The Thousand Stories by herenortherenearnorfar

Ûrîbêth and the Sun Woman

The first of hopefully seven stories for Atani week (of varying relevance to the prompts). They're in non-linear order, so for reference this one is set around 1729 SA.

Read Ûrîbêth and the Sun Woman

She was very strange, the sole woman among the delegation of the Dark Folk sent to Lebenin. 

The towns masters and guild leaders had made it clear that establishing trade routes with Harad and the other lands beyond Mordor was of the utmost priority, to them if not to the proper lords of the West. Tensions between whatever petty-king they had in their land and the Queen in Armenelos were still high. There had been some war a few decades back, when Ûrîbêth was still a toddling child and the evil creature who ruled in the land between the mountains had been sent running by the heir's fleets. 

It was an interesting bit of history, spoke very well to the pride and power of Númenor, but it didn’t change the fact that this Dark Lord held sway over most of the trading tribes who connected the east and west. Ûrîbêth’s people— who did not exactly swear to the Sea-kings but were born of venturers and wandering folk— could only afford to go without diplomatic allies for so long. They’d managed for the last few years, keeping up contacts with the usual caravans out of the west, selling their wares and acting as a vital intermediary between the shy elves of the rivers and the equally jumpy eastern men. 

The Dark Lord’s power only grew unfortunately, as did the population of their little unofficial haven. They could only make it so far without a proper trade agreement. 

So, with great reluctance, the mayor had made contact with the forces of evil and invited them to the negotiating table. 

Ûrîbêth wasn’t supposed to be there, at least not at first. All the trade heads and town officials had apparently assumed that the negotiations would be conducted in Nernean, a common tongue shared by the people of the east; their Adûnaic so to speak. It wasn’t until the well appointed caravan of fine horses and well-dressed men (and one, mysterious woman) arrived that it became clear that the people of Mordor intended to conduct their business in their more official language. The Black Speech, it was called. Few people of Númenorean descent were willing to learn it, for it was deemed foul and dangerously magical. 

Panicked and unwilling to request a translator from their guests, the duly elected leaders of Lebenin had hastily searched for anyone in town fluent in the reviled language. Most of the potential candidates were leagues away— it was trading season and linguists were much needed among the wagon trains. Ûrîbêth would have been with them, sailing down the muddy plains to Um-bar with her father’s company, if only she weren’t several months into her confinement. 

She’d been hesitant when the messenger had come to her mother-in-law’s house, asking after Azûlkhô’s daughter. The role promised little reward and a good deal of risk. But the children of the Sea had always been good to her family— even if they viewed travelers and foreigners (her father and mother respectively) with a good deal of suspicion— and she did count herself among their number. There was a duty here; one she was not about to shirk.

The days spent in the palace of the mayor were a blur. The words of the Black Speech, learned as a child from a retainer of her father in between more commonly spoken, less formal eastern languages, were heavy on her tongue and more than once she thought she caught the representatives of Mordor smiling at her turns of phrase. At least there was no cause to worry about dialect. What was it Khâzim had always said? “There is only one true speech and it cannot be changed by men.” Luckily the ‘one true speech’, at least as she had learned it, was decently equipped to discuss trade deals.

Surrounded by the splendour of Númenor’s prodigal sons and daughters, and of the wondrous empire to the east, it was easy to become dizzied and distracted. Rather than try to note all the little expressions, reactions, machinations, Ûrîbêth tried to keep her attention focused on her work. Still, no matter how hard she worked to empty her mind of naught but words, her eyes kept wandering to the woman. How quiet she was, but how she would occasionally nod at one of her companions in response to an amenable set of terms. How responsive they were when she tugged them away from the negotiation table for a little chat. When she didn’t show up one day Ûrîbêth grew concerned; then by afternoon she was back, with a veil of local lace pinned in her hair and her eyes full of mischief. The part of Ûrîbêth that was pointedly not noticing things realized that after that the Mordor folk had a much crisper idea of exactly what goods they could squeeze out of their new partners. 

Eventually the talks were concluded. No one walked away happy, but both parties seemed largely content with the easing of tensions. There would be proper caravans now, and protected status for traders who wished to travel eastwards (and vice-versa). Fine elven goods, spices, delicate fabrics, and books of wisdom would now be more abundant than ever.

There was a feast when all was said and done, and Ûrîbêth was invited. Against her mother-in-law’s advice, she decided to go. It was cruel to waste another man’s generosity, and now that she was out of the first three months she was allowed to have wine again. There would be sweets, and perhaps even dancing, and as the daughter of two traders she had every reason to represent her company to such illustrious guests. 

The night seemed rather disappointing at first. The wine turned her stomach and the usually sweet summer fruits tasted sour. The Mordor delegation was keeping to itself, perhaps tired after so long in a strange land. Furthermore her own kinsmen, though grateful, did not seem overjoyed to socialize with a young fishwife. 

She settled on one of the low couches, all the rage in Andúnië these days it was said, and picked apart shellfish morosely. The sudden brush of cloth against her shoulder made her inhale so sharply that a bit of shrimp briefly lodged in her airway. When the blur cleared from her eyes she tilted her head up to see the woman looking down at her, clearly worried. 

“Are you well?” she asked; blessedly in Nernean. 

Ûrîbêth nodded, thrown by the sudden attention on her. 

“May I sit?” the woman asked, one hand moving smoothly to hover over the surface of the couch next to Ûrîbêth. 

“Yes,” she croaked, and hastily took a sip of wine to soothe her tight throat. 

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” the woman continued, and there was an accent to her words that Ûrîbêth couldn’t place. Unlike the Black Speech, the language of the place Númenor called Nurn changed freely There were a thousand little variations, depending on region and mother tongue. It had spread as the dark power had, and had adapted as that kingdom had grown. Ûrîbêth had heard dozens of dialects in her years. None had quite been like the one she heard now. 

That shouldn’t have been surprising. The woman was clearly from very far away— south if Ûrîbêth knew her geography. She had a teak complexion and although her dark curls were pulled into a braided crown tight around her scalp the tightness of the coils where they were loosed to skip down her back reminded Ûrîbêth of a mule driver in one of the mountain faring trade parties who had told children of the waystation stories of her magical homeland when evening fell. 

And she was rich, possibly the richest of those sent to treat with Lebenin, though men sometimes wore wealth differently than women. Gold weighed down her neck and hands, and a fortune in huge, smooth pearls were set in her earrings. 

This awareness of who she was speaking with, of the potential importance of the middle-aged lady perched elegantly next to her, settled over Ûrîbêth in an instant, before the woman could even finish speaking. 

“It is simply that there are too many men here,” she said, seemingly not caring that she was sharing a seat with a slightly grubby girl whose husband was out at sea, on a boat that wasn’t even his own. “It does grow tiresome.”

Ûrîbêth did her best to shake off the unease, without shaking off all good sense too. “Yes, it does, my lady.”

The woman waved her hand and laughed merrily. “None of that. You elect people here, don’t you, like they do in Leshkerru? Let’s have a very equitable evening. I’m Cytise, it’s a delight to finally meet you.”

We only elect rich people from good families , Ûrîbêth thought despairingly. Then she remembered that no one cared about propriety when strangers were involved. It was the principle her mother, an otherwise all too respectable Rhûnish matron, regularly used to do scandalous independent business. It would certainly extend to some frank conversation with an Easterling queen. 

She relaxed. “All right then, Cytise.” It was a very Nernean name, enough to make her suspect it was a translation, “I’m Ûrîbêth.”

“And are you from here or are you a traveller like we are? I noticed you spoke the One Speech, where your leaders did not.” Merry as her eyes were, and as light as her tone made the conversation feel, there was something prying about the substance of the question. Cytise from Mordor clearly didn’t content herself with comment on the food and weather. 

“I’m from here,” Ûrîbêth braced for the surprise, that such a slight creature could be of the same people as the High Men. “I just look a bit different because my mother was from the northeast.”

The Númenorean ideal was to be tall as a pine tree, dark and clear as the night, and with eyes like the winter sea. Ûrîbêth was short and brown-eyed, with hair that turned an unlucky shade of red under the sun. Red like blood, the old ladies whispered, red like cursed old elves whose names Ûrîbêth could never remember. 

It was a small matter, but an annoying one. Scant few of the descendants of the mariners here still had enough sea-blood to live more than a hundred and twenty years, and many had parents or spouses from the coastal people. If it weren’t for the red, and her mother’s very visible status as an outsider, it was entirely possible no one would ever comment. As it was, however…. 

It ate at her sometimes. 

Cytise seemed to notice the bitterness playing on Ûrîbêth’s face. She tilted her head and then, softly, apologized. 

“It wasn’t my wish to prod at you, I simply noticed your sunspots. They’re beautiful, you should be proud if your mother gave them to you.”

Blushing, Ûrîbêth’s hand shot to her cheek, as if she could feel the freckles scattered there. They were numerous and seemed to multiply by the year. 

“Thank you,” she replied automatically. Then, wanting to keep the conversation going, wanting to entertain this kind, clever stranger, she added, “I was named after the sun maiden, you know? We call her Urwendi and my name means Sun-Knowing, more or less.” Despite a modest gift when it came to translating the languages of others, her own had always proven more opaque to Ûrîbêth. Perhaps it was because she had learned it when she was too young to grasp any of the rules. 

Cytise tucked up her feet next to her, a familiar and all too intimate motion, and chuckled. 

“Oh, I’ve heard your people’s mythologies. I do not think they are quite accurate.”

That rankled at Ûrîbêth’s national pride. They had their tales straight from the elves of the elder days, and the servants-of-Eru who had shaped the world. Of course they were correct!

“You don’t know that."

The older woman’s hand came to rest on her shoulder, a warm weight. “Oh? Then tell me how you think the sun woman came to burn?”

This was easy, Ûrîbêth knew the tale by heart. “Urwendi was the protector of the great golden tree in the blessed land. She fought to defend it, to keep it from being cast into shadow, but could not defeat the monster who came to ruin it. All she could do was burn him.”

Around them the feast hall was quieter. It was hard to say when the majority of the partygoers had left, only obvious that they weren’t there anymore. Perhaps they’d finally put aside their differences and gone out on one of the small skiffs, or gone up to the roof to smoke . It was a clear night and the stars could be wonderful this time of year. If all went well the mayor would even be able to restrain himself from referring to the king in the east as a “dark lord of perfidy” within earshot of their guests. 

Ûrîbêth went on with the story, her voice feeling very thin in the still room. “For her bravery, she was entrusted with the last drop of the tree’s light and told to take it where spiders and shadows could never reach. So she forged a boat of gold with her own fiery hands and navigated it into the sky. There she and the light could never be harmed again, and though others have tried to mimic her success they have never sailed so high or so far. And that’s why we have the sun.”

Her hand was so close to Cytise’s knee, and it was easy to touch her, lightly, like she would with one of her friends. Were they friends now?

