The Kohrinju Tai Saga:
Call of the Wolf
By J P Nelson
Copyright © 2011 by J P Nelson
All rights reserved.
Acknowledgements
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This work would not have been completed without my adopted sis, Teresa Goodemote, her belief in me, ongoing endeavor to teach me correct punctuation, and kicking and biting me to stay on course; Dale Goodemote, more of a brother than my own blood, and who can fix a computer just by touching it; Lorraine Saporito, LMFT, who made sure I kept all the psychology on track; Pam Allison, who listened to me read over, and over again; Ray and Laura Hunt, who insist I should relax every now and then; Eddy Wetmore and his advice about boats, sailing, and hang-gliding; my adopted parents, Mom and Pop Minnick; my students at the Family Self Defense Center; my club the Platinum Dragon Society, and twenty years of great adventure role-playing; Calvin Barker and Pierce Greene, who adamantly insisted my storylines and world setting needed to be put into book form; Robert and Lesia of Clater Kaye Theatreworks for a multitude of invaluable suggestions; the Staff at Golden Corral of Hickory, NC, where I wrote two-thirds of this first novel; the Guardian ad Litem Program, a legal group who fights for the children, of which I am proud to be a part; Sgt. Deloris Day, my Drill Sergeant from way back when, who instilled in me deep respect for the Female Warrior; my only real childhood friends, the pooches Mitzi, Chief, Sandy and Gypsy; I can’t forget Peaches the puppy; Dino the hamster, who inspired an entire species; the world’s biggest black cat, Charlie; kitties Gus, Morella, and Benjy; my head-butting partner, Pippin the goat; my favorite Trail Riding Partner, the Egyptian-Arab, Kowi; and my roommate and writing supervisor, Kashi the half-Himalayan kitty.
Dedication
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To Mr. Vernon Dyer,
Thank You.
A pronunciation guide is provided in back of book.
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Chapter 1, From the Scroll of Ghespahrrtha:
First Book of the Holy Writings of Zhymathatt.
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IT FELT AS if the world had exploded with a thousand tiny lights. I couldn’t see and I could only hear a dull pounding within my skull. The taste of blood was strong in my mouth, my breath hard and labored. I could feel the hard packed dirt beneath me as I crouched on hands and knees. But, where was I? I couldn’t seem to remember and my mind was a haze of dull, throbbing pain.
Instinctively, not by thought, I contracted my abdominal muscles and pulled inward as a leather shod, hoof-like foot kick me hard in the stomach. Moving with the force of the blow I rolled sideways twice, coming back to my hands and knees. Trying hard to buy time, and my breath, I slowly crawled on a hard packed dirt floor while keeping the position of my assailant to my left side.
Somehow I was aware the tattered and bloody rag on my body was supposed to be a tunic, once held together by a scrap of a sash. My leggings were threadbare with freshly torn holes over my scraped knees. Only my boots were in good repair; buckskin boots which tied above the calf and had a fringe all around the top, boots fashioned by my own hand long ago.
Without seeing them, I knew my knuckles were raw and abraded from fighting, and my almost white-blond hair clung past my shoulders in the same matted and sweaty dirt which covered the rest of my body. I was sure my scalp had been split and I felt a searing, burning pain deep in the joint of my right shoulder.
The darkness of my vision started to become a blur, and through the blur I began to make out the shape of a nightmare taking his time moving toward me, hands wide outstretched as he swaggered and spoke in a language I didn’t know. At first he seemed a shadowy figure as my eyes tried to regain focus, then as my sight cleared I could make out a form unbelievably thick with inhumanly large muscles, somewhat human shaped, but at the same time different.
How many times had I been hit in the head? Why could I not remember?
Unbidden, a memory arose of a man I once knew who had won many fights, but his head and hands often shook uncontrollably and could not even remember his daughter’s name. Is that what was wrong with me? Was this even real?
My sight began to blur in and out as with great effort I tried to crawl away from the figure, yet keeping him in my line of sight. My hearing had been reduced to a hum and his words seemed to come from far, far away.
I tried to focus on his head, it seemed misshapen in my visual haze … but wait … no … not misshapen, he had horns coming from the sides of his head, and long ears which hung to his massive neck and shoulder muscles.
Those horns made me think of a wild bull, and one was skewed so that it tilted downward at an odd angle. He was clad in only a loincloth and as the haze lifted from my eyes I could see that except for his chest, stomach and face he was covered in the kind of short, mahogany colored bristle hairs a pig would have.
His face … his face was becoming clear and the sweat on my body suddenly turned cold despite the sweltering sun. My breath caught and I thought to myself, ‘Mon’Gouchest! I’m about to die …’ as I found myself looking into those bloodshot, cruel and sadistic eyes.
The creature’s face was flat with a low hanging jaw, now opened in a snarl of pleasure. His eyes opened wide in demonic glee and I found myself entranced as if staring into the gaze of a large serpent. Tusk-like fangs protruded from his lower jaw and I could now see him flex his fingers as he held his arms wide and suddenly crouching low as if to pounce upon me. Those thighs were almost as big as my own torso and were jointed like a cow’s and I figured he could easily jump what was now the twenty feet between us.
Shaking my head in an effort to regain full clarity and mental control, I stumbled to regain my footing, but slipped and fell to my right side as the creature carefully circled and set me up for what I knew would be the kill. Through split lips I mumbled to myself, “What is he waiting for?”
As the fog in my brain began to clear, it came to me that my assailant … no, not an assailant … this was my opponent … my opponent was toying with me, thinking me finished. He was a Minotaur-Org hybrid and I remembered he would gloat, playing up to a large crowd of screaming humans and other species and drawing out the inevitable moment when he would kill.
How I had been hit, I wasn’t sure. But it had been solid. Nor could I remember how long the fight had been going on. I felt sharp pain in my left side and was now afraid that a rib, or ribs, had been broken. The thought went through my mind, that if I inhaled too hard … I may slash my lungs and drown from my own blood. Death held no fear over me, but there was something more, something I could not at the moment identify.
Slowly, very slowly, it was starting to come back as I fought to get up on my hands and knees, somewhere I thought I could hear chanting voices way off in the background … a crowd, yes, a crowd, and they were watching me.
I was the victim of no accidental altercation or disagreement. Nor was this the result of a misunderstanding. The hybrid and I were in the Grand Coliseum of Dahruban; Dahruban, the Great City of the North, touted as the grandest city on the whole continent of Aeshea and possibly of the entire human world. As for me, I was billed as a Feral Spawn of Elf and Human Blood. And for the main event of this sporting promotion, these crowds had come to see me die.
To be more specific, they had come to see their champion kill me.
His name, the hybrid, his name was Karthanook. He stood nearly seven feet tall and was close to three hundred pounds of cruel intentions. Karthanook loved to play the crowd, loved to torture his wounded opponents and prolong the outcome, and in return the crowds loved him for it. Thirty-four times in the last two years he had engaged in Dahruban Coliseum combat, and a loss in the coliseum meant you were dead.
But Karthanook had a serious failing. He had a pattern. If his nearly beaten opponent raised his head, Karthanook would grab the hair and hold it in a powerful grip while walking and screaming to the crowd. Then in an exaggerated manner he would circle his fist upward toward the heavens, culminating the scenario by rapping his stone hard knuckles into the opponent’s forehead at an angle. This would either open a nasty wound or expand an existing one.
I was remembering, bit by bit. Twice before I had watched him fight in other arenas. But along with what I had heard of him, I knew enough.
If his opponent staggered on hands and knees with head down, Karthanook would kick hard to the underbody a total of three individual times. Each time just hard enough to cause pain and keep the wind knocked out, but not enough to finish. Then with a forth kick, he would raise his knee up high and up close to his chest, hesitate for the screams of the crowd, and then come down hard with that hoof-like foot and shatter the ribs or spine. After which he would finally reach down and slowly, methodically twist the neck until broken; the neck-breaking motion being his signature move of sorts.
Closing my eyes for a moment I tried to focus into the ground through my hands and fingers, seeking out my last vestige of power and strength. I could somehow feel Karthanook’s meticulous approach through the vibrations of the ground beneath my hands. I exaggerated my staggering motions while firmly securing a position with my right foot.
The blood-fevered chants of the crowd were now mingling with the pulsing throbs of pain in my head.
My vision began to clear and I could see somewhat, but still the blur came and went.
Keeping my head low, I could sense his foot come up in a swinging motion and connect square in my abdomen, but I was ready for it. I rose up with the force of the blow, as if his kick had caused more damage than it did, and used the momentum to do a partial jump out and away from Karthanook. Touching first with my feet as I came down I exaggerated a wide roll over my back, once more onto my right side, and then slowly scrabbled to my knees. He would relish this, I knew, and slowly cover the distance gloating to the wildly roaring crowds.
There was something about his eyes; I had to keep from looking into his eyes.
Had he kicked me twice … or was it three times? I couldn’t remember. I kept careful watch for the shadow of his movement as I hung my head low, gamboling he had kicked me only twice. This was not a time for mistakes.
I could only launch one more attack and knew I had to summon every fiber of my being, and beyond, for the effort. I had to be perfect in my timing and tactic, following through with speed and flawless precision. The crowd’s noise was even louder in my ears and I dwelt on it for just an instant. Deep within me I felt the anger, the burning hatred of these people … I profaned the word in my mind.
