Would any of his comrades be impelled to steal the talisman or betray its secret? Loving parents and siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts and uncles surrounded all of them. There was not one among his friends who did not have reason to desire an object of gramarye with the ability to save the lives of their kith and kin. Perhaps they had been tempted at times. It was an indication of their solidarity and integrity that honesty had prevailed.
When the two youths reached Jarred’s mother’s house they parted. Jarred brushed aside the door curtain and strode inside. She was waiting for him, her visage taut and as pale as chalk dust, brushed with gray shadows beneath her eyes and cheekbones. As soon as she saw him, her features collapsed in relief. A series of expressions flitted across her face; her son deciphered relief, joy, perplexity, a desire to pepper him with questions, and finally restraint.
She assumed a nonchalant mien and said only, “I am glad you are back. The meal is ready.”
Still wrestling with the distress caused by his encounter with the unseelie wight, Jarred was grateful for her considerate compassion. When Jarred had been a young child she used to fling her arms around him and shower him with kisses whenever he returned home from some jaunt. He guessed what it must cost her to refrain from doing so now that he was grown to manhood. Her constant concern for his security irked him, even while he loved her for it. Sometimes he used to wonder—if he’d had siblings, would her care for him, being spread further, have diminished? As he grew up, continually witnessing the tenderness with which his mother treated young children in the village, he understood otherwise. Her protective, nurturing nature was inexhaustible; she was driven to care for vulnerable living creatures even at her own expense. In a way it was as if she were bearing a burden of crushing weight.
She reached up and touched the leather thong about his neck.
“Yes, I still wear the talisman,” he said, smiling at her. “I keep my promise.”
“That strap is too thin and weak. I shall buy a chain of metal.”
As Jarred and his family took their meal together, cross-legged on the floor, he recounted his adventures of the day, omitting mention of the illicitly obtained spyglass and the crossing of the haunted bridge. Visions of the skeletal specter haunted him, but now that he was secure in a familiar environment his distress had decreased. His spirits began to rise to their customary heights.
“On the way to the practice place, we passed a pair of sand foxes. I daresay there had been a litter of cubs born recently. The vixen, in particular, was ferociously guarding their lair.”
“A mother protecting her offspring is no thing to be taken lightly,” said his own mother, smiling ruefully.
“I have heard,” contributed Shahla, sprinkling salt on a dish of vegetables, “that she-wolves and she-bears, sows and vixens, have been known to attack even when hopelessly outnumbered. They would willingly lay down their lives to save their progeny, taking extraordinary risks. In situations when they would usually turn and flee, they stand their ground if they have a family to protect, and they will fight to the death even against overwhelming odds.”
“I suppose we are all bound to ensure the survival of our own kind,” said Jarred’s mother.
“Not Yaadosh and I,” said Jarred, “for we plan to annihilate the opposition when we play against them on Salt’s Day morning.”
But even as he jested, the truth of his mother’s words came home to him, and as much as he loved his mother he wished he had a father in his life.
The football match turned out to be protracted and suspenseful. Ultimately Jarred’s team triumphed, but by a very narrow margin, and possibly only because Jarred seemed unafraid to risk injury; he never hesitated to confront charging packs of opposition players. Neither the fastest nor the most skillful was he, but after the game his teammates clapped him on the back and called him Fearless, an appellation that he threw back in their faces with surprising vehemence, declaring, “I possess no greater courage than the next man.”
Fiercely, just then, he wished the talisman had never existed. The advantage it afforded him was unfair; surely his friends were aware of that. The knowledge that he could never compete with them on an equal footing was hurtful. How could he ever prove himself a worthy teammate and comrade under such circumstances? Briefly, but not unusually, the slight weight of the amulet against his chest was hateful to him.
