Blessings and Trials (Exiles and Sojourners Book 1)

by Thomas Davidsmeier

  “I am Jarl Bjorn Flametooth of Her Ladyship’s Skullguards, and I am here to collect her rightful tribute as sovereign of the Icemuth Valley. She will take her traditional one freeman youth for each sixty-six people, including thralls.” The jarl was a young man who held his head up proudly and pronounced his own name with a bit too much emphasis.

  The farmer who had been negotiating with Lythia stepped forward.

  “You fellas might be a little lost. That there,” he jerked his thumb at the river behind him, “Is the Silverling River, not the Icemuth.”

  “My troop and my finger,” the jarl took off his glove and held his index finger up in front of his chin, “Both say that since the Silverling runs into the Icemuth, that makes this part of the Icemuth Valley.”

  The farmer scrunched up his forehead in furious confusion at what seemed to be the jarl mocking him. “I’ll take that finger of yours and …”

  The farmer did not finish. Jarl Bjorn Flametooth inhaled deeply and blew out a long breath over his finger. As the air passed over the tip of his finger, it became a blast of flames that enveloped the angry farmer.

  The man’s screams and the smell of burning hair and clothes filled the open air between the market stalls. As he collapsed in a heap on the packed earth, a little form darted out from the crowd and ran to the watering trough.

  Ingrid had pulled herself away from her mother. She stuck one hand in the water of the trough and stretched out the other toward the burning man. Her Blessing had only manifested half a year before, but this task required little skill or delicacy. She pulled the water up and sprayed it all over the farmer, dousing the flames. Even as his screams turned to moans, no one moved.

  “My, my, my, what do we have here?” The jarl’s eyes were glittering like a wolf circling a campfire. “A little diamond in the rough? I did not know a little village out in the Backwaters could have a Gifted One. The Pale Lady’s tributes are supposed to be between thirteen and sixteen summers, but for a little waterwright in training, we can make an exception. Perhaps even two or three for one?” The jarl looked up from Ingrid’s pale, terrified face, searching for someone to bargain with.

  Svena and Lythia both leapt between Ingrid and the flamewright. Svena tugged Ingrid back toward the crowd. Lythia stood her ground and reached over to the stone water trough. The trough was some of her own earlier stoneshaping work, and she readied herself to reuse the stone for less peaceful purposes. She had never fought another Blessed, and this man was obviously used to killing. Lythia knew she was at a decided disadvantage.

  “What a day of surprises! A southerner in the Northlands, too.” The jarl had a maniacal grin on his face, teeth bared.

  Lythia kept her face placid as she quietly said, “She’s not for trade or sale or any other such transaction. She belongs to the Lord and Savior of all, not you or any mortal man.”

  “Dear daughter of Soru, I think my finger might have something to say about that,” snickered the jarl as he raised his hand to his mouth again. But as he inhaled, it turned from a deep breath to a deep throated howl of pain.

  In front of his face, the flamewright’s finger had suddenly bent crooked in three different wrong directions. His hand flew out to one side and then back across his own face. His own hand, broken finger and all, slammed him in the cheek and slapped his head to the side with the force of a punch.

  Wyddol Tollonyn, Gwyndolyn’s father, came out from between two market stalls. His arm was extended in front of him and his fist was closed tight as if it was grasping something like another person’s finger. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear what your finger said over the sounds of you crying like a baby…”

  The faces of the soldiers in the shield wall behind their jarl looked suddenly confused. This was not how these little visits to town normally went. Sure, the first part where their boss picked a fight and burnt a man alive, that was normal. Everything from that point on had been veering further and further off course. They were frozen in confusion, not sure what to do. Villagers were already slipping out of the marketplace.

  The jarl gathered his wits about him and reached out his undamaged hand toward Wyddol. A ball of roiling flames formed in the jarl’s palm, but just as he launched them at his enemy, Wyddol flicked his own wrist in a slapping motion. The jarl’s hand leapt upward and the ball of fire when harmlessly over the rooftops.

