Searing 9, 122
Imogen pursed her lips.
She tented her hands, pressing finger-to-finger, and raised the resulting edifice to her nose. The motion would have been smoother were it not for the splint on her arm, but she had endured worse for the sake of appropriate drama.
She sat down once, cross-legged, which sent a twang of pain through her right calf.
”The monkeys took it?” Imogen asked.
“Mmm!” responded Fioh, her tone bright and thoughtful despite the fact that it was a daft query. “Well, that is the whole idea of the shrine, Imogen. Kighe brought the statue here and then put it there overnight, and now it is gone.”
”Right. Okay, right, sure. That makes sense.” Imogen wasn’t at all sure it did, but what else was there to say? ”So what do the monkeys do with stuff?.”
“Mmm!” said Fioh again, eyes glimmering with laughter. “Now here’s the part you’ll find funny-”
The meal that night had been fantastic, actually. There had been eleven Orks present, all of whom Imogen gathered were siblings or the children of those siblings; their mother, it seemed, had been close to Oarv'hua.
“I remember him.” insisted the oldest of her Orkhan hosts, a man with few wrinkles but even fewer tufts of wispy white hair named Evonain. “People called him a layabout, though he was never lazy. He was always lost in his own head, and he’d hide away whenever he could so that nobody would bug him. It was days after he finally left that people realized he’d actually made good on it this time.”
The Orkhan were gathered in some manner of central sitting room, which featured well over a dozen pieces of woven furniture. There was no table- each of the people in attendance got a bowl of leeks, some sort of soft nut-based pâté, and a fish which her hosts called “tambaqui” and which she called “the most singularly delicious fish she’d ever eaten.”
”Well, father says that he came north chasing after grandmother. Did you know her?”
“I was just a little thing then, In-nogen.” Evonain had particularly pronounced tusks, and there was simply no way he was going to get her name right, but she appreciated the effort. “I recall being angry that she had come here and taken Oarv'hua, who was always a kind and fascinating man, but that was nothing more than a child’s tantrum. I heard from the elders that she was a famous beauty, but said to be too brusque and cold. It was rumored by some that she had no loins at all, but merely a smooth patch of opal scale. As you are here, I suppose one cannot put much faith in rumor, eh?”
“Could we have a look at yours, then?” one of the younger men asked. Imogen blinked with shock, setting off a round of howls around the room as he quickly-perhaps too quickly-corrected “Scales, that is, your scales.”
Imogen tried not to scowl or blush or otherwise play the butt of the joke too well as she pushed back the sleeve on her left arm and let the man examine the scaling near her elbow. “Yes, that’s a foreign shade, no doubt about it. Very nice, how they catch and roil in the light; I can see why Oarv'hua was interested.”
Thankfully, before Imogen had to come up with a graceful response to the compliment, one of the younger girls interrupted.
“Was that why you came here across the sea, Imogen? To learn about Oarv'hua?”
”No- well, I’m grateful to learn about him,” Imogen remembered how intensely the people in Drathera had treated knowledge of kin. It didn’t seem likely, to her, that a little village in which everyone was family would think much less of the importance of such, ”But I actually came looking to find someone named Kighe.”
The final member of the trio of young girls looked up in surprise, as though Imogen had just announced that she was here to ransack the village. “For… me? Why?”
A wave of surprised relief passed over Imogen. After everything else, she thought finding the girl would be a lot harder. ”Oh, you’re Kighe? I wanted to talk about the statuette you bought in Drathera. The one from Ailos?”
Kighe looked like she was about a second from fainting dead away.
To her credit, Kighe did not lie to me.
She refused to tell me the whole story, but her sister Fioh filled me in after dinner. Although I had not realized it, the question was contentious. You see, Kighe bought the statuette not on a whim, but out of devotion to the Triumvirate, who are not well-loved in Gihah K'uvfoi'uv Fi'uv. She was (and is) unaware that it was anything more than a bit of stonework rescued from Ailos after the fall, but she wanted to take it home as a symbol of faith that the Triumvirate will someday see the cities of Ecith restored.
