Goddess Moon Statue
Mural of Skell,The Hero-King
Eldinic Militia Man
Ruk Warrior
THE
GODDESS MOON
PART ONE
“JOURNEY”
Six Chapters
Written by Gary K. Nomeland
A Serial Novel Created for Diversion
and
Serious Thought When the Reader is So Inclined
New West Crash Books
Copyright 2008
CHAPTER ONE
“Service to the Glorious Lady is the highest merit”
The Scroll of Emaklee
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I write this to my beloved ones, so that you may know
what truly happened
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Before I ever left my mother’s womb, I was already dedicated to serving Her. My parents were tenant farmers, struggling to raise a family on a plot of dirt close to the Eldin coast. My mother was terrified that a woman who hated her had put a curse on her after a nasty fight in the marketplace. The woman was thought to be dangerous. She was extremely beautiful and didn’t seem to age normally, thus the locals believed she might be consorting with spirits. And she was often seen heading out to Winding Snake Canyon, a known habitat of troublesome demons. Driven by her terror, Mother consecrated me before birth to the Goddess, an act certain to break any curse. I don’t know if this odd woman had any power to harm my mother, but I hold no resentment towards Mother for choosing my path before I ever took a breath. She did what she thought was best for the family. Of that I have no doubt.
As an infant, a tiny copper image of the Moon was hung about my neck with a leather string. I was never allowed to take it off, not even when I bathed. Not even when I went swimming naked with my companions in the cold sweetness of the Ocean, the waves toying with us like bobbing wooden dolls.
The first time I remember visiting our local shrine I was four years of age. The holy site stood atop a low hill, a clay wall encircling a white statue of Her in long flowing robes. Her hair rolled down her back as if sea foam, a jeweled crown gleaming upon the statue’s head. Her face was passive but seemed to radiate a serene maternal concern. Behind Her, on a wall of painted brick, were constellations and comets and falling stars (Her special omens), all dominated by a massive full Moon. Silver white. Encrusted with pearls. And Eldin was a poor, poor land. Such was the power of the Goddess in Eldin.
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Mother was holding my sweaty hand. An ancient skeletal Sister, burning sacred herbs on hissing coals in a brazier and hawking cures for all sorts of diseases, noticed my lunar image and made her way through the ragged mass of worshippers.
She muttered a prayer over me and set her bony fingers upon my unruly hair. Then she sighed. It was a very sad sound. A mournful exhale full of a long life and expressing much heartache and pain. As I think about it now, maybe she was communicating something else to me, something I was to discover later in my life. Acceptance of Fate? The death of dreams?
Eldin was a difficult land to raise a family. I was the oldest of six, four boys and two girls. The coast was rugged, tilting up to the coastal plain, a region of thin soil where most people lived on small farms in mud-walled, thatched-roofed homes. Ours was a long rectangle composed of one room, though we did have a mud floor covered with straw for warmth. There was a tiny wooden shack for tools behind the house and a low storage room, only three feet high, made of stacked stones and a roof of tree limbs also nearby. Father, as most of the other farmers, would fish in the Ocean’s coves and hunt for meat, mostly rabbits or wild goats or the small coastal deer. We had a small “escape hole” in the back wall in case of a robber or an attack by the Ruk.
The plain, thinly covered with scrub trees, worked its way toward the foothills to the West, where more adventuresome farmers lived. They hunted more and their homes were made of wooden logs. Further up into the mountains, the Eldin folk were hunters, loggers and even a few miners. They dug for copper and semi-precious stones that had some value after being polished. We had little to do with them other than commerce. They spoke our language strangely and seemed uncomfortable when the number of people near them was more than a handful.
The mountain peaks were uninhabited, unless you counted demons or ghosts. On the other side was the West, where the mountains supposedly fell sharply down, melting into a never ending plain. There were supposedly no passes through to the West, only the Moon reigning above the snowy peaks.
All of us were fascinated by the Moon. We watched it wax and wane. Observed it sail across the night sky as a boat of light, designating the months and seasons of our lives.
We suffered extreme fear when it was entirely eaten up by the Night. I can still hear my little sisters weeping and moaning in terror as Mother and Father consoled them. I
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didn’t cry much, but I shook like a leaf in the wind, my teeth chattering, afraid to search the sky until the silver disk appeared again.
The Scroll of Creation said that the Glorious Lady did not want to be observed constantly, so she selected Huyal, the Dark Cloud, to slowly cover the Moon in a regular pattern. She might have desired it so, but we found it terrifying when the Sacred Orb was only a sliver in the heavens above.
Daytime was for labor and mundane affairs. The nights were for contemplation of the Great Lady and Her Sacred Truths. We chanted and prayed before we went to our blankets spread over low wooden pallets, building up the resolve to face another day of struggling in the fields.
A small observatory run by the Society of Scholars stood on a hill near our farm. It was composed of a tower with a room at the very top with an opening out upon the sky. Lodd, the rotund Scholar stationed there, had only a small piece of glass called a “magnifier” and mirrors to study the Moon. He was one of my favorite adults to pester. We spent many nights studying the Sacred Orb, with Lodd endlessly pontificating (especially when he had been smoking gee weed) and me acting as a sponge for his numerous theories and wild ruminations.
When I was about eight, I asked Lodd if the Sun had a goddess or god.
Lodd snorted crudely, insulted by my stupidity. “The Sun is a sphere populated by demons, ghosts and evil spirits. Can you stare directly at it? No! Because it would blind you, it would give you horrible headaches and even drive you insane. What type of deity would live in such a hostile world? Aye? The Sun is needed in the cosmos, but it has no deity. There is only one deity, the Goddess Moon, and we know that she came down to our pitiful world in the guise of Inistra, taught us how to live and understand life, created the True Religion, and defeated many monsters intent upon destroying our race! Haven’t you been listening to the Sacred Stories?”
He puffed on his clay pipe. The gee weed made his eyelids droop. I could tell by his darting eyes that he was seeing things. “I’ve actually made out a few of the palaces located up there. I’ve been mapping the surface for years, preparing to release the penultimate document concerning the Sacred World. I will be returned to the elite of the Society once again, dining in the magnificent halls of the Three Islands, lauded far and wide as a mind of the first magnitude.”
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Lodd gazed about him at the cluttered room, dusty charts and manuscripts covering everything, madly searching for his leather pouch of gee weed. “If you’re fortunate, you’ll become a Scholar, not some lowly Scribe, and instruct the high and mighty Sisters and the Great Mothers. They’re often so lax in their studies. Lazy. Indolent. Pampered. All they crave are beautiful robes and to stand out at the gaudy rituals… women…”
“I would hope some day to write something grand as a Scholar, Master Lodd.”
“When you get to the Blessed Island, don’t be afraid to have your own opinions and to stand up to all of the official nonsense. You’re a smart lad.”
His words shocked me, showing a degree of fondness I had never felt from him before. I almost felt like hugging him.
Lodd finally located his pouch of gee weed beneath a stack of drawings.
“By the Emperor’s ugly teeth, Skell, how come you were too stupid to find my pouch?”
So much for tender affection. Yet he was still my mentor and loaned me every text I ever read out of school when I was a child. Whenever I returned them, he’d always give the works a thorough examination to make certain I hadn’t rumpled them even more than he had done. Frankly, they were all in shabby condition.
Lodd was also the first person to show me in the Scroll of Creation an obscure passage where the Goddess Moon has a conversation with a spirit referred to as “The Master of Daylight Hours”. However, he would not discuss it with me. He even marked out the reference with his quill and ink.
Three years later, old Lodd fell out of the tower and broke his neck on the rocks below. Folks claimed that his pipe, filled with gee weed, was found next to his lifeless body. His works never reached the Blessed Isle. A group of Imperial soldiers came by and cleaned out the tower, burning all of his personal works, and turned the observatory into a guard post. I was the only native at his funeral, chanting the prayers for his soul’s ascent to the Sacred Orb along with a cranky younger Sister who came over from the nearby Sanctuary to perform the ritual as a meritorious act.
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5
In our hamlet, the education was handled by a Scribe, not a Scholar. Gammen was young and always seemed very nervous and agitated. He kept trying to grow a beard even though he could only produce patches of reddish fuzz on his cheeks. He always smelled of sweat and his breath was awful. None of us ever wanted him to get too close to us in class.
Gammen loved the Scroll of Creation. He would crouch over the manuscript and read it as if he were an actor performing in a grand theater. “All was darkness/ A shooting star traveled through the arc of the black sky/ The Goddess, as the Mother of All, gazed about in loneliness/ She took some of the darkness in Her hands and rubbed it so quickly that it heated up and glowed white/ She tossed it out and it became the Moon/ She stood upon Her new domain/ Out of the shining soil She formed the Leeads and Desdrads to serve Her/ They set about building Her palace and gardens.”
“How big was the palace?” questioned an eager, pious girl with no front teeth.
“Bigger than the Continent.”
Some ooh’s and ah’s gave him a superior smile. Gammen loved to feel that he was better than common rural folk. But, he came from a village up North much like ours and prayed constantly to be sent to a fine city to teach.
“Back to our readings… Then Our Gracious Lady beheld the darkness below Her and desired to fill it up/ She cut strands of Her hair and dropped them/ These became the dry land and mountains/ She sliced a vein with a dagger and released Her precious blood, drop by drop, and these became the oceans and rivers/ Beholding that She had a place to stand, She stepped down and molded the world even more/ To create plants, She blew upon the waters and made ice and carved them/ When she stuck them into the earth, they blossomed and grew/ She wanted animals to play among the forests, so She molded them out of the clay of the Sacred River Ish/ As soon as the mud dried, they became alive/ She sculpted the fishes and the sea creatures from rocks at the bottom of the Great Lake/ The Divine One gazed all about Her and the sheer beauty of the created world made Her cry/ Her tears dropped onto the dust and instantly transformed themselves into men and women and children/ Thus the human race was born.”
I blurted out, “How was the Sun created?”
Gammen raised his eyebrow at me then glanced further down the scroll. “As our ancestors hunted and fished and farmed to stay alive, they grumbled to the Divine Lady
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about always working in the darkness of the Night/ This displeased Her, but She cared for these new creatures, thus She captured the reflection of the Moon in the ocean and polished it brightly with Her robes/ She hurled it into the sky, and Day was created/ However, She did not want the Sun to become puffed up about himself/ She commanded the Sun to stay hidden behind a huge blue mountain in the sky for at least half of the time/ And ordained that the Moon would also be present in the light of Day.”
