Lyric Challenge, Selection #30
Title: The Gem Cutter
Word Count: 2586
Author: hhhellcat
Fandom: Tamora Pierce
Who: Alan of Pirate's Swoop, set a few years after the events of the book, "Trickster's Queen."
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Characters mentioned in this fic belong to the world of Tortall as created by Tamora Pierce. Alan's woes and thoughts are my speculation on things that the future might bring.
Author's notes: This was written for innerslytherin's Song Lyrics Fic Challenge. The prompt, which was number thirty on the list, is below.
I've got a memory a thousand years old
And I know secrets I've never been told
And I've got jewels I haven't found
And they'll return me to the ground
- "I'm the Girl" by Heather Nova
One might wonder, and perhaps wisely at that, what pushes a young lad or lass to pursue their shield? Eight years ago, I began my own journey, one that culminates this evening as I sit here in the freezing night, clad simply in rough-spun undyed cotton garments. I am here to sit out a vigil as I reflect on all I have been taught and all that will be expected of me should I emerge from behind that iron door after the sun rises.
The Chamber of the Ordeal. Just the name of it is enough to put a haunted look in the eyes of even the most battle-toughened knight. I already knew many in my lifetime, and met many more in the near decade I have spent dedicating my days toward earning that which will mark me as a defender of the people, someone who represents both my liege lord king and his lady queen, as well as the law of this land. None are allowed to speak of what happens when they enter the Chamber, just as none are allowed to speak once they enter this antechamber on the night of their vigil.
I am supposed to be reflecting on what it will mean to emerge from that room there in the morning. My thoughts are supposed to be virtuous, pure, dedicated to my country's well-being. And instead, my mind travels to a land far to the southeast, to the place known to us as the Copper Isles, to a room in a tower where my twin currently labors to birth her third and fourth children. Each contraction she feels rips at my own belly. "Honestly, Aly," I think to myself, "your timing couldn't have been better!"
I jump as a god, shimmering in his silvery light, sits beside me. "Now, now, Alan," he chides me, shaking his head. "You should have expected that your sister, favoured of the Trickster," he said, giving me a mocking bow, "would choose the night of your vigil to have her twins. In fact," he says, examining his nails as if bored, the torch light flashing off the jewels of his myriad rings, "I might even offer you odds on which of my brothers and sisters arranged things so that she would . What say you, Alan of Pirate's Swoop?"
I, of course, am forbidden from speaking, or I shall forfeit eight long years of work. I offer him a wilting look, one with which -- if this is the god Kyprioth of whom Aly wrote so much about -- he must be familiar. We are not identical, but our features and our ways of expressing ourselves are similar enough, something that develops when sharing the same womb. It is a twin bond, something those who are not twinborn cannot understand. Mother was a twin; Aly and I are twins, and through our bond, I again wince and fight the urge to groan aloud as another contraction (for her own nearly born set of twins) squeezes through her. The births of her first two children -- for which I was 'blessed' enough to share the burden of the birthing process, even thousands of miles away -- were mercifully short, and I was not in such a precarious position as I am now when they had occurred.
Kyprioth, as he is known in the Copper Isles, or the Trickster god as we know him as here in Tortall ... he taunts me; he teases, he relates stories of Aly's work that ordinarily would have had me howling with laughter. He tries to force me to make some sort of noise, but either he has not counted on the stubborn streak I have inherited from both parents, or he is banking on it. I ignore him -- despite my gratitude for the distraction from both Aly's contraction pains, and the boredom being stuck with one's own thoughts can bring -- and after a while, his presence disappears. Again, I sit in contemplation, or at least I give the appearance of doing so, even if Aly's birthing pains are now speeding up.