Certainly Cytise seemed to think so, because she smiled again and brushed some of . Ûrîbêth’s wayward curls out of her face. “That’s a version of it.”

“Tell me yours,” Ûrîbêth demanded. She’d never had much interest in other versions of creation stories before— after all, they were just stories compared to Númenor’s unquestionable natural histories, but now she had to know. Maybe she just wanted to hear Cytise talk more. Her voice was enchanting, high and sweet and sharply pronounced, every consonant a kiss. 

“If you insist. It is a very different story, though it shares some ideas.” Here she paused like a marketplace storyteller, dragging it out, pulling the audience in. Ûrîbêth found herself leaning closer, until she was even more in Cytise’s inescapable orbit. 

“When the first humans were made the world was dark and cold. There was no light, no sun, no moon, and the people suffered.” That didn’t sound right to Ûrîbêth. Humans had been born with the sun, not before it, but she had asked for this story, from a guest and a lady no less. She wasn’t about to contradict it. 

“The gods were cruel and did not care. Only a few rebels tried to help the humans, but they were quickly caught up fighting the demons of the Western Lands and could not send aid.” That seemed wrong too, and furthermore it seemed similar to some dusty bits of history in the back of Ûrîbêth’s mind. She had never been a scholar, however, and she put the concern aside. 

“The humans began to die of cold and starvation and finally, finally, one of the cruel gods spoke up. It was a woman wreathed in flames, bright as the dawn yet somehow of little renown among her own people. She said that they ought to send help, that they ought to aid the poor new creatures. She was ignored.”

This was very close to blasphemy. Ûrîbêth knew with a sinking feeling that her in-laws, and even her own unobservant parents, wouldn’t approve. But she was entranced, if not convinced, by the soft way Cytise told the tale, by the pressure of her touch and the way the deep lines around her eyes creased in concentration as she organized her thoughts. 

“The fragile, dying humans were too far for this one woman to reach on her own. Instead she took another path. She stole a thousand yards of golden fabric from her mistress and snuck past the guards at the secret door to the outer air, the door that the gods used to hang the stars and carve the silver moon.  When she was outside in the darkness amid the silver she began to wrap herself in cloth. She wrapped and wrapped, until she was more a shrouded corpse than a human, and then she kept wrapping, surrounding herself in layers like a moth’s cocoon.”

Listening with an increasing sense of dread, Ûrîbêth clutched at the hand on her arm for reassurance. “Finally there was nothing but a huge ball of golden thread, stitched and sewn and doubled over, with no hint of the woman inside. And when that was done she used her great power to set the gold aflame.”

“Was she alright?” Ûrîbêth asked, horrified. 

Cytise nodded. “Of course, it takes more than that to kill an immortal. Still, she is forever trapped in the outer air, in her prison of melting gold. Her flames and her sacrifice saved the first humans, however, and for that we are forever grateful.”

“Well, I’m glad she didn’t die.” Ûrîbêth took a long draught of wine. “That was a good story. Not the sort I’d tell to my children,” her arm curled protectively over her belly, “But good all the same.”

“Yours was as well,” Cytise graciously allowed. “I will remember it. You speak of children, will this be your first?”

It must have been the gesture, Ûrîbêth knew she wasn’t showing yet. Still, she was grateful for the change of subject. “Yes. It’s all very new to me, and all the old women have so many ideas. Do you have children?”

She was old enough to have half a dozen, if Ûrîbêth was any judge. Though her hair didn’t show any grey her face was well lined. Forty, maybe fifty, the distinctions were hard with middle men.

“No, only a nephew, and it is not the same thing. My position has kept me too busy for a family.” It wasn’t exactly regret in her voice. Regret implied too much sorrow. There was however a sort of bitterness, as if some aspect of her life were not to her liking. 

“What do you do?” The question had been on Ûrîbêth’s mind for days. Now, with wine making her pliable, it was impossible to keep from asking it. 

“Diplomacy. I am I diplomat serving at the pleasure of the Eye.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

Cytise leaned in resting a hand on Ûrîbêth’s knee. The metal of her jewelry was hot. “I’m here because I asked to be, and I am allowed some frivolities. I think it was a good choice, since I got to meet you.”

Then the mayor and his guests burst in again, talking very fast and loud about the good mead. Feeling unreasonably guilty, Ûrîbêth drew back, and, with a slight pause, Cytise also settled back into her seat. 

Still, she didn’t move her hand. 

She was very strange, the woman from Mordor, but not frightening . Quite the opposite, in fact.

Thetime and the Man Who Made Mountains

A little late but hopefully still acceptable. This one would be set around... 1734 SA? Give or take a few years. Also, I cannot stress how much death is in this one, and how terrible it is to be living in this atmosphere. The coping mechanisms are bad and the state oppression prevalent.

Read Thetime and the Man Who Made Mountains

It was tempting to say that luxury had made her soft, but Cytise had never known anything but luxury in one form or another. Admittedly, the bare stone walls of the great Tower weren’t as rich as the painted wood and plaster of her family home, and the tidy military tents arranged for this expedition into the countryside of Nurn were a far cry from even Lugbúrz’s amenities. There were always cushions, to soften the hard earth, however, always a layer of feathers and linen between her and the ground. 

In the stone hut there was nothing but the hard-packed soil and a few blankets made of a rough wool that was too hot for the muggy spring night. Her host did have a raised bed, made of wooden staves and slats. It was far to skinny for the both of them, so they’d opted instead to spread Cytise’s white cotton wrap out on the ground and lie on that. Hard and uncomfortable as the earth was, it became almost tolerable thanks to the woman in her arms. Almost— Cytise’s old bones still protested the treatment and her joints ached. 

Oh, but she was beautiful, the priestess of this village. So many of the people within the mountain bounds of the Dark Land were. It was a result of the orc admixture. It had always struck her as strange. The child of an orc and a human was exactly what you would expect, exactly what Cytise had expected, but given a few generations the uneven bones and mottled corpse skin seemed to disappear. What was left were traces of unearthly beauty, and an odd tendency towards sharp teeth and ears. 

Achaimene, her friend and companion, had explained it as a sort of delayed justice. It was only fair that the orcs, who had been so horribly warped from the humans they once were, should be allowed beautiful descendants. 

That didn’t explain why the orcs themselves were still left cursed, though it had been many centuries since they were freed from their cold tormentors. Cytise tried not to think about it too much. After so long waiting on the great Tower she’d learned what matters weren’t even worth considering. 

Unlike many of her fellow villagers, the woman dozing fitfully with her head on Cytise’s shoulder wasn’t supernaturally lovely, did not have eyes that drank in light and eye teeth that gleamed. She was just… fresh. Frighteningly young looking for the half a century she said she had, in a way that reminded Cytise unnervingly of the a'ëleqleqara . Dewy cheeked with soft dark hair and a cutting, daring tongue. Thetime.

It did not do to think about that tongue. Things had been said that perhaps should not have been said, and Cytise had tried to drown them in the sensation of kisses, of calloused hands. 

She wasn’t sure what she had been looking for when she introduced herself to the elusive wise woman. A conversation, maybe. It just got so terribly dull, going to all these little farming villages, putting the fear of the lord back in them. Certainly it was better than military drills and slow, steady diplomacy of the tower— the countryside was lovely and the people kind (though awed). 

The All-Seeing liked to keep order within his realm, and so things were perfectly orderly. Every village put on the same show, all the people gathered to listen. In the middle of the adoring faces had been Thetime, blank as a board. So when the Brilliant One had gone off to speak with the district supervisor, and the words had given way to choreographed entertainment, Cytise had made her excuses and caught up with the woman a street away from the town square. 

Hospitable to the end, Thetime had invited her home. It was a little cottage, amid the straight rows of olive trees, much older than the well planned village. Unauthorized, Cytise had thought, and then forgot, because it didn’t do to get a new friend in trouble. There had been courtesies, and gentle sparring, much discussion of their god’s procession through Nurn and of the state of the people. 

“As you might know, we aren’t allowed wise women anymore,” Thetime had commented, neck straight and proud. “Such bold choices in governance by your king.”

“Bold choices bear bold results,” Cytise had replied, her heart in her throat, and then Thetime had leaned in and kissed her. 

Maybe they were both trying to cover something up. 

It was only late afternoon now. The deep golden sun had moved out of the doorway, leaving them in shadow and the pretense of a nap in the light was gone. Cytise would need to leave soon. No one kept too close an eye on her, she was just one woman of little importance, but it was hard to go missing when you marched under the standard of the Eye. At nightfall there would be questions. 

When she glanced away from the doorway and back down to Thetime, she found that she was not sleeping anymore. Though her breathing was still slow and steady she was looking up at Cytise through her lashes; watching, considering. 

“You never even closed your eyes.”

Cytise felt compelled to put up some defense. “It’s hard to sleep.” 

“Spoiled. Must I give you opium tea and a story like you’re a child with a broken bone?” The accusation was lightly leveled, but there was still a greater, unspoken tension between them. 

“A story,” she seized on it desperately, “If you have one. I am something of a collector of them.”

She hadn’t intended to start gathering up silly tales of monsters and morals. It had simply happened. The great tower was home to many people from all over the world, mostly warriors and staid religious types. There was very little social scene, and most of the chances for conversation that did occur were dominated by dull recollections of archery contests and ancient wars. 

Even generals with nothing but rust in their silly old heads knew nursery stories, however. They took a certain pride in them too. No one believed the more fantastical ones, but it didn’t matter. These stories were theirs— their peoples’ memories— and they were all a very long way from home. 

“A story,” Thetime’s lips curled around the word, and Cytise saw a hint of the anger they had both sought to bury with enthusiastic camaraderie. “I know a story, and it isn’t one you would hear anywhere else. It’s about your great, admirable ruler, and how he tore this land apart.”

“ Thetime —” She should have known this was a bad idea, from the moment she saw her face, blank with fury written underneath. She should have known better than to get herself in trouble. She might have hoped Thetime would know better, but some people who had not experienced the Eye themselves didn’t fear him enough, and some people who were properly fearful still lashed out in strange ways when they felt trapped. 

“Long ago three great clans ruled a fertile lands above the desert, surrounding an inland sea—”

“Thetime!” Cytise pulled herself upright, yanking her arm out from where Thetime was leaning her weight on it. She didn’t bother to try to grab her wrap, dust stained from the dirt floor. “I’m leaving.”

Thetime bowed her head. “Very well. Go back to him.” She didn’t need insults, or even a voice full of spite, just that slight, disappointed hollowness to her voice. 

She had been so wonderful to talk to. 

Outside the doorway and around the corner, Cytise leaned against the wall and collected herself. There were herbs growing around the perimeter of the house, a condensed little garden that probably supplied the bundles of plant matter Cytise had seen hung up to dry from the ceiling inside. She’d counted herself something of an amateur botanist at home, a distinction earned after spending dozens of hours harassing the family cook as a child. The plants that grew in the north weren’t that different. She counted recognizable flowers until her stomach stopped churning and then began to walk out of the endless orchard, back to the town. It wasn’t dusk yet, no one should miss her. 

