Blessings and Trials (Exiles and Sojourners Book 1)

by Thomas Davidsmeier

  He was very careful not to get any butter on the book. Both young people certainly knew how valuable their trove of books were, even the legal and grammar ones. To Pyter and Anya, the library was like a treasure house buried under a beaten-up old stone tower.

  He flipped to the third chapter and began reading in the Ancient tongue, “And I saw returning from Heaven the flame that would set the whole world alight. It was not the Light of the World, but instead a spark from the dawn of the world.” He looked up at his sister inquisitively, “That’s a quote from St. Jonas’s Apocalypto. I guess that makes some sense given the topic. Gilm is probably assigning this to me because of some questions I was asking him, about the differences between the Savages and the Wildmen. Or, maybe it is just for practice with the Ancient. It isn’t the typical thing Father would assign. Do you know if I am learning this for practice with Ancient, or is there something else in there I’m supposed to get out of it?”

  “I’m not sure. You know how Gilm is.” Here Anya waved her hands around in the air, trying to mimic him. Gilm waved his hands as he bounced from subject to subject and thought to thought, like a bee dancing between flowers. “He didn’t take much time for instructions when the watchman came. I thought everyone was expecting something like this when Ulric the Elder built that farm out there. But, Gilm looked surprised when he found out how Ulric had been attacked. Maybe it was because it was in broad daylight.”

  “Ummhmm,” mumbled Pyter through another mouthful of bread and butter.

  Anya went on, “I thought I’d get to go with him to practice healing like always. But, I guess he thought it was more important for me to come here.”

  Swallowing his large last bite, Pyter replied, “While my dinner is one of the more important concerns, as I am sure you know, that’s only part of it. I’m sure Gilm didn’t want you going out so close to the forest’s edge when there was no real need.”

  Anya took the cloth bundle and stuffed it into her satchel to clean up later. “I don’t see what the big deal is. The Savages wouldn’t bother us, certainly not Gilm. They know better by now, don’t they?”

  “Who knows what they know? It’s one thing to take the risk if you’ve got to do it like he does; it’s another thing if you’re just going along sightseeing. Everybody said that Ulric’s father was crazy for trying to farm so close to the forest. One man in a field by himself, with a big delicious horse strapped to a heavy thing to slow it down. That is awfully inviting. An old man and a little girl walking along the wagon trail would be tempting too. We both know that it isn’t like the two of you would have any problem taking care of them, it would just be unnecessarily dangerous. What if they chucked some spears at you before you spotted them? Besides, you would never use your Blessings to kill something, would you? Not a spider or a mouse or a fly or anything? You’d just slow Gilm down.”

  Anya rolled her shoulders back uncomfortably at the questions. She tried to put up a good show. “Mice are cute! I might roast some rats if Gilm made me. He told me they carry the mikros that cause so many diseases. But not mice, you can cuddle them.”

  Still, Pyter knew that killing, death, and dead things were her greatest fears. She could barely handle being near the departed at the occasional funerals that Gilm officiated. He just stared at her flatly.

  Anya tried to justify herself, “Besides, the Lord didn’t bless me this way so I could destroy parts of His creation.”

  “Don’t be so sure of that,” came Pyter’s dark reply. He had picked up his knife and whetstone again. “Some parts of this world need destroying.”

  Anya slung her astronomy text across her back on a book strap and started up the side of the tower. She tried free climbing the crumbly old tower when she was younger, but she’d never gotten more than halfway up it. Then, Pyter had carved stone rungs with his stonewright Blessing. He put them all the way up to a nice perch at the very top. Gilm was always giving them challenges using their Blessings. They did not know Gilm was training their abilities far more intensively at earlier ages than most Blesseds.

  If Anya had been worried about falling as she scampered up the building’s old wall—which she most certainly was not—she would have been reassured by the fact that Pyter was watching her every move from down below. Instead of reassured, she was a little bothered. Her brother moved around the base of the tower, pacing back and forth, more like the wolf he did not want to mention than a shepherd.

