When it was done, Aeden slumped as if he had been carrying rocks all day. He found that he had tears in his eyes. He looked around and found that he wasn’t the only one. Fahtin, standing next to him, took his hand in hers and squeezed it.
“What is that song?” he asked her, wiping at his wet cheeks with his other hand.
“It is the Song of Prophecy, the Bhavisyaganant. Bhagant for short.”
“It’s beautiful,” Aeden said. “It sang directly to my soul.”
“Yes. It is very powerful.”
Aeden knew he must learn more of the Song.
The next morning Aeden went to Jehira’s wagon. Everyone had been up late the night before celebrating, so the camp was slow in moving and getting started with their day.
Raki answered the knock at the door of Jehira’s wagon. His eyes lit up as he saw Aeden there, Fahtin in tow.
“Is your grandmother about?” Aeden asked the boy.
“She is. I’ll go get her.”
When the old woman climbed out of the wagon, she looked at Aeden confidently. “You’re here to ask me about the Song.” It didn’t sound like a question.
“Yes,” Aeden said.
“You felt its power running through you?”
Aeden nodded. “I have never felt anything like that before. What was it?”
“The Song has power. It calls to the elemental and blood magic in the world. Its words are a powerful prophecy about the time of the end of the world.”
“The end of the world?” Raki said. “Nani, you never told me that.”
“You are young yet, Raki. I would have gotten around to it. Surely you recognized some of the words of the Song. I have been teaching you Dantogyptain for years now.”
The boy dipped his head. “I know, but it’s harder to hear the words in a song. I do recognize some of the sounds, but you only sing the whole thing every five years.”
“True,” Jehira said as she patted his head.
“Jehira,” Aeden blurted out. “Will you teach me the Song?”
“No.”
Aeden was stunned. He blinked at the old woman several times and worked his mouth as if to speak, but couldn’t think of anything to say. He had thought it would just be a formality to ask her and then she would start teaching him. The family had always been so open with all the knowledge they had.
“Why not?” he finally got out.
“It is too difficult for you.” She stepped one foot out into a wider stance and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “It is in Dantogyptain, the ancient language of the Gypta people, with some Alaqotim words thrown in. No one really speaks either language anymore.” She nodded for emphasis, as if she had made her point.
“All the more reason to teach it to me,” Aeden said. “Then one more person will be around who knows about the languages.”
The old soothsayer narrowed her eyes and stared at Aeden. “There is truth in what you say.” Hope rose in Aeden’s belly, a fluttering feeling. “But no. I will not teach you.”
The flutters died in his stomach and turned to stone.
“Will you tell us what it means, tell us the story it tells?” Fahtin asked.
“It does not tell a story, precisely, girl,” Jehira said. “It is a prophecy. It foretells the future, and it does not translate well to the common tongue of Ruthrin. No, you will have to wait another five years to hear more of the Song. Now be off with you. I have work to be about and cannot be bothered by the lot of you.”
All three made groaning noises but began to leave.
“Not you, Raki,” his grandmother said. “There is work for you to do. I need herbs gathered. You can go and spend time with your friends when that is done.”
Aeden offered to help, and Fahtin went along with the idea. It only took an hour to gather the herbs Jehira needed with all three working. When they returned with them, Jehira smiled at the trio and told Raki he was free the rest of the day, until their evening lessons in Dantogyptain.
“Can I come, too?” Aeden asked, noting that Fahtin’s head snapped around to look at him when he did it. “If I can’t learn the Song, maybe I can learn some of the language. Maybe it has power, too.”
“It does,” Jehira said. She studied him for a minute, her dark eyes drilling into him. Aeden could see white spots on her eyes, things that looked like little wet warts reflecting the sunlight. “Yes, you may come, but don’t trouble me with questions. You will have to try to learn what you may without affecting Raki’s pace.”
“Thank you, Nani,” he said, using Raki’s name for her. “Thank you.”
