The Legender: Myths Awoken Read online

  Chapter 2

  Prayers on Paper Ships

   

  For the first time in a very long time Arkos encountered something that confused him. He had formed water into fish shapes many times before, but a puddle shaped into the ancient words was something he had not intended. It had not been of his making, and for that he found it very disturbing. Looking for answers, he first turned to the fountain. The women in the stonework of the tiers continued to empty their bottomless jars; time had not worn away their patient expressions for they were made of erthmarrow, an adamantine stone.

  “Why have you spelled out such a riddle,” Arkos asked the water from the fountain.

  The water answered him with a very subtle voice, a voice hidden in the gurgling.

  ‘My child,’ the fountain shushed, ‘I have spelled out nothing.’

  “There is a puddle here that bears words of war.”

  ‘You are mistaken; I am not the writer of such things. Listen to my song. I am free once more from the darkness of wells, and I have sprung out to the light of day; my thoughts are far from war. Men will have their wars, and their dead will feed the soil. When have beings like you and I ever held concern for the ways of men?’

  “It is not the ways of men that worry me, but how this word was formed.”

  ‘Perhaps Ahatho or the Everyn shaped it. They are mysterious beings.’

  Arkos thanked the water of the fountain for its advice and began searching for anything else that might aid him in this mystery. It was yet a still morning and no breezes or winds had passed through the square since he had been there. They were high up in the sky playing forever like children and therefore would be of no help. The lamp tender had not come by yet with his snuffer, so there were still a few flames in the lanterns about the square that had not yet died out from the night before. It was possible the flames had witnessed the formation of the puddle, but Arkos knew that it was useless to ask them what they knew. If he asked, the flames would interrupt him with questions of their own. Having been born on the dusk of the day before, they would first ask about the names of all of the things around them. Then they would begin pleading for freedom from the lanterns, begging to play about the trees and rooftops. At the mere mention of the fountain they would sputter in instinctual fear of being extinguished.

  Arkos took the blue stone from the pouch on his belt and spoke to it.

  “I would like a word with the flagstones.”

  He placed the stone in the gap between two flagstones that were each partially covered by the puddle. The ground shook with the slightest of tremors, and Arkos heard a deep voice come from below him. To Arkos’ ear the voice resonated throughout the square, but no one threw open their shutters to see what was causing the noise. No one but Arkos seemed to notice the ground speak.

  ‘Why do you wake us?’ one of the stones asked.

  “Forgive me,” Arkos replied, “but you bear a very curious puddle. It is curious in that it spells a riddle without obeying the shaping of your grooves and contours. Do you know of how it was formed?”

  ‘We have slumbered long and know nothing of what you speak.’

  “I knew your answer would be as such, but one must try when no answer has presented itself.”

  ‘Thorough work is honorable,’ said the flagstone, and then it drifted back to sleep.

  Once the deep voice faded Arkos retrieved the blue stone from the gap. Since nothing else around could advise Arkos, he sat down on the lip of the fountain and on his own pondered the riddle of the puddle.

   

  Water poured from the fountain pool and into the stream as it had always done, gently and with a soothing babble. The stream swiftly flowed through the city, alongside streets, over weirs and under bridges. Eventually the stream joined with other streams gaining enough water to be called a river and to be given the name Asetsi. The Asetsi meandered through the city’s gardens and orchards where a group of women walked barefoot along its banks carrying baskets filled with dune berries and lasamelon. When the river came to the giant wall that encircled the old part of the city and the gardens, large culverts at the base of the wall accommodated the flow. Beyond the wall the river passed through the newer section of the city. Unlike the older section, which was made almost entirely out of erthmarrow, the newer part was made of inferior material, bricks and lesser stone. The buildings were squat and weathered, bearing weeds here and there on the roofs. After the Asetsi turned a wheel mill on the city’s outskirts, it entered the countryside and went on its way.