She was still within eyesight of Thetime’s cottage when she saw the regiment marching forward, Achaimene at its head. She froze, and he pressed his horse forward to meet her. He looked melancholy but that was a default state of being for him, and he brightened somewhat to see her though he was also blessedly confused. 

Good; if he didn’t expect her she couldn’t feel guilty. She wouldn’t have to wonder too much if this was her fault. 

“Nūrohti,” he said, softly enough that the men (at least they were men, not orcs) behind him couldn’t hear. “What are you doing here?”

“Talking to people. Are you here for her?” 

He knew she got along easily with strangers, that she had a soft heart even for treason. Unlike some of the others Cytise considered friends in this place, he also trusted her enough to not fuss about the matter. She wasn’t a military asset like most of the envoys sent to serve the Lord of the Light and Dark were, but she’d delivered a handful of diplomatic victories over the course of her years simply by being less pigheaded than some of the others and she was always good at keeping her thoughts in check, so the lord mostly left her alone.  

Achaimene had always been quietly clever at reading His desires. He’d never used it for to grasp for power, he was a gentle soul underneath it all, and because of this fundamental blandness of spirit and sharpness of mind he was given a number of assignments. It gave her cover and the outside pressure of work buoyed their friendship as much as any shared intellectual pursuits.

“Yes. The Lidless came out of his discussion with the district leader with quite a list of potential subversives. Will she be trouble?” Achaimene had started going grey long before her. Though they now had matching silver streaked hair she’d theorized for a while that it was the stress of serving as commander that had pushed him into venerability so young. It made sense, hurting others was stressful.

Cytise shut her eyes. “I don’t know.”

She hung back after they dragged Thetime off (she was silent, her back stiff and her neck proud, and she did not look at Cytise). “I left something in there,” she told Achaimene, and darted into the cottage before he could object. She came out with her cotton shawl wrapped in a ball in her arms, and did not stay to watch as the remaining men began to pull the cottage down. 

 

“I think I would like that story now,” Cytise said, and knew it sounded cruel. 

Thetime laughed, and the sound was laboured. Her arms were twisted at a strange angle, the tightness of the ropes putting pressure on her chest. It must have been hard for her to breath, contorted so. “Oh, would you?”

Cytise nodded. The executions had just begun on the other side of camp, so there would be no prying at the door of her mind for a while. She had been let into this tent unquestioned; she had somehow earned the amity of an orc commander many years ago and that reputation traveled. 

Someone would be looking for her eventually, of course. Even a purposeless noble woman had to be accounted for. 

“Yes. I want to hear it so someone will remember.”

“Do you want to take my place next, fool?” Thetime hissed. 

“No. And I don’t think I will. I have some protection. My sister would miss me and she is very powerful in her own land.” They’d had a rebellion against the benevolent protection of the god-king when Cytise was quite young. Since they were so very far from the center of his power, it was generally considered best to avoid another one. 

Nurn was the pupil of his eye, and its people had no such shield. Their acts of insurrection were crushed quickly and cleanly. 

“Tell me,” Thetime asked, her eyes now did have that gleam without light, a hunger and a fury that only orcs and other constructs of magic could match, “Are you the reason I’m here?”

“No.” Cytise tried to meet her gaze and was mollified when Thetime started to cry.

There was no comfort she could render here. Not yet. 

Tears sliding down her soft, unsettlingly youthful cheeks, Thetime nodded. The mere motion appeared painful. 

“Very well. I might as well start from the beginning, then.” 

“Long ago three great houses of men lived in a fertile land above the desert, around a great inland sea . There were no mountains then to separate them from their western kin, only the foothills of the mountains of white marble, so they traded and travelled with ease. They never strayed too far from their home around the sea. It supported them and gave them life, and they built a great city on it.” Thetime’s face changed when she spoke. Her breathing grew less pained, the old story catching her up in its rhythm and keeping her trapped there. 

“Now the plains just to their north were a land even richer than they were. There was a single mountain there, made of fire long ago, but it was still and silent and covered in dense forests. It was a good place to farm, and many covetous men left their homes to find better fortune there. When, one day, word came of even more blessings laid upon that plain, no one was surprised.” 

A man had walked out of the mountain, they said, and he had brought many gifts and much wisdom. Many dismissed it as rumour, but soon the new powers gifted to that hungry land became apparent. They had sharper swords, traps that could catch a thousand fish, technology to see the stars and know the passing of the seasons. More and more, the children of landlocked sea left their homes and families to find the hidden knowledge of the north. And their elders grieved for they knew this would not end well. 

But what could they do? They had no leverage with which to demand the return of their bewitched people, and the coiling, clever words of the man from inside the mountain reached ever further.”

It was obvious who the man was, and yet… there was enough plausible deniability that Cytise thought she might even be able to write it down.

“Soon other, fouler creatures began to creep out of the north, flocking to his hand. They could not bear the sun or the sight of unbefouled men, and their faces were terrible to look at. But the thing that had crawled out of the fires of the mountain said they were allies, they were friends, that they had been hurt long ago and it wasn’t their fault they were such pitiful creatures. And the people of the plains believed him, though all others now turned their faces away and feared. 

The day came, in time, that the men of the plains and their new army of twisted nightworms turned their gaze on the city by the sea. They sent a demand for total surrender, for all land and holdings to be turned over to them.”

I mentioned there were three great houses in this land, didn’t I? One wanted to surrender immediately. The other two thought they could fight, so with majority control of the city they sent their cowardly brethren out to make their obeisances to their new masters. When they returned it was with an army more terrible than you could imagine—” Thetime stopped.

“Actually,” she said abruptly, “You probably could imagine. It’s more or less the same army you came along with. But most of the people I tell this story to haven’t seen more than 200 orcs at once, so,”

The first time she had crested a hill and seen the forces of the Hand laid out before her, Cytise had wanted to run scared. She knew what it was like to face real military power and know your insignificance, your inability to fight.

Thetime’s shoulders popped with a sickening sound as she shrugged, “Well, they put up a good fight for a little while, before some warriors began to fear for their safety, for the safety of their families. The second great house resolved to surrender as well. But the third, the third was not as willing to give in. They had seen the long fanged hunters who accompanied these newly forged men. They had watched as their neighbors dissolved into cruelty and ambition. They worried if they bowed now they would never have a chance to stand up again. There would be no surrender, they said, not as long as they had breath and hope.

The three houses were largely matched in strength but the second had just a slight advantage here. They had the element of deceit on their side. Shrewdly, they hid their disapproval and pretended to see the benefits of fighting on. Then, on the night of the 16th day of the siege, they opened the city gates and welcomes the mountain man and his servants in.” She said it very neutrally, little judgement or moral pontificating. Cytise knew men (mostly of the strong, capable sort) who would happily declaim about the treachery and trickery of cravens and women. Maybe it was as a woman, or as someone who grew at least one poison, that Thetime restrained herself. 

“For their swiftness of response, the mountain man gave the first house the rule of the land, under the greater jurisdiction of the plains and, of course, himself. The second house, he declared, would be rewarded with their lives. The third house…”

Her breathing was growing laboured again, whether from the strain of her position or the pain of the story, Cytise wasn’t sure. “He burnt the city to the ground, gathered up every last member of the third house, and marched southeast, past rivers and homes, to the very border of what I think is now called Khand. Then he had the first throat cut.”

Cytise couldn’t help her little gasp, and that only seemed to egg Thetime on. “They marched west in a perfectly straight line, leaving bodies behind them, and behind them, everywhere a corpse lay, a mountain grew. The earth shook as they passed, trade routes were cut, farmland ripped apart, and still they marched on, killing the last defenders of this land and making a cage to box the survivors in. When they reached a river mouth they turned sharply north, and continued on. More bodies, more mountains. The blood stained the earth and the very ground seemed to cry out for its lost children, for they had lived on this land a very long time. 

When they could see the mountain of fire south of them they turned again, making a third and final wall. The men of the plains, greedy and unable to see sense, did not realize they were also imprisoning themselves. They quickly learned how little their leader thought of them, for as the long army train headed east they began to run out of prisoners. So the mountain man turned to his general and said ‘bring me those who are still wounded, or who have injured themselves on the journey’. He must have known what would happen to them, how could he not? 

He had seen the spurts of blood every half a mile for the last month. But his mind was ensnared, and so he obeyed. It’s said that he did not even hold back his own son, who had fallen from his horse some weeks before. Or maybe he tried to but he just… couldn’t. It doesn’t matter, in the end. The mountains were made all the same, and the men of the plains did not try to revolt until several years later.”

“And what happened to them?” Cytise asked, for the sake of completeness. The plain of Gargarraz was mostly an army camp, as far as she knew, and most of its inhabitants were orcs. 

Thetime gave her a withering look. “What do you think? The earth rumbled, their mountain doused them in flame, and the man-eaters they took in as tools tore them apart. That is what I want you to remember, Cytise. This land, your god’s little fief, is built on our bones. Again and again he remakes it with our life blood. Is it any wonder I helped the others fight back?”

“No, it isn’t,” Cytise sighed. “I just wish you hadn’t.”

“I’m their wise woman,” Thetime’s tears had stopped but her cheeks were still streaked dirt and tracks of salt. “It’s my job to take care of them.”

They had been talking a very long time. Soon, someone would come for her. It was now or never. Cytise’s hand went to her waist and then to Thetime’s lips. And then she kissed her. 

It wasn’t preferable, but there had to be an explanation, there had to be a distraction. So Cytise focused on the leftover tear-taste pooling on those lips and tried to ignore the ball of pungent resin slipping into Thetime’s mouth, quickly ground between her teeth, swallowed down. She must have recognized it— it came from her house after all. 

“There is so much more I want to say,” Thetime said, “So many stories that could be forgotten.”

“Yes, I know. I’m sorry.” It was a terribly treasonous thing to say, but her tongue had always been quicker than her good sense. That was why she was stuck here, in this well-ordered land of fire and blood.

There was a long moment as Thetime pulled herself together. Then, perhaps reassured by the fact that her death would be… less painful than it could have been, she nodded. 

“Alright, you can go. I think I've said enough.” 

Makada Writes About the Golden Man Of The Sea

1711 SA. Sorry Numenor, I love you, it just so happens that you're a horror story for unsuspecting humans, especially when there's some cultural mistrust on top of that.

Read Makada Writes About the Golden Man Of The Sea

My sister, 

I write to let you know, 

All is well here and if luck is on our side all will still be well when this message reaches you. I send it with my messenger Mane, treat him well. 

The king is growing strong and canny and soon will be a proud young man. He has spoken some of learning music. Do you still know any respectable musicians in the city? A recommendation of a trustworthy teacher would be appreciated. 