  “What are you waiting for?” the jarl roar at his men as he formed another fireball in his palm. “Charge him!”

  This time, the flick of Wyddol’s wrist sent the fireball right at one of the Skullguards, lighting him afire. Still, nine men with sharp pointy things were headed across the quickly emptying market. “This reminds me of the Pillar of Heaven back before I became a Sojourner,” sighed the aetherial. “It was a lot easier to fight groups when I didn’t mind killing a few.”

  Wyddol grabbed air with his hand and yanked as he shoved over with his other. The soldier at the point of the charging vee tumbled over his own feet sideways bringing down three others. A quick repetition of the motion on the other side, and four more warriors were falling to the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, Wyddol saw that the flamewright had recovered enough to be flinging another fireball.

  Almost instinctually, Wyddol sent out a spherical shell of force centered on himself to deflect the incoming missile. It took up a lot of his strength, but it had the double benefit of knocking down both the last standing Skullguard and his flamewright jarl. Without a second thought, Wyddol took advantage and leapt impossibly high into the air, using his Blessing to take off and land, he easily jumped over one of the houses that bordered the marketplace.

  Jarl Bjorn Flametooth was left to try to set his troop and his finger straight.

  Anya sighed as she slid the sheets of vellum back into the sheath. “Nope, it didn’t say who helped the farmer to safety. I guess it could have been other villagers. Still, I don’t understand why the villagers turned on the Sojourners. And, why is the village almost all Sojourner now if they were so against Sojourners then?”

  After having her newest historical theory dashed to bits, Anya set about putting away her library books. She deftly glided out onto the walkway with a little girl’s grace. She was not worried about the eight-foot drop to the hard stone floor below. Anya never fell. Instead, she was trying to make sure she was putting the scrolls back in the right places. Her adopted father was a stickler for his particular system of organization.

  She slid the fat Herbal Extractives and the Healing Arts, Part 1 into the box that held the numerous scrolls about medicine. Next, the slim one entitled The Republic of Kaladar, A History went into the almost as full box set aside for history of the western continent. Finally, the medium-sized one with no title went into the rather sparse collection on the culinary arts. Anya thought to herself as she went back around the walkway and down to the lower level, If it weren’t for the disciples of that rotund Exile they call the Lord of the Feast, no one would be writing about how to cook anything. Their recipes always have such weird ingredients, but they still give me good ideas.

  Those charges successfully put in their places, she went to a gap in the books on one of the shelves. There, she slid in the tome she had been carrying. It was Gwyndolyn’s book about bees. One of the illustrations, the five-times life-sized diagram of a bee, had been ruined long ago by some sort of staining yellow substance. Anya had no idea how it had happened, but she guessed it had been some lout eating or drinking while they read it. The idea of an abomination squished by a frying pan was pretty close to the last thing she would have guessed.

  Anya’s elderly adoptive father, Gilm, had assigned her the job of recreating the illustration. She was fairly certain that he had given her the task because it had required her to use both of her Blessings at once. She had shaped and held a magnifying lens of water while creating a flame to illuminate her deceased bee subject. The dead bee had made her uncomfortable. Anya viscerally abhorred death, the dead, and killing. Still, sh
e had been forced to use both her Blessings while sitting inches away from a dead thing. All the while, she had needed to draw every detail perfectly. Gilm as a taskmaster occasionally approached the maniacal.

  After putting the bee book back, Anya started looking for a book Gilm had assigned to her brother as lesson work. She hunted for a little while along the lower shelves, playing with the end of her long braid absentmindedly. She had first looked where the book should have been, based on its title. She could not find it.

  I can’t believe this. Where could it be? Gilm never has any book out of place... Anya was getting worried. She was not sure if it would be her or her brother who would get in trouble if he could not complete his assignment because she could not find the book.

  “Actually, both of us knowing Gilm,” sighed Anya as she puffed a strand of hair out of her face.

