Disclaimer: Don't own it, don't make money off of it, don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities. Please God, don't sue.
Thanks: MOM, I love you! Stelmarta, awesome beta! Miss Sharp, for her 'sharpness'
The Mage Storms
Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a land called Velgarth. Many great mages made their livelihood playing with the natural magic of the planet's interior. But there was the sundering, Urtho and Ma'ar could not come to terms and unleashed a magical holocaust the likes of which no one had ever seen. Events do not exist in a vacuum, and the repercussions of the original mage storms vibrated back a hundred-fold centuries later. Only the quick thinking of the Heralds of the Kingdom of Valdemar and the enigmatic Hawkbrothers and Shin'a'in. Both peoples were bound by their Goddess to guard the terrible weapons and purify the land of their taint.
Or mostly. Not all were prepared for the violent upheaval of the world as they knew it. Some, especially traders on long hauls, didn't even know of the havoc that magic was soon to wreak on their lives. Whole circles of land, areas of desert, ocean, grassland, and forest were uprooted and transplanted thousand of miles away. One land, hardest hit for their unpreparedness, was the Kingdom of Cymraig. It was a twin land bound by high mountains on either side and heavily dependent on the trade of long haul caravans that traveled up into the civilized world and not too 'in' with the magical news.
"Bring th' bloody buggers tha' way!" The caravan leader was a relatively short man, black haired, with ice blue eyes.
"They ought comin' Dafyd, patience."
" Th' hell with patience. Th' be a storm a'brewin an' we needs get th' hosses under cover"
"Th' storm be comin' whether we gets under cover or no. Let's make sure the babes is safe aforehand."
"Gwnfyr, there be no way t' get th' wagon up here!"
"Then track back and stay in th' hills, afore we get blown off this place."
"Bloody git! Move ye're arses! We needs go back ye buggers, not up!"
In the wagon, the only wagon of the train, swayed the most valuable cargo of the caravan: the children. Twelve younglings, ranging in age from as-yet-unborn to nearly ten. One mother, Mwynwen, heavily pregnant, sat in with the young ones and calmed their terror of the storm. Lynwen, one of the camp dogs, helped her. Lynwen's mate, the caravan lead dog, Ceinfryn, was outside in the storm, trying to herd the wagon beasts. She and her pups were all scared stiff. She was the nominal babysitter of the children, both four and two footed. Both 'litters' of children were scared out of their minds and both trusted her absolutely to save them from the storm. The rest of the wagon was home to the traveling carpentry and blacksmithing shops that were necessary for the maintenance of the caravan. Tools rattled, wooden boards creaked, and lightening flashed as the storm grew in intensity.
Suddenly there was a jolt that shook Lynwen to her bones. The wagon, and all of its contents, seemed to lift and fall. It shifted and flew about until a dead thud stopped its downward free fall. Slowly Lynwen and Mwynwen went to the opening, canvas flapping in the residual wind. The children, eerily, had stopped crying. They were looking at Mwynwen and Lynwen expectantly. Slowly, as if the wagon itself might fly apart if they moved, they pushed the flapping canvas aside.
They saw trees, were lost in trees. They towered higher than the tallest building either had ever seen. Wide enough for a dozen men to wrap arms around and still have room. Bigger than any house they'd ever seen. One of the trees, damaged in the blast of the magic, had a hole burned into the dead center, halfway through the trunk. It was larger than the house Mwynwen owned back in her homeland. Big enough, she speculated for her to fit the wagon and it's contents. Making a rush decision, Mwynwen grabbed the now splintered tracings to which the horses had been hitched. She and Lynwen , who now seemed larger than any dog she'd ever seen, started to drag the wagon towards the safety of the tree. Rain thundered out of the sky, barely visible through the massive trees. They reached the safety of the tree moments before the sky really opened up and let loose a hail of magical Levin bolts, mage lightening, and fiery mage balls. Safe, for the moment, Mwynwen turned her attention back to the children. They were her responsibility now, far from anything she recognized as familiar. Mwynwen had no clue where they were or how they'd got there, all she knew was that nothing would ever be the same.
