Wyndy escorted Rassler toward a booth set up on a street just off the main square. In the booth stood a tall, very pale young human, with long black hair, bloodshot eyes, and lips as red as blood. Next to the human was a creature with the head of a deer and the body of a man. Large antlers sprung from its head, reaching almost to the roof of the tent. Both wore pitch black robes and beckoned to Rassler as he approached. Both had human hands, with sharp pointed nails painted black.
“You are courtly enough and all, Count Rassler. But you don't speak High Goblin. We need to fix that!” explained Wyndy. She seemed even more excited about the “fixing” than she had about the dance-off.
Rassler recoiled from the beckoning hands. “What are you going to do to me? Tell me exactly how you mean to ‘fix’ me!”
The deer-man threw his hand up in the air. “Oh, for love of the gods! We were just saying ‘hi.’ Get a grip on yourself, Vatharian human!”
The darkly-clad human continued to move his hand in a beckoning motion. “Do not fear us, Vatharian. We will give you understanding. Come and see.”
Wyndy went up, gave a big hug to both, then put an arm behind each of their backs and pushed them a few steps toward Rassler. She grabbed each of their right arms, and held them out as if for Rassler to shake their hands. “Count Rassler. Let me present to you two of our most talented young wizards. This is Bedo,” she waved the young human’s arm, “and this over here is Marthor, Son of the Wild Hunt, but everyone calls him Bobby,” she said as she waved the arm of the dear-man, who looked pained as soon as his nick-name was mentioned. “Now, Bedo and Bobby, please explain the simple and painless procedure we are going to perform.”
“The procedure… yes, it is a fine procedure and extremely painless. We are going to cast a spell on you, and then you'll be able to speak and understand High Goblin. It won't hurt. You just need to pay attention, listen carefully, and keep your mind open to the spell. It's a great day for it too, as we are at the Equinox, when the gods roam the earth. Magic is more powerful in these periods, so the spell should be even more effective now. Maybe you'll have better pronunciation or something.”
“Okay, that sounds good. I agree with your proposal. How do we do it?”
“Oh, he agrees does he? How nice of him,” Bobby said.
Bedo was back to his dark wizard pose. “Understand this, Mister Count Vatharian, or whatever sort of noble you are. This wasn't my idea, and I do this only at the request of our fair princesses Myla and Wyndy. Understand the trust they are placing in you, to reveal this knowledge and give you this understanding. I only hope you live up to their trust.”
Wyndy's almost ever-present smile dropped. “Bedo! We can trust him. I saw the army that was after him. It is clear he isn't going back to Vathary. And what are you worried about anyway? What is the knowledge of our language going to reveal to him?”
“It reveals everything. He will now understand what is really going on here.”
“But we have human sight seers all the time. What more is he going to learn that they don't already see.”
“The sight seers don't speak our language. They can't read the signs. They can see the streets, the buildings, see that the town is clean and people seem busy. But they don't really know what we are doing, what we are thinking, and what we are building. But now Rassler will understand.”
“Okay, whatever, I royally note your concerns. Can we get on with it now? I think Myla has already covered your fee, or do you have more ominous warnings to make and more wizard-posing to do?”
“As you wish, princess. We will give this Vatharian the knowledge!” Bedo made a dramatic gesture with his arms, as Bobby closed the tent and cleared a space on the carpet.
They sat cross-legged on the carpet, and motioned to Rassler to join them. As soon as he did the two wizards grabbed Rassler's hands and quickly tied them to a table leg. When Rassler opened his mouth to protest, Bedo stuck a piece of cloth into his mouth.
“This spell is called ‘Intensive Language Course.’ You are about to have three years of language lessons condensed into ten minutes. Brace yourself. And bite down on the cloth.”
Bedo and Bobby reached over and grabbed their subject’s head in a vice grip. Their eyes glowed white. A great torrent of language started flowing into Rassler.
These are the four grammatical genders. A table is masculine, while an unmarried woman is neuter. Chairs are masculine. Children are neuter. Frogs are feminine, unless it is a specifically masculine frog. Here is the list of the most common three thousand words, which you will now memorize, along with their gender and declension pattern, and whether the word is hard or soft. There are seven cases, and each case has eight different standard declensions, depending on gender and hardness. Here are the fifty-six standard patterns, followed by the twenty-seven most common irregular patterns.
