Wayland by clotho123

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

It’s not safe to be sleeping here, mortal. 

 

So weakling in mind, your people.  So easy to overwhelm.    You to inherit these lands?  None of you would have slept here on a time, not so long ago by your years, scarce any time to me.  You forget too swiftly.  It is not safe to sleep here.

 

In the times when they brought the horses to me, then they knew better than to sleep.  I miss the horses.  You should have a horse with you, mortal.  There is strength in a horse.  They make me remember a time when I rode.  Is the Horse still in speed on the hill?  It mattered once, the Horse.  There was a story to it I no longer recall.  Did it matter to me, that story?  Was I of a people of horses, once?

 

There, sleep on, I only took a little.  Just a little: to see with your eyes, feel with your flesh.  To know the Horse is there yet, (so your people do remember somewhat), and to see the stars.  I miss the stars.  I cannot see; there’s the thing, cannot feel or hear.  I only know, as I know where you are, but I cannot know very far.  Not far enough to know the Horse is there.

 

I would have taken all once.  Just to remember.  The life made me remember.  I have no life.  I had once.  I would have hated you once, because you had life.  Stupid, weakling creature, why did you deserve the life you’d lose so soon?  Why should your kind inherit these lands; why should I live in the hollow hill and be blind to the stars?  I remember the stars.…

 

Ah, that is better!  I have more memory now.  I refused the Call: that is how it was.  I thought that I was strong, but I was not as strong as him, as strong as the Lord of Dark; or his servant, the one they called Necromancer.  I remember that I hated, and yet I could do nothing, and they took memory and gave the terrible hunger to make me theirs.  That was when I saw your kind first and I slew for them, even as every slaying made me hate them more.  So much I that forget still.…

 

They were defeated; then I was free.  Free to hide in the barrows where the dead lay, where they called me wight, free to draw others to my Dark.  I would have drawn you down then.  Perhaps I would have taken your form. But all forms become cold and unlovely on me.  You cannot see me, or you would fear.  You should be afraid; you should know better than to sleep here, mortal. 

 

But there were horses.  I remember when I found that I could mend the shoes.  Mending is not making, but it was the first act in so long that was not of destroying.  A thing of my own, a thing I could do that was good.  It was good to shoe the horses.  But there are no horses now.  And no silver, they would leave me real silver, not like the little discs you carry.  Silver is the most free of metals, did you know?  Your kind forget so much.

 

You do not know me, and I forget the name they called me by, your kind, as I forgot those names I bore before.  I used to be a maker.  There was Light once…

 

Yes, I was great once.  I was the one that caught the Light, but the Light was taken and I called the Dark.  And so Darkness took me, and in Dark I remain.  And the Light, the Light, it was mine, and it was taken….  So much lost.

 

More… I should recall, there was more that I lost.  I am cold.

 

Cold.  You are cold.   I have given you my coldness.  I did not mean to do that.  I only wanted memory, and to see the stars.  Will you not wake?  Will you not leave this place, and think that you have had bad dreams?  Will you not forget?  I did not mean to harm you.  You should not be sleeping here….