves as vague figures in large cloaks. There
were six of them distinguished by the colour of their cloaks: white, who fought
on land; blue, who fought on water; red, who stoked the fires; yellow, who
rules the skies; brown, who made new life; and grey, who led them. No elf had ever spoken to them, but all knew
their objective – to destroy the Empire. And at first, no-one could see how
they could be resisted. The Imperial army was strong, but they could not withstand
such a multitude. Slowly they retreated, leaving just the walled strong points.
In those days the emperor at Visnea was Adrial, in many ways a very
wise elf, but mistrusted by the other noble families. He was said to consort
with the other races too freely; counting men and dwarves as his friends and
allies. He was also considered to be unstable emotionally. When the plague came from the east he is said
to have gone into a deep despair. Months passed and the Empire was rudderless,
with Adrial shut up in his room or mysteriously away, allegedly roaming the
mountains to find a suitable place to throw himself from. When he did finally
return to active life, he had recruited an adviser, a southern elf with subtle
powers, who named herself Ophia. This new companion was as clever as any living
thing, but she made most of those who met her uneasy, as there was something
distant and cold about her. It seemed to those who spoke with her that she
pitied them, and pity is an emotion that is hard to bear. This however, was not
the main reason that opinion turned against her. With her she brought eleven
dwarven smiths, the finest of their race.
These dwarves were given an area of land just outside Vyrnia, and there
they were given whatever assistance they needed from the academics at the
University. On that land they built a laboratory, and in that laboratory they
fused elven power with dwarven skill, and gave birth to Dwarven Magic, and it
was said that only Ophia was brilliant enough to imagine and realise this.
What they had given birth to, however, was something strangely hybrid –
neither elf fish nor dwarf fowl. But how it worked! Engines of war were
created, great and small, and the Tlaxacans were everywhere thrown back. The tide seemed to have turned and contact
was re-established with Melloreis and Ortia. The cost had been very great
though: the Far East had been lost forever, and the lands around Melloreis,
once the most fertile in the western continent, were scorched and parched.
Reconstruction began, with high hopes but also with constant vigilance.
Four of Ophia’s dwarven artificers, it is said, came to Melloreis, and they
worked on a new set of constructions, specifically intended to combat the power
of the cloaked necromancers. They toiled long at their task, and Ophia spent
many months in the city, overseeing the work. What it was exactly that they
built is unrecorded, but when they left the city’s defenders were confident
that they could withstand another attack, however ferocious.
For an elven generation the east remained at peace. Monurbis was
fortified, and a permanent watchful guard was kept over the pass. Crops grew
again, if anything even more vigorously than before; the cities returned to
prosperity. The old trade routes were opened up and the great west road
thronged with travellers.
Then Whitecloak appeared at Monurbis. He asked for parley, which he was
reluctantly given, and there he demanded the whole of the east of the Empire.
When his opponents would not yield he murdered them, and then ordered his
hordes to attack. Monurbis was almost immediately overrun and many thousands of
elves died in its defence. The overwhelming of the east was inevitable, and a
last stand at Melloreis was prepared. When Adrial heard the news of the fall of
Monurbis he committed suicide, it is thought by poisoning himself.
The new Emperor, Juvian, Adrial’s beloved only son, called a great
council of war. At that council, the troubles of the empire were attributed to
Ophia, who was by then suspected of being some agent of the enemy, disguised to
appear fair. They voted to expel her from the empire, but Juvian stayed her
exile indefinitely, in order that she should build a great wall of defence, a
thing that she claimed was possible and that would protect the west of the
empire. So, while the last defence of the east bought the west time, she and
her smiths, along with a great mass of willing elves of all trades, constructed
the Great Wall of Juvian, a wall so strong and so protected with such strange
enchantments that none but the Emperor could lead an army through it. And at
the northern end of the wall, where it dissolved into the Contrabarbaria
Mountains, she built a mausoleum for Emperor Adrial, and in that remote spot
laid his body. It was said by some to be an act of love, by others as an act of
contrition, and, more darkly, by a few, as a way of covering up a terrible act
of treachery.
The siege of Melloreis lasted five years and three months, and was
bloody and prolonged. It is said by some that the four Dwarven smiths stayed in
the city elaborating and constructing to the very end, but there is no good
evidence for this. There are many legends concerning the city and the secrets
it contains, but none of them have been substantiated. What does seem to be
true, however, is that the city was eventually razed, but not completely taken,
and that the central tower, one of the last structures built by the
inhabitants, was not destroyed, and may well stand still. There were no
survivors, which is perhaps fortunate for the emperors in the West, as it
cannot be denied that they allowed Melloreis to be taken, safe as the western
elves were behind their enchanted wall. There is no evidence of any Tlaxacan
settlements being made in Melloreis, unlike Monurbis, which was garrisoned and
may well still be occupied by the enemy.
I must append a final note concerning Ortia, as its fate remains
incompletely understood. When the Tlaxacan hordes engulfed the Near East, they
did not invest Ortia, and in fact passed round it. After that it was besieged for a time, but
apparently half-heartedly, and when Melloreis was taken and their westward
march halted by the Wall, the armies retreated and left Ortia intact. However, by
then the proconsul and the emperor had been estranged: the emperor having decided that the city must
have been spared through some secret treacherous deal. However, it is also
perfectly conceivable that the power of the Lady of Ortia had some effect on
the Tlaxacan troops, and that Whitecloak felt it unnecessary to pursue its
investment further. It is also said, in legend at least, that Ophia came to the
city at the last moment and elaborated enchantments upon the city wall and
rendered it almost impregnable. Whatever
the truth, Ortia falls out of the history of the Empire, and its present state
is unknown, although inevitably it must have fallen to the privations of
loneliness, superstition and barbarism, even if it persists in some bastardised
form.
I will deal with the subsequent unhappy history of the Wall of Juvian
in Part nineteen when I turn, wearily, to the recent politics of the Western
empire in its dotage.
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