Rassler tried to keep up. Why four genders? Why was a house masculine? Rassler felt his brain was about to burst. Why did the location need a case in addition to the preposition, and why eight different patterns? What in the hells is ‘Dative?’ People can’t really figure all that out while speaking, right? They must be kidding with those consonants. Can lips even make that noise? Doesn’t it hurt your throat to say that?
The four genders are: feminine, neuter, masculine active things, and masculine inactive things. Human nobles are considered masculine inactive things.
Oh, that was just rude. Rassler wondered if he had offended the language in some way.
Nouns are either soft or hard. “Noble” is a soft noun. It follows the third minor soft declension pattern, like “slime” or “cabbage.”
“I demand that you change that. A noble should be considered a masculine active thing. Change that at once!”
You can’t argue with a language. I don't care what you think.. I control how a whole nation thinks, so I care not for the opinion of a mere mortal. As punishment for your impertinence, you must now memorize the Genitive Plural forms of the soft adjectives!
Rassler reeled as he was assaulted by the Genitive Plural. Even leaving out how rude the language was being to him, the intensive language course was the most unpleasant minutes of Rassler’s life to date. He began shaking, sweat dripping from him, his shirt drenched, as the language-learning process continued.
The adjectives change form too, depending on the gender of the word they modify, and whether it is genitive or accusative.
Who had thought up this hellish system? What sort of sadist had codified it? Why were they allowed to do this to innocent people? They taught this language to children?! How did the gods allow this?
The definite articles have their own system of declensions, and there are five types of definite articles. You must also learn these eight indefinite articles, each of which behaves like an adjective and whose ending changes depending on which of the four genders the noun it modifies has, and its case. Here are the forms for the nominative plural!
Tears ran down Rassler’s cheeks. His hand remained tied, but he tried to cover his ears with his arms to keep out the onslaught of indefinite articles.
The cloth fell from his mouth, and he began muttering the future tenses of the three standard verb forms and the most common irregular verbs.
“Make it stop,” he tried to scream, but he got the imperative case wrong, and nobody understood him. He was doomed to continue on to the completion of the course. He thrashed, attempting to escape, but the wizards held him firmly.
Oh, trying to stop the learning process, are you? Just for that, you are going to get an extra lesson on possessive adjectives!
Rassler opened his eyes, to see Shadow staring down at him, watching him shake in agony. Shadow tilted his head to see Rassler in agony from another angle.
Rassler tried again with the imperative case. “Kill… the… wizards,” Rassler managed to say to Shadow, this time getting the conjugation correct. Shadow looked over at the wizards, paused for a moment, and then let them continue.
I previously presented the subjunctive present and past cases. Do not confuse it with the conditional tense, which has a separate set of endings that you will now commit to memory!
Rassler saw Wyndy arrive back in the tent, now carrying a bowl of food. She munched as she stood next to Shadow, watching the human twisting under the linguistic torture, the two wizards holding him down having the time of their lives as they inflicted Intensive Language Course on his helpless Vatharian noble self. Rassler began to feel as if he really were a masculine inanimate noun.
Wyndy said to Shadow, “Hmm.. If Rassler is writhing, he is on the conditional.”
Shadow nodded solemnly. It looked like he did not approve of the conditional tense. Rassler agreed with the wolf.
Right, now it is the time for pronouns. There are only eight base forms in the nominative case.
“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,” thought Rassler.
But when you consider the declensions across the seven cases, and whether the pronoun follows a preposition or not, there are forty-two forms that you need to learn. For standard spoken usage.
Rassler, lying on the carpet with his hands tied to a table leg, wished he had stayed in Vathary and face death, rather than endure learning High Goblin.
And now we’ll finish up with words you’ll use to order food in an inn.
Finally, the torrent of language slowed, until it was a mere vocabulary flashcard review.
The two wizards removed their hands from Rassler’s head, looking quite pleased with themselves and what they had done. Their noble victim lay jabbering at their feet.
“My lady, it is done,” said Bedo, as he stood and bowed to the princess.
Rassler emerged disoriented from the ordeal. They started to untie his hands. Rassler grabbed Bedo's arm tightly, and asked, “By all the gods, but that was awful…” He laid down on the carpet, and rolled to his side, his head still pounding.
He paused, and started to speak again, and this time the guttural sounds of High Goblin came out. The spell had worked. He faced the two wizards and spoke his first sentence in the new language. “Will speaking this language give me throat cancer?”
