Chapter 9

Fickle rains had always plagued Sterich. In the very bad years, when the rains hid along the horizon and refused to come ashore, the oat grasses stunted, the stems curled and their leaves yellowed. The river ran shallow. Small flies buzzed above the brown stained basins of the dry, narrow irrigation canals. Boats rested at odd angles on the dry river bed. Frozen in a sea of hardened mud.

Summer scorched the stems and left them bleached brown. The summer winds lifted the dust into the air. Hazy, beige clouds veiled the sun and covered what few green leaves were left. Each morning, farmers bent over at the hip, futilely wiped the dusty leaves only for the afternoon winds to restore their patina. On the days they could see the sky, the sun had robbed it of all its blue, and left a tired, white smear.

Before summer left, stems collapsed. Farmers scampered through the fields, a dull scythe in one hand, the other reaching for grasses that remained upright. The brittle plants snapped more than cut. Worried faces, reddened by the sun, searched out the meager yield the gods left them.

At the fading light that closed each day, farmers returned home to a pale broth and porridge. The ambling wagons that creaked under the load of grain, driven by the landowners to collect the noble's share, came frequently. Stern faces backed by big men with spears, made their demands in a civil tone that felt anything but. They had threats in their eyes. They had eyes that searched, evaluated and questioned. Their expressions that dared someone to say, "This is all I have." The crop yields shrank, but the noble's share remained the same. The people tasted hunger.

Those bad years happened as frequently as the good, and buckled the farmer's spirits. Older farmers who had rode out the bad years with the good, buttressed their flagging hopes with reminders that good years turn bad just as surely as bad years will one day turn good. They had a name for what was needed to survive those trying times, they called weathering. "If we a weather this, the shoots will shine green in the sun next spring." Not everyone could weather it.

Stoic farmers, with red necks and leathery skin, rubbed the sweat and grime from the back of their necks as they looked over what remained and discussed in quiet voices so the children couldn't hear, "Do we feed the pig? Or do we just eat it? Will the pork last a month? Do we have enough salt to keep it? How soon you think the rain's gonna come?" In the evening, when there was nothing left to do but listen to their stomachs and look out across the greying landscape as night stole the sun, they'd spy the lands beyond the view of Fael and wonder. Pale, yellow hills rimmed the world to the east like crust of undercooked pie. A skirt of redwoods traced their valleys, wrapped their bases in a dark, jagged shade. From that distance, they looked still and quiet. No roads to cut the landscape into pieces.

Rumors of springs just inside the hill line spread. Some dismissed that kind of talk as dangerous, speculative. But to the more desperate, these rumors were pregnant with hope. And soon men were asking their wives what they knew of the hills. Wives were asking their husbands whether a garden, a garden they could keep, would grow under those towering trees? Or how about higher up, in the yellowed, faded part, that bathed under a lidless sky?

In the driest year yet known by the sterish, when on calm days the sun cooked the sky to a gauze-colored heaven above them; when on windy days the ulth (earth) shed great clouds of dust that devoured the sun, and gently buried everything in a fine powder; when the nobles sent guards with tax men and the collectors didn't just accept their offering but kicked in doors and turned over tables looking for hidden stores of food: the rumors of the hills took on a sound of testimony from someone whom someone knew, never directly, but close enough to ring of truth. "There's water, there's land, there's no nobles." A trickle of carts pulled by men with barely enough strength to drag their lives up the slopes of the hills, but with the resolve to find another day, began on those nights. Frozen hearts stared over shoulders for fear of a call, or horn, or stampede of horses to give chase. Fearful eyes scanned the the moon-traced country for the glowing blue eyes of the watchful and dangerous fay. The unknown could be no worse than the life they knew.

Families left in clumps, and many settled in clumps. Most didn't intend it that way. The journey there had changed their minds. Nights were fireless. Hidden in copses and beneath the crown of hills, they feared the nobles would give chase and reclaim them, return them to the land that couldn't feed them. So on their journey, they remained hidden by night without light. They spoke in hushed voices. They chided the children that couldn't help but blurt out their excitement. The men and women spoke with a guarded enthusiasm of the promise of their own land. "I want a plot where I as far as I can see, the land is no one's but the gods. And I can grow for myself, for my children." That's how they spoke on the journey. But once there, in these foreign hills, alone, with haunting new night sounds, families found comfort in being together. There were a handful of such clumps, that became settlements in the hills. One such settlement was Nemheim.

The hills were called Hyll Hael Rudo (Saint Rudo Hills). Rudo, in his day, had negotiated with the fay to leave the river lands and settle in the hills. And in his honor the sterish named the hills for him. The fay never made the hills their home.