He stared out through a window at the Sun’s position.” We’ve studied enough. Time to return to help your families with their work. Go, go! Without work our lives have very little meaning.”
Everybody trudged out, most not wanting to face their chores.
“Skell.”
I turned around and faced Gammen, making a deep bow from the waist to impress him.
“When you are taken into the service of the Gracious Lady, don’t meddle with questions concerning the Sun.”
“Why not, Scribe Gammen?”
“It’s a very controversial subject on the Three Islands, better left alone. The Sisters and Great Mothers will lead you in the ways you should follow. That eccentric Lodd, the Scholar in the tower, did he ever put any strange ideas in your head?”
“Never, Scribe Gammen. Master Lodd always praised the traditional teachings.”
“Run along then, and think of other things, Skell.”
I bowed again and ran out of the thatch roofed schoolhouse, looking for some friends to catch up with on the way back to our farm.
Of course, when I grew older, I didn’t heed his advice. How much simpler my life would have been had I listened.
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I was thirteen. It was my time to join the society of men. Roughly twenty of us budding men were brought together during the Halas Festival, celebrating the first half of the calendar year. Our fathers, or closest adult male relative, built small huts of branches on the beach and ordered all of the women to stay away. The women cheerfully performed the ceremonial Grumbling Ritual (my mother was particularly good at it) and then took off on their own, ready to enjoy several days without any men. Some of the women got drunk or smoked gee weed, while others prayed, chanted and gossiped at the shrine to the Blessed Lady. I heard later that Mother fell in with the first group, putting away cups of wine, singing melancholy songs of love, complaining about her life of drudgery and spewing forth memories of a young lad she once loved who had drowned in the Ocean.
Father and I went into the hut we shared with three other pairs. My father was a very quiet man, hunched over with years of back breaking labor, yet he was very kind to man
and beast. Mother was the disciplinarian in our family. She ruled the roost until Father would take her out into the fields and impress his opinion upon her. She never went against his wishes.
The initiation gave me my fondest memories of him. I saw him as a strong man for the first time. Every man deferred to his guidance during the rituals, and he had a kind word for everyone.
On the first day, we fasted all day long in our various huts. Father lit a small fire, grabbed a small drum and began a quiet rhythm as he spoke in our ancestral tongue, not the Common Language.
“Our fathers came to Eldin in the Time of Mists, when monsters and heroes and demigods still roamed this region. The first Hero-King was Skell. He built the Stone Fort, which stands at the top of Freill Mount. He defeated the demon Hikk, the protector of the Ruk Folk, whom he drove down to the lands to the South. He won many battles against the Ruk chieftans, built a ring of forts to protect our people, and set up many stone altars to the ancient demigods. This was before the True Religion came to us centuries later, thus we must not harshly judge the greatest Hero-King in this matter. When he died fighting the giant White Bear, he was buried in the Field of Flowers below the Stone Fort, where all of our Hero-Kings were buried.”
Father went through a swift chronicle of the Hero-Kings until Eldin was conquered by the Dread Emperor. “Let us now be silent and contemplate our great heritage, and hope
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if the Glorious Lady is willing, we may again have our own Hero-Kings to rule us from the Stone Fort.”
The hut was totally silent. I couldn’t believe my ears. Father had just expressed, on the face of it, treason against the reigning Emperor and not one man had blinked at the words. I had the sense that the world was not at all what it seemed to be. Father had never said one political comment to me in my entire life. Now he had just stated that the men of Eldin cared nothing for the Imperial rule, and this was no simple complaining of the poor. They wanted our own rulers. Another boy gulped with terror. We really were joining the society of men.
Father glanced outside the hut. The Sun was going to sleep in a bed of pinks and oranges. “Outside. The initiates must cast off their childhood.”
Within minutes, all of us were standing at the shore, the Sun half-covered by the mountain peaks.
“Strip off your clothes!” Father intoned sternly.
All of the initiates stripped down and piled our clothes near the cliff wall.
“Bathe in the great Ocean, but do not swim! No playing! No cavorting around!”
We slid through the breaking waves until we reached waist-high water and began bathing. A pair of jaunty dolphins swam nearby. Everybody smiled. A good omen.
Back on the beach, the men herded us back into our huts with switches, drawing stingers of blood on our salty skins. Once inside, Father stoked up the fire with dried junilap leaves. The smoke was overwhelming, causing all of us to cough harshly. I sat there waiting for more talk from him, but nothing was said.
I suddenly jerked up, realizing I had passed out by staring at the dead fire and the smoke barely evident in the hut. I cleared my throat, noticing that the other initiates had only awakened also.
Father stared at me. “What did you dream?”
“Nothing.”
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“What did you dream?”
A picture leaped into my forehead. I was in the ancient army of Skell the King, fighting a wild band of Ruk warriors in a marshy area. My arms were exhausted from swinging my war axe, yet they kept coming at me. A Ruk jumped me from behind, taking me down into the fetid water. I thrashed about, certain I would drown. Suddenly, I was pulled up by the scruff of the neck by the Hero-King himself, a muscular man with a great beard, his shield protecting me from the flint arrowheads of the Ruk archers.
He leaned in close to me, his wide face a mass of scars, and he chuckled, “Remember to hold your breath.” That was all. I told Father.
“And you have a question for me.”
Without thinking, I blurted out something which had nothing to do with the dream. “How do you and Mother feel about me leaving you for holy service?’
Father, taken aback, tilted his head down, eyes upon his lap. He tried to keep his voice firm, but I could hear the emotion behind it. “We’re proud of your service to the Great Lady, of course… of course… We are fortunate to have your brothers and sisters to console us and to help us run the farm in your absence.” He glanced up at me, a slight moistness in his eyes. “Of course, we regret the terrible incident with that mad woman that led to the promise, for we have always wanted all of our children to live close by, to give us the chance to see you raise your own families, to be grandparents… We hope and pray you will be assigned by the Great Mothers back here in Eldin if such a chance should arise.”
I barely touched Father’s knee. “I want to return.”
He smiled sadly and turned to an initiate next to him and the discussion of their dreams began. I wondered what the morning would bring.
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It brought about us sitting in a group on the beach, still without a bite of food, listening to Father and others drone on about the ancient code of law given to us by Skell the Hero-King, laws such as, “If a man accidentally stabs another man with his dagger after drinking wine or beer, he shall be brought forth before the village elders and the witnesses shall attest to the matter. The offender shall give the injured man
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one-fourth of his belongings. If the offender owns nothing, he will be stabbed in his weak arm by an elder and not allowed to partake of strong drink for 60 days.”
All of the initiates began nodding off out of sheer boredom and hunger.
When the recitation of the code was finished, the men started painting our bodies with red, green and blue paint made from berries. We were covered with drawings of animals and fish and conical helmets and weapons. After the painting was finished, we initiates each gobbled down a single piece of thin bread, often eaten by ancestral soldiers during long marches. We sat in front of fires learning long chants and poems extolling the virtues of our people, again in the Eldinic tongue. We crawled into the huts for sleep at a very late hour.
The morning brought profound change. The men dragged us out into the Ocean where they playfully dunked us in the waves, washing off every vestige of the paint. Then we feasted upon a grand breakfast, including as much wine and beer as our hearts desired.
Needless to say, there was a lot of vomiting afterwards. As we ate, the men wove kilts of thick grasses for us – the common attire of our ancestors in hot weather – and put them on us, giving us plenty of hugs and friendly slaps on the backs. They talked to us in a more respectful tone and used words to describe us as true men.
Father instructed us to wear these kilts for five days before we could return to our usual clothing. Every adult hugged each “new man” and uttered a blessing, “Live in the honor of the ancestors.” Father even kissed me on my lips, highly unusual for him.
The grand conclusion was a game of ablal between the newly confirmed men and the elders. In ablal, each team kicks a leather ball high into the air and members of either side try to catch it in the midst of a rough melee. If you catch a ball kicked by a teammate, you get a point. If your opponents catch it, they get to kick. To win the game a team must score 19 points. The game is exceedingly rough and our elders slaughtered us in three games, but we did score a few points to uphold our pride.
Father kicked the ball higher than anyone else and he also jumped very well in the crowd fighting for the ball. When the games were finished, the other men fashioned him a crown of leaves and named him the “master of the festival”. After singing a song, “Skell and the White Bear”, we went off toward our homes.
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As we walked home, Father said that the ancient ones played ablal with the head of a Ruk stuffed with straw. He claimed that we originally learned the game from the Ruk
who played the game with the severed heads of our ancestors. I was glad we had the leather ball.
When we arrived back home, Mother called me her “second husband” (a traditional phrase for the new adult) and handed me a new blanket to sleep on. She set about doing my chores for that day despite being queasy with too much drink. She warned me not to harm the kilt for it was to be put aside as a family memento. I did detect a look of pride in her face.
I did not get to wear the kilt the full five days because a Ruk war band entered our area the next evening.
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I was in the doorway watching Father hoeing out in the fields, rejoicing in my newfound manhood and trying not to think of my future already given to the Great Lady. Two exhausted men riding boney nags rode up a trail to reach him. He offered them water as they wildly waived their arms, obviously upset. Father came striding rapidly to the house through the crops.
Father charged in, heading straight for his battered chest against the wall.
Mother, who was cleaning out a few clay pots, asked, “Why’re you so agitated, Dyess? If it’s about the cloth I bought –“
Father barked out, “Don’t be so foolish, woman! A band of Ruk attacked some of the outer farms at dusk, burning and pillaging. Talk is they’ve killed around twenty folk and have taken another thirty as slaves. Those damn, worthless Imperial guards!
Father pulled out a dull, short, bronze sword and a sharpening stone. He immediately began working over the blade.
“Skell! Out in the shed is a spear behind the rakes and tools. Bring it here! And take off your ceremonial kilt!”
When I returned with the spear, Mother already had the other children gathered around and held a big shawl full of food.
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Father placed his hand on Mother’s shoulder.” If they break through the militia, go to the cave near Old Woman Rock. They have never found it.”
Mother hugged him warmly, holding on for a few moments longer as tears streamed down her cheeks. She then gently ruffled up my hair and touched my cheek. “Do whatever Father says. He’s a wise man in a scrape.”