“That really doesn't happen very often. You will be fine. Writing in the formal style will make your brain ache, though. Avoid it if at all possible,” Bobby replied.
Bedo nodded. “Yes, to save your mind from a descent into madness, the course only covered the basics of High Goblin Formal Writing. I warn you: Do not go deeper! If you get to Academic Writing, turn back, or you will come to question the very purpose of language and become unintelligible to everyone around you!”
Rassler made a mental note to never, ever even think of studying Academic Writing, as he slowly stood up and began to look around. The world looked the same but sounded completely different.
Now he would know their secrets, and be able to fully discover the complex nature of the society and culture of the Kingdom of Pelsa. Perhaps the ordeal would reap a reward, and he could come to understand the values of the peoples of this land. He could use that to convince its leaders to help him retake his own land. Equally importantly, he could better woo the beautiful woman standing near him, who had hitherto been inexplicably showing little or no romantic interest in him. Perhaps if he were witty in his new language that would do the trick.
There was a sound. Rassler could understand! Someone was calling out in High Goblin. It was coming from the next tent.
“Grubs! Grubs in sauce! Very hot! Very tasty! But be careful, if you eat too fast, it will melt your tongue. Come get our grubs in sauce. Best grubs in Lagar’s Haven!”
Rassler turned to the wizards. “Grubs?! They eat grubs here!”
Wyndy quickly put the bowl from which she’d been eating under one of the wizard’s hats. “Yes, grubs. In a spicy sauce. The goblins like them. Just the goblins. And some of the orcs like them too. A few others, maybe, I don't know. We won’t make you try them though. I know a place with human food that we can go to for lunch. We’ll go there. And eat human food. Because that is what I like to eat.”
Rassler legs remained wobbly. He sat down at the table and tried to calm his racing heart.
He saw the paper that was on the table. It read, in High Goblin, “You too can do magic! Come study at the Cradel College of Magic!”
“The two of you?! And this tent? You are recruiting?”
“Look, we have to find more students somewhere. I mean, we can’t just send birds out to bring back random children, can we?” said Bedo.
“No, of course not. That would be a terrible way of recruiting,” Rassler agreed.
“Yes, and the yield of the accepting students would be very low and our ranking would go down!” added Bobby.
“Wait, what? The wizard schools are ranked?”
“We will not speak of such horror on this, a festive day!” Bedo and Bobby looked at the ground and closed their eyes for a moment.
Then Bedo continued, “So, at the Equinox Festival, and later in the year at the Solstice Morning, the school sets up this booth, and a couple of the students come and teach the kids some basic tricks. Those that get it quickly, and show some power, we try to recruit.”
“His father is Duke Cradel, so Bedo usually has to be one of the ‘volunteers’ at the stand. He convinced me to come this time too. He said it would be fun. We are in the same fraternity, so I thought I had too,” explained Bobby.
“Oh, they have fraternal organizations here in Pelsa too? I was in one during my year in university. Omega Pi. Which is yours?” asked Rassler, as his senses continued to return to him.
“We are in Phee Phi Pho Phum. I'm the First Speaker. It’s the best fraternity at the University of the Northern Lights,” replied Bobby as he raised the side panels of the recruiting booth.
“There are only two fraternities at UNL,” said Wyndy. “The other one is mostly Engineers and they recently blew up their house, so, yes, it is ranked lower.”
“What are these ‘Engineers’ and why do they blow things up?” asked Rassler.
“For the first part of your question, I'll explain later, and to answer the second part of your question, well, we really just don't know,” said Wyndy as she put on her cloak and prepared to depart. “Well, thank you boys, and we’ll see you tomorrow at the dinner! Have fun!”
Bobby had one last piece of advice for Rassler. “Try to speak and read a lot this month. Then you may retain much of the language. If you don’t practice, you will forget everything within three months and hardly be able to say good morning.”
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Rassler was still in something of a daze as Wyndy took his arm and escorted him down the street. The world looked newish as he gazed around the street, enjoying his new High Goblin reading skills.
His eyes were drawn first to an oddly skinny giant wolf with pamphlets in his mouth. He stood under a banner that Rassler happily read, in High Goblin, “Great Wolf Running Club. Now open to all species. Come run with the wolves!” The wolf had one of his paws wrapped in a bandage and a headband holding back his ears. Rassler took one of the pamphlets to read.