These so-called people of highest civilization were paying to be entertained through the shedding of my blood and destruction of my body. I, who had never wronged these or any other creature, who had been born a bastard son to a captive elvin female and human owner, and sold in my childhood as a matter of convenience after my momma had been killed. Husbands, wives, merchants, prostitutes, physicians, weavers, cooks, clergy, city leaders … each and all, they lusted for the thrill of watching my death through pugilistic combat.
Was this all my life was to be? I was born into slavery and in one manner or another, had been a slave all of my life. Fifty years, I thought, I was over fifty years old and my home was a blanket on a bed of straw in a cage.
“Humans …” I spat the word in a growing rage as Karthanook kicked me in the abdomen one more time.
Again I made the spring upward and out. When I came to my hands and knees once more over thirty feet of dirt separated us.
The timing had to be right.
Again I set my right foot as Karthanook swaggered toward my left side.
He was caught up in anticipation of the kill and lost himself to his self-confidence.
Deliberately, and with great control, he swung his right foot high into the air and prepared to hammer my spine.
The pulsing cry of the crowd rose in anticipation of the crippling blow.
Ahjokus the Archer, the winged chief of security, took to the air and circled the coliseum with bow in hand.
I drew my breath in deeply and felt something pop within my chest, heat and fury rushed through the core of my being, and I drew strength from the hateful roar of sound emitted from the crowd of thousands.
The dirt from Karthanook’s foot hit my body and his scream of victory began to rise from his throat, and my own rage vented in a flaming torrent as if of its own accord.
From the coiled springs of muscle with-in my right leg, I shot in hard with my right shoulder against the center of Karthanook’s groin. Hooking my hands behind his left knee I stood straight up, and then kneeled down forward and hard, bringing his pelvis down on my bent right knee. I felt something break but had no time to determine if it was him or me. He, on the other hand, screamed in pain.
He didn’t fall as I wanted and he went over sideways into a roll. I stumbled and lost my grip, but came up on my feet and felt a second wind wash through me as I reached into the ground for all of the strength I could muster. I had little time and rushed in as he made way to his feet.
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When I had first seen my opponent that evening, I knew I was going to be in trouble. It was at that opening moment of the fight a desperate plan formulated quickly in my mind. You never know what tidbit of information may turn up useful, or even save your life. So I listened and learned from everything and everybody. My plan, however, would require my survival until … and if … I was able to act upon it.
I had learned much about Minotaur anatomy from a former physician who had been a cage-mate. He had told me that one of the most favored features of the Minotaur-Org hybrid, as a residential sentry or front line warrior, was the fact that they could draw up their torso into a near impervious natural armor. The muscles were so dense, it was explained to me, that when contracted they were nearly as tough as banded mail. As a result, bludgeoning weapons were almost useless and blades were easily deflected on the imperfect lines of the hybrid’s form. And the bones, the bones were nearly as resilient as stone.
One would need to be an expert in the use of weaponry to properly score serious blood, and only extreme pain could cause the muscles to unbind. If this happened, however, then a huge solar plexus cavity would expose itself just under the chest as the belly dropped low. The solar plexus being the one vulnerable point an unarmed, human sized person could have a chance of exploiting in combat.
The challenge was to cause this creature sufficient pain to expose that solar plexus. I had an idea of how to do it, but it was a long shot. Considering we had no weapons, it was the only shot I had. And as big and skillful as he was, getting in close enough to try my plan was nearly impossible. Surviving until my chance appeared had become my sole recourse.
And now, my chance had come.
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When he rose up into a partial crouch, I could see his face was a caricature of amazement. I also quickly noticed that he was favoring his left leg. There was no time for personal satisfaction, however. If I succeeded I could reflect later.
Keeping the initiative, I skipped in with the right foot and gave a partial jump up with the left knee as a faking strike. As he brought his arms up and stood to protect his snout, the most obviously vulnerable part of his body, I extended the left foot down and landed on the ground while thrusting forward deep and low with my right foot just below his belt line, something I have heard called a Jumping Chicken-Kick.
As he groaned and grabbed low to the cavity just above his groin, I delivered a wicked uppercut with the stiffened fingers of my left hand into his throat. This caused him to reel backward, and again catching my tall opponent off guard I immediately shot in against his left leg and took him down. Stepping in quick and rolling him over, I knew I had only a fraction of a second. His unclad underside was fully exposed, and through my still partially blurred vision I saw what I was looking for.
There was only one way to beat this walking abomination, it was literally a case of do or die. For a split moment I was able to keep him in a rolled position, and I hammered my fist into his exposed genitals with all of the strength I could muster. I felt him buck hard and his loud exclamation might be considered humorous in other conditions.
Karthanook managed to roll out of my grasp and stumble to an almost standing position. Grabbing his right foot from behind, I was able to hold onto his ankle as he hopped around on the other leg, his expression was almost pleading. I kicked him savagely and methodically into the groin four times, each kick causing him to leap into the air with howls of pain. With the fourth kick he finally fell to the ground, pitifully clutching his privates as he writhed upon the coliseum floor.
The anguished cries of Karthanook were horrific, sounding like a mixture of a woman screaming and a wounded dog’s yelping, but I felt no sympathy for him. He had intended to humiliate, mutilate, and then slowly kill me. Not only for the entertainment of the crowd, but for his own pleasure.
He rolled in agony to his knees and I watched his torso muscles drop. The muscles had released and the solar plexus cavity was now exposed. This is what I had been hoping for, as his head was just too hard to keep hitting with my fists and his throat too well protected by the way he held his head. Frantic in his movements, Karthanook was struggling to get up on his right leg.
I went in hard, ramming in and upward with my right fist into his exposed belly with every vestige of my being. Again I hit him, and then again five times more. With each strike I was directing all of my strength and power. I felt as if I were consumed by living fire. With each strike I could hear myself screaming as an enraged beast.
Karthanook reeled and I grabbed his head, hard I brought my left knee under his unprotected chin and I felt the teeth crunch. I knew I could not beat his bones into breakage, so I tore off the remains of my own tunic and twisted it. With his head bent forward and toward me I wrapped the twisted fabric under his neck, around his exposed throat, and turned his body over and onto my back.
Standing bent forward, I now held Karthanook stretched over my back, his belly exposed to the sun, his windpipe closed and sealed by his own weight from my garrote. I stood there until I felt him wretch in the spastic shudder of a creature in death, and then held him a bit longer before letting him drop.
Nearly falling down myself and staggering from fatigue, physical abuse, and the sudden release of my heavy opponent, I faced the crowd. They, who only moments ago had been chanting for my death, were now chanting my name in victory.
I remembered … I remembered the sole reason why I had no fear of death. I remembered why I had to win. Harboring the vilest of thoughts, I looked at these people. I looked into their eyes and hated. I hated each male, each female, and each child with no racial exceptions.
I hated and visualized every single one of them, their homes, their livestock, and their pets. I visualized each and every one lying upon the ground dying, their eyes looking up at me with their last glimmer of life. The same look of so many who had died in the coliseum, breathing their last breath for these people’s amusement. In my mind, I envisioned these people looking at me with pleading spirits. And in my mind, I spit upon them.
Into the crowd I screamed an ancient curse from a language no longer spoken “Thel-dohnarize Kn’Shuratt!” It was a curse they could not understand, but which damned them and blasphemed the gods they served.
Today, Karthanook’s death made two hundred and sixteen opponents I had killed in coliseum combat.
I won because they came to see me die by one of their own, and I refused to give them the satisfaction.
Turning my back on the screaming crowd, I felt myself stagger as I turned to go into the tunnels leading to where the fighting slaves were kept. And the guards … they moved out of my way.
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FOUR GUARDS WAITED inside the tunnel to lead the way and a compliment of six more gathered behind me; ten well-armed and trained men, each taller and bigger than I, to escort my battered form back to my cell. As I stepped in from the light of the sun, I wavered and almost fell. Hesitating a moment, the guards just stopped and gave me some space. They had each seen me fight many times before and knew me well. I was not feigning, this time I had been taken beyond my limits; Karthanook had dealt me more punishment than anyone had before.
Fighters and fight promoters had been watching me for years, now. It might sound like flattery in some regards, but the point of the matter is that they were studying how to beat me. Diversification of style and tactics had kept me in the win, but there is only so much you can do. I had seen and fought many who perceived them self as unbeatable, but I knew better. Sooner or later I would be matched with the right opponent, or I would make a fatal mistake, and it would be over; I would be dead, and all for the sake of spectator entertainment.
My dilemma, though, was how to get out? I was a slave … a well-guarded slave.
My head, it was so-o-o hard to think straight. The remains of my adrenaline rush were washing away, quickly, and the perfectly hewn rock walls of the coliseum’s lower levels seemed to fade in an out of darkness. Closing my eyes, I shook my head, but when I opened them I was seeing double images of everything, and they were separated into triple and quadruple images.
I saw four mouths open and begin to speak, it was so eerie and surreal, but then I realized it was the same person, as his visage slowly came back together. His words sounded impossibly slow and a loud hum was in my ears. Bending over and bracing myself with my hands on my knees I fought to keep consciousness; if only I could walk the distance to my cell where I could lie down, get some small amount of nourishment, water in my system, and rest.
