The House of Yeel

by Michael McCloskey

  Jymoor paused to peek out one of the stone windows. The sea lay far below, rolling in a slow wind. She caught sight of a shadowy form moving below the water for a moment, then it was gone. She wondered what a whale from this world might look like. Legrach had said she would be safe from monsters if she stayed out of the ocean. That implied that the water creatures here might be dangerous.

  They walked through another water net into a large chamber. Jymoor immediately identified it as a dining room. A massive table of worn green stone dominated the center, running long enough to hold twenty on each side.

  A pleasant smell filled the air. Jymoor saw a door without a net.

  “The kitchen must be that way. I can smell something cooking.”

  Legrach nodded. “The meal is of yranthan and stid. Creatures from the sea. Vot provides for us mostly from the sea.”

  Jymoor heard a sound, like a scraping of leather on smooth stone. She turned and saw Yeel step into the chamber, with a beautiful woman behind him. The woman had long greenish hair and a narrow face like Legrach, though she stood much taller, at exactly Yeel’s height. She wore a flowing dress of some unknown fibrous material of the now familiar copperish hue. Surely this was Vot.

  Jymoor looked at the woman, first in open curiosity, and then with a sense of dread. Did Yeel favor the company of Vot? Would she be able to pursue him if this amazing woman already held his heart?

  “I trust you have found Ascara-home to your liking?” Yeel said to Jymoor. “This is Vot.”

  Jymoor bowed before Vot.

  “Hello. Yeel tells me you seek our aid,” Vot said in a strong voice.

  “Well…Yeel thought it best I accompany him here…”

  “We will do our best to help you though Ascara-home is at war here in our world, so we cannot spare much.”

  Other men entered the chamber and took places at the table. They looked like warriors. Still more men brought in food and set it about the table. It looked to Jymoor like two kinds of fish and a variety of sea plants.

  “This is the yranthan. Perhaps you should try it first. It is milder than the stid,” Legrach said, indicating the dishes.

  Jymoor looked around the table at the other guests. Suddenly it struck her that she and Vot were the only females present. Her face suddenly flushed.

  She turned to Legrach and spoke in a low voice.

  “Should I be here? Is Vot the only woman allowed to dine here?”

  “There is no rule,” Legrach said.

  “Then why don’t the other women sit here too?”

  “There are only you and Vot,” Legrach said.

  “Oh,” Jymoor said, trivializing her confusion. “Perhaps that is why you’re so eager for children.”

  “Of course,” Legrach said. “Vot can only bring us ten or twenty each time.”

  Jymoor coughed on her food.

  “What?”

  “Yes. She brings us many, but we need many to fight the Quan.”

  “You have no women? Aren’t any of the children female?”

  Legrach shook his head. “Vot brings us only warriors for the battle. No women.”

  Vot overheard the conversation and looked over toward Jymoor and Legrach.

  “So you are a temporary traveling companion of Yeel’s,” Vot said.

  “I’m an extremely close companion to Yeel,” Jymoor answered quickly. “We are nearly inseparable, after what we’ve been through together!”

  Vot smiled.

  “Ah. Yes, it is amazing the friendships that can be formed through shared adversity.”

  “Friendship? The word hardly does our relationship justice!” Jymoor said. “Why, it was I who released Yeel from his imprisonment!” Jymoor added. She looked pleadingly at Yeel.

  “It is true,” Yeel said. “I hope we can continue to work together.”

  Jymoor accepted Yeel’s verification eagerly. She smiled defiantly toward Vot.

  “Can Jymoor bring us infant soldiers?” Legrach said. “She said it might be discussed over dinner.”

  Jymoor’s victory face fled.

  “That’s probably not a good idea,” Vot said.

  “Yes, she doesn’t have that capability,” Yeel said.

  Jymoor opened her mouth to agree, then closed it, then opened it again to disagree, then fell silent, trying to decide which was worse: being enlisted as a baby maker or being seen as useless.

