In truth, he hadn’t intended to be thrown into the masses of human civilization so early in his travels. But, as the saying went, all roads in Orynthis lead to Ka’veshi. The metaphor he’d heard from a cloth seller in Havesh’kavar turned out to also be geographically correct.
After leaving the ruins of Fen’Nadrel, he’d begun the search for a silversmith that might be able to aid him in opening the mithril box he’d been gifted by the spirit wolf. The delicate craft of silversmithing held the closest hope for assistance given the lack of those skilled in mithril. Havesh’kavar had been a small farming village north of the ruins, with only a blacksmith who seemed more skilled in shoeing horses and yoking oxen than with the finer arts of metalwork. What men considered skilled, Serenthel had quickly surmised, would be what the Elvan labeled as camacyn’cref, or the first steps apprentices must take on their long journey towards mastering a craft. If he wanted anyone even remotely skilled in silversmithing, the cloth trader had told him, he would need to seek them out in Ka’veshi. So, here he stood, in a long line of people and animals, all waiting for the gates to open.
“What is taking so long?” he muttered to Forfolyn. The sun had risen to sit well over his shoulder, the breakfast hour quickly melding into early lunch.
“The gate is usually open by now,” a woman behind Forfolyn replied in a thick countryside accent that took him a moment to decipher. She had a basket at her feet, its shoulder straps well-worn and its top filled to the brim with softened flax fibers ready to be spun. “It’s the Spears flexing their authority, keeping us Brokenback folk from our fields and the Merchant guilds from their trades. I should’ve been done and back home by now. I’ll have to work past sundown to make up for it.”
“You should’ve been here three days ago,” a man ahead of Serenthel said while standing at the back of an empty cart. “Took me well past lunch to get inside. By the time I’d finished collecting manure from the Black Hands, it was time for supper! Had to fertilize crops in the dark, just so the Spears can piss all over the gate to mark it as theirs.”
“With us Brokenbacks caught downwind,” the woman replied.
Serenthel looked from the man to the woman then back again, trying to make sense of their words. Brokenbacks? Black Hands? Were they even speaking Orynthian? Perhaps his language instructor had left some words out, or the languages beyond the wall had changed, as languages often do.
Wait, he thought. The woman had mentioned the Merchant guilds. What was it he had read about Ka’veshi? Something about guilds and lines in the dirt.
No, not dirt.
“The paradunes refuse to settle,” the man retorted. “Meanwhile we hard workers with our broken backs and rough hands are made to wait in line.”
Paradunes. Serenthel’s brow tightened then raised. Ah! Sand! Lines in the sand. Guilds and their territorial spats. Yes, welcome to Ka’veshi. Serenthel smiled smugly to himself at having remembered a lesson from ten years ago. And his history instructor had sought fit to warn him to pay more attention. Ha! Take that, Master Elethchiel.
“Think it funny, do you?” The man asked with a glare.
Serenthel blinked out of his thoughts as Forfolyn snorted with a shake of the head. “Pardon?” Serenthel thought for a moment then balked at his own misunderstood expression. The pride of fools, he self-admonished. “Apologies, good sir, but my use of the common tongue is unpracticed. I am... confused by some of your words.”
“Fresh from the other side of the wall, are ye?” the woman asked with a tiny snicker.
“Fresh from his mother’s teat, I’d say,” the man said, earning another small giggle from the woman.
Serenthel blinked at the man. “Pardon?”
“Oh, you know their kind don’t age like us,” the woman said to the man after catching Serenthel’s shock. “Why, he could be older than me!”
“Hmph,” the man peered harder at Serenthel. “In years, maybe, but his eyes have the look of a boy who still knows nothing of the world.”
Serenthel wanted to argue, to say that he’d been in lessons for decades learning from masters of history, language and culture. He’d left the Mother’s Grove confident in his abilities, even if the way forward had been uncertain and not without its hesitations.