Slightly further along they passed a booth with a sign reading “Skin, Fur, Tooth and Claw Care!”
The booth was centered around a bubbling pot of mud, with an older gray orc stirring the pot. She said to Rassler, in Common Vatharian, “It is sulfuric mud, with volcanic ash! Very good for both skin and claws!”
Rassler, wanting to show off his new language skills, and wanting the orcs to understand he was an important noble, answered back in the most complicated High Goblin that he could manage. “Thank you, great madam of the orcs, for your offer of majestic generosity of the flowing bloods of earth.”
Wyndy grimaced and tried to explain, “He is just starting to learn the language, he still hasn’t quite figured out the words to use. You know, lots of study of vocabulary lists!”
She whispered to Rassler, “Simple words, just use simple words. Don't strain. Nobles don't really have their own way of speaking here.”
But the orc mud-seller was very excited to hear a human speaking, or trying to speak, High Goblin., and perhaps had some sympathy for him from her own Modern Elvish classes in school. “Wowwwww! You speak High Goblin! Hey, everybody, this human speaks Goblin!”
Passers-by began to stop, and a small crowd began to form.
Rassler wasn't yet ready to speak like a commoner, so thought carefully about how to ask his question, and said. “What is the purpose of this petite stick with the fuzzy ending, miss vendor?”
The crowd cheered the sentence in High Goblin spoken by Rassler. One of the young buggebears patted him on the head.
“It is a ‘tooth brush.’”
Rassler stared at her. What she had said made no sense. He wondered what had happened to his language skills. He feared he might end up less-than-completely impressive to the onlookers.
There were a few murmurs in the crowd. “He doesn’t know what a tooth brush is!”
A small goblin girl took her finger and rubbed it on her teeth, trying to show Rassler how it worked. “Mister, you need to keep your teeth clean. It is important. At least until your adult teeth come in.”
The sales orc nodded. “You rub it on your teeth to clean them. And you use this cream.”
The crowd continued to murmur. “Humans don’t use tooth brushes?,” then “Are they savages?” “Maybe this is why their teeth are so weak and dull…”
The sales orc held up a small metal file and offered it to Rassler. “We also have tooth files, to help keep them sharp. Don't overuse them though.” She pointed to her own incisors, shiny white and very sharp.
Wyndy started looking through the collection of tooth files of various sizes on the table. She quickly stopped when Rassler looked over.
“Thank you, miss vendor ladyness, but I’m afraid I do not know how to use them. Or the tooth brushes. In Vathary, we use cloths to clean our teeth in the mornings.”
There was a rumble of murmurs from the crowd, with a general consensus that teeth cloths weren't a great idea.
The sales orc was still hoping to sell something to her now-favorite human. “Oh, but you must take this anti-Ethereal Tick cream! The ticks are out already! It is early this year. You must be careful or they will take all your magic!”
Rassler looked over at Wyndy.
“I'll explain later,” she said quietly in Vatharian. “They won't get you anyway unless you go into the deep forest. Annoying parasites, but they probably won't be interested in you.”
Rassler looked around at the crowd, and did notice that the general state of their teeth was both very shiny white, and generally very sharp. They looked at him expectantly. He reached down and chose one of the smaller tooth brushes.
A cheer went up from the crowd
The sales orc was a very happy orc. “Oh, you can have that for free. Introductory sample. Tell all your human friends to come over here and get one. We can do a special line for humans, if you like it.”
Wyndy and Rassler thanked the orc and departed to cheers from the crowd, many of whom lingered, picking out new tooth brushes of their own. Rassler waved his new tooth brush to the crowd as he departed.
They caught up to Shadow who had been a slight bit ahead, and walked down what looked like the main street. The festival was in full swing, and the street was full of creatures. A line of tents were set up all along the street.
Rassler’s attention was drawn to three tents they were passing on the left. Rassler recognized the purpose of the tents. They were military recruiting booths.
The first had two orcs in what Rassler had to admit were impressive uniforms, in front of a painted banner showing a mounted orc, goblin and wolf charge on a formation of human soldiers. Half the humans in the picture were depicted as running away, and the ones that stood up to the charge looked pretty scrawny and were clearly about to be overwhelmed. The two orc recruiters were in discussion with a younger orc and two goblins.
The sign read:
Join the Army!
