You Need to Hear This to Understand
At the end of King of the Forgotten Darkness, Liam and Mia face a god, in a final confrontation. When the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won, you might say, they stand face to face with the titular king, and make a crucial decision.
For those of you who have already read King of the Forgotten Darkness, you may know what comes next. But even if you haven’t read it (I highly recommend that you do), there is a key musical piece that really encapsulates what happens next in the story. I was thinking of this song when writing that scene, and every time I hear it, images of the scene of the massive changes happening in Kaledon afterward accompany it in my mind.
The song is Nikkal by the German Neofolk group Heilung. It’s incredible, and absolutely captures the atmosphere of mystery, dark fantasy, and massive changes that I was trying to capture when writing this crucial scene.
It’s not a long track, but it’s very beautiful—Heilung adapted it from an ancient prayer; in fact, it is the oldest complete song in written history. It is a Hurrian hymn to the goddess Nikkal, a Semitic mother and fertility goddess, wife of the moon god. It asks that the goddess grant fertility to those who have yet to have children, offering sesame oil and bread as gifts to receive forgiveness and the ultimate blessing: a child. Archetypal indeed.
The prayer was found on a cuneiform tablet in the 1950s and scholars have debated the details of its meaning, as it was originally written around 1400 BCE. So, very old. Heilung uses some complex heptatonic and diatonic scales and unusual tuning to achieve a haunting, eternal quality that matches the mood of the scene I’m referring to in the book.
So, listen, enjoy, and if you’ve read King of the Forgotten Darkness, try to guess exactly which scene I’m talking about—leave a comment if you like! And if you haven’t read it, well then, what in the heck are you waiting for? XD
Never stop dreaming!
EG
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