Then, he’d crossed the wall. He’d seen and met humans. He’d ventured through their untended wilds, their over-cleared farmlands and encroaching deserts, their ransacked ruins, unkempt graveyards and somewhat equally neglected dwellings they passed off as housing.
He’d also watched their expressive natures. Learned there was more than one way to say a word. Saw that the jubilant emotions of children were carried on well past the point of adulthood. He’d been met with equal amounts of suspicion and kindness, all of which left him reeling from an understanding of just how much of this world he in fact did not know.
“There, see,” said the man with a meaty finger pointed towards Serenthel’s face. “Wide-eyed as a boy catching his first toad.”
“Oh, leave the boy- er, man, alone,” the woman chided, though not without another tiny, well-meaning chortle at her slip of the tongue. She placed a hand on Serenthel’s arm, a touch he had come to assume as one of friendly comfort. Humans did seem to enjoy more bodily contact than an Elvan would deem necessary...or appropriate. “What brings you to our grand city?”
“Grand,” the man grunted. “Overcrowded and garishly gilded thieves’ den, more like,” he muttered before turning his back on the conversation.
Serenthel wasn’t sad to have the man return to fussing over his oxcart as they continued to wait in line. The woman gave a roll of the eyes in the man’s direction then looked back to Serenthel with a patient smile. After the utterance about thieves, Serenthel hesitated. But, he also knew he could spend all day in a city the size of Ka’veshi without finding what he came seeking.
“I am looking for a master silversmith.”
“Oh? Hope to become an apprentice, perhaps?” The woman put one hand on her hip and shook her head as she waggled a finger. “I’ll warn you now, you’ll not find a silversmith in Ka’veshi that would teach... your kind, begging your pardon. It’s the guilds, you see.” She tapped a finger to her cheek where the aged tattoo of a harvesting sickle resided. “They don’t take in elf nor orc, and most wouldn’t even take a Carnathian. Old laws and traditions and all that, and all apprentices must be guilded.”
“Well, it’s good to know I won’t be pressed into joining,” Serenthel replied. “But, no, I seek a master for assistance in a box I need opening.” He hesitated in showing her the box, and he certainly didn’t seek to advertise that it was not made of silver but mithril, although he did wonder if most humans could tell the difference in their current age of gold and iron.
“A silver box?” The man turned back around with more interest in the conversation. “Not some stolen item whose lock you need picked, is it?”
“No, sir, I assure you.” It had been given to him, after all, even if it had been technically taken from a graveyard. “It’s a family heirloom.” Well, that wasn’t entirely a lie. “It’s delicate, so I would rather not pry the box open by way of force. It’s also Elvan in design, so I thought perhaps it would be best to seek a master who might have knowledge of such items.”
“Why not just go home?” the man asked, with a look that said he’d prefer it if Serenthel did.
“Because, I am here now,” Serenthel answered plainly, keeping his emotions restrained.
The woman’s hand gave Serenthel’s arm the tiniest of squeezes. “Sounds like you be needing Adibe Asahn.”
“The man is dead,” the man hissed in a shushing tone at the woman’s suggestion, his eyes darting across the line of people. “You dare break the rule against speaking the names of the exiled?”
“Desperate times,” the woman replied, her hand leaving Serenthel’s arm to wave expressively at the man as she spoke. “You would rather I send this young man to the Glittering Row so Pashta can charge exorbitant p
rices or take what isn’t his?” The woman tutted her tongue. “I think not. Besides, there be no man in Ka’veshi whose hands be as skilled with the shaping of silver than Adibe.”
The man scratched at his beard below his own sickle tattoo. “I’ll not argue that.”
“Only a fool would,” the woman said. “Is common knowledge that the former guild master can weave silver embellished rings around that dolt Pashta, may Ishkar strike his name from history,” she cursed and spit to the side. “Having Adibe forced out was madness!”
“Spears had a hand in that, says the Water,” said the man.
