Farworld: The Ulkuhn Part 2
‘We shall never conquer it all. There is no end to the world.’
What follows is an excerpt from the first volume of The Legends and Histories of Farworld.
The Ulkuhn: Part 1 tells of the fearsome tribe’s conquests under the rule of its first two kings. Part 2 sees the Ulkuhn’s first and last queen carry the destiny of her lineage to the edge of the known world.
The Ulkuhn
~7500-7600 Years after The Fall
Heroluvas attempted to bargain for the life of her sisters, but Zethos did not respect their tears and would not spare them. However, Zethos gave Heroluvas the option to not witness their deaths, which she declined. She did, in the end, convince him not to slit their throats, but instead allowed them to take Elfen poison.
From then, Heroluvas was respected and feared amongst the Ulkuhn, and became one of Zethos’ most trusted advisors. Despite his efforts, Zethos never learned to read and write, but his daughter Zasha took to Heroluvas’ teaching, which was in part why Zethos named Zasha his heir.
Having never encountered Elfs, the Ulkuhn did not know what to make of Heroluvas. She did not seem to age as the Ulkuhn did, and she made strange potions that were used to treat the sick and heal the wounded. She was rarely seen, for when she was not teaching the sons and daughters of important Ulkuhn families, she was desperately writing down everything she could remember from the libraries that Zethos had destroyed. We owe much to her efforts.
And we also owe much to Zasha the daughter of Zethos. Zasha was named heir over her brothers because she was as fearless in battle as them, and much stronger in strategy, as well as writing and reading. Whispers snaked through the Ulkuhn camps that Zasha was learning dark magic from Heroluvas. While her father lay on her deathbed, she confided in her teacher.
“‘They will not accept me,’ she worried, ‘for your teachings might make me smarter than the others, but they also taint me. My people believe I am a witch that has ensorceled my father.’
“‘Let them,’ said I. “Teach them to believe it. They hate you because they fear you, and the Ulkuhn have always used fear as their greatest weapon.’
“At this, Zasha pondered. Ever since her childhood, she had been a sweet and charming girl with a talent for making her peers like her and look up to her. It hurt her that the masses spoke ill of her, and I saw that she did not want to inflame their fear and hatred. But she also saw that I was right.”
When Zethos died, Zasha presided over his funeral and with the help of her teacher, staged a frightening ritual. The body of Zethos was brought atop the highest hill during a great storm. A pyre was built, which Zasha climbed atop. After speaking briefly about the strength of her father and the destiny of the Ulkuhn people, it appeared as though she called down a bolt of lightning to set her father’s body aflame. The crowd was astonished, and as she leapt through the flame and off the pyre, they cheered her. It was a trick of oil and thunder, and it won Zasha her father’s people.
“From that moment, Zasha lost all her fear and gained the confidence of her father and grandfather. Through our little trick, she felt the power of her people and became a woman on fire, believing what her father had told her: that she would see the Ulkuhn to the end of the world. Even I wanted to believe in her.”
Fifteen years after the beginning of Zasha’s reign, the Ulkuhn had wiped the world clean of nearly every tribe and town from the northern shores of the Womb to the tip of Cape Valas. From the waters of the Womb, Zasha looked up to the peaks of the Divide and smiled, for she believed she had nearly completed her destiny. “Come friends,” she said, “let us climb to the end of the world.”
On the journey up the mountains, Zasha finally took a husband, whose name Heroluvas did not care to record. They were a week’s climb from the highest peak when Zasha announced that she was pregnant. The Ulkuhn took this as a sign that their dominance of the world would be unending, and that the line of Shalla would go on forever.
“Zasha ascended the peak alone, ordering myself and her brothers to give her a moment’s solitude at the top of the world. The climb was steep, and her brothers protested, but she did not hear them. We watched as her silhouette became smaller against the sky’s gray. When she reached the top, she did not move. For nearly an hour we stared at her in silence, waiting for her to turn and call us up. Her brothers feared that some magic had taken hold of her and frozen her on the world’s edge. Only I knew what she might have discovered at the end of the world, and having grown fond of her over the years, my heart broke for this day I hoped would not come.
