Pirin - Book II - Hairam the Queen

Sebastiano B. Brocchi PIRIN - BOOK II - HAIRAM THE QUEEN ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I dedicate this book to my mum. who proved me to know what it takes to be a mother both in silence and in speech, as much in quietness as in deeds, And in stepping aside no less than in participating. And I shall never be able to speak, nor enact, nor participate properly in any attempt to express to her my gratitude and my love. I also thank my dad for helping and lovingly supporting me, so much as to constitute a warranty to me in my every enterprise my whole life through. To you, reader, I say: in this labyrinth of tales some get lost, some find themselves, and yet what really matters shall be the end of the path. NOTES This romance is a work of fantasy. Any possible reference to names of actual people, places, events, historical facts, past or present, is completely unintended and purely fortuitous. Sebastiano Brocchi Pirin – Hairam the Queen First Italian Edition September 2016 - Second Italian Edition June 2019 © Sebastiano B. Brocchi contact: sebastiano.b.brocchi@gmail.com Translated into English by Giovanni Carmine Costabile Reproduction and translation rights are reserved. No portion of this book can be utilized, reproduced or disseminated by any means without explicit, prior authorization in writing by the author. Lyrics, cover and illustrations by the author. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Sebastiano B. Brocchi (Author) was born on 18 March 1987 in Montagnola (Switzerland), where he currently lives. He left high school to become an independent writer and researcher in the field of Art History, Hermetic Philosophy, Sacred Symbology and Inner Alchemy. In 2004 he published his first work, the brief treatise Collina d’Oro – I Tesori dell’Arte . In the following years he also published Collina d’Oro Segreta (2005), a book causing amazement in the Canton Ticino local press, and Riflessioni sulla Grande Opera (2006), considered by specialists as a masterwork on Alchemy. In 2009 he dedicates the essay Favole Ermetiche to the esoteric interpretation of traditional fairy-tales. In 2011 the historical detective-story L’Oro di Polia is published, while in 2012 he presents to the general public the first Italian edition of the first volume of the Pirin fantasy saga, thereafter titled in English Memoirs of Helewen . The second volume, in English Hairam the Queen , is first published in Italian in 2016. He is also the author of several articles, studies, and interviews to important international characters, published on journals and web-pages, both in Switzerland and Italy. Giovanni Carmine Costabile (Translator, MPhil) born in Italy in 1987. Independent scholar, writer, translator, and private teacher. He presented at conferences both in Italy and abroad, and published on Tolkien for academic journals Tolkien Studies (2017), Mythlore (2018, 2022), Settentrione (2020), Journal of Inklings Studies (2022), Journal of Tolkien Research (2022), and Inklings Jahrbuch (2017). He contributed to Tolkien Society's Peter Roe series (2017, 2019), to their journal Mallorn (2018), and to volumes published or forthcoming by Lexington Press, Aracne, and Walking Tree. He was finalist at Medieval Philosophy Arosio Award 2019, hosted by Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum, Rome. His monography, Oltre le Mura del Mondo: Immanenza e Trascendenza nell'Opera di JRR Tolkien (Il Cerchio, 2018), was well received in Italy. He is a writer and proofreader for the foundation and magazine Fellowship & Fairydust from Maryland.He translated and co-translated ten books, both fiction and non-fiction, and both from English into Italian and from Italian into English. He is the official translator into English of the Pirin fantasy saga by Swiss talent Sebastiano B. Brocchi. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE “For Lothriel to have a Queen” When Professor J.R.R. Tolkien in his late years was asked to write the Preface to a new edition of The Golden Key by George MacDonald, he was so involved in the undertaking that he ended up writing a fairy tale of his own instead, the one we all enthusiasts know and love under the title Smith of Wootton Major . Writing a Preface to my translation of Sebastiano B. Brocchi's Hairam the Queen , I feel somewhat to be exposed to the same risk. For verily Brocchi's imagination, mastery of symbolism, and insight is so great that one feels inspired to compose some flight of fancy of his own, in the trail of the Swiss writer. Readers of the first volume of the Pirin trilogy are already familiar with this sort of inventiveness, happily married with a profoundity of thought, but they will still be surprised by the many turns unfolding in the narrative, as well as by its tackling, this time, a single, problematic issue: trust. This of course entails that new readers, however they are of course advised to begin their reading from Memoirs of Helewen , would still be able to enjoy the present volume on its own standing. A book on trust is inevitably also a book on love: that between Helewen and Hairam, first of all, which we have learnt to somehow mirror that between Theoson and Atthù-ath-Hir, and even Ghaladar and Uhilyn, in the remote past. But it is also love between friends, or relatives, or parents and children, or subjects and rulers. Eventually, it becomes the very bond between forces keeping together the universe. So we are reminded of reflections as old as Plato's Symposium and as contemporary as Fritjof Capra's Tao of Physics . But there is more, and even more entanglement, as we consider that, among the nets of relationships the characters are interwoven into, there always comes the time to make a choice, to assign priorities: a motif already dear to the anonymous 14th century poet of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , whose knight of the Round Table is forced not to be a paragon of all virtues anymore. Also Helewen and Hairam, in all their “Pirinness”, remain human, very human, and eventually it is the acceptance of their humanity making them a good couple and their journeys of discovery a successful quest. In the sequence of adventures leading to an unforeseen ending, even you, dear reader, may find answers you had been looking for, and finally understand what it means “for Lothriel to have a