The Season of the Plough

by Luke R J Maynard

  “You have lived two dozen of my lifetimes,” said Poe. “The karach have many blessings, but long life is not one of them. If you would teach me all that you know, old master, I hope it pleases you, lecturing to the empty wind when I am gone.”

  “I will teach you the language of birds,” said Celithrand. “If the Grrǎkha wills it, they will carry my lectures home to you a hundred years after your spirit is sick of them.”

  They traveled in silence for a time, burdened by thoughts they were both unready to share. Neither one was a stranger to the woods, and in time they moved with such an easy grace that songbirds who had ceased their singing as the pair passed now grew bold enough to serenade them. When Poe spoke at last, and shocked them into silence, it was as if the whole mood of the forest had changed.

  “Tell me again of the prophecy,” he said. “The one for which you nearly gave your life. The one I can now safely say has failed to become truth.”

  Celithrand might have bristled at the comment; but under the weight of profound exhaustion, he let the remark go. “The Imidactui,” he said, “sometimes called the Unwatchers, or the Blind Watchers, were the last seers of the Age of the Sun. They foresaw the rising of this Age, the Age of the Moons, which will come to an end when the Chain of Night is broken and Tamnor returns to the world. They tell of a champion born of a fairy-maiden—a chosen warrior raised in the wood—which for centuries seemed to make no sense. Creatures like Aewyn’s mother do not have children. All the stories in the Hanes about fairy kidnappings, changelings and the like, they come because the êtrili have no natural born children of their own. So none have understood what these words might mean, until now. Until Aewyn.”

  “And you believe her the dryad’s natural child.”

  “Yes,” said Celithrand.

  “How is this possible?”

  The druid frowned. “I don’t know,” he said. “But the Imidactui are never wrong.”

  Poe rested his tongue for a moment, deep in thought. At last, he ventured a reply.

  “Are you?” he asked.

  “Am I what?” asked Celithrand.

  “Ever wrong,” said Poe.

  Celithrand felt at the marks on his neck and considered the question.

  “Sometimes,” he muttered.

  “And if you are wrong about Aewyn? What then?”

  To this Celithrand had no reply.

  “Since the great fires of my youth,” said Poe, “I have watched over her. Probably by your doing, old trickster, but so it is. I brought her food in the woods, and gave her warmth in the winters, and taught her what woodcraft is common to the bone-walkers of my tribe. I did this because she became my family. I know that you made this so. You brought me to her, when I should have died, and made it so that we became tribe. I think that you are wise in the ways of metals, too. I think you found the riches of the town, if you did not call them up from the rock by magic, so that the strongest city-men would come, and she would learn the way of the warrior you think she is. I have never said it, for you saved me when I had nothing. But everything she is, I think, you have bent toward your vision of these ancient words.”

  “I have done all I can to help her,” said Celithrand.

  “Why?” asked Poe. “Why help a child of prophecy? If she has a true destiny, what does she need from you?”

  “The prophecies speak of a champion, and a great war,” said Celithrand. “They are silent, alas, on the matter of who will emerge the victor.”

  “And now that you are wrong about her,” Poe pressed again. “Now that she is not your champion. What then?”

  Celithrand stopped walking, then, for the first time in what seemed like hours. Poe caught the scent of the ancient’s tears even before he turned round.

  “Dire times lie ahead,” said the druid. “That much is certain. If she is truly chosen, she has no need of me. If she is not—if I am wrong—if I have been wrong in all of this—then she may have no destiny at all. There will be war, and that war will reave the world. The champion will see it through to its end. But if she is just an ordinary girl—”

  He sat down suddenly, wearing his years on his care-worn face.

  “I could smell your doubt,” said Poe. “You have carried it a long time.”

  The druid ran a hand through his white hair and sighed. “I was certain, for a time. I put her on this path. And then—she became my child, P’őh. My daughter. As much as she was ever Grim’s, or Aelissraia’s, or her true father’s child. If she is not chosen by Fate—then neither is she protected by it. And this war that comes may take her away from me.”

  “Now you know the doubts,” said Poe, “that plague ordinary men and families in an age of heroes.”

  “I have been a hero in a hero’s age,” said Celithrand. “It is different, perhaps, but it is no life of glory. I have been the one for whom great lays are sung and statues raised, over whose shoulders men and women drape the heavy mantle of their hope. And I have seen so many laid low by fortune, so many who gave their all to the War of Shadow, and whether by destiny or cruel fortune it was I, not they, who found fame as a hero of renown. They were laid into pits in the end, their bodies too numerous to count, and no songs were sung of them, and they passed from this world into a dreamless sleep, as if all that they were had never been.”