Another presence appears by my side. I look up and immediately wish I had not. This time, the Great Mother goddess sits by my side; my mother is sworn to her. "How inordinately blessed I am," I think sardonically, "to be visited on such a solemn night by not one, but two gods, and both of whom have shaped my family's destiny in some form or another." One cannot be a member of the combined Cooper/Trebond/Olau lines and not be god-touched, but some of us, like my brother Thom and I, are luckier than others. Until now, the only gods I have ever met in person are my adoptive aunt, Daine, and her parents, the Green Lady of Snowsdale in Galla and the hunt-god, Weiryn. And now, one of the greatest, and one of the most cunning have both come to me on this night.
When she speaks, her voice is that of the hunt; it is the sound of battle, the ring of swords as they clash against one another. Had I not been raised to be respectful, I would be curled in a ball on the floor, my hands clapped over my ears, even if she only speaks to me in my mind. "Alan of Pirate's Swoop," she says, her deep green eyes holding mine. I cannot pull away, even if I wanted to. "I see my brother has been here," she observes as my stomach again clenches in a sympathetic contraction pain. I have been taught to withstand pain, to let my mind carry me above the sort of thing that would cripple an ordinary fighter. In these times, a knight must be extraordinary, and with my mother being who she is, I have had to prove my skills time and again. I do not dare speak to the goddess, not even in my mind. I have worked too hard to risk the loss of my shield on the eve of my earning it.
Shaking her head, she does ... something ... and as quickly as the contractions were upon me, they are gone. "Your sister's children, a boy and a girl, are fine and healthy." The goddess kisses me on the forehead, as my own mother would. I see the cosmos before my eyes, even as I fight to remain upright, and the sense that I am in the presence of a god fades until I can again see the door to the Chamber. No wonder no one else is allowed to speak of his or her Ordeal! If everyone has had to deal with things as I have, no one would believe them.
Now that I do not feel Aly's contractions, my thoughts return to the reason why I am in this room. I have to admit that the distractions, pleasant or otherwise, did succeed in making me forget for a time that I am freezing. I fall into a meditation, slowly letting the control my physical discomfort holds over me ease away. At last I am able to let my thoughts flow over that for which I have been charged. There are more interruptions in the long hours before the pre-dawn when the Mithran priest fetches me to step past that iron door, but they are mere annoyances after the grand visits of Kyprioth and the Great Mother. I get to my feet, my legs stiff from the long hours I have sat in the same position. Once my legs are steady beneath me, I enter the Chamber and the door behind me slams shut. It has been an eventful night, and my stock of fear and nerves has been depleted. All that remains is curiosity. I look around at the blank stone walls but nothing happens so I venture to the center of the room and sit down, the picture of idleness.
While I wait, I reflect on my own behaviour and suppose this is a trait inherited from my father, the realm's spymaster now that Grandfather has retired. Myles of Olau handed the reigns to my father after Aly successfully helped the rebellion in the Copper Isles to overthrow their rulers and to return rule to the indigenous people of that land. My grandsire travels now, as he never did in his youth, to the Copper Isles, to see his great-grandchildren. He goes to Carthak and spends time with his godsdaughter, Kalasin, my lord king's daughter and my childhood friend. Together with her husband, the Emperor Kaddar, they work to bring Carthak to a new kind of prosperity. The road will be long and hard fought, as it has been for King Jonathan and Queen Thayet, but they will succeed in the end. I have foreseen it.
Still, the Chamber does nothing, so my thoughts wander yet again, this time to the gift. My mother and Thom both have the gift in huge amounts. Theirs is the all-purpose gift, one that enables them to do so many things. My father's is less developed, but he too has the gift. Aly's is much like Da's in the sense that it works perfectly with their talents. Their work -- and greatest delight -- is in spy work, and having the Sight enables them to do their job better than anyone else. Aly and Da have been matching wits against each other since she became the Copper Isles' spymaster; neither ever triumphs over the other for very long, and it is a game they both enjoy. I envy the relationship Aly has with Da, even as she envies the one I have with Ma.
