[Fic] "Ashes" part 6 -- original, NaNo 2010
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Ashes, part 6
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["It's hard enough to guard you, you overgrown puppy," Zalir added, reaching up to punch Riam amiably in the shoulder. "Turn around and look sharp. Gador is bringing the magician around the corner, and I didn't wash up and put on my good clothes just to let you two make me look foolish with your bickering."]
Riam turned, sliding into place between Tir and Zalir just as two women rounded the corner of the corridor at a deceptively fast pace. Gador, in her dusty riding clothes, fell back a step to let the magician approach alone.
The magician, Riam noted, was quite short -- her head might reach Zalir's chin at best, and Zalir wasn't especially tall. Beyond that, he couldn't tell much of anything about her, since she had wrapped herself in a long, dark cloak with a full hood. The fabric and the dim candlelight of the wall sconces combined to drench her face in shadow. Her hands were tucked within the cloak, and her trousers were loose and flowing, wide enough to billow like a skirt and long enough to completely obscure her feet.
Useless clothes, clearly worn for appearance rather than work. Which was fair enough, Riam thought, tugging down his red tunic, but at least his clothes still allowed him to run if necessary.
The magician stopped six paces from where Riam, Tir, and Zalir stood: more distance than comfortable for conversation, even between strangers. Riam almost moved forward to close that gap, but Zalir stepped on his right foot and pressed down, pinning him in place.
The magician waited, silent, still, and vaguely ominous.
Just as then tension became unbearable, Tir sighed -- a quick, soft exhale of frustration -- and raised her right hand, palm up. "You have come to Zerlon, last of the living kingdoms before the Great Waste," she said in trade tongue. "I'm Tir Tegera, holder of this land. With me are Riam Tegera, our binder, and Zalir Na, one of our master guards, whom you've already met. If you bring no ill intent, be welcome for the night."
Tir paused, waiting for a response.
The magician flicked back her hood, revealing salt-pale skin and long black hair, hanging fine and limp like a skein of damp thread. Her face was round and soft, despite the high slash of her cheekbones and the deep set of her eyes: a strange combination of childlike innocence and the mocking wisdom of a wind-scoured skull. Her eyes were like honey flecked with green, and she held herself calm and aloof like an ancient statue, scarcely moving even to breathe.
Rationally, Riam recognized the cast of her features from old pictures of the people who lived in the uttermost north, but his gut clenched, seeing only that everything in her face was subtly wrong from what he expected to see -- the kind of twisted features that, on a child, spoke deeper taints caused by a parent's miasma poisoning.
Zalir felt him twitch and shifted her weight to rest more fully on Riam's foot.
Riam glanced aside for a moment to pull himself together. Then he looked back at the magician, trying to see what was instead of what unfamiliarity was making him paint over reality.
She was still shockingly pale, so much that her veins might be visible through her skin at a closer distance, and her eyes were still disconcertingly deep-set, but now he could see that her features fit together, and her eyes were clear and direct.
Which would be because she was looking back at him, watching him watch her. Riam's neck and ears heated, but he held the magician's gaze. He'd never seen anyone like her before. His reaction was perfectly understandable, nothing to be ashamed of.
Still holding his eyes, the magician smiled -- a narrow, fleeting grin that sparkled for a breath in her eyes and then vanished back into aloof stillness. "I bring no ill intent to your land," she said, her voice sweet and husky, and carrying a hint of a strange, singing accent. "Neither do I bring deceit, nor a covetous heart. And my pursuit has been thoroughly dealt with, as Zalir Na has doubtless informed you."
"The wildfire you nearly started has also been thoroughly dealt with," Zalir shot back, "though doubtless that slipped your mind."
The magician blinked, slow and deliberate. "Oh. The tree? My apologies, that was careless of me. I'm sure you understand that I wasn't at my best, though, in my worry over what those two flesh-sacks had done to Gydra, and whether you and your fellow riders might take advantage of her wounds and our horses' exhaustion."