Father and I hugged my siblings as they rushed out behind Mother.
Father and I were in the meeting field in a half hour. There were already more than a hundred men arguing loudly about what to do. The Lord of the Tower (the post created after Lodd died) was an idiotic drunk from the Three Islands, sent down to Eldin to keep obvious disgrace from his family. Everyone was ignoring him which made him act even more like a petulant child. He had cavalrymen and archers with him.
Finally he screamed. The men quieted down somewhat. “I have already drawn up a plan for the defense of my district! It is my duty and my right. These stinking barbarians are trying to gain revenge for last year’s raid to gain tribute for the Dread Emperor. They will make for the shrine to profane it and not the Sister’s Sanctuary because the Sanctuary is defended by a high wall and over fifty guards. Stay in bands and roam about as spies. If you find them, send a messenger and get me at the shrine!”
A few men applauded politely. Most were silent. In a huff, the Lord rode off with dirty glances from most of the men. An older man with one gouged out eye climbed up on the stones piled in the field’s center. “Now that the fop is gone who forces us to pay taxes to an unseen ruler, what are we really going to do with these Ruk bastards?”
More heated debate followed. Without my knowing, Father had inched his way through the crowd and toward the stones. The One-Eyed Man pulled him up. The throng slowly calmed down.
“What are the Ruk really looking for?” Father shouted.
“Revenge against us!” bellowed several gruff voices.
“Our Lord Protector knows little of the centuries our blood feud has lasted, and it may never end! The Ruk are here to steal and burn and kill until they’ve had enough and then they’ll run back home. The shrine is too close to the Ocean.”
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“What do we do?” asked the One-Eyed Man.
“They’ll attack tomorrow morning when the Goddess’ powers are lessened by the Daytime, probably picking off more farms out towards the hills. Their war band will move down further tonight, probably at the Skor Ravine, to surprise anybody still left behind.”
“And? And?” Voices cried from the milling crowd.
“We take the entire militia to the ravine now, blend in with the rocks and shrubbery while it’s Night. When they come sneaking down, we will be ready. The Ruk hate surprises.”
Father’s plan was approved overwhelmingly by a voice vote and the quick march began in earnest.
The trek up to the ravine was difficult. Father was at the head of the ragged line, consulting with other militia leaders. I found myself half-running alongside the One-
Eyed Man, who was chewing gee weed and spitting every so often, but he still had his wits about him.
“Why do the men listen to my father?”
“Dyess is a damn good militia man. Over the past twenty years or so, he’s shown his bravery against the Ruk and even a pirate band or two. He cares nothing for glory, only the people.”
My heart swelled with pride. Father had never mentioned any brave exploits.
“Of course, it helps that your father is in the line of descent of Skell the Great, may his memory be honored forever.”
“What?” I was flabbergasted.
“Oh, there’s plenty of folks who can claim that too, but Dyess has a damn good blood line. If we weren’t ruled by the Empire, your father would likely be a high constable, commanding an outpost with soldiers under his command.”
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I blinked at him with disbelief. Again I had that sense that life was not what it seemed to be. All of my life, we were nothing but poor tenant farmers struggling to feed ourselves. Now I discovered that we were a family wronged by conquest and the affairs of the world. A very unkind world. We had lineage back to Skell the Great King, a figure of myth and reverence. I felt unsteady. The very earth was topsy-turvy.
“He doesn’t whine about the harsh lives we lead. He trusts life to the Goddess and goes about his business with dignity.”
I raced towards Father still in the lead. I bumped into him accidentally. He could see a new light in my eyes.
“Are you feeling well?”
“Extremely well, Father.”
“Make certain you stay right next to me during the fighting. I’ll keep an eye on you and you keep an eye on your old geezer,” he laughed as he tweaked my nose. I sensed that he was actually enjoying the prospect of physical danger. I dropped a few feet back and let the militia leaders continue their discussion.
We deployed on both sides of the ravine, stacking boulders and brush to hide our positions. The sunset faded out. Father stood up, waved his sword and everyone went completely silent and into hiding.
We sat for hours. We never spoke. Father kept an eye out for any suspicious movement while I gathered more rocks and brush for our defense. He sharpened his blade with a slow, constant rhythm. Each new minute made him a hair more anxious. He feared his strategy was wrong, but he tried to hide it from me, giving me an occasional grim smile.
It was a quarter Moon. The powers of the Great Lady would not be all-powerful.
There was a slight thrashing of bushes near us. It was the One-Eyed Man. He whispered, “The others say you are wrong. They want to retreat to the Eckriss farm, where the two streams meet, and talk things over.”
Father shook his head no and held up one finger.
“One more hour? What if you’re wrong?”
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Father kept up his solitary index finger.
“One more hour!” The One-Eyed Man slipped away.
A cloud rolled in front of the Sacred Orb. Father glanced up, beads of sweat covering his forehead. He mumbled a prayer.
“Ancestral guides… Hero-Kings… friends of hearth and field… send our enemies into our hands and I will honor you with drink offerings at the altar on Freill Mount.”
The cloud drifted on. The pale moonlight revealed a row of Ruk raiders lazily picking their way down the center of the ravine. Father sighed and grabbed a handful of earth.
They moved in a sloppy fashion, fully confident of being alone. Some even stopped to relieve themselves on bushes and rocks, giggling lightly and obviously making crude jokes. The Ruk are a small, dark folk – black hair and eyes, leather brown skin. Skell the Great’s victories drove them to the bottom of the Continent, a harsh region bedeviled by cruel weather. They build their villages along the rocky coast in tiny harbors where the men launch out in long canoes to hunt seals and to fish. They also kill bears and other wild beasts on land. Their women gather berries and nuts from trees to bring back to their huts made of animal skins. The raiders wore clothing of stitched skins or fur.
Father whistled out the call of the night hawk.
Someone answered from the other side of the ravine.
The Ruk plodded on, carrying their spears and short bows and war sticks, foot long wooden shafts imbedded with sharpened bone, lethal enough to rip an enemy’s skin to ribbons.
Someone else tried to warble out another night hawk call, but he did it so poorly that the Ruk recognized a human voice. As if with one mind, they turned and ran frantically back up the ravine.
Father stood and shouted, “Out of the bag! Out of the bag!” He grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me down into the ravine, scraping me up terribly.
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The first Ruk to reach the top ran into a hail of arrows from our archers lying in wait. Ten of the raiders were hit, turning them back down, screaming profanities and begging for assistance from the animal deities they worshipped.
Ever since Father dragged me out from hiding, nothing seemed real to me. It was as if I were jumping out of a tree except that I could never quite land. Everybody was moving in an odd motion. Even sounds were garbled.
Men were hacking men, rolling around in the dirt, cursing and screaming in each other’s
faces. Howls of pain almost like animals. Father fought with a calm ferocity I could not believe as I protected his back. A Ruk swung a war stick at him. He deftly stepped back, cracked it apart with his sword, and sliced the man’s arm at the elbow. Another raider charged at him with a spear tipped with a sharpened antler. He grabbed the shaft
under his armpit, pulled the surprised Ruk in a circle until he tripped. Father jumped on him and plunged the blade into his thigh.
I could smell the fear mingled with the blood and sweat and fur. One of the boys from the initiation ran past me, his shoulder and arm hanging limp at his side, crushed by a club, headed for safety. Another newly-designated man was lying on the ground, hugging his knees, whimpering like a pup.
We were winning the fight, but the Ruk spirit was far from broken. They pulled back into a circle located around a fierce warrior, a Ruk man tall for their race who wore a headband of bear’s teeth over his long black mane. A ragged scar divided his bent nose. His will alone kept them from crumbling.
Father rushed at Scar Face from behind, but he turned slightly and Father glanced off his hip, unable to cut him or knock him down. Scar Face turned to find Father, who was crawling off into a row of bushes to gather his wind. Scar Face raised his battle stick and went after Father.
Without even thinking, I lunged at him, a whelp trying to bring down a mountain lion. He swirled about, trying to shake me loose, but I grabbed onto his thick hair. I was losing my hold. I reached for his neck. Instead my fingers became entangled in his circlet of teeth. It broke and I rolled off into the blackness, bouncing over a boulder and splashing into a shallow stream.
Scar Face was one me in a flash, his hands choking me, my head beneath the water. I felt a purple darkness overcome me. I consigned my soul to the Great Lady.
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Suddenly, I was yanked up, coughing and spitting water out of my lungs. The darkness subsided. I lay on the dirt staring up at Father. Scar Face, Father’s sword sticking out of his back, was next to me, shaking with the tremors of oncoming death.
Father leaned in close to my face.”Remember to hold your breath.”
The dream. But Father spoke instead of the Hero-King. I tingled all over, sensing the power of the unseen world swirling all around us and within us. Reality seemed a dark forest beast that scared the wits out of me.
A rock landed on my leg causing me to jerk with pain. The moment was lost.
Father roared hoarsely,”We must follow the birds back to the nest!” In other words, a few Ruk must be allowed to escape in order for us to find their camp and rescue our kin.
At the ravine’s crown, the archers purposefully shot wide of their targets allowing a half dozen raiders to scramble away over the hill.
Thirty men stayed behind to bind the captured Ruk. One Eye claimed the duty of determining who of the enemy was truly dead. He began jabbing the still bodies with a bloody pike, giving the death blow to a few Ruk who were still barely alive.
Father led the rest of us, now down to around sixty, following the Ruk escapees at a safe distance.
++++++
We didn’t reach the encampment until sunrise, a fact that caused some shudders throughout our militia, shudders that the Great Lady was not at Her full powers.
“Trust the ways of the Goddess Moon always ,”Father chided them.” Anyway, we outnumber them five to one, and I can still see Her in the sky.” He pointed at the faded Moon.
The men’s faces lightened up with that consolation.
The Ruk camp was in a small glen filled with trees. When we arrived, they were just beginning to move out, the half dozen survivors of the ravine joining ten warriors
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guarding the prisoners. There were roughly forty prisoners – children, women, men – tied to the trees, both feet and hands, with stout rope.
Father bellowed something out to them in the Ruk tongue, sending them scurrying around like rodents. A few went over to the prisoners and held obsidian blades to the throats of the young girls.
“They are cowards,” I muttered to Father. “Beasts with no souls.”
“They are frightened and want to talk terms. Go down with me.”
