The storyteller is a woman seated by a fireplace. Her hair is long, dark red and streaked through with silver, her face is young – she looks no more than twenty-five – but her eyes, should one care to look closely, hold the wisdom of many more years. The tale of Iliane’s forest and the city of Helai is but one of many that she knows and one that is rarely shared for knowledge of it has passed from the memory of most.
Many years ago, far to the north, there lived a sorceress named Iliane. There are many tales told of her very long life but that is not the purpose of this tale. This is the tale of Iliane’s death and Iliane’s forest.
When the time came for Iliane to die she bid farewell to her husband and daughter and walked to the base of the mountain on which they lived. A sorceress has many gifts and among them is the ability to choose the manner of her death. Iliane’s choice was to give her magic to the barren land that surrounded the mountain; in doing so she transformed her mortal remains into a tree unlike any other in the world at that time. Her magic kept the tree alive until it grew deep enough to reach the water underground and did the same for each seed that fell from the tree and grew up around Iliane’s tree.
At that time there were no other people near the mountain, Iliane’s husband and daughter watched over her forest making sure her children didn’t crowd each other and gradually the trees surrounded the mountain in all directions.
Many years after Iliane’s death civilisation reached the edges of the forest that bore her name to that day. A number of villages were built outside the forest but, after the first few attempts, no villager entered Iliane’s forest until one particular day…
A man named Relar of Helai was a woodcutter by trade and in the winter of one particular year, when the path to the south forest was cut off, he ignored the advice of family and friends including the woman who was his wife and the mother of his two children and set off with his axe into Iliane’s forest.
The main problem, for a woodcutter, was that most of the trees were very old and large so the intrepid Relar was forced to venture deep into the forest to find a dead tree trunk to take his wood from.
He was, he felt, vindicated in his opinion that there was nothing to stop him and the other village woodcutter’s taking their supplies from here when no harm befell him in the collection of his wood.
He had been in the wood but one morning when he finished cutting the wood to fill his sack, took his direction from the sun, and started back towards the village having encountered nothing more dangerous than a startled rabbit.
As he exited the woods he saw a strange girl-child, of about twelve years, herding sheep along the path that led to his village.
“Good morrow to thee, young lass. Be thou on the way to Helai?”
“What a queer way of speaking ye have,” remarked the girl to the strange woodcutter. “Aye, to Helai I be bound and from Helai too for I am from there.”
“I am sure thou art not for I am from there but this very morning. My wife is Elder Mera of Helai and I am Relar of Helai!”
The girl took a step back in apparent shock, for reasons that Relar could not fathom and her face turned white.
“Nay! Ye cannot be, I be Mera of Helai named for my great-grandmother whose husband be disappeared into Iliane’s woods nearly one hundred years ago!”
You see though only a day had passed for Relar outside the woods it had been nearly a century, his children’s children were married with children of their own and all he knew was lost and gone.
Well, naturally Master Relar was as shocked as can be and at first thought a trick was being played on him but the girl led him to the village that was now a medium sized town and he believed her. She took him to the council of Elders, of whom his eldest daughter was one, and his daughter identified him as her disappeared father. Shortly after that the Elders passed a law that forbade entry by any of the town into the forest.
Relar of Helai tried to settle back into the ways of the village but found it all too strange. On the very day that he decided to leave the village and end his life a strange woman came to the door and greeted him by name.
“Who art thou, stranger, that you know my name?” he asked of her, not unkindly. With a smile in response she told him who she was and his face paled.
“Why hast thou come here?”
“To bring you home, Relar of Helai, the only home left to you for this place is your home no longer.”
“It is not,” he agreed “but where is this place you say is my home? My home is gone, lost to time.”
“Iliane’s forest would welcome you, if you wished to go there.”
“It is that cursed place that is responsible for my fate in the first place!” shouted the woodcutter.
“No,” disagreed the woman, unintimidated by his rage. “You knew that you were not to enter and you did so anyway. Now you are offered a chance to begin again, take it or not as you choose… it has always been your choice, Relar of Helai.”
With that the stranger left the house and though he ran to the street directly after her she had disappeared.
Relar’s family returned to find no sign of him but a note addressed to his daughter.
My dearest Amila,
I have come to realise that there is no longer any place for me within Helai. Do not grieve for me or blame yourself. It is simply my time to leave this life and find a new path. Learn from my example and do not disturb the sanctity of the forest.
May you and all our kin be blessed.
Your loving father,
Relar of Helai.
No one knows, except perhaps his mysterious visitor, what became of Relar, he was never again seen in Helai in all the time the town that became a city stood.
Now what of this village that became a town and then a great city?
In time it became the greatest city of that land and was considered to be the centre of all civilisation for several hundred years…until a greedy King, one Arekenan, came to power. He was not satisfied with what he had and vowed that the wildwoods would become his domain for he had lost many slaves and criminals to its shadows.
The very day he declared that the forest would be razed as a great sacrifice upon the next full moon he was visited by a stranger who appeared within his very throne room and said to him.
“Arekenan of Helai, it not for you to decide the fate of Iliane’s forest. If you do not renounce your intention to assault it you must accept the consequences.”
Naturally the king was shocked by the audacity of this nameless and unimportant person but he paid no heed, despite the legend of Relar, which had long since passed from truth to myth. He decided to attack the forest as he planned.
Some days later an impassable wall of thorns was encountered by a trader’s caravan on the road to Helai. They hacked their way through and found the gates of the city, open. They entered the city to find it completely empty. Every room of every house from the poorest to richest. Finally they came to the palace itself and that too was empty of all life.
Brave though these travellers were they were frightened by this and made their way back through the city to the town square, which now had a single occupant.
“Your pardon,” said the boldest. “Can you tell us what passed in this place? Where are the Helaian people? What evil has torn them from their home?”
“Do you know the legends of Iliane’s forest?”
“Of course. It is said that any who enter will be cursed.”
“The King of this place thought to control the forest. What you see here is the cost of that ambition. Go forth and tell all the lands that the city of Helai belongs to the forest and none shall enter here again.”
Terrified though they were offered no violence the trader’s ran back to their horses and wagons, watching in awe as the forest grew before their eyes and covered the city.
Many explorers since then have sought the lost city of Helai, and more specifically its vast treasury, but none have ever found it or, if they have, they have not returned to tell the tale.