  Remembering where she had originally found the meeting notes of the Elders when she was younger, she bent down to the bottom shelf. She started pulling out tomes from that shelf carefully. It was a shelf full of grammar books for languages she did not know. She had no luck, but she moved on to the other least-used shelf in the library. It was full of big, fat legal books with different cities and principalities embossed on their dusty spines. Just like with the grammar books, neither Anya nor her brother would have ever touched them. Sure enough, the little book she had been hunting was back behind them just like the meeting notes had been hidden.

  The little Twice Blessed girl pulled a small leather bound folio out into the light of the lantern on the ceiling. “Hmmm, so you were hiding from me, huh?” she asked it as if it could talk. She wrestled the legal books back into place and stood up nimbly.

  Setting the folio down next to a similarly sized copper plate on the oak table, she retrieved the lantern for her brother. Not everyone could make their own light like she could. The battered old lantern had shutters, but she had never needed to close them. The St. Petros Stone inside could never be blown out by the wind, or extinguished any other way that she knew of. It was just another one of the many little treasures that she lived with. She tried to be appropriately thankful by whispering a prayer to the Son who died and rose again. After all, the Son gave St. Petros the ability to make those forever-glowing stones. The little girl scooped up the miraculous lantern, the folio, and the copper plate in her arms.

  Even with her new awkward load, she was quick up the steps and back to the meeting hall. At least I’m done with my flames for now, thought Anya with relief. Still hefting and arranging things, she headed through the doorway and up the now empty steps that had been barricaded seventy years ago to keep out spideresses and Exiles. Cresting the last stairs, Anya paused. She carefully wrapped the tail of her cloak around the lantern.

  Anya waited eagerly for nearly a minute for her eyes to adjust to the dark, then she walked through a doorway. Anya craned her neck and tipped her head as far back as she could. She looked straight up as she slowly crossed the single large room that was the base of the old tower. The interior of the building above her was ringed with jutting timbers and crumbling boards. They had once made the higher floors of the structure, but the heart of the tower was hollow now. There was a jagged bite of starry sky hanging high in the center. Anya was almost slowed to a stop by the beauty of it, but she kept herself moving. She pushed open the door that led outside. Even before she stepped out into the night, she could hear a few plaintive sheep bleating.

  Pyter looked up at his little sister as she came out of the tower. “What took you so long? I can’t eat grass like these fluffy ones, you know.”

  “Why not? You’re fluffy enough.” she giggled at her own joke, but her older brother did not. He was rather sensitive about his dark, curly brown hair, and dark complexion.

  His hair was similar to the Sons of Soru while his complexion was more like the Sons of Pendan. That made Pyter feel like the black sheep of a village where most of the people were fair-featured descendents of Borea. The other village boys made the same joke often enough that it was a tender spot for him. It didn’t help Pyter to fit in that he was Twice Blessed like his sister. Both orphans were truly strangers in a strange land.

  Old Gilm had often told them, “God must have important things planned for you two, putting two Twice Blessed in the very same family.” It was beyond unheard of. Gilm never told them that being born out on the frontier, surrounded by wilderness, had kept them from being kidnapped and sold to the highest bidder. Powerful men and Exiles would go to almost any lengths to secure the services of normal Blesseds. Twice Blesseds were pearls without price.

  “Alright, I’m sorry. I’ve brought some bread from this morning and even some butter, but no jam.” Anya thought about sharing the whole story, But he probably doesn’t want to hear about bartering my extra bread for some butter, and then finding out Brunhild only wanted silver for her jam. She knew Pyter wasn’t much for those sorts of things. Old Gilm, on the other hand, would have loved to hear the story. Gilm was always interested in Anya’s conversations with the townsfolk. He was the pastor of the village chapel, interested in everyone, especially new families. The new folks that came last week are why Brunhild is holding out for silver now. She knows they’ve got money and not many supplies.

  “I won’t complain, I’m just hungry!” A broad smile graced Pyter’s square face.

  Anya couldn’t help but smile back. Her narrow features were as different from Pyter’s as they could be. They were brother and sister by blood, but no one would have guessed that by looking. Their four grandparents had been descended from four different Sons of Enoch. Apart from a few offspring from “arranged” marriages coerced by rulers and Exiles trying to produce Blesseds, it was a very uncommon sort of family tree.

