IV

Bergia was not at all what Aroha had ever expected. She knew nothing about the place except what the townsfolk of the Port had told her, but there had always been this impression in her mind that it was just better than what she had at home. There was a sense of otherness and wonder associated with it.

It was one of two border towns, along with Qwan further to the east, that were known as the last bastions of “freedom” before entering the Kingdom of Sevet to the north. It was the northernmost point of civilization on the continent, so close to the natural border of the Sephia Wood that separated Zeshan and Sevet that you could actually see the beginnings of the dense, largely uncharted, forest from its town square. As such, she had always imagined it to be some kind of bustling modern metropolis – a city of opportunity and fortune just barely out of her reach.

It was not that. The place was middling at best. It was much smaller than the Port, and more compactly built. It was most certainly stretching the definition of a town to even call Bergia one. It was simply a village.

The group rode up to it, disappointed that it did not live up to the stories and their own wild imaginations, but more than happy to see some kind of civilization at all. They stopped by the first villager they came across – a small, dirty boy sitting on a wall throwing stones at some chickens running on the dirt path that led into the village.

‘Hey, boy! Can you point us to Bergia’s mayor or town official? We need some help.’ Rylan called out to him.

The boy gave them a mildly amused look, glancing at the wagon and its occupants. ‘You’s some kinds of Kingdoms traders then?’

‘No, we’re from Kaze Port. Please, we just need to speak to your mayor. It’s very urgent,’ Aroha answered, somewhat tersely.

‘Dunno what that is,’ the boy muttered. He seemed to lose interest in the group and turned his attention back to the chickens.

The group shared a despondent look. Being strangers in a place they had never been, they were at a loss for what to do. Rylan stirred the hessians back up and the cart was just starting to inch forward when the boy suddenly sprang off the wall. He hopped like a jackrabbit up into the box with Aroha and Rylan, much to their surprise and dismay.

‘Look here, where you’s are going, you’s’ll needs a guide, right?’ he said, his demeanour suddenly full of excitement and cheer, as if he had just figured out something extraordinary. ‘But, I wants something in return then. Deal?’

‘What kind of something?’ Aroha asked wearily.

‘You’s got any money?’

The group shared a look. Rylan shrugged his shoulders and Penelope gave Aroha a wide-eyed look that said ‘Not for this’. Aroha rummaged in her pant pockets. She was sure she had had some extra money after her meal at the tavern the other day. Being the daughter of tailors – and paranoid ones at that – her pockets had a secret compartment sewn into them, like an extra pouch to keep money safe in. She pulled the piece of string that kept the pocket closed and extracted a single coin from it with deft, practised fingers, so as not to jingle any other coins that were in there. She held up the silver coin she had extracted to the little boy sitting next to her and his eyes lit up with greed.

‘This’ll do just fine,’ he said as he reached up to grab the coin from Aroha’s hand.

She was quicker than he was, however, and palmed the coin before he had even reached it. ‘We want the works, Sir Guide. A full tour of the town.’

‘Ain’t no sirs in this village here, Missus,’ the boy grumbled. ‘That’s for them Kingdomers and them children’s stories.’

Aroha placed the coin in the boy’s grubby hands. ‘And ain’t no missus here either.’

Rylan gave the two of them a bemused smirk and spurred the hessians onwards.

Their little guide told them about Bergia – or the “Berg” as he called it – as they rode on. He pointed out various structures along the road, saying things like, ‘This here is old man Frye’s blacksmith, an’ this is the fletcher, Arrow. Be careful of him, he’s a strange man, he is. Next here is the carpenter, Jesse. Lovely girl she is. An’ this is the tavern, The Blind Bull. You’s can probably get a room in there if you ask nice-like.’

The village grew outwards from a modest square that contained not much else but a single general store and a small temple. The square itself was the temple’s front garden and main worship area. There were a handful of small homes in the centre of the village and some specialist shops, such as the aforementioned blacksmith, fletcher and carpenter, as well as the village’s single tavern. There were a few more homesteads and three small farms on the easternmost outskirts of the village that grew what the villagers needed to survive. Besides these modest structures, there was not much else at all. The entire population of the village could not be more than forty people all told, although none of them seemed to be out and about at this time. The village was so small and sparely populated that there was no need for a mayor of any kind. The temple’s Priest of the Mother served as the sole governing figure of the village, which is who the little boy directed the group to as they rode up into the square.