Zalir growled and lifted her foot from Riam's toes. He slid his hand around her wrist and squeezed, reminding her to control herself.
"The healers in the taint-house will do everything possible to care for your companion," Tir said, carefully ignoring the magician's provocation and Zalir's reaction. "Her name is Gydra? That's good to know. People often respond better to their names, even while asleep."
The magician's grin flashed in her eyes for another second, while her face remained bland. "I've never studied medicine, so I wouldn't know to judge the truth of your words. But yes, her name is Kivarunanga Gydra, formerly a binder of Adijat. It's very important that she make a full recovery."
"All patients are given the best care possible," Tir said, a faint thread of irritation audible in her voice. "Now that you've identified your companion, who are you? I can't in good conscience allow you to stay more than the night with no assurance that I can trust your word."
"I never lie," the magician said, sounding affronted. "Untruth is a filthy habit, fit only for rabble. I am Morgalen ha le Shani, second child and only daughter of the High Binder of the Clan of the Hawk, who holds the fiefs of Shani, Somiri, Luntebarad, Riyasi, and Sigores, in the western reaches of the Har-Galen mountains. We have bound Shani since the year of the Gate, and our lineage traces back another thousand years to Kanrin Sher himself."
Blood inheritance indeed, Riam thought, slightly impressed despite himself at the idea of one family ruling the same patch of ground for twelve hundred years. Nobody in Zerlon could trace ancestry back more than three generations before the miasma poured through the Gate, and Tir had only succeeded their uncle as holder because she had proved herself to the people and the guards.
The idea of binders inheriting their positions was so strange he shoved it aside to deal with later.
"I see," said Tir. "And what, dare I ask, brings such a distinguished person across the whole of the earth to our quiet and humble land, along with a binder from the shores of the Jyavati Sea?"
"That," said Morgalen, "is a long and twisting tale, best told while seated and full instead of standing and hungry -- particularly since we seem to be keeping your humble people from their supper while you question me."
Riam bit back a laugh at her phrasing. It was one thing to admire someone verbally skewering Tir; it was another altogether to show any sign of disunity in the face of a dangerous and still secretive stranger. But he glanced at Zalir and saw an answering appreciation in her eyes, quickly buried again under professional wariness.
"Follow me," Tir said reluctantly, and turned toward the doorway of the great hall. "You'll be at the high table between me and Riam. Don't think the presence of others will excuse you from explaining. We keep no secrets in Zerlon; anything said to us can be said to all."
Riam hid a wince with the ease of long practice, and knew Zalir was doing the same, but Tir's point was well made. He gestured for Morgalen to precede him into the great hall, then fell into step at her side. She walked faster than she seemed to, the smoothness of her gait disguising the quickness of her steps, and he found he didn't need to shorted his stride to keep pace with her.
They followed Tir up the side of the hall, past the children's table where girls and boys between five and nine years old turned and stared openly and unabashedly at Morgalen's foreign face and clothes. Riam smiled reassuringly over her head and made a note to ask Nidar and Rom to spend the next day's lesson talking about the old world before the miasma, and how people from distant corners of the earth might look different but were just as human as everyone else.
Tir pulled back her heavy carved chair and waited for Riam, Zalir, and Morgalen to take their own seats. "Do you want to lead the blessing?" she asked Riam. He shook his head, not wanting to risk tripping over the words with a stranger listening.
Tir shrugged and sat, tucking her sword neatly to the side. Then she leaned forward and struck the bronze bowl gong with her spoon. Its deep mellow tone rippled out over the room, quieting the gossip and speculative conversation of the household, the guards, and the handful of people stopping for the night on their way from one part of the valley to another.
"We honor the work that feeds us, the hands that support us, the hearts that sustain us, and the gods who create us," Tir said. "Apart we are nothing; together we live. And the poison will not destroy us."
"The Gate was not the answer. The Gate was not the end," Riam responded, his words blending with the massed voices of over two hundred people. Beside him, Morgalen was silent.
"The world as it is is not as it was, nor yet how it will come to be. All things must pass; all things must change. And the poison will not survive us," Tir said.