When I decided to go for my shield, I do not think anyone was more relieved than Alanna of Pirate's Swoop, Olau and Trebond. She is the King's Champion, even all these decades later, and the greatest swordsman (or woman) of our time. Her skill on the battlefield and in duels is legendary. She is god-touched, hot-tempered, and amazing. And I am the most -- and the least -- like her. Thom, like the uncle our parents named him for, is an academic. Aly is the trickster. And Alan....
"Alan has no idea what his role in the world is, does he?" a voice whispers in my mind. At last; I feared I would be the only person ever to enter this room and have nothing happen! I do not speak, but I am not supposed to, am I? Instead, I get to my feet and look around. The room is still empty save for one wall, which seems to become a moving tapestry. I watch as scenes flash before my eyes ... it is my life, on fast-forward, and for the first time, I feel a flicker of unease that has nothing to do with gods who show up unannounced.
I watch as the Chamber forces me to acknowledge something that no one else knows about me. A part of my mind marvels at its ability to do so even as the rest of me grows more uncomfortable by the minute. I do not know what my place in this world is. Thom's role is mapped out for him; he wants to be a great sorcerer, and he will be. Aly has already proven herself time and again, using skills she learned as part of a game growing up, and applying them to make her mark in the world. Me, for all that I have excelled at my studies and have proven my skill and talent with weapons, I have no true direction to my life. For now, I will go as the wind blows me, to where I am needed or commanded. And this chafes as nothing else can.
How is it that I come from such a great family, deed and talent wise, and of them all, I am the only one who does not have a calling? I became a page three years later than most. The reasons were many, and even if I had wanted to at age ten as most other young men and women (there are now four girls who are in training) do, I could not have come then. Instead, once the political dealings that had blocked my bid to become a knight were resolved, I came, not because the desire to earn my shield fired my blood, as it had my mother's, but because I had nothing better to do.
The Chamber forces me to face the one character trait about myself that I hate as it reminds me in one way or another that I am ordinary. My gift manifests itself through the ability to see the future. I do not need a scrying crystal or mirror to see things that will come, but mine is nothing special. There are hedgewitches who have the gift of foresight. Irnai, the young woman whom Lady Knight Keladry and her friends rescued from Scanra so many years ago, now advises the king. I have a talent with weaponry, true, but I have never excelled at any one. Seeing me with my friends, no one would ever guess that my deepest, most crippling fear is not failure, but that of being unremarkable. The Chamber of the Ordeal is merciless. It hammers me with memory after memory, forcing me to relive them all until I weep bitter tears, until I fight back and rage at it in my mind. "There is no crime in being ordinary!" I rail silently. "It is the ordinary, and not the extraordinary that make the world function day in and out. Even those who seem unimpressive have something to offer!"
In my mind, the Chamber whispers, "I have a memory a thousand years old, and I know secrets I have never been told, Alan of Pirate's Swoop." I wipe my cheeks and glare defiance as the voice continues, "And I have jewels that have not yet been found when they first walk through my door, but you, lad, were just a diamond in the rough that needed polishing. You will do."
Behind me, the door opens on its own. I have done it. And when I leave, my shoulders back, my head held high and emerge into the room now filled with dawn's light, my knight master stares at me in surprise before draping a blanket around my shoulders. Most people who emerge from the Chamber look like they were hammered, but I refuse to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing how very much my time in that room has affected me. I nod my thanks and pull it around me.
The gallery is full of well-wishers -- adopted family consisting of my famous uncles and aunts, including my liege lord king and his queen. There are the people with whom I have made lifelong friendships during my tenure as a page and squire, and a handful of my instructors. My grandparents, my brother, my father -- the man for whom I am a dead-ringer save for the color of my hair -- and my mother. I lock eyes not with the host of gods at the back of the room ... were I not so weary I would be honored by their presences ... but with the short woman whose violet eyes look over me anxiously. And I begin to understand what it is that the Chamber forced me to recognise. Ordinary is never dull. And neither am I.