  Eventually the Asetsi would reach the ocean in the north, but it had much land to cross before it got there. The river would first have to weave its way through fields where farmers tended to their ripening shoots; the river would curve around small villages where the people hardly ever spoke the words “coast” or “sea.” On a particular bend in the river, about a day’s journey away from where it sprang, the Asetsi grew a wide belly and voyaged at a leisurely pace. Here the stout osip trees sank their roots into the river’s edge and the sounds of man were too far away to be heard. It was on this untamed bank of mud and reeds that a young woman sat on a large flat stone and crafted a fleet of paper ships.

  By the young woman’s appearance it could be assumed that her land was not the countryside that surrounded her. She wore an ornate cormantle circlet shaped like the rolling waves and embedded with seashells. Dappled washes of ocean hues colored her long peplos. Her skin was tawny as beach sand, and her eyes flashed like a pair of fish scales in the sun.

  She wrote and wrote with ink and quill.

  Ahatho, King of land, sea, and sky,

  and all that is above the sky;

  Read my words and grant my prayer:

  Do not let me fall into humiliation.

  Do not lower my head

  in the presence of those who would scorn me.

  Once the ink dried, she folded the paper into a little ship and placed it in the Asetsi’s current. Again and again she did this, and one after another the little paper ships went downstream where they braved dangers proportional to that of actual ships; swallowing whirlpools formed in the eddies of submerged debris, and the minnows were the fearsome sea monsters.

  As the woman worked and as the fleet voyaged onward, an aeriathea’s head emerged from the middle of the river, a head with sweptback crests of bristly fur. The aeriathea had a pointed muzzle and strong jaws, and in his mouth writhed a bull galmo held fast by his fangs. With a gulp the aeriathea swallowed the ponderous fish whole and then began to swim for shore. When he entered shallower waters, his powerful neck grew more and more exposed, followed by his vast feathered wings, each as large as a ship sail. He padded onto the bank on all fours, sinking paw prints into the mud as he went, and shook himself so as to dry his coat of short, striped fur. He approached the young woman and rubbed his immense muzzle against her shoulder, and she favored him with a long scratch behind his long ears. Dropping down onto the bank to rest, the aeriathea formed a semi-circle around the flat boulder where the young woman sat. He let the feathered end of his tail carelessly splash in the shallows, and the black slits of his pupils darted here and there with the minnows.

  It had been dark when the young woman and the aeriathea left their camp and came down to the river, but when the sun was shining through the trees on the opposite shore, then leaving the hold of the highest branches and rolling into the wisps of clouds—it was then that the young woman placed her last paper ship on the river.

  “Thirty prayers,” she stated. “One for each day of Merhala.”

  The aeriathea’s stare left the minnows and turned to the woman. He purred in the language of his kind, a deep rumbling purr that asked her a question.

  “No,” the young woman replied. “I have not made my decision. It is too soon.” She took the circlet from her head and began studying it. “Only three full moons have passed since this was placed on me. I will wait until the festival is finished to decide whether I will keep it o
r not. Much can happen in thirty days, and we do not know what will be revealed during that time. Perhaps I will find a man of an honorable house.”

  Again the aeriathea purred, yet he did not sound pleased with what she had said.

  “The trician men back home have heads full of salt. No, I cannot take such a man. A man must have wisdom along with an honorable name. How else could he advise me in leading Havamir?”

  The aeriathea responded, sounding more displeased than before.

  “A husband may advise me, but you will remain my guardian and protector,” she assured. “Without you, I could not be queen.”

  In growls and purrs, the aeriathea swore on the heavy rope from which she had freed him—the rope that had held him when he was just a cub—that he would remain the faithful servant he had always been.

  “And so you will,” said the young woman. “But you would better serve me by preparing for the race. Here I see you glutting on fish when you should be making yourself light and lean.”

  The aeriathea purred contentedly.

  “The Asetsi has been good to you, has she?” the young woman replied. “You should not heed her temptations. Remember, you do not fly well when your belly is full, and I would not have you sick as you race tomorrow. I would have you win the bell for me and make Havamir proud.”

  The young woman’s eyes dropped to the circlet at her side. The sight of it seemed to weigh heavily upon her for she then stared out at the river and pondered many things that made her face grow solemn. The aeriathea went back to watching the minnows and imagined himself victoriously flying across the finish; the thought made him purr to himself.