"The world remembers the way. One day the Gate will close," Riam responded, glancing sideways to gauge Morgalen's reaction to the evening ritual. But her face was politely blank, as if she'd seen a hundred local rites on her long journey south and they had all begun to blend together.
"Until the stars shine clear in the sky, we remember, and we survive," Tir finished, and clapped her hands to seal the words.
A ragged chorus of clapping echoed her, followed by a brief moment of silence before people began reaching for the dishes in the centers of the long tables and serving themselves a belated meal.
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1) So that's Morgalen. Next chapter, she gets to start explaining what she's doing so far from home -- and why she was traveling with a binder, when binders tend to have a lot of trouble being out in the tainted lands -- which means the plot is finally about to get going.
2) I think I went slightly overboard compensating for my previous failure at physical description. Oh well. When I edit in December, I will do my best to put little verbal sketches of Zalir, Tir, and Sular into the earlier sections, and try harder to define Riam's appearance through indirect means. (I refuse to resort to a scene where he looks at himself in a mirror, because no. Just no.)
3) Hello, random world-building! So now you have a bit more information about the miasma -- both its effects and its origins. I will actually be resorting to a more traditional infodump during Morgalen's tale, if only because she has to explain her plan to fix the world, which requires her to be very precise about the details of what went wrong. You also have a bit of implicit information about Morgalen's home; again that will come clearer over time as she talks more about her past and her family.
4) You know, I have utterly failed to explain what was up with the two people chasing Morgalen and Gydra -- somebody ought to have asked about them, or made sure that they were X kind of people instead of Y kind of people, or commented that their clothes or weapons or mounts or whatever marked them as such-and-such. Anything other than a complete non-reaction. Oops. I'll have to fix that in December.
5) 1,700 words today, 8,500 total.
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I'm feeling better than yesterday; sleep is remarkably good at shoving a mild cold back into the box of not-quite-sick.
Now I should go to bed in order to keep on the correct side of the line between illness and health. :-)
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
Ashes, part 6
---------------------------------------------
["It's hard enough to guard you, you overgrown puppy," Zalir added, reaching up to punch Riam amiably in the shoulder. "Turn around and look sharp. Gador is bringing the magician around the corner, and I didn't wash up and put on my good clothes just to let you two make me look foolish with your bickering."]
Riam turned, sliding into place between Tir and Zalir just as two women rounded the corner of the corridor at a deceptively fast pace. Gador, in her dusty riding clothes, fell back a step to let the magician approach alone.
The magician, Riam noted, was quite short -- her head might reach Zalir's chin at best, and Zalir wasn't especially tall. Beyond that, he couldn't tell much of anything about her, since she had wrapped herself in a long, dark cloak with a full hood. The fabric and the dim candlelight of the wall sconces combined to drench her face in shadow. Her hands were tucked within the cloak, and her trousers were loose and flowing, wide enough to billow like a skirt and long enough to completely obscure her feet.
Useless clothes, clearly worn for appearance rather than work. Which was fair enough, Riam thought, tugging down his red tunic, but at least his clothes still allowed him to run if necessary.
The magician stopped six paces from where Riam, Tir, and Zalir stood: more distance than comfortable for conversation, even between strangers. Riam almost moved forward to close that gap, but Zalir stepped on his right foot and pressed down, pinning him in place.
The magician waited, silent, still, and vaguely ominous.
Just as then tension became unbearable, Tir sighed -- a quick, soft exhale of frustration -- and raised her right hand, palm up. "You have come to Zerlon, last of the living kingdoms before the Great Waste," she said in trade tongue. "I'm Tir Tegera, holder of this land. With me are Riam Tegera, our binder, and Zalir Na, one of our master guards, whom you've already met. If you bring no ill intent, be welcome for the night."
Tir paused, waiting for a response.