There is no law in Gihah against worship of the Triumvirate, of course, but I take it that Chieftain Coid Ong Oping has some species of grudge against the practice. Fioh says that she thinks that he thinks that they led the Orkhan away from the true stewardship of the dragonflights to become toys for the demigods’ games abroad. And Evonain is a great supporter of the Chieftain, and while I can’t imagine that he has barred his family from talk of Ailos and such, they seem reluctant to get into it with him.
Orks who don’t want to debate? Now I’ve seen everything.
So Kighe buys this relic of Ailos and travels home–by water, by the way, it turns out the people at the trading post were wrong and you don’t need to wander through the damn jungle for days before you reach the river–but doesn’t want to bring it into her household as a symbol because it could cause strife.
What’s her solution? Well, it turns out that there’s an old ruined shrine about forty minutes east of the village, and the villagers say that anything you leave on the altar overnight gets taken by the gods. A perfect devotional spot! She does what you’d guess.
Now Carina, you and I, we’re modern folk. We know that the gods are too damn busy to be ferrying packages, or else they’re wildly overqualified for a job which I could be doing. But when Fioh takes me to this place the next day?
”OK. Tell me again about the monkeys.”
“As I said, this place was a shrine back in the Age before the three cities were built. I think it was a dragon shrine, but when they tell the stories it’s usually Galetira or Syren. The superstition was that if you left something there, the gods would take it and make use of your gift, so kids leave little gifts all the time- cups of cider, little treats, woven bracelets. And the next day, they are always gone!”
Imogen nodded, thoughtful. ”I understand. But it wasn’t the gods, it was monkeys.”
“Mmm!” trilled Fioh, “Well, who knows what relationship gods have with monkeys, but yes.”
”Fine. That’s fine, Fioh.” Actually, that would depend on the answer to her next question, and she was loath to even ask for that reason. ”So where do the monkeys take the stuff?”
Fioh looked thoughtful, which was pretty standard for the girl. “I don’t think anyone knows for sure. Probably different places, or someone would have stumbled on the cache by now. I suppose…” Fioh pointed upward.
“*Whaak whaak whaak*”
Imogen looked skyward, and her blood froze. Up above the two Orkhan, in the high branches of one of the twisting trees near the old shrine, two figures were watching. Lemurs.
”Oh Oh no.”
“Mmm! You’ll have to ask them.”
“A way to track the sifakas?”
Imogen was sitting, cross-legged (again, uncomfortably) in the Meditation Hall of Gihah. It was the traditional haunt of the Chief, and it absolutely looked like it could have been the workplace of a great and powerful mage of legend.
The hall itself was located in a cavern beneath the river, just before the cliff and waterfall, and one had to immerse themself in the water in order to access either of the entryways. This, Imogen suspected, was to create some sort of hermetic aetheric environment, appropriate for the Chief’s elementalist rites. Likewise, the stone floor of the cavern was covered in a thin film of water, making it, symbolically, one with the river above, except for a deeper pool in the middle which led all the way down the cliff to the retaining lake below.
Coid Ong Oping, master of water and chieftain of the village before the fire, sat at the edge of that pool. He wore almost nothing, which was sensible when working in such a cool, wet place, but he carried himself with such certainty and force that it was practically a cloak in itself. Imogen wore only a shift and breeches, both extremely soaked.
“Perhaps there is, Imogen Ward.” The chief pronounced her name without difficulty, and spoke without derision. Without any emotion at all, it seemed to her. “But before we speak of that, would you indulge me with a brief change of topic?”
It took Imogen a moment of pause to realize that it was a genuine question, not a transitional hypothetical. ”Oh, um. Yes, of course, Chief Coid.”
The Chief nodded and stood, rising to his full height, nearly eight feet high. “Your ancestors left Ecith and went north, to this place called Karnor. What do you think of Karnor?”