  The sound of the breeze brushing against the reeds and the hum of insect wings played alongside the babble of the river, but the pair’s tranquility did not last for very long. There came a sound from the woods behind them, the sound of someone treading on dead leaves. The aeriathea raised his neck to its full height and looked into the woods. The young woman stood up so she too could see over the eroded edge of the riverbank. An old soldier was coming their way. His beard was as white as sea foam, and his skin was dark and rough from years of salt and sun. His rolled up sleeves revealed brawny arms covered in tattoos that twisted into the shapes of sea monsters. His breastplate bore the engraving of a ship with crossed spears above it, the mark of the Arch Captain, the highest military rank of Havamir. There was also a short sword sheathed to his side. The young woman did not think of it as something that had killed men in the Maofin Wars but only knew of it as the paddle that had spanked her when she had been a disobedient child. At the soldier’s coming, she sighed in disappointment.

  The Arch Captain came to the bank and stood before the young woman and the aeriathea. He looked down at the young woman for a time, his face severe. When at last he spoke, his voice sounded like grinding stones, his tone a restrained rebuke.

  “I know why you seek out the lonely places, queen Maris, but you cannot leave your people for an untamed shore. What if a servant had come down to fetch water and saw you? There would be talk among the people that our queen plays in the mud.”

  “I was praying,” the young woman informed.

  “Yet you were not giving Ahatho good service by putting yourself in danger. There are wurns in these parts,” the Arch Captain warned. “They do not have mouths big enough to swallow you, but they can take an arm or leg.”

  “Haloreth was here to protect me.”

  “And he was guarding you this whole time? He did not go off to play or to fish, leaving you here alone?”

  The young woman said nothing and looked away. The aeriathea bowed his head in shame.

  “It is as they say,” the Arch Captain grunted, “those who are starved of wisdom do not know that they are hungry. But come. Let us go. See how the east reddens?” He pointed beyond the other side of the river where clouds were beginning to gather. They were ripening to a bright scarlet. “We should leave now before the rain turns the road to mud.”

  “As you wish, Haeron,” the young woman conceded. “None of us want to be dirtied in front of the people.”

  Maris, Haeron, and Haloreth crossed through the woods and came to the top of a knoll where their caravan had encamped. The camp was already astir when they arrived. Like the queen, the people there were tawny skinned and dark haired. They dressed in the fashion of the coast, many wearing necklaces made of seashells and clothing dyed in blue. The rich among them wore smooth robes made of tyruk hides and jewelry made of salt gems. Hundreds of people bustled in and out of the camp’s remnants, passing through the smoke of extinguished breakfast fires and working on their respective morning chores. All about the camp, tents collapsed and were shaken of dew. The servants, soldiers, and poor worked quickly; for they had traveled far, and striking a camp had become routine for them. Once the wagons were loaded and hitched to the bronteos—those stout beasts of low heads and heavy horns—the caravan took to the road. The soldiers led the way, a marching column of spears and banners. Their blue and tan banners were emblazoned with the design of the sun on the ocean horizon, the symbol of Havamir. If a foreigner had called it a sunset they would have been sternly corrected; it was a sunrise.

  The road that lay before the caravan disappeared and reappeared with the curving of the hills and knolls, ultimately rising until it came to the wide, round hill on which Tierrion sat. Even from far off the caravan could see the Avahorn rise up from the city like a great spike. By where the tower stood, the Havamirians judged that they had less than a day’s journey before they reached the city.

  Queen Maris traveled in a canopied howdah on the back of an indramon, a long necked, pillar-legged creature that elevated her above everyone else in the caravan. Everyone except for Haloreth who padded alongside her. In front of Maris marched the soldiers and behind her came the pilgrims arranged from greatest to least. There were the tricians riding on their gandas, gentle snouted mounts with heads that came to pointed crests. These were followed by the fishers and lowyns who took the road on foot. At the very end of the caravan walked Metaro the Broken, whose bare feet were blackened and calloused from the long journey. His lank hair and beard hung down his chest and back, and his clothes were made of ruined sails, the clothes of a wreckman. He walked alone behind the wagons and through their clouds of dust, for his was a path of penance.