The magician flicked back her hood, revealing salt-pale skin and long black hair, hanging fine and limp like a skein of damp thread. Her face was round and soft, despite the high slash of her cheekbones and the deep set of her eyes: a strange combination of childlike innocence and the mocking wisdom of a wind-scoured skull. Her eyes were like honey flecked with green, and she held herself calm and aloof like an ancient statue, scarcely moving even to breathe.
Rationally, Riam recognized the cast of her features from old pictures of the people who lived in the uttermost north, but his gut clenched, seeing only that everything in her face was subtly wrong from what he expected to see -- the kind of twisted features that, on a child, spoke deeper taints caused by a parent's miasma poisoning.
Zalir felt him twitch and shifted her weight to rest more fully on Riam's foot.
Riam glanced aside for a moment to pull himself together. Then he looked back at the magician, trying to see what was instead of what unfamiliarity was making him paint over reality.
She was still shockingly pale, so much that her veins might be visible through her skin at a closer distance, and her eyes were still disconcertingly deep-set, but now he could see that her features fit together, and her eyes were clear and direct.
Which would be because she was looking back at him, watching him watch her. Riam's neck and ears heated, but he held the magician's gaze. He'd never seen anyone like her before. His reaction was perfectly understandable, nothing to be ashamed of.
Still holding his eyes, the magician smiled -- a narrow, fleeting grin that sparkled for a breath in her eyes and then vanished back into aloof stillness. "I bring no ill intent to your land," she said, her voice sweet and husky, and carrying a hint of a strange, singing accent. "Neither do I bring deceit, nor a covetous heart. And my pursuit has been thoroughly dealt with, as Zalir Na has doubtless informed you."
"The wildfire you nearly started has also been thoroughly dealt with," Zalir shot back, "though doubtless that slipped your mind."
The magician blinked, slow and deliberate. "Oh. The tree? My apologies, that was careless of me. I'm sure you understand that I wasn't at my best, though, in my worry over what those two flesh-sacks had done to Gydra, and whether you and your fellow riders might take advantage of her wounds and our horses' exhaustion."
Zalir growled and lifted her foot from Riam's toes. He slid his hand around her wrist and squeezed, reminding her to control herself.
"The healers in the taint-house will do everything possible to care for your companion," Tir said, carefully ignoring the magician's provocation and Zalir's reaction. "Her name is Gydra? That's good to know. People often respond better to their names, even while asleep."
The magician's grin flashed in her eyes for another second, while her face remained bland. "I've never studied medicine, so I wouldn't know to judge the truth of your words. But yes, her name is Kivarunanga Gydra, formerly a binder of Adijat. It's very important that she make a full recovery."
"All patients are given the best care possible," Tir said, a faint thread of irritation audible in her voice. "Now that you've identified your companion, who are you? I can't in good conscience allow you to stay more than the night with no assurance that I can trust your word."
"I never lie," the magician said, sounding affronted. "Untruth is a filthy habit, fit only for rabble. I am Morgalen ha le Shani, second child and only daughter of the High Binder of the Clan of the Hawk, who holds the fiefs of Shani, Somiri, Luntebarad, Riyasi, and Sigores, in the western reaches of the Har-Galen mountains. We have bound Shani since the year of the Gate, and our lineage traces back another thousand years to Kanrin Sher himself."
Blood inheritance indeed, Riam thought, slightly impressed despite himself at the idea of one family ruling the same patch of ground for twelve hundred years. Nobody in Zerlon could trace ancestry back more than three generations before the miasma poured through the Gate, and Tir had only succeeded their uncle as holder because she had proved herself to the people and the guards.
The idea of binders inheriting their positions was so strange he shoved it aside to deal with later.
"I see," said Tir. "And what, dare I ask, brings such a distinguished person across the whole of the earth to our quiet and humble land, along with a binder from the shores of the Jyavati Sea?"
"That," said Morgalen, "is a long and twisting tale, best told while seated and full instead of standing and hungry -- particularly since we seem to be keeping your humble people from their supper while you question me."
Riam bit back a laugh at her phrasing. It was one thing to admire someone verbally skewering Tir; it was another altogether to show any sign of disunity in the face of a dangerous and still secretive stranger. But he glanced at Zalir and saw an answering appreciation in her eyes, quickly buried again under professional wariness.