A reasonable inquiry. ”Well, I have only seldom been outside of the country surrounding Zaichaer, but it is a cold continent, where the land gives rise to less life. It is a bit dull compared to Ecith, but not without its own virtues.”
“I see. And what do you think of the city-state itself?”
”Zaichaer?” Imogen paused, thinking about the answer, ”It is an industrious city, but controlled by an odious philosophy which is used by even worse people to justify the cruelties and exploitation of their own people. The earth around it is poisoned by that industry, and the air itself tastes poisonous at times. But many of those who live there are good people. That is why my family stays there, Chieftain Coid.”
The Chieftain smiled, the first she’d seen. “What you have told me, Imogen Ward, is more than you may yet understand. The people, perhaps, you love. That is well. But the land of Zaichaer is foreign to your blood. It is natural! The dead earth of Karnor is no fit place for Orkhan. You would be happier if you stayed here.”
The comment wasn’t unexpected. She’d spoken to a few of the villagers about Zaichaer now, and they had all reasonably concluded that it seemed like a hellhole. They weren’t really wrong- but still. ”That may be true, Chieftain Coid, but I made an oath.”
“Yes, to the Sunsingers.” The Chief rolled the unfamiliar word about in his mouth. “The one who taught me said that Reaving was a rune for the suicidal and insane, but perhaps it is appropriate that it is needed in such a terrible land. It is good that you honor your commitments, but the higher calling is to the stewardship of Ecith.”
Imogen said nothing. She wasn’t convinced, but a sentiment like that was not vulnerable to argument.
“I would not question your right to decide this for yourself, Imogen Ward, but I would like you to better understand the disparity between Ecith and the northern realms. As I see it, your problem is that you love people, but you do not love the land- any land. As you see it, your problem is that you do not understand the creatures who have taken this thing you seek. Let us solve both problems at once.”
”How do you mean?” asked Imogen, warily.
“Through the rune of Animus, I can give you the power to question the sifakas. Spend some time here in the village and we will teach you to see the land as it is, to recognize at least a part of its beauty. Then you may retrieve your prize, and when you return to Zaichaer, you may clearly see what it is you have been missing since birth.”
”You’re offering initiation?” The idea seemed insane; no mage offered their apprentices a cardinal rune so carelessly.
“You are a seasoned mage already, Imogen Ward. If your Pacts have not killed you, neither will Animus. The danger to you is not that you lack will, but that you lack understanding of the land. Your life is yours to do with as you will, but I do not want to see a cousin kill herself out of ignorance without first offering the knowledge she lacks.”
He had a point. She’d survived one initiation. Anyway, the power to talk to animals seemed pretty useful, and while Animus was commonplace in Ecith, she didn’t think she’d find the opportunity again in Zaichaer.
”Alright. I will take your deal, Chief Coid. Just don’t expect me to be much good at it.”
Imogen pursed her lips.
She tented her hands, pressing finger-to-finger, and raised the resulting edifice to her nose. The motion would have been smoother were it not for the splint on her arm, but she had endured worse for the sake of appropriate drama.
She sat down once, cross-legged, which sent a twang of pain through her right calf.
”The monkeys took it?” Imogen asked.
“Mmm!” responded Fioh, her tone bright and thoughtful despite the fact that it was a daft query. “Well, that is the whole idea of the shrine, Imogen. Kighe brought the statue here and then put it there overnight, and now it is gone.”
”Right. Okay, right, sure. That makes sense.” Imogen wasn’t at all sure it did, but what else was there to say? ”So what do the monkeys do with stuff?.”
“Mmm!” said Fioh again, eyes glimmering with laughter. “Now here’s the part you’ll find funny-”
~~~
Searing 9, 122
Dear Carina,
So anyway, I lived.
It took a little longer to get to Gihah than expected, and I have some lumps and bruises and apparently my arm has “multiple” “hairline” “fractures” which I’ve never heard of but you cannot argue your way around these Orkhan. They are ridiculous about treating people.