Fight your enemies in hand-to-hand combat!
Your strength against their strength
Bite them on the neck!
Pummel those bastards into the dirt!
Be the beast you know you can be!
Grrr!
The creatures at the second booth were in the process of hanging an even larger banner with a picture of the dragon he'd seen in the battle. It showed her breathing fire as she swooped down on a squad of human soldiers, her brightly-painted claws about to rake a crossbowman.
At this booth was a beast that looked like a half-bird half-horse wearing a vest adorned with military medals. She was talking to a young copper-colored dragon, on which was sitting two of the bat-creatures similar to the ones that had knocked Rassler off his horse two days earlier on his approach to the village.
The sign read,
Join the Air Force!
Drop things on your enemies!
The spokes-dragon was calling out “Much less dangerous than the army! You can drop our new exploding weapons, and fly away and have a nice dinner!”
Rassler, as a count, had been forced by his father to go through military training, and got the point quickly. "You are building an aerial army! That is brilliant. None of the human lands have anything like it."
"Yes, we call it the Air Force. It was my uncle's idea. You met Scarlett yesterday. She is one of the officers. It is just a few dragons right now, plus a couple of hippogriffs, and this young wyvern, Frotiss. Myla though went on about how we need to add dragon-riding goblins to it, so that they can drop things on our enemies. Things that explode. She talked about it for like, an hour. My father says he will allow it, so we need some goblins now. Some of the older army officers don't really like the whole thing though."
"Dropping exploding things on people isn't the most honorable way to fight, but, yes, it would add a lot to your attacks. The Vatharian would have a really hard time to counter it. I supposed you'd have to watch the range of the crossbows and ballistas." Rassler stroked what beard he had, wondering if he might yet return to rule the March of Flai Drary.
"Oh, get real. Of course we tested the ballistas against moving aerial targets, and I assure you that ballistas have no chance. They'd never be able to hit a dragon at anything beyond two hundred yards, and even if they did, at any normal flying height they'd have lost most of their force and wouldn't hit strongly enough to penetrate even a young dragon's scales. The humans can try though."
Rassler saw a booth further along that had an orc and a goblin in blue uniforms in front of a table with a map of the area and a few blue and green banners. Rassler read the largest banner.
Join the Navy!
Live in cramped conditions on a ship with creatures who aren't allowed to wash!
See what the ocean is like in a storm!
Occasionally shoot a ballista at something!
Rassler read the sign and advised Wyndy: “I have done some work recruiting for our military, and I don’t think their slogans will be very effective. They may need to think about it more, and repaint their sign.”
“Oh, it works though. Many of the goblins and orcs still don't approve of bathing, and miss the feeling of the cave and the old smells.”
“Oh, right. Of course,” said Rassler.
“Two members of The Circle joined the Navy reserve after they heard about what the storms were like at sea. I hear they are getting really good at channeling the winds. Overall, the Navy is growing nicely. It isn't big, but we have a kraken."
"What? You have a what?"
"You know, a kraken. Massive giant creature with tentacles, can destroy ships in seven to ten seconds. My father made a deal on 'joint cooperation and mutual defense' with her.”
“You could destroy half the navies of the world with a mon.., a creature like that.”
Wyndy looked at him with what can only be described as worry. “But we do not want to go around destroying navies. We just need to keep sea serpents and pirates away from our harbors. And anyway, I've met her. She's really very nice. Imelda’s her name. Mostly worried about her children, and she was getting a bit tired of hunting, so we are helping her out in exchange for coastal defense. I helped design the mosaic we did for her cave.”
“Mosaic for her cave? Right, of course that is what krakens like.”
“It was all very sparkly!”
“Krakens like sparkly things. So many things I never had to deal with in Vathary.”
“But you did. You paint your ships bright colors and polish every bit of metal you can. It provokes the attacks. The kraken can't resist. You all really should be more careful, and not tempt the poor things like that.”
“Should I ever make it back to Flai Drary as a free man, I will be sure to let them know. If not, we can maybe just keep this secret between us.”
“You should meet her son too. A bit of a dandy among the young kraken, but a proper gentleman. You'd like him. He came by the harbor a few weeks ago for a tenti-cure. It took the entire salon staff all day, but he seemed happy with the results. He left a nice tip."
Rassler spent the next minute just staring at her.