These families that settled Nemheim had escaped the burdens of life under the nobles of Fael. They could keep that which they grew from the soil. They found little flowing water, but they dug beneath the massive trees and found ground water. Wells were dug, lined with stones. Gardens were watered by the sound of a winch raising buckets that sloshed and splashed even on the driest of days. Yes, they had found what they had hoped for, but it was not as they hoped for it. That was expected. The gods provide, it's not for men to say how. But they also found they had lost things they failed to notice they had. They lost the security granted by the great stone walls of Fael which embraced large populations. They lost the great numbers of men who could hold spears and shields. Nemheim was exposed.

Welklings are quick to find exploits. As Altarik, the great gnomish bookkeeper of the Third Long, put it, "We gnomes play in the fine print of ledgers, while the welklings do the same but with people." It didn't take long for some of these settlements to figure out that taking what they needed was easier than the work of raising it. Raids became frequent. Nemheim was burned and raised and burned in almost annual cycle. At first the surest defense was no defense. The people would scatter, hide amongst the redwoods in caves and in dugouts camouflaged with blankets of pine needles. The raiders wanted their oats, lettuce, pigs, chickens, far more than they wanted blood. Once the raiders began to covet the people, hiding became less effective.

Huddled in dark shelters, they could hear the booted footsteps, see the flickering lights of torches at night, hear the huffing sniffs of dogs hunting their scents. Nemheim had to meet these threats head on. Berms were shoveled shoulder high around the approach from the west. They erected guard towers from redwood beams with ladders of lashings. Horns called, sometimes not in time. Still, a resistance gave pause to raiders hoping for easy prey. The raids grew less frequent, but more coordinated. Nemheim grew more savvy in response.

Unlike Fael where the law and the Dux's fist maintained a sense of order, they only had kinship to hold them together. In lean times, they shared their hunger. But overtime, how they shared it came into question. There were those who felt entitled to larger claims. They argued they contributed more than the rest. Some said they were more needed and could leave for other settlements if they weren't provided for. And so, the greatest bounty found its way to those who were deemed the most important or the most vital. Warriors (that is to say anyone who could wield a spear, hold a shield, and not turn and run in the face of danger) got the first pick of the harvest. The reasoning was thus: they must be fit to defend everyone's new homes. The healers came next. If they perished, then they wouldn't be there to tend those in need. Then the artisans. The elders. Those with knowledge. Then came the rest.

As these affordances were made, resentments grew. Murmurs of discontent hummed like the rise and fall of the locusts. Mothers who had but an apple to feed their children stared crossly from the corners of their eyes at the stout smith who showed no signs of hunger. The elderly, those not wise enough to be part of the elders, sat under the shades of trees on small stools and in few words exchanged their concerns. "I remember this." "Different though." Nods. Grunts. Looks exchanged from beneath bushy brows. Sun spotted hands wiped sweat from the backs of their necks. "Different, and the same." They all knew what was meant: this new life was not the same as the life they left at Fael, but it was not that much different.

Before long, the people who settled had children who grew up and had their own children, and so forth. In a short time, those in Nemheim had no memory of life before Nemheim. No memory of the bargain made when they left Fael.

As struggles persisted in particularly bad years, the hunger spread from the outside in, from those deemed not as deserving, to the deserving. Families redefined a lifetime to a single day. One woke to hunger pains and the only point of the day was to find food for that day. Failure meant that any day could be the end of a life. There were no means to plan for anything beyond it. And if the next day came, another single-day-long life began all over again.

Their frontier had little escape to offer, no further frontiers to probe for promises of reprieve. The river bound them in the north, and across it lay wild Blada, too wild to hope for a better life. The eastern hills offered nothing to live off of. And the valleys beyond teemed with Neeklow and the other hill peoples.

In time, a few desperate people dared the bleak hills to the east, recreating the journey from generations before. Hungry people looking for a better place. Only, the horizon didn't offer the much promise beyond hope. But hunger has a way of turning hope into promise, especially for the desperate. And that's how the stersh first went east into the barren, unforgiving interior hills. They carried empty stomachs and minds emptied of choices. They made promises to return, they made promises to find something better. Few returned. Of those that did, they only spoke of the horrors of the hills, horrors too terrifying to name. They feared uttering a name would call those horrors to follow them back, back to Nemheim. One of those that returned was a well known but quiet farmer. He had a wife, four children, and a garden of weeds. He had left a broad man with large eyes and an even temperament, returned hollowed out by the harrowing experience, with a savage scar across his chest, four claws had raked his flesh to the bone, exposing his ribs and sternum. His wounds festered and refused to heal. The cuts seeped blood until the day he passed. In his possession was a bundle of sticks with a ruddy bark and a blood red grain. The priest who performed the death rituals noticed the bundle of sticks.