He hopped off the cart and took off at a run towards the farms as soon as Rylan had stopped. With not even a goodbye, the boy had disappeared behind the temple before the group even had a chance to thank him for his help.

‘Such a strange little boy,’ Penelope remarked. ‘Where is everyone? The town is so still.’

‘Maybe it’s the town’s rest time?’ Aroha guessed. ‘That boy didn’t really tell us anything of importance. I’m starting to feel swindled.’

‘Let’s see if the Priest is inside the temple,’ Rylan said as he hopped off the cart. ‘Hopefully, he can provide us with some help. Or at least advise us on what to do next. Anyone want to volunteer and stay with the wagon and our friend back there?’

Penelope sighed. ‘I’ll do it. Just be quick.’

As followers of the Mother usually worship and hold their religious festivals outside to be closer to Her, Temples of the Mother are rarely lavish structures. They are usually simple and clean, with not much decoration or adornment. Small villages might not even have a Temple and instead keep only a simple worship garden. Bergia’s Temple followed these rules to the letter. There was nothing inside of it aside from an effigy of the Mother – a simple carving of wood of an older woman, her body robust and shapely, with a wide smile on her face, a scythe held up in her left hand and a bundle of wheat cradled to her bosom in her right. Simple black tallow candles burnt in two concentric circles around the effigy, providing the only light in the Temple.

Aroha inadvertently averted her gaze from the eyes of the effigy when she entered. She felt foolish for doing so – it was only a wood statue, after all – but it was her natural knee-jerk reaction at this point. She had never been a fervent believer in the holy and had always been a reluctant follower when she was younger and had been forced to attend worships, but she still felt it was almost disrespectful to gaze upon the Mother with her unbelieving eyes.

In the low light of the candles, she could see that the walls of the single-room Temple had been adorned with various paintings and runes. The two lengthwise walls each held a different elaborate painting. The left wall saw the Mother in a field of bloody wheat, riding high atop a bear, with a tiger trailing not too far behind her. This painting illustrated the scythe more prominently in her outstretched hand, used in both farming and self-defence. The right wall depicted the Mother caressing the head of a woman giving birth on a bed of hay. These were standard paintings of famous mythologies and allegories that the Temple Priests would read from the religion’s holy text every worship. Even the Temple at the Port had had paintings of these exact same scenes, albeit by a different artist.

Rylan did a quick scan of the room and, upon not finding a Priest or even another person of any kind, made for the back where he knew there would be a door that led into a back garden. Priests of the Mother typically lived in dorms or homes separate from the Temple, and these were usually built behind the Temple. Sure enough, as the duo exited back out into the suns’ light from the murky darkness of the candlelit Temple, they spied the dormitory, a small structure built on the side of a sprawling back garden. This garden was much neater and more cleanly kept than the front worship area that was open to the village. It even had a small fish pond in the centre where several small fishes swam around in lazy circles.

To their delight, they finally caught sight of the Priest of the Mother who tended to this Temple. He was an old man, much older and much whiter than any person Aroha had ever seen in her life. He was clad in a simple, clean white linen robe that gave him the appearance of radiance and wisdom. Despite this, he was still sweeping up the front porch of the dormitory with stamina belying his years. He gave the two visitors a wide smile that crinkled his face like paper.

‘To whom do I owe the pleasure, young ones?’ he called out to them, beckoning them over to him.

Aroha and Rylan shared a look, then broke into a brisk jog across the garden. They stopped in front of the old Priest and bowed down to him reverently. ‘We just arrived in your town from Kaze Port, your worship,’ Rylan managed to stumble out.

‘Ah! It’s nice to see such vigour in youth! But, please, you are my guests, there is no need to bow and none of that “your worship” nonsense,’ the Priest fussed. He tapped Rylan on the back to straighten him out, and lifted Aroha’s head with a rough, but not unkind, arthritic claw. ‘My name is Eduard. The most I will accept from guests is a simple “uncle”. Come, come, you must be tired from your journey. I shall make you some herbal water.’

With this, he grabbed Aroha’s arm and, leaning on her slightly, led the pair into the dormitory. It was a simple two-room building. Aroha spied a small single bed and a bookcase through the back room’s open door, but the Priest let them sit in the sparse front room. It contained nothing except for a small cooking pit, set directly in a hole in the floor, with ample space around it so as not to set fire to anything, but still close enough to a circle of seating cushions to provide warmth to whoever sat around it. A small pot was already bubbling merrily atop a rudimentary metal spit.

