Fall of the Kingfisher

Moira knew she was deep in a nightmare, and for the fifth night in a row there was nothing she could do to wake herself. Maybe that was because she had actually lived these events six nights ago. Maybe her mind was damaged beyond repair. She didn't think that last was true.  The prophet had chosen her and her brother after all. She clung to that thought fiercely as the flames licked the walls, and the screams of her mother and sisters clawed through her mind.

Every night, sometimes two or three times, the events in her dreams would unfold just as they had in the waking world a week ago. Moira could still hear the soft bleating as her father finished gathering the last of the wayward flock into the small pen behind their house. She remembered seeing her mother running up the small rise from the beach, her face white with terror. When Moira looked up she saw the reiver sails silhouetted on the watery horizon.

The men of Nordhulm had been an increasing threat to northern isles, especially Lerial. They had, for years, contented themselves with poaching ships, and raiding the small whaling communities in the White Sea. Little more than pirates, they had built their reputation as mercenaries for petty lords of the Inner Islands in their incessant conflicts.

Lerial had stood for centuries, under the Kingfisher Banner, as a buffer between the Hundred Isles and the reivers of Nordhulm. In a few short months though, the Prophet Rillan had undone the armies of the Kingfisher with his new vision of the Path. Duality and Balance were, and always had been, at the heart of the Path. The Monks of Kualang had preached a path of peace for generations, but they, being monks, lived far from society, and their message was mixed with the nature of Hia'ji – the open-handed martial art their order developed and promoted.

Rillan's message was peace. Peace in family, peace in community, and peace in the world. The Path to Ascension could only be reached, he said, by an all-encompassing life of non-violence. The miracles he had worked in the hamlets, cities, and ports of Lerial had won the commoners over by the thousands. Crowds followed him from one city to the next. When the Lord Kingfisher had finally mustered his strength it was already too late. 

On a field outside the capitol, the host of Rillan had sat down while the prophet walked forward to speak under the majestic Kingfisher Banner.  The King had called Rillan a false prophet, and challenged his teachings in a voice that carried across the field. In another time that may have worked.  There had been many and more false prophets in the long history of Hundred Isles.  Rillan’s miracles and message were too powerful though.  The vast majority of the army had thrown down their weapons at the prophet’s response, and joined the sitting throng.

For a season Lerial was truly peaceful.  The Lord Kingfisher had taken the remnants of his army across the straights, and locked himself in the ancient cliff fortress of Ulloch.  The prophet worked with and through the peoples of Lerial, and everyone was cared for.  The poor were fed and clothed, the sick healed, and the criminals reformed.

Word had spread though, as it was want to do, on the first sails that left with the Lord Kingfisher.  Nordhulm stirred in its icy halls.  When the raiding began all along the northern coast of Lerial, the reivers did not just burn the villages, and carry off the women and plunder.  They established their own military commands in the conquered towns.

The people turned to Rillan for answers, and he spoke as he always had, of peace and balance and the Path.  His words, even in chaos, had buoyed the nation.  Time and again, they watched as Rillan would walk out, open armed, to speak with the reivers as they fell upon some village, or stormed a city’s walls.  Neither arrow nor sword could touch him as he told them of the path, walking among the stunned nordmen.

For all of his attempts though, the prophet could not convert the men of Nordhulm.  The northerners worshiped deities they called the old gods, and their priests worked their own miracles, wrought in fire, lightning and blood.  So the reivers pushed further south with every new moon, until that twilight, one week ago, the sails had appeared outside Moira’s village, and changed her life forever.