Reeling, it was a battle just to keep my footing as the guards stepped back, not wanting to come close enough for me to touch them. I think two of them drew swords just in case. One guard, I know, was still talking to me in an alarmed tone, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
As the world seemed to spin I thought I could smell my momma’s griddle cakes simmering on the breakfast fire, the feel of my bare feet on the finely woven grass mat covering the floor of our quarters, and the distant sounds of Barlan, the hostler I knew as a child, putting the horses to harness first thing in the morning. But my feet weren’t bare; compelling my eyes to focus I could see and feel the stone floor of the tunnel.
Again, everything went to a blur and it seemed I was a small child, waking in the middle of the night from a horrible nightmare. ‘Momma?’ I thought to myself and mouthed the words, ‘Is that really you?’ I started to reach out, to call for her, when my knee struck the tunnel floor and sharp pain jolted me back to reality. I forced myself to stand back up, desperately pushing through the weakness with the sheer power of will.
Finally gathering my footing, I was able to somehow make my way down the corridor. My mind, however, my mind kept flowing in and out, back and forth in time, as I began to remember things I thought I had long since forgotten, some things I strangely realized I hadn’t remembered since I was a child … how odd to suddenly remember them now …
According to my momma, I was born on the 17th day of the 3rd month in the Dahruban Year of 436. If you want it in the colorful Old World Elvin vernacular, you would say my birth occurred at the apex of eventide during the Ebbon Qiuthox of the 4th Age, in the year of the Black Leopard, upon the 17th day of the month Kizokudahm.
The Selestian Star was out and burning bright blue that night, which was a rare thing that happened for only a few days every two thousand years or so. Momma believed this to be an omen and named me Komain J’Sehf; Komain being an Elvin name meaning Soldier of, or Guardian of Light.
Kelshinua was my momma’s name, and she was beautiful, and I don’t just say that because she was my momma. She was of olive complexion with ashen colored hair mingled with a creamy white that seemed to come alive in the breeze. Only slightly less tall than most human women, she was what most would call slender. She had the most beautiful deep brown eyes that could look right into your soul, and a voice so pure it’s almost impossible to describe. When she sang … the birds, squirrels, chipmunks, horses, any creature round about seemed to stop and listen.
My momma’s smile made you feel all warm inside; her touch like the brush of silk yet gently firm at the same time, and when she walked it was almost as if she floated from one movement to the next. You would have thought she was a queen, she was so elegant, yet there was no pretentious arrogance about her.
Even though my momma’s fingers were strong, when she brushed the strings of her guitar, the sounds were as if they had been caressed from the air itself. When I was hurt, her fingers could brush over me and it would actually ease the pain. Sometimes, if I banged my knee or elbow, you could actually see the bruise fade at her touch. There was just something so special about the feel of my momma’s hands and fingertips.
Just being next to my momma was like a magical experience, and I was next to her most of the time for my first nineteen years, but don’t compare that to human years. Humans breed and grow way too fast, at nineteen they’re practically full-grown and d’warvec aren’t too far behind.
Elves of all varieties are just entering adolescence at twenty and aren’t fully mature until around forty or fifty years of age, depending on type and whether they have a human parent or not. Human parentage among modern elves isn’t exactly unheard of, but it is highly uncommon to rare.
When I came along my momma was four hundred and fifty years old, but she was an elf of the Shihnuthai Clan, said to be among the last of the T’dahrosheim, which means old-bred, or true-bred, depending on dialect translation, and a T’dahrosheim Elf of good health could live to be as much as six or even seven hundred years old. One of our ancestors, an immensely powerful Druid named Shumang Thai, had even lived to be one thousand and seventeen years old, only he wasn’t a slave, and we were. It hadn’t always been that way, though, at least not for my momma.
Kelshinua Fhai’Tuhra was born into the Sh’Nika Tribe of Itahro Mountain Elves and was the only great-granddaughter of Kn’Yang T’Oun Shu, last Great Chief of the Dsh’Tharr Nation. Outsiders who have even seen the Itahro Mountains are few and far between and the Sh’Nika Elves had long since been labeled Wild Elves by the humans. More often than not, anyone who travels that way are never heard from again. There are even legends of famous trappers and explorers who traveled that way, looking for treasure more often than not, and didn’t make it back.
The Itahro’s are the northernmost range of the imposing Hoshael Mountains. Located within the Arctic Circle, the territory is a mixture of ice-covered peaks, canyons, glaciers, lakes which are frozen half of the year, and vast forests of virgin timber. Momma said there are trees out there which two dozen grown elves couldn’t reach around.
Breathing in deeply you can taste the purity of the atmosphere and feel the crisp, vibrant presence of evergreens mingled with vast plains of sheer ice. As cold as the temperatures are, though, the air is very dry and a person used to humid snow can easily freeze to death thinking they are warmer than they are. Momma recounted times when elvin hunters came across the petrified remains of humans whose warmest clothing was tied to their backpack; they had just fallen over and succumbed to Tuat nio’Huatka, what many call snow sleep.
It’s the land of the Shastien Eagle, arguably the most intelligent of all eagle species, two hundred pound wolverines, the Sapphire Rose, deer big enough to ride, Uordak Trolls, the woodchuck-like Kahfotaur folk, and the dreaded Windigo. Rugged and treacherous to be sure, yet my momma’s people embraced the territory and made it their home, and she not only grew up there, she flourished in that land.
Many times as a child I have laid before the night fire in my blanket and listened to my momma weave tales of her childhood; tales of the numerous baby deer she rescued and raised, running carefree through the dangerous woodlands with birds flying all about her as watchful companions, playing hide and seek with chipmunks and ferrets, and then there was the time she fixed an eaglet’s wing and carried it for five days until she found its nest on high up Gadriel’s Peak.
Kn’Yang himself went to go find her, and then he let her ride on his shoulders the whole way down the mountain as he told her stories of his own antics as a child. I often think back in awe and wonderment, what nerve and courage my momma had, even as a little girl. Only a person of magnificent valor, or an absolute fool, would do some of the things my momma had done … and to know her was to know this, the great-granddaughter of Kn’Yang was no fool.
Of course, any child fortunate to be around animals and to have pets will always remember that one special, favorite pet. For my momma it was an albino mongoose whom she dearly loved. Together, she said in fond memory, they went on so many adventures. In their play world they visited the far distant Dsh’Tharr Mountains, where the Itahro Elves once lived under legendary Elvin King Oshang; they helped found the original castle where the city-state of Dahruban is now located; they even visited other worlds by rediscovering how to use the ancient Ciquoa’Stän.
Momma had actually seen a Ciquoa’Stän somewhere north of Belmond Glacier. It was a large ring of tall stones, each connected at the top by another stone laying from one to another. At the backside of the circle it was maybe eight rods high at the top, and at the front it was about nine rods tall. There was no mortar and they were fitted perfectly. Momma said seven of these were built around the world by the fabled Dorhune, long before the Age of Druids.
She loved that mongoose and when she talked about him it always brought tranquility to her soul. What happened to him I never asked, but who wants to talk of a dear pet in its passing? She never told me his name, but she would call him her little Thon’Cier, which translates into Longish, the most common language in Aeshea, as “masked one.”
For nearly three hundred and fifty years my momma lived in that wild country, yet in the stories she told me, never did she reveal anything of her own life beyond childhood. Was it because I was still small and she sought to keep the horrid images of war from my mind? For there were wars in that rugged land, and although she never talked about it, I somehow knew she had seen things no person should have to.
If so, it would be like her to do such a thing; not to hide me from the reality of death and destruction, but to wait until I could understand and she could teach me values based upon her own experience.
Many were the tales she told me of Kn’Yang, however, since she and her great-grandfather held a special bond, and when she spoke of him it was with majesty and grandeur. I got to hear of his fighting trolls, his magic quiver of a thousand arrows, and how he led the Itahro Elves through two hundred years of warfare into conclusive victory over their enemies.
Among those defeated were the Sn’Yter-Guymar people, an elvin name for a sub-human race of inbred cannibals; long feared for their cruelty, deception, and villainy to those who might attempt to travel throughout the country. Under the leadership of Kn’Yang, the Sn’Yter-Guymar were all but exterminated like vermin and the few survivors scattered into the icy wastes of Pel’Fynqiuah.
Kn’Yang was known as Gahjurahnge Miu Grandé, translated in the human tongues to mean The Great Ranger. Momma told me even the trolls feared him, and if you know anything about the ferocity of trolls, that is saying a lot.
It was said he could walk from tree to tree, covering miles of territory in only a few strides, and when he walked through the forest the laurel and thorn bushes would part for him to pass. Personally, I always thought that a bit too far out to believe, but it sounded good when momma talked about it and I never questioned anything she said.
How my momma came to be captured and brought to Gevard was a tale she would not tell me. But for over one hundred years my momma was kept within the walls of the Fel’Caden Family’s main keep, housed in her own little dwelling behind the apple trees, and not once did any of those elvin warriors ever appear. As far as I was concerned she had been abandoned by her own kind, cast away and ignored to be used by human filth in whatever way they chose.
Sure, my momma’s official purpose was to cultivate the flowers, vineyard plants and the various orchard trees. By her hand did Fel’Caden Keep become the most beautiful in all of Gevard. Often she would be called upon to sing and/or play her homemade guitar for gatherings sometimes held at the keep. But there was more; my momma had visitors at times in the night, visitors she did not want nor willfully indulge, and these visitors were not gentle.
