I've been doing a bit of (re)writing for Fabian and Tentacles, and in doing so came upon the following 'strange fragment'. It's about five years old. It concerns a humakti named Helden, a vingan named Cradledaughter, and a meeting with Queen Kallyr's Consort. Karis is the spirit of Helden's sword. Helden is a Ralian with, well as my wife would say, with a few unresolved issues. About life. And death. And Wolf Pirates.
Looking back, I find it unusual enough to be worth sharing. Partially because of current discussions on souls, and partly because with HW out we can get finally back to weaving our own stories again.
So, as a brief diversion from Uroxi identity crises, the cultural dimensions of political power, and whether you can *really* have a big-rock finish HW combat without knowing if you've been hit or not, may I share, without further comment...
*RUNO IX* Darkness
***
Where do our myths come from? They are eternal, but we must also dream them
anew in every generation. They come to us in new robes, though their truth
is unchanging. When one of our tribe is sanctified, or initiated, when they
go off alone into the wilderness, or into the depths of the temple, there
they will dream a truth. It might be song or story or vision or spell. That
truth is holy, and it must be shared with the entire tribe. So our myths
live.
Share what you can of that truth. But do not worry if your words seem inadequate; we all know that more was shown to you than you can tell.
CloudStrider.
Wind-Shaman of Far Point.
***
"Neither slumber nor sentry watch for you tonight my friend. It's time to
receive your orders. Bring your heaviest cloak, but no armour that might
make noise as you travel. Be sure you wear no silver."
Cradledaughter's summons was expected. What was <I>unexpected</I> was the path on which she led me. Not to the Orlanthi thane-fires in the centre of our camp, but rather beyond the rear sentry posts and palisades, turning north to face the towering dark mass of Cursed. <I>What manner of meeting was this?</I>
We carried neither torch nor light-charm. As we passed beyond the Praxian picket fires, my companion bade me not to speak, nor draw a weapon, nor even to look behind as we journeyed. I sensed from her stern tone that we intruded upon wanton powers.
So we entered into a night torn with cries, into a winter-dark realm where elemental and ancient spirits ranged triumphant in the star-hung waste. Often as we edged forward I felt the tendril touch of their raw power. Immortals tamed to silence in the wet woods below rove unfettered here.
The darkness was broken only by the occasional gentle intrusion of glow worm, by distant thunder flash or by ruddy reflection of moonlight on powdered snow and ice. An owl screamed hatred at our unwelcome intrusion. Each breath came danger-keen. About me I sensed rather than saw nameless colours, brooding pools, gashed trees, broken rock. <I>This I remember.</I>
Something pale drifted through the air above us, following our path.
I stumbled rather than strode. Darkness fell complete; moon and star dome obscured behind dark masses of rain-pregnant cloud. My world narrowed down to the pale outline that was Cradledaughter, the stinging whip of branches as we climbed the twisting slope, the squelch and tug of boots through rain-sodden mud. I became nothing more than chilled bones and dagger-drawn lungs, the chant-like rhythms of walking and breathing.
As we climbed I sensed figures in the fog about us. Yet it was as if I journeyed in a dream: the landscape around me timeless, silent, collapsed to formless mists and nameless presences.
We must have walked for several hours, circling as much as climbing the jutting height. Occasional thunderbolts tore at my night vision, stark colours lingering with the after-image - browns and greens and weathered purple.
Once the moon broke through the massed cloud. I saw her trembling on the crag's brink, bearing away plunder between her horns. <I>Such a beautiful young girl. </I> By her fleeting light I glimpsed. <I>I do not know.</I>
The distant fires of both camps were spread below us as a tapestry - we had completely circled the mountain. Still Cradledaughter did not speak. We stood upon a storm-barren braich, its stony floor littered with wind-carved colgs and ancient dragon stones. To our left, a black spring bubbled silently, overshadowed by the coal-glowing branches of a cypress, its trunk burning but not consumed. To our right, a similar pool, overshadowed by hazel thick with verdant leaf.
