From Across the Clouded Range

by H. Nathan Wilcox

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  Nyel ut Torswauk was teaching her granddaughters to read. Fourteen girls aged five to fifteen sat on cushions around her. The fifteenth and youngest was on her lap, nestled close, a book spread across her lap. The room’s log shutters were open, but it was never really hot in the Fells, and the breeze this day seemed to hold none of the summer’s warmth. The girl in her lap shivered. A black fly landed on her bare arm. She slapped it away with a squeal – the biting flies of summer were almost worse than the biting winds of winter. The other girls looked at the windows, at the flies buzzing around them, then at their grandmother, but Nyel did not relent. The air smelled fresh, of wildflowers and grass. Goose bumps and bites were a small price to smell something other than wood smoke, fur, and leather.

  Despite that diversion, despite the sweet child in her lap, Nyel could not escape her dark thoughts, could not stop worrying about the days to come. There was a new Emperor on the Throne of Dawn, one who was not blind to the world, one with ambitions and a great store a wealth. Already he had sent emissaries to the lodge at Pada Por and the two in Okotok, had offered their men the gold that had been sitting stagnant in his palace for centuries. Soon emissaries from Liandria or Pindar would respond. Eventually, one would arrive here.

  And the men would not hesitate to take their gold. After a generation of peace, of raising animals and crafting metals, the men were aching for war. Lodges would sell themselves gladly to the outsiders. Morg would fight Morg, and twenty years of peace would be shattered. Her sons would die, her daughters would be widowed, and no amount of gold would bring them back or quench their tears. And, for all her power, Nyel could do nothing about it. War was the purview of men. If every man in the Fells suddenly marched off to fight the Maelstrom itself, she could do nothing but pray for their return. It was the curse of a mercenary people, that their women must forever watch their men march away and wonder when they will fail to return.Nyel drew a deep breath to ease her spiraling emotions. Something wasn’t right. She smelled a man, and a ripe one at that. She glanced at the windows, but they were in the carved-out top of the great hill, in the highest room of the lodge. Outside was a fifty foot drop to the roof below. The smell had to be coming from within the lodge. But no man would dare bring his scent into her quarters. Then, in the next room, one of her sons announced the arrival of a runner. With the release of a bolt, her daughter opened the top of the door, and a strange man spoke. With an accent. He subjugated himself, begged forgiveness for entering their lodge. From a different lodge!

  That was as much as Nyel needed to know. She lifted the child from her lap and crawled to the small, circular hole that separated the common area from the women’s quarters. The passage was designed to keep men out, and it almost had the same effect on the aging Nyel. She tucked her shoulders and climbed down the ladder to the meeting room. The runner’s smell grew stronger as she entered. She fought the desire to cover her nose against the unaccustomed invasion as she eyed the sweat-soaked uhrm. Only his head and shoulders shown through the top third of the door – the bottom remained barred – framed by the faces of four of her sons. His head was cast down as was appropriate in the presence of a mother. Sweat streamed from his damp hair, ran down his face and soaked into his thick, black beard. The dark hair and accent suggested that he was from the west, but Nyel only confirmed it when she found the tattoo on his neck. The mountain with a ring around its top marked him as a son of Stermspek Lodge, the farthest west of all Morg lodges. He must have run for weeks through wild terrain to deliver his message. And then to come here himself, still sweating and winded. . . .

  Nyel drew a breath to calm her pounding heart. Her long, grey hair hung down her back in a great braid. Her simple tan dress was unadorned, tied at her sturdy hips by a leather cord. Only a diamond-encrusted pendant in the shape of the great bear revealed her position. She rose to her full height and threw back her shoulders, left no doubt as to her importance, to the power she held over these men. The Mother of Torswauk lodge, Nyel was, without doubt, the most powerful woman in the Fells. Within this lodge, her word was law. And Torswauk was the oldest, largest, richest, and most powerful of the Morg lodges. It alone held fully a quarter of all Morg daughters in a single, sprawling building that stretched over acres of land in the center of Morgvel – a word outsiders put on their maps to fulfill their need to fit Morg customs into their own definitions.

  No Morg would think of Morgvel as a single place. Four Morg lodges were located in the surrounding hills, but each lodge was its own, independent, self-contained city. Built into the hills and extending through heavy wooden structures, a lodge included everything its residents needed: storage rooms, animal stalls, smithies, shops, common kitchens and dining areas. A woman could live her entire life without ever leaving the halls of her lodge. And women ruled the lodge. Men had their own bunk rooms, dining areas, entertainments, and even corridors. They entered the women’s areas only by invitation, and the Mother could expel them into the cold for the smallest infractions.

  “Great Mother,” the uhrm said when Nyel approached. “I have run for half a moon cycle from Stermspek with a message from my Mother for you alone.”

  “What is it child?” Nyel tried to keep her voice strong though she was nearly breathless.

  “My Mother says, ‘The lost sons have returned. They lead an army and have allied themselves as before to chaos.’”

  Nyel choked on her own breath, nearly collapsed as her legs turned weak. A daughter came to help, caught her arm, and held her as she coughed. Her sons grumbled around the messenger. The lost sons returned and with them the chaos that led them away. Thus the times go from dim to darkest black. “Thank you, gar Stermspek,” she croaked when she had recovered enough breath to speak. “Your message is received. My sons will see that you are fed and given the chance to recover from your journey.” The uhrm responded with a nod and allowed two of the men to lead him away. Two others remained before the door, Nyel’s two oldest sons, the husbands of her first and second daughters.

