Pellerin Eli: Vol. 1

This book is also called "Hleberi in Love." Its first-edition author claimed to adapt a household legend of Khaenri'ah, but no one remains who can confirm that. It is now the collective creation of many generations.

This is a story from a very ancient time—legend says poultry and wild birds had not yet parted then. In that age what lit the underground kingdom was a crimson moon, not the black sun that came later.

Because of the kingdom's special place, things from beyond the world always leaked in. The kingdom's arms would destroy the calamities among them—but what of the rest? For example: a child perhaps come from some destroyed world?

One of the sages advised the king: "O head of the nobles, I once heard from a child a tale of another world: sea-folk once believed the gods came from the sea. Each time they found a castaway from shipwreck, they treated them with highest honor—only because they held that gods would borrow the form of shipwreck survivors to inspect the human world."

The king said: "I do not understand. Do as you mean."

(Of course, within the kingdom there was no ocean in the traditional sense. The kingdom's earliest founders had once seen mountain outlines blur under the sun's fierce radiance, and moonlight fall on fine ripples of the sea like many pearls. By the age of this story, only outsiders and rare ones who left the kingdom on duty and returned could describe such scenes under the king. The word "ocean" was often a metaphor for the space of stellar projection.)

Hoping for a god from beyond the so-called ocean—or one who could surpass the gods—they founded an institution to take in such children. After that, orphans of the kingdom or waifs from outside were also accepted.

Young Peren'eli's earliest memory of life was being made by adults to crawl through a pitch-black passage. These tunnels may have been flues for fire and smoke in cold seasons, full of coal ash, with not a crack for smoke to escape or light to leak in. As Peren'eli crawled, he sometimes fell in the dark. Fortunately the passage was designed for children to pass; even falls did not hurt much, and there were no detestable webs of insects.

At last Peren'eli reached the end, but the exit did not open. He knocked; only adults' merciless voices asked: "Are you dead?"

If already dead, how could one answer? But the adults did not like that reply. They repeated the same question until Peren'eli shouted: "Dead!"

The adults went on: "Then did you see it?"

Perhaps from fear of the dark plus hunger and exhaustion, Peren'eli saw a vision. A crimson moon hung high in the pitch-black night sky; it suddenly turned—and was a huge, terrified pupil.

The adults opened the door and held coal-black Peren'eli: "You have already walked the two-world fire within the wall-furnace; now you are reborn here."

Though until the crimson moon fell, the black sun rose, and the black sun declined, the kingdom's orphanage never waited for the one who surpasses to arrive—yet many strange and gifted people walked out of it, many of them becoming the kingdom's great knights. Peren'eli was without shame the foremost of his age—unless one insisted on comparing him with his dearest friend Hleberi.

They should have contended for merit, deciding superiority by the number and size of honors and by the cups of fine wine drunk at victory feasts. Yet for some reason they walked instead the dead end of life-and-death struggle.