The priest had a round belly that shamed him. Beneath his frock he wrapped a strip of wool tightly around his middle in an attempt to conceal it. It made breathing hard, especially when he exerted himself. So he did everything slowly, calmly, except inside his home, where he'd let his bounds loose and breath freely.

The farmer's widow, distraught, without any means to provide an offering to pay for the death ceremony, noticed the priests curious gaze. She sprung into motion, scooped the bundle into her arms, dropped to her knees, and with tears streaming down her face she pressed the sticks into the priest's bound belly. He took a step back, uncomfortably laughed, confused by the offering, confused by her desperation, embarrassed that she might detect the wrappings around his stomach. Still, his eyes couldn't leave the wood. It had a strange beauty. She released the wood into his arms. A smaller branch fell to the floor and skittered at his feet. He looked down on the tangle he held and felt something. A warmth seemed to radiate from the wood. He nodded, accepted the offering.

He performed the rituals. He said his prayers over the dead man. He stuffed the wound with rosemary and huckleberries. She handed him a stick, what would be the ceremonial first bit of kindling to light on the dead man's pyre. The priest saw it was of that same, potent looking red wood and he shook his head no. Had her place it with his pile she gave for payment, and told her to fetch another piece from a different tree. When she returned, he performed the ritual to let the gods light the wood. Several strange words, spoken in a deep voice, with a stomping cadence. The branch, laid across his palms, began to shed a green, wispy light that seemed to flicker like smoke. Then the stick glowed white, heatless, like a pure flame. He set it, lit and all, on the man's chest. Nothing caught fire from this magical flame. It just shed light, in a dancing, flaming manner.

Then he left, taking the blood red wood back to his home. His wife saw the pile of sticks and chided him for the odds and ends he brought back as payment. He laughed at himself, admitted he had never learned to say no. She took the pile and tossed it out by the rest of their fire wood. She wiped her hands clean, a look of irritation on her face, that then melted to a loving acceptance of the bumbling fool (that's what she called him) that her husband was. She loosened the wrap around his belly, which spilled out over his belt, and kissed him lightly on his cheek. He took a deep, unrestricted breath, and followed her inside.

For the rest of that day the priest was filled with a dread of having lost something. At night, after his wife fell asleep, he slinked out of bed and shuffled softly across the room. His feet slid across the dried floorboards with a sooosh sound. He tried to disguise that he was sneaking. He felt ashamed of his obsession with these twigs and branches. He didn't want his sneaking to betray how much his thoughts centered on this exotic kindling. But he also didn't want his wife to wake and stop him from going to see the branches.

Two of the moons had risen, tuelal still hid behind the horizon. Breaks in the canopy of the towering redwoods revealed the moons in silvery beams. Passing clouds claimed the moonlight as their own, and the darkness would deepen and fade as they passed. A wind from the west, cold, shook the branches and the moonlight danced to the sound. His obsession lay next to stacks of ordinary firewood and that bothered him. He bent over with a grunt and moved aside his pile of branches from some beautiful, exotic tree.

He grunted again as he stood up, his hands to pressed palm to palm at his lips. Once there, staring at the twigs, he felt silly. Tree branches. Kindling. All day long, at the edges of his mind, like a cloud that cast a shadow, the image of these branches lingered like a foreshadow. And looking at the the tangle of branches, a few dried leaves curled had separated and fallen to the ground -- they looked like any dead leaf on a dusty ground. He laughed at himself, a quiet chuckle, shook his head and turned to leave. The moment he did, he felt a pang of vague regret. He turned back around, and hurriedly mouthed a prayer.

He rushed it, scared if he took his time his thoughts would talk him out of this inquiry his instincts so badly wanted to make. With his eyes closed, he extended his awareness. At once, he felt the warmth of the wood again, just like he had the first time he held them. The heat felt like the dying embers of a once strong fire.

He kept his eyes closed.

He opened his spirit and reached out. It's a sensation much like how one can draw a picture of a space by the sounds they hear. He was practiced at opening his spirit to feel the spiritual about him. He felt the shape of the wood, only it wasn't in the shape of a tangle of branches. It felt more like a crown. Then it changed shaped. It felt like a different crown. And over and over, as his spirit felt for the wood, he felt a multitude of crowns, all regal, all magnificent, all worthy of dux and duxes (kings and queens).

