The Totem-Maker (part one hundred fifteen)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Eleven

Lore and Lessons

(part one hundred fifteen)

Our first stage returned us to the Tollhouse. The Prince and Noakale were our escorts, to settle in the flower meadow, making two camps. Pravor Castor, perverse in his amusements, had me leader, and couched suggestions as servile queries: “Will the Totem-Maker have the scouts survey the road ahead, until the moon achieves her half-night post, and report to us whether the way is clear for wagons?”

“That I would have thought of for myself. But give the order.”

He bowed, and took his first retreating steps backwards. Unless he were incurable, he would not keep this up. Egdoah was joined to our party, a pleasure to me, learning the Prince had so decided. Moth came to sit with us at our fire. Six burned afield, a number of slaughtered sheep roasting—the meat, salted, to keep us the whole of our journey.

“The traders will not let me alone. They ask for fortunes, and I tell them I am only a poor placeholder, that I cannot see by tiles, and that…” Faltering. “That the Totem-Maker has taken away the bhekale…”

“I will take the Totems away, and I promise no more will emerge. The Prince intends Lord Ei to appoint you tollkeeper. Then, Moth, you had better not permit the traders wagging you about.”

“Be solemn,” Egdoah said. “Be of heavy face, and hand like so.” He thrust a hand palm-up, eyes and mouth assuming a stone-carved mien. Castor and I laughed, and Moth nodded…somewhat laughing, somewhat afraid of Egdoah’s metal-studded face.

The night perfume of a meadow breathing before rain came to us, heralding our Princess. Her husband was a step behind, but they had come in full trust, without servants.

“We are in accord, we have haggled our way to it. He balks at auspices, and I tell him the Totem-Maker commands the auspices.”

“And Noakale commands the Totem-Maker.”

A dismissing hand, for this. “The Prince will beg a simple casting of you. The gods should not oppose a night of storytelling.”

“Her tribe has ranged far,” the Prince said, “and the gods of the Alëenon may recall them in kinship. Still, the rain seems very near…”

“A blessing. We will put coals of the fire in a lamp, and go sit in the tent.”

My casting was of the hours, never time enough for the deeper puzzles. The sixth hour began it, for the sixth hour it was…and received the fish, sign of wealth. The seventh was rain. “There,” I said, almost in unison with Noakale. The eighth was alo, the cooking pot. A sign of prospering in marriages, danger in ventures of commerce. Each hour, growing later, diminishes in might and gold, but in troubles and heavy labors also.

We would all be asleep before the ninth.

Yet the ninth proved wev. Meaning that as fortunes flowed, lessening, so would they go forwards; if by little, a slow descent to life’s midnight, and rebirth. If by much…

119

Lore and Lessons

The Totem-Maker (part one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)