Some of my earliest memories are of having to endure the looks of the humans, both adult and child, and hearing them refer to me as “the spike, spike-ears, slink, half-breed, bastard” and other degrading things. When once I tried to join the other slave children in play, they instantly turned on me with laughter, hurled mud-balls at me, and chants of “hit the spike, hit the spike …”
I remember well two boys, humans, there were no other elf-bloods that I knew of within hundreds of miles, these two boys were bigger than I and they caught me playing by myself behind the main barn. With one brave and laughing boy on each side of me, they grabbed my ears and made me walk through mud, manure and a briar bush with my bare feet.
Learning to hate humans became easy. Only the hostler, a simple-minded fellow named Barlan, was kind to me, but he scared me so I stayed away from him. I never knew exactly why he scared me, but he did. Sometimes I have wondered if it was the hunched over way he walked, the way he often seemed confused when he talked, or the way he just stared at me sometimes. I remember his left eye was a lot bigger than the right, and his right eye seemed to always be rolling in different directions.
My momma liked Barlan and she would talk with him sometimes, but my fear was there and I couldn’t explain it. It could have been in part to the fact that he always worked with those horses, and I was deathly afraid of those creatures, they were so big. In fact, my worst childhood nightmares revolved around horses; something about being swallowed alive and not being able to move, screaming, shouting, fire, the feeling of nothingness and then pain, solid and welting pain into the blackness as I screamed and cried, and all around me I could hear the sound of horses hooves pounding on a road, the smell of equine sweat and something burning …
Then the sweetest whisper I can ever imagine would enter my ear, “Komain, Komain …?” My momma’s song-like voice would cross the barriers of the mind and merge into my dream, her fingers gently touching my shoulder as she spoke, “Wake up, my little blue-eyes, it’s only a dream, wake up Komain …”
And no matter how dark it was, the first thing I would see would be my momma’s beautiful eyes, shining out from the depths of my despair and giving me direction to follow through the last tendrils of the nightmare.
“Momma …” I would call out with a shudder, sometimes in tears, and then reach for the safety of her embrace.
“It’s okay, Komain, it’s okay. I’m right here … momma’s right here. I love you …”
She would cradle me and sing softly, sometimes pressing her forehead gently against mine, until slowly I would feel a floating sensation; the world would seem to fade away and I would move like a feather in the wind, rising up into the clouds until I thought I was looking over a sea of mist, and I would forget the horror of my dream and drift into a deep slumber. Only every so often the nightmare would come back.
Sometimes in the nightmare I could see Barlan’s face emerge from a hole in the terrifying blackness, sometimes not. They were nightmares I could never explain, but at least I had my momma to ease them away.
In any case, for my first twelve years it was pretty much just the two of us, and in that I was very lucky.
There are many children born to women who don’t want them for various reasons. In our day and time, children born as a result of rape, and often of prostitute mommas, are usually shunned, callously treated if kept at all, and more likely than not bear the brunt of the momma’s scorn for her circumstance; but my momma wasn’t like that.
Should I live a thousand lifetimes, I would be hard-pressed to imagine a more loving, nurturing, long-suffering parent than my momma. If she had felt any shame in bearing me it never showed. When I cried she was there to comfort me, when I had a question she had time to listen to me, when I made a new discovery she was excited with me.
Before I was old enough to walk and keep up, momma would carry me on a special board and blanket she slung on her back as she did her work among the trees and flowers. As she worked she talked with me and sang in what I later learned was a multitude of languages, each song weaving its own special story. When I was able, she would show me how to work with the plants, so I became her constant helper.
Sometimes the humans of the keep would watch us, but as long as we kept the grounds beautiful we were left alone … except, that is, those occasional visits at night. I would be put outside, and they would leave with smiles on their faces. Momma would not allow talk of it and I didn’t really understand what was going on, but she would have a sad look in her eyes until she saw me staring at her. She would start talking about her childhood, dancing around the blue roses and I could tell she was trying not to cry. But for me, hatred grew within my heart, and not just against the humans; I began to hate the elves, as well.
It was their fault, I decided. Only the worst kind of cowards would allow one of their own to be carried away into captivity. Kn’Yang, I knew, would have come for her; and he wouldn’t have let her defilement go unpunished. In my own fantasy I became Kn’Yang and saved my momma, took her away, and then returned to avenge her. When I was finished with the humans I would punish the elves for allowing her to be taken in the first place.
Our quarters had once been a workhouse for who knows what, but it was built of solid rock on a little knoll all to itself. And when I say solid rock, that’s what I mean, it was like the place had been cut right out of a giant boulder or something. There was no porch or overhang, just a stair-step to the front door and a stair-step to where the back door had once been. The door had been removed and carefully filled in with tight fitting stone and mortar.
Looking from the front, the building was twenty feet across and went back twenty-four feet with a flat roof. The front door was on the left side of the house, a small window with bars was on the right side in front, and another small window with bars was on the left side of the house in the back.
When you stepped inside you could tell the place had been divided in half crossways. The front room went the whole way across and twelve feet back, and at the end of the room on the left side was a fireplace built right out of that solid rock wall. The front ceiling went all the way up to twelve feet, but the wall dividing the front of the house from the back was made strange and never made any sense to me.
Okay, bear with me because I’m no architect.
Imagine the same kind of solid rock wall, as the outside was made from, going all the way across from right to left and cutting our quarters in half. Now, behind that wall, cut that space in half again with the same kind of wall, making two rooms about ten feet wide and twelve feet back. My momma and I called this our center wall. None of these walls have any seam anywhere; they are all somehow carved out of the same piece of stone.
Almost at the very back of the center wall, a two feet wide by six feet tall door used to give access between the two rooms, but now was filled in with mortared stone. The room on the left has the little barred window, the room on the right has the filled in door once leading outside to the right.
Are you with me, or do I need to draw a diagram out on the ground?
Back to the room on the left, a strong ceiling of hard wood was built seven feet high. Another two by six foot door was placed at center and front to open inward to the front room. A keyhole indicated this room could be locked, but momma and I had never seen the key.
Walking back into the front room and looking back, you could see where the left side of the wall was cut away above the seven foot mark to expose a loft with a five foot ceiling. This became my private space when I got older, and the room below was my momma’s.
I can understand the loft and separate room, but the room on the right is what was really confusing. As you looked at it from the main room, the wall was almost opposite in appearance, maybe better to say upside down, of the left side. Where the loft area on the right was exposed to the front and the bottom was walled in, the wall on the right was closed in at the top for five feet, and the bottom seven feet were exposed. What’s more, when stepping from the main room into the one on the right, you stepped down three narrow steps to get into it.
From top to bottom it was about fourteen feet high and in the back was another fireplace built from the wall, only this one was different. Momma called it an oven and it was where she cooked some of our meals. On the left side you could see where the stairs had once been leading to the door into momma’s room. On all three of the walls in what we called our rock room were metal pegs at various heights and with no apparent pattern. Momma used the pegs to hang cooking utensils, dried foods and our wet clothes when they couldn’t be dried by the sun.
When I say fourteen feet top to bottom, I mean down to the floor surface. The rock room’s floor surface was hard-packed dirt. There were a couple of times I dug down, I guess planning some great escape, only to find solid rock about three feet below. We never could decide just why all that dirt had been brought in and packed like it was, but it was there.
Except for the rock room, the whole place had wood planking for the floor and the only two windows, one in front and one in my momma’s room, were fitted with heavy steel bars. A hatch once opened from the loft to the outside, but it had long been closed off. All in all, our quarters needed but one bar across the front door, which opened to the outside, to make it a formidable prison.
Now, you might think living in such a place would be dismal and spiritually depressing, but not with my momma around. The wood of the floor was maybe hundreds of years old, but it was as smooth, straight and tight-fitting as a freshly hewn and fitted floor could be with not a sign of rot or mold anywhere. A thick, pile mat of hay-straw had been finely woven into one huge carpet which covered the floor, but if the seamless weaving weren’t enough to boggle the mind, somehow my momma had woven colored designs into it, as well, and she made a curtain of woven grasses to separate the rock room off from the front.
We had a split wood plank table, but the edges had been beveled and etched with painstakingly detailed roses. Our couch and two sitting chairs looked like they had been grown into their shape from several vines. The walls were adorned, and I do mean adorned, with tapestries of living vines and flower arrangements. On three of the walls colored vines formed the design of what momma called dream catchers.
Yup, walking into our quarters could make you forget where you were. Take a moment and close your eyes; imagine what it would feel like to live year round among the scent of pine, mountain laurel and honeysuckle; hear the sounds of birds flying in your window to perch on your wall and sing their songs; feel a constant breeze blowing in circles around the room even when the air isn’t moving outside; and then there were your toes, you could squeeze the comforting softness of the floor between your toes at any time. That is what it was like in our quarters, and sometimes I still see and walk through it in my dreams.
Our clothing was sparse, but momma covered us with dignity. She could take an old flour sack and make a well fitting pair of leggings or tunic out of it, and often did.
My momma told me stories upon stories and taught me more songs than I can count, but even as a little tyke she taught me other things, too. When we were in our quarters she would show me by mimicry how to clean an animal skin and prepare it for clothing or tools. I learned the craft of making footwear and high top hunter’s boots with long fringes hanging from the top. Theses fringes looked nice, but they had an important function as well, if you needed a short piece of leather to tie something with, you had yourself a string right there on your boot.
She explained how to make a sheath and the right way to include little pockets into my boots or vest, and I learned cordage as well, the art of making ropes from grasses, roots, vines or whatever. It was to make carrying baskets and holding pots, momma would explain to me when the humans were watching. She explained the formation of a bow and arrows, how to tie knots, even how to make something she called a garrote. These articles we were not allowed to have, but she explained them anyhow and I listened.