Father and I slowly stepped down into the glen. A Ruk battle chief took a few steps out to meet us in a neutral spot.
“We have you surrounded, “Father said in our language.” You have no escape.”
The battle chief shrugged and responded crudely,”If… we, us… die, many caught… dead.”
“We don’t want you. We want our folk back. You leave them behind, you leave unharmed.”
“What is the rikka, the… the…”
“I know what rikka means. My son, Skell, will be the rikka.”
The Ruk thought it over. I hadn’t a clue to what I meant in the scheme of this haggling. Finally he let out a slight diabolical smile, nodded, and Father turned to me. “Go with him. Stay among the captives and do not move. When the Ruk are gone, we’ll come and get you all.”
My knees nearly collapsed. My own father had made me into some sort of bond to secure their safety. I felt abandoned.
“Can’t you pick an old man?”
“He knows I value you. I might use an old man to trick them and kill them anyway after the prisoners are free.”
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The battle chief held out his hand. Father put my hand in his and he led me into the area where the captives were bound. Several of the Ruk warriors sneered at me, barely able to contain their desire for revenge, but the chief pushed them away.
The battle chief personally cut every rope with his battle stick. He gestured for everyone to stand. He held up two fingers to Father. Father nodded yes.
Two Ruk warriors disappeared into the forest. The chief pushed five prisoners toward our militia.
This continued until only the battle chief remained with me and a woman.
He smiled again at Father. “You… true… keep balance… with…” Then he jabbered in Ruk for a few minutes.
Father bowed. “There must always be a balance among the sea and sky and land and the animal chieftans in the stars.”
Then he was gone. The woman rushed towards Father. I took my time.
++++++
First came the days of mourning. Father had commanded over 150 men at the ravine. Seventeen died and another forty were wounded, some grievously. Four or five of them died later in the year. At the burying hill, the women sewed burial hoods for the men, an Eldinic tradition having nothing to do with the True Religion. Each hood was in the likeness of the deceased and placed over his head as he was lowered feet first into the “posthole grave”. All of our people are buried, as it were, “standing up”, prepared to meet the next life. Trinkets and mementos are tossed in with the corpse, again for traditional folk beliefs. The Mother and Sisters stood back as we did such rituals, respecting our old ways.
The women at the Sanctuary were so thankful for our triumph that the entire complement of Sisters and even the aged Mother conducted the funerals. They mixed together the holy herbs and spread them over the corpses, as well as daubing the heads with sacred oil made only on the Blessed Isle, just before we covered them with earth. The Mother spoke the Words of Departure.
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“Let go of your corporeal form,
And follow the glow of the silver orb,
The home of the Goddess Moon,
Who summons you to the great feast
In the palaces of the Lunar Paradise,
Where the virtuous souls are welcomed
And immortality is bestowed upon all
Who eat the food and drink the wine
Served at Her illustrious table.”
The Sacred Guards chanted a special hymn in their honor and wept tears of sadness at the courage of the local militia, wishing they had been able to fight with them.
The Lord of the Tower stayed away from the funerals, such was his disgrace and anger at being robbed of his first bloody glory. He claimed that he and his troops were searching the hill country for more bandits.
A feast day of victory followed soon after. The Lord of the Tower did attend this event, basically to get his hands on our prisoners. The Ruk war band had numbered around sixty and sixteen fled at the encampment. Twenty-five had been slain and another twenty were captives, mostly wounded. Instead of following our traditions - having the Ruk men work as laborers for five years and then set free to return home - the Lord felt the need to make himself look powerful.
During the festivities, his men hung all of the captives and shot arrows at the bodies hanging from the trees, laughing and drinking themselves into senselessness. We all knew that the Ruk would hear of this and exact their revenge, hopefully against the Imperial idiot and not us. We had kin captured and living among the Ruk, thus to ultimately release the prisoners meant we might see our neighbors again too. A gloom was cast over the thanksgiving due to this evil man.
Father received many toasts and accolades. Mother got herself appropriately drunk and was most happy to see the gifts of food, clothing and furniture bestowed upon our family. She sunk into a silent moodiness when Father distributed over half of the gifts to the widows and orphans. However, Father knew this was the proper action to take and was pleased to do so. This only increased his honor and prestige among the community.
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In the burst of charity and goodwill that swept over the feast, even the drunken Lord of the Tower tried to regain some stature. He gifted Father with a silver chain, increasing Father’s wealth a hundredfold. Mother’s moodiness ended. She hid the chain in her undergarments. Without lifting a finger, the family could stay alive on that silver for ten years.
And with Father choosing me as the rikka, I was also hailed as a gallant young man. The Tower Master gave me three silver coins as I kneeled before him. He faked his goodwill then passed out in the grass. But he was outdone by the Mother of the Sanctuary. Since I was promised to the Great Lady, I was led before her, a chubby woman in blue robes sitting in a sedan chair carried by servants.
I prostrated myself fully on the ground before her.
She had a music in her voice even though she spoke with all seriousness.”Our Glorious One has a need of young men such as you in Her service. For whatever you will become, you already are a warrior in the tradition of great holy warriors.”
She dropped a circlet of prayer beads into my hands, each bead an exquisitely polished pearl. I was astounded with such a noble gift and my peasant mind went giddy. Except for two large landowners, I was probably the wealthiest man in the hamlet’s precinct because of the circlet. I immediately hid it beneath my tattered shirt. “A friend tonight and a thief tomorrow”, as the saying went.
“Stay true to the wishes of Our Lady.” I heard the creak of the wooden sedan chair as the servants picked it up and headed back to the Sanctuary.
++++++
Father and I were distant but polite the following days. In my mind I knew what he had done was right, but in my heart I could not believe he would use me as a pawn when others were available.
Father came to me in the fields when I was struggling with a particularly nasty clump of weeds.
“Drop your work and fill a pack for six days. I must fulfill the promise I made on the night of the ambush.” He pivoted and walked away.
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Father prayed a long time out in the fields all night. Owls circled him a few times, he said, a certain sign of The Lady’s blessing.
We left the next morning. Very early. My treasures were buried in a vegetable patch. Father’s in a row of corn. Only Mother knew where they were located. Father kissed her on the cheek and we walked down the path, each with a walking stick. Father had his sword. I carried the spear.
Despite our limited conversation, Father was in an excellent mood. He pointed out everything to me as if we were in school. He told me about every bird he spotted. He discussed every type of tree and its various purposes. He noted all sorts of animals, wild and domesticated, and spoke in great depth about them. He would pull up herbs and roots and detail the food and healing qualities they possessed.
Once it rained and we found cover beneath the cover of thick trees. We piled leaves over us to help keep in the warmth. Father told a few stories about my grandfather, a good but sickly man who died from a chill. Father then took over as the man of the household at the age of fourteen because Grandmother swore never to marry another man.
At night, we always stayed in a hostel run by Sisters. Safe lodging. Hot food. Just for the price of a little hard work, usually chopping wood. Father told me for the first time that he had a sister who had wanted to join the Holy Community, but she was killed in a Ruk raid before she was ten years old. I was gaining even more respect for this not-so-distant stranger who was my father.
On the fourth day we reached Freill Mount as it rose above the small harbor town of Ailgen-on-the-Coast and the Ocean below. The mount was dotted with dozens of piles of stones covered with thick, mossy grass and wildflowers. These were the graves of the Hero-Kings. Father knelt at every grave and kissed the stones, muttering prayers I had never heard before in Old Eldinish.
All that was left of the fort was the outer wall, and it was covered in long grasses, vines, bushes and small trees sprouting from the rocks and broken mortar. The wall only stood about ten or twelve feet high where it was clearly better preserved. There was one entrance, a narrow gateway about eight feet wide. The lintel beam that had once been the top had been missing for many centuries. As we searched about the site, we found some copper and flint arrowheads buried in the grasses. This had been the seat of Skell’s power, but now it was a home for loneliness and desolation.
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“We can rebuild it again, make it even greater,” Father stated firmly. “There will be justice for our descendents.”
We came to the resting place of Skell the Great himself. It was a circle of cracked bricks five feet high with a roof of one large slab of narrow stone. Before it was an altar of crumbling brick standing like a leaning pedestal, a brazier at the top. Father gathered dry grasses to fill the brazier and took out a clay cup and a gourd filled with wine. Others had left gifts of wine jugs, spear heads and clay dolls in the likeness of Skell.
He lit the grasses with his striking stone and poured small amounts of wine into the fire from the cup, just enough to allow the fire to burn.
“I give you thanks, Great Skell, Father of our people, for the victory you gave to us at the ravine. I do this in no way lessening the glory deserved to the Glorious Lady Moon, but as a son of Eldin. I know that you are not among the truly blessed on the Sacred Orb, yet you still reside in the Garden of Virtue reserved for the meritorious during the Time of Ignorance, and that your powers were allowed to assist us. Honor to you, Father Skell, and to the ancestors who rest with you in the Garden.”
Father poured all of the wine on the flames, reducing them to sweet smoke. He waved his hands through the smoke and gestured for me to do the same. He sat down by the altar, gazing at all of the beauty that lay below us. I sat down also, but not too close.
“Skell, if I would have lost you I would’ve wanted to die, for you are my favorite child and the soul I feel the closest to. But I have no regrets concerning the rikka agreement. It was my great love for you that made the accord possible. Sometimes one must risk what is most dear in order for your enemy to trust you.” Tears illumined his eyes.
Slowly, I reached out for his hand and held it. “I know you were right, Father. I’m just a silly boy who thinks he knows what is best, and now I see that I know close to nothing.”
“Son, I would not lose you for the world.”
My eyes wandered towards the Ocean, giving Father time to gather his composure. The Sun had burnt off most of the morning fog and a number of fishing boats were out. A small, tubby merchant ship, one that likely only traveled a few hundred miles up and down the coast, was being unloaded on the dock. Our unimportant place in the world seemed safe. Sea gulls floated through the stiff breeze.
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A ship rounded the great rock bounding one side of the harbor.
Another ship came right after it, its sail billowed out by the wind.
And a third. A much larger vessel. A much finer craft from where I could see.
All of the sails were blue and bore the insignia of a full white moon in the center.
I pointed to them. “Father. That is almost a whole fleet for Ailgen.”
Father gazed up and swallowed thickly. “Emissaries from the Sacred Court of the Blessed Island. There will be a Great Mother aboard the large ship.”