  Up above, Anya’s pulse quickened from the exertion of the climb. The night was beautifully clear. She loved to climb, and astronomy was her favorite thing to study. She wondered to herself, Maybe astronomy is my favorite because I get to climb this tower... No, there are other reasons too.

  Trees, rocks, or towers, it did not matter. If Anya could get up higher, closer to the sky, she would. She felt closer to Heaven when she had made it to the top of a tree. Here on the side of the tower, the spring wind was the breath of Heaven itself. It softly ruffled her red cloak and tossed around the stray hairs that had escaped her braid. She went on, hand over hand, up and up. All too quickly for her taste despite tired muscles, she reached the top of the old tower.

  There was a small stone platform there. It was only a few paces across, tucked up next to the side of the tower where the handholds were. What was left of the rest of the tower top was made up of old, wind-worn wood. A hole had been badly burnt in the center seventy years ago by the Eater of the Unwanted’s flames. This neat little platform that Anya was climbing onto had not been there then. It was a very new addition by Pyter. It was supposed to give the stargazer a horizon to horizon view and a steady place to stand without fear of her footing crumbling out from under her.

  Anya breathed deeply, enjoying the calm and the sky. Then she stepped halfway across the little space over to the rough, weatherproof storage box that doubled as a place to sit. She slung her satchel down carefully against the side of the box. Flipping the clasps and opening the box, she retrieved an odd collection of brass rods and loops. Some of the rods made a tripod and one was specially designed for waterwrights to construct lenses on. Before closing the box, Anya took out a wooden ladle as well.

  A tiny rain barrel sat next to one of the ruined walls on a little ledge beneath the level of the platform. The whole platform had a gentle slope, to funnel rainwater into the barrel, a very thoughtful feature Pyter had put into his design to save Anya from carrying water up on her climbs. She was quite grateful for it. The little astronomer ladled out rainwater into two bowls on the special rod, and then took the metal contraption to her seat atop the box.

  Concentrating, Anya carefully reached out to the waters in the first bowl on the far end of the rod. Dipping her finger into the water, she took control of its shape. Gently pushing and pulling, she tugged the water up to fill a vertical circle of metal and make a lens. Leaving a bit of her attention focused to keep that water in shape, she turned her touch and mind to the other bowl. She coaxed the water there to glide up a twisting pin, trickling uphill, and into a smaller metal circle. There, she shaped it into another lens.

  It had taken Anya a long time to learn to keep two different shapes of water together and under such precise control at the same time. She didn’t know that it took many waterwrights well into their adult years to learn this delicate skill. Gilm was Blessed with water shaping as well, and his help had made it much easier for Anya to learn. In fact, this was Gilm’s brass farseeing rod that she was using atop the tower tonight. Setting the farseeing rod atop the brass tripod, Anya turned it toward the base of the tower first.

  She saw the courtyard with its sheep pen and broken stone walls, and of course her brother, with the copper plate and book open on his lap now. Occasionally, he would look up at her. Everything looked as it should through a farseeing rod, upside down and backward. Anya had been using the rod long enough that she was used to the distortions.

  Next, she looked over the wall and down the slope, to the stone-walled part of the village where Litharu
s, Ingrid, and Gwyndolyn had lived over seventy years ago. It was on this side of the river, so she didn’t need to adjust the lenses much. She looked over the well-maintained stone walls to the wooden chapel on the little square where she lived. Anya scanned from the chapel along the only pathway wide enough for a cart in the walled village to the huge doors of the gate. Then she cast her gaze along the seamless stoneshaped bridge over the Silverling River that Litharus’s mother had once helped repair. On the other bank sprawled the rest of the village of Arhaus.

  Unlike the cramped and orderly buildings inside the stone walls, the longhouses on the far bank were scattered about with one central open space that became the market once a week. It was the same market place where Ingrid had doused the farmer who was burnt by Bjorn Flametooth.