She also taught me the elvin perspective of So’Yahr, the masculine power of the sun, the sky, moon, air, and all things directly above us. And there was So’Yeth, that which we walk upon that goes deeper than most people can ever imagine. From So’Yeth came the feminine power of growth, the life force of Orucean within, that which makes plants grow and the land move. So’Yahr and So’Yeth being that which the ancient Dorhune gathered and harnessed their power, and that was just the beginning.
From a very early age she began showing me how to draw pictures on the floor of our rock room. Once I was able to make clean lines, she showed me how to write letters and numbers in all kinds of fun ways. It was a game with us; she would start a word with a certain kind of writing, and then I would have to finish it in the same kind of way. Other times she would draw a word in one way, and I had to draw what the word looked like in a different way. Sometimes she would whisper and tell me that such and such kind of writing wasn’t even used by anyone anymore, and we would quietly giggle at the special knowledge we shared.
When I would despair at the treatment I got from the other children, momma would sit with me and explain that there was nothing wrong with me, I was just different.
“Children reflect what they have been taught,” she said, “and most people, humans, elves, dwarves, anyone, are only able to understand what they can see on a daily basis. Beyond the common and mundane, anything different from what someone is used to, it is oftentimes difficult to accept.”
I remember so well the day the slave children had mud-balled me and called me names; she gently brushed the hair from my forehead and kneeling down beside me said, “You are not like them, and they have been taught to fear that which they do not understand, so it isn’t completely their fault. It is not truly you which they fear; it is their own lack of understanding.”
“But momma,” I explained through my hurt feelings and tears, “I have done nothing to make them afraid of me. I only want to play …”
The touch of her hand on my own was so soft and warm as she took my hand in hers; her precious smile comforted me as I could feel her feeling the pain in my young heart, and then she said, “I know, my son, I know.”
She gently kissed my hand and lingered as her warmth and love washed through me, and then she added with a hint of sadness, “And the truth is, it will often be so.”
Pulling my hand close to her chest, she gazed into my eyes and said words I shall never forget, “If you remember only one thing throughout your life, remember this, what you have been taught is not nearly so important as who you choose to be … and why.”
It was a pretty deep portion of philosophy, especially for a little boy, but she imprinted it strongly. I did not understand it at the time, but it has always lingered with me.
Despite being shunned by other children, I had no lack of a playmate. When we worked, my momma made it like a game. When we were alone and in quarters, she often would play sword-fighter with me. We would use wisps of broom straw, twigs or whatever was at hand. Together we fought beside Kn’Yang as she told me stories of his victories in battle, how we were descended from a long line of warriors, chiefs, Druids, a Tell Singer or two, and one of only eight elves to be declared a ruling king or queen in all of known history.
It was private time for just us, she would explain, and I had no problem with that. It became one of the many secrets we would share.
________________________
THAT I WAS different from the human children was clear; I didn’t grow as fast as they did, for one thing. At age eleven I was still smaller than most of the six and seven year old boys on the estate. And while I wasn’t what you might call skinny, I was very lean. Although slight of build, however, I took pride in my hand to eye coordination. Not only were my hands quick, but I could stone pine cones from forty feet away.
What’s more, I could run really fast. It got so I could even catch rabbits with my bare hands; well, not every time, but almost. And then there are those things that simply come with being an elf, or even a half-elf, like seeing in the dark and way farther or tiny details no human can.
All too often, we are thought of as frail beings; not so. I’ve seen artist’s impressions of elves with ears sticking way up in the air, eyes looking like slits in the face or overly wide like a recently born calf, and our features depicted as dainty. Others have the idea we’re immortal, but the modern-day elf lives an average of only four-five hundred years, a lot less than it used to be. Of course, that’s a long time for a human, so you can almost understand how they can think that.
When I asked momma why such a difference in life expectancy from ours she said, “It’s because most elves of our time have left the Old Ways and their oneness with nature to follow the human path and their interpretation of civilization. In their quest to fit in and be accepted, they have forgotten who they really are and have left their ancestral heritage behind.”
D’warvec are closer to humans, physiologically speaking, and live to be maybe two hundred and fifty, or so. But humans, the poor creatures only live maybe sixty or seventy years, and that’s providing they stay out of warfare and away from their many diseases. If a human can stay healthy they might make it to eighty or ninety years old. Only a couple of human breeds can live as long as maybe one hundred and fifty years.
To look at us, we appear no different from slender humans. Pure-blood elf males are around five feet and seven to eight inches tall and females four to five inches shorter. But human males only run an inch or two more on the average, and their females aren’t much different in height from ours. The word is, though, that humans are slowly but steadily getting shorter, over the centuries. Why, I have no clue, but that’s the word according to my momma.
Our eyes are slightly almond shaped, like some of the humans on the southern continent of Rok’Shutai, and our skin can be fair or olive toned. Sometimes you might find an elf with rose, lavender or sea green eyes, but typically our eye colors are the same as humans, with hazel or forest green being the most common. As for the ears; get real. Our ears point at the top, but not all that much, and if you wear a headband or cap you can’t tell the difference.
Facial hair, now that’s rare. Elves don’t tend to be very hairy, and facial hair on a male is an almost certainty of human blood within two or three generations.
Other than that, we have a high metabolism and the Abaishulek are the only elves I have ever heard of who can get overweight. In fact, other than momma and me, an Abaishulek Elf merchant was the only elf blood I ever saw until I was over thirty years old. He had been rude when he saw momma; looking at her as if she was vermin and I never forgot his face or his greasy smell and potbelly.
I rarely became injured, but the day came when I was playing where I shouldn’t have been and fell. I don’t remember what I fell on, but it cut my leg deeply and I ran to our quarters where momma was washing some garments.
The wound was severe, bleeding profusely, and you could see the bone. As you could guess I was very scared. Rather than panic as many mommas do, and yes, papas too, she became extremely calm, looked quickly around, grabbed me up and carried me into the house. Promptly she clamped her hand on the wound which would not stop bleeding, and then she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.
In my heart I had always known my momma was special, but what happened next was beyond my wildest imagination. I was already sick from loss of blood and from between her fingers I watched with horror as my life fluid kept oozing out. But suddenly from deep inside my leg I felt something twitch, then a burning heat entered into the wound from her hand. The bleeding stopped and then she gave a little gasp as she closed her eyes and bit her lip. It looked as if she was pushing against something as her face become white and a feeling like hot water washed into my leg.
When she let go blood still covered my leg, clothes and floor, but when I looked at my leg all I could find was a thin, white little scar. Suddenly, and with urgency in her voice that always reflected someone was coming, she said, “Hurry, Komain, go wash your legs, change your clothes and be gentle.” Gentle was our private word for being fast, quiet, but don’t over do it so as to look suspicious.
It always fascinated me how my momma always knew when someone was coming, when as good as my hearing was I could never hear as much as a rustle on the pebbles. But she always knew.
After my momma had healed my leg, I looked at the bloodstain on the woven carpet and felt dismay. But I did as I was told and ran to clean and change. A ladder gave me easy access to my loft, and while I was up there I heard the human hurriedly walk in the door.
He didn’t knock, and I would have been confused if he had. No one knocked before coming into our quarters; we were slaves and had no rights. It was one of the things that tarnished what beauty my momma had cultivated.
The human looked quickly about, and then focused his gaze up at the loft before addressing my momma in a harsh manner, “What’s wrong with the brat? There’s blood all the way from behind the smithy to here.”
My momma was standing just inside the door, wearing her customary tunic and leggings of unbleached muslin, and I could see a breeze gently blow through her hair. Over a hundred years as a slave, but she still had her dignity and courage. This human pig may knock her down, or force his way into our privacy this very night, but she would not back down, for no one. At the same time she gave no insolence, she was simply Kelshinua, an elf of the wild who refused to be broken and of whom I was proud.
Her words were calm and smooth, “I believe he encountered a small creature who was mortally wounded, and he was frightened.”
The human was irritated and he scoffed, “Frightened? Why that … you’ve got a damn, sissy-fied crotch-sucker for a boy. They’re gonna geld him when he gets more size on him, you know that don’t you? Then they’ll put him in the field with me, and I’ll learn him a thing or two. Can’t make a stud out of no slink, stub-Johnny mule like you’re whelp.”
My momma said not a word; she just stood there and let him feel tough. I looked over the edge of the loft and saw he was getting exasperated. ‘Humans,’ I thought to myself, ‘He wants her to cower, but she won’t.’ And then I thought with defiance, ‘And I’m not a stub-Johnny …’
The human looked up at me, around the big room, then at the floor where momma had put me down and healed me. I was startled to see there was no sign of blood anywhere, not on her either.
He paused and looked my momma up and down and with a sneer he asked, “You even know who his daddy is?”
She looked to the floor and stepped back, “As you can see, there is no blood evident in here.”
He looked her eye to eye and I saw his face get red and his right hand ball into a fist, “You slink bitch … I ought-ta …”
“You,” my momma said with a passive smile on her face, “are not Fel’Caden.”
That was all she said, and that human suddenly stopped and I saw his face turn white as a sudden realization came over him. What it was, I didn’t know, and I was curious myself. I had never seen this kind of exchange before.
I couldn’t see my momma’s face, but he could and he was standing scared, I mean really scared.