“Pashta sold his soul to the sultanate, the Earth agrees,” replied the woman as Serenthel looked between the two in a failing attempt to keep up with their quickly spoken words and odd phrases. She sighed with a shake of the head. “At least they let Adibe live.”
The man grunted. “If you call being exiled and confined to his sister’s washhouse, living.”
A silversmith living in a washhouse? Serenthel thought it seemed odd but as promising a lead as he may receive. His question as to where this washhouse may be was interrupted by the long bellowing of a horn. A relieved sigh echoed over the line of people as they began picking up their baskets and readying their carts to finally begin moving. Loud, repeating kathunks came next as the massive gate split down the middle, each half pulled into the wall on the left and right by some mechanism Serenthel could not ascertain.
“Merciful Gods,” the man muttered and made his way back to the front of his ox cart. “I might actually get home before dark tonight.”
The woman placed her hand back on Serenthel’s upper arm. “You seem to have a strong back. Mine’s not what it used to be. You help me carry this basket to the Looms, and I’ll show you the way to Adibe.”
Serenthel looked from the woman’s kind but clever eyes then down to the large basket of flax fibers and its shoulder straps. Forfolyn nudged Serenthel’s side, and Serenthel figured it was a fair trade. With a single nod, he accepted her offer then hefted the basket onto his back. It was heavier than it looked, and Forfolyn snorted in amusement as Serenthel stumbled a bit.
The woman held up a hand to cover the smile most likely on her lips. “I am called Farrah, by the way.”
“Serenthel,” he grunted with the weight of the basket before finding his balance. “And this is Forfolyn.” With a deep breath and a gaze up the long line now beginning to flow into the city gate, he bowed as best he could with the basket on his back and held his arm out toward the gate. “Please, lead the way, lady Farrah.”
The woman tittered and managed a halfway decent curtsy before stepping the front to follow the ox cart ahead. As he followed her in the line’s slow march, the basket gave him an understanding as to the term Brokenbacks. Who the Spears were remained a mystery, as too the Earth and the Water, but he looked forward to discovering more about the guilds and whatever surprisingly complex mechanisms must work the gate. He just hoped that wherever Farrah led him would provide some much needed answers instead of more questions.
36
Children of Water and Earth
Another sweltering day in Ka’veshi had chased Naomi off her roof well before noon. She found little solace in the shadows between the buildings, and the heat roiling off the cobblestones along the sunbaked streets threatened to burn her bare feet, calloused as her soles may be. Naomi had no desire to linger long in the streets anyway, and stuck to the shadows after snatching a half-eaten apple tossed from a passing cart. Too late, she discovered on her first bite the reason for the apple’s discard. Worms. She spit out the bite on a gag and dropped the apple back onto the cobblestones. Even her hunger had its limits.
With a disparaged sigh and an inhale of wet, sticky air, she left the streets behind with the intention of returning back to her own alleyway. The roof would be too hot as afternoon hung high overhead, but perhaps Adibe would be up for a game of Ur to help pass the hours and take her mind off her hunger. He’d probably attempt to feed her again, despite her failings lately to get him even the smallest pinch of tobacco for his pipe. Pride made her often decline the old man’s generosity, but her pride, too, had its limits.
Men lingered in doorways as she passed, but they paid her little mind as they spoke in hushed tones about souring trades and delays at the gates. Not a single one snatched for her, even though her crudely hand-drawn mark had long ago been smeared by droplets of sweat rolling down her cheek. The heat had set an uneasy calm among the guilds, a truce drawn due to dying of heat exhaustion being a less honorable fate than dying over unsettled paradunes. Glancing up at the sun between buildings, Naomi wondered if Retgar was attempting to bake the paradunes into some form of permanence, or slowly boil Ka’veshi’s populace into heat-driven madness.
“Not even high summer yet,” complained one woman to another as Naomi entered the Washerwoman’s district. “How am I to stoop over the tubs all day in this heat?”