  Anya had many friends among the farmers’ families in the far village. She checked in on a few of their farms and longhouses to the north and east of the bridge. The further she looked away from the bridge, the more homesteads had walls of sharpened wooden stakes enclosing their farmyards. There were hundreds of families living in and around Arhaus now. When her adopted father had been born in the village, almost seventy years ago, fewer than two hundred people lived there.

  The flatlands north and east were well-populated, but the west was a different story. To the west of Arhaus was an old forest that stretched over rougher country to the far-off White Mountains. With the farseeing rod, on clear days Anya could just barely see some of those towering mountains peeking over the horizon some fifty leagues to the northwest. The old forest was home to the human-bodied but soulless Savages of Gaia the Exile Earth Mother. Anya did not know the origins of the Savages; they were always spoken of in hushed tones by grown-ups.

  The Savages had already been there when Gilm was born, and they had been causing trouble for the village that entire time. Anya knew she could help a little in that struggle against the Savages. She always turned her lenses to the Druspagos, a huge rocky hill that rose out of the forest to cut a dark shape on the far horizon. On nights before the Savages were particularly active, that hilltop and its crowning oaks would often be lit with eerie, unnatural green glows.

  The village was not defenseless against either the Savages or even the occasional raids from the Wildmen to the southeast. They had three stone watchtowers with stables to the west, north, and east. The men took turns manning these posts as the Watch. If Anya saw those green glows on the Druspagos, the Watch would be informed, then they would double their heavily armed patrols.

  Anya took her bearings off of these three watchtowers now. Tugging at the disks of water with her mind, she made one fatter and the other thinner. The rings of metal made all the difference in the world. Making water stand up on its own was exhausting. With it clinging to the metal, it was so much easier. She viewed the western tower first, as it was closest, then to the north and then to the east. The distances were only slightly different, but pulling the images into tight focus helped Anya practice on familiar sights. Looking at the heavens could be much more confusing.

  The water and the view it afforded her rippled a little as she made her adjustments and swung the farseeing rod back to the west. Soon, a distant farm came into focus. It was beyond the western watchtower, and closer to the forest than any other farm. She tightened the little knob at the apex of the tripod, pinching the farseeing rod in place at just the right inclination.

  The Ulric farm had three buildings that were very close together. A high, wooden palisade connected their outside walls. Anya could see the building shapes outlined with moonlight and the dim flicker of firelight inside the palisade, probably from a door or window. The buildings had no doors or windows facing the outside of the enclosure.

  Ulric the Elder built his farm with defense in mind. It was on the crest of the last ridge before the forest. This eliminated a good bit of Anya’s height advantage from the top of the tower, even though the tall tower was perched atop a hill itself. Try as she might, she could not see much of anything inside the palisade. She peered into the farmyard hoping to catch a glimpse of her father and make sure everything was alright. She only had a good view of the barn, and there was no light or activity in it this late.

  “At least everything is still standing. If the Savages tried anything tonight, Gilm would take care of them,” Anya confidently whispered to herself. For such a loving old man, Gilm still had an air of power and danger about him. Anya wondered aloud to herself, “Why has Gilm never told me any stories about using his Gift to fight? I know he’s done it.” Her voice dropped to a forced lower register as she imitated him.

  “Dragons aren’t that hard to kill, you’ve just got to know how to do it.”

  She harrumphed to herself, and the image wavered as her concentration faded for a moment. She caught herself before she lost her water lens altogether. “At least I don’t think he’s kidding about dragons,” she muttered as she reformed the lenses. “I don’t know, maybe he’s just pulling my leg. Anyway, why hasn’t he had me start practicing those things?” She sincerely hoped it was because the wise old man was sure she would never need to fight or worse, kill.