  “Isn’t she is female? Aren’t females involved with babies on her world as well?” persisted Legrach.

  “Yes, but I’ll serve a greater and more immediately useful role as a leader of our soldiers,” Jymoor said.

  “I don’t think so,” Legrach said. “One fighter is good, but the hundreds of children you could bring would be the greater contribution, on the whole.”

  Jymoor looked at Legrach again, confused.

  “She could not give you that many,” Yeel said. “Her fertility is less than Vot’s. She could bring perhaps a dozen at most.”

  A cloud grew over Jymoor’s face. Legrach nodded.

  “A dozen at a time is less than Vot, true, but—”

  “No! A dozen total! In her lifetime!” explained Vot.

  Legrach’s eyebrows rose.

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I should have realized. Of course, Vot is exceptional; look at everything she’s done for us. She is the reason Ascara-home even exists! I should not have expected such lofty things from you, Jymoor.”

  Jymoor’s jaw set in anger. Her face turned red.

  “I am not Vot. This is not my home. Yet I play an important role in the future of my nation, together with Yeel, we plan to turn away the horde—”

  “Yeel belongs here with me,” Vot said.

  “He is pledged to my cause,” Jymoor fired back.

  “He cannot change the migrational patterns of your entire planet. What is happening to your world is an expected process of friction between indigenous cultures that need to evolve in conflict so that the natural order can work itself out.”

  “I should be able to help you both,” Yeel said.

  An awkward silence grew at the table. Finally, Jymoor tried a different tack.

  “Legrach has offered to train me to be a warrior although the fenlar, the weapon he uses, is not a knightly weapon on my world.”

  “Ah. It is good to learn these skills anyway,” Yeel said. “There’s some carry over between various athletic pursuits. However, I think given the state of warfare on your own world, and your leadership position there, I’d best find you a sword master as well. I’m sure one of our travel companions from the garden will teach you the sword!”

  “But they believe me to be…they don’t know about Avorn.”

  “Ah. Yes. Don’t worry. I’ll find someone upon whose discretion we can rely. Remember, it’s the armor that is constant, the user changes every decade or so.”

  Jymoor finished eating what she could, then remained quiet. Vot and her warriors talked a bit, though Jymoor couldn’t catch the meaning of their words.

  After the meal Legrach took her back to the room she’d seen earlier. He showed her how to operate the water net, as simple as a touch, then left her alone in the room to sleep.

  “I guess I won’t be Yeel’s guest tonight,” she said to herself.

  Jymoor started to take the moon armor off.

  She knew some of the strength given by the smooth pearly plates of armor would leave her once she took it off, but she needed to rest well. Even though her skin had started to callous from the support straps, she couldn’t leave the armor on every minute of every day.

  But separating herself from the moon armor had an even greater effect on her mood. As soon as the breastplate fell off her chest, she felt another weight, a weight of despair, settle onto her. What chance did she have with Yeel, she a lowly scout, sent to him almost as a sacrifice, when Yeel interacted with peers such as Vot? And what chance did she have to learn to take the place of the Crescent Knight, to lead her people to victory a
gainst the barbarians?

  The dark emotions became overwhelming. Jymoor curled up in the dark room, surrounded by strange sounds and scents, and cried herself to sleep.

  Chapter 10: New Studies

  When Legrach arrived at her room, Jymoor was dressed in her armor and ready to go. She felt better on the new day and nodded to Legrach with confidence.

  “I’d like to see more of the fortress.”

  Legrach nodded. “Of course. Come with me. Then, I can teach you about being a warrior.”

  “Excellent.”

  Legrach led her out of her water curtain into the stone hallway. He opened another water net and showed her a room down the corridor.

  The room held dozens of rubbery sacks. Each one was the size of a large backpack.

  “We keep our food here for emergencies, such as siege,” Legrach said.

  “Sensible. We do the same in our castles on my world. I assume you have cisterns for water?”

  Legrach looked puzzled.