“A sign of things to come,” the older of the two warned, her aged eyes seeing memories drifting off the hot stones between the heat waves. “Best mind your well. There’ll be a shortage soon.”
“A shortage?” The younger woman fanned herself with a flat wooden paddle used to beat the dirt out of soapy laundry. “The wells haven’t run low in a hundred years.”
“Low?” The old woman shook her head and looked less bothered by the heat than by the younger woman’s ignorance. “Water says the wells will run dry by Haden, if not sooner.”
“Dry? Less than a month from now?” The younger woman fanned herself faster, as if it could ward off such dire news. “Surely, the rains will come, as they do every year.”
The old woman glanced back up at the sky then to Naomi as she attempted to pass by unnoticed. “A great change comes instead, says the Earth. Best prepare yourself, or be caught in the upheaval that is sure to follow.”
Naomi slinked by, unnerved by the old woman’s stare, and took the next available right turn out of the alley. It meant an extra block of walking in the wrong direction, but the narrow alley was quiet and devoid of prying eyes, or crazy old ladies talking about the wells going dry. Speaking such a dangerous rumor could spread fear and panic through the districts like wildfire. The younger woman had been right; the rains always came during the month of Haden, just after the spring equinox. They had to.
But what if they didn’t?
The washerwomen not being able to fill their tubs would be the least of the city’s problems. Without the Haden rains, the early crops would fail. The aquifers would not fill, so the late crops would fail, too. The city wells would go dry. The parched earth would crack apart and swallow man and animal whole in a thirsty, wasted death.
Naomi shuddered at the thought and wished Adibe wouldn’t talk so much during their games of Ur. The old man liked to share stories from hundreds of years ago when the rains didn’t come and the last guild war had ravaged Ka’veshi. How the old man knew of such things, she had never asked, and so she always took his frightening tales with a good heaping of salt. He lived in a washerwoman’s house, after all, so what could he truly know? She wasn’t even certain he could read.
Not that being unable to read meant you were stupid, Naomi reminded herself. No, Adibe wasn’t stupid. Of that she was most certain of all. Then again, turning the corner and finding Adibe stooped on his porch next to a large four legged, horned beast made her think Adibe might be a little crazy.
Naomi skidded to a stop on the stones and rubbed sand from her eyes, thinking perhaps the heat waves were making mirages in the middle of the city. But no, the beast was real, like some overgrown goat with two leafless trees growing from the top of its head. The horned head turned her way to stare at her with large brown eyes, and Naomi’s legs went stiff despite her thoughts to run in the other direction. The animal made a low rumbling snort, not sounding at all like a goat, then it stepped three paces back to reveal a figure previously hidden by its immense size.
The strange looking
boy paused in his conversation with Adibe and glanced over his shoulder at the animal’s sound. His clothes were odd, much too heavy and layered for western Orynthian weather, and decorated with delicate embroidery that could put the Weavers guild to shame. Sunlight sheened off silver thread, dark leather, long auburn hair and a piece of metal jewelry clamped to the underside of a pointed ear.
Naomi’s eyes widened and her throat went dryer than she thought possible. An elf. There, standing in her alleyway, was an Elvan boy. As her initial shock at seeing an elf for the first time passed, her confusion compounded into suspicion. What in Ishkar’s quill would an elf be doing in the Washerwoman’s district talking to an old man like Adibe?
“Ah, Naomi!” Adibe called down the alley and waved a beckoning hand. “I hoped you would soon come home. We have a special guest you should meet.”
Naomi, try as she might, couldn’t get her feet to take a step forward. The elf boy opened his arms, showing off long sleeves in forest green cloth laced-up over an undershirt of creamy white that led to soft leather gloves of an earthy brown. He made a half bow, which Naomi would normally associate with pompous entitlement, but the elf somehow made it look graceful and not at all a display of his status being well above her own. Still, that anyone would think to bow to a street mutt like her made his posture unintentionally amusing.
When the Wind Speaks (Starstone Prophecies Book 1) Page 31