  Poe laid an enormous hand on him. “You speak of the greatest sorrow of the karach,” said Poe, “if sorrow is what I think. A sleep without dreams—no dreams of your own, no dreams of your tribe to carry you on—that, to karach, is the most wretched sorrow of all.”

  Celithrand met the karach’s gaze with a look of profound woe.

  “Those who fell to the Horrors—not even the worms would eat their eyes,” he said.

  Poe lowered his head well below his shoulders. “Crows take your eyes,” he whispered.

  “Crows take yours,” said Celithrand. “And Aewyn’s, most of all.”

  “Yes,” said Poe. “Most of all hers.”

  They sat in silence a long time. The sun crossed overhead, gliding through a clear sky, as the two dwelt in heavy thought.

  “I have decided to help you,” said Poe, at last. “Speak, and I listen. These things you foresee, she may be none of them. But she is all of them to me. She is my hero, and my champion, though all the rest of the world forget her.”

  “She will thrive with the Havenari,” said Celithrand. “Robyn will be good to her. They all will, in time. They will give her more, in the end, than the men of the Iron City ever give to their women. And when trouble comes—the trouble of gods or men, as you choose—you will be glad for all she has become.”

  “I am glad of all she is today,” said Poe. “For that there is no need to wait. It is I who am not enough. It is I who fail her, again and again with her people. I know not what lessons you teach, but I cannot go on without wisdom. And since the wisdom of my people is lost to me, now—your wisdom, I think, might suffice.”

  Celithrand smiled for the first time in a long while. “You, too, have a great destiny, my friend,” he said. Poe raised his ears at the thought.

  “No more prophecies,” he said; but then, after a pause, “what is my destiny, then?”

  Celithrand chuckled as he stood to his feet uneasily. “I have no idea,” he said. “Let’s go in search of it together.”

  All that day and into the next, they ranged across the face of Haveïl, over high desolate heaths and thickly wooded hollows, resting in forest lawns and hustling through the untended chases of self-proclaimed lords and over barren meadows freshly cut for the encroaching winter. With walking-songs and stories of old they passed the long hours in the highlands, chasing the dried and forlorn paths of ancient waters to shield themselves from the high winds. They dined as they pleased on hare, quail, pheasant, and for Celithrand, the berries and fruits of a dozen strange trees.

  For all their ease, they were not unsought. Patrols came went, even on the old roads, and the whole host of the Grand Army that patrolled the coast
had been called inland to hunt them down. But Poe’s senses were uncommonly keen, and Celithrand whispered strange sounds to the forest birds as they walked, and they seemed to answer him in kind. Only once, in a narrow ravine winding that penned in all travelers, did they come so close to a patrol that Poe could see them from the treeline. These were not Havenari, but fully armoured troops of the Grand Army, though they moved with an ease and familiarity on the trail that unsettled the ancient druid.

  “They dress like City-men,” said Poe when he was sure they had passed. “But this is their home soil. I feel it.”

  “We are a long way from Travalaith, now,” said Celithrand. “Perhaps there is a new outpost in these hills. There wasn’t, last year.”

  “The wilderness is too crowded, now, for my taste,” said Poe as they took the hard climb up the side of the ravine and left the well-travelled trail far below them.

  On the late afternoon of the third day, with the pale ghost of the white moon overhead, the sound of rushing water and the cries of many birds came to Poe’s ears, and he stopped short.

  “I have never heard a river rage so fiercely,” he said. “We had best build a raft or cut some floats to ford it.” But Celithrand said nothing, only doubled his climbing speed with a sudden exuberance, and with a bony hand on Poe’s broad neck hoisted him to the top of the ridge.

  “Look,” he said. “Look.”

  A thin curtain of flowering broom was all that lay between them and the sea. On the far side of the swaying highland reeds, under an overcast sky of hazy light, lay the shimmering silver mirror of the Miumuranai, the Sea of Joining Skies, so wide and bright and serene beneath the canopy of the world that an endless ribbon of grey mist, glowing faintly on the distant horizon, barely seemed to divide the waters from the heavens. The rush and hiss of the waves came only from the rocks below, where white-winged gannets and gulls played at fish above the churning shallows. As Poe rose to his full height, towering over the golden broom in stunned silence, all he could see in the whole world seemed made of silver light.