   

  As the morning gave way to noon, two tricians rode up from their place in the caravan and came alongside the queen. One of them was very withered, his head completely bald and his beady eyes spying out from wrinkled folds. The other was younger, nearly forty years old, a slender man with skin and hair that shined with expensive oils. Both tricians bowed their heads low and retrieved their speaking totems from pouches on the belts. The speaking totems were small spheres of fired clay, dark blue and lustrous. They made a rattling noise, for within them they held the teeth of great ancestors. The men placed the speaking totems in a cloth bag that hung at the indramon’s side. Maris pulled the bag up to where she sat and took the speaking totems in her hand.

  “Wrane Coracal. Wrane Garafin,” she said, nodding to them. They again bowed their heads low.

  “He who greets the queen, greets wisdom!” they said.

  As was the courtesy and custom, the slender wrane began their conversation by speaking of this and that, everything other than what he had come to tell her.

  “How do you believe Haloreth will fare in the Flight tomorrow?” Coracal inquired.

  “How can I say anything other than Haloreth will win? When he flies, he catches the wind by the tail, as they say. I do not believe there is an aeriathea who is faster.”

  “Yes, he is young and has strength in his wings, but the people say that Solanan and Wayrasi are arrows from a bow, and they say so rightly,” Coracal informed.

  “I have been to many Merhalas,” stated Garafin, “and I have seen the way those two fly. Solanan has taken Merhala’s Bell these last four Flights, but not without Wayrasi coming in close beh
ind. Haloreth must know sweat and pain if he is to take the Bell.”

  Haloreth had been passing his time on the road by watching the rodents and reptiles that scurried through the grasses and the birds that flitted from tree to tree. Upon hearing his name, however, he began listening to what the two wranes said. They talked of Solanan and Wayrasi, making those two sound as powerful as the aeriatheas that carried the sun and the moon, but Haloreth did not flinch at the names of his competitors. He was confident in his youth and strength, but most of all he wanted to win the bell for Maris; such motivation would put a fire in his blood. The suitors who courted her at the festival could have vast amounts of land and great herds beyond counting, but they could not win her the Bell.

  “Haloreth will have to use more than just his wings if he is to win,” said Garafin. “He will need to keep his wits, not to use all of his strength too early or too late. Solanan and Wayrasi are older and know the course well. This is Haloreth’s first Merhala, and he is inexperienced with the ways of the Flight.”

  “But this could also be his strength,” Coracal assured, addressing the slight furrow of disappointment he detected on the queen’s brow. “Solanan and Wayrasi have been studying each other throughout the years. They know nothing of Haloreth, and so he should surprise them.”

  As the wranes continued on, their talk spread to Merhala in general. Haloreth lost interest and returned to looking for creatures in the grasses and trees. The wranes told Maris all that there was to do and to see, the feasts and the music, the plays and the evening storytellers. Maris had heard much of the same before. Because she was a young queen, it seemed that there was no shortage of older tricians who wished to tell her the wonders of Merhala and reminisce of festivals past. As the wranes continued to speak, her attention drifted and she found it difficult to appear interested in what they had to say. She absently watched the road as it passed below her. But then Coracal mentioned something that caught her attention fully.

  “When you meet the kings and queens of other nations, they will be very curious of you, for you are new among them.”

  The way Coracal spoke made it sound as though Maris would receive a great honor in this, but she did not find his words at all comforting. Coracal detected a nervous shudder in the queen.

  “Do these gatherings worry you?” he asked, his tone concerned.

  “No,” she lied. “Merhala sounds as though it gives all a kind spirit. I have no need to fear the other leaders.”

  “I wish it were as you say, my queen,” said Garafin. “But the gatherings are happenings of rumor and judgment; and all will study you, for you are new. Beware of King Kayor. He is all teeth, and harguar blood runs in his veins; more of a hunter than a king he is.”

  “But do not wet your brow with worried sweat,” said Coracal. “Wrane Garafin and I will go with you to these gatherings if it pleases you.”