  She found the eyes of her oldest son. “Riju, send runners to the other lodges. The Thull will meet as soon as a quorum can be assembled.”

  “Yes, Mother,” the big man replied. “And Father?”

  Nyel drew a breath but did not get the chance to use it.

  “I’m here!” Ithar ral Torswauk bellowed. His face appeared a heartbeat later, one remaining eye leering through the top of the door. The slash that had taken his eye was remembered by a scar that ran from the line of his silver hair across his deformed nose and split lip to his jaw. Nyel hated him for that scar, for selling himself and her sons to the foolish outsider’s war that had taken his face and far too many of them. She had not allowed him to her bed since. She sneered at his presence now. “This is not your business, Wife. Your Thull has no say. And do not think to interfere. The Callik will decide how to meet the lost sons.” He turned to look at his sons. “Why are you standing around the women’s room like boys in heat? War is coming. We must prepare for a return to glory, for the only life a man need know.”

  “This is my lodge!” Nyel yelled. “Do not think to tell me my place or to order my sons.” She closed on the door, eyes on fire. Her sons were smart enough to back away. Her husband was not. “The lost sons have not crossed into our lands. They have not threatened a lodge or sent emissaries to negotiate our hire. Until one of those things occur, it is you that has no say. The Thull will meet, and we will determine how to approach the lost sons. And until such time as they bring war upon themselves, you and your Callik will stay out of it, or you will sleep with the trees. Do you understand?”

  Ithar’s face screwed up in frustration. His fists balled, but he bit back his anger. He turned and stomped down the hall, muttering to himself about his wife’s cold bed and dried up femininity. Nyel felt sorry for whomever of her widowed nieces was likely to take him into her
bed this night.

  When her husband was gone, she looked back to her first son. He had backed away from the door and watched Ithar’s back warily. “You heard me, Riju,” she commanded. “Send runners. Assemble the Thull. And tell me if your father tries again to outstep his bounds.”

  Riju bowed the looked to his brother. Nyel had just placed him between Ithar’s fire and her cold command. It was as welcome a location as a lump of iron caught between the forge and the hammer. “Yes, Mother,” he eventually replied then accompanied his brother down the hall.

  Nyel turned back to find three of her daughters standing around her. They looked frightened. “Can it be true, Mother?” the youngest asked. “The lost sons are just a legend.”

  “There are no legends daughter, just forgotten truths.” Nyel sighed, thought about herself at that age, the way she had felt as her husband marched to war for a chest of gold. “You should hold your husbands close this night. Cherish them while you can. Ask them to give you another daughter. It may be the last chance you have.”

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  Teros Maciam struggled to maintain his meditation, to keep his emotions suppressed, his mind open to the Order. He was an administrator, not a weaver, but he had enough of the talent to know how the pattern was shaping around him, to see the events that would soon engulf him. And despite generations of preparation, he did not feel ready to face what would soon arrive.

  The tentative knock at his chamber door gave him the needed excuse to break his pointless meditation. “Enter,” he said, voice little more than a breath.

  The door to his chambers swung slowly open. “I am sorry to interrupt your meditation, your Grace, but you asked me to bring any news of Warlord Rammeriz.” An old man in a brown robe stepped through the door, head down, hands buried in his sleeves.

  “The news?”

  “Our brothers report that he escaped last night. The new Emperor,” the acolyte stopped at the rise of the Xi Valati’s eyebrow. “I apologize, the brother of the former Emperor, Nabim az’ Pmalatir . . . .”

  “Has not been anointed?”

  “No, your. . . .”

  “Then he is not the Emperor, and we will not pretend that he is.”

  “Yes, your Grace. Again, my apologies, Nabim an’ Pmalatir has made no statement other than to postpone the trial, but our brothers assure me Rammeriz has escaped, is even now leaving the city and heading north.”

  “Calm yourself, brother,” the Xi Valati sighed. “The tapestry is very delicate and must not be disturbed. Is all as it should be in the Hall of Understanding?”

  “It is as you ordered. Silence, study, meditation. Oneness with the Order.”

  The Xi Valati sighed long and slow, brought his eyes to those of the man who had been his secretary from the time the Order had chosen him to lead Its church. “The last sign has come, Marcum. The end is upon us. Outsiders will soon enter our sanctuary. No guard, no acolyte, no counselor will do anything to impede them. You and all who follow the Order must maintain your meditation even in the face of death. We are now disciples of Valatarian in the truest possible sense.” Marcum gulped noticeably. Sweat ran down his bald head, formed a bead on the end of his nose, dripped to the floor. Teros drew a shaking breath. “I will await them under the dome. Have The Book brought there immediately. And the boy I told you about as well.”

  Marcum nodded, licked his lips. Teros could feel the emotion radiating from him, rippling through the tapestry, distorting the pattern that had been so carefully woven. “Calm yourself, my friend. The pattern has been set. We must simply play out our strands, make them bold and bright so that they can mark the way for those who will take our places, those who will carry the pattern when our strands have ended.”

  The Xi Valati rose from his mat and walked to the door. In the distance, thunder rumbled. The storm has arrived, he thought. Thus far the pattern has held, but greater tests remain. And I can only do my small part and hope that others will do the same, that the tapestry we have woven will not come undone at any of a thousand possible points. It all seemed too much to hope, but Teros sighed and went to perform his final weavings, to pull the weft one final time.

  The End Book 1

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  To learn more about H. Nathan Wilcox, visit me at hnathanwilcox.com.

  Thank you for reading.