The three left to do their weapon training.
“What was that about?” Fahtin asked when they were far enough away from the old woman.
“I want to learn that song,” Aeden said. “If I can’t learn it the normal way, maybe I can learn pieces of it, or at least the language. I have never felt that kind of energy before, Fahtin. I don’t know if it is the language, the Song itself, or something else, but I have to find out.
“You know I was cast out of my clan for failing the Trial of Magic. I said the words, but it didn’t come. I felt nothing when I tried to call it forth.”
“I know that,” she said, “but what does that have to do with the Song or the language it’s in?”
“When Jehira sang it, I recognized some words. Rather, they were words that are the words of power for our blood magic. When she sang them, I felt a tugging, as if something pulled me toward her. It was almost as if the Song had life and wanted to share its power with me. I have to learn more about it.”
Fahtin still looked skeptical, but nodded. “Okay. I’ll take your word for it. But she said she wouldn’t teach you the song. Pardon me for saying it, Raki, but Jehira can be a stubborn old woman.”
Raki smiled. “She can, you’re right.”
“She’ll teach it to me. You watch. She’ll teach it to me because she must. I’ll make her see that.” He wished he was as confident as he sounded. Still, learning the language would be interesting, and it might tell him something about himself and his inability to use the magic of his clan.
The caravan drew nearer the Cridheargla. Aeden and his friends trained, he practiced his fiddle, and he did what chores were required of him. His highest priority, though, was learning everything Jehira would teach him about the Song and the language it was in. He practiced the words he learned constantly and soon was better with the language than Raki.
The soothsayer saw his effort, and in a few weeks, she relented and began to teach him some of the words of the Song. It would be a long time before he would be able to translate all of them, but if he could learn the lyrics, that was his first step. He excitedly spent as much time with the old woman as she would allow, learning the Bhagant.
“It really is a prophecy,” he told Fahtin as they had finished their sparring for the day. “A real, honest prophecy. Jehira says it was written more than two thousand years ago, at the height of the devastation of a great war of magic. It tells of the end of the world.”
“Will you tell us what it means?” Raki asked. “Nani will never tell me when I ask her.”
“I have only learned the translation for the first part, though I know the Dantogyptain words for almost the entire Song now.”
“Tell us,” Fahtin said.
“It is a very long Song, and it does not follow a logical narrative like a story. The first bit I have translated doesn’t really tell us anything.”
“Please, Aeden,” she begged. “Share it with us. Then, as you can translate more of it, we can all learn together.”
Aeden looked toward Jehira’s wagon. She had never told him he couldn’t share what he learned with the others, but he felt guilty for wanting to do so. Most of all, he didn’t want her to stop teaching him because he couldn’t keep the secret of the Song. She seemed very picky about who she let have the knowledge.
“Fine,” he finally said. “I can tell you what I have learned, but you will be disapp
ointed.”
His two friends smiled at him and settled in to listen.
“The Song itself, in Dantogyptain, is like this:
Daen fendin lisoun mo dile hasa son
Admum ekosin dah stuta sai
Prein tons adhuton
Selim sabmen dah fortuta sai
Voira tomut ua drikontam deh rouleta sain
Oudra Dishelim ua airuh dadain
Ua Arushelim dasanim dera deh nanteta sain
Animaru bahen abahun daralma deh sain.”
Aeden tried to simply say the verses, as he would with poetry, but from the first word, it came out of his mouth in song. Even as he sang it, his eyes went wide and he felt as if he had lost control of his own body. It was just eight lines, but energy welled up in him.
“Wow, Aeden,” Raki said. “Your Dantogyptain has gotten much better than mine. That was amazing. You sounded as good as Jehira singing it.”
Aeden just nodded, still trying to catch his breath. It felt like he had run several miles. Fahtin eyed him suspiciously, but said nothing.
“Ok, that was the first part, two of the sections. There are fourteen more sections like that.”