‘I’m afraid I don’t have much in the way of comfort, young ones. We will have to make do,’ the Priest said. He let go of Aroha’s arm and went to check on the spit, kneeling low. Aroha and Rylan took seats on the seating cushions, cross-legged and awkward. They were not soft and comfortable at all and indeed were not much better than just sitting on the ground itself.

‘Um, I’m afraid our visit isn’t a pleasant one, your— Uncle,’ Rylan began.

‘There will be time enough for that in a bit,’ the Priest said. He got up and went over to a small chest tucked away in the corner of the room and returned with some wooden cups, into which he poured generous helpings of the herbal water he had been heating on the pit. He offered these cups to Aroha and Rylan in turn, who accepted them with a smile and thanks. The herbs were bitter and acrid upon first sipping, but they provided a certain warmth in the afterglow of their consumption; a heat that ran down the throat and into the chest and stomach that was not altogether unpleasant. Despite hating the initial taste, Aroha found herself drinking deeply from the herbal water.

The Priest watched her with a smile on his face. ‘I had hoped you would enjoy it. It is a concoction of my own design. I grow the herbs in the garden myself.’

Aroha smiled back at him. ‘It is very invigorating, to be sure.’

‘Now then, young ones, first things first. What do I call you?’

‘I am Aroha, this is Rylan.’

‘Aroha and Rylan? Hmmm. Yes. Good. You say you come from Kaze? The town along the path of the Sephia River?’

‘Yes, although, truth be told, we know it as the Bergia River in the Port,’ Rylan responded, setting down his now-empty cup by his side. ‘And I’m afraid we come with a pressing issue and dire matters to discuss today.’

‘You are an impatient one, aren’t you, Rylan? The pleasantries are not even done with yet.’

‘I meant no disrespect, Uncle. It’s just that my sister is waiting out in the square for us to return and I’m afraid we have an injured man with us that requires attention from a healer.’

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

‘Hmmm, another sister? Your parents were certainly blessed.’

Aroha and Rylan shared a startled look. ‘Oh no, Uncle, we are not related,’ Aroha insisted. ‘We are simply friends. We’ve known each other from childhood. Grew up in the Port together.’

‘Ah, you have the look of siblings, is all. Well, you had best tell me exactly what’s going on then.’

Sharing another look, and seeing that Aroha had no desire to repeat the telling of the events of the raid for a second time, Rylan recounted to the old Priest exactly what had transpired in the Port. He retold every detail as clearly and plainly as he could, leaving nothing out and laying out the group’s current situation.

When Rylan had finished, the Priest stood up and said, ‘Oh, Mother’s blessings be upon you, my dear children. I am deeply sorrowful that this has occurred to ones so young such as yourself. It is a terrible travesty indeed! So much senseless bloodshed and destruction! The Camarians have gone too far, but I am glad that there is hope yet that some of your townsfolk have survived, even if their situation is perilous at the moment. I hope you will take comfort in the Mother to keep them safe from harm. Do not lose hope! And of course, you shall have my full assistance and aid. Come, let us see to your injured friend first and foremost.’

Aroha suddenly found herself swept up into a whirlwind of activity, of which she was not sure moment-to-moment exactly what was going on. The Priest led her and Rylan out of the dormitory and back out through the front entrance of the Temple. He made swift work of pleasantries with Penelope and assessed the man in the cart carefully, before enlisting the three young people to carry the man back, gingerly, through the Temple to the dormitory. The man was laid out on the ground by the fire on top of a blanket and a pillow, not stirring through all the commotion and oblivious to the struggle the group went through to transport him. The cart out front was simply covered with the thin blanket Penelope had been using to shelter the man, and the hessians were hitched, fed and watered by Rylan after all the hard work of carrying the man had been done. Aroha and Penelope found themselves sitting alone in the Priest’s kitchen/sitting room, watching with bated breath as he carefully stripped the unconscious man of Penelope’s bandages and studied the wound.

‘Remarkable work, Penelope,’ he said happily. ‘I see you have a way with herbs yourself.’

Penelope blushed, something Aroha had never seen before in her entire life. She stared at her friend incredulously as she responded, ‘Oh, it was nothing. A simple herbal salve to help quicken the body’s natural healing.’