He figured King Jend could probably get him his county fiefdom back in a week, if Jend wanted to. And Rassler had derived that the way to get Jend to want to do something was if Aida or Wyndy wanted him to do that thing.
Rassler had trained with the Royal Vatharian Army, and knew it to be big and to be generally competent. Plus, Vathary was a much larger nation. But Vathary’s army consisted of either men on horseback or men on foot or men on ships. Not the variety of that Pelsa could field.
After passing the booths, Wyndy turned down a side street. Rassler and Shadow followed as she walked two further blocks and around a sharp corner. As he rounded the corner he almost ran into a sign as tall as he was. It had words in at least five different languages. The ones he could read in High Goblin and Common Vatharian both said:
Scarves For All Creatures
Our Necks Unite Us!
Different Lengths for Different Shapes!
Next to the words was a painting, clearly quickly done, of the dragon he’d seen at the battle, with Princess Myla riding on her back, wrapped in a great scarf and wearing a shirt emblazoned with “SFAC,” which Rassler had not remember her wearing at the battle. In the foreground of the painting it showed panicked Vatharian soldiers running for their lives, while in the background a number of orcs and buggebears struck poses in their SFAC shirts and scarves while they pointed at the Vatharians with amusement.
Behind the sign there was a tent with four tables stacked with shirts and scarves. The tent was full of mostly youngish female creatures queueing in front of the tables to buy shirts and scarves. At the entrance to the tent the company’s spokes-orc called out to the passing creatures on the street.
Rassler saw Princess Myla working the stands, doing her best to deal with the press of young creatures urgently seeking to buy scarves. Behind her, the dragon Scarlet kept watch over the lockbox and counted the money as it came in with her surprisingly dexterous claws.
“Yeah! You came!” Myla screamed as she ran to hug her sister, the two girls bouncing up and down for a moment as they embraced. Scarlet joined in, throwing her wings around both girls.
Myla then stood back and contemplated Rassler.
She said to him in High Goblin, “So, how did it go with Bedo? Are you one of us now?”
“Yes, my lady. I, um, thank you for arranging that most interesting experience.”
“So it was okay? You seem to understand what I say, yes? You understand everything spoken around you?” asked Myla, pointed to random labels in the booth.
“Bedo’s methods were, let’s say, effective. I understand the words, but I can’t say I understand everything that is said. Bobby told me that I need to practice a lot this month.”
“Bobby warned us about that, so we got you a present!” said Myla, as Scarlett picked up a large book with a black leather cover that they’d had in a box behind the stall. “It’s called The Guardian of the Ring.”
“I am honored, princess and madam dragon.” Count Rassler paused and opened the cover. He was proud to see that he could indeed read the words. “What is the book about?” he asked, as he flipped through the pages.
“It is the story of the brave and selfless goblin who guards a terrible magic ring that could, if it fell into the wrong hands, destroy the world. The ring is stolen by a short naive human, who then bands together with larger and not-much-more-intelligent humans in order to take the ring directly in the direction of the evil wizard who could use it for his dark purposes.” said the dragon, moving her claws in a circular motion next to her ears – the universal sign of craziness.
“Wait, I know that legend. We have a version of it in Vathary. But the human Ring Fellows had to destroy the ring!”
“I think you know the story from the human perspective. Humans don’t take goblins seriously,” said the younger half-orc half-elf princess.
Scarlette continued. “Luckily, the guardian goblin works very hard and tirelessly to track the ring, and gets it just in the nick of time, before the small humans let the evil wizard seize it. The guardian goblin puts the world before his very life, and selflessly jumps into a pit of molten lava to make sure the ring is destroyed, saving the world through his sacrifice.” She covered her eyes with her wings in sadness and in respect of the sacrifice of the noble guardian of the ring.
“It is a good book. We all have to read it in middle-school,” said Myla.
“It will help you understand our culture,” explained Wyndy. “Goblin and orc children are raised to emulate the values of the guardian of the ring. We are taught to live up to his example!”
“I will then read it eagerly,” said Rassler. “I am learning so much of your culture today.”
“That’s important, yeah,” said Myla. “And now you should learn about our latest fashion!”
“We’ll start your fashion education with a tour of our magnificent shop,” the dragon said as she indicated the small, crowded booth the humanoids were standing in, “and then our friendly partner temple! The girls can take you inside.” She nodded to an old stone building just behind the booth, across a small square.