Still eye to eye, my momma calmly added, “Cordis, I think you should leave and … forget … that you were even for a moment distracted from the significance of your duties. You have so much to do … Cordis … we are not important enough for you to waste your time here.”
The human creased his brow for a moment to think, as if momentarily confused, and then turned and walked away. I wanted to ask questions and hurried down the ladder, but she turned to me and said with an exhausted smile, “I’ll be right back.” Then she walked outside.
Running to the door I watched her follow my blood trail with a hand calmly outstretched. Anyone seeing her would think she was using her hand as a focus object while looking for something she may have dropped on the ground. As she walked I saw the dark stains soak into the ground as if they had never been there.
As I looked down where I had lain, sure enough, there was only a sweet aroma of fresh grasses and not a trace of blood to be seen.
When she returned I was sitting in my chair, hands folded, waiting and thinking. As she stepped through the door she looked at me sitting there and a slight smile of amusement crossed her face. I was full of questions and she knew it. I couldn’t think where to start.
“Momma, why did you say he wasn’t Fel’Caden?”
She thought about it for a moment and I could see her trying to decide what to say, and then she answered with a slow wink, “Because, he isn’t.”
I was perplexed and it showed
She smiled at me and pulled up her chair. Patiently momma waited for me to formulate my next question.
At first I wanted to know all about what happened to the human, and I wanted to know what happened to the blood, and, and, and, but what I really wanted to know was what she did to me. Looking down at my leg, I rubbed it and looked up at her, “How …”
“It’s a Family Secret,” she said with a smile.
I thought long and hard about her answer. “Can I have a Family Secret?” I asked.
“You most probably will, Komain. It is within you. You carry the mark of your ancestors.”
“How so momma?”
“It is the way you see things, my son. You do not just observe. You look and feel what is there.” She brushed a tassel of hair out of my eyes and touched me gently on the forehead. “You see from within.” She laughed, “And because you have the blue of the sky contained in your beautiful eyes.”
I laughed with her, but her answer was sort of vague and I was still confused. I asked, “But I don’t understand.”
“You will, Komain, one day you will. I promise.”
And with that I was satisfied, because my momma always kept her promises.
After the day she healed my leg I became much more aware of things that happened from day to day, little things I had always taken for granted.
We always made sure the gardens were beautiful and sometimes we would play around the apple trees. Sometimes we would dance and sometimes the squirrels and rabbits would come out and play with us. I used to think it was the animals liking my momma’s music, but then I realized it was something much more than that. When my momma was around, the animals didn’t just notice, they acted differently. It wasn’t something you could easily describe, and unless you knew what you were looking for you probably wouldn’t notice, but I was watching and it was almost like they were waiting for her to tell them something to do.
I began to notice that occasionally a bird would land on her shoulder and preen on her ear. She would smile and take the bird onto her finger and gently blow where its own ear might be, and it would fly away. Sometimes, though, I could see a tear through her smile and she would watch the bird fly away to the north and west. I never said anything because it was the same look she sometimes had at night when she sat and looked out from our doorstep; I figured she was remembering her home.
Another time, I peeked over the ledge of my loft room late at night. When I say late, I mean, like, way past night’s middle. I was sure momma thought me sound asleep and usually I was a real sound sleeper. Pretending to be a caterpillar, I slowly squirmed out of my covers and onto the floor, there was no bed-frame so I didn’t have far to go, and made my way just far enough to the edge to look down.
There was a hint of music playing, but no instruments were in use and all of the candles were blown out. Well, if there is a hint of light of any kind, we elf-types can see anyhow, so I just focused on what was going on. My momma was dancing real slow, moving her arms in extreme circular movements, and she was doing it with her eyes closed. I think she was humming, but I wasn’t sure. The thing is, as she was dancing, little swirls of what looked like dust was rising up from the floor, off of the table, and out of the artwork on the walls. I watched as that dust eventually swirled together, and then the door to the outside opened all of its own and the dust up and went out that way.
When she finally came to a slow stop, she was facing the door. My momma held her hand to the door with the palm up, and then curled her fingers inward as if motioning someone or something to come to her … and the door shut. As quickly and soundlessly as I could I did the caterpillar back into my bed and lay there breathing hard. All kinds of thoughts were in my mind, but suddenly I felt so-o-o sleepy and drifted off to sweet slumber.
It’s funny; I had forgotten all about that time until I was making way back to my cell after fighting Karthanook.
I said my momma told me nothing of her adult life, but that is not entirely true.
It was the year I had turned eleven and we were around the Haedanburg Apple trees, which produce an extremely sweet and crisp green and purple striped fruit. The apples were already beginning to fall and we were in our first day of collecting when I suddenly asked the question, “Momma, what makes the apple trees grow?”
I could tell she was pleased with the question. Looking about to make sure we were alone, she reached down to a freshly fallen apple and took a bite out of it. She accidentally bit off too big of a bite, and we both giggled as she fought to keep it all in her mouth, but then she finally chewed enough of it so she could talk and pointing to the seeds inside, she begin to explain.
“You see this seed? Well this is really a baby apple tree that’s looking for its momma.” She reached down and grabbed a big handful of dirt and continued, “When a seed is lucky enough to find itself inside some special dirt, it has found her.”
She pushed a seed into the ball of dirt in her hand and said, “When the right amount of rain and sunshine loves the dirt, the baby seed begins to grow.” Cupping both hands around the ball of dirt she closed her eyes for a moment and then opened her eyes wide in surprise for me, “And when the time is right …” I watched in raptured amazement as a little stem started to rise out from between her hands, “… the baby tree comes out into the world.”
“Wo-o-ow-w-w!” I exclaimed in fascination.
Gingerly petting the little tree as one might pet a baby kitten, I asked in absolute innocence, “Momma, are you a Druid?”
The question caught her by complete surprise. I saw her falter, and then a tear came to her eye. She composed herself quickly, but not before I knew I had asked something that hurt her.
“N-No, sweetheart, I’m not … I’m not a D-Druid …” She was fighting hard not to cry; I didn’t understand and started to cry too.
She hugged me quickly and with passion, then she quickly looked around as if to see if anyone was near, and then back at me with a pained and tear-stained face and said, “I love you, Komain, so-o-o much. You just don’t understand. You must promise me something, okay?”
With tears covering my own little face I nodded yes.
In a voice just above a whisper she said, “You must promise to not ever, ever ask me that question again, please? You must trust me.”
Trying not to cry, but believing with all of my heart I had done something wrong, I promised. As if hearing my thoughts my momma looked at me and said in a soft voice, “It is a good question, and such a very smart one … it just isn’t safe … and I only want to protect you. I promise one day you will understand. Now let’s finish our work so we can go fix our supper, okay?” And she brushed my hair from my eyes.
When we returned to our quarters she had made my most favorite food ever, her griddlecakes. Usually she fixed them in the morning, and there was nothing in the world like my momma’s griddlecakes. She could make them out of wheat flour, rice, corn and even potatoes. There was a hollow space between our ceiling and the actual roof of our building, and momma said she had talked honeybees into making a home up there. So we had all the honey you could imagine, and let me tell you, that honey on my momma’s griddlecakes was the best ever.
In some ways we were rich. Honey was a high cost product when I was a child in Gevard, and come to think of it, it still is in lots of places, but the humans in Castle Fel’Caden never knew there was a honey making empire in our ceiling and the wall beside the rock room. It only makes sense, though. Mornings and evenings are when honeybees are most active outside of the hive, and as I’ve said, we lived off to ourselves and away from the main keep. Trees were all around us and there was no reason for anyone to see the bees. When the human dogs came to our quarters to abuse my momma, it was always in the dark of night.
On this particular evening, my momma made extra special griddlecakes. She mixed some groundnuts and little slices of apple into corn meal, and when they were ready we slathered them with a mixture of hot honey and butter. It was so-o-o good.
The butter was yet another of our secrets. Sure, anyone would know we churned our own butter. But there was a special jar in the rock room where we kept our butter and no one ever knew it. It looked like a regular clay jar, but the inside was always really cold. It was one of those things I took for granted, but looking back it had to have been my momma’s doing. That jar was always warm to the touch on the outside.
After we had eaten and cleaned our plates, we sat and watched the stars come out and listened to the sounds of the night. The time past when an unwanted visitor might invade our quarters and as the moons made evident the apex of the night was upon us, my momma turned to me and I knew she had something important she needed to say.
I had never seen the expression on her face as I saw then, and for the first time I sensed fear, fear radiating from my beloved momma who was my rock and fortress against all things dark and despairing. She took my hand, as she often did when she wanted to say something profound, and I saw a strained expression on her face as she seemed to try to find the right words to say.
Several times I thought she was about to say something, but then she would hesitate. Was that pain I saw cross her features? I began to become afraid and then she grasped my hand, so hard it almost hurt.
She looked around the room like she was looking to see if anyone was near, then her eyes went out of focus and momma seemed to lose her breath. One hand she put to her ear like she could hear something loud enough to hurt her head, but I couldn’t hear it … or did I? Was someone whispering, someone from really far away?
A droplet fell from her nose, and then another. What was that? She managed to wipe whatever it was away, and then put a cloth to her nose as she looked at me. I thought her face grew pale and I began to feel frightened all over again.
Momma put the back of her hand to her mouth, then to her forehead and took a deep breath, and then it looked like she suddenly knew what to say. Squeezing my hand in assurance, she sighed real big and managed a weak smile at me.
