The Tales of The Waste Beyond

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. They had, however, been nesting in the Azure Mountains long before the first Parga and his people arrived from the Waste Beyond to settle the land. They barely paid any mind to the strangers, but watched with sleepy disinterest as a village struggled to rise beside the mossy bank of the Pale River.

The elders spoke of the time of the Waste with reverence, and emblazoned their ancestral memories in the minds of the wide-eyed children who sat before them at Midnight Circle. Eventually those same boys and girls grew into storytellers of the Circle themselves to pass on their treasures to a successive generation. Some elders even held onto relics of the great journey passed down from generation to generation: rotted furs, worm-ridden leather boots, and shards of pottery. One balding, gap-toothed man even claimed to carry the skull of Parga Suum himself. He would just cackle when he was asked to produce it. No one knew why the first people came to the Valley, perhaps it was the promise of dragons or a fear of them. It was generally believed that they had been fleeing some terrible calamity or misfortune. The same man who spoke of Parga Suum's skull also spoke of a monstrous creature that had no name who waited beyond the Waste."It was not a journey. It was an escape," he would always say. "One day The Devourer will find us and feast upon our flesh and our souls will dribble from his lips like water."

Cardin listened, enraptured, to the tales at the Circle when he was small. He was like the others then and had no idea what kind of fate would be passed down to him. The trouble started seven years ago when Cardin was eight and his father had tried to capture one of the dragons––or so it was believed. Feor returned from the mountains at night with a broken arm, his tangled beard burned away, and raw, melted skin over much of his body. It was considered a great sin to disturb the dragons, and fracture the peace between man and beast. Cardin asked his father why, why had he done this thing, as he washed away the ash and pealing skin. His father would not say, nor would he answer the Parga and the elders when it was discovered what he had done. Feor's lips held his secrets in a tomb of silence, and no one could make him betray his own confidence.

There was no way for Cardin to conceal what his father had done, and it would only have made the punishment worse. Feor was cursed, and his line with him. Feor had been a blacksmith before his fall, a position of pride and great honor. Cardin would have followed him as an apprentice when the time was right. There had been no warning, no sign to predict Feor's doom. The smithy and all of their family's precious tools were given to Halthro and his son Able, who had been fishermen. Feor was taken to the cells below the altar of the Gods, and Cardin was left to pay the price and accept the Parga's curse. Because no one would take in the son of a cursed man, or give him a purpose, Cardin was given to the care of the elders. They took his name from him and were left to devise a life of penance and contrition. Cardin would have to pay for his father's crime. No one else had dared to seek out the dragons before out of all the countless generations, and so the punishment must be fearsome and without mercy to serve as an example for any who might think to follow. Cardin cried that first night as he heard his father's screams ring through the night and the spectre of death reared its head in his imagination. The elders deliberated for several days before passing down his sentence. He would serve the Parga as a nameless servant. Cardin would never marry or be allowed to pass on his legacy. As a mark of his family's shame, they presented him with a jingling fool's cap and a coat of motley. The village had had storytellers and entertainers and wizards before, but no one had ever been made a fool.

Cardin grew into the curse, and mutely obeyed the Parga, a man called Tallow. The Parga was spiteful and cruel behind his crooked smile, and the years were hard. Cardin's boyhood tears dried into dust and refused to come after enough time had passed. He spent his days waiting to be summoned to serve the Parga his meals or stand shackled to the high table during feasts for all to see his fate. He was simply called the fool or the rat or the accursed and his true name, and that of his father, were forbidden words. Whenever he was paraded before the village the crowd would always look at him warily, gazing with unfettered revulsion at the son of the traitor who had so nearly brought destruction down upon them. The other children were encouraged to shun him at all times lest the curse pass on to them as well. Why had he done it? The question ate away at him and festered into a hatred for his father that grew ripe as he stumbled through his weary existence. The Midnight Circle and his father's smithy became distant and dim in his memory, and any warmth he may have felt for the man who sought out the dragons had hardened and cracked. His fate was sealed, it seemed, until the unexpected passing of Parga Tallow. He had choked on a fish bone that became lodged in his windpipe.