GODDESS MOON
PART ONE
“JOURNEY”
Six Chapters
Written by Gary K. Nomeland
A Serial Novel Created for Diversion
and
Serious Thought When the Reader is So Inclined
New West Crash Books
Copyright 2008
CHAPTER ONE
“Service to the Glorious Lady is the highest merit”
The Scroll of Emaklee
++++++
I write this to my beloved ones, so that you may know
what truly happened
++++++
Before I ever left my mother’s womb, I was already dedicated to serving Her. My parents were tenant farmers, struggling to raise a family on a plot of dirt close to the Eldin coast. My mother was terrified that a woman who hated her had put a curse on her after a nasty fight in the marketplace. The woman was thought to be dangerous. She was extremely beautiful and didn’t seem to age normally, thus the locals believed she might be consorting with spirits. And she was often seen heading out to Winding Snake Canyon, a known habitat of troublesome demons. Driven by her terror, Mother consecrated me before birth to the Goddess, an act certain to break any curse. I don’t know if this odd woman had any power to harm my mother, but I hold no resentment towards Mother for choosing my path before I ever took a breath. She did what she thought was best for the family. Of that I have no doubt.
As an infant, a tiny copper image of the Moon was hung about my neck with a leather string. I was never allowed to take it off, not even when I bathed. Not even when I went swimming naked with my companions in the cold sweetness of the Ocean, the waves toying with us like bobbing wooden dolls.
The first time I remember visiting our local shrine I was four years of age. The holy site stood atop a low hill, a clay wall encircling a white statue of Her in long flowing robes. Her hair rolled down her back as if sea foam, a jeweled crown gleaming upon the statue’s head. Her face was passive but seemed to radiate a serene maternal concern. Behind Her, on a wall of painted brick, were constellations and comets and falling stars (Her special omens), all dominated by a massive full Moon. Silver white. Encrusted with pearls. And Eldin was a poor, poor land. Such was the power of the Goddess in Eldin.
2
Mother was holding my sweaty hand. An ancient skeletal Sister, burning sacred herbs on hissing coals in a brazier and hawking cures for all sorts of diseases, noticed my lunar image and made her way through the ragged mass of worshippers.
She muttered a prayer over me and set her bony fingers upon my unruly hair. Then she sighed. It was a very sad sound. A mournful exhale full of a long life and expressing much heartache and pain. As I think about it now, maybe she was communicating something else to me, something I was to discover later in my life. Acceptance of Fate? The death of dreams?
Eldin was a difficult land to raise a family. I was the oldest of six, four boys and two girls. The coast was rugged, tilting up to the coastal plain, a region of thin soil where most people lived on small farms in mud-walled, thatched-roofed homes. Ours was a long rectangle composed of one room, though we did have a mud floor covered with straw for warmth. There was a tiny wooden shack for tools behind the house and a low storage room, only three feet high, made of stacked stones and a roof of tree limbs also nearby. Father, as most of the other farmers, would fish in the Ocean’s coves and hunt for meat, mostly rabbits or wild goats or the small coastal deer. We had a small “escape hole” in the back wall in case of a robber or an attack by the Ruk.
The plain, thinly covered with scrub trees, worked its way toward the foothills to the West, where more adventuresome farmers lived. They hunted more and their homes were made of wooden logs. Further up into the mountains, the Eldin folk were hunters, loggers and even a few miners. They dug for copper and semi-precious stones that had some value after being polished. We had little to do with them other than commerce. They spoke our language strangely and seemed uncomfortable when the number of people near them was more than a handful.
The mountain peaks were uninhabited, unless you counted demons or ghosts. On the other side was the West, where the mountains supposedly fell sharply down, melting into a never ending plain. There were supposedly no passes through to the West, only the Moon reigning above the snowy peaks.
All of us were fascinated by the Moon. We watched it wax and wane. Observed it sail across the night sky as a boat of light, designating the months and seasons of our lives.
We suffered extreme fear when it was entirely eaten up by the Night. I can still hear my little sisters weeping and moaning in terror as Mother and Father consoled them. I
3
didn’t cry much, but I shook like a leaf in the wind, my teeth chattering, afraid to search the sky until the silver disk appeared again.
The Scroll of Creation said that the Glorious Lady did not want to be observed constantly, so she selected Huyal, the Dark Cloud, to slowly cover the Moon in a regular pattern. She might have desired it so, but we found it terrifying when the Sacred Orb was only a sliver in the heavens above.
Daytime was for labor and mundane affairs. The nights were for contemplation of the Great Lady and Her Sacred Truths. We chanted and prayed before we went to our blankets spread over low wooden pallets, building up the resolve to face another day of struggling in the fields.
A small observatory run by the Society of Scholars stood on a hill near our farm. It was composed of a tower with a room at the very top with an opening out upon the sky. Lodd, the rotund Scholar stationed there, had only a small piece of glass called a “magnifier” and mirrors to study the Moon. He was one of my favorite adults to pester. We spent many nights studying the Sacred Orb, with Lodd endlessly pontificating (especially when he had been smoking gee weed) and me acting as a sponge for his numerous theories and wild ruminations.
When I was about eight, I asked Lodd if the Sun had a goddess or god.
Lodd snorted crudely, insulted by my stupidity. “The Sun is a sphere populated by demons, ghosts and evil spirits. Can you stare directly at it? No! Because it would blind you, it would give you horrible headaches and even drive you insane. What type of deity would live in such a hostile world? Aye? The Sun is needed in the cosmos, but it has no deity. There is only one deity, the Goddess Moon, and we know that she came down to our pitiful world in the guise of Inistra, taught us how to live and understand life, created the True Religion, and defeated many monsters intent upon destroying our race! Haven’t you been listening to the Sacred Stories?”
He puffed on his clay pipe. The gee weed made his eyelids droop. I could tell by his darting eyes that he was seeing things. “I’ve actually made out a few of the palaces located up there. I’ve been mapping the surface for years, preparing to release the penultimate document concerning the Sacred World. I will be returned to the elite of the Society once again, dining in the magnificent halls of the Three Islands, lauded far and wide as a mind of the first magnitude.”
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Lodd gazed about him at the cluttered room, dusty charts and manuscripts covering everything, madly searching for his leather pouch of gee weed. “If you’re fortunate, you’ll become a Scholar, not some lowly Scribe, and instruct the high and mighty Sisters and the Great Mothers. They’re often so lax in their studies. Lazy. Indolent. Pampered. All they crave are beautiful robes and to stand out at the gaudy rituals… women…”
“I would hope some day to write something grand as a Scholar, Master Lodd.”
“When you get to the Blessed Island, don’t be afraid to have your own opinions and to stand up to all of the official nonsense. You’re a smart lad.”
His words shocked me, showing a degree of fondness I had never felt from him before. I almost felt like hugging him.
Lodd finally located his pouch of gee weed beneath a stack of drawings.
“By the Emperor’s ugly teeth, Skell, how come you were too stupid to find my pouch?”
So much for tender affection. Yet he was still my mentor and loaned me every text I ever read out of school when I was a child. Whenever I returned them, he’d always give the works a thorough examination to make certain I hadn’t rumpled them even more than he had done. Frankly, they were all in shabby condition.
Lodd was also the first person to show me in the Scroll of Creation an obscure passage where the Goddess Moon has a conversation with a spirit referred to as “The Master of Daylight Hours”. However, he would not discuss it with me. He even marked out the reference with his quill and ink.
Three years later, old Lodd fell out of the tower and broke his neck on the rocks below. Folks claimed that his pipe, filled with gee weed, was found next to his lifeless body. His works never reached the Blessed Isle. A group of Imperial soldiers came by and cleaned out the tower, burning all of his personal works, and turned the observatory into a guard post. I was the only native at his funeral, chanting the prayers for his soul’s ascent to the Sacred Orb along with a cranky younger Sister who came over from the nearby Sanctuary to perform the ritual as a meritorious act.
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5
In our hamlet, the education was handled by a Scribe, not a Scholar. Gammen was young and always seemed very nervous and agitated. He kept trying to grow a beard even though he could only produce patches of reddish fuzz on his cheeks. He always smelled of sweat and his breath was awful. None of us ever wanted him to get too close to us in class.
Gammen loved the Scroll of Creation. He would crouch over the manuscript and read it as if he were an actor performing in a grand theater. “All was darkness/ A shooting star traveled through the arc of the black sky/ The Goddess, as the Mother of All, gazed about in loneliness/ She took some of the darkness in Her hands and rubbed it so quickly that it heated up and glowed white/ She tossed it out and it became the Moon/ She stood upon Her new domain/ Out of the shining soil She formed the Leeads and Desdrads to serve Her/ They set about building Her palace and gardens.”
“How big was the palace?” questioned an eager, pious girl with no front teeth.
“Bigger than the Continent.”
Some ooh’s and ah’s gave him a superior smile. Gammen loved to feel that he was better than common rural folk. But, he came from a village up North much like ours and prayed constantly to be sent to a fine city to teach.
“Back to our readings… Then Our Gracious Lady beheld the darkness below Her and desired to fill it up/ She cut strands of Her hair and dropped them/ These became the dry land and mountains/ She sliced a vein with a dagger and released Her precious blood, drop by drop, and these became the oceans and rivers/ Beholding that She had a place to stand, She stepped down and molded the world even more/ To create plants, She blew upon the waters and made ice and carved them/ When she stuck them into the earth, they blossomed and grew/ She wanted animals to play among the forests, so She molded them out of the clay of the Sacred River Ish/ As soon as the mud dried, they became alive/ She sculpted the fishes and the sea creatures from rocks at the bottom of the Great Lake/ The Divine One gazed all about Her and the sheer beauty of the created world made Her cry/ Her tears dropped onto the dust and instantly transformed themselves into men and women and children/ Thus the human race was born.”
I blurted out, “How was the Sun created?”
Gammen raised his eyebrow at me then glanced further down the scroll. “As our ancestors hunted and fished and farmed to stay alive, they grumbled to the Divine Lady
6
about always working in the darkness of the Night/ This displeased Her, but She cared for these new creatures, thus She captured the reflection of the Moon in the ocean and polished it brightly with Her robes/ She hurled it into the sky, and Day was created/ However, She did not want the Sun to become puffed up about himself/ She commanded the Sun to stay hidden behind a huge blue mountain in the sky for at least half of the time/ And ordained that the Moon would also be present in the light of Day.”
