The Chronicles of Taynan Rayner, the one known also as the Dark Hound, through

virtue of his abilities in the hunt of the beings of darkness.

Knight of the Lady Nerys.

I sit here at my window as the candle gutters, casting long shadows against the tapestried walls. The eyes of the fabulous beasts stitched there gleam with unnatural life. Their imprisoned life screams, and I turn my eyes back to the yellowing parchment in front of me. There is nothing I can do to aid them now. The Raven’s pet sorcerer saw to that. All I can do now is listen to their whispers, as their spirits strain against the restraints of thread, cloth and sorcery. It is the very least I can do. Just to listen.

My Lady has desired that I scribe the events that have led to this. A broken land ravaged by civil war and the darkness that emerges full-grown from the souls of men. The howling outside the walls rises ever higher and the people within fear for their lives. They should be afraid for their souls. The beasts that roam outside in the darkness will not be content with flesh and blood. They will consume a person’s very essence, removing from them all chance of rebirth on the Mother’s wheel. I think She has abandoned us. My Lady insists that She has not, but I can smell the darkness rolling in like a storm. The scent of evil floats like a miasma on the wind, stinking up the air of this once fair land, and the Raven croaks harsh laughter over all. Yet I think that not even he saw this coming, no matter how he seeks to pretty it up for his supporters. He could not have foreseen this darkness and continued on this course. . .

The Raven. Indeed, he was aptly named. Devourer of dead men and haunter of battlefields. A bird of ill omen. Known to prey upon the weak and defenceless. What was his mother thinking when she named him? The naming of a thing carries certain magics with it.

My name, Taynan, means of the Dark. But my mother did not choose my name. One older, blacker then she did. My father, and also my uncle. The twin bonds of blood are strong, and I am the product of that incestous union. My mother, may the Eternal Goddess comfort her soul, died at my birthing, mad and lost to the world already before the death of her body. Nevertheless, I show no signs of the deformities that so often accompany the products of a brother sister coupling. Indeed, sister and brother who shared the womb in the time before their birth.

I was born, nay, created for one purpose. My father was a Mage of great power and he seduced his sister in order that I, a worthy successor, would take up his staff and robes. Although Adonai has urged me to tutor under him, I have not. The darkness inherent in my heritage holds my conscience fast. I dare not risk that I become what my people cower from. It is known that a child of close family ties can have a great gift for the magics. The offspring of a pair of twins is the most powerful joining that exists, while being rightly condemned by all good folk. While my family name is tainted, my own lines of descent are unknown. Most believe that an Elf, one that walks the shaded paths rather then the forested was my father. Others, some daemon or night dwelling spirit. The truth that my mother and father were twins is now known only to four living people – myself, my Lady, her Knight Champion, and her Mage. The dead keep their own counsel. . .or they did. None of the folk here would talk to such things, however.

I am a rather woeful knight, being small of stature and finely boned. More fitted to being a minstrel then an errant knight. And while my Lady’s Champion moves about on the walls, heartening our men, I sit in the gathering dark and let the ink fall like scattered droplets of blood across the smooth parchment. But I obey my Lady’s wishes.

A chronicle is what she desires, and a chronicle she shall have. First, I must pen what has come before, then I can begin to write what happens now, and on until this dark business has seen its close.

Shall we begin at the beginning?

In the Beginning, there was the Mother of All. She was desolate and alone in the reaches of space and time, without child or lover. She wept heartsore and the stars are formed from Her anguished tears. In time, in the unmeasurable spans of time that the Gods know, She created from Herself the Gods and Goddesses of our world. Not all of their names are known to us, and some races claim as their own different ones under different names. But there is always the Goddess, the Mother of all life and Eternal. Except some peoples do not acknowledge her.

Adonai’s people for example, worship a God, born of fire and controller of the desert winds. He is hard and demanding, requiring gifts of blood spilled on open alters as the priests chant in hollow voices and the smoke of sacrifice rises upwards to the heavens. The terrified bleat of goats, yellow eyed and rank with animal sweat as the knives glitter in the hot desert sun and the boom of the priests and their horns accompanying it all in a sullen dirge. They do not celebrate their relationship with their God. They fear Him and one can see this reflected in their worship.

But in the Beginning and always unto the End, there is the Great Mother, the Eternal Goddess.

Since the time before times, in the land of Alba, honour and land is passed through the female line. My lady Nerys was to become High Priestess, Queen and War Raven of our united lands through the right of the Mother.

However, great darkness dwells in the hearts of men.

Corbett, son of the previous Champion of our Queen laid claim to the throne over lady Nerys and her right through the female line. Daughter of the sister of our queen, she had the Mother Right of Claim. She had the birthright. But. . .

As always, things can go awry.

~*~*~*~*~

Taynan looked up startled from his scribing.

“On the walls! They’re coming!” A voice screamed from the ramparts.

The slenderly built young man with dark hair and pale skin quickly blew across the glimmering black ink. Dry, dry, so I can don my armour and go to where I must! His page entered.

“Sir, sir! Quick!” The sandy haired boy, the son of one of the minor lords who yet supported Nerys held out his chainmail. Taynan hadn’t bothered to learn his name. Boys died young on the field now. The knight waited an instant more, then moved, pinning down the edges of the fine parchment sheet with rocks gathered from the walls where the grapples sang and clawed.

“Help me into it then, lad.” Taynan let the boy carefully slide it over his head. A terrible screaming and wailing echoed into the keep. Adonai was up to his tricks then. And thank Mother for that. It was only thanks to the outland mage that Nerys had held out as long as she had. What held him? Who knew. Why didn’t he leave? Even now, he could abandon them. But he hasn’t and Taynan thanked the Mother for it. The mail slithered over his body and he patted it into place, securing it with a belt and draping the hauberk over his head.

“The Mother shield you, sir!”

“Thanks, lad.” Taynan smiled briefly at the boy, and tousled his hair for a moment. “My sword?”

“Here, lord.” The boy held the main symbol of Taynan’s knighthood reverently in his hands, the light of idealism still shining brightly in his eyes. The knight could have winced, for soon that light would be drenched in blood. Covered in the foulness that was this war, a war against less then men and yet more then men. Vampires, weres, moredhel, trolls, goblins, orcs. . .dark and foul things that belonged to the nothingness outside the Mother’s love and warmth. He took the sword from the boy and slid it into the scabbard.

“Soon, Canid, you will taste blood. . .” he whispered to his family sword and left the room at a run.