Queen”. Giovanni Carmine Costabile Moncalieri, 12/05/2022 ...THE STORY INSOFAR… PIRIN – BOOK I – MEMOIRS OF HELEWEN The young scribe named Nhalfòrdon-Domenir, an olive-skinned boy forced by leg paralysis to use a wheelchair, is entrusted by his parents to the foster-care of Helewen. The latter, having retreated to a great river mansion called “Magnolias Estate”, is a man of astounding looks and a troublesome past: his white hair and golden eyes reveal him to belong to a race of demigods, the Pirin, a thriving civilization which once flourished upon the high peaks in the East, whose King the very man was. Their land, Lothriel (meaning 'The Realm of the Lotus Flowers') was a mythical, glorious Kingdom, a verdant paradise preserved by glaciers, defended by the snowy peaks encircling its boundaries. During his first few days at Magnolias Estate, Domenir soon gets familiar with his new environment and his mysterious, yet fatherly and caring landlord. In order to get to know his foster-child better, and also to preserve knowledge and memories otherwise soon lost, King Helewen decides to dictate Domenir his memoirs, as much as the general account of the legendary past of his people. Among many episodes recounted, one in particular shall constitute the main thread, not only in Helewen's personal vicissitudes, but also in the general plot of the whole of the peoples in the known world: during one of his journeys, Helewen, accompanied by his dearest friend from his childhood, Hairam, eventually gets to the royal court of the wide underground Kingdom of Hagardtyh. The Queen of Hagardtyh gives to Helewen as a gift the first half of a secret item, invisible until the second half is found. A little while later, Hairam asks Helewen to join her on a journey in search of a lost hamlet nowhere to be found on maps. Rirhos, Hairam's grandmother, wrote her grandchild a letter confiding her to have left her an important legacy, having hidden it in the aforesaid village, more precisely in the saffron field of a local farmer named Ofat. Having finally come to the village after their share of adventures, Helewen and Hairam shall actually find a chest buried in the saffron field, and within it no less than the second half of the secret item given them by the Queen of Hagardtyh. Contrarily to their expectations, though, the item is neither finely-wrought nor precious: they have only gotten the two halves of a cheap, rusty metal circlet. Even so, Rirhos' journal, also found within the chest, shall reveal to them the nature of the most ancient relic: the metal half-circles belong to the Crown of Sibereht, the King of the World announced by prophecies, who shall defeat the dark power of the fallen God Belhagard. A God of War and Chaos, Belhagard had been thought to have been vanquished many centuries earlier, during the latest War of the Gods, having been imprisoned within the ice at the bottom of a chasm, and yet, for unknown reasons, it seems he still secretly rules the fates of peoples. Only once the Holy Crown comes into the hands of the Chosen One, the rough iron in which it is made shall turn into bright gold, thus putting an end to the dominion of conflict and hatred. In order for that to happen, in the first place they shall find a way to reforge the broken crown: since in their journeys Helewen and Hairam had already come into possession of the Fiery Hammer of the Alliance, which would allow them to weld once more the two shards, still an item is missing in order to perform the ritual: an anvil fit to the holiest of relics. Before the two Pirin may get in search of the anvil, though, an unexpected tragedy upsets their existence: King Osondel, Helewen's father, dies, thus compelling his son to take the throne of Lothriel instead. PART ONE THE TEN PROBLEMS SOLVED Where, now and then, the mist receded CHAPTER I It was in the eighteenth year of the Eighth Age of the world. Winter ran along the river, swept hither and thither through tree-branches, seeped as a frozen breath into wood, hill and plain, paralyzing them all before snows came. Inflating his lungs, Helewen breathed in the poignant vapour, faintly smelling like algae and fish, hovering over the river, and, as soon as he exhaled, his breath slowly rose in a cloud, and, like some bird coming back to its nest, rejoined the surrounding mist. The King covered his nose in his gloves, in order to warm up. Then he collected the javelin he had previously put upon the keel, returning to observe, wary, the shore and the reedbeds where, now and then, the mist receded. He was sitting, watchful, astern of a long, slender canoe, sliding over Pafantehes-yedo River, piercing the skin of the still water as a keen blade, leaving a trail of ripples behind it hurting the smooth face of the stream. Once in a while, the oarsmen plunged their oars in order to wake up the boat's boost, and all of them kept silent as in reverence, ready to catch any tiny move around them, any imperceptible nuance in that moving landscape. Helewen had been warned by fishermen that a swamp dragon had settled within the reedbed, not too far from Magnolias Estate. There are many species of dragons. Some are colossal, their lungs filled with fire, like those overflying deserts in Noghard, ridden by the sultan's dragoneers. Others are as large as magpies, and harmless like butterflies, like the ones fluttering among the flowery bushes in the woods of Banoymiribin. Swamp dragons do not spit fire, their wings do not overshadow towns, their fangs do not lift horses from the ground. And yet their presence is soon felt, along a river course. Since fishermen's nets soon cannot catch fish anymore, just as clouds made empty by the rain. Those who had sighted the dragon in the property of Magnolias Estate described it as long three or four dektelatthadar, with scales coloured in dark green, almost grey, and long, slender neck, almost like a heron's. They had seen it laying still upon a trunk rising from the waters, while it ambushed its prey, swiftly sticking its hungry fangs into an unfortunate duck, unaware of the whole affair. A short while earlier, it was floating upon the river, squawking among its fellows, soon thereafter to have been caught in the reptile's mouth. Eventually, after the dragon had rapidly finished its meal, swallowing the whole duck, they had seen it dive into the water in an explosion of splashes, and never saw it again.