The Tale of Faurëlar and of Dallàthraua

Away to the north they fled, and there they found refuge among the Hrímheimr-Elves. Though they were seemingly welcomed with all the warmth one would a kinsman, the long division from the southern lands and the old scars from the time of Queen Hella had breed in these distant kindred of the Elves a great bitterness. They had little in the way of love for those from the south, and even less for those of noble blood such as Valderian, who was father to Dallàthraua.

Though her father had been gentle of mood, and good tempered this had not softened the attitudes of the northern tribes. They had it was said long held the Dwarves in contempt, and held them to be enemies for they wielded the dreaded iron and steel that the Elves who had not undergone the Rite of Iron were so vulnerable to. Such was their ill-grace at the son of an Elf who had undergone such a ritual and forged arms and raiment of steel that they took in the couple if in a poor mood whilst doing so.

Hardly with any place to turn to, and keen to find his way somewhere safe from her mother’s reaches, Faurëlar was to resort to desperate pleas and promises to the Hrímheimr Elves. The Wilder Elves though took but poorly to his oaths and feeble supplications. Several of their warriors also had developed a longing towards Dallàthraua.

It was in this spirit that the jealous Wilder-Elves posited a challenge to the newcomers, with it being their chieftain Ygonalaus who delivered the dread ultimatum. “You Faurëlar are a stranger to these lands, and of other folk than our own. You bear a closer ressemblence to they who have hunted us, and taken over the dread-lands once occupied by the Enemy, turning it into a great forest one which we consider ours by right.”

“It is not yours by right, though they have done much wrong unto thee.” Faurëlar answered at once, never one to tell a lie.

The chieftain took this but poorly yet he did not let this show, saying to him. “You must now go to the nearby mountain that overlooks the river-Sólvágr to secure from there the feather of one of the Dread-Eagles, and a leaf from their tree.”

“Why must I do this?”

“Because, thou art an outsider and hath infringed upon our goodness for many months now.”

Troubled by these words, Faurëlar never one to refuse so blunt a stated fact, nor one to deny host-rights was to consult with his bride who objected at once. She did not like the notion that he should venture whither up the mountain and seek out such danger.

Yet the more he considered it, the more convinced Faurëlar became of the rightness of their hosts’ cause and resolved to do so. Departing three days later, he was to make his way up yon mountain. He did not know it but many of those he left behind did hold a great celebration, for they held him to already be dead. Most made advances, and yet faithful Dallàthraua would remain, saying to them that when she no longer had thread to weave in her loom she would wed one of them. Gleeful, they were to set to waiting, little knowing that in the night she often undid the tapestry and shroud she had begun at their behest. Thus, she was destined to never finish them so long as Faurëlar remained absent.

Faurëlar climbed the mountain, scaling the tallest of the mounts of Rossilia. Thereupon the peak he knew he would find the tree of olde, and the great eagle nest. Long did he exhaust himself and for many weeks he strove to conquer the great mount that defied the heavens. He struggled more than any other Elf might well have imagined, lonelier still in spirit than any man or Elf could well have understood.

The reason for this was because of how his hounds, long beloved and never far from his company remained far below. They would not leave him, and were bound to him by bonds forged long ago when the earth was much younger. It was as he climbed that he wept for the separation and they wept all the louder.

It was as he made his way up the mountain though that he forgot his agony and came into his own that he discovered the greatest of colds and the very worst of sorrow. It was in that place that he was confronted by ancient visions, of his long deceased father, and of his nigh on forgotten mother so that the houndsman who had loved a princess struggled against countless pains and sorrows that none since the time of the prince Féalandvil and his father could comprehend. Yet nonetheless Faurëlar reached the peak that none had before him ever seen, not even the mighty Thordrin the Great of the Dwarves.

It was thereupon the mountain peak that Faurëlar discovered not a tree in the full bloom of its youth, but rather an ash in the winter of its life. Seizing a great many of its fallen leaves, he made to leave when he was to come across one of the Great Eagles that had so bedevilled those servants of Hella in another age. In the time since that distant era, they had run wild as such beasts are wont to do, having transformed into the violent protectors of a tree that had ceased to glow with the same venerable light that had once awed the Dwarves in the most distant era of the world.