  “The lower level of the stronghold has a few places where the ocean water is accessible from within the walls,” he said.

  “What about fresh water storage?”

  “I’ll show you,” Legrach said. They walked back out to the corridor and took a winding stair deeper into the fortress. They passed a whole level and kept walking downward. Finally the stair ended. A glowing sphere lit the way down a dark passage that opened into a wide chamber. A stone stair descended right down into greenish water that filled the lower part of the chamber, flowing from left to right.

  “There’s our water, all we need,” Legrach said.

  “It’s not salty like on my world?”

  “It’s fine to drink. Drink all you want,” Legrach said.

  Jymoor looked at Legrach as if expecting a joke. But when Legrach met her gaze calmly, she realized it wasn’t a joke. Legrach hadn’t made the slightest joke since she met him.

  She took several steps down the stair to the water’s edge. She knelt and waved her hand through the water. It looked clear. She brought a handful to her mouth and tasted it.

  “It is drinkable!”

  “How could it be otherwise? If the water is poisoned on your world, how do you survive?”

  “The sea is undrinkable, but we have rain, and water flows down from mountains…maybe someday I can show you.”

  “Perhaps.” Legrach’s voice was doubtful.

  Legrach led Jymoor into a room full of large clay vats. Each vat held a different substance important to Vot. There were containers full of milled grain, fish, berries, chips of flint, poison harvested from sea predators, and many other things Jymoor couldn’t identify.

  They ascended to the top of the keep, under the wide-open green sky. Legrach showed her the four huge ballistae used to defend against attack from land, sea, and air. Jymoor stared down from the highest tower across the ocean. Way below, she saw a massive sea creature stir across the surface. It looked like a gigantic serpent with four long paddle-arms.

  “I see something. It must be even larger than I think. What is that thing?”

  “That’s Tuluk. We live in his territory. The creature is dangerous, and we give it wide berth. But Vot forbids us to try and kill it. She says someday, the Meridalae will besiege us. Then Tuluk may become their problem. As it is, we’re safe enough here, inside the fortress.”

  “And outside?”

  “He usually leaves us alone. We often feed him. But every now and then…he snatches someone up for a snack.”

  “You jest?”

  “No.”

  “Can he go onto the land?”

  “Perhaps a short distance. But he doesn’t like to. I don’t think he would, unless provoked.”

  Jymoor just nodded.

  Legrach led Jymoor down a winding staircase, out an archway, and into a large courtyard.

  “We can train here?”

  “Best to find a more solitary place,” Legrach said. He led her out the gate of the fortress. They crossed the massive stone bridge Jymoor had used when she arrived at this place. Another ten minutes of walking and they found themselves alone among the lizards and rocks.

  Legrach looked around, seeking something. He led her on a slight tangent, until they came to a wide shelf of stone. The flat rock was at least a hundred paces across in any direction.

  “We can train here,” Legrach said. “You won’t need the armor. At least not for training.”

  “The armor…gives me strength!” Jymoor admitted.

  “Fair enough, though the fenlar is a light weapon of speed. Try first without the armor. Then, when you tire, put it on. I’d like to see the armor’s effect.”

  “Well…that sounds reasonable. I’ve never used a spear. I don’t have any skill at swordplay, either. I do know the bow, though. Hardly a knight’s weapon!”

  “I don’t know the bow.”

  “Well, it’s a way to launch a kind of small spear very quickly. It can travel farther than a hand-thrown spear.”

  “Strange. Small spears don’t go far, here.”

  Jymoor took a fenlar from Legrach. She gave it a few experimental swings.

  “When going into battle the tip holds a deadly poison,” Legrach said. “But I’ve filled these with a substance less deadly. They may sting, but not kill.”

  They squared off against each other. Jymoor took a few swings with her fenlar. Legrach calmly blocked or retreated as necessary. Jymoor tried to thrust the fenlar at his legs. Legrach hit her in the center of her chest. She felt the sharp sting of its venom.