There has been something of a hubbub of late. A mighty ship beset by storms came into our port. It was not the floodmen themselves, but some close allies of theirs. We’ve had quite a time playing host, though their repairs should be finished by the time this reaches you.

Among other, more interesting news, which I have sent in the formal message to the god, they did tell some new stories. Since I know you have a love of song, I have written down my recollection of one of them. Apologies if it seems unpolished, you know my memory is not keen. 

It deals with the fate of a golden man, who was loved by the god of the sea (who you know our countrymen once loved before we were shown a higher truth). He wanted nothing more than to sail forever, but the sea god knew this would bring his death, for this was well before the days of boats that could safely traverse the ocean. So to tie him to the shore, the sea god gave him a bold husband who loved nothing more than earth and tree, and wife from a royal family whose footsteps fell like silver. And the golden man was happy with them for a while. 

The man still felt the call of the sea though, that endless pull that would not stop. And one day as he grew old he slipped out of bed from between his lovers and stood on the beach. Then there’s this chant where you say first that he only wanted to look at the ocean, then that he only wanted to stand in the shallow waves, then that he only wanted to feel the cool water against his creaking knees. And it goes on for a while until the man is standing neck deep in the ocean. His husband and wife standing on the beach desperately call out to him, and as he turns to look back at them the strong tide sweeps him away. 

I thought it was going to be a sad story, you know? That he would die and his spouses would be left without him. But the sailors made it quite clear that he survives. The sea god saves him, though he cannot return him to land, and he is swept away to the kingdom at the ocean’s heart. When his husband and wife dive down to rescue him, they find him happy and safe, finally in the ocean where he has always wanted to be, so they join him. For their loyalty the sea god makes their son the first sailor.

I am not sure its the right ending. It is the sort of thing you like, though. 

Please deliver my message with alacrity, and do write back sometime. If you love your royal sister, you will act thus. 

Cytise scanned the letter twice after the first reading, searching for any hidden meaning in the words. Of course there wouldn’t be, Makada wasn’t the sort for subterfuge. She had been chosen for her gentleness and piety as well as her beauty. Likely none of the choosing had intended her be left the sole adult member of the royal clan after rebellion and plague did their work, but she’d stepped up to the task admirably, managing to rebuild the country and even maintain some vestiges of independence for the monarchy. She’d just never developed an instinct for deception. Maybe that was for the best, they’d probably have never let her get so far with so little oversight if she had the head of a politician on her shoulders. 

Even if she wasn’t the sort of person who snuck in secret messages. that didn’t mean the words were pointless. The story had no doubt been intended as a mindless gift, like the package of cotton cloth and pearls she’d sent with it. It still communicated the salient point-- that close allies of Númenor (one of the cities close to Mordor, which did little normal trade with her people) had visited their island, and that Makada had come away with intelligence. 

Sliding the letter between the pages of her latest book, Cytise stood and gestured to the messenger. “You can stay-- recover from your journey. I’ll take the missive the rest of the way.”

No doubt the priests who wormed their way through the city of her birth would have sent their own report, which would even now be working its way up the chain of command and into the sight of the Knowing. He’d appreciate the corroboration (or contradiction) of whatever they had written as soon as possible. Though there were official channels for messages from vassal-kings to travel through, there were also… more direct avenues. 

Cytise left her room alone and headed down the long, shadowy corridors of the tower. There were quite a few flights of stairs between her and her goal, and though she found the lifts that brought heavier goods between levels fascinating she’d never quite trusted them with her life. There were too many unfortunate breakdowns. So she climbed until her calves ached, unwilling to spend even a spare second catching her breath, until she finally reached the central nervous system of the castle’s bureaucracy. The office of the head scribe; and several dozen of his underlings. 

The door was open, revealing the buzzing life within. Though it was night, this part of the tower never truly slept. Fortune smiled on her-- Dôlbeen was in. 

It was strange that the information she thought she held had to do with the a'ëleqleqara, since she was fairly sure Dôlbeen was one of them himself. Rumor had it that he’d been working this post for more than a hundred years, and he hadn’t been a child when he’d joined. Only the floodmen and orcs, both monsters of different stripes had that longevity. 

Dôlbeen didn’t look part orc and it was rumored he was from a river town (just within the reach of the Dark Lands but still waterbound enough to see a good number of unearthly mariners), so it made sense he’d be the bastard of some sailor from Númenor. And of course their shared lord would want someone of such permanence in a high ranking post. When you were eternal it probably got very tiring to switch out your servants every few decades. 

Undeniably he was loyal, so close to the eye of smoke and fire he couldn’t have been anything but devoted, so Cytise truly tried not to hold his likely heritage against him. 

It was difficult. They were so insidious, the floodmen, or as they were more accurately called in her own language, the inundation. Water was so rarely thought of as a threat, and water was what all people needed to live, but them, they wiped the world away and remade it like themselves, muddy and pale. Every coastal city north of Cytise’s own now had ties to them in one way or another, and every city was paying for it. They became haughty, hungry, full of new people who did not die at the right time and did not understand those who did.

Even Dôlbeen didn’t know how to put his head down and rest. He'd already been decrepit and his eyesight had declined sharply over the last few years, yet he still remained at his post, assisted now by lesser scribes who guided his hands and read what he could not see. Cytise wondered sometimes if he would stay until he was just bones. 

“I have a message,” she said, stepping inside and to the side as two young people bustled out and off to some errand, “From the Queen of the Maiy. Based on her communication with me, it seemed urgent enough to require immediate attention.”

Dôlbeen didn’t look up. “Ah, yes. Mahnás. Bring it here.” 

His assistant took the carefully bound parchment scroll and rolled it out on the table. Cytise did not crane her head to look, but did cast a quick eye over the letter. It wasn’t in her sister’s own, wavering hand or the rounded script of their home. Instead she’d gotten another to write it in the sharp letters of the trolls who wandered the most inhospitable lands at night and carved their words into ancient stone. Upside down and in a foreign lettering, Cytise could only make out a few phrases, including “plans” “settlers” and, most soothingly, “a long time”. Yes, the current queen on that wretched island was something of an isolationist, wasn't she? Cytise could at least respect one who knew how to mind their own business. Her heir though, he had different intentions. There had long been whispers that he wished to expand. The soft muttering of the underscribe in her teacher’s ear confirmed that those suspicions had just found another confirmation. 

But Númenoreans lived for such a very long time. 

The conquest of Cytise’s home and the countries surrounding it had happened so quickly in the scheme of things. A few hundred years and half the continent was under the control of the watchful. Well, they hadn’t been able to put up much of a fight. Númenor would, and its people, those implacable watery-eyed sea farers, they functioned on a timeline much more similar to her lord's than hers. 

It could take a very long time, she thought with some relief, this game of maneuvering they now seemed locked into. Little moves taken against allied city states with friends too powerful to directly attack, careful misdirection and diplomacy, building forces and bring the places that were already loyal in line. They were making good work on the formless north in the meantime, pulling Rhun slowly under proper control, but Númenor would take years to destroy. 

That was almost reassuring. It meant there was less of a chance of war in her nephew’s lifetime, or in the life of his children. 

It was nothing to write home about. Makada didn’t want her optimistic babbling. After Dôlbeen dismissed her and she was out of his horrible, clouded over grey sight, she started to draft a story. Something light, to keep her sister’s mind at ease. 

Hagru and the Benefits of Cooperation

roughly 1703 SA? This one is weird because it's very orc centric but orc views on humanity, if you know what I mean. (I do have a lot of orc creation myths in mind now, including thematic star fixations, but they are not for this day.)

Warning for general orc behavior and some soldier songs (cut off).

Read Hagru and the Benefits of Cooperation

They taught you how to slit the throats of your enemies, how to send their snivelling brats wailing into the dark, how to beat the war drums and struggle up the rungs of the bloodstained hierarchical ladder. 

They didn’t teach a single thing about dinner parties. No one expected an orc to attend one of those. Humans and orcs didn’t mix like that, on account of etiquette differences.

No one had told the damned girl that. As soon as Hagru had come back to the home plateau, back from two years helping bring the nomadic peoples of the empty lands to heel, she’d received the invitation. She’d just about put the little miss out of her mind and now this?

She had to go, though, didn’t she? Even if the human was as soft and spoilt as the curdles in milk, she was still part of the big man’s circle of advisors. The high tower didn’t look kindly on low soldiers who contradicted its special guests.

It was all politics, made and run by the sort who were better used as spider food. If Hagru wasn’t worried about being sent to see She of the Mountains herself, she’d go sozzled on the worst sort of mash drink. Instead she polished up the bones set in her leather armor, girded her hips with a nonthreatening knife, and made to look presentable. 

Maybe this was just another bit of curiosity. The humans could get awful interested in an orc as obviously female as she was. Most of her kin didn’t grow enough hair to be recognized as women by those close-minded louts, but the toll the flesh-molder had taken from Hagru’s pitted and sunken face had apparently been returned on her scalp. So they pried. Mind, she was pretty sure the girl would have had cause to meet plenty of orcs in the two intervening years, and surely some of them had a few strands of the old fur on top. She’d have had plenty of other targets to take an interest in, especially now that the body of the army was back from the big war.

When she arrived a shaking human led Hagru up the steps into a bit of the tower that stunk of perfume and feathers. There was hardly any orc smell here, only the rancid sweat of men. 

The girl— hard to call her anything but a woman now, Hagru noted, for though she hadn’t grown much in stature in the two years she’d certainly gained a lot of boldness— opened her door onto a cramped little apartment of a few rooms, which she clearly shared with the same servants who had accompanied her on the journey up from her home. They were still the same fearful sort, and the woman was still bright-eyed and watchful. Hah! Watchful and entitled, a perfect fit for a world of lords and knowing eyes. 

“It’s just the two of us dining,” she said, ushering Hagru to a tiny table with two tureens already piled with food. Hagru was delighted to note that the meat in her bowl was fresh and pink. It lacked the seasoning of rot it could have had, instead there were decorative plant bits everywhere, but it oozed as Hagru poked at it dark red juice obscuring whatever noncy design was in the ceramic bowl. Fresh and bloody. 

She grunted appreciatively, before sitting in the flimsy wooden chair provided and digging in. What better way was there to show enjoyment than to eat what was provided? When she looked up from the (too tender, annoyingly wine soaked) meal the servants were gone and the woman was watching her carefully. 

“Got something to say?” Hagru challenged, before belatedly remembering that she was supposed to be minding her manners. There was a reason she’d never advanced past mid-command; she simply didn’t have the temper to handle humans with the care they required. There were some corners of the army where that was acceptable, but most of the generals had to either take orders from or give orders to the odd feeble human— and they didn’t like honesty. 

Hagru, on the other hand, loved being honest. 