That afternoon, when the searing wind called the Fyrflaume began blowing from the hot Stone Deserts in the south, players from both sides gathered to celebrate with friends and relations. Such festivities were intended to iron out any animosity that might have built up between the teams. Men and women of the village mingled freely beneath the shady trees, those who were unwed darting sly looks at one another or finding excuses to remove themselves to deserted crannies in which they might steal a kiss and an embrace. Five ardent damsels crowded about Jarred, inventing reasons to touch his hair with their soft, flowerlike hands, or pass food to him, or brush against his shoulder. Unabashed, he laughed and joked with them all equally. Food was plentiful, good humor abundant. Bowls of kumiss were passed around. The revelers drank the fermented camels’ milk, pulling wry faces at the acrid flavor and lauding the virtues of beverages from other regions. As the celebrations progressed, Jarred and some of his teammates, flushed with victory and made reckless by inebriation, made a pact to fulfil a long-cherished desire.
“We must go to Jhallavad for the annual Wine and Poetry Festival!” proclaimed Tsafrir, holding aloft a half-full bowl of kumiss. “Never yet have I attended the Festival, yet everyone speaks highly of it. It is hardly appropriate for men of the world, such as we, to be unacquainted with one of the most prestigious events in the whole of Tir!”
“Yes! Yes!” Michaiah enthusiastically agreed, thumping his hand on his thigh. “With every birthday that passes, I long to go to the Festival. You have been there, haven’t you, Master Saeed?”
“Naturally,” growled the headman, displeased at being so familiarly addressed by a drunken youth. “Mind your manners, you pup.”
Michaiah rose unsteadily to his feet and bowed. “I’m minding my manners, your lordship,” he burbled, “but I’d mind them even better if I were at the Wine and Pottery Fesserval. What say you, my friends?” he cried, gesturing at his comrades with such enthusiasm he almost overbalanced. “Shall we all embark on this empterprize?
The lads raised their voices in an exuberant cheer.
“I’ll drink to that!” shouted Yaadosh.
“Come morning they’ll have forgotten all about it,” Saeed muttered rancidly as the youths passed around the skins to refill their bowls.
But come morning, Jarred and his comrades had not forgotten. Despite their headaches, they fell to planning, for all were agreed that they would depart the following week for the Wine and Poetry Festival at Jhallavad.
During the next few days, they made their preparations. A trip to the capital city, or to any destination in the drylands, for that matter, could not be lightly undertaken. The desert was harsh and did not tolerate fools. For villagers as impecunious as those of R’shael, attempts must be made to derive some profit from the enterprise; therefore, the lads loaded their saddlebags with locally produced merchandise.
The inhabitants of R’shael scraped a living from the desert. Each day, goatherds took their charges to graze on the sparse, tenacious grasses of the hills. Salt collectors shovelled sackfuls of the sticky crystals from the blinding snowlike surfaces of the salt lakes scattered throughout the region. The settlement itself was built over three profound wells, abundant with seemingly endless supplies of artesian water. Crops of dates, figs, pumpkins, peanuts, millet, melons, sorghum, barley, and beans thrived on the irrigated land. Several acres were devoted to the growing of the spice cumin; once a year, the fields of cumin turned into carpets of diminutive pinkish white flowers, strumming with bees. Later in the season, the fragrance of their seedlike fruits would perfume the atmosphere.
T
he artisans of the village worked to produce exportable items. Potters produced clay crockery, small terra-cotta plaques and figurines. Sculptors carved dramatic geometric forms in gypsum alabaster. The local blacksmith chiefly produced tools for the villagers themselves, but the smiths who worked with bronze and brass created elegantly crafted objects such as daggers, vases, belt buckles, and decorative items to be sold at market in Jhallavad. It was such items as these that Jarred and his comrades packed in their saddlebags.
A journey anywhere at all in the Four Kingdoms of Tir was subject to the added perils of Marauders and unseelie wights, and every precaution must be taken to guard against their predations. The youths assembled a variety of defenses, including small bells, knives of steel, staffs of ash and rowan wood, sprays of dried hypericum leaves tied with red ribbon, and talismans of amber. These items would probably prove sufficient to deter any minor unseelie wights encountered along the way, but as for the more powerful species, the travelers would have to trust to luck. Bearing the fickleness of fortune in mind, some of them visited the druids’ agent allotted to the village: an ancient, desiccated vulture of a man who lived alone and apparently spent his days in silent communion with the Fates, or—as his lowly station decreed—with the minions of the Fates. To uninformed observers it would usually seem as if he were dozing. The youths gave coins to the druids’ agent, asking him to intercede on their behalf with Lord Ádh and the other Fates to ensure a safe journey.