  Satisfied everything was well with her earthly father, she unscrewed the little knob on the stand and turned the farseeing rod toward the Heavens. She did not jump straight to her assigned observations. Instead, she indulged in a little fascination of her own. Scanning slowly and carefully, she looked for great skyships drifting along the two busy routes that skirted her horizons. One route went in front of the White Mountains. That one connected the city of Lungnacht to the Stormhold in the mountains to the west. The other was out to the east over the rolling grasslands of the Wildmen. That one connected Lungnacht with the city of Kaladar away to the south. Anya knew the places only as names and paragraphs in her geography texts. She knew the ships were gliding between towering, glittering mountain top-cities scattered all over the world. Perhaps someday she would get to ride one again.

  A skyship had brought Anya and Pyter to this little village in the wilderness. She was a baby and he had just finished toddling along holding hands. Anya had been too small to remember anything about that, or how their parents had died within two years of their arrival. Their little family had come from Fireheart, very far to the south, though her parents were not from there originally.

  Fireheart is the only city governed by Sojourners like us, she puzzled in her mind. I know many people in other places hate us, I’ve heard enough stories from my friends out on the farms. Most of her friends were refugees from persecutions to the north. It just makes no sense for people to hate a group dedicated to kindness, mercy, and charity. Of course, our utter rejection of Exiles, abominations, and those that worship the vile things might put us on the outside of polite society just a wee bit. The Son of God said “If they hate the teacher, how much more will they hate the students?” And they hung Him on a tree to die even though they could find no sin in Him.

  Anya put these things out of her mind. Now was her chance to enjoy the beauty of God’s creation, not contemplate the ugliness induced by the Fall. She loved finding stars and skyships in the Heavens. Some skyships would gleam in the moonlight, their silvery bodies distant fish swimming lazily through the sky. Others would show themselves only by the lights that peeked out the windows of the hulls hanging beneath dark gas-filled balloons. She gazed through the farseeing rod and her water lenses along the top edge of the forest to the northwest. “No one headed to Stormhold or lonely old Skysend tonight,” she said to herself as she swung the farseeing rod around to the other route to the east. The ones Anya spotted most often were coming up from the south from Kaladar and headed to Lungnacht. Because of the prevailing winds and various details of how most skyships operated, the ships would sail north on that route far more than they would sail south.

  Since arriving in Arhaus, Anya had never traveled more than a few miles from home. With her Blessings and Gilm’s farseeing rod, she could go farther than all but one man. She could see
right up into the Heavens. After the Son had risen from the dead to defeat death, He had risen up into the Heavens and beyond. She couldn’t see where He had gone yet, but she knew someday she would, and she would not need a farseeing rod to do it.

  With no skyships lurking about, Anya finally turned her attention to her astronomy assignment. For the main portion, she was tracking the position of a planet as it moved across the sky. It surprised her every time that she checked and saw it was in a slightly different place. She would watch, but she could never see the planet shifting positions. Sure enough, the next night she came out, it would be in a slightly different place. Tonight, even before she had gotten through her chain of stars to find her planet, she found herself being surprised in a different way.

  “Father,” she whispered in prayer, “Have you made a new one?” She checked her position again and retraced her steps. “There was the Ladle pouring out onto Borhasster. Borhasster is the head of the Lion, but I’m looking for Aliono at the tip of the tail, so I follow it along. Yes, there it is. Lord, you haven’t moved any of the other ones around have you?” She quickly moved the farseeing rod around, pausing to steady herself when her nerves caused her lenses to start to wobble. “What is this new one doing there next to Aliono? It isn’t very bright is it, Lord? I can’t see it without the farseeing rod. Wait...”

  Anya paused for a few minutes more, almost not breathing. She held her muscles tight without thinking. She was stock still, hand firmly gripping the brass rod. Suddenly, Anya’s concentration broke completely, and the water lenses splashed down out of their places. The young girl gasped and stood up straight. “It’s moving!” she whispered in stunned surprise, looking up into the starry sky. Forgetting where she was, she took a step backward and tripped over her satchel. Arms wheeling around like little windmills in the night, she desperately tried to keep her balance. She failed. Anya fell backward over the edge, screaming into the darkness.