He stared out through a window at the Sun’s position.” We’ve studied enough. Time to return to help your families with their work. Go, go! Without work our lives have very little meaning.”
Everybody trudged out, most not wanting to face their chores.
“Skell.”
I turned around and faced Gammen, making a deep bow from the waist to impress him.
“When you are taken into the service of the Gracious Lady, don’t meddle with questions concerning the Sun.”
“Why not, Scribe Gammen?”
“It’s a very controversial subject on the Three Islands, better left alone. The Sisters and Great Mothers will lead you in the ways you should follow. That eccentric Lodd, the Scholar in the tower, did he ever put any strange ideas in your head?”
“Never, Scribe Gammen. Master Lodd always praised the traditional teachings.”
“Run along then, and think of other things, Skell.”
I bowed again and ran out of the thatch roofed schoolhouse, looking for some friends to catch up with on the way back to our farm.
Of course, when I grew older, I didn’t heed his advice. How much simpler my life would have been had I listened.
++++++
7
I was thirteen. It was my time to join the society of men. Roughly twenty of us budding men were brought together during the Halas Festival, celebrating the first half of the calendar year. Our fathers, or closest adult male relative, built small huts of branches on the beach and ordered all of the women to stay away. The women cheerfully performed the ceremonial Grumbling Ritual (my mother was particularly good at it) and then took off on their own, ready to enjoy several days without any men. Some of the women got drunk or smoked gee weed, while others prayed, chanted and gossiped at the shrine to the Blessed Lady. I heard later that Mother fell in with the first group, putting away cups of wine, singing melancholy songs of love, complaining about her life of drudgery and spewing forth memories of a young lad she once loved who had drowned in the Ocean.
Father and I went into the hut we shared with three other pairs. My father was a very quiet man, hunched over with years of back breaking labor, yet he was very kind to man
and beast. Mother was the disciplinarian in our family. She ruled the roost until Father would take her out into the fields and impress his opinion upon her. She never went against his wishes.
The initiation gave me my fondest memories of him. I saw him as a strong man for the first time. Every man deferred to his guidance during the rituals, and he had a kind word for everyone.
On the first day, we fasted all day long in our various huts. Father lit a small fire, grabbed a small drum and began a quiet rhythm as he spoke in our ancestral tongue, not the Common Language.
“Our fathers came to Eldin in the Time of Mists, when monsters and heroes and demigods still roamed this region. The first Hero-King was Skell. He built the Stone Fort, which stands at the top of Freill Mount. He defeated the demon Hikk, the protector of the Ruk Folk, whom he drove down to the lands to the South. He won many battles against the Ruk chieftans, built a ring of forts to protect our people, and set up many stone altars to the ancient demigods. This was before the True Religion came to us centuries later, thus we must not harshly judge the greatest Hero-King in this matter. When he died fighting the giant White Bear, he was buried in the Field of Flowers below the Stone Fort, where all of our Hero-Kings were buried.”
Father went through a swift chronicle of the Hero-Kings until Eldin was conquered by the Dread Emperor. “Let us now be silent and contemplate our great heritage, and hope
8
if the Glorious Lady is willing, we may again have our own Hero-Kings to rule us from the Stone Fort.”
The hut was totally silent. I couldn’t believe my ears. Father had just expressed, on the face of it, treason against the reigning Emperor and not one man had blinked at the words. I had the sense that the world was not at all what it seemed to be. Father had never said one political comment to me in my entire life. Now he had just stated that the men of Eldin cared nothing for the Imperial rule, and this was no simple complaining of the poor. They wanted our own rulers. Another boy gulped with terror. We really were joining the society of men.
Father glanced outside the hut. The Sun was going to sleep in a bed of pinks and oranges. “Outside. The initiates must cast off their childhood.”
Within minutes, all of us were standing at the shore, the Sun half-covered by the mountain peaks.
“Strip off your clothes!” Father intoned sternly.
All of the initiates stripped down and piled our clothes near the cliff wall.
“Bathe in the great Ocean, but do not swim! No playing! No cavorting around!”
We slid through the breaking waves until we reached waist-high water and began bathing. A pair of jaunty dolphins swam nearby. Everybody smiled. A good omen.
Back on the beach, the men herded us back into our huts with switches, drawing stingers of blood on our salty skins. Once inside, Father stoked up the fire with dried junilap leaves. The smoke was overwhelming, causing all of us to cough harshly. I sat there waiting for more talk from him, but nothing was said.
I suddenly jerked up, realizing I had passed out by staring at the dead fire and the smoke barely evident in the hut. I cleared my throat, noticing that the other initiates had only awakened also.
Father stared at me. “What did you dream?”
“Nothing.”
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“What did you dream?”
A picture leaped into my forehead. I was in the ancient army of Skell the King, fighting a wild band of Ruk warriors in a marshy area. My arms were exhausted from swinging my war axe, yet they kept coming at me. A Ruk jumped me from behind, taking me down into the fetid water. I thrashed about, certain I would drown. Suddenly, I was pulled up by the scruff of the neck by the Hero-King himself, a muscular man with a great beard, his shield protecting me from the flint arrowheads of the Ruk archers.
He leaned in close to me, his wide face a mass of scars, and he chuckled, “Remember to hold your breath.” That was all. I told Father.
“And you have a question for me.”
Without thinking, I blurted out something which had nothing to do with the dream. “How do you and Mother feel about me leaving you for holy service?’
Father, taken aback, tilted his head down, eyes upon his lap. He tried to keep his voice firm, but I could hear the emotion behind it. “We’re proud of your service to the Great Lady, of course… of course… We are fortunate to have your brothers and sisters to console us and to help us run the farm in your absence.” He glanced up at me, a slight moistness in his eyes. “Of course, we regret the terrible incident with that mad woman that led to the promise, for we have always wanted all of our children to live close by, to give us the chance to see you raise your own families, to be grandparents… We hope and pray you will be assigned by the Great Mothers back here in Eldin if such a chance should arise.”
I barely touched Father’s knee. “I want to return.”
He smiled sadly and turned to an initiate next to him and the discussion of their dreams began. I wondered what the morning would bring.
++++++
It brought about us sitting in a group on the beach, still without a bite of food, listening to Father and others drone on about the ancient code of law given to us by Skell the Hero-King, laws such as, “If a man accidentally stabs another man with his dagger after drinking wine or beer, he shall be brought forth before the village elders and the witnesses shall attest to the matter. The offender shall give the injured man
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one-fourth of his belongings. If the offender owns nothing, he will be stabbed in his weak arm by an elder and not allowed to partake of strong drink for 60 days.”
All of the initiates began nodding off out of sheer boredom and hunger.
When the recitation of the code was finished, the men started painting our bodies with red, green and blue paint made from berries. We were covered with drawings of animals and fish and conical helmets and weapons. After the painting was finished, we initiates each gobbled down a single piece of thin bread, often eaten by ancestral soldiers during long marches. We sat in front of fires learning long chants and poems extolling the virtues of our people, again in the Eldinic tongue. We crawled into the huts for sleep at a very late hour.
The morning brought profound change. The men dragged us out into the Ocean where they playfully dunked us in the waves, washing off every vestige of the paint. Then we feasted upon a grand breakfast, including as much wine and beer as our hearts desired.
Needless to say, there was a lot of vomiting afterwards. As we ate, the men wove kilts of thick grasses for us – the common attire of our ancestors in hot weather – and put them on us, giving us plenty of hugs and friendly slaps on the backs. They talked to us in a more respectful tone and used words to describe us as true men.
Father instructed us to wear these kilts for five days before we could return to our usual clothing. Every adult hugged each “new man” and uttered a blessing, “Live in the honor of the ancestors.” Father even kissed me on my lips, highly unusual for him.
The grand conclusion was a game of ablal between the newly confirmed men and the elders. In ablal, each team kicks a leather ball high into the air and members of either side try to catch it in the midst of a rough melee. If you catch a ball kicked by a teammate, you get a point. If your opponents catch it, they get to kick. To win the game a team must score 19 points. The game is exceedingly rough and our elders slaughtered us in three games, but we did score a few points to uphold our pride.
Father kicked the ball higher than anyone else and he also jumped very well in the crowd fighting for the ball. When the games were finished, the other men fashioned him a crown of leaves and named him the “master of the festival”. After singing a song, “Skell and the White Bear”, we went off toward our homes.
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As we walked home, Father said that the ancient ones played ablal with the head of a Ruk stuffed with straw. He claimed that we originally learned the game from the Ruk
who played the game with the severed heads of our ancestors. I was glad we had the leather ball.
When we arrived back home, Mother called me her “second husband” (a traditional phrase for the new adult) and handed me a new blanket to sleep on. She set about doing my chores for that day despite being queasy with too much drink. She warned me not to harm the kilt for it was to be put aside as a family memento. I did detect a look of pride in her face.
I did not get to wear the kilt the full five days because a Ruk war band entered our area the next evening.
++++++
I was in the doorway watching Father hoeing out in the fields, rejoicing in my newfound manhood and trying not to think of my future already given to the Great Lady. Two exhausted men riding boney nags rode up a trail to reach him. He offered them water as they wildly waived their arms, obviously upset. Father came striding rapidly to the house through the crops.
Father charged in, heading straight for his battered chest against the wall.
Mother, who was cleaning out a few clay pots, asked, “Why’re you so agitated, Dyess? If it’s about the cloth I bought –“
Father barked out, “Don’t be so foolish, woman! A band of Ruk attacked some of the outer farms at dusk, burning and pillaging. Talk is they’ve killed around twenty folk and have taken another thirty as slaves. Those damn, worthless Imperial guards!
Father pulled out a dull, short, bronze sword and a sharpening stone. He immediately began working over the blade.
“Skell! Out in the shed is a spear behind the rakes and tools. Bring it here! And take off your ceremonial kilt!”
When I returned with the spear, Mother already had the other children gathered around and held a big shawl full of food.
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Father placed his hand on Mother’s shoulder.” If they break through the militia, go to the cave near Old Woman Rock. They have never found it.”
Mother hugged him warmly, holding on for a few moments longer as tears streamed down her cheeks. She then gently ruffled up my hair and touched my cheek. “Do whatever Father says. He’s a wise man in a scrape.”