“Go safely,” Jarred’s mother said as he took his leave from her. Her gaze absorbed him like a sponge, as if she wished to imprint her mind with the sight of him in case it was the last. With the insight born of love, Jarred could tell she was trying not to say the things she always said when they were about to part. She tried, but at the last, her resolution failed. “Go safely,” she whispered, and her hands fluttered around him, stroking his hair, patting his shoulder, as if she longed to take hold of him and keep him close by, in the way she had when he was an infant. Her warnings spilled forth. “Beware of Marauders! Make certain one of your number keeps watch at nights. Come straight back home if anything goes wrong! Send me a message if you need anything.” As she spoke, he could read the anguish behind her entreaties. “Do not take off the talisman,” was her last plea.
All he could do was smile brightly, reassuringly. “I will be all right,” he said, and after printing one last kiss on her cheek, he was off.
The highway to Jhallavad was bordered by a series of upstanding milestones three feet tall. Here and there the surface itself was paved; in other stretches, the sand and clay were rammed hard. The mercurial sands of the desert, which continually covered and uncovered other man-made landmarks, unaccountably refrained from obliterating the road. It was popularly conjectured that the highway was shielded by some antique spell, or else it surely would have been congested and interred centuries earlier. Along this rigorous way rode the wine-seeking youths of R’shael, garbed in hues of saffron and ochre, their desert horses accoutred with sage green bridles and saddles dyed with dark vermilion. They covered their faces with scarves of muslin to keep out the dust blown by the scorching afternoon breezes of the Fyrflaume and topped their skulls with turbans or hats to block the white-hot girders of the sun. Occasionally they passed convoys of dromedaries belonging to glass merchants or silk vendors on their way to far-flung, exotic lands. Shouted acknowledgments and salutations would pass between them.
By night the travelers were audience to the furtive scurryings of nocturnal creatures such as bilbies and scorpions, and the sudden eerie lights and sounds of eldritch wights: species that differed from those that haunted the R’shael region. The desert nights were sparklingly lucid. There was scant moisture to haze the air, and no cloud cover, so the stars refracted, sharp and scintillating, as if the sky were a pane of crystal smashed all over by sharp silver hammers.
Whether the archaic druids’ agent of R’shael was held in high esteem by the Fates due to the enduring and faithful nature of his discourse with them, or for some other reason, luck favored Jarred and his comrades. Their twelve-day journey took place without injurious incident. As they approached the city, the first sign of its existence was a soft scarf of smoke tracking across the sky. The chimneys of the glass-furnaces were spewing forth their pollution in long streamers that trailed away to the north, borne on the prevailing winds. Closer to the settlement, the arid landscape transmuted, becoming lush and well watered. Clumps of low trees were scattered here and there: groves of olives, figs, and date palms. Countless steel-vaned windmills were spinning atop their gawky towers, pumping water from Jhallavad’s aquifers and artesian wells. The surrounding fields were striped with grapevines and furrowed crops, among which glinted the thin metallic threads of irrigation channels. Goats, onagers, and dromedaries wandered in fenced paddocks. Some of the farmhouses were perched on stilts so that the breezes blowing beneath might keep them cool.
The city itself, surrounded by walls of stone and adobe, had been built in and upon a great hill of sandstone perforated with profoundly excavated hollows and passages that remained frigid despite the outside temperature. The shanties of the indigent were fashioned of sun-baked clay and camel dung, while the mansions of the well-off, set in their walled gardens, vaunted roofs of celadon slate and walls of pastel stone. The sanctorum of Jhallavad incorporated a columned palace and a ziggurat. Constructed of mud brick, the stepped temple tower rose in stages to a small haven at the peak, wherein the druids conducted secret ceremonies of communication with the Fates. Its external walls were adorned with magnificent reliefs carved in gypsum alabaster, and authoritative chronicles of the druids’ superiority narrated in horizontal bands with cuneiform texts, to astound the populace. Gigantic guardian sculptures stood at the sanctorum gates.