Quite what it was that Faurëlar had expected from them is impossible to know, all that is known is that where others might have become gripped by fear, he felt none. He knew that these beasts though no longer the great heroic mounts that had lifted the likes of Féalandvil’s great love from the bleakest of parts of the realm of Hella to her father’s forest, still bore some vague resemblance to those majestic beings. At this time savage and untamed, filled with madness now that their tree had become a pale shadow of its former glory, they were hardly safe to be near, yet no menace to one such as Faurëlar. The reason for this lay in that somewhere deep within them, they still remembered their earliest vows to King Alfrikr, he who had in another age rescued them, from the Wyrms of Hella and had won from them their lealty and love. It was he who had banished the shadows from their hearts and minds, and he who had forged the ancient peace between Dwarves, Elves, Eagles, Centaurs and those Winged-Folks who sought at times to ally with Hella at others times betray her. Alfrikr had passed down the covenant and the Eagles knew this and thus could no more fight against this than they could break their oaths to the goddess Macaria for it was she whom they had fallen under the sway of, since the time she had first come to the realm of the Allfather.

Noble and good, they had slain a number of others, notably Ursidon and had frightened the Wilder-Elves, and yet still Faurëlar held true to the belief they would not harm him. Showing them the scarf he had been given as a child, that which had belonged to his father, and his own father before him going all the way back to the time of the Red-King of the Elves, when Faurëlar’s most distant ancestor Faurëln was guard to that ruler. It was this very cloth that that noble guardsman had worn when his laird and King had journeyed whither to the north. Once there he had shown himself good and true.

The memory of that scar remained with them, and it was this that made the Eagles cease their savage ways. No longer would they be driven to madness. At last they could abandon the north and fly west, having seen for the first time in millennia one linked to the ancient King they still revered.

It was thus that Faurëlar was flown down to his hounds, on wings darker and more majestic than any that any Elf of that age had ever seen, or flown upon in the whole of that distant era. Upon his return with the feathers and the autumn-leaves of the tree of Falérànd the Wilder-Elves welcomed him into their midst still sore over the failure to woo Dallàthraua. Their chieftain pleased to see the eagles fly away, to the west though offered little in the way of difficulties and preferred to win over Faurëlar and be rid of him if in slightly different fashion.

The Ursidon of that place had long been in the habit of mounting ruthless raids against the Elves, and often carried off a great many of their sheep and cows. The locals had grown to detest them, for this reason it was requested that should he wish to have them wed the pair, Faurëlar had as obligation to drive out the Ursidon. This he agreed readily to do, if reluctantly.

He conspired though with Dallàthraua, to invite the Ursidon to Bjölmar under the pretence of peace. The Ursidon long accustomed to the cowardice of the Wilder-Elves and convinced of their own innate superiority agreed readily. Feeding them a great feast he had gathered from many days of hunting, and quenching their thirst with untold amounts of wine and ale mixed with honey, they soon fell into a great slumber.

It was at this time that Faurëlar had his beloved release the hounds he had kept hidden, at which time he took up his bow and arrows. The great majority of the Ursidons that survived this event were to later speak bitterly of the treacherousness of the Elves, and to flee further east where they were to establish the state of Bjölmar and where they would swear ever-lasting vengeance upon the Elves driving a great many who inhabited those lands out and into the isles of Zipangu, or into the southern isles and into the lands later known as those of Hwanguk.

As to Faurëlar, in the Great Plains near the Sólvágr-River he established a great fortress, one that took many moons to build and that his new people who had nominated him their new chieftain after his marriage, dubbed Duiaisain. This they also took up as their new name in honour of him, and the yellowed leaves he had brought down from the mountain and that Dallàthraua had fashioned into a great coronet that was to sit upon his brow and those of a great many of his descendants until the fall of the Kingdom of Duiaisain.

This though was not the last of the adventures the new King of Duiaisain was to venture out upon, yet the next were in a decidedly different period, many days after the establishment of his realm after Dallàthraua had given him three sons, and two daughters.