Above me, shrieking birds flitted through the darkness. <I>Karis, where are we?</I>
°^This is a natural opening, a holy place, a link between the worlds. Some god's blood is smeared across the ground.^°
<I>An Earth Navel.</I> Yet all I could see were chron holes and egg stones, wind-carved images of divine stallion and mare, and two flickering campfires. <I>Had they been there a moment before? </I>The world seemed out of kilter, rippling. I could sense the coils of something <I>monstrous </I>twist about me.
I must be even more tired than I realised.
Three old women huddled by the first fire, roasting a dog, silent as I made my slow approach. One of them crouched forward, rolling the bones. Before the second flame, a pair of surly Praxians picked the flesh from a one-eyed salmon. They stood as we approached, each emblazoned with the mark of a white bull across their chest. One exchanged a few curt words with Cradledaughter. The second, bald and scarred, stepped forward, motioned to take Karis from my keeping. Obviously the woman was a simpleton, and did not know who I was. She would soon learn.
"Let him keep the blade."
The voice was Sartarite, tired and hoarse, like one worn out from constant shouting. It rasped into my consciousness like the presence of naked iron. I spun to face the man who had stepped behind me from the darkness, wondering why Karis had not warned me of his presence.
And found myself staring into a limitless expanse of liquid blue-grey eyes.
He was dressed in a simple grey kilted tunic and cloak. No weapon was visible, though three carved teeth from some enormous beast hung from his woven belt. He stood half a head shorter than me, though well-muscled and limber. Thirty winters perhaps. Black hair, already etched with grey, slicked back against his skull with rancid oil. The edges of his face were plastered with white ochre, and his hair and nails were long and unkempt. The effect was ghostlike; he seemed a lonely shaman rather than a warrior.
"Come with me. You must be tired."
I followed the stranger down through the web-plastered rocks and boulders that littered the braich. Part of me hoped that this was another servant, leading me into the presence of the Consort. Yet I already sensed the truth, even before my ally confirmed it.
"Karis, what do you see?. Karis?"
°^I don't know. I perceive. a multitude.^°
I am the leaf caught upon the breeze.
I am the falling stone.
I am the taste of blood in the mouth of the predator.
I am the rain before it forms into drops.
I am the brother who is not kin
Parent of life, life's child.
I am the taste of water, the light in sun and moon
the silence between the crashing waves.
I am the murmur of the bellows
I am the cry of dreams on waking
the name in the hero challenge
white bull in valour
a salmon in the water
blade point in battle.
I am in everything,
and everything springs from me.
Neither revealed nor unrevealed
Neither manifest nor hidden.
Name me.
The Seventh Meditation on the Blade.
We stood together, side by side, rooted at the iron heart of ancient hills. Behind us, some damp and crouching cave tunnelled down into unknown depths. To my left, a collapsed dome of turf and stone, the remains of some long-abandoned sweat lodge. To my right, the abyss, a cloud-wrapped visa extending west to the very boundaries of Furthest. The plain below sparkled with ten thousand jewels.
<I>A shaman's place.</I>
The Queen's Consort crouched by a dying fire, rebinding with thong the grip of a great two-handed sword. Totally absorbed in his task, he let the silence grow. I sipped impatiently from a pannikin of mulled wine.
When he finally spoke, he did so without glancing up from his labour. "Do you know of Gamla's Leap, that last bitter battle of the Righteous Wind? Harvar Ironfist's wind-borne thanes led a Lunar hero band into the heights north of Chalk Man - they were seeking vengeance for the Ghost Gors. They had it too - matched it blood for blood and head for head - a massacre."
He inspected his handiwork by the ember's flickering glow. Satisfied, he wiped down the blue metal of the blade with an edge of his cloak. "It's said that many of the final survivors - windlords and godi all - swore terrible oaths together. Rather than give up the struggle, they willed their spirits and their souls into a single blade. That blade was taken from the place by Balin Stormstrong of the Tresdarnii clan, one of the few who lived. He was the oldest, and perhaps the wisest amongst them. It is said that the blade will be used in the great battle to free the Far Place from Moon Woman and her kin."
Balin Stormstrong, whose god-gifted grandson bore his name and, some said, his memory and wisdom. The forces were gathering.
"A battle such as the one we face below?"