Again she looked about carefully, and then up to the ceiling; I had no idea what that was about, in particular. Momma never looked up at the ceiling like that.
In something just above a whisper she asked, “Komain, do you remember me talking about Puhtnam Jai?”
Puhtnam Jai, I thought. At first the name wasn’t familiar, and then I remembered. Everything about our little quarters suddenly became very surreal; I slowly nodded my head as I became intently focused on my momma’s face.
“Do you remember what he did?”
Thinking long and hard, I answered in the same kind of whispering voice, “He lived a long, long time ago and wrote a lot of things on scrows.”
My momma smiled and softly said, “Not scrows, sweetheart, scrolls. And yes, that is correct. I’m so proud of you.”
I smiled.
“Do you remember what he was called?”
I remember the moment as if it were yesterday. Scrunching my forehead in deep thought, I replied slowly, “He was a Tell-l-l S-s-singer-r-r, momma.”
“Yes-s-s!” She closed her eyes with a kind of relief and satisfaction. It was like I had done something really special, but what? “Do you remember what …” her eyes still closed, I noticed she seemed to be careful about what she said next, and her forehead wrinkled up like she was thinking really hard about something, “… what a … Tell …” the words came so slow, I thought she was expecting someone to hit her the way she winced, but it was just us in the room so I still didn’t understand, “… Sing-ger is?”
I was more concerned with watching my momma than what she was asking. She opened her eyes carefully as I asked, “What’s wrong, momma?”
She bit her lip and glanced around, apparently relieved about something, she didn’t say what, but she was sweating a lot, and this time it was I who brushed the hair out of her face.
I caught her smile as I said, “I love you momma. It will be okay.”
We sat there for a few moments and she closed her eyes again and replied, “Yes, Komain, one day it will all be okay.”
Brushing my nose with a little smirk, she asked me again, “Do you remember what a … Tell … Singer is?”
Thinking for a minute, suddenly I beamed and said, “They sing, momma, they sing and say things …”
Still in a hush-hush, my momma began to chuckle and said, “Yes, yes … that’s exactly what they do. I want you to listen carefully, okay?”
I nodded my head in earnest, as I knew she was about to tell me something important and exciting.
“A Tell Singer, like Puhtnam Jai, is a very special elf who keeps the old lore and history secrets of times past. Sometimes they travel all over just to learn one little bit of history, but it’s a very important job.”
“Why, momma?”
“Well, because when something special happens somewhere, lots of times there is no one around who can write down what happened, so important details are forgotten. Even if stories are told, the stories often change with the teller. Why, I know the stories which weren’t written down for two hundred years after they had happened, and the happening wasn’t even close to the written history. It took me-, it took the Tell Singer a whole season to uncover the truth.”
“How did the Tell Singer do it, momma? Was it magic?”
My momma pondered and brushed some dirt off of my tunic before saying, “A good Tell Singer has skills, ways to learn things that most people may call magic. But the …”
“What happens then, momma?” I asked excitedly.
“Sh-h-h … let me finish.” She held her finger in front of her lips. When I nodded she continued, “But the most important thing is preserving the knowledge. That’s where the singing comes in, but it is a very special singing.” My momma got up close to my ear and whispered as if we were sharing yet another secret and said, “The Ghahn N’hael is a special language in which, when a song is formed, it can never be changed. Therefore the words can never be misconstrued or the meaning lost.”
Drawing back, she asked, “Do you understand, my son?” Her eyes had a certain twinkle, and I tried hard to think about what she had just said. I believed I understood and gently nodded.
“You see, even when things are written down, sometimes an enemy can come along and conquer, or beat and take over, the people of the place where the history was written down. Because the new people want history to say what they want it to say, they will write it all over their own way, and the first history is often destroyed. Then the truth is often lost …”
“Unless a Tell Singer goes and finds it, right momma?”
My momma smiled, “Yes, Komain, that is correct.”
I creased my head in intense thought, “Momma?”
“Yes?”
“Can’t that be dangerous? Does a Tell Singer have to fight bad people?”
There was a long pause and I thought I saw her lip tremble as she looked away for a moment, then rubbed her eyes. My momma couldn’t look at me directly when she said, “Yes, my son, it can be very dangerous. Sometimes they … sometimes they even die.” Another long pause as she glanced around the room and looked at one of the Dream Catchers, then she looked back at me and said, “Tell Singers have to be very brave. There are lots of bad people out there, and some are even elves, who don’t want the real histories to be found out or told.”
Sitting there in our quarters, we held each other’s hand and never before had I felt any stronger bond of love with my momma than right then. I asked gently, but I was suddenly excited because I thought I was learning something new, a secret about my beloved momma and a part of her life I had never heard before, “Momma … are you a Tell Singer?”
Again, I saw moisture in her eyes as she smiled an emotional smile. Then she said the most precious words I have ever heard, “I am your momma, my little blue eyes …” She brushed my hair with her fingers, “… and that is the most important thing in the world to me.” She took me into her arms, held my head, and as I held her back she rocked back and forth and said, “I love you so much … I love you Komain. I am so-o-o proud to be your momma.”
“I love you too, momma.”
We stayed like that long into the night, and me? With my eyes closed and a smile on my face I kept thinking to myself, ‘My momma’s a Tell Singer, the greatest Tell Singer in the whole world, and she’s all mine.’ It was my own personal secret.
________________________
“HEY, SPIKE-EARS … come here you little slink!”
Four boys were chasing me and I was running and dodging as fast as I could around snow covered plows, cultivating tools and a tool shed. Two months after I had turned twelve the drifts were high, and I had explored perhaps a bit too far for my own good. We were on the backside of a heavy snowstorm and I had been struck with cramped-quarter fever. My momma was busy in the cow barn helping Barlan with an injured bull, so I decided to go hunting me some trolls.
Well, I found me a troll in the guise of a pock-faced boy who had more than once whopped me in the head with a thrown rock. I easily traced his way to the other side of the main keep’s wall, and there I lay in wait for the perfect ambush with a well made snowball dipped in water. He showed his face around a tool shed and I let fly from thirty-five feet away. Bango! I marked him right in the ear and I let out a whoop of excitement.
The trouble is, I didn’t think through my plan. All I could figure was getting that boy back, I forgot he was always surrounded by at least two or three friends or cousins. What was worse was they were plantation kids, I mean, they weren’t slaves.
One saw me nail my troll and pointed at me, and then they all started running at me. All were about eleven or twelve years old, and they were screaming at me. Remember, I was the same age in years, but the size of a human boy maybe six or seven years old.
Like I’ve said before, I was fast, but we were in the snow and it slowed me down considerably. Ducking in and out around snow covered equipment I could see I might have made it, but then I barked my shins against a buried wagon tongue and went head first into a snowdrift.
“Get him, Lexin, get him!” I heard the boys shriek when I raised my head up to see.
I floundered in the snow trying to get up and was just about to gain foot purchase when my troll, Lexin, did a flying tackle against me and knocked me back down into the snow. The punches came as he punctuated every blow, “I … got … you … you … damn … slink …” Trying with all I had to fight back, he was much too big and his buddies then joined in.
“Let’s brand him!” One boy yelled.
“Yeah!” I heard another say.
Lexin ordered, “Colsti, help me drag him to the wall.”
I think it was Colsti who in turn told one of the others, “Phaul, go find a rod to brand his ass with.”
“Lexin, Lexin, let’s do his face,” the other said with a cackling giggle.
Lexin and Colsti started yanking me about and I heard them all laugh as I fought frantically to keep from being dragged to the shed wall. Lexin’s face displayed cruel humor as he grabbed me by the hair and said, “Yeah, you slink …” then he spit in my face and added, “… How’re you gonna like my brand on your cheek?”
Phaul came out of the shed with a piece of rod and Lexin, who seemed to be in charge, ordered the other boy, “Jess, stir up that fire pot over there and set us one up. It don’t have to be big, but hurry, it’ll be dinner time and we gotta wash up.”
As Lexin was running his mouth I almost broke free and he and Colsti both yelled and secured me again, this time bodily picking me up and slamming me face first against the shed wall.
It was then I heard a deep voice bellow so loud you could have heard it across the whole grounds, “Wait-to-hoy!” I could make out a distinct sneer in the angry voice, but I couldn’t yet see the speaker, “What are you scodgers about? What …?” And then I could make out a horse snorting and the hold Lexin had on me released; as I half fell I looked up to the new voice.
The man must have been older than the mountaintop, but the instant I saw that horse my thoughts went immediately to my nightmare. The horse was huge and almost black, but with a deep red tint reflecting from the sunlight. Its mane, tail and both hind legs up to the hocks were the color of cream toughed with fire, and just as I looked, it reared up on its hind legs and practically danced as it pawed the air with its forefeet and bugled as if a challenge to do battle. The color of his hind legs blended with the snow and in my mind I envisioned the man and horse as having come right up from below, and the horse was still half in and half out.
While the horse was on two legs the man’s voice boomed again and my attention was averted to him; the world went surreal as I saw his weathered and ancient face contorted with rage; his eyes like twin points of flaming blue ringed by the whites of his eyeballs. In his right hand he brandished what looked like a twisted, black walking stick with an almost white knob grown out from one end, pointing it at the boys holding me; he made me wonder if this was what a demon looked like as he demanded in a voice that made you quiver to the bone, “Let – that – boy – go!”