  She kept attacking. Legrach calmly defended for a while, stinging her every now and then. She started trying to defend herself when the stings became too painful.

  “Stop defending yourself. Better to sting me, and be first. When the stings are deadly, you have to hit me first at all costs.”

  Jymoor nodded.

  “Here, I’ll give you two. Distract me with one and sting with the other. Concentrate only on offense.”

  Jymoor tried very hard, but she still couldn’t sting Legrach. As she tired, Legrach stopped to assess her abilities.

  “You’re quick on your feet though your strikes aren’t practiced. We’ll keep trying.”

  Jymoor detected disappointment in Legrach’s voice. She put on the moon armor, hoping it would give her the energy she needed to impress Legrach.

  “Dip your helm if I go for the throat,” Legrach said. “If you must wear armor, then it must be used to your advantage.”

  “I’ll try,” Jymoor said.

  They worked for two more hours. The moon armor gave Jymoor energy, allowing her to spar for a long time. She seemed to improve a bit, but she never matched the speed of Legrach’s attacks.

  Finally her mentor called a stop to the practice.

  “You have great stamina. But it is only the armor. It must be.”

  Jymoor removed her helmet. Her face was dark.

  “Of course.”

  ***

  Two days later, Jymoor returned to the House of Yeel to check on the progress of the caravan headed home. She wandered through the portal near the bridge road, then found herself in the fountain room. Afraid to wander the vast halls by herself, she made herself a small meal and waited in the atrium for Yeel to show up.

  Before long, the tall wizard came into the chamber.

  “That didn’t take long,” Jymoor said.

  “I…sensed company,” Yeel said. “You know, with my magical powers and all. How is your training with the fenlar going?” Yeel asked.

  “Quite well. Legrach is a wise teacher, and the fenlar is a quick and deadly weapon,” she said, feigning optimism. Actually, her studies hadn’t been going well. Legrach continued to abuse her. It wasn’t the physical punishment that got to her, but his disdain for her potential. It was clear Legrach thought he was wasting his time.

  “Well, I’ve arranged for another wise teacher,” Yeel said. “A swordmaster. A female , actually, since I noted you were feeling uncomfor
table about being among so many males of your kind!”

  “Oh…that’s nice of you, Yeel! My thanks! Who is this swordmaster?”

  “Master Kasil.”

  “Master Kasil! The Master Kasil! She’s legendary! Yeel, how dare I attempt to become her student?”

  “It’s already done. You are her student, and she’s coming here today to assess your potential. And she’s sworn to secrecy, no need to worry on that count. Quite a character she is, by the way, extremely energetic, and very amorous, for your race, I believe.”

  “Amorous?”

  “Please do share with me, my friend. What is this habit of repeating what I say? What does it signify? Are you merely verifying your reception of my communication or is there a more subtle—”

  “I recall legends of her being as…shamefully…aggressive with men as with the blade. And even with women, by some accounts. Did she…?”

  Jymoor stammered to a halt. She stared at Yeel, afraid to continue.

  “Did she what?”

  “Oh, but she wouldn’t dare. Not with you. Would she? Yeel, are you…are you and Vot…amorous?”

  It was Yeel’s turn to stammer.

  “Well of course we…I…that is to say, we are…I mean we’re of the same…the same…we have a lot in common. I’ve known Vot for a long time, we, we, see things from the same angle, we share a unique disposition. A common…ancestry.”

  “Oh. OH! You’re related to her?”

  “Um. More closely than to any of your people, yes.”

  “I see! I didn’t know you were family.”

  “Well…”

  “I thought you two were…you know. And I wanted to…and I thought…well, she is a queen, more or less. And I’m simply a low-born scout.”

  “You? You’re a wonderful friend, a great scout. Why, it was you who finally found me after all those others failed! And now you’re the Crescent Knight! You’re moving up in the world. Don’t let your station hold you down. Is that what we’re talking about? What are we talking about?”