The Totem-Maker (part forty-seven)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Six

A First Road

(part forty-seven)

She would not answer. Even-voiced and eyes on my work, I said: “I do not own a suirmat. I would need to have one spared, by one of the general’s retainers, perhaps. Else I may enter his hall to be laughed at, wearing this cape they have given me. I am a novelty to these men, I unnerve them a bit…they may want me the butt of a joke. If so, it serves me better to forgive. You see I have no great status in the world. I am not much more than the charmer they call me.”

“Do you bid me bring you the suirmat?”

“Please do.”

She gave another of her angry looks—for the “please”.

Alone, I weighed temptation. I might sow mayhem, play havoc with happy lives… I could see honor in casting my own fortune first. I centered a tablet and etched a simple wheel of life.

I laid out tiles, and turned that of the hub. It was the Counsellor.

I turned the tile for the First Hour of the Sun. It was Raven. It could not be, for all the god had smiled on me this mystery. The First Hour of the Sun was the birth sign, and here I sat, born living and not dead.

“Giver, may I not earn your favor? You will correct my error, Aantahah Ami, Salo-Lotoq. This people, or this place, for Alëenon is a strange word to me…their Prince will displace ours, and my counsel will be the instrument of his undoing. You will correct my error, Aantahah Ami, Salo-Lotoq.”

Feeling put wrong, I meant to fix this; I would sweep my tiles into their pouch, shake them out again, cast a corrected fortune. To misvalue the Giver’s favored one was to misvalue the Giver and his Gifts—and, I reminded myself, “There are imps and demons in the world.”

I thought of weather, the roll of the seasons, our taskmaster in this enterprise. Time was short for the thousand things I was charged to prescribe upon. I saw it must be the Wheel of Life for each and all, from the personal slaves of the officers, to the Prince…to the Emperor, if we praised him afar. I might do thirty, fifty, a hundred in a day. I might cast from the rising to the setting of the sun.

For a month or two. Then every morning in frost, every north wind blowing to our fleet’s ruin when asea, would weigh our spirits, while a mission launched out of favor with the gods…

I saw the coming round of my inner words. The work of demons: famous for sloth, for smugly dropping a seed and deserting it. As human minds are famous for nurturing these seeds. Soon roots cling to a cliff, branches block all light, and fear…fear to go, fear to stay…trammels us to an imagined perch.

However much it tired me, I must show the same smile to everyone. How, if the Charmer, a being of mystery and power, yawned at them and sighed? And mumbled, tossed tiles in idleness, bored with it all?

51

The Mustering Grounds

The Totem-Maker (part forty-eight)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)