The Totem-Maker (part ninety)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Nine

The Recalcitrant One

(part ninety)

What sort of home made a border stronghold in these lands? The clan of Ei had built theirs on a promontory, perched in good defense, the winding way up unsuited to a large company.

Over the sea in my first country, our rock was soft. Light as earth, crushable to sand with a few hammer blows. This, mixed with seeds and broadcast over our fields kept off diseases of withering and spots, made the soil black, the new leaves vivid green. Another type made a clay that drank water, and when hardened, repelled it.

In this second country of the Alëenon, rock stood stark from the plain, like leaves bound in a book, flinty grey and iron red. Sometimes the great tomes of the gods were flung on their ends. Sometimes they lay sprawled on their backs.

The rock was not much shaped by the natives. They came rather to its terms, as the Siankans had done. All the corner-posts of Lord Ei’s house were planted trees, forests being sparse on the Balbaecan plain…and the living trunks were studded with metal spurs that served for anchoring. What the people had in abundance, grasses, they wove into mats, stuffed with fleece and hung in pairs. Water flowed from the mountains, and was captured in channels under the flooring. The floor was of snugged flagstones, those myriad flat stones scattered the length of the cave road.

The plains-dwellers were herdsmen and burned manure in ovens; the water-channels were constructed to carry through these furnaces. And while the smells were strongly of hair and fat, and green ferment, the large unpillared rooms were swept clean, warmed with a heat that misted the skin, a relief from the winds that had pushed us along the road, and parched our throats.

The household came down to us as we climbed, bringing sweets and wines to refresh us, walking the way with us. This was the goodwill, the charm of the Alëenon people. We entered by a lower room. Shenath greeted a household steward; a woman came also, who served Noakale, the Prince’s wife. Shenath’s guard would eat with Lord Ei’s men. I would eat with the servants and lesser retainers—an arrangement contenting to me. Lifelong I had been of that quality.

But Shenath betrayed me, though with kindest intentions.

“You must fly to your mistress and tell her our companion is the Foretold, the Totem-Maker. Mera, Lord Ei will not care to know the sal’nuhr-ostre had been under his roof, in any part denied its revered place. We should all be cursed.”

I did not know enough, but thought he winked at formality, put on an air for private amusement.

Noakale descended, herself. “Why it’s you! Such a mystery they make! And what terrible thing that cannot be named have you brought to us? But, come along. Someone may like to have a talk with you.”

94

The Recalcitrant One

The Totem-Maker (part ninety-one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)