When I got to Gihah, I was prepared to face discrimination for being a foreigner and undecorated, and perhaps a bit of undeserved scorn for my decision to proceed blindly through the jungles, which was driven by a rational economic calculation but admittedly based on incomplete data. The reality, however, defied all expectations.
I knew from my discussion with the Librarians that my grandfather was actually a man named Oarv'hua, but I had not quite put together that he was, in fact, from Gihah. There are a lot of villages in Ecith, so it is a strange coincidence that the one from which Kighe hails would happen to be the same as Oarv'hua’s own home, but truth is truth.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that a few of the people of Gihah apparently knew my grandfather, or knew of him by way of their own kin, and they decided upon the spot that I was a “cousin” because of it. This has been very convenient financially, since they’ve been all too eager to invite me for meals in exchange for stories about Zaichaer and our family.
And that was how I located the “cousin” called Kighe...
Dear Carina,
So anyway, I lived.
It took a little longer to get to Gihah than expected, and I have some lumps and bruises and apparently my arm has “multiple” “hairline” “fractures” which I’ve never heard of but you cannot argue your way around these Orkhan. They are ridiculous about treating people.
When I got to Gihah, I was prepared to face discrimination for being a foreigner and undecorated, and perhaps a bit of undeserved scorn for my decision to proceed blindly through the jungles, which was driven by a rational economic calculation but admittedly based on incomplete data. The reality, however, defied all expectations.
I knew from my discussion with the Librarians that my grandfather was actually a man named Oarv'hua, but I had not quite put together that he was, in fact, from Gihah. There are a lot of villages in Ecith, so it is a strange coincidence that the one from which Kighe hails would happen to be the same as Oarv'hua’s own home, but truth is truth.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that a few of the people of Gihah apparently knew my grandfather, or knew of him by way of their own kin, and they decided upon the spot that I was a “cousin” because of it. This has been very convenient financially, since they’ve been all too eager to invite me for meals in exchange for stories about Zaichaer and our family.
And that was how I located the “cousin” called Kighe...
~~~
The meal that night had been fantastic, actually. There had been eleven Orks present, all of whom Imogen gathered were siblings or the children of those siblings; their mother, it seemed, had been close to Oarv'hua.
“I remember him.” insisted the oldest of her Orkhan hosts, a man with few wrinkles but even fewer tufts of wispy white hair named Evonain. “People called him a layabout, though he was never lazy. He was always lost in his own head, and he’d hide away whenever he could so that nobody would bug him. It was days after he finally left that people realized he’d actually made good on it this time.”
The Orkhan were gathered in some manner of central sitting room, which featured well over a dozen pieces of woven furniture. There was no table- each of the people in attendance got a bowl of leeks, some sort of soft nut-based pâté, and a fish which her hosts called “tambaqui” and which she called “the most singularly delicious fish she’d ever eaten.”
”Well, father says that he came north chasing after grandmother. Did you know her?”
“I was just a little thing then, In-nogen.” Evonain had particularly pronounced tusks, and there was simply no way he was going to get her name right, but she appreciated the effort. “I recall being angry that she had come here and taken Oarv'hua, who was always a kind and fascinating man, but that was nothing more than a child’s tantrum. I heard from the elders that she was a famous beauty, but said to be too brusque and cold. It was rumored by some that she had no loins at all, but merely a smooth patch of opal scale. As you are here, I suppose one cannot put much faith in rumor, eh?”
“Could we have a look at yours, then?” one of the younger men asked. Imogen blinked with shock, setting off a round of howls around the room as he quickly-perhaps too quickly-corrected “Scales, that is, your scales.”
Imogen tried not to scowl or blush or otherwise play the butt of the joke too well as she pushed back the sleeve on her left arm and let the man examine the scaling near her elbow. “Yes, that’s a foreign shade, no doubt about it. Very nice, how they catch and roil in the light; I can see why Oarv'hua was interested.”
Thankfully, before Imogen had to come up with a graceful response to the compliment, one of the younger girls interrupted.