Father and I hugged my siblings as they rushed out behind Mother.
Father and I were in the meeting field in a half hour. There were already more than a hundred men arguing loudly about what to do. The Lord of the Tower (the post created after Lodd died) was an idiotic drunk from the Three Islands, sent down to Eldin to keep obvious disgrace from his family. Everyone was ignoring him which made him act even more like a petulant child. He had cavalrymen and archers with him.
Finally he screamed. The men quieted down somewhat. “I have already drawn up a plan for the defense of my district! It is my duty and my right. These stinking barbarians are trying to gain revenge for last year’s raid to gain tribute for the Dread Emperor. They will make for the shrine to profane it and not the Sister’s Sanctuary because the Sanctuary is defended by a high wall and over fifty guards. Stay in bands and roam about as spies. If you find them, send a messenger and get me at the shrine!”
A few men applauded politely. Most were silent. In a huff, the Lord rode off with dirty glances from most of the men. An older man with one gouged out eye climbed up on the stones piled in the field’s center. “Now that the fop is gone who forces us to pay taxes to an unseen ruler, what are we really going to do with these Ruk bastards?”
More heated debate followed. Without my knowing, Father had inched his way through the crowd and toward the stones. The One-Eyed Man pulled him up. The throng slowly calmed down.
“What are the Ruk really looking for?” Father shouted.
“Revenge against us!” bellowed several gruff voices.
“Our Lord Protector knows little of the centuries our blood feud has lasted, and it may never end! The Ruk are here to steal and burn and kill until they’ve had enough and then they’ll run back home. The shrine is too close to the Ocean.”
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“What do we do?” asked the One-Eyed Man.
“They’ll attack tomorrow morning when the Goddess’ powers are lessened by the Daytime, probably picking off more farms out towards the hills. Their war band will move down further tonight, probably at the Skor Ravine, to surprise anybody still left behind.”
“And? And?” Voices cried from the milling crowd.
“We take the entire militia to the ravine now, blend in with the rocks and shrubbery while it’s Night. When they come sneaking down, we will be ready. The Ruk hate surprises.”
Father’s plan was approved overwhelmingly by a voice vote and the quick march began in earnest.
The trek up to the ravine was difficult. Father was at the head of the ragged line, consulting with other militia leaders. I found myself half-running alongside the One-
Eyed Man, who was chewing gee weed and spitting every so often, but he still had his wits about him.
“Why do the men listen to my father?”
“Dyess is a damn good militia man. Over the past twenty years or so, he’s shown his bravery against the Ruk and even a pirate band or two. He cares nothing for glory, only the people.”
My heart swelled with pride. Father had never mentioned any brave exploits.
“Of course, it helps that your father is in the line of descent of Skell the Great, may his memory be honored forever.”
“What?” I was flabbergasted.
“Oh, there’s plenty of folks who can claim that too, but Dyess has a damn good blood line. If we weren’t ruled by the Empire, your father would likely be a high constable, commanding an outpost with soldiers under his command.”
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I blinked at him with disbelief. Again I had that sense that life was not what it seemed to be. All of my life, we were nothing but poor tenant farmers struggling to feed ourselves. Now I discovered that we were a family wronged by conquest and the affairs of the world. A very unkind world. We had lineage back to Skell the Great King, a figure of myth and reverence. I felt unsteady. The very earth was topsy-turvy.
“He doesn’t whine about the harsh lives we lead. He trusts life to the Goddess and goes about his business with dignity.”
I raced towards Father still in the lead. I bumped into him accidentally. He could see a new light in my eyes.
“Are you feeling well?”
“Extremely well, Father.”
“Make certain you stay right next to me during the fighting. I’ll keep an eye on you and you keep an eye on your old geezer,” he laughed as he tweaked my nose. I sensed that he was actually enjoying the prospect of physical danger. I dropped a few feet back and let the militia leaders continue their discussion.
We deployed on both sides of the ravine, stacking boulders and brush to hide our positions. The sunset faded out. Father stood up, waved his sword and everyone went completely silent and into hiding.
We sat for hours. We never spoke. Father kept an eye out for any suspicious movement while I gathered more rocks and brush for our defense. He sharpened his blade with a slow, constant rhythm. Each new minute made him a hair more anxious. He feared his strategy was wrong, but he tried to hide it from me, giving me an occasional grim smile.
It was a quarter Moon. The powers of the Great Lady would not be all-powerful.
There was a slight thrashing of bushes near us. It was the One-Eyed Man. He whispered, “The others say you are wrong. They want to retreat to the Eckriss farm, where the two streams meet, and talk things over.”
Father shook his head no and held up one finger.
“One more hour? What if you’re wrong?”
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Father kept up his solitary index finger.
“One more hour!” The One-Eyed Man slipped away.
A cloud rolled in front of the Sacred Orb. Father glanced up, beads of sweat covering his forehead. He mumbled a prayer.
“Ancestral guides… Hero-Kings… friends of hearth and field… send our enemies into our hands and I will honor you with drink offerings at the altar on Freill Mount.”
The cloud drifted on. The pale moonlight revealed a row of Ruk raiders lazily picking their way down the center of the ravine. Father sighed and grabbed a handful of earth.
They moved in a sloppy fashion, fully confident of being alone. Some even stopped to relieve themselves on bushes and rocks, giggling lightly and obviously making crude jokes. The Ruk are a small, dark folk – black hair and eyes, leather brown skin. Skell the Great’s victories drove them to the bottom of the Continent, a harsh region bedeviled by cruel weather. They build their villages along the rocky coast in tiny harbors where the men launch out in long canoes to hunt seals and to fish. They also kill bears and other wild beasts on land. Their women gather berries and nuts from trees to bring back to their huts made of animal skins. The raiders wore clothing of stitched skins or fur.
Father whistled out the call of the night hawk.
Someone answered from the other side of the ravine.
The Ruk plodded on, carrying their spears and short bows and war sticks, foot long wooden shafts imbedded with sharpened bone, lethal enough to rip an enemy’s skin to ribbons.
Someone else tried to warble out another night hawk call, but he did it so poorly that the Ruk recognized a human voice. As if with one mind, they turned and ran frantically back up the ravine.
Father stood and shouted, “Out of the bag! Out of the bag!” He grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me down into the ravine, scraping me up terribly.
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The first Ruk to reach the top ran into a hail of arrows from our archers lying in wait. Ten of the raiders were hit, turning them back down, screaming profanities and begging for assistance from the animal deities they worshipped.
Ever since Father dragged me out from hiding, nothing seemed real to me. It was as if I were jumping out of a tree except that I could never quite land. Everybody was moving in an odd motion. Even sounds were garbled.
Men were hacking men, rolling around in the dirt, cursing and screaming in each other’s
faces. Howls of pain almost like animals. Father fought with a calm ferocity I could not believe as I protected his back. A Ruk swung a war stick at him. He deftly stepped back, cracked it apart with his sword, and sliced the man’s arm at the elbow. Another raider charged at him with a spear tipped with a sharpened antler. He grabbed the shaft
under his armpit, pulled the surprised Ruk in a circle until he tripped. Father jumped on him and plunged the blade into his thigh.
I could smell the fear mingled with the blood and sweat and fur. One of the boys from the initiation ran past me, his shoulder and arm hanging limp at his side, crushed by a club, headed for safety. Another newly-designated man was lying on the ground, hugging his knees, whimpering like a pup.
We were winning the fight, but the Ruk spirit was far from broken. They pulled back into a circle located around a fierce warrior, a Ruk man tall for their race who wore a headband of bear’s teeth over his long black mane. A ragged scar divided his bent nose. His will alone kept them from crumbling.
Father rushed at Scar Face from behind, but he turned slightly and Father glanced off his hip, unable to cut him or knock him down. Scar Face turned to find Father, who was crawling off into a row of bushes to gather his wind. Scar Face raised his battle stick and went after Father.
Without even thinking, I lunged at him, a whelp trying to bring down a mountain lion. He swirled about, trying to shake me loose, but I grabbed onto his thick hair. I was losing my hold. I reached for his neck. Instead my fingers became entangled in his circlet of teeth. It broke and I rolled off into the blackness, bouncing over a boulder and splashing into a shallow stream.
Scar Face was one me in a flash, his hands choking me, my head beneath the water. I felt a purple darkness overcome me. I consigned my soul to the Great Lady.
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Suddenly, I was yanked up, coughing and spitting water out of my lungs. The darkness subsided. I lay on the dirt staring up at Father. Scar Face, Father’s sword sticking out of his back, was next to me, shaking with the tremors of oncoming death.
Father leaned in close to my face.”Remember to hold your breath.”
The dream. But Father spoke instead of the Hero-King. I tingled all over, sensing the power of the unseen world swirling all around us and within us. Reality seemed a dark forest beast that scared the wits out of me.
A rock landed on my leg causing me to jerk with pain. The moment was lost.
Father roared hoarsely,”We must follow the birds back to the nest!” In other words, a few Ruk must be allowed to escape in order for us to find their camp and rescue our kin.
At the ravine’s crown, the archers purposefully shot wide of their targets allowing a half dozen raiders to scramble away over the hill.
Thirty men stayed behind to bind the captured Ruk. One Eye claimed the duty of determining who of the enemy was truly dead. He began jabbing the still bodies with a bloody pike, giving the death blow to a few Ruk who were still barely alive.
Father led the rest of us, now down to around sixty, following the Ruk escapees at a safe distance.
++++++
We didn’t reach the encampment until sunrise, a fact that caused some shudders throughout our militia, shudders that the Great Lady was not at Her full powers.
“Trust the ways of the Goddess Moon always ,”Father chided them.” Anyway, we outnumber them five to one, and I can still see Her in the sky.” He pointed at the faded Moon.
The men’s faces lightened up with that consolation.
The Ruk camp was in a small glen filled with trees. When we arrived, they were just beginning to move out, the half dozen survivors of the ravine joining ten warriors
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guarding the prisoners. There were roughly forty prisoners – children, women, men – tied to the trees, both feet and hands, with stout rope.
Father bellowed something out to them in the Ruk tongue, sending them scurrying around like rodents. A few went over to the prisoners and held obsidian blades to the throats of the young girls.
“They are cowards,” I muttered to Father. “Beasts with no souls.”
“They are frightened and want to talk terms. Go down with me.”
