--The Horns of Morning.
The Lady Eleriad Deerfriend, whose name means "star-dreamer" (el, 'star,' + eriad 'dreamer') was born in 1491 P. I., in the Age of Song, the daughter of the Lord Valvert and his lady Florania Flowercarpet. She was the four-times-great-granddaughter of Yubro Deerfriend, who had destroyed the secret of creating life when he feared that others might misuse it, and so ended the glory of the Age of Creation. Therefore the Lady grew up under a dark cloud, with no one trusting Yubro's descendants, and more or less everyone in Rowan remembering, resentfully, that the Deerfriends were both the source of their prosperity and the loss of it since.
Eleriad had the genius of her forefather burning in her, though, as well as a will to rule and a taste for politics that he had never had. She was Chosen to the Council very young, and Ascended to Councilmaster very young as well. She ruled Rowan wisely, and sought to bring it back to prominence by encouraging arts and sciences in the School, even opening the gates to other races. By the time she had ruled for nearly fifteen hundred years, Rowan had become a center of poetry, music, and the advancement of the mental and emotional sciences. Eleriad had also won the personal loyalty of such powerful lords and ladies of the high blood as Dorren Goatleap and Brincillay Durillo. (It is sometimes rumored that there was more than just the loyalty of a liege lady and servant between the Lady and the Lord Dorren, but, as they both married others, this seems unlikely). If that had been all she had accomplished, the Lady would still be remembered with wonder in song.
However, at the end of the Age of Song, the Lady came up with a method for linking the minds of land Elwens in order to use their emotional magic to lift ships beyond the planet. Thus the secret of starflight was born, and thus the moons were settled, and the Age of Stars began. For three thousand years afterward, the ships from the moons brought exotic crops and other products to the markets of Rowan, and ambitious youngsters traveled to the city in order to ride the ships to the moons, and further. It was a time of wonders, of contentment, and of great peace. The Lady ruled over it, as originator and as balance point, the one judge everyone trusted.
Alas, it did not endure.
A great Dragonlord, known after as the Yavil, came to Rowan and wiped the knowledge of starflight from both books and minds. (It is feared he did this because the starships were close to finding his people's own world). At almost the same moment, the priests of Suulta, who had grown to hate the devotion paid to Nystze because of the need for emotional magic in lifting the starships, staged the Emotionless Revolution. They forced Eleriad to agree to new Laws in Rowan that forbade the practice of emotional magic and even most open expressions of emotion. The Lady, shocked and grieving, not least because her elder son Dacevem had been the one casualty of the Revolution, agreed.
The Age of Falling, full of chaos and long disasters and wars, began, and lasted two hundred years, until the Age of Newness and the arrival of the humans. Less than a century afterwards, the humans burned land Elwen villages in their demands for more land, more power, and access to Elwen cities, and Rowan declared the War of Acceptance.
Early in the war, the Lady's husband, West Sunfall, was captured and tortured to death by the humans. Perhaps for this reason, Eleriad became the terror of the War, the most successful battle-leader against them and the originator of the most terrible vengeances. Humans would often flee, or cast down their swords, when they saw the Running Stag. Many battles she won, including the Echeo Tor or the Battle of the Anvil, and for a century and a half she was the hope of the continent. Her name was on lips and in song everywhere that Elwens fought humans and hoped for the defeat of the cowardly and cruel round-eyes.
As time wore on, the Lady realized that Rowan could not win the War alone. She turned to her old means of peace, making alliances with other Elwen races. She had just returned from making an alliance with the curalli, usually her people's direst enemies, when she was ambushed by humans in the valley of Esshellen. She was then swiftly slain by a traitor's arrow.
The Lady died as she had lived, protecting her people and guiding her city. The songs that name and praise her are too many to mention, but the most beautiful of the verses from Oriel Goatleap's Lirar Arosodani can be quoted here.
Ebe aaman darie,
Aama arosodan dosanovlun.
Alialon ebe carie,
Alialon Lirarlar i lislarlun.
She was the battle-lady of the covenant, The covenant of the stars with our people. In our noon she was the most high and rightful lady, In the noon of Rowan and our true glory.
