The story of Karadiyar is preserved in the libraries of Tien and Sinraen. The miracles, wars, heroics, and follies of past ages are written on these pages alone.
The Green Silence Incident
The following lines are taken from the personal records of Lord Aethon of the line of Esthe. The text is believed to have been written around the six hundred and forty-second year of the First Age. In those years the village now known as Poynaz had not yet been founded, and the region was known only as the Southwestern Forests.
My father Hail had not yet become king. My grandfather Esthe had become so consumed by illnesses that he could not sleep even at night. Human settlements were only just beginning to grow, and hunting parties were entering the depths of the forests more often. Yet in those years no one willingly went to the ancient forests in the southwest. There was a strange silence among the trees. Birds sang, the wind blew, and yet a person still felt as though he were being listened to.
I was twenty years old then. I was sent to the southwestern border with twenty-two spearmen and four hunters beside me. The reason was the orc raids that had appeared in recent days. Herds were being torn apart, woodcutters were disappearing, and mangled bodies were found among fallen trees. At first we thought it was an ordinary raid. But most of the dead had their eyes gouged out. This was an old war mark of the orcs from the northern tribes.
For three days we moved along the edge of the forest. On the fourth day fog descended. It was so dense that we could barely make out the man walking before us. Our horses grew restless. One of our hunters said we should turn back. Another claimed he had seen shadows walking among the trees. The soldiers had begun to fear, but because I was of the line of Esthe, I could not bring myself to retreat. We continued forward.
Toward evening we found the first body. It was an orc. A thin silver arrow was lodged in its throat. When we tried to pull the arrow out, one of our hunters said it was not made by human hands. It truly was strange. Its shaft was dark, but not stone. It shone like polished night. It resembled neither iron nor bone nor any other substance we knew.
When night fell, we were attacked. War cries coming from between the trees shook the forest. There were at least forty orcs. We raised our shields and formed a tight circle. In the first charge two of our men fell. An orc axe split the face of one of my soldiers in two. We began retreating through the mud. I thought we would die that night.
Just then I heard sounds from deep within the forest. At first I thought it was the wind. Then thin hums rose from between the trees. All at once silver arrows began raining from the darkness. They were so fast that the eye could not follow them. Each arrow found an orc, burying itself in necks, eyes, or throats. Some creatures collapsed before they could even understand what was happening.
My men looked around in terror. As for me, I can swear I saw something among the trees. Tall silhouettes... Pale beings walking within the mists... When moonlight touched them, their bodies became visible for a brief moment, then mingled with the shadows once again. They were like humans, yet they were not. No human could move so silently. No human gaze could be so heavy.
The battle was very short. When the orcs began to flee, the rain of arrows suddenly stopped. The forest fell silent again. It was such a deep silence that I could hear even the breathing of the wounded.
One of my soldiers fell to his knees and said that spirits living in the forest had protected us. Another swore they were ancient gods. But I did not know what they were. The only thing I knew was that if they had wished to kill us, they could have done so easily.
At daybreak the fog lifted. We searched for them within the forest. We found neither campfire nor trail nor footprint. Only a few silver arrows remained stuck in the earth. But as the sun rose, those arrows too began to change. Their dark surfaces cracked, then turned into fine dust and scattered with the wind. It was as though they had never existed.
On the road back, I ordered my soldiers not to speak of that night. For people fear such stories. But as the years passed, I understood this: what saved us that night was neither human nor any other living thing we knew. There were beings in the depths of the ancient forests who had lived long before us. And unless they wished it, they did not wish to be seen.