  “Never in my days,” he said, “have I imagined such wonder. It is a water without beginning or end.”

  “It is,” said Celithrand, with no small measure of his own joy. “And yet you will cross it with me. Come down with me to the sea, P’őh. We will find a fisherman to take us south, along the coast. There are sailing ships aplenty in Lockmouth, if we can reach it before nightfall.”

  “I wish to go down with you,” breathed Poe, his whispered voice low and reverent. “But I seem to have lost my feet, and all my breath with them.”

  Celithrand reached up, touched the karach’s trembling shoulder, guided him forward onto the gentlest slope of the high hill.

  “Come along,” he said.

  HERE ENDS THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE TRAVALAITH SAGA.

  AFTERWORD

  Aewyn and the Havenari will soon return in The Season of the Cerulyn, Book II of the Travalaith Saga. New reaches of the Travalaithi Empire and the sprawling darkness of the Iron City itself will be revealed as the Havenari find themselves wrapped up in a web of seduction, espionage, and brutal violence, and the Empire plunges deeper into civil war.

  In the meantime, if you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or the social media platform of your choice. Reviews are more precious than gold to independent authors and small presses; and I do read every one of them. Your feedback on Amazon and other social media not only enables me to keep writing new books, but gives me the valuable feedback I need to help make each new book better than the last.

  You can find me on the Web at Lukemaynard.com, where you can follow my writing and music, and sign up to be notified whenever I have a new release.

  Thank you for taking a chance on The Season of the Plough. I look forward to our next meeting.

  Acknowledgments

  Don’t be fooled: the term “indie publishing” is a misnomer. Producing any work, particularly a work of much merit, requires no small support, counsel, encouragement—and sometimes a few swift kicks—from a whole village of people. Without some, this book would not exist; without others, it would have been much inferior.

  Eldest thanks are due to Jessie and Brett, who gave me characters worth telling stories about, and to Emily, who gave me an extraordinary skald in whose difficult, ornate, rich voice they simply had to be told. (Her story, and how she came to tell it, is yet to come).

  The youngest thanks go to my beta readers and editorial team, and chiefly to Riley Kirkwin, who was First Spear among them—nor has any spear ever boasted an edge keener than her eye for detail.

  I’d like to acknowledge my writing teachers—Herb Hunter, Marilyn Scott, Inge Evans, Larry Garber—for teaching me to be a good-ish writer (that is, to be a master thief). Thanks also to Neil Brooks and my twenty-three other literature teachers, for showing this master thief where all the treasures of the ages lay waiting to be plundered.

  Thanks to Jamie Ibson, who has put up with my worldbuilding habits for more than a quarter of a century. Thanks to Scott R. Jones at Martian Migraine Press, who taught me by example how an exceptional Canadian micropress should be run: with absolute integrity, professionalism, and kingly patience, no matter how many trolls & goblins are at play within your sub-subgenre of choice. Thanks to Kathryn Sandford, who knows no fear, for teaching me that I didn’t need anyone’s permission to chase my own stars by my own rules.

  I’d like to thank my mother, who has supported me as a writer from my first alphabet blocks to this; and the family and friends who were instrumental keeping me going all the days in between. Natalie & Ashley, Matt & Megan, Jen, Amy, Karen, David, Judy, Shannon & Megan, Justins I & II, Daniel, Madison, Erica, Aladdin, Sol, and Yukimi: the world is full of half-written stories left behind by earnest writers who simply give up on them. Thanks to your kindness and support, this story is not one of them.

  Finally, a heartfelt thanks to the readers who took a chance on this largely unknown book by a largely unsung author. If there are more to come, it’s because you supported new writing from an unknown indie publisher. Don’t stop reading.

  About the Author

  Luke R. J. Maynard is a writer, poet, scholar, lapsed medievalist, musician, and wearer of sundry other hats in the arts & letters. Born in London, Ontario, Canada, he received his PhD in English Literature from the University of Victoria in 2013, and his Juris Doctor at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law in 2019.

  Luke's first CD, Desolation Sound, was released in June of 2018. The Season of the Plough is his first novel. Luke currently lives in Toronto.

  Web page: http://www.lukemaynard.com

  Follow me on Twitter: @lukemaynard

  Find me on Facebook: facebook.com/lukerjmaynard