Father and I slowly stepped down into the glen. A Ruk battle chief took a few steps out to meet us in a neutral spot.
“We have you surrounded, “Father said in our language.” You have no escape.”
The battle chief shrugged and responded crudely,”If… we, us… die, many caught… dead.”
“We don’t want you. We want our folk back. You leave them behind, you leave unharmed.”
“What is the rikka, the… the…”
“I know what rikka means. My son, Skell, will be the rikka.”
The Ruk thought it over. I hadn’t a clue to what I meant in the scheme of this haggling. Finally he let out a slight diabolical smile, nodded, and Father turned to me. “Go with him. Stay among the captives and do not move. When the Ruk are gone, we’ll come and get you all.”
My knees nearly collapsed. My own father had made me into some sort of bond to secure their safety. I felt abandoned.
“Can’t you pick an old man?”
“He knows I value you. I might use an old man to trick them and kill them anyway after the prisoners are free.”
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The battle chief held out his hand. Father put my hand in his and he led me into the area where the captives were bound. Several of the Ruk warriors sneered at me, barely able to contain their desire for revenge, but the chief pushed them away.
The battle chief personally cut every rope with his battle stick. He gestured for everyone to stand. He held up two fingers to Father. Father nodded yes.
Two Ruk warriors disappeared into the forest. The chief pushed five prisoners toward our militia.
This continued until only the battle chief remained with me and a woman.
He smiled again at Father. “You… true… keep balance… with…” Then he jabbered in Ruk for a few minutes.
Father bowed. “There must always be a balance among the sea and sky and land and the animal chieftans in the stars.”
Then he was gone. The woman rushed towards Father. I took my time.
++++++
First came the days of mourning. Father had commanded over 150 men at the ravine. Seventeen died and another forty were wounded, some grievously. Four or five of them died later in the year. At the burying hill, the women sewed burial hoods for the men, an Eldinic tradition having nothing to do with the True Religion. Each hood was in the likeness of the deceased and placed over his head as he was lowered feet first into the “posthole grave”. All of our people are buried, as it were, “standing up”, prepared to meet the next life. Trinkets and mementos are tossed in with the corpse, again for traditional folk beliefs. The Mother and Sisters stood back as we did such rituals, respecting our old ways.
The women at the Sanctuary were so thankful for our triumph that the entire complement of Sisters and even the aged Mother conducted the funerals. They mixed together the holy herbs and spread them over the corpses, as well as daubing the heads with sacred oil made only on the Blessed Isle, just before we covered them with earth. The Mother spoke the Words of Departure.
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“Let go of your corporeal form,
And follow the glow of the silver orb,
The home of the Goddess Moon,
Who summons you to the great feast
In the palaces of the Lunar Paradise,
Where the virtuous souls are welcomed
And immortality is bestowed upon all
Who eat the food and drink the wine
Served at Her illustrious table.”
The Sacred Guards chanted a special hymn in their honor and wept tears of sadness at the courage of the local militia, wishing they had been able to fight with them.
The Lord of the Tower stayed away from the funerals, such was his disgrace and anger at being robbed of his first bloody glory. He claimed that he and his troops were searching the hill country for more bandits.
A feast day of victory followed soon after. The Lord of the Tower did attend this event, basically to get his hands on our prisoners. The Ruk war band had numbered around sixty and sixteen fled at the encampment. Twenty-five had been slain and another twenty were captives, mostly wounded. Instead of following our traditions - having the Ruk men work as laborers for five years and then set free to return home - the Lord felt the need to make himself look powerful.
During the festivities, his men hung all of the captives and shot arrows at the bodies hanging from the trees, laughing and drinking themselves into senselessness. We all knew that the Ruk would hear of this and exact their revenge, hopefully against the Imperial idiot and not us. We had kin captured and living among the Ruk, thus to ultimately release the prisoners meant we might see our neighbors again too. A gloom was cast over the thanksgiving due to this evil man.
Father received many toasts and accolades. Mother got herself appropriately drunk and was most happy to see the gifts of food, clothing and furniture bestowed upon our family. She sunk into a silent moodiness when Father distributed over half of the gifts to the widows and orphans. However, Father knew this was the proper action to take and was pleased to do so. This only increased his honor and prestige among the community.
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In the burst of charity and goodwill that swept over the feast, even the drunken Lord of the Tower tried to regain some stature. He gifted Father with a silver chain, increasing Father’s wealth a hundredfold. Mother’s moodiness ended. She hid the chain in her undergarments. Without lifting a finger, the family could stay alive on that silver for ten years.
And with Father choosing me as the rikka, I was also hailed as a gallant young man. The Tower Master gave me three silver coins as I kneeled before him. He faked his goodwill then passed out in the grass. But he was outdone by the Mother of the Sanctuary. Since I was promised to the Great Lady, I was led before her, a chubby woman in blue robes sitting in a sedan chair carried by servants.
I prostrated myself fully on the ground before her.
She had a music in her voice even though she spoke with all seriousness.”Our Glorious One has a need of young men such as you in Her service. For whatever you will become, you already are a warrior in the tradition of great holy warriors.”
She dropped a circlet of prayer beads into my hands, each bead an exquisitely polished pearl. I was astounded with such a noble gift and my peasant mind went giddy. Except for two large landowners, I was probably the wealthiest man in the hamlet’s precinct because of the circlet. I immediately hid it beneath my tattered shirt. “A friend tonight and a thief tomorrow”, as the saying went.
“Stay true to the wishes of Our Lady.” I heard the creak of the wooden sedan chair as the servants picked it up and headed back to the Sanctuary.
++++++
Father and I were distant but polite the following days. In my mind I knew what he had done was right, but in my heart I could not believe he would use me as a pawn when others were available.
Father came to me in the fields when I was struggling with a particularly nasty clump of weeds.
“Drop your work and fill a pack for six days. I must fulfill the promise I made on the night of the ambush.” He pivoted and walked away.
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Father prayed a long time out in the fields all night. Owls circled him a few times, he said, a certain sign of The Lady’s blessing.
We left the next morning. Very early. My treasures were buried in a vegetable patch. Father’s in a row of corn. Only Mother knew where they were located. Father kissed her on the cheek and we walked down the path, each with a walking stick. Father had his sword. I carried the spear.
Despite our limited conversation, Father was in an excellent mood. He pointed out everything to me as if we were in school. He told me about every bird he spotted. He discussed every type of tree and its various purposes. He noted all sorts of animals, wild and domesticated, and spoke in great depth about them. He would pull up herbs and roots and detail the food and healing qualities they possessed.
Once it rained and we found cover beneath the cover of thick trees. We piled leaves over us to help keep in the warmth. Father told a few stories about my grandfather, a good but sickly man who died from a chill. Father then took over as the man of the household at the age of fourteen because Grandmother swore never to marry another man.
At night, we always stayed in a hostel run by Sisters. Safe lodging. Hot food. Just for the price of a little hard work, usually chopping wood. Father told me for the first time that he had a sister who had wanted to join the Holy Community, but she was killed in a Ruk raid before she was ten years old. I was gaining even more respect for this not-so-distant stranger who was my father.
On the fourth day we reached Freill Mount as it rose above the small harbor town of Ailgen-on-the-Coast and the Ocean below. The mount was dotted with dozens of piles of stones covered with thick, mossy grass and wildflowers. These were the graves of the Hero-Kings. Father knelt at every grave and kissed the stones, muttering prayers I had never heard before in Old Eldinish.
All that was left of the fort was the outer wall, and it was covered in long grasses, vines, bushes and small trees sprouting from the rocks and broken mortar. The wall only stood about ten or twelve feet high where it was clearly better preserved. There was one entrance, a narrow gateway about eight feet wide. The lintel beam that had once been the top had been missing for many centuries. As we searched about the site, we found some copper and flint arrowheads buried in the grasses. This had been the seat of Skell’s power, but now it was a home for loneliness and desolation.
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“We can rebuild it again, make it even greater,” Father stated firmly. “There will be justice for our descendents.”
We came to the resting place of Skell the Great himself. It was a circle of cracked bricks five feet high with a roof of one large slab of narrow stone. Before it was an altar of crumbling brick standing like a leaning pedestal, a brazier at the top. Father gathered dry grasses to fill the brazier and took out a clay cup and a gourd filled with wine. Others had left gifts of wine jugs, spear heads and clay dolls in the likeness of Skell.
He lit the grasses with his striking stone and poured small amounts of wine into the fire from the cup, just enough to allow the fire to burn.
“I give you thanks, Great Skell, Father of our people, for the victory you gave to us at the ravine. I do this in no way lessening the glory deserved to the Glorious Lady Moon, but as a son of Eldin. I know that you are not among the truly blessed on the Sacred Orb, yet you still reside in the Garden of Virtue reserved for the meritorious during the Time of Ignorance, and that your powers were allowed to assist us. Honor to you, Father Skell, and to the ancestors who rest with you in the Garden.”
Father poured all of the wine on the flames, reducing them to sweet smoke. He waved his hands through the smoke and gestured for me to do the same. He sat down by the altar, gazing at all of the beauty that lay below us. I sat down also, but not too close.
“Skell, if I would have lost you I would’ve wanted to die, for you are my favorite child and the soul I feel the closest to. But I have no regrets concerning the rikka agreement. It was my great love for you that made the accord possible. Sometimes one must risk what is most dear in order for your enemy to trust you.” Tears illumined his eyes.
Slowly, I reached out for his hand and held it. “I know you were right, Father. I’m just a silly boy who thinks he knows what is best, and now I see that I know close to nothing.”
“Son, I would not lose you for the world.”
My eyes wandered towards the Ocean, giving Father time to gather his composure. The Sun had burnt off most of the morning fog and a number of fishing boats were out. A small, tubby merchant ship, one that likely only traveled a few hundred miles up and down the coast, was being unloaded on the dock. Our unimportant place in the world seemed safe. Sea gulls floated through the stiff breeze.
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A ship rounded the great rock bounding one side of the harbor.
Another ship came right after it, its sail billowed out by the wind.
And a third. A much larger vessel. A much finer craft from where I could see.
All of the sails were blue and bore the insignia of a full white moon in the center.
I pointed to them. “Father. That is almost a whole fleet for Ailgen.”
Father gazed up and swallowed thickly. “Emissaries from the Sacred Court of the Blessed Island. There will be a Great Mother aboard the large ship.”
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