Word Count: 2586
Author: hhhellcat
Fandom: Tamora Pierce
Who: Alan of Pirate's Swoop, set a few years after the events of the book, "Trickster's Queen."
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Characters mentioned in this fic belong to the world of Tortall as created by Tamora Pierce. Alan's woes and thoughts are my speculation on things that the future might bring.
Author's notes: This was written for innerslytherin's Song Lyrics Fic Challenge. The prompt, which was number thirty on the list, is below.
I've got a memory a thousand years old
And I know secrets I've never been told
And I've got jewels I haven't found
And they'll return me to the ground
- "I'm the Girl" by Heather Nova
One might wonder, and perhaps wisely at that, what pushes a young lad or lass to pursue their shield? Eight years ago, I began my own journey, one that culminates this evening as I sit here in the freezing night, clad simply in rough-spun undyed cotton garments. I am here to sit out a vigil as I reflect on all I have been taught and all that will be expected of me should I emerge from behind that iron door after the sun rises.
The Chamber of the Ordeal. Just the name of it is enough to put a haunted look in the eyes of even the most battle-toughened knight. I already knew many in my lifetime, and met many more in the near decade I have spent dedicating my days toward earning that which will mark me as a defender of the people, someone who represents both my liege lord king and his lady queen, as well as the law of this land. None are allowed to speak of what happens when they enter the Chamber, just as none are allowed to speak once they enter this antechamber on the night of their vigil.
I am supposed to be reflecting on what it will mean to emerge from that room there in the morning. My thoughts are supposed to be virtuous, pure, dedicated to my country's well-being. And instead, my mind travels to a land far to the southeast, to the place known to us as the Copper Isles, to a room in a tower where my twin currently labors to birth her third and fourth children. Each contraction she feels rips at my own belly. "Honestly, Aly," I think to myself, "your timing couldn't have been better!"
I jump as a god, shimmering in his silvery light, sits beside me. "Now, now, Alan," he chides me, shaking his head. "You should have expected that your sister, favoured of the Trickster," he said, giving me a mocking bow, "would choose the night of your vigil to have her twins. In fact," he says, examining his nails as if bored, the torch light flashing off the jewels of his myriad rings, "I might even offer you odds on which of my brothers and sisters arranged things so that she would . What say you, Alan of Pirate's Swoop?"
I, of course, am forbidden from speaking, or I shall forfeit eight long years of work. I offer him a wilting look, one with which -- if this is the god Kyprioth of whom Aly wrote so much about -- he must be familiar. We are not identical, but our features and our ways of expressing ourselves are similar enough, something that develops when sharing the same womb. It is a twin bond, something those who are not twinborn cannot understand. Mother was a twin; Aly and I are twins, and through our bond, I again wince and fight the urge to groan aloud as another contraction (for her own nearly born set of twins) squeezes through her. The births of her first two children -- for which I was 'blessed' enough to share the burden of the birthing process, even thousands of miles away -- were mercifully short, and I was not in such a precarious position as I am now when they had occurred.
Kyprioth, as he is known in the Copper Isles, or the Trickster god as we know him as here in Tortall ... he taunts me; he teases, he relates stories of Aly's work that ordinarily would have had me howling with laughter. He tries to force me to make some sort of noise, but either he has not counted on the stubborn streak I have inherited from both parents, or he is banking on it. I ignore him -- despite my gratitude for the distraction from both Aly's contraction pains, and the boredom being stuck with one's own thoughts can bring -- and after a while, his presence disappears. Again, I sit in contemplation, or at least I give the appearance of doing so, even if Aly's birthing pains are now speeding up.
