Chapter 6 – Masaan

Eyes forward, Masaan gave little attention to the eerie sound of the wind as it lashed against the fastness of the Blue Hold. It was little more than a spur of dark rock, but against the whiteness of the ice and snow, the shimmer of the blue ocean it held a sharp contrast, a finger of solace in spite of the harsh lands around it. Masaan clasped his knockstone staff harder, drove the filed point deeper into the snow until it struck firmer, icier layers beneath the fluff. Here, the snow was not so deep, perhaps as high as Masaan’s knees at most. A crackle sounded from behind, from the Blue Hold. It was a thoroughly inexplicable sound in this frozen waste: the sound of fire.

She is gone then.

Masaan had known Ah’shakan would stay true to her word, to their plans, but he had not been sure she would be able to actually succeed. There had been an entire detachment of the Force Guards in the Blue Hold, led by Jeraal Grunter. Masaan could only hope Ah’shakan’s powers had been enough to seal them all in. He did not wish to have any of them come after him. Any Force Guard could track a being as large as Masaan across the wildest of snowlands, it was part of the most basic training given to all recruits, but this particular detachment had been special. They were tasked with guarding the most important prisoners of the Masterlands. Because the Blue Hold had been, before Ah’shakan set fire to it, first and foremost, a prison.

How the Eye ever though she could hold me here is beyond me. Perhaps she always expected my escape and merely intends to see me killed as a fugitive rather than imprisoned for life.

The Blue Hold was not a true prison, of course. No such places existed in the Masterlands. Criminals who warranted being segregated from the rest of society were simply thrown into the ocean with rocks tied to their feet, or lashed to a post in the night atop a high peak, food for the birds. The Urukshane did not have ideas which encompassed the notion of prison as such. Yet they had prisons. The Blue Hold being the worst of these.

When a particular Urukshane violated a law but was too important to kill, that particular individual was sent to a place like the Blue Hold. To contemplate life, it was said. But they were never allowed to return. Most ended up dead shortly after, worked to cruel ends by the unforgiving souls who captained such places. There were precious few enough of these important Urukshane that in the entire vastness of the Masterlands only seven such prisons existed, with the Blue Hold being the most remote, far off in the Northern tip of the Gundatribes’ lands. The nearest village was six days walk through the snow. The nearest town or city almost a month’s trek. Ah’shakan had been the place’s only permanent resident. A former Priestess who devoted herself to a lifetime of service. But she had been so much more. Masaan bowed his head in reverence for the loss of her.

She would have been great, if the Eye allowed.

the Eye.

Despite the far-off location of the Blue Hold, there was communication between the place and the Capital. Which meant the Eye would eventually learn, if by learning nothing at all, that the Blue Hold had been destroyed. She would send another detachment of Force Guards, or two or three, perhaps an entire division, with a naval armada to support it. The woman’s fear had few bounds and Masaan was the pit of her terror.

She fears the unknown. She fears loss of her power. She is not fit to lead us Home. I only wish I had been strong enough to see it before she sent me here.

For a stark, dusty white moment Masaan stood still, brimming with memory, with cold sadness. The pride of his people had been so strong within before, the power of his position, the might of arms. All had been laid carefully before him, all he had to do was ride the tide of iceswells forward. He likely would have been The Eye himself one day.

That future is dust beneath the ice now. Now there is only the Truth and the Lie. Will my people be strong enough to weather it? Will I?

The introspective moment passed, leaving Masaan again aware of the openness of his surroundings, of the atavistic nature lurking within him. He was all too aware of the Burnt Face shining above him, seemingly watching him as she tracked across the sky, making a part of him wish to hide from her brightness. But that is part of the Lie. I will not accept it further.

Masaan lifted his knockstone staff from the powdery snow and began to trot away from the burning hulk of the Blue Hold. It was not a difficult pace, his kind could maintain it for days on end, even in the snow.

Orcs. Masaan thought. We were bred for such things.

Pushing that unpleasant truth away, Masaan traveled lightly over snow dunes and ice caps, pausing only at random intervals to look backwards and note the progress of the now dimming fire left behind. Soon the Blue Hold would be nothing more than icy char, a mound of detritus awaiting the next heavy snow to cover it entirely. But it would be rebuilt. the Eye would see it so, though others would also play a great part in that effort.