Phaul fell to the ground scrambling to get away as the stallion echoed his rider’s temperament and hammered the ground with his forefeet. Lexin backed up to the wall and stood there transfixed with fear. Colsti was literally quaking in his feet while still holding me, although not with any authority. I have no clue what happened to Jess.
The horse spun around in a left-wise circle and I saw the whole figure of the man. On his left side hung a wide sword sheath, unlike what I had ever seen any of the other plantation men wear, his boots were highly polished black and covered his calves and were folded down from the top, also different from anything I had seen. I think his leggings were made of tight leather, but I couldn’t be sure, and his black overcoat was split in the back with a high, folded collar and looked like a cape, the way the wind was blowing it around.
The man’s hair was shoulder long, flying wild in the breeze and almost gave him a majestic appearance; on his head was a medium brimmed black hat with the edges somewhat curled to give an almost triangular shape, and a bushy feather plumed from the left of his hat-band. I thought I saw a golden earring in his left earlobe and his mustache and goatee was painfully neat and trim.
As old as he was, I thought he should have fallen from the saddle, but it was as if he and the horse were one creature.
In the brief instant the horse completed his circle; Phaul had dropped his rod and ran for the main keep. Lexin ran around the shed with skating feet and must not have been watching where he was going, because I heard him run head on into the open shed door.
My own terror of this man on his horse boiled through my blood and I tore from Colsti’s grasp and bolted for my quarters. I heard the man’s voice thundering and was sure he was eating Colsti as he stood there, but I had no idea what he said and didn’t care.
As brave as I thought I was, I was still just a little fellow, and I had never seen anything like that man before, or heard such words of power and violence. The door of our quarters was open and I cleared the steps with a flying jump; bolting inside I saw my momma turning around to look and heard her say, “Komain, where have you …?”
She couldn’t finish before I plowed into her and grabbed hold of her waist as I trembled something fierce.
“Komain …” she held me and was clearly alarmed, “Talk to me, Komain, what’s wrong?”
“It’s … it’s … I saw it, momma … I saw it …” I said, wild eyed and too scared to even cry. I have to admit I was fairly traumatized.
My momma tried to pull me loose, I’m sure to talk to me, but I’m here to tell you that I wasn’t having any part of it.
And then I heard hoof beats riding up to our quarters, first at a brisk trot, then a slow walk. It was the first time that had ever happened, I hadn’t known a horse to come within a hundred rods of our quarters and I felt the terror renewed through my soul. It was the Horseman from Hades, I was sure, coming to take me back to wherever he dropped me from in my dream, and I was now sure it was he who was in my nightmare.
Now, Hades was a word my momma never used, and you couldn’t have gotten me to tell you where I first heard it, but it didn’t matter to me. More than the big, dark horse with the fire on its mane and tail, it was the look in that man’s eyes and the rage on his face. But it wasn’t just me, Lexin and Colsti and the others had felt it too.
I was standing there wrapped in my momma’s arms, just inside the doorway, as the horse and rider walked up and I could feel this eerie silence and a strange change in the manner of my momma. Something was very different, something I had never felt from my momma before.
For several awkward moments we three, or I guess I should say we four, maintained our pose, and then the man spoke, slowly and respectfully, in such a way I could not remember ever hearing anyone speak to her before, “I … I … ah …” The voice was strong, but strangely gentle, so different from only minutes before, was he stammering while trying to find the right words to say?
Again he tried to speak, “… the …” I heard a rustle of material against material and the sound of creaking leather, was he turning in his saddle and pointing the way he, we had come from? “… there were some lads waylayin’ the boy, there. I wanted to make sure he was altogether well.”
Scared as I was, of a sudden my curiosity got the better of me and I slowly turned to see. The man was clearly in my sight, but only for a moment, as my attention became riveted on the great beast standing sideways but three rods from our door. This creature was standing still, his left side to us, and all at once he was terrible to see but magnificent as well.
Clutching hard on my momma’s tunic I stared at the perfect musculature, the manner the stallion held his head, and that black bridle with the embossed decorations. I wanted to look at that saddle, too, and those skirted covers on the place where the feet went … I had no idea what stirrups were … but I just knew if I took my eyes off of that face he would turn around and eat me.
There! The horse rolled his eyes and looked at me, and then turned his head to look better … and … and … he was sticking his nose out to, to taste me-e-e … “MomMA!” I screamed. In a desperate panic I again grabbed my momma, and together we spun around as she was able to drop beside me, and holding me close we once more were facing the man and horse.
“I have you, Komain … I’m right here! I’m not letting go!” She said as she held me close.
The man and horse were still there as my momma held her face to mine and got me to look in their direction. That big horse was still looking at me but it looked like the man was keeping his head pulled in, all the while saying, “E-e-easy, e-e-easy there Dahnté; the lad doesn’t know you’re bein’ friendly.”
The old man somehow looked different; he still sat way straighter in that black saddle than I thought he should be able to, but instead of fire, his eyes now shown some kind of warmth and there was a smile on his face that was almost soft; I didn’t understand.
I got the feeling the man wasn’t sure what to do or say, and in my extreme youth I could sense he was used to being in charge. But, who was he? Why had I never seen him before? Clearly, my momma knew this man. Was I wrong, or did she seem to like him, this human?
Catching my eye, the old man spoke to me; yes, to me, and I was afraid, only his words were a blend of strength and tenderness, “It’s easy in the wind, there lad, Dahnté is my good mate. We found each other in the Kohntia Mountains not two years ago; he alone, and I injured.”
Without realizing it, I knew he wasn’t just talking to me, but it was me he was looking at. But how could he be so mean and cruel looking before, but now he seemed so pleasant; his voice was so soft sounding, and at the same time potent.
“It was said you had been slain.” My momma’s words surprised me.
The man thought of it before offering, “And so it was, I thought myself scuttled, for sure.” He gave her a long glance. It was like they were talking among themselves without words. What were they saying?
Dahnté arched his neck and pawed the ground; I clung a little harder on my momma.
The old man looked back at me and patiently said, “He won’t hurt you. Dahnté is a Battle Mount … he’s trained to fight … and to do whatever I ask him. Watch this …”
I watched in fascination as without saying a word, hitting him, or anything, the old man seemed to sit straight in the saddle with reins in one hand and that cane in the other as Dahnté first came to a complete stop and held his head and tail high. Then Dahnté started to high step in place, next he held one foreleg up in the air, then he skipped and held the other one up.
When he rose up on his back legs I rammed my face into my momma’s shoulder, but she said, “Komain, watch … look at this …” And the stallion stayed on his hind legs and held one foreleg way up, and then the other, and then changed again. When he came down, he stepped sideways three times, then to the other side three times, always rising his knees way up in the air.
Dahnté walked in a figure eight, then in a circle, then he trotted in a circle holding his head way high and tail looking like a flag. The old man never touched the saddle or anything the whole time; I just knew if I got stuck up on a saddle like that I would have to hold onto everything. And then the old man looked over at us and winked.
My momma squeezed my waist real tight, and suddenly the old man slapped his heels into Dahnté’s sides and that horse took off running. There were four trees real close to our quarters where we could see, and the man and stallion headed straight for one so fast I couldn’t believe it, then they ran around that tree dropping so low and close to the ground I just knew the old man would fall off, but instead they came around and headed for another tree and did the same thing.
“Yes-s-s!” I heard my momma say in whispered excitement. They did that around all four trees two or three times, and then with the knob end of his cane he hit something off of the ground which went flying out of our view. Trotting up, then slowing down to a walk, they came back to just outside of our doorstep; then facing us again Dahnté picked one leg up, bowed his head way down, and lowered himself on the one front leg as far as he could. As he did, the old man doffed his hat and my momma clapped her hands.
Was her eye twinkling just a little? I didn’t like that. What did it mean?
As Dahnté stood back up and the old man put his hat back on, I noticed he wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at my momma … and my momma was smiling. I didn’t even know a horse could run. The ones Barlan put harness on always walked wherever I saw them go.
“I’ve no idea of his breedin’, but his blood runs hot and he was born and raised in some really mean mountains.” The old man looked a little winded, but the stallion looked like he could keep on going.
Dahnté stamped twice and held his right foot up and tossed his head. I just stared and marveled; never had I thought I would be so close to a demon horse. I just knew he was getting ready to grab me.
The old man chuckled, “Dahnté’s tryin’ to show off to you, skipper, he wants you to feed him some sugar …” Still staring at the stallion, from the corner of my eye I caught the old man look to my momma and say, ask, “… or an apple …”
“Komain,” my momma whispered into my ear, “I want you to stand right here for just a moment.” Slowly she stood up and I about panicked. Taking my hands in her much stronger ones, she gently guided me behind the door-post and said, “You are very, very safe. You don’t even have to look out. I’m just going over here to our apple barrel.”
Was my momma crazy? I watched her walk over to the barrel, but then I whirled around and peeked out to the horse and the old man. He was looking at me, and then tilted his head as if he wanted to see around the door. The old man was smiling. As he rubbed the horse’s mane, Dahnté put his foot down.
Casually speaking to me, the old man said, “He’s what they call a liver-chestnut. It’s a color. We don’t see it around here much.” I said nothing, but kept watching. He started to add, “You know … maybe sometime I could …” it got real awkward, “I could tea- …” he shifted in his saddle and put his tongue to his bottom lip while thinking, “Uhm, do you ride?”