Another presence appears by my side. I look up and immediately wish I had not. This time, the Great Mother goddess sits by my side; my mother is sworn to her. "How inordinately blessed I am," I think sardonically, "to be visited on such a solemn night by not one, but two gods, and both of whom have shaped my family's destiny in some form or another." One cannot be a member of the combined Cooper/Trebond/Olau lines and not be god-touched, but some of us, like my brother Thom and I, are luckier than others. Until now, the only gods I have ever met in person are my adoptive aunt, Daine, and her parents, the Green Lady of Snowsdale in Galla and the hunt-god, Weiryn. And now, one of the greatest, and one of the most cunning have both come to me on this night.
When she speaks, her voice is that of the hunt; it is the sound of battle, the ring of swords as they clash against one another. Had I not been raised to be respectful, I would be curled in a ball on the floor, my hands clapped over my ears, even if she only speaks to me in my mind. "Alan of Pirate's Swoop," she says, her deep green eyes holding mine. I cannot pull away, even if I wanted to. "I see my brother has been here," she observes as my stomach again clenches in a sympathetic contraction pain. I have been taught to withstand pain, to let my mind carry me above the sort of thing that would cripple an ordinary fighter. In these times, a knight must be extraordinary, and with my mother being who she is, I have had to prove my skills time and again. I do not dare speak to the goddess, not even in my mind. I have worked too hard to risk the loss of my shield on the eve of my earning it.
Shaking her head, she does ... something ... and as quickly as the contractions were upon me, they are gone. "Your sister's children, a boy and a girl, are fine and healthy." The goddess kisses me on the forehead, as my own mother would. I see the cosmos before my eyes, even as I fight to remain upright, and the sense that I am in the presence of a god fades until I can again see the door to the Chamber. No wonder no one else is allowed to speak of his or her Ordeal! If everyone has had to deal with things as I have, no one would believe them.
Now that I do not feel Aly's contractions, my thoughts return to the reason why I am in this room. I have to admit that the distractions, pleasant or otherwise, did succeed in making me forget for a time that I am freezing. I fall into a meditation, slowly letting the control my physical discomfort holds over me ease away. At last I am able to let my thoughts flow over that for which I have been charged. There are more interruptions in the long hours before the pre-dawn when the Mithran priest fetches me to step past that iron door, but they are mere annoyances after the grand visits of Kyprioth and the Great Mother. I get to my feet, my legs stiff from the long hours I have sat in the same position. Once my legs are steady beneath me, I enter the Chamber and the door behind me slams shut. It has been an eventful night, and my stock of fear and nerves has been depleted. All that remains is curiosity. I look around at the blank stone walls but nothing happens so I venture to the center of the room and sit down, the picture of idleness.
While I wait, I reflect on my own behaviour and suppose this is a trait inherited from my father, the realm's spymaster now that Grandfather has retired. Myles of Olau handed the reigns to my father after Aly successfully helped the rebellion in the Copper Isles to overthrow their rulers and to return rule to the indigenous people of that land. My grandsire travels now, as he never did in his youth, to the Copper Isles, to see his great-grandchildren. He goes to Carthak and spends time with his godsdaughter, Kalasin, my lord king's daughter and my childhood friend. Together with her husband, the Emperor Kaddar, they work to bring Carthak to a new kind of prosperity. The road will be long and hard fought, as it has been for King Jonathan and Queen Thayet, but they will succeed in the end. I have foreseen it.
Still, the Chamber does nothing, so my thoughts wander yet again, this time to the gift. My mother and Thom both have the gift in huge amounts. Theirs is the all-purpose gift, one that enables them to do so many things. My father's is less developed, but he too has the gift. Aly's is much like Da's in the sense that it works perfectly with their talents. Their work -- and greatest delight -- is in spy work, and having the Sight enables them to do their job better than anyone else. Aly and Da have been matching wits against each other since she became the Copper Isles' spymaster; neither ever triumphs over the other for very long, and it is a game they both enjoy. I envy the relationship Aly has with Da, even as she envies the one I have with Ma.