“‘I will go to her,’ I said, and began to climb before her brothers could answer. When I reached the peak, I did not speak, but only stared at the endless valley below and the towns and cities that sprung up upon its rivers.
“After long minutes, she finally broke the silence, her voice hardly more than a whisper in the whistling wind. ‘We shall never conquer it all. There is no end to the world.’
“‘I am sorry,’ said I, and when she turned to me her eyes beheld many emotions. Had I betrayed her by keeping the secret of the world beyond the mountains from her? Did she hate me? Or was she grateful for my friendship in that moment?
“‘We must never tell them,’ said she. And tell them, we never did.”
Zasha and Heroluvas concocted a story from the top of the world, telling of ancient magic both dark and light that formed the border of the world and the unknown. The mountains belonged to the gods, they declared, and the Ulkuhn had been blessed to climb them, but must never come back.
Zasha secluded herself for the descent, speaking to no one except Heroluvas. She grew great with child, and her brothers wished that she give birth on the shores of the Womb. But in her solitude, Zasha grew mad, raving to herself in the night. The Ulkuhn that traveled with her whispered that she had been possessed by the dark gods of the mountains, or that the child growing within her had been possessed by a demon.
By the time they exited the mountains, Zasha’s ravings had not ceased, and she was oft heard crying out “Take me to the end of the world!” She was inconsolable; even Heroluvas could not comfort her.
“We shall take you to the beginning of the world, Sister,” said one of her brothers. “We are going to the Womb from whence all life sprang forth, so that you may give birth to a child who will hold our lands long after we are gone.” But at that, she went even more mad and seemed to lose language completely.
After a sleepless night haunted by Zasha’s madness, Heroluvas entered the tent of the Ulkuhn leader and finally there was quiet on the plains. When asked what calmed Zasha, the Elfen teacher said that they should go to the end of the world. But when the Ulkuhn gathered, they turned south away from the mountains.
Zasha was great with child when they reached the cape at the southern tip of the peninsula the Ulkuhn now ruled. Along the way, they saw only scarce wanderers who fled at the sight of them. In their path were ruined cities and towns, giving way to the grasses, trees and wildlife. The hunting was good and they found no enemies.
But Zasha had returned to a sullen silence, and would not speak even to her teacher and friend.
“The world turned into winter and when we were in sight of the waters, the winds chilled us as though we were still atop that cursed peak. I knew that we had reached our destiny, and hoped that I could cheer my friend. I placed my hand on her belly. ‘It is a girl,’ I said. ‘What will you call her?’
“Zasha then turned to me and asked simply, ‘Have we reached the end of the world?’
“I took her out to the cliffs that overlooked the sea. I knew there were lands beyond those seas, but she did not and I hoped that it would cheer her to see the site and to believe that she had found at least one end to the world. Believe it she did, but it did not cheer her.
“She turned to her people then and raised her sword. ‘We have reached the end of the world,’ she proclaimed, ‘and now we shall conquer the gods.’ The Ulkuhn cheered as she turned and sprinted towards the edge of the cliff. She could not have heard my shriek as they charged after her.
“I was almost swept off the cliff by the fanatical Ulkuhn warriors. I fell to the ground and covered my head, trampled by the stampede over the edge of the world. When I awoke, bruised and broken, only a few hundred of the Ulkuhn remained, staring at what they could not understand. For the first time since breaking the bonds of that forgotten empire, they were leaderless and lost.
“Some looked at me with trust and awe, but I saw fear and hatred in the eyes of most. And so I ran, though I did not know where to go, I ran from the end of the world.”
The Ulkuhn do not appear in any other histories. Heroluvas had learned to hunt and live off the land in her many years with the Ulkhuhn, and eventually traveled with a band of Lostmen. She spent the remainder of her years writing the tales she heard on her travels and recording all she could remember from the libraries of her childhood.
Near the end of her life, she came upon a tribe of wood Elfs, though we are not sure exactly where. After a few months, she grew restless and left the Elfs, leaving her writings with them. She was not heard from again.