“Was that why you came here across the sea, Imogen? To learn about Oarv'hua?”
”No- well, I’m grateful to learn about him,” Imogen remembered how intensely the people in Drathera had treated knowledge of kin. It didn’t seem likely, to her, that a little village in which everyone was family would think much less of the importance of such, ”But I actually came looking to find someone named Kighe.”
The final member of the trio of young girls looked up in surprise, as though Imogen had just announced that she was here to ransack the village. “For… me? Why?”
A wave of surprised relief passed over Imogen. After everything else, she thought finding the girl would be a lot harder. ”Oh, you’re Kighe? I wanted to talk about the statuette you bought in Drathera. The one from Ailos?”
Kighe looked like she was about a second from fainting dead away.
~~~
To her credit, Kighe did not lie to me.
She refused to tell me the whole story, but her sister Fioh filled me in after dinner. Although I had not realized it, the question was contentious. You see, Kighe bought the statuette not on a whim, but out of devotion to the Triumvirate, who are not well-loved in Gihah K'uvfoi'uv Fi'uv. She was (and is) unaware that it was anything more than a bit of stonework rescued from Ailos after the fall, but she wanted to take it home as a symbol of faith that the Triumvirate will someday see the cities of Ecith restored.
There is no law in Gihah against worship of the Triumvirate, of course, but I take it that Chieftain Coid Ong Oping has some species of grudge against the practice. Fioh says that she thinks that he thinks that they led the Orkhan away from the true stewardship of the dragonflights to become toys for the demigods’ games abroad. And Evonain is a great supporter of the Chieftain, and while I can’t imagine that he has barred his family from talk of Ailos and such, they seem reluctant to get into it with him.
Orks who don’t want to debate? Now I’ve seen everything.
So Kighe buys this relic of Ailos and travels home–by water, by the way, it turns out the people at the trading post were wrong and you don’t need to wander through the damn jungle for days before you reach the river–but doesn’t want to bring it into her household as a symbol because it could cause strife.
What’s her solution? Well, it turns out that there’s an old ruined shrine about forty minutes east of the village, and the villagers say that anything you leave on the altar overnight gets taken by the gods. A perfect devotional spot! She does what you’d guess.
Now Carina, you and I, we’re modern folk. We know that the gods are too damn busy to be ferrying packages, or else they’re wildly overqualified for a job which I could be doing. But when Fioh takes me to this place the next day?
~~~
”OK. Tell me again about the monkeys.”
“As I said, this place was a shrine back in the Age before the three cities were built. I think it was a dragon shrine, but when they tell the stories it’s usually Galetira or Syren. The superstition was that if you left something there, the gods would take it and make use of your gift, so kids leave little gifts all the time- cups of cider, little treats, woven bracelets. And the next day, they are always gone!”
Imogen nodded, thoughtful. ”I understand. But it wasn’t the gods, it was monkeys.”
“Mmm!” trilled Fioh, “Well, who knows what relationship gods have with monkeys, but yes.”
”Fine. That’s fine, Fioh.” Actually, that would depend on the answer to her next question, and she was loath to even ask for that reason. ”So where do the monkeys take the stuff?”
Fioh looked thoughtful, which was pretty standard for the girl. “I don’t think anyone knows for sure. Probably different places, or someone would have stumbled on the cache by now. I suppose…” Fioh pointed upward.
“*Whaak whaak whaak*”
Imogen looked skyward, and her blood froze. Up above the two Orkhan, in the high branches of one of the twisting trees near the old shrine, two figures were watching. Lemurs.
”Oh Oh no.”
“Mmm! You’ll have to ask them.”
~~~
“A way to track the sifakas?”
Imogen was sitting, cross-legged (again, uncomfortably) in the Meditation Hall of Gihah. It was the traditional haunt of the Chief, and it absolutely looked like it could have been the workplace of a great and powerful mage of legend.