He opened his eyes and took a slow step back. For a long moment, he considered the pile. "This is not just wood," he said to himself. He cupped his hands and began a ceremony. A wisp of iridescent green smoke wafted from his palms. He chanted, quietly, "Aenyl wythul nosturum." Over and over. Spoken softly, more like air that in the shape of a sound. With each repetition, the green smoke shone brighter, the light intensified. Revolution by revolution, it took on a shape. It became a roiling ball of green light that cast a mist like smoke made of pure light. He slowly cracked open his eyes, just a mere slit. His eye lids released each other. His lashes chopped up the view, and distorted everything. The world through that sliver was made of ghostly shapes and suggestions of their true form. He saw that the wood emanated a green mist of its own, and something more, at the heart of the green mist was a taint of orange.

He startled. His fingers straightened reflexively. The ball of green mist dissipated like sand, and quickly faded out. He stepped back. The branches still glowed, a faint greenish-orange mist, but only for a moment longer, then it too faded to a sandy-textured light, scattered on the ground, and faded out.

"This should not be so," he said aloud.

[3]

16 Firedawn -862

It was morning. The smell of coffee and porridge filled the priest's home. A breeze shook needles from the redwoods and carried a scent of pine into the room. A plate of salted pork shined with grease, an end of yesterday's bread steamed on the table.

His wife kneaded a sticky dough. She was a stout woman with sharp, small eyes and a firm mouth. She wore her hair tied atop her head in a tight bun. She worked the dough expertly. Her stubby fingers moved with a motion of their own. She heard a chair scrape across the floorboards and the grunt as the priest sat down. She cast a look back, over her shoulder, her eyes wide, and saw his smile. It looked forced. She waited. She worked the dough.

The priest rubbed his hands together. He asked "My love, how is your morning?"

"Baking bread," she said in a curt tone.

He stiffened. He didn't want her in a bad mood. He knew she wouldn't agree with what he was about to say. He wanted to see her face, confirm his suspicion, but he didn't dare.

She cast another quick glance and noticed how he avoided her gaze. She returned to her dough. Fold, lift, slap, over and over. As the silence hung in the air her impatience grew. She knew he was hiding something, something she wouldn't like, and he sought a way to expose just a tiniest bit of it to test her. She hated that. She disliked his meekness. Her eyes happened over the nearly empty flour bowl. She pursed her lips. She thought to herself, He accepted twigs, she thought to herself. We need flour, lard, meat, not twigs. I could get twigs. A bird could get twigs. For Isla's grace, he's a healer?

Wordlessly, their argument began. It was the quiet, cold way they fought. At last he said, "I am going to Fael."

There it is, she thought. She answered quickly, "I don't like that idea."

He replied with silence. That was how he disagreed, without words.

She worked the dough with vigor. The slap of the dough grew louder. Her thoughts coursed through her mind like a river passing over rocks and gaining in anger. Accusations, frustrations, impatience with his self-absorbed righteousness. She wanted him to burn that wood; to return to that foolish woman's house and demand the payment owed. Grain!. She exhaled slowly and then said, "Who is going with you?"

The priest heard both the question put to him, and separately, as if outside of his own body, he observed their dynamic. A detached, observation. Like this was happening between two people he didn't know. They didn't talk about the issue nor did they talk around the issue. They drew an outline around what mattered to them, dividing the space between what's said and unsaid.

Nemheim, like most villages in the hills, included a small number of fay. They had their own culture, and over time bits and pieces had rubbed off on the welklings. The way the priest and his wife argued was typically fay-ish. Obtuse conversations, where the words carry one message, but the real meaning is found in what's not said. The priest recognized the influence in how they fought. It saddened him. He couldn't say why. He turned, looked at her back. She flipped, slapped, lifted and stretched the dough and it sounded angry. She felt distant. And he wanted to reach out, approach her, touch her, let her feel his presence, and remind her they were in this together.

He opened his mouth, about to give words to this feeling but she spoke before he could, "We need flour. See if the miller will lend you some."

And with that, the moment slipped from him. He heard her unspoken concerns: how he exchanged services for trinkets instead of what they needed. How he doesn't consult her first. How he makes these decisions because he is weak and won't demand payment. He heard all of that, in her voice, in his head. He heard all of it in the silence outlined by her request for flour.

His resolve hardened. This is important, he told himself. He didn't know how, but those twigs and the strange spirit they contained mattered. He had a duty to figure this out. Thank the gods I got paid in twigs! Flour? Meat? Trifles. He was doing something important, something good. Things work themselves out. No one would ever let us go hungry. He could hear her rebuttal in his head, You rely upon others and get taken advantage of.

He ate his breakfast. His hunger had left him. Still, he forced the food down. She would grow upset if he wasted what she made for him. "I will speak with the miller," he said in reference to the flour. "And I will ask someone from the chapter (he was referring to the men who rotate the lookout duties) to accompany me."

She picked up the dough, held it above the board, and then let it drop with a wet thud. "I'll bake you a loaf to take with you."