Arturo,

I am sorry to hear that the Book of Unwritten Years never entered into your travels. If it still survives then perhaps we will discover it some day. I would like to visit the secret airs myself if possible but first I must finish my record of what transpired in Geldorad during our own time.

Since you enjoyed the last pair of stories I sent you, I thought I would enclose one more which concerns the night sky, albeit less directly. I am not convinced that this story belongs to our most ancient cycles of myth and is not simply an imitation of them, but it is surely an early imitation and our friend the witch enjoyed it greatly.

I will say my farewell here and allow you to peruse the tale, but please let me know if you remembering seeing an anthology of old war poetry somewhere around the estate. It had a red cover and now I cannot find it.

With kindest regards,

Sidwid Hull.

Though the old war vanished from our sight long ago it never ended fully. The gods still quarrel in our land in unseen ways.

Long ago there were three who lived together as friends. Lumen and Numen were brothers but students of different masters. Lumen learned the secrets of light and colour. Numen learned the skill of weaving dreams. Both used their arts to win praise for their teachers. They cared for their crafts not for sake of the world but only so that they could honour their masters.

For their cousin Frowar it was different. Though he loved the teacher who taught him the names and uses of flowers, he loved the flowers themselves most of all. That was the way that his teacher had taught him. So when his teacher fell ill and lost her senses he tempered his fear and grief with diligent work, tending to his garden.

And it was no usual garden he tended but the Garden of Stars. Lumen, Numen, and Frower worked together to raise up mighty sprouts whose roots were in the earth and whose leaves stretched throughout the middle heavens. These plants grew and grew through long generations of men until their flowers blossomed into resplendent lights which the Highest took and placed in the uttermost heavens. This had been their most joyous and fulfilling labour until the time when Frowar’s teacher fell sick and Lumen and Numen’s masters went to war.

On the night that the brothers met in battle, the wrath-filled moon was brighter than it ever was before or after. Clouds of darkest shadow passed in waves through the sky. The brothers met alone in the Garden of Stars while Frowar watched fearfully from a distance.

Numen called out, “Why, O Brother, does your master make the moon to burn so bright? Should not all his loyal servants be sleeping? Why does your master scorn the order of his world?”

Lumen answered, “Why, O Brother, did your master send shadows across the sky during the day? Should not all his loyal servants wait for their chosen hour? Is night not enough?”

And so the two began to fight. Caring more for the honour of their masters than the works they built together, they knocked each other into stalks of young flowers and they broke. Sparks splashed out from their stems and faded. They crashed into the trunks of older flowers and their sap ran like rivers of flame and then faded. Frowar only watched and wept for his garden as the brothers destroyed more and more of it until not a single flower was left to shed its unripe light.

Lumen and Numen then pierced each other with their spears, each in one eye, and for a moment the battle came to halt as they held their wounds. When all light from the nearby broken flowers had flickered out, a cloud of shadow passed over the moon and all was dark.

Opening his one eye Numen said, “Do not think that this battle is over, Lumen. Once I see you again, you are dead.”

Lumen opened his one eye and responded in kind. “Light is my art, Numen. You will die when the moon returns.”

When the cloud passed and the moon shined again the battle continued. Neither overcame the other and then shadow passed over them once more. They waited until the moon shined again and the battle continued. Then they stopped when clouds rolled back in.

This continued throughout the night and when dawn broke they rested.

Frowar stepped out and looked over the ruins of his garden. He searched acre after acre and found only one young sprout remaining. In his anger he thought of killing the two brothers where they slept but a messenger of Lumen’s master came to him and looking over the devastation said,

“Do not despair, Frowar, though the Garden of Stars be ruined. Though no new lights will replace the old when they burn out, do not be grieved. The old will prove enough when the fullness of time has passed and the unborn star you now see here will bloom when the Highest decrees. Wait here for now, for the battle between Lumen and Numen must continue.”

And so Frowar trusted the messenger and waited until night. The brothers awoke at dusk and continued their fight, grappling whenever the moon shined. Night after night this happened even after Numen’s master was broken and Lumen’s master vanished. Generations passed and all the gods’ bodies turned to stone. But not so for the two brothers who battled every night. In time their bodies faded and they became wraiths, formless spirits of wrath twisting around each other every moonlit night.

When the city of Geldorad was founded, men often tried to travel through the old Garden of Stars by night and met an untimely end. Wherever light shines in that country by night, the quarrel of ancient wraiths was roused and men died in the swirl. Pitying the unknowing victims, Frowar then decided to replant the young flower in the midst of that land so that once it grew tall its shadow would be a shelter for any who tried to travel there by night.

Though the old war vanished from our sight long ago it never ended, for the two brothers battle on by night wherever the moon shines. That is why travellers through the northern country keep to the shadows if they must travel by night at all.