“What does it mean?” Fahtin asked, looking back and forth between Aeden and Raki.
“Don’t look at me,” Raki said. “I can never pick the words out of the Song.”
“The meaning isn’t exact, remember,” Aeden said. “Things don’t translate over directly from Dantogyptain to Ruthrin. I am starting to understand why Jehira doesn’t like to tell people the translation. There can be three or four meanings for each word. You really have to feel the Song’s intent. Here’s the gist of it, though:
The last day dawning
A warning rings
For a future time
The world all ending
See, the pieces of the evil spread
Across Dizhelim from untold darkness
From Aruzhelim flood the evil creatures
Animaru vast, without number, ready for the kill.
“That’s what I know so far.” As he recited the words in the common tongue, a shiver ran up his back. Whether it was magic or the fact that the Song was a prophecy of death and destruction, he didn’t know.
“What is Aruzhelim and Animaru?” Raki asked. “Those don’t sound like Dantogyptain words.
“They’re not,” Aeden said. “I asked Jehira and she told me they were from a language even older. Aruzhelim means ‘un-world,’ or ‘dark world.’ Animaru are some sort of legendary creatures of darkness. Monsters. There are other words from that language mixed in, too. It’s hard to tell sometimes which are from what language.”
“So, the prophecy is about dark creatures coming to eat us?” Fahtin laughed. “It’s like the monster stories our parents used to tell us to make us do our chores.”
Raki laughed, too, though it didn’t seem natural. Or comfortable. Aeden didn’t even smile.
“Poke fun at it if you like,” he said. “This song holds power. I feel it when I sing it and even when I talk about what it means. It is no laughing matter. We have to hope that it won’t be fulfilled for many years yet, decades. I would as soon have it fulfilled when I’ve been dead a hundred years.”
“Oh, I was just teasing,” Fahtin said. “Don’t get too excited about it. I’m sorry if I offended you. It does sound fascinating. I can’t wait until you can translate more of it.”
Aeden nodded slowly. He wanted to know more about the prophecy as well, but a small part of him wanted nothing more than never to hear it again. The Song did things to him, made him feel energy he had never known. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one.
20
Aeden had heard many stories in his four years with the Gypta, and he filed the memories of them away so he could recall them in the future, either to tell them or to glean lessons from them. Many were nonsensical and trivial, humorous tales meant to entertain or evoke wonder in young listeners. Some, though, had hidden meanings, knowledge that, if pondered and ruminated upon, could be helpful in everyday life.
One night, the old fiddler, Aeden’s instructor, told a tale as old as the rocks around them. Charin Med had a raspy sort of voice when he spoke in normal conversation. When he sang, however, it transformed into something much different, a smooth baritone with not a hint of his usual scratchiness. It had always amazed Aeden to hear the man sing.
Charin took a drink of warm spiced wine and cleared his throat; it seemed they would be subjected to a voice that sounded like a bowl full of pebbles being shaken around. What came out was smooth and pleasant, though.
“I would tell of Mellaine, the goddess of all nature and of growing things,” the old man started. Aeden’s surprise at the pleasant speaking voice was not evident on any other face around him, but he knew Fahtin had seen his eyes go wide. She winked at him and smiled. The singing he had gotten used to, but this?
“Mellaine, with the green hair and matching eyes, the beautiful goddess in whose care are all the plants and animals of the world. Of her, and of Codaghan the god of war, and of the lowly man Trikus Phen.
“In a time long past, when gods walked Dizhelim and shared the world with men, the Voordim, a group of the most powerful of the gods and goddesses, held their court in Srantorna, the dwelling place of the gods, where no mortal has ever set foot.
“You have all heard of them. Of Surus, the king and chief among the gods; of Ianthra, her domain love and all things beautiful in the world; Mellaine, nature’s goddess; Codaghan, god of war; Arcus, the god of smithing and all clever devices; Aesculus, god of water; and the others. In this time all the great and mighty deeds were done, when magic coursed through the world, pulsed in the very air, and when miracles were commonplace. This was before the great war and the exodus of the gods.