"Blocking the Tarsh Road is merely a holding action for Kallyr and for Alda
Chur, as well you know. But it is an important one, perhaps a critical one.
The balance is so fine - a day or two's difference may mean life or death
for Sartar, and for the Far Place. But the great battle is coming. The
forces gather. Soon enough the battle-bird's cry, the hoar-wolf's howl. The
first blows have already been dealt. Shield will answer shaft."
I nodded, hearing screams of bronze and wood and flesh carried upon the ghost wind. Quickly I made warding with my fingers. "Our present situation is a good one. Our defences are excellent. Perhaps the skalds will one day remember a victory at the mountain called Cursed. They will recite our names and count us among the heroes of Kallyr's war. No warrior could ask for more."
He stared beyond me, to the lights of the camp below. "I think the skalds will name us all as one, if they remember us at all."
He rose then, testing the balance of the great blade. Hefting it with ease, he set it dancing on palm and fingers. Despite his odd appearance, this man was a master of the iron edge. I laughed gently to myself, thinking of another wild bushman who was not what he seemed.
The Consort laid down the heavy blade. "I agree with your assessment of the defences. Your Cohort have done well. But tell me, Death Lord, what do you think of the <I>hosting</I> gathered below?"
He knew as well as I our major weakness. "I think that if hopes and hatred could win battles you'd be king of Dragon Pass."
He laughed at that. "I was told your mind was as keen as your blade. Excellent. But remember Death Lord, sometimes hopes can take solid form, march out and take the foe by the throat. Hatred too. I learned that well enough in Prax, and again when Broyan of the Volsaxi took hopes and hatred and a hundred men and marched north into Heortland. I know the clansmen below won't wait forever, and that war, despite the horrors of a generation, is still a kind of sport to many of them. But you're a foreigner, and know the more of them in dying than in living.
The Consort lifted one of the rune-carved teeth from his belt, and
whispering to it softly before placing it on the ground next to his sword.
"I know the mettle of these people. They're wilful and undisciplined and
fickle as a storm gust, but they'll fight for the warrior to their left and
to their right, the brothers, fathers, sisters and lovers who've left the
steads to join them. They have something to fight for here that those of us
who make war our bedmate can't really understand. They're our greatest
weapon."
I barely heard beyond his first few sentences. <I>Broyan.</I> Anger was rising within me again, deep-welled and poisonous. Had my hand been clasped around a fetish when I gave reply, the venom in my voice might have killed him.
The air crackled and sparked as I spoke. "I seem to remember that Broyan had more than a hundred; he made pact with Harrek and his Wolf Pirates. Little enough concern for the clansfolk then."
In the brief silence that followed, anything was possible. My hand itched, watching, ready for the great double blade to fly through the air towards me. Or perhaps I'd draw Karis and make justice myself.
He shrugged, those liquid eyes gazing into mine, unflinching. <I>They were not a warrior's eyes.</I> There was patience in his voice. And weariness perhaps.
"Death Lord, you're a mercenary yourself. Do you pick and choose who will
fight beside you? Of course not! The gods have their own ways of judging men
and their deeds. It's for us to strive as they did, and then to go beyond.
That's the song-lesson of our heroes; Harmast, Arkat, Alakoring, Sartar,
Kallyr."
The world spun on the point of a weighted knife. "Arkat didn't lift his kilt and bend to the Wolf Pirates."
Once again those silent eyes sought mine. I turned away, unable to bear his gaze, troubled and shamed. I'd regretted those words as soon as they'd left my mouth. He knew: I knew. Arkat did worse. <I>Much worse.</I> Blessed be the terrible sound of his name.
"I'm sorry. Lord. I spoke in haste, from an angry wound. Such words are
unworthy of you."
He crouched by the fire, poured himself a cup of wine. "We are not so different, you and I. Not even the gods can go through life unmarked."
<I>How dark your will, and iron-like. </I>
Words came unbidden to my lips. "Who are you?"
___
[next paragraph(s) left to you].
Cheers
John
The thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth....
This is the place. We are, I am, you are
carrying a knife, a camera / a book of myths
in which / our names do not appear.
- - Adrienne Rich.
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #664
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