Maybe that's why she'd been kept out of the action during the last big throw down. All the other orcs were allowed to go kill elves but not Hagru, she doesn't know when to shut up. Best let her and hers tidy up the kingdom while everyone else is off having fun. 

The woman, to her credit, didn’t waver, even as Hagru's temper turned. Were she just a few years younger she would have, but it seemed she’d gotten over her fear of bogeymen. 

“I wanted to thank you, for conveying me here safely. The trip was long and you were… kind.”

Hagru spat a piece of fat, one that really could have been chewed down to nothing, onto the table. She wanted this conversation over. “Take that back!” 

The woman looked away. “I will not. I might not have realized it at the time, but you were being nice. Of course once I knew enough about your people to know that’s what it was, you were gone, so I had to wait.”

“And?” There were red eyes up and down the front of her pale dress, Hagru noted for the first time. She only had fuzzy memories of the journey north from Ilat with the girl and her train— mostly of riding at night through the hinterlands of Far Harad and cursing the sun that bore down through even thick daytime tents— but it didn’t seem like the sort of thing she’d have worn back then. “Think this is enough for all the trouble I went through, toting your sorry frame through the summer mountains? Think it’s a good little apology for all the times I found you crying alone?”

“No! It’s just, it’s better than nothing.” Her lips pursed. “You know, I’ve heard the stories about orcs, about why I ought to be sorry for them—” Hagru had heard those stories too. Because their hearts were faint and their minds were moldable, the humans she had met all seemed to be under the impression orcs had once been the same as them. Some even cast it as a terrible tragedy; that poor mortal souls had been so twisted by torment.

Well, Hagru couldn’t deny that orcs bled like humans, and died like them too if you stuck them hard enough. And a human put though enough torture could even begin to look like an orc with time. If you locked them away from sunlight and chopped off bits of them at random, and maybe let them get eaten by badgers for a few hours, the resemblance could really be uncanny. 

Still, she wasn’t convinced. Her people had their own secret histories. They were more bitter than any sob story the humans believed. 

“So if we’re the same underneath it all, couldn’t we have a civil conversation?” the little princess said, voice trembling like an animal right before you slit its throat. 

Hagru folded her hands, aware of her dense, sharp claws over the smooth finish of the table. “Shouldn’t you be trying this with some of your own lot? There’s a lot of humans here, you can have little dinner parties with them, can’t you?”

The frustration that passed over her host’s face then was hard to parse. “They don’t like parties.”

“Well, neither do I, hows about that.”

Cytise threw up her hands then, a sudden, sharp gesture more befitting a wild woman than the put together lady in front of Hagru. “Fine then! You can go. I just—” Hagru stayed, wary of the whims of humans and the power of damned politics, “You were kind, back then. Sometimes you would let me sit around your fire while you sang your songs. It was nice, I think.”

So Hagru had. She’d been warned by the men who’d handed her over that this one might be a runner, and though there were few places in the sunlit hells to run to, the all orc escort (they’d been in the area after dealing with a small uprising in Ilat— for nothing afeared the petal-skinned southerns like orcs did) did make the prospect of an attempted escape distasteful. Rather than risk it she’d kept her charge close during the daylight hours, inside the tent where the smoke and stench made her vomit the first few days. 

After the adjustment period, she’d made decent enough company. That was true. 

Maybe even humans got tired of hearing other humans patter on. 

“You had a good singing voice, for one of your lot,” Hagru recalled, relaxing a little. She wasn’t sure how small talk went but she was willing to give it a try. 

A laugh escaped from the lady. “Well that’s not true at all. I used to have friends who were musicians, back home, and they’d beg me not to sing.”

Casting her mind back so far, dredging up old memories, it was hard. Hagru had never been the sort for keeping a record of her days. You fought, you drank, you killed, you forgot. What was friend one day might be foe the next, and so you grew used to waking up each new morning ready to live again. 

Nevertheless, she was pretty sure the girl had a decent voice, a bit pitchy but deliciously discordant— the sort that pierced the ears of enemies and shattered their thinking bones. 

“Nah, nah. You did a hell of a job on the chorus, remember?”

Knocking her chair back, Hagru stood and started the verse of an old song, surely one they’d sang on the way back up the spiny road, in the old cant, of course. 

“Lo! And we walk again and we curse the one

Who made us walk at all

And we walk again and we curse the one

Who gave us such big—” She remembered where she was at the last moment. Some rhymes were not appropriate for such high and lofty company, even if she did hum along after the initial flinch away.

“Ah, well. You know the rest,” Hagru awkwardly scratched the back of her head. 

“Not really.” 

Servants were poking their heads in around a door the doddering old things. Hagru let them see a bit of yellow tooth and they ducked away, before their lady even noticed. She did seem preoccupied. Cytise was drifting around the table towards her, dark eyes gleaming with interest again. Drat. “I don’t know the dialect. It’s not quite the One Speech…”

“Orc lingo,” Hagru hastily informed her, taking a step back. The room was so small and cramped, and everywhere she turned there seemed to be something precious. Surely no one could blame her if something broke? The daft girl had invited her here. 

(But orcs were easy to replace, and Hagru had no illusions about her value as a commander.)

Fortune was on Hagru’s side, for the woman stopped a safe distance away. “I never knew the lyrics, you know? I just sang along. What’s it about?”

“Being burdened with greatness,” Hagru said earnestly. “Not the most serious of our songs. Bit of a joke one.”

“You have serious songs?” There it was again, that implacable curiosity, undeterred by a broken chair of a bowl of swirling blood and gristle.

Unsettled as Hagru was, she couldn’t help but play along. “Why wouldn’t we?”

In return she received a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. I really don’t know much about you. Even though there are orcs everywhere here there always a— a distance.”

It’s there for a reason, Hagru privately reflected. Humans could not handle the brutality of a fight for power, however much they considered themselves the cruelest and most power hungry. They had stomachs too weak and bodies too frail for most of an orcs favorite past times. One might give the other orders, or the other way around, and they worked well provided they didn’t have to interact too much, but even the savviest of generals faltered when asked to deal with humans full time. 

Instead they relegated each other to a sort of mutual pity and usefulness.

Sweet as the princess Cytise’s interest was, it was very, very doomed.

Hagru felt a stab of empathy and decided that once more, she could try to be nice. “Sit back down, woman,” she demanded, and was pleasantly surprised when the command was obeyed. 

“Now, I reckon you’ve got your head a bit mixed up. I don’t know how to unmix it, as unfamiliar with the contents of human heads as I am,” She actually knew very well what was inside those bird’s egg skulls, it’s just that she knew it as a lot of pink meat rather than the thoughts she also suspected resided. “But I can at least try to give you an old orc lesson. It doesn’t end well when the two kinds come together. It’s been tried before and it failed.”

She could see the questions rising on the girl’s lips and she shushed them with a quick slicing motion. “I’ll tell you the story, just let me get on with it!”

It was properly a song. Lots of the old ones were songs, sung because they had to be. In Hagru’s two hundred years several of the oldest had been forgotten, repurposed as shorter fireside tales or rough jokes. The habit of singing seemed to be dying back out among the younger orcs. Many of the ones who dwelt closest to the tower and the mountain scorned singing entirely. 

So Hagru would repurpose this particular big of doggerel, because Cytise didn’t understand the morphed speech used between orcs and since she did shudder a little at singing, poor frail eared thing. 

Translating and adapting took a lot of concentration, and it was a good few minutes before Hagru had marshalled together the right words, in the right order. 

“Aight. So once a bunch of rats fled a fiery house, except the fiery house was actually a land sinking under waves and the rats were us. Orcs. And there were many other beings with them; cats and mice and some blasted elves who grew trees out of their eyes. And being that now they were in a whole new house, the orcs were a little lost. They wandered and wandered, looking for places to go. Some of them went and found mountains with really no one living in them at all, some of them settled in the woods where the light couldn’t reach. But some, some were foolish. Some thought that now that the shadow that had plucked them out of the earth and made them was gone they were just the same as anyone else.  That they were free.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, most of the time. It’s one of those stories. A lot of the details have gone to rot and all that’s left are the bones. So the orcs go looking for a place to be free. They found an awful lot of places to try, and each place was not right. Finally, the desperate and hungry, pursued by the unrelenting sun, the orcs stumbled upon a human village. Once they might have sacked it but this time they were too weak. All they could do was huddle in the shadow of a cottage and hope. Then, the strangest thing happened. A human came out and offered them help. 

See the humans here hadn’t heard of orcs before. It was so very far afield, north and east and further than wind could see, that the men did not know what we were made of. Even though they were right jumpy, what with the teeth and looks, they were willing to put that aside and offer a hand. Very forgiving these humans— that’s how you know it’s a story. 

Frightened and—” Hagru spat, “hopeful, the orcs accepted. And they made a place in the village. They hunted their meat at night in the forests, and worked the fields in the shade, and didn’t kill a single soul. They remade themselves, as they were once remade. And they hoped they could be free. The humans, for their part, benefited greatly. They’d been in a bit of a feud with their neighbouring village and now those other humans stayed well away.

All this time, the orcs had been living in their own shelters on the outskirts of town, and the humans in their own little hovels. No room for anyone else, you know how it is. But then one night the orcs got it in their heads to invite their neighbors to a feast. Fresh deer, good drink, whatever it is. And the humans came and they feasted, and then, for the best course, the orcs presented the body of one of the men from the village down the way? Because what is better than to crack the marrow of your enemies?”

The alarm on that smooth face was almost worth the telling. In orcish circles it got quite the opposite reaction— although most orcs knew how humans would react it was agreed that there was little better than to rip out the heart of the foe and consume it. Hagru had jiggled the narrative quite a bit to preserve the— what was it called?— element of surprise. 

“Just like you, girly, the humans didn’t like that at all. But they were schemers, those humans. They made their excuses, hustled their children and women out, and then came back at midday with torches. You should know as well as anyone how poorly we fare in the sun. Though these orcs did their level best to fight, in the end they were all killed. All because they tried to give the humans what they wanted. All because they tried to work as a team.”

Cytise’s wide forehead crinkled. “If all the orcs died, how do you know this story? Especially if it was in the north east, far away from where stories could reach.”
 

“Just do.” Hagru patted her shoulder. “I think the story came from the big eyeball, and he knows lots of things.”

“Oh. That actually, that actually does make sense, if that story came from Him.” More complex emotions wrinkled up Cytise’s face, but Hagru wasn’t in the business of reading human expression. She knew the one firmly pasted on when Cytise looked up, and that was Polite. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for coffee?” The woman asked, and Hagru felt a sudden burst of affection. 

“Certain. I’ve stayed long enough as it is. They’re not my thing, events .”

“I’ll walk you—”

“I know the way downstairs.” 

She did end up letting herself out. 

Even if the night was a predictable disaster, she rather liked the woman at the center of it. There was something endlessly charming about humans who thought they could rework the world with a bit of good temper. They kept the business of tragedies booming. 