“In this time, the mighty warrior Trikus Phen was making a name for himself. Of the nation of Salamus, he was the greatest among the heroes and warriors of the world. It was whispered that the man could challenge Codaghan himself, a whisper that displeased the god of war.”
Aeden leaned closer to the fiddler. Codaghan was precious to the Croagh. It was claimed that from Codaghan, all the people of the clans were descended. He was the only god worshipped by the clans, though the Croagh respected the god of death, Percipius, as well.
“In one particularly bloody battle, its name lost to the ages, Trikus Phen found himself alone against a mass of forces from the nation of Gentason. All his allies had been killed, and it looked to be the end of the armies of Salamus. But Phen would not give up. He straightened the shield on his arm, gripped his sword, and entered the fray as if rushing to a lover.
“The bodies of his enemies piled up before him, and he had to move to other parts of the battlefield to see over the tops of them. They came in droves, valiant men and strong, but none could stand before him. The odds against him, so very great at first, seemed to be evening out. Such a battle it was that Codaghan himself took interest and lounged upon a nearby mountain to watch, for what he loved more than anything else was conflict, battle, and death.
“And Trikus Phen fought on. All through the day, his arm guided his sword, slashing, stabbing, defeating foe after foe. When the light began to fade, and dusk fell over the land, Codaghan looked about and was surprised to see that few of the enemy army were still left alive. Phen had whittled their numbers down during the day to such an extent that it seemed he would actually win the battle single-handedly.
“But the enemy forces had held in reserve a handful of their greatest heroes, believing that if they struck when Trikus Phen was tired, they could defeat him. So it was that they mounted their last assault, a dozen of the remaining soldiers among the heroes of the army. As one they closed on Phen, meaning to overwhelm him.
“Such was the skill, strength, and valor of Trikus Phen that though the best warriors came against him in a rush, he withstood their assault. In the first crush of the enemy, he killed half the soldiers. In the next, he kille
d nearly all of the other half, leaving only the finest of their fighters. Back and forth they battled, moving around the bodies already dead, the heroes’ corpses adding to their number one at a time.
“It came to be that there were only two combatants left, Trikus Phen and Starin Kolus, the greatest of Gentason’s heroes. The foe would normally have been no match for Phen, but he had been fighting all day, killing men by the score, and he was tiring. The two danced around the battlefield, then to as-yet untouched areas. Neither could strike a killing blow, though several smaller wounds were traded.
“Codaghan was fully absorbed in the melee, licking his lips and seeing nothing else but the struggle between the two. When the end came, he exulted in the finest battle he had ever witnessed by human men.
“Trikus Phen slipped on a stone slick with his own blood and looked to be falling toward the ground. His foe, taking the opportunity, lunged in with what would be a killing blow. But somehow, the hero of Salamus twisted, barely evading the sword coming at him. In so doing, his own sword lashed out and opened the arm of the other man, causing his enemy’s weapon to fall from his useless arm.
“A quick kick to the other arm dislodged Starin Kolus’s shield, and Trikus Phen stood over his foe, sword point at his throat. They froze there for several seconds, Starin expecting the sword to open his throat as it had his arm, and Phen looking down upon his defeated opponent. Codaghan leaned toward the men, wanting to see clearly the ending of this epic battle.
“‘Go,’ Trikus Phen said, lifting his sword from the other man’s neck. ‘Go bind up your wounds and heal. You have fought valiantly today and I am tired of the killing. Your nation has no army. The battle is done.’
“His foe, shocked at the hero’s mercy, got to his knees and kissed the blood-spattered boots Trikus wore. ‘You have shown me mercy when I would not have done the same. You honor me more even than death in battle. I would hope that I too could show kindness in such a situation, but if we meet again and I am victorious, I do not know if I could manage it.’
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