Jarred and his comrades arrived in Jhallavad in time for the opening of the three-day festival. Upon entering the civil precincts, they gazed about with an amazement that never diminished, no matter how many times they visited this teeming metropolis. In their tiny village there was nothing to match the silk bazaars, the wine shops, the crowds of people in colorful raiment, jingling with ornaments of brass, glittering with rainbows of glass beads.
The most impressive building of all was the king’s palace, whose garnishes and sculptures had been carved from fluorspar, a stone that glowed eerily fluorescent when illuminated by the blue light of morning. Mined from beneath the desert, the native fluor was rich in shades of muted green and soft yellow. The palace’s topmost turret had been fashioned exclusively from luteous jasper, and the courtyards were famous for their statues of jadeite and nephrite. This gorgeous edifice was almost a century old and had been constructed by the current king’s great-grandfather, who, it was cautiously whispered, had been the last truly lucid monarch of the Shechem dynasty.
The festival was perennially popular; visitors flocked to the city from surrounding districts and foreign lands, bringing their brews and distillations. Out of Grïmnørsland came various beers, ales, stouts, lagers, ryes, and whiskies, while from Slievmordhu came beverages concocted from roots and herbs, the spirit known as White Lightning, made from solanum tubers, wines made from dandelions, elderberries, or cowslips, sloe gin, and juniper gin. Ashqalêth contributed its kumiss and kefir; the rare prickly pear cactus mead; and a fusion called basilisk, reputed to have blown out the brains of many drinkers. Of all the realms, Narngalis was most prolific in liquors. The rainfall-rich, fertile hills of the north produced flavorsome mead and melomel, pyment and cyser, metheglin, hippocras, braggot, malmsey, and sack, as well as brandy, pear blossom wine, applejack, scrumpy, and cellarsful of numerous other intoxicating liquids.
As the celebrations progressed, poetry was recited, plays enacted, songs sung. News from far-flung places was relayed. There was some discussion about the extravagant revelries the previous year in Cathair Rua, held in honor of the second birthday of the eldest son of King Maolmórdha Ó Maoldúin. Travelers said the entire city had been decked out in
flowers and bunting, music and dancing had filled the streets, and the palace had provided a feast for all and sundry.
“And ’tis said that the lavishness of the festivities this year will outdo all that went before,” some festivalgoers rumored enthusiastically. “We will be off to Cathair Rua then, you may be sure!”
Tales were also told concerning the village of Füshgaard in Grïmnørsland. During the previous Winter, the inhabitants—every man, woman, and child—began to perceive wondrous visions and to hear messages from disembodied voices. At first this was presumed to spring from the activities of eldritch wights, but this proved untrue. Subsequently, popular opinion held that it was a haunting of wraiths, but this also turned out to be false. The druids in the sanctorum at Trøndelheim solved the mystery by declaring this phenomenon to be a benevolent miracle sent by the Fates. Later, the news spread to outlying regions and folk began making pilgrimages to hear the words of the visionaries and marvel thereat. The visitors gave offerings of money and goods to the people of Füshgaard, whereupon the druids proclaimed they had erred in their judgment—been led astray, perhaps, by malign forces. The voices and visions were not the instruments of the Fates, but malicious facsimiles, simulacra, fakes, fallacies, and abominations. The sanctorum branded the citizens of Füshgaard “vessels contaminated by the enemies of the Fates” and demanded that such profaners be cast down. The king, however, refused to imprison or otherwise penalize the bedazzled families of the village. Instead, he appointed a number of scholars and carlins to examine the mystery.
Meanwhile, spurred on by the covert urgings of the druids, who whispered to their subscribers that excellent fortune would be attracted to those who defended Lord Ádh with their arms and lives, bands of militiamen advanced upon Füshgaard. The king sent soldiers to protect the village. A standoff developed, during which one of the carlins, who had been investigating the grain stores of Füshgaard, announced that the villagers were victims of an outbreak of rye fungus. That year the harvest had been poor, and the villagers were using up last season’s rye, which had been stored for many months under damp conditions. Bread baked from the affected grain induced delusions in those who consumed it.
The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles Page 3