Tabeat and How The Moon Was Carved Of Silver

1718 SA. Finally, some largely uncomplicated fluff.

Read Tabeat and How The Moon Was Carved Of Silver

It was unfair that Tabeat of the Adal be so very pleasant when she clearly wasn’t going to stay. 

Not that it was her fault. The many nomadic peoples, who populated the less arable lands actually outnumbered the populations of the small cities and kingdoms that squatted by coasts and rivers. Amid heat and mountains a lifestyle of herding and sparse agriculture worked much better than urban society, and though many of the wanderers spent time on land claimed by one lesser king or another, they were largely independent. Most bore more allegiance to their own, small circles of kinship and greater farflung cultures than to any palace dwelling priest or ruler. And when you added up the many enclaves scattered across the south and east, the number of herders, wainriders, shepherds, traders, and horsemen grew quite high. 

Though the inland kingdoms as far south as Ilat and as deep east as Nalivarsha now swore enthusiastic allegiance to the brilliance of their lord, the wanderers were more recalcitrant with their loyalty. Winning it would not be as simple as a war either, though Cytise knew some of the others itched for one— it having been more than a decade and a half since the defeat of the viperous elves. Decentralized as they were, there was no good way to subdue them that didn’t involve throwing army after army at the inhospitable wilds. This meant diplomacy was being employed instead, much to Cytise’s delight. 

Quite a few of the more venerable members of those communities had been invited to visit a while in the great tower and witness the magnanimity and power of their master. The fact that such a visit definitionally exposed them to the might of the dark land’s armies was a bonus. 

Most of the visitors were cagey elders or leaders of warbands, solemn men and women with hard faces who kept their tongues still. 

Tabeat was different. She was quiet, yes. It was normal to be quiet when faced with such a show of force. More important was how her face did not show signs of dismay or fear when faced with the busy industry of the tower and the creatures who served its whims. She did not flinch back or turn away in sorrow (and to their credit, neither did any of the others with her). Her stony determination and rare laughter made her a pillar of the coalition of travelers, while her style of dress— fine and adorned with silver where the others had come suited for war— shone bright amid the ash and shadow of the ever clouded plain. 

For as little as they’d gotten to interact over the course of the visit, she and Cytise had gotten along quite well. One day, as the more martially inclined indulged in a show of wrestling, they sat together and fell to talking easily, barely paying any mind to the grease covered warriors struggling on the courtyard stone. 

By tacit mutual agreement, the topics of conversation were uncomplicated. They spoke of the lands of their youth, which were not that far from each other compared to the distance they had traveled to Mordor, of flatbread and coffee, and the bone-warming sunlight left behind.

As they spoke a few rays of pale, weak light poked through the heavy smog that always surrounded the industrial landscape. This was a rare treat and they both let the conversation die peacefully so they could enjoy the attenuated light. Tabeat leaned back on her hands, turned her face up, and closed her eyes. 

In such repose she seemed peaceful, yet the moving chiaroscuro kept the image in motion. Reflections jumped off the shiny silver of her ornaments, making every coin-shaped disk and molded charm light up. 

Beneath the outer layer of her front clasped robes Cytise glimpsed a palm sized circle of silver, dimpled like a face. It seemed to be securing an inner belt. Most inner clothing did not bear such delicate adornment, making the sight of the hidden treasure (at least five days wage for a city worker in material alone) intriguing. More than that, the uneven geometric design of dents and chased circles was strikingly intentional but not stylized like the usual metalwork of herder-jewelers. 

“You’ve stolen the moon from the sky and wear it below your ribs,” Cytise said as the image finally clicked in her head. Tabeat adjusted the lay of her dress, though whether to expose more of the silver face or hide it away it was hard to tell.

“Yes. A present from a supplicant long ago. I have always loved silver.”

It was a superstitious, well-adored metal, surrounded by mysticism and magic. Gold was common in its beauty and longevity but silver, which tarnished dark as it soaked up evil, was special. 

“It suits you well. You have the moon’s face; full of light.”

Dark flush climbed up Tabeat’s long neck. “The moon was made by craftsmen of the finest caliber— I was made by one woman alone.”

“Then a fine craftswoman she was!” Cytise paused. “You say the moon was made? It is not a drinking vessel or a necklace hung in the sky.”

The sun was passing now, retreating back behind the dense darkness. Tabeat sighed. “No. It is a mirror of silver, polished smooth then carved to reflect the face of the star-maker. I know others have stories; drinking men and cows horns. I stand by this one though. We know silver very well.”

Cytise reached out a flicked one of her earrings, a crescent shape with small bells on the end. “That you do. I do not know how such a work of metal would end up in the sky though.”

“A foolish hunter brought it up as he chased the sun, and dropped it in the firmament. Obviously.” A cry went up from the wrestlers at the noise Tabeat startled, then settled again, body curling next to Cytise’s own. 

“And why would they leave something so precious in the sky, hmm?” Her jewelry really was lovely. Up close the swirls and crosses detailing every line seemed all the more intricate. 

“Once such beauty had been seen by all it would have been cruel to take it away. Everyone knows that you must share that which is most wonderful, or it will grow hot and heavy in your hand. The star-maker knew this most of all, so she let us keep seeing her face in her looking mirror.”

“I am glad. There is not much beauty here.” Power, yes, but delicate works or art were few and far between.

Tabeat looked back up at the sky. “No. Even the moon is hidden. I do not think you see it very much at all.”

 

 

Later, in Cytise’s room, they unclasped the belt together, admired the workmanship, and then moved on to the rest of the hooks and brooches. With her finery cast aside Tabeat was still wonderful, her face as round and golden as an autumn evening. 

 

 

“I do not think you should be here,” Tabeat whispered as she left— for the wandering people were not powerful enough to be kept permanently. They were allowed to leave. “It is dark. No man or woman should have to live without light of sun, stars, or moon.”

“I’ll try to remember your face,” Cytise said cheerily, and bid her friend farewell. 

Zikiti Does Not Tell A War Story

1702/1703 SA. The animal Zikiti describes is actually a Sarkastodon. Given the timeframe of the first few epochs of the Silm (much shorter than our own) it makes sense some megafauna would manage to survive into the time of humans.

Read Zikiti Does Not Tell A War Story

“Tell me what the war was like.”

Alembic distilled spirits were a plague upon the kingdoms of women. Orcs did not have much want for wine but had introduced their fellow soldiers to such clever concoctions, liquids that tasted of bile and burned the tongue. In turn the men had made some adjustments, switching out bitter wormwood and poisonous wood alcohol for pomace and other pressed fruit. The end result was less immediately toxic and broadly popular. Zikiti still despised it. A cup of wine was a soldier’s right but a cup of that foul liquid made a soldier into a fool.

The southern girl had not learned that lesson quickly enough. She’d held her wine well enough, even though it flowed thick and gauchely unwatered at this celebration of failure. Then someone had pressed a goblet full of burning dawn yellow into her little hands. Stupid girl had drank the whole thing. At least Zikiti had managed to catch her, stumbling through the crowd of war-fatigued revelers. Now she clung like lichen to Zikiti’s side, sensing perhaps, that it was better to be tipsy at the side of a dull general than amid the increasingly wild men of the camp party. 

“It was a war,” Zikiti told her. “We fought it. People died. We came back home.”

Most of the army was now back within the borders of the dark lands. The All-Seeing and a small detachment had taken a detour to root out the rising banditry on the borders— waging war away from home always left you vulnerable to closer threats, but the grand marching battalions of orcs, the tribute armies of the client kingdoms, and the various hostage-commander-princes had all flocked back to the tower. And though none of them would be caught dead celebrating their defeat while their lord was present, a homecoming party was not out of the question.

It had been ten long years. Many of the younger ones— the bare faced boys from the trading towns of Harad and the eager squires of good breeding— had not been in service when the war had started. They’d marched across mountains and flatlands to a warfront established when they were children, to replace soldiers who’d grown too old or injured to fight a hundred miles from home. 

They had arrived just in time for the terrible rout. Strange how the half-men of the sea could be so much worse than the western demons. Though they were vicious warriors the glowing sorcerers of fairy did not have great armies. Few and deadly they were, and that was far more manageable than the witch-aided might of Anadûnê. 

The southern princess’ breath was hot with wine, her eyes hazy and her grip strong. “Surely there must be some stories. It was such a long campaign! What is the world like so far away? Are their artisans skillful? Are their poets half as quick?”

Zikiti remembered the fallen city before it was taken apart. How it towered high, the arches defying the laws of nature. The devices her soldiers had found as they had ransacked the fairy citadel; made of whisper thin glass and twisted metal. Chemicals that burned and spell-traps that left healthy men drowning on dry land. 

“They are artful,” she said shortly. 

“And the people? Are they really frightening?”

The world was full of magic. Zikiti knew stories of it and had encountered the might of such mastery in her days. There were the womanhawks of the peaks, the adroit dwarves of the northeastern mountains, the talking birds, the great hunters, the shamans and wizards and wisewomen. There were orcs and trolls, who were not fair, and the lavamen who lived in Far Harad, who very called half-trolls by those who did not know trolls very well for they were fine to look upon. There were the sea spirits, the forest creatures, the whirling dancers, and the spirits of wood and glen and arid wild. Everywhere there were men, of every color and shape and size; dark and pale, long and short. 

What she had seen in the godless west had frightened her all the same. The elves were too tall, in spirit if not in body, with laughing eyes and sad smiles. They simmered, heat and magic pouring off of them like steam off a cook pot until the world distorted. Their works were wicked and their eyes were pale and empty. Next to them the men were shallow, scrabbling things— except of course for those of the furthest west who towered and thundered and made no mystery of their entitlement and the enchantment laid over their wicked race.

There had been one woman— if that term even applied to an elven dame— who Zikiti still saw in her dreams. Even dying she’d been ethereal, skin glossy as black glass, eyes half-closed with pain and lashes a knuckle long. The sword buried in her shoulder was of orcish make, the barbed iron rusty beneath the vibrant blood. There was more blood under her nails and around her mouth; dark, foul stuff. Orcs had too much brimstone in the blood. 

Zikiti and her squad had not expected to encounter any survivors sweeping the mostly empty streets. This one must have dragged herself into a small home to avoid detection. The elfin maid was less surprised by their appearance than they were by hers. There were only so many places to hide in a taken city. 

She had opened one eyelid, revealing the flat tawny color of a lion’s eyes, no striation or circling. “Send me to my rest, daughter of the Sun. I have avoided returning home too long.”

Pride did not let warriors give in, and many preferred death to surrender. Not one of the inhabitants of this cursed land had laid down their swords willingly. Zikiti had sympathized with that until she had seen them in battle, specters of glinting light. Mercy should not have been offered, yet…

She wore the soft clothes of a scholar, and her face, though aged by wisdom, was also very young. With her full mouth and upturned nose she looked like in impression of a human. Like one of Zikiti’s childhood friends from the hot, green lands had been vitrified. Her slick face was twisted in agony and every breath reworked the expression, making skin that seemed smooth and heavy contort as easily as any man’s. 

