For those who do not know me, I am Balladir, the Bard of the Elves, a collector and a teller of tales.
I am the thirteenth holder of this title that stretches back several thousand years to Cento Golias, who was the first to leave our island home honoured with this task. Collection and retelling are my supposed purpose I say, adding slowly to the cultural wealth and accumulating wisdom of my people, but you will soon hear that my role has wandered from that path. Sometimes by accident, sometimes by design, and occasionally upon request, I have become more than a bystander, more a part of the song than its singer, more a participant than a witness to the great crimes and troubled events of our age.
I am writing this account on the terrace of my chambers within the palace of my king, Auryola, after returning from a period of war and particular hardship in a distant land. The day will come soon enough when I must tell that tale. For now though, to feel the breeze of my island home upon my face again, to hear the distant chiming of the Gates of Tintawn and the whinnying of my king’s horses in the stable, to watch the petals from the royal orchards drift by, some landing softly on the very page where my sun-sore hands slowly begin to draw these events into the light, causes me such pleasure and such pause in relief, that I find I can barely begin. Such a mingling of joy and loss lies in the air around me that my eyes have closed a hundred times before my quill begins to move.
Those who know me well often tease me for my long-windedness. Usually this is because I enjoy the recounting of events so much that I struggle to select the relevant from the entertaining, the mundane from the important. I overwhelm the table, my old mentor Solian would say, rather than offering my song like a teasing taste of wine in crystal. But I vow to give you enough, my reader, for you to satisfy your appetite as you indulge with me. I urge you to judge my account with what discerning wisdom you will, to forgive my moments of naïve rambling and, when the table groans, select what you will, peer carefully between these offerings for what I may have failed to see.
I was naïve when I left my home in the days I shall describe. I shall not say that I was young, for I had seen more than seventy summers already, but that journey was the first great tempering of what little wisdom and resilience I had, and I shall say at the first that I found myself wanting more than once. I cannot otherwise explain why things should have proceeded as they did. Once I had been selected as the Bard of the Elves, through a series of several rather testing trials, I had received the most generous tuition and guidance from Solian, who had held the title for the previous two hundred years, and who then declared that he wanted a rest. Solian was truly wise and parcelled me a wealth of knowledge and practical advice that I treasure to this day, though to my shame I do not always follow it. He recognised in me where seeds of skill lay dormant, and he slyly planted others even as he tended to my growth. I became adept enough with a sword and with a bow, my skills being nothing truly remarkable among my people; I could sing and play both flute and lyre well enough, so I was often told, and I know that once I have heard a phrase of music, I have it in my head forever, which is useful. Music, I will say, is where I had begun to know myself best, but I was otherwise still a novice as a mage. Solian folded me in and out of shadows, following me like a fox. He demonstrated how to still a crowded room with a sigh, how to calm a swarm of bees by singing their own language, and how to read the runes of books so old they threatened to crumble to powder between my clumsy fingers. I learned to survive on a bare mountain, to swim in wild seas and to charm or improvise my way out of all manner of trouble, as my ancestor Bards had most notoriously done, yet I had not grown to comprehend the world outside the tales I had heard; nor had I really left the safety of my nest, the glorious Elven Isle. The world beyond was then but a scroll of glowing parchment rolling open, and despite my curious hunger to learn, the dark desires of Men, the palpable horrors of war and the machinations of the gods had not yet been revealed to me in all their fierce dimensions.