Shaman
More than a century had passed since the mage storms. The Tale'dray'as, Shin'a'in, and Kaled'a'in went back to the ordained roles the Goddess assigned them: To protect, preserve, and heal. One, Nighthorse shena Tale'sedrin k'Treva, was the product of the times: the mingling of Shin'a'in and Tale'dray'as. His mother was a shaman of the Tale'sedrin, his father a k'Treva scout on the border of the Plains and the Pelgir. He had grown in the dichotomy of grassland and forest not quite one, yet not yet the other. It was a unique existence and one he enjoyed to the fullest. It was about to be shattered.
"Moving! The entire Vale! Now?" He reclined on a pile of cushions in his mother's tent, the home of half his childhood. Visiting, for his scouting territory was a furlong to the north.
"It is time, all that can be done for this area has been done, and there are other lands, to the north and west, that need these attentions" She sat, her limber posture belying her mage talent, and age, that the gray streaked hair was evidence of.
"Surely we are not leaving yet, what of the taint of the Storms? Of the changecreatures and the…" he was interrupted.
"You are leaving, Wingbrother. The council will be sending out word that k'Treva is Seeking a new vale before the sun sets tomorrow. You must accept it." She folded her hands, immovable.
"But I… I'll miss the Plains and the Clan. What of them?" He paced the length of the tent, frustration lacing through his voice.
"You must choose, my son, the Goddess waits on no man." She was serene, to an extent only a shaman could be.
He sat in a heap on the rugs in the tent and in his best 'little child on the brink of a temper tantrum' voice, whined "Mother! I don't want to go!"
"That's mature." She sat beside him, taking his head in her lap as she used to when he was young. She ran her hands through his hair, black as was hereditary among Shin'a'in but heavily braided and beaded, as was custom among Tale'dray'as. She stoked his head, gently, soothing away his anxiety.
"I knew this day was coming, Mother, the moment of truth; am I Tale'dray'as or am I Shin'a'in?" His green eyes looked up, legacy of his many-time great-grandmother, into his mother's twin emerald orbs.
"Must you be one or the other?" Irritating logic, shamanic logic.
He stuck his tongue out, and then grinned ruefully at his childishness with his mother's irrefutable conclusion. Must he choose? The question had haunted him for most of his almost-yet-not-quite thirty years. "I chose this path didn't I?"
"And having chosen, now you must walk it. The Goddess does not set impossible goals, only the difficult ones." She smiled warmly, " or do you plan to stick your tongue out at Her as well?"
"Would it help?" He saw his mother's look, "I suppose not. I will miss the Plains, and you, Mother."
"And I you, my son." She stroked his hair a minute longer. "Out with you now, the council will want you back in the Vale. I can hardly argue with that."
"Yes, Mother."
http://www.red4.co.uk/welsh/dictionary/e2w/dictionary.htm
http://www.geocities.com/tamalyn_2001/welshbabynames.html
Mopani
Mopani was the alpha male of the pack. He earned this position over years of dedication and no little strength of his own and his mate, Glynis, who was now in the den with cubs. He lived with the human Llawela, in the tree house nearest the clearing. It was an honor to live near the magic circle. Even if it made his fur stand on edge sometimes. Especially when Llawela was casting in the magic circle. It made his head itch.
Llawela was the alpha female of the pack, a two-foot, but she had no cubs. They'd been raised together as pups, from the same litter. As a wolf-pup he'd grown into his feet a lot faster than she, a man-pup, had. It had taken almost sixteen years for her to reach her full growth and Mopani was grateful she had. Llawela had grown into her feet quite well, once she'd had the chance. There wasn't a faster or stronger two-foot runner in the pack. He'd taught her the secret of using the blue lines in the earth to help her stamina. She'd been a gangly child, one of the direct decedents of the Wolf-woman Mwynwen, and followed the same path of magic. Her mother and her mother's mother both went pure white before they reached their twentieth summer. Llawela was on her way to a full gray, even if her fur yielded to change as stubbornly as she herself did. Mopani was a full white too, it had happened soon after he showed her the secret of the power lines. He remembered that day well, she'd been near sixteen summers when it happened.