When I decided to go for my shield, I do not think anyone was more relieved than Alanna of Pirate's Swoop, Olau and Trebond. She is the King's Champion, even all these decades later, and the greatest swordsman (or woman) of our time. Her skill on the battlefield and in duels is legendary. She is god-touched, hot-tempered, and amazing. And I am the most -- and the least -- like her. Thom, like the uncle our parents named him for, is an academic. Aly is the trickster. And Alan....
"Alan has no idea what his role in the world is, does he?" a voice whispers in my mind. At last; I feared I would be the only person ever to enter this room and have nothing happen! I do not speak, but I am not supposed to, am I? Instead, I get to my feet and look around. The room is still empty save for one wall, which seems to become a moving tapestry. I watch as scenes flash before my eyes ... it is my life, on fast-forward, and for the first time, I feel a flicker of unease that has nothing to do with gods who show up unannounced.
I watch as the Chamber forces me to acknowledge something that no one else knows about me. A part of my mind marvels at its ability to do so even as the rest of me grows more uncomfortable by the minute. I do not know what my place in this world is. Thom's role is mapped out for him; he wants to be a great sorcerer, and he will be. Aly has already proven herself time and again, using skills she learned as part of a game growing up, and applying them to make her mark in the world. Me, for all that I have excelled at my studies and have proven my skill and talent with weapons, I have no true direction to my life. For now, I will go as the wind blows me, to where I am needed or commanded. And this chafes as nothing else can.
How is it that I come from such a great family, deed and talent wise, and of them all, I am the only one who does not have a calling? I became a page three years later than most. The reasons were many, and even if I had wanted to at age ten as most other young men and women (there are now four girls who are in training) do, I could not have come then. Instead, once the political dealings that had blocked my bid to become a knight were resolved, I came, not because the desire to earn my shield fired my blood, as it had my mother's, but because I had nothing better to do.
The Chamber forces me to face the one character trait about myself that I hate as it reminds me in one way or another that I am ordinary. My gift manifests itself through the ability to see the future. I do not need a scrying crystal or mirror to see things that will come, but mine is nothing special. There are hedgewitches who have the gift of foresight. Irnai, the young woman whom Lady Knight Keladry and her friends rescued from Scanra so many years ago, now advises the king. I have a talent with weaponry, true, but I have never excelled at any one. Seeing me with my friends, no one would ever guess that my deepest, most crippling fear is not failure, but that of being unremarkable. The Chamber of the Ordeal is merciless. It hammers me with memory after memory, forcing me to relive them all until I weep bitter tears, until I fight back and rage at it in my mind. "There is no crime in being ordinary!" I rail silently. "It is the ordinary, and not the extraordinary that make the world function day in and out. Even those who seem unimpressive have something to offer!"
In my mind, the Chamber whispers, "I have a memory a thousand years old, and I know secrets I have never been told, Alan of Pirate's Swoop." I wipe my cheeks and glare defiance as the voice continues, "And I have jewels that have not yet been found when they first walk through my door, but you, lad, were just a diamond in the rough that needed polishing. You will do."
Behind me, the door opens on its own. I have done it. And when I leave, my shoulders back, my head held high and emerge into the room now filled with dawn's light, my knight master stares at me in surprise before draping a blanket around my shoulders. Most people who emerge from the Chamber look like they were hammered, but I refuse to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing how very much my time in that room has affected me. I nod my thanks and pull it around me.
The gallery is full of well-wishers -- adopted family consisting of my famous uncles and aunts, including my liege lord king and his queen. There are the people with whom I have made lifelong friendships during my tenure as a page and squire, and a handful of my instructors. My grandparents, my brother, my father -- the man for whom I am a dead-ringer save for the color of my hair -- and my mother. I lock eyes not with the host of gods at the back of the room ... were I not so weary I would be honored by their presences ... but with the short woman whose violet eyes look over me anxiously. And I begin to understand what it is that the Chamber forced me to recognise. Ordinary is never dull. And neither am I.