“We design and sell scarves and shirts,” Myla said as she held up a particularly colorful scarf and showed it to Rassler. “Scarves are very important, you know, this far north. Totally essential. But we are just getting started, so we don’t weave the cloth ourselves. Our partner is the High Priestess of the temple behind us, the second oldest temple in Lagar’s Haven. I present The Temple of Fashion!”
Rassler stared at her for a second, again unsure if he was understanding the words correctly. “It’s a temple, like, to the gods?”
“That is generally what temples are to, yes. Although we did almost build a Temple of Food.”
Shadow whined something sad in response to that, and Myla replied to him “Yes, I agree, they should have built the Temple of Food.” She scritched him behind the ears to console him.
She then turned back to Rassler. “Anyway, yes. Its official name is the Temple of Elemental Fashion of the Great Goddess Hista and Her Creative Power.”
Rassler shook his head. “But she’s not the goddess of fashion. Hista, whom I think is clearly the goddess we call ‘Hestia,’ is the goddess of the hearth and of weavers, granting warmth to the home and skill of hands to the women.”
Wyndy corrected him as the princesses escorted him across the square to the temple. “Maybe that is all you give her in the south. But here we properly appreciate her. She is first of all the Goddess of the Dawn, weaving the colors of the first light of morning as she dances her celestial dance across the sky, in the chariot pulled by the Twins. Through her display every morning, she inspires an appreciation of beauty, and gives us mortals fashion sense.”
“Okay, yes, Hestia is associated with the first light of morning, but that doesn’t mean she guides fashion. At least that is most certainly not what I was taught by the priests. They say that she helps with the crafts of the home. She is the obedient daughter of Jipater, the Lord of the Skies and Giver of Laws.”
“Well, She is the daughter of the Sky Father, although we say His name as...”
But Rassler kept going, reciting the creed of the Vatharian Church: “Jipater, the Sky Lord took as his consort the Goddess of the Harvest, Dimeter, whom he impregnated with his holy seed and She gave birth to the twin chariot warriors who carry the victorious sun across the sky, and Thorsmi, the mighty thunderer whose hammer smites the enemies of the Church, and Admi, who guides our generals and army in its wars, and ..”
“Oh, please just stop.” Myla held out both hands. “First off, ‘Dimeter’ is really said as ‘Deymater,’ and She is the Great Mother, who provides for us all. I don’t know why you demoted her in Vathary to some sort of accessory to the men.”
“Well, She is important too! If Jipater is angry with us, if we have not obeyed his rules, She will strike our farms with blight. But our priests make sure that doesn’t happen, and help the king stamp out heresy in the kingdom!”
Wyndy, who’d been speaking calmly up to now, lost it and went at Rassler. “The gods were created as the first creatures first became conscious and started to know the world. The gods were the universe itself trying to help, personified in a way mortals we could understand. They fashioned themselves in the way of a family, to help and protect the creatures of the world. In Vathary, you have perverted this, you have tried to make our protectors and comforters into controllers, the henchmen and enforcers of the human leaders in authority. You use their image to keep men under control, to make people obey the king and priests. It is an abomination."
Rassler paused and walked quietly for a moment, then murmured “I can see why your mother and her followers were kicked out of Ushos.”
“Why? I mean, they were mostly working as healers. I never understood why they wanted them kicked out.” said Myla as she started up the temple steps.
“Well, if I were to say even half of what you’d just said in any of the other kingdoms or the empire, I would be declared an apostate and stripped of my titles and condemned.”
“Well, they condemned you anyway. Even having just gone along with their system. And here is the entrance to the temple! It is the headquarters of the Cult of the Fashion-Histas, so beware,” said Wyndy.
“Beware?” Rassler hesitated, and stopped moving toward the temple door.
“Oh yes,” Wyndy continued, now speaking in a hushed voice. “Sionia showed up four years ago after she got exiled from Dhu'Nemos, and became a priestess and restarted Hista’s temple three years ago. We discovered that before that she had been a famous bard in the elven lands, and her musical skills had developed to the point that they’d become a form of sorcery. When she starts singing, it is hard not to dance. You may see. In Dhu'Nemos she had a rabid following and would have concerts in which half the city would go and dance all night. It shook the earth. Some buildings fell. She claims it wasn’t her fault. The elf king decided she had to go. So, yes, be wary of Sionia.”
The doors swung open, and Rassler heard music.