"Mopani!" She'd shouted by way of greeting, he jumped up and placed his paws on her shoulders and licked her face. They'd danced a little, him balanced on his hind legs, before falling into the nearest tree. He'd woven between her legs and curveted, an invitation to run. They'd run together, through the forest, dodging trees and bushes, until she had, laughingly, grabbed his tail and pulled them both down. Llawela'd pulled his head onto her lap and scratched behind his ears, sending him into spasms of ecstasy.
When she'd pulled on his ears, his thoughts, and hers, merged. Neither was alarmed. When they ran, especially at night, Mopani let his human see through his eyes. She saw the blue lines of magic that illuminated the night life of the forest. Everything had its own blue-glow. Llawela was different, she had a green-gold glow that outshone anyone Mopani'd seen. He reached out to the blue line underneath his feet and pulled the silken power into himself to replenish his energy.
Suddenly he'd felt a surge of power. More energy than he ever safely handled before surged through his Sight. He felt the drain flow into him and out… into Llawela. Her green-gold glow turned bright blue as she had pulled more and more energy from the ground into her power well. They linked then, deeper than before, and he felt the bright, laughing joy. She'd earned her name at that moment, the sky, previously clear and bright darkened, and lightening flowed from the ground to the sky in continuous bolts, through her body. She'd called the lightening, kept calling it and he could feel the wild joy that she experienced as she played with the lightening like a cub played with an old bone. She'd played until the line under his feet had emptied, then slumped down, exhausted from the effort of controlling the lightening. Hence the name, Llawela, meaning lightening in the human language. By the wolf tongue, she was simply the alpha.
Over the years she'd gained more control of the power, now that she was nearly twice again the age when she'd found the first line she'd almost mastered them, and earned the title alpha from the virtue that she could, and almost had, fried a rival. Mopani was her alpha male, and together they ran the pack. It worked well, the two-foots respected her hunting and running, and the wolves respected Mopani's size and endless endurance. In the early days of her dominance, she'd gone out hunting and fighting almost every day. She was no longer that young, instead she now concentrated on the blue lines of magic that ran through the forest. Some of them ran red with virulent acidic power that burned at her mind. Mopani helped her; they'd found together that if she pushed the green-gold power from her center into the angry-red power of the line, it slowly faded into a deep blue-green. Where the blue green lines flowed good plants and healthy animals flourished. These were good hunting places. The magic could be pulled to a new place now, and she slowly concentrated on moving the blue-green lines into a web. They collected into little lakes or pools of power. She found that if she pulled on the center of a web, the power there was blindingly strong.
It was a slow process and taken many years of trial and error to perfect the purification of the hunting lands. In many ways, it would have been easier to dig up the land and purify it by hand, than it was to use the powers to drag it out and clean it. Another side effect, discovered once when a poison-thorn bush had injured a friend, was the ability to knit together wounds leaving no more than a slight scar in the wake. She had been angry, dangerously so, and pulled on the power of the lines to hurl lightening in her rage. Mopani had to jump on her to prevent her from releasing the power destructively. He had thought he forced her to 'ground' the power and allow it to dissipate harmlessly. The green-blue core went through Llawela and into her friend, Gynefyur. He had seen, with the outer-Sight, the red-angry poison of the bush recede and the blue-green of the power replace it. Ever since that day, no one in the pack had died of an illness or sudden trauma when Llawela was nearby.
She was the alpha; he followed her lead as he followed no other. All of the pack would jump at her orders and fight at her behest. They had fought off together enemies that would have decimated other packs. She cast lightening and healed wounds, the pack hunted and the two-feet's cared for the four-foot brothers. It was the Law of the Pack, inviolable, irrefutable, and unshakable.