"Follow me," Tir said reluctantly, and turned toward the doorway of the great hall. "You'll be at the high table between me and Riam. Don't think the presence of others will excuse you from explaining. We keep no secrets in Zerlon; anything said to us can be said to all."
Riam hid a wince with the ease of long practice, and knew Zalir was doing the same, but Tir's point was well made. He gestured for Morgalen to precede him into the great hall, then fell into step at her side. She walked faster than she seemed to, the smoothness of her gait disguising the quickness of her steps, and he found he didn't need to shorted his stride to keep pace with her.
They followed Tir up the side of the hall, past the children's table where girls and boys between five and nine years old turned and stared openly and unabashedly at Morgalen's foreign face and clothes. Riam smiled reassuringly over her head and made a note to ask Nidar and Rom to spend the next day's lesson talking about the old world before the miasma, and how people from distant corners of the earth might look different but were just as human as everyone else.
Tir pulled back her heavy carved chair and waited for Riam, Zalir, and Morgalen to take their own seats. "Do you want to lead the blessing?" she asked Riam. He shook his head, not wanting to risk tripping over the words with a stranger listening.
Tir shrugged and sat, tucking her sword neatly to the side. Then she leaned forward and struck the bronze bowl gong with her spoon. Its deep mellow tone rippled out over the room, quieting the gossip and speculative conversation of the household, the guards, and the handful of people stopping for the night on their way from one part of the valley to another.
"We honor the work that feeds us, the hands that support us, the hearts that sustain us, and the gods who create us," Tir said. "Apart we are nothing; together we live. And the poison will not destroy us."
"The Gate was not the answer. The Gate was not the end," Riam responded, his words blending with the massed voices of over two hundred people. Beside him, Morgalen was silent.
"The world as it is is not as it was, nor yet how it will come to be. All things must pass; all things must change. And the poison will not survive us," Tir said.
"The world remembers the way. One day the Gate will close," Riam responded, glancing sideways to gauge Morgalen's reaction to the evening ritual. But her face was politely blank, as if she'd seen a hundred local rites on her long journey south and they had all begun to blend together.
"Until the stars shine clear in the sky, we remember, and we survive," Tir finished, and clapped her hands to seal the words.
A ragged chorus of clapping echoed her, followed by a brief moment of silence before people began reaching for the dishes in the centers of the long tables and serving themselves a belated meal.
---------------
---------------
---------------
1) So that's Morgalen. Next chapter, she gets to start explaining what she's doing so far from home -- and why she was traveling with a binder, when binders tend to have a lot of trouble being out in the tainted lands -- which means the plot is finally about to get going.
2) I think I went slightly overboard compensating for my previous failure at physical description. Oh well. When I edit in December, I will do my best to put little verbal sketches of Zalir, Tir, and Sular into the earlier sections, and try harder to define Riam's appearance through indirect means. (I refuse to resort to a scene where he looks at himself in a mirror, because no. Just no.)
3) Hello, random world-building! So now you have a bit more information about the miasma -- both its effects and its origins. I will actually be resorting to a more traditional infodump during Morgalen's tale, if only because she has to explain her plan to fix the world, which requires her to be very precise about the details of what went wrong. You also have a bit of implicit information about Morgalen's home; again that will come clearer over time as she talks more about her past and her family.
4) You know, I have utterly failed to explain what was up with the two people chasing Morgalen and Gydra -- somebody ought to have asked about them, or made sure that they were X kind of people instead of Y kind of people, or commented that their clothes or weapons or mounts or whatever marked them as such-and-such. Anything other than a complete non-reaction. Oops. I'll have to fix that in December.
5) 1,700 words today, 8,500 total.
---------------
I'm feeling better than yesterday; sleep is remarkably good at shoving a mild cold back into the box of not-quite-sick.
Now I should go to bed in order to keep on the correct side of the line between illness and health. :-)
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)