Pain made even these empty immortals approachable. And the wound did not look like a death sentence yet; the phantasms being as sturdy as they were. Zikiti had knelt by her side and examined the injury, surprised when there was give and warmth to the rent flesh. “You might still live,” she’d told the elf. “And I will not throw away a prisoner so easily.”

Truth be told, the Wise One had only taken an interest in one captive. If any others still lived, Zikiti suspected they were having a thoroughly miserable time. Intelligence was intelligence, however, and perhaps she’d be able to convince Dôlbeen or Qamar that this one could be useful. 

At that the elf’s eyes had shot open and she’d stared at Zikiti so intently. She had served the Eye Which Saw for many years, and knew what it was to have your mind bared. That gaze had been different. It had not demanded answers or pulled away at defenses. Neither was it a look of accusation. 

Instead it was an offer, to see what this ageless thing had seen and know the monstrosities it had known. It was an extended hand, threatening to drag her down into an abyss of memory. Worst of all, Zikiti thought she already knew what the elf wanted to say. Everyone knew their own hypocrisies, on some level. It was being confronted by them which was so very frightening. 

She had pulled away sharply, a motion which had half her men drawing their swords. The elfin maid had blinked, long and slow as a cat. “No. No one deserves that fate.”

Final words delivered, she’d shut her eyes. It hadn’t been a mortal wound, not based on what the other captive could tolerate. Nonetheless, she’d been dead before Zikiti could work up the bravery to cut her throat. Orc poison, mayhaps, or some new sorcery of this wretched place. 

“They are not like us,” Zikiti informed the drunken girl at her side. For all her silliness and obnoxious conviviality, she at least was human. 

“Ah, but you are not like me, and I am not like you. Is it truly so bad to be different?” Laughter laced her high voice, making Zikiti certain that the point of serious discussion was long past. 

“Yes,” she told her in the firm voice of a commanding officer. “No more questions.”

Stubborn even as she yawned and leaned against Zikiti’s shoulder, the southron girl didn’t pay any heed. “Was it a good war?”

There were no good war. Wars were long and sluggish. Battles brought the heat to your chest and the blood to your head. Wars were just a means to an end. 

Even the first war she’d ever fought, a campaign against a single foe, hadn’t been satisfying. She’d been 25 when the great lion had come to terrorize her town. Lion was not quite the correct word. It had something of a weasel about it, and something of a bear, but it was long and four legged and golden brown so they had called it a lion, for lack of any better term. It had been long as two men were tall, end to end, and when they’d finally killed it and measured it up it had weighed more than 30 talents. 

It had to be older than the world of men, a forgotten slumbering terror from the time before light and sound and speech. Its teeth were long and its very bones yellow with age. 

Though it was just one beast it had ruined them, preying on travellers and farmers, eating small children and whole oxen alike. They were not a large city, or one overpopulated with warriors. They had relied too long on their connection to the lord of the dark lands to shelter them from enemies. Diplomacy and the threat of armies did nothing against a carnivore from antiquity. Nor could they plead for help from their allies, for who would give them credit if they were so easily defeated by a dumb animal?

After the final hunting party had come back, bloodied and few in number, Zikiti had decided to act. She was not from a family of no account, for few children of slaves and plowsmen were marked by history, but neither was she of the noblest blood. What she did have were broad shoulders, a quick mind, and parents who would not miss her if she did not return. Most importantly, she had hunted lions as a young woman, when they had troubled her family’s country holdings. Experience lent her what few of the would-be heroes had; a plan.

Arsenic was not easy to come by, but not for nothing was it called the poison of kings. Kings kept it, for their own means. Her scheme had won over the monarch, and he’d given her four strong workmen, a net woven of metal, and a tin of yellow ointment. 

They’d followed stories of the monsters passing, until they had found the cave. There, Zikiti’s plan had fallen apart. None of the stories had given hint of how clever it was. How its eyes would assess the fresh ox carcass and turn aside, as no lion ever would. How it would leap at the men stood poised with the gleaming net and begin to tear them apart. 

The hunters who had come back had hinted at how thick its hide would be, handfuls of fur and fat that Zikiti had to chop away at to get to tough muscle and finally, finally, the tender nerves of the spine. It had roared and whirled furiously, trying to throw her off its back. She’d nearly put her eye out with her own blade. 

Strength of arms had saved her, and when all was said and done, it was strength of arms she was celebrated for. The Lioness of Shams, elevated until she'd finally been sent away to serve the greatest army this side of the sea, and bring her people merit as she had once brought them safety. 

It had still been alive after she’d sliced through its spinal cord. It was just the two of them, the poor men she’d recruited to her cause dead or dying. Zikiti had looked into its dark eyes and seen an age as old as stars, which knew the hands of the unkind gods who had molded them. As with the elf, the sight of those eyes had made her mouth go dry with awe. As with the elf, she had wanted to save it, though her sensible mind knew that no such remnant of the savage world could exist alongside men. What enchantment was there to the sublime to make them so alluring?

There was magic, which everyone had experienced in some manner, and then there was Power, which no one ought to find themselves face-to-face with. At least one who ruled them all kept most of his own self covered, and was alone in his attributes. At least he was willing to aid them against others of even worse kind.

“It was a war, and they are all the same,” she told the girl dozing at her side. “But I would fight that war a thousand times over again to drive such demons from our world.”

“Oh. That’s nice,” came the bleary response. 

“Truly? I do not know if hatred is what one should fight for.”

Cytise Expounds on the Nature of Her Island

1749 SA. The final chapter. For the record, the kids do have names it was just a hassle to put them in and Cytise is the sort of old lady who does not bother.

Also I have a tag of some character moodboards here.

Read Cytise Expounds on the Nature of Her Island

Home was not much changed. Many years had passed since Cytise had set foot on the island of her birth, but the winding streets were still the same. The low slung palace in the center of the city was spiffier, the docks a bit louder, the last scars of rebellion and plague healed over at long last. Otherwise, it was remarkably identical to the land she had left. The greatest development of the last century had been the temple, dedicated to those who thought to worship a being who was more king than god and built on the bones of a demolished shrine. Even that bold red structure had been built long before her birth, when her parents were still young and conquest was still settling over the islands.

She hated the permanence of everything. As a child she had been certain she would change everything, that the future was full of possibility and great stories. Now she was old and the city of driftwood and limestone was an unchanging marker in a world that did not shift fast enough. 

Teal ocean water lapped lazily against the shellwall of the docks and the sun was bright against the bare horizon. Trees were rare here, the heat and salt made the islands rather inhospitable for large plants, and only a handful of small shrubs could be seen clinging to the coastline. The sun-bleached buildings, many intentionally whitewashed from pale yellow to glaring eggshell, only reflected the radiant afternoon light. 

Her escort to the palace walked her up through the market street. That had changed. Though the signs and stalls were still the same the faces were not. The laughing goldsmith was only an echo of the man she used to consider a friend— a son or a nephew? she wondered. The stonecarver who etched graves was nodding asleep in a shaded chair and did not recognize her as she passed, though they used to talk often when he was an apprentice and she was the little head of a liminally royal house.

There were other goods laid out there. Fish and sea cucumbers, hearty chilis and chickpeas grown in gardens or imported from the mainland, white cloth woven from boles of a plant brought over from the east a century ago, grain for flat bread, and all manner of goat products. There were whole sea turtles being taken apart for shell and meat, polished obsidian knives and rarer blades of iron, and— hidden away in the best guarded stalls— the pearls which brought them such bounty. Divers dragged them up daily from the deeps, ranging further and further away from the islands with every year. Greed depleted even the riches of the ocean. It didn’t help that they turned away from their old god long ago. 

The light brought tears to her eyes. So did the aching familiarity of the cobblestones. Decades she dreamed of the island, and now half-forgotten details stood out to her. The worn leather sound of sandals hitting the road, smoothed by age and the elements rung in her ears. The waxed cloth tarps propped and arranged over every roof like great sails, meant to catch the rainwater and funnel it into barrels and cisterns— had she forgotten about those? The songs of the women echoing out from the hidden courtyards of houses, those seemed new. She thought she saw a man with the mark of a northern slave on him, though there had been no slavery on the island in her parents' day; another change. The long road up to the palace could not have be different. It was her body that was remade in fouler form. She had sprinted these streets as a child too young for dignity and wandered them as a bored young woman. Now the trek made her breath catch and founder.

She was in such a state when she finally reached the palace that the sight of her sister, bent over, grey, and leaning on a footman for support, nearly broke her. 

“Makada,” she whispered, abandoning all protocol in favour of the name their parents had given her. “I’m home.”

Thin and weak as her sister’s arms were, they still held her tight and for a moment Cytise could pretend she was a child again. 

 

Her nephew, who had been a round faced boy of six when she’d left, was now a solemn father of five. He greeted her kindly and, after the formalities were over, said that he still had the presents she’d sent him from the Dark Land; the gleaming sword and the paintings and the box of hidden wonders. He said he’d missed her, though no doubt he’d missed the carefree young aunt he barely remembered. 

The young queen was something of an enigma, not particularly pretty and quiet. She’d been picked over the protests of those loyal to a greater ruler, and Makada had paid for that small rebellion. There was no contesting the choice though. Cytise was certain the young woman could be trusted and that was not always a certainty these days. Their nobility was small compared to the sprawling, scheming courts she’d met and heard tale of. They did their best to plot with the best of them, however. 

Makada and her son insisted she stay in the palace. The home she’d grown up in and then worked so hard to make her own had been handed to a distant cousin after her exile, so she acquiesced. It was easy to settle in amid the slow statecraft and gentle atmosphere of familial fondness. Though it was a palace it was also quite clearly a home, in a way the great tower had never been (though men and women had lived and died there). 

And the children... the children adored her. She had never met them before, had barely spoken to them except through rare letters which took months to travel. Still, Cytise took their affection in stride. They were naturally awed by a strange relation returned from lands far abroad. Perhaps they even sensed how hard she had worked to preserve their freedom. When she’d finally been released from service there had been some talk of bringing one of the oldest ones to replace her. They were barely chest high but such things rarely mattered to people who thought in terms of strategy and long-term benefits. 

In the end she’d been allowed to return home without further assurance. She was old and not likely to make trouble, her people were light in military might, and they despised far Westernesse for their hubris and control of coastal markets. The ceaseless attention of the Excellent had shifted elsewhere and Cytise had been sent on the long journey home.

Knowing her own faults, she still held her tongue for the first few months of her stay. Justified paranoia was a hard habit to break. 