Cardin remembered that day well. The dawn had flashed across the rugged horizon as he watched the sun rise between the bars of his cell. The horn of the nearest mountain split the sun in two, and sent an ocean of purple and red spilling and tumbling over the jagged peaks. It was not long before the Parga, screaming silently into a pool of his own blood, was discovered at the foot of his carved wooden bed. "The accursed has slain his master" the villagers were saying to each other. "He is his father's son" some replied. Though the temptation had been overwhelming at times, he had not killed the Parga. Old age and good food had done their work for him, but there was no denying he felt relief when the news reached him. However, fear gripped him when he realized what the tragic circumstances might mean for him and his punishment. Who would carry on the curse? Once again, his father was to blame. A new Parga would have to be chosen, and the fate of the cursed would have to be decided again.

The elders always chose the new Parga. It was a secret ritual that only the worthy were privileged to observe. They came to Cardin in his cell the night of Tallow's death, and stirred him from a troubled sleep. He was dreaming of dragons as he sometimes did, wishing that they had simply not permitted his father to return. Wordlessly, the elders brought Cardin out into the inky darkness. Foer was standing before him, after so many years. Even by the limited light of the harvest moon, his father's hair was white and brittle, and his hands had been removed. There were other marks of torture, cracked cuts and fresh bruises. Cardin looked on his father with cold indifference and he knew it was another toll exacted by the curse. They had truly taken everything from them. Why had he done it? Feor was muttering under his breath and looking about wildly. There were fresh mounts waiting and Cardin knew what they expected of him. It was a sin to kill, but what was one more sin to those already accursed. Slowly, cautiously, he approached his father. "He is coming" was all that he heard before the Feor's mutterings became softer. He touched his father's cheek gently, and felt the cruel marks of his jailers. There was a moment of pity and he felt his heart stir before it resumed its steady hammering. He helped his father to one of the horses, a black gelding, and eased him up and into the saddle. When Cardin had clambered onto his own saddle, the elders pointed far to the North and the Pass of Havalthea. They would not meet his eye or speak a word to him. They too feared the curse now it seemed––their own curse. The pass was far away from where the dragons nested and no one lived beyond the confines of the village. No one would know.

Cardin was quick to obey, it was all had had known for so many years, and they rode with Cardin leading his father's horse. The boy tried to decipher the words as the dribbled from his father's lips, but to no avail. Cardin jingled as he went. All he had was his fool's crown and motley. It was all he had known for so many years, and the shame of it had worn away as slowly as the bright colors of the coat. His father had been permitted a cloak and two saddle bags of provisions, but little else. They would have to make do for themselves. It did not take long to reach the pass. They rode along the windswept ridges of Havalthea gingerly, and with great trepidation. Cardin remembered the old saying that when one reached the place where the sun met the land, one would be free. Was that true for cursed men he wodnered? That was one of Cardin's memories before he had become the accursed. Despite his stony heart, he performed the role of a dutiful son. He fed his father and bathed him with cool water before they reached the frozen pass. Feor's whispers became more fevered the higher they climbed. One word did escape and reach Cardin's ears. "Intersection."

Why had he done it? Cardin was drawn onwards with the question once more reverberating across his senses. The farther from the village they went, the more he became consumed by it and utterly enamored with it. The idea of knowing the truth, of escaping the curse was threaded through his being, a thread of longing that pulsed and stretched and writhed within his mortal frame. Cardin did not anticipate such a bite to the cold, the snarling, bestial ferocity of the wind, nor the gnawing hunger that clawed at his belly. Wherever they were bound, Cardin could feel his soul spread its wings and rise as the pass continued to widen. He felt a thread binding him to his father now, woven with the strands of his hatred and disgust. He felt the thread snap when he pushed the older man. He watched him fall, and felt the pain of the breaking, the ending. He felt him still inside long after the darkness had swallowed the man he had once embraced and cherished before the curse and the talk of dragons. Perhaps it was the wind or the hunger, but this truth became his truth. Feor had to fall, and Cardin knew that the old man would watch the glory of his discovery through his eyes. Cardin spent what felt like an eternity peering into that void, his cap jingling in the cold wind. He almost let it fall into the darkness as well, but he would need it for the remainder of his journey. The elders must have hoped the cold would be enough, and they did not expect his return. They had molded him for this task, this terrible crime. They had not freed him, not really. He was free to seek the Waste Beyond and his retribution.