  Scrambling down the old stone steps, Anya brought her stuffed satchel and the wrapped lantern down to Pyter. Her brother was reclining against the foot of the tower, legs outstretched. As Anya unwrapped the lantern, she saw that her brother had his knife and a whetstone in his lap. Instead of asking about it, she cheerily said, “I made enough for both you and Ulric, because I hadn’t heard about his father yet.”

  “Not to worry, I won’t let any go to waste, no matter how much you brought. I’m as hungry as a w-o-l-f,” spelled out the older boy.

  Anya’s twelve-year-old face took on a look peculiar to that age. It was the one where the twelve-year-old shows plainly by the arrangement of their eyebrows and open mouth that they believe the person speaking is unspeakably insane.

  “I don’t want to say it out loud. I might scare them,” grinned the boy as he jerked his thumb over toward the pens of sheep, safely confined by the intact parts of the keep’s outer walls.

  Anya managed a little chortle at her older brother’s silliness. Other concerns weighed on her mind. “Did Ulric or the watchman say anything about his father?”

  “Food first, then talk,” grunted Pyter patting his stomach..

  Anya neatly arranged Pyter’s meal. She regretted not having a vase with fresh spring flowers. The neat arrangement lasted no more than a minute. Pyter thanked her, thanked the Lord, thanked the Lord for her, and ravenously tore apart a long loaf of bread. Crumbs flew. He dipped a pointed hunk of crust into the clay jar of butter.

  Mouth full, he finally explained, “The watchman said they should be alright. Ulric and his family and everyone I mean.” Pyter paused for chewing and gulped. “The watchman who came to fetch Ulric, I think he was Gustav Olafson, said that Ulric’s father was only wounded in the arm and shoulder. Nothing our Old Gilm won’t be able to knit back together. But, they needed Ulric the Younger for the chores until Ulric the Elder is well enough to get back to work. Gilm’s awfully... nice, I guess... to be making a visit all the way out so close to the forest.” Pyter wolfed down more bread and butter.

  “Speaking of how nice the Old Man is,” replied Anya, “He left something for you.”

  Fishing in her satchel dramatically, she tried to let the tension build. “An assign
ment,” she announced anticlimactically, as she found what she was looking for. “You’re supposed to do it while I’m up on top the tower doing my astronomy observations.”

  “I’ll try.” Her brother sounded doubtful. “But, I”m not taking my eyes off of you while you’re up there. Remember last month?”

  “I don’t fall. Despite what that incident looked like, I had everything under control.” Anya pulled the book and copper plate out of her satchel and handed them to her brother. “Gilm wants you to start memorizing the third chapter from this one. I’ve never looked at it before, and I thought I’d at least paged through all the books in our library. I had to go hunting for it behind a bunch of those legal books on the bottom shelf just to find it. Oh, and that reminds me, that idea I had about the farmer who got burned was wrong. Or, at least, I couldn’t find anything one way or the other in the Meeting Notes.”

  Pyter tapped his butter-covered chin with a finger, “That reminds me, I’m going to visit my favorite stone tomorrow. I’ll look for clues again.”

  “You’re just going to watch that battle again. How can you watch all that killing?” Anya did not even attempt to hide the revulsion in her voice.

  “Hey, it’s the Lord’s Servants doing it, so you know it is right.” Pyter looked serious.

  Anya shivered and turned her hand to the side. “I’m just glad I can’t see it.”

  “Well, you’re missing out on the Faithful Servants. They are amazing, even if they are being violent,” replied Pyter.

  “Speaking of violence, I’m guessing you’re going to enjoy your assignment.” Anya pointed at the book she had handed him.

  Pyter opened the little tome. In Ancient Pyter read off the first page of vellum, “The Doctrine of Just War Against Exiles and Abominations and Between Men.” He did not bother to translate, both he and Anya had been studying Ancient since they were small.