In time it became impossible to deny that she had been forgotten. There were plenty of watchers here, amid the endless turquoise sea and sun-blanched lime, they just weren’t paying attention to her any more. They focused on the king, his inscrutable wife, the loudest of the notables in their circle of warrior nobles. Cytise may have been a danger once but now, cut off from friends and the whirling social life she’d once cultivated, she was just an old woman of good birth. 

One afternoon as affairs of state soldiered on down the hall, she told the children a story. 

They liked her stories. She had a deep well of them and when the priests of the red-hot eye were near she stuck to the least offensive. Tales of animals and morals, of lions and heroes who bravely slew them. She did not tell them about monsters, or the making of the world, or the demons who lurked in the west and the east. She did not burden their young minds with the idea of gods who hated them or a king who would endure long past their deaths, precise and bright as a goldsmith’s flame. 

Stories were for better purposes. Stories were memory and fundamental truths and the worries that could not be spoken aloud. 

“Can’t you do it in another language?” the middle boy complained. “I don’t like this one. It’s for shepherds.” 

Cytise reached down to the cool pool in the center of the courtyard and splashed some water in his face. “Don’t be rude. You like to eat lamb, you owe those shepherds. The least you can do is know their tongue.” 

She had to admit that it was a struggle for her to manage the language of her homeland as well. Though she’d written a good deal in it over the countless years, she had not spoken it out loud in some time. 

It didn’t help that the people of the city increasingly favored the languages of other lands. Vowel heavy Nernean had been spoken in merchant’s houses for decades now. Cytise had been nicknamed in that tongue when she was too young to remember, and now her first name was a relic used only by a few relations. The priests loved the True Speech and insisted on doing business in it, and their neighbors on the mainland spoke a dialect some centuries removed from theirs— and were vital enough allies that a working grasp of it was useful for most leaders. 

The children rarely had a chance to practice their skills with what had once been the only language of the island. Cytise tried to speak to them in it whenever possible, even if her vocabulary was rusty. 

The littlest princess, who had been trying to wrestle a collar onto the small gazelle the children kept, gave her brother a nasty glare. “Don’t be mean, I want a story!”

“You’ll have it,” Cytise promised, leaning back so the jumpy animal could skitter out of the way. “Sit first and lend me your ears.”

With various degrees of willingness, the children sat, some dunking their feet in the shallow water (a luxury when kept uncovered and without purpose), others perching on the edge of the stone rim. The oldest, a naturally suspicious girl, stilled her spindle with some reluctance. 

“Story?” the wiggly little princess demanded, splashing in the water like her gazelle.

“Mmmm.” Cytise checked their surroundings one last time, then, assured that they were alone in the stillness of the family quarters, began. 

“Once we weren’t a land, we were a people. The sun was new and there were many humans wandering the world, looking for a place to call home. For a few years we all spoke the same language but as humans began to settle and find places of their own their languages shifted and grew strange.”

“I know lots of languages,” the oldest prince said, as if this was some sort of challenge. He was holding his youngest brother in his lap, bouncing him with the expert motions of an experienced older sibling. At the end of the day their nursemaid went home to her family (a unique arrangement but not an unwelcome one) and their parents were both very busy. 

“And if you lived when the world was young you might know even more,” Cytise said. “Tongues were quicker then and the air was rich. But we are not speaking of languages, we are speaking of our people. They have had many names but they called themselves the Maiy, then as now.”

“That just means ‘people’.” Her eldest great-nephew said helpfully, only to be shushed by the rapt little ones. 

He wasn’t wrong. For years they had been the people and their island had been the land. Then some trader had called it Maiynáz, using the possessive ending shared by several languages. Time had made that into Mahnás, and now there was no other name. 

That was how it went, Cytise had learned. The greater world eroded what had been, until all that was left was foreign appellations and old wives tales. Your own name was made of another’s letters. 

“They were people. Their own people and that mattered. They wanted to remain their own people so they wandered, not settling in lands where others had set down roots. Instead they looked for a place that spoke to them.”

This was where the story had grown tricky. She had heard it first from an old worker of coral and twine, who was more at ease with the divers and fishermen than the urbane company Cytise had hosted. He’d accepted her invitation so grudgingly and lingered at the edge of the dinner, uncertain of his place. In trying to set him at ease, Cytise had instead discovered a world of old tales, the sort her parents had told her when they were sizing up the value of treason. Stories of the water and the wind and world-shaping music that still lingered in summer storms. 

She’d been 19 then, so her memories of this old bit of doggerel were shaky. 

“They travelled to the great forests of the east where shadows lingered in the trees and by the side of a lake bigger than a sea. The shadows would not speak to them, so they turned away. They went west where the mountains trapped a monster who was raging at the stars, and they heard his cries and were afraid, for though he spoke much of glory and hatred, he did not speak to them. So they turned away. They stood on the mountains and listened to the sky, hoping for some listening cloud to speak, but all was quiet. So they kept on their way. Finally they reached the ocean. And the ocean spoke to them.”

There was a sharp clatter as the oldest girl, whose birth name was Senit and who was called Sintyche, dropped her spindle. Cytise paused as she recovered it and sat back down. 

“All well?”

“Just clumsy hands,” Sintyche said, looking away. 

“More story!” the littlest princess shouted, her voice echoing in the quiet of the courtyard. 

Laughing, Cytise grabbed her and pulled her bodily into her lap, clawed hands aimed at the soft target of the girl’s stomach. When the shrieks of laughter died away, she spoke again. 

“As I was saying before this bird decided to chirp, the people came to the ocean. And the ocean spoke to them. At long last, the people knew that this was where they were wanted, this was where they were home. But there were already people on the shores of the the sea, and they were jealous. Not wanting these two groups of children to come to blows, the ocean opened up a great path along the sea floor.”

“They should have used boats,” her opinionated older nephew said, and this time his interruption got some agreement from his siblings. 

“They hadn’t been invented yet,” Cytise informed him quickly. It wasn’t in the words of the story she had been told but it wasn’t a stretch either. Boats to cross the long miles were not easy to make. “You’re right. It would have been easier. The Maiy were reluctant to walk the sea floor. It took a clever and brave leader and the coaxing of the sea for them to make the long trek. They walked over corals that cut through the soles of their feet and sharp shells, over the hills and past the ravines of the ocean floor. Finally the water around them grew shallower and soon they were on an island! And then, finally, they were home.”

“And they stayed there forever and ever?” the youngest boy asked. 

“And their language grew to suit them, and their hands grew clever, and they knew the love of the water.” Cytise agreed. “They built boats," she nodded to her nephew, "And settled the other islands, and raised up kings to rule themselves. So now you know that you should not give up your heritage lightly, for you are descended from the very leader who helped the people walk the ocean. This is the language shaped by years alone in the embrace of the sea.”

There was a brief silence, punctuated by splashing. “I want a story about a fish-princess next,” came the plaintive cry from the little princess.

 

A dignitary from a seaside town that knew no master was talking with the king and queen, and all the women and bondmen were busy attending on them. The children— who were not awed by feasts or boring talk of politics, and ardently avoided events where they might be asked to make a show out of themselves — went to bed on their own. At least, the younger ones did. After checking on Makada (who was ailing of late and whose frail condition was why Cytise had reluctantly excused herself from courtly duties), Cytise returned to the courtyard to find young Sintyche looking up at the stars. At her waist whorled the spindle, working an uneven yarn. Cytise sympathized— she’d never had the knack for spinning either.

“What do you see up there?” she asked. 

Sintyche jumped and the sharp movement broke the thread and sent the spindle plummeting to the ground again. This time she caught it. 

“Just stars. The wanderer was bright tonight.”

Cytise had seen contraptions of brass and polished glass in her time, and had been shown the windings of the heavens by people cleverer than she was. “Some people call him the hope star, you know?” There was something reassuring about the first point of light in the evening. Even far away, where the constellations had different names, everyone knew that celestial body. 

“I don’t know why,” Sintyche muttered, “He seems very lonely.” 

There seemed to be something on the girl’s mind. After waiting a decent while for her to speak of her own accord, Cytise looked for understanding. 

“What troubles you?”

“The story you told…”

Though she knew exactly which story preyed on her great-niece’s mind, she couldn’t help a bit of teasing. “The one about the fish-princess?”

“No! The one about the old god. It didn’t feel right. It might get people in trouble.”

It had been a gamble. It was one she was prepared to stand by. “Are they going to criticize a cast-aside old woman for telling stories, or children for listening? More dangerous words have been bandied in these halls in years past. Besides, it is important that you children understand the truth.”

She would tell it again when they were older, if she lived that long. When they knew how to guard their tongues she might even speak of other matters, of how their grandfather and great-grandparents had died, of how they had become princes of a kingdom that wasn't a kingdom at all. In the meantime they would have to settle for stories. 

“Why?” Sintyche asked. “It might have been different back in your day, but now we’re part of something bigger. All men should be united as one, not listening to the whispers of those gods who have forgotten us.” There was fear in her eyes even as she quoted the priestly sayings. Ah, Cytise hadn’t missed that bit of home. Religion really held no place in the Dark Land— worship was hard when you knew your god personally— but at the edges of the protectorate it served a purpose and was well nurtured. 

It was hard to say how much Sintyche’s parents had told her, how much she had overheard and how much she had put together. She was young, yes, but she also clever, and there was a patience to her that Cytise recognized from Makada’s youth. The steady philosophy of an older sister was a power all its own and Cytise, born brash and born last, didn’t really understand it. 

“They may be part of something greater, but this will always be their home. We should not discard our own stories lightly; even if greater works should come upon us. Remember them, I won’t be around forever.”

Sintyche sat abruptly at the edge of the courtyard pool, which reflected the white stars and the torchlit edges of the roof. “Why? You lived there for so long, you must know so much more than this island. Why do we still matter?”

Politics had taken more of a toll on the princess than Cytise had reckoned. She had seen her niece at small gatherings or standing behind her mother during affairs of state, drinking in everything with dark eyes. Maybe she should have known the child was actually listening to talk of kings far away, of mariners with ships that held a thousand men, of planned colonies, of conquest. Of the fact that they were conquered and were now playing a long slow game at the whims of another. 

The courtyard was silent and the sounds of hosting could only be heard from very far away. Still, it paid to be cautious. 

“Senit Lelte,” Cytise said, using the most formal version of her name, and then, because names were slippery as octopi, “Sintyche. Empires do not last forever, but islands fall with less frequency. Inescapable as some powers may seem, I do not think they will outlast humankind. If we are lucky, they will not outlast us. Oh, we may live and die in the worlds they have made, but the languages? The stories? If we are careful, they go on.”

Sintyche’s eyes went comically wide, and then her face scrunched up with the effort of deep political thought. Well, she was only nine. “I don’t think that’s the sort of thing you’re supposed to say,” she eventually whispered. 

Leaning over, Cytise kissed her forehead. “Don’t tell anyone I said it then,” she replied in a voice just as soft. 

Sintyche shook her head, though she was smiling faintly. “Grandma was right, Auntie. You are trouble.”