  “It would please me very much,” Maris sighed in relief.

  Coracal and Garafin then bowed their heads, and Maris returned their speaking totems to them.

  It was not long after they retired to their place in line that Haeron the Arch Captain rode up beside her and put his speaking totem in the bag at the indramon’s side.

  “That was not wise,” he said in a voice intended only for her—Maris had to lean down some from her high seat to hear him. “Those two wanted something, and you gave it to them without a struggle.”

  “What did they want?” Maris asked, confused. Haeron looked up at her with thorough disappointment.

  “You did not hear? You did not see? As queen, you will need different ears and eyes then.”

  “If you are here to teach me, tell me plainly what error I have made.”

   “Do you believe that Coracal and Garafin wish to accompany you to the gatherings of kings for your benefit?”

  “Are they not wranes on the Council? Are they not here to advise me?”

   “Politicians will not extend an open hand to you unless it will come back to them full. You believe that if they accompany you to the gatherings they will aid you in speaking. Beware of not speaking at all and being nothing more than their ornament. If Coracal and Garafin speak for you, the kings and queens will remember their voice, not yours. That is what those two want: a firm place in the minds of kings.”  

  “So grim and dark! That is how you have always seen the world. I cannot believe that their intentions are as you say. I do not smell such a foul wind as you do.”

  “You cannot trust them,” Haeron warned, shaking his head. “Coracal has a cunning tongue, and Garafin has the blood of the old Sarchean lords.”

  “He also has the blood of the noble Elemari, and he is no wreckman. Very honorable and ancient ulavyns watch over his family’s ships. They would not give such protection to a Sarchean.”

  “The wranes may have their timbers intact, but tell me when my counsel and corrections have led you to harm. Tell me when they have been made of poor material.”

  Haeron waited patiently for a time, staring down the road, but Maris gave him no reply.

  “The road is a good place for thinking,” Haeron said at length. “And there remains a bit of it before us. Remember what I have said.”

  Biting her lip, Maris lowered the Arch Captain’s speaking totem to him. He took it without a word and retired to his place in the caravan.

   

  The morning gave way to noon and the caravan’s road passed through a thick patch of woods. A jackadey, perched on a low hanging branch above the road, harassed the travelers with its shrill cries. Upon seeing the truculent bird, Haloreth studied it keenly, and he twitched his tail back and forth in anticipation. His neck grew tense, and just as he was ready to strike, a greasy odor of musk and filth stung his nostrils. None of the people around him caught wind of it, but they did not have his sense of smell. His instincts warned him that the scent came from an unpleasant kind of creature, something that was possibly dangerous. Haloreth took his eyes off the bird and looked into the woods for any sign of movement, but all he saw were insects whirring in the spaces between the trees.

  The jackadey grew fearful of the approaching aeriathea and flew away, croaking an angry note as it went. Haloreth turned his eyes away from the wooded depths and watched the jackadey fly beyond the high boughs. After the bird was out of sight, he smelled and studied the air again, but the scent of the unpleasant thing had grown fainter. He looked into the woods, his tail wagging anxiously with the desire to hunt. But then he looked to where Maris sat on her mount. Back and forth his gaze went between her and the woods. He then remembered Haeron’s reprimand early that morning, and therefore he decided not to track down whatever it was he had smelled but to continue down the road and stay at Maris’ side.

   

  Back in the woods where the trees grew thick, something hid behind an osip trunk and panted heavily. A cloaked figure—covered from head to foot in dusty, torn rags as if he were embalmed—lingered in the shadows. He had been hiding in the underbrush by the roadside, so close to the travelers he could have reached out and touched their ankles. It was when the aeriathea had sensed him that he crept back deeper into the woods. From the safety found behind the trees, the cloaked figure watched the procession of Havamirians with keen interest. His smoldering yellow eyes stared through the holes of a crudely made wooden mask, watching the caravan the way a predator watches a herd. There was a tension in the figure’s limbs, a shudder that longed release from hiding, that longed to strike, but the figure restrained himself.  The time would soon come when he would strike his mighty blow.