The Order will wish it.

Of course Ah’shakan had been part of The Order, perhaps even one of its highest members. But Masaan had not known that when he arrived at the place. Nor for some time after. She had been wary, circumspect, in her recruitment of him. That the Eye was his enemy had simply been the first part of Ah’shakan’s reasoning in trying to ally Masaan to her cause.

I suppose now I am part of The Order.

This thought aroused a strange reaction, both within Masaan and just off his body. A bright, translucent light began to shimmer around him. A word came to his mouth and he spoke it without hesitation, the feeling near to exultant.

Elbereth.

Overhead, though Masaan could not see it, a star twinkled in recognition. But Masaan knew. Ah’shakan had brought him, alone, and amid a terrible storm of ice and driving snow to a secret place. A high place in the mountains south of the now former spot where the Blue Hold had been. Carved into the rock by the slow, coarse hands of Time and Wind had been a little cove, sheltered from the both the ice and howling winds. The rocks of the place had created a space above, a tunnel of rock, rising up like the mouth of a volcano, towards the empty sky above. From this cove Ah’shakan had shown Masaan the way past his fear, past the Lie, and revealed the Truth. It had all begun with that one word and that one bright, lovely star.

Elbereth.

The secret cove was a shrine maintained by The Order, by whichever member of that hidden cabal was ensconced at the Blue Hold. Or had been, before Masaan and Ah’shakan had conspired to burn the place to the ground. It was the presence of this shrine, some two days run from the Blue Hold, which would result in The Order’s efforts to rebuild the place. That, and knowledge of what had happened to Ah’shakan. And her books.

She had left clues in the rubble, for those who knew what to search for, but it was Masaan’s duty now to guard the books. To keep the shrine. Because this was exactly the place he was going. From there he would plan the rest of his journey back to the Capital, back into the jaws of the Urukshane power structure, back into the byzantine plots of the Eye. Though he was confident, thanks to Ah’shakan’s teachings and the blessing of Elbereth, that he could prevail, he still did not know how. Prayer was needed, and reflection. Time, away from the prying and watching eyes of the Force Guards, away from the laborious tasks required of a resident of the Blue Hold, away from the far off, but ever present watch of the Eye. A sudden revelation struck Masaan.

The Eye! If I had the Eye’s Stone, I could see what must be done. I could find the path back to the Middle Lands, and from there to the West.

To Elbereth.

Masaan’s heart pumped with the fierce effort of his pace and his love for Elbereth. In return for his love a warm, syrupy calm infused his limbs, making each step lighter, until he bounded over the snow, his heavy, thickly clod feet barely making a dent in the powdery surface. For a long while Masaan ran this way, unaware of anything but the joy of the Burnt Face on his skin and the light, softly cold touch of snow beneath him. When he realized what he had been doing he nearly toppled over in surprise as his heavy frame sank back to his knees in the snow.

I ran like one of them. Like one of the Eldar.

Ah’shakan had told him this was part of the birthright of their people – the true birthright – as First Children of The One, but Masaan had not truly believed it. It had seemed pure fantasy to imagine his body could become as light as eddying air, as gentle as a leaf on the wind, as calm as the feather of a drifting eagle. But Ah’shakan had been certain, though she had also been frank in revealing that she herself had never seen it happen, neither to herself or any other.

It will be part of the change, Masaan. Ah’shakan had told him over a fire and bits of dried gull meat formed into tough strips. Part of the first wave of our rejection of Him and our return to the life we were so cruelly denied. Our salvation will begin, uruko, with the Feet of the Earth.

“The Feet of the Earth!” Masaan sang aloud to the formless white. He did not care if he was heard, so strong was the joy of the world upon him in the moment. “Elbereth! O Gilthoniel! The Feet of the Earth!”

Slow, but with gathering speed and joy, Masaan began again to run. At first his feet sank again into the snow, leaving holes the length of his lower leg, though he felt little effort, little of the familiar resistance his kind knew to expect from thousands of years of running in the snows of the Masterland. And step by step his feet sank less and less into the snow, until again Masaan bounded across the expanse of white fluff leaving hardly any mark of his passing. But his passing was marked, from a distance far off, by the last pair of eyes he wished upon him.

Next Chapter: Chapter 7 - Neldoreth