The hall itself was located in a cavern beneath the river, just before the cliff and waterfall, and one had to immerse themself in the water in order to access either of the entryways. This, Imogen suspected, was to create some sort of hermetic aetheric environment, appropriate for the Chief’s elementalist rites. Likewise, the stone floor of the cavern was covered in a thin film of water, making it, symbolically, one with the river above, except for a deeper pool in the middle which led all the way down the cliff to the retaining lake below.
Coid Ong Oping, master of water and chieftain of the village before the fire, sat at the edge of that pool. He wore almost nothing, which was sensible when working in such a cool, wet place, but he carried himself with such certainty and force that it was practically a cloak in itself. Imogen wore only a shift and breeches, both extremely soaked.
“Perhaps there is, Imogen Ward.” The chief pronounced her name without difficulty, and spoke without derision. Without any emotion at all, it seemed to her. “But before we speak of that, would you indulge me with a brief change of topic?”
It took Imogen a moment of pause to realize that it was a genuine question, not a transitional hypothetical. ”Oh, um. Yes, of course, Chief Coid.”
The Chief nodded and stood, rising to his full height, nearly eight feet high. “Your ancestors left Ecith and went north, to this place called Karnor. What do you think of Karnor?”
A reasonable inquiry. ”Well, I have only seldom been outside of the country surrounding Zaichaer, but it is a cold continent, where the land gives rise to less life. It is a bit dull compared to Ecith, but not without its own virtues.”
“I see. And what do you think of the city-state itself?”
”Zaichaer?” Imogen paused, thinking about the answer, ”It is an industrious city, but controlled by an odious philosophy which is used by even worse people to justify the cruelties and exploitation of their own people. The earth around it is poisoned by that industry, and the air itself tastes poisonous at times. But many of those who live there are good people. That is why my family stays there, Chieftain Coid.”
The Chieftain smiled, the first she’d seen. “What you have told me, Imogen Ward, is more than you may yet understand. The people, perhaps, you love. That is well. But the land of Zaichaer is foreign to your blood. It is natural! The dead earth of Karnor is no fit place for Orkhan. You would be happier if you stayed here.”
The comment wasn’t unexpected. She’d spoken to a few of the villagers about Zaichaer now, and they had all reasonably concluded that it seemed like a hellhole. They weren’t really wrong- but still. ”That may be true, Chieftain Coid, but I made an oath.”
“Yes, to the Sunsingers.” The Chief rolled the unfamiliar word about in his mouth. “The one who taught me said that Reaving was a rune for the suicidal and insane, but perhaps it is appropriate that it is needed in such a terrible land. It is good that you honor your commitments, but the higher calling is to the stewardship of Ecith.”
Imogen said nothing. She wasn’t convinced, but a sentiment like that was not vulnerable to argument.
“I would not question your right to decide this for yourself, Imogen Ward, but I would like you to better understand the disparity between Ecith and the northern realms. As I see it, your problem is that you love people, but you do not love the land- any land. As you see it, your problem is that you do not understand the creatures who have taken this thing you seek. Let us solve both problems at once.”
”How do you mean?” asked Imogen, warily.
“Through the rune of Animus, I can give you the power to question the sifakas. Spend some time here in the village and we will teach you to see the land as it is, to recognize at least a part of its beauty. Then you may retrieve your prize, and when you return to Zaichaer, you may clearly see what it is you have been missing since birth.”
”You’re offering initiation?” The idea seemed insane; no mage offered their apprentices a cardinal rune so carelessly.
“You are a seasoned mage already, Imogen Ward. If your Pacts have not killed you, neither will Animus. The danger to you is not that you lack will, but that you lack understanding of the land. Your life is yours to do with as you will, but I do not want to see a cousin kill herself out of ignorance without first offering the knowledge she lacks.”
He had a point. She’d survived one initiation. Anyway, the power to talk to animals seemed pretty useful, and while Animus was commonplace in Ecith, she didn’t think she’d find the opportunity again in Zaichaer.
”Alright. I will take your deal, Chief Coid. Just don’t expect me to be much good at it.”