There were murmurs of awe from the crowd. Everyone was staring at Korram in respect, and he saw several people nudge each other and point to his necklace and the matching one Ernth wore.
“All right, give me your arm,” the man with the brand ordered.
I am the Prince of Malorn. Pain doesn’t bother me. Hot metal doesn’t bother me. I killed one snowcat and survived a night with another and didn’t freeze or starve or get eaten by bears up in the mountains. I made it through the Rite of Acceptance and I can endure anything now. Anything.
The white-hot metal of the brand against his flesh was the worst pain Korram had ever experienced. Worse than the time he had smashed his finger in the heavy front door of the palace when he was eight years old. Worse than when he had accidentally sliced his hand open playing with his father’s dagger when he was eleven. Worse than when he had broken his ankle falling off a horse at thirteen.
Korram clenched his jaw and tightened his throat, determined not to disgrace himself by crying out in pain. I am the Prince of Malorn. I am the Prince of Malorn. I am the Prince of Malorn.
Then the branding iron was gone, and there was an awful smell of singed flesh until the woman dumped water over his shoulder. The stinging shock of the cold water against his burn made him gasp, but once again he managed not to cry out. Then the crowd was cheering, Thel and Ernth were hugging him, and the rest of Ernth’s family was surging forward to throw their arms around him and congratulate him. “The former Lowlander got his horse mark just like us!” Korram heard someone say.
“You’re one of us now forever,” Thisti exclaimed, seizing his elbow and craning her neck to stare in admiration at the proof. “Forever and forever!”
That evening they sat down to supper with Otchen and his family and a dozen of their friends. All around them in the valley, hundreds of other happy families clustered around hundreds of supper fires, laughing and sharing food and stories of things they had done that year. Everyone in Korram’s supper group wanted to hear the tale of how he had reclaimed the goats from the Lowlanders, and when they had all finished exclaiming over that, Ernth regaled them with an account of the battle with the snowcat. Korram was grateful that this time his friend chose not to emphasize his stupidity in wounding it in the first place.
Ernth had just finished recounting that story when Thel appeared in their midst. “There you are, Korram. All of the Newly Accepted are over there talking about what it was like. Come join us!”
There were eighteen of them altogether, all crowded around a huge bonfire, their horses dozing nearby. They made room for Korram in their circle, grinning and thumping his back in welcome. No one was wearing a jacket – it hurt too much to let anything touch the fresh burn they all shared – so they huddled as close to their fire as they could, jokingly comparing the chilly evening to the bitter cold they had all suffered on the Rite of Acceptance.
“What was the longest you went without food?” someone asked, and they all thought back and calculated, laughingly congratulating the girl who had the record – four days with only water and snow.
“What did you all name your horses?” someone else wanted to know. One by one they shared the names they had chosen, each one producing a sympathetic groan as the listeners pictured the hardships those names represented. Frostbite. Footsore. Parched. Wolfpack. Snowcat. Sprain. Sunburn. Flashflood. Fever. Lost. Heatstroke. Avalanche. Thirsty. Blizzard. Bruises. Lonely. Nezkodney. Clinja. No two were the same, and each one told its own story of difficulty and determination and success against all odds.
“What wildlife did you meet?” someone else wondered, and they took turns telling of the bears, wolves, poisonous snakes, and other creatures that they had fought or fled from. Everyone had a good laugh when Korram described his experience with the second bear and how he had spent the night tied to a tree. But it was a sympathetic laugh, not a scornful one; and to his surprise, four others admitted to tying themselves to branches overnight as well.
Several of them had seen snowcats from a distance, and Thel’s cousin Fretchal had been chased by one, finally wounding and driving it off with a makeshift spear when it cornered him in a ravine. Everyone listened, enthralled, to the boy’s story; but they were completely speechless when Korram told his.
“I’ve heard legends about people lost in the snow who survived by huddling with a wolf or snowcat for warmth,” Layth finally said, “but I never thought it could happen in real life.”
“Just like there are legends about Lowlanders getting Accepted,” Thel added, “but no one I know has ever met a Lowlander who did. But Korram’s done both! This year we have a twice-over living legend with us!”
There were murmurs of agreement and awe from around the circle.
“Not only that, but I heard he’s going to make the Lowlanders treat us better,” another girl put in. “My sister’s husband’s cousin’s family just got thirty-five goats that they said Korram made some Lowlanders give them.”
Everyone turned to Korram for his response. “I am going to make sure the Lowlanders start treating you better,” he agreed, “but I promised them that you would start treating them better too. You can’t keep hurting them or taking their crops without asking. I think most of them will be willing to trade with you and even be friendly, as long as you treat them fairly.”
There was a doubtful silence while they all considered this.
“So why did you decide to attempt the Rite of Acceptance?” Fretchal asked Korram finally, changing the subject. “Is there a Mountain girl you want to marry, like in the story?”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” Korram told him. He hesitated. Tomorrow night there was to be an introduction time, when all the Newly Accepted would be presented to the whole group down at the bottom of the valley. Ernth had told him that each one would be introduced by a family member, and that they could then say anything they liked to the Gathering. Usually people didn’t have much to say, though sometimes someone would make an announcement about a valley to avoid because of Lowlander trouble, or a popular travel route blocked by a landslide. The Newly Accepted were allowed to speak first, and then any other adults who wanted could come forward and address the whole group.
So it was tomorrow that he had planned to tell everyone about his need for an army and how he hoped to solve their Lowlander troubles. But it won’t hurt if I talk to these people about it first, Korram decided. Actually, it would probably work out better if he already had some of them on his side.
So he explained, as simply and clearly as possible, how Regent Rampus had deceived Malorn and was angling himself into position for the throne, and how the regular army and most of the rest of the kingdom was under his control. Korram told them how he planned to make sure the Lowlanders treated Mountain Folk better, but that he could only do it if he had his own army to help him defeat Rampus so Korram could survive to become king.
His new friends had lots of questions, especially about what Lowland life was like. But Korram could see that most of them found the idea of joining an army and traveling down from the mountains intriguing and exciting. It was very different from the way Ernth and his family had reacted when Korram had first explained his plan to them. Probably because these young people were just beginning a new chapter of their lives anyway; they had challenged nature and won and were now free for the first time to make their own decisions and choose their own paths. After the difficulties they had recently conquered, anything seemed possible.
“I think we should all go with Korram,” Thel announced finally, when the discussion had died down. “I mean, look at us. We’re almost like brothers and sisters. We all got Accepted this year, and we all got our horse marks together today, and I think we should all go experience this adventure together and maybe get to fight together in the Lowlands. Whatever happens down there, we’ll be the first of our people to choose to do it. We’ll be famous! Someday we can tell our children and grandchildren about it, and we’ll all be living legends!”
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There was a murmur of agreement from around the circle. “Let’s vote,” Layth suggested, and Korram was startled at the enthusiasm with which her idea was greeted.
“Now that we’ve been Accepted, we finally get to vote on things for the first time,” Thel explained. “We’ve been waiting for that privilege all our lives!”
Only three people voted no. But to Korram’s surprise, when they saw that they were outnumbered, they all nodded reluctantly and agreed that they would come as well.
“Wait a moment,” he objected. “As much as I’d love to have all of you in my army, nobody has to come who doesn’t want to.” Unwilling soldiers might be more of a liability than an asset in the long run.
“Of course we have to come,” one of the three told him matter-of-factly. “We voted.” And everybody seemed to accept this.
Eventually they all fell asleep on the ground around the fire. The next morning they each returned to their own families to help with the milking. But after breakfast, by prior arrangement, all the Newly Accepted brought their horses and met at the valley’s rim to go out riding together.
Leaving the crowded valley, they galloped down the next slope and raced each other to the nearby river, splashing across it and then urging their horses up the hill on the other side. All morning they played games that Korram had never heard of before: some similar to tag, others more like hide-and-seek or follow-the-leader, but all on horseback.
Now and then they would stop and dismount to snack on the berries Thel found growing in a shady thicket or lie down to rest in the long grass. It was a sunny day, and though there was a cool breeze, by noon they were all warm from their exertions. Cantering down to the river again, they leaped from their horses’ backs into the cold water, clothes and all. With much yelling, they splashed and wrestled, trying to dunk each other under the current while their horses grazed and watched them in apparent amusement from the bank. Finally they crawled out, dripping and shivering, and pulled themselves back onto their mounts. Then they galloped along the slope, racing and chasing each other again until their clothes had dried in the sun and the wind.
Korram had never had so much fun with a group of his peers before. No one was speaking formally; no one cared whether they were dirtying their clothes or breaking some rule of etiquette; no one eyed him nervously and addressed him as “your Highness” or worried that they might in some way offend the Prince of Malorn. He was just another one of the Mountain Folk. Their friend.
And he loved it. Why can’t I have friends like this back in Sazellia?
But, he reminded himself, he would eventually have to say goodbye to all these people, probably never to see them again. Yes, they were going to join his army, but what about after that? Of course he would invite them to return to Sazellia and visit him in the palace whenever they liked, but he doubted that many would come often or stay long. Their home was in the mountains. And if he ever returned to the Impassables, an occasional brief visit was all he would have time for. Once he was king, it would be nearly impossible to leave Sazellia for the three weeks or so that he estimated he would need to make the trip to the Mid-Autumn Gathering.
So perhaps it would be wise not to let himself get too close to any of his new friends. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t all have a good time together while this lasted, Korram told himself. He would enjoy it while he could.
In the afternoon, at Fretchal’s suggestion, they all rode back to Gathering Valley to fetch their spears. Korram saw that everyone in the valley seemed to be having just as much fun as he was: children playing and chasing each other among the tents, adults sitting deep in conversation with relatives or friends. Down at the bottom, an archery competition was going on, spectators loudly cheering for contestants of all ages. In the next campsite over, he saw a group of old women from different families involved in what seemed to be an elaborate goat trade, earnestly debating the animals’ respective values as they discussed their health and ages and how many kids each goat had borne or sired.
Korram pulled his spear out of his tent and hurried back to rejoin his new friends. They were going deer hunting, and though he had never hunted deer with a spear before, he wasn’t about to be left out of the fun.
It turned out that this was one occasion on which people were supposed to throw their spears. When they arrived in the forest several miles away, Korram discovered that his blind luck with hitting the snowcat did not carry over to deer hunting. He embarrassed himself by nearly losing his spear in the underbrush one of the times he tried to hurl it from Clinja’s back, but nobody made fun of him. As Thel and a few others helped him look for it, they assured him that he was doing incredibly well for a former Lowlander.
Together, the group killed three deer, though Korram didn’t manage to actually hit any of them himself. To make up for his poor spear-throwing skills, he worked extra hard to help cut up the meat with a borrowed knife. It was hard work skinning the animals, cutting the meat into pieces, and carrying it back on their horses; but at least there were plenty of people to help.
That evening the Newly Accepted all returned to the valley with hunks of venison for supper, more than enough for eighteen families and lots of extra friends. Ernth’s family, who didn’t know Korram’s limited role in the expedition, complimented his hunting skills as they feasted on the venison.
And then, as soon as they had finished their early dinner, they all headed down toward the bottom of the valley for the Introduction Time. This was the most important moment of the Gathering, as far as Korram was concerned. This was the whole reason he had come to the Impassables. He had to be convincing tonight, had to recruit a big army, or everything he had been through would be for nothing.
The Newly Accepted were assembling in the center of the valley floor, each accompanied by one family member. Ernth stood by Korram while the rest of his family waited on the lower slope where there was more room. All around the valley, Mountain Folk were leaving their campsites and coming to sit or stand near the bottom, leaving only a few by their tents to keep an eye on the goats or very small children.
Thel and the other young people nudged each other and whispered excitedly, watching the crowd grow. Korram shivered in the cold breeze. All of them were still bare-armed, their horse marks smarting.
The adults who had accompanied them murmured together, deciding who was going to go first. Then Thel’s mother stepped forward and waved her arms, and gradually the crowd quieted. The only sound was the wind in the grass and the scattered bleating of goats.
“This is my daughter Thel,” she called to the gathered crowd. “She made it through the Rite of Acceptance this autumn, even though she was nearly buried in an avalanche. She’s good with her spear, and two summers ago she killed a bear by herself and had finished skinning it before the rest of us even realized she’d been in any danger. She loves to draw, and she can milk a goat faster than anyone in the family, and her four younger brothers and sisters all look up to her. She’s the first of my children to be Accepted, and we’re all so proud of her.” She turned and hugged her daughter as the crowd burst into cheers.
“I want to go last,” Korram whispered to Ernth as the next girl’s father pulled her forward into the center of attention. Ernth nodded. Together the rest of them watched and waited as proud parents and grandparents introduced the Newly Accepted, boasting about their skills and accomplishments and some of the hardships they had triumphed over. A few of the young people added extra details about what they had gone through to get Accepted, but none of them had much else to say to the crowd.
At last the other seventeen had all had their turns. Ernth stepped forward proudly, Korram behind him, and raised his voice to address the crowd.
“This is my friend Korram. He was a Lowlander, but he traveled into the mountains this summer and met my family, and we taught him how to survive up here. After less than two moons with us, he attempted the Rite of Acceptance and succeeded the first time. While he was up on Mount
Nezkodney in a blizzard, he spent the night with a live snowcat in its den and survived with not even a scratch. Afterwards, he saved my life when he and I were hunting another snowcat together, and he killed it with the spear he made himself. He’s one of the Lowlanders’ most important leaders, and all of them listen to him and do what he says. And now he’s here to talk to us about how we can get involved in something exciting that will make the Lowlanders treat us better from now on!”
Ernth stepped back and pushed Korram forward where everyone could see him. But the only cheers and yells came from the rest of the Newly Accepted, clustered around and behind him. Instead, the valley erupted into a buzz of conversation. From all across the slopes, Korram could hear amazed and wondering voices.
“They can hardly believe it,” Thel whispered from beside him, squeezing his hand. Her eyes sparkled in the starlight. “You’re like a hero from the stories, only better. No one has ever met anyone who’s done what you’ve done!”
Finally Korram waved his arms for silence, as Thel’s mother had, and the voices died away. His heart was pounding, as it always did when he had to make a speech to a large assembly. Not that he minded speaking in front of a group, but he tended to get nervous just before he began. He ran a hand through his hair and immediately pictured his mother smoothing his hair back down, scolding him fondly for the habit and reminding him that he wanted to look his best before speaking in public.
The Mountain Folk won’t care, Mother. They don’t comb their hair either.
“Good evening, everyone,” he called loudly. “I’ve come here from the Lowlands both to help you and to ask for your help.” True, helping them had been more of an afterthought, but it was one of his goals now.
Prince of Malorn (Annals of Alasia Book 3) Page 30