‘Very well done indeed! I’m afraid there are no healers in this village, but I will be more than happy to provide the young man what aid I can. His body is already looking like he is through the worst of it. It was quick thinking on your parts to stem the blood loss and to provide him with the salve. It has cleaned the wound out nicely. I would have cauterized it myself, but that can lead to infection and terrible scarring as well. As it stands, I say there is not much else I can do for him. I shall leave him be, for now, then on the morrow, we shall bathe him and treat the wound once more with egg white and honey and rebind it. We shall repeat this treatment for a few days until he is back up to strength. He is strong and young, I am sure he will pull through, with time.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘Yes. Tell me, how do you know him?’

‘Truth be told, we do not,’ Aroha interjected. ‘We don’t even know his name or his story. Rylan and I simply did our best to drag him out of the fray alive. He was all we could manage…’

‘Yes, yes, of course, dear… I understand. And a good job you all did to save his life. I am sure he will be most grateful to you all, once he awakens. Even if he does appear to be Camarian.’

‘We do not think he was with the slavers,’ Penelope said. She glanced at Aroha but did not meet her gaze entirely. ‘We think he was simply a traveller who was unlucky enough to be present when… When it happened.’

‘We shall give him a chance to explain his own story when he wakes. Let us give him some rest. We can go to town and explain the situation to the others in the meantime.’

‘Where are the other townsfolk?’ Penelope asked as they walked back to the Temple entrance. ‘I did not see a single other soul while I was waiting in the cart.’

‘You shall see, dear child. Patience,’ was all the Priest said in reply.

They met back up with Rylan who was sitting outside, taking a rest next to the hessians. He leapt up as soon as he saw them and did his best to appear like he wasn’t exhausted, but Aroha gave him a playful push and almost knocked him off his feet.

‘Come, come. Follow me, young ones,’ the Priest insisted. He led the party through the empty town, but not the way they had come in. He instead seemed to be leading them to the road out of the village. They walked at a pace to match the older man leading them and it was relatively slow going. They exited the village through a northern road that led up towards the Sephia. It took them a few good minutes of walking before they finally saw where the other villagers were gathered.

Just on the border of the woods, what seemed to be the entirety of Bergia was gathered in what looked like a massive family dinner. Long wooden dining tables had been laid out on the grass – three of them, organized into a triangle – all piled high with food and wine bottles. Every one of the villagers looked scrubbed clean and dressed up in formal clothing, or what best they could muster. They were seated at the tables, eating, drinking and making merry. A small archway of intertwined branches had been built at the space by the tip of the triangle formed by the dining tables. Three people stood underneath the archway – a man clad in clean, simple clothing, a young woman in a pretty, pale green dress and another man, in front of them, clad in the same white linen robe that Eduard also wore.

‘It’s a wedding, young ones. A union between two of the farmers’ families. My apprentice was handling this one as it can be quite challenging for me to walk this far out of the village,’ the Priest told them as they drew closer.

He took off ahead of the others and approached the wedding party while Aroha, Rylan and Penelope hung back, unsure of what they should do. The villagers paused their celebrations and listened to the Priest talk to them in reverent silence. Aroha couldn’t hear what he told them, but he beckoned her party over after a brief discussion with what looked like some of the more senior members of the community. What followed was a torrent of introductions and kind greetings as the outsider trio were brought into the wedding party. Plates and cups of wine were thrust upon them and they were fussed over by at least four elderly ladies, making sure they had enough food and drink and a place to sit at the bottom dining table amongst some of the younger villagers. They smiled and greeted everyone awkwardly and Aroha did her best to keep all of the names and faces in her head, but they were gone almost as soon as she heard them. The wedding guests around them fawned and asked many questions about the Port and what life was like there as the party settled back into the merry mood they had been in before this new group had joined them.

Aroha wanted to burst into tears and she wasn’t quite sure why. There was a burning sensation on the back of her neck and an overwhelming, swelling surge in her chest that she had never felt before. It was all she could do to gulp down the wine, smile politely and nod along to the hammering outpour of questioning she was subjected to by the sweetly inquisitive young girl sitting beside her. Rylan and Penelope did not fare much better and were dealing with their own interrogations between bites of food. A few of the village lads seemed to have taken an exceptional interest in Penelope.

The kindly old Priest leaned into the group and whispered, ‘Don’t tell them too much now. We don’t want to ruin the merriment just yet. There will be time enough for a village meeting after these festivities are done with.’

Aroha had been to weddings when she had been much younger, but Bergia seemed to have completely different traditions than the Port had from what little she could recall. While the bride and groom prayed for the Mother’s blessings with the apprentice Priest under the archway, everyone else made toasts to their health and fertility and ate and chatted amongst each other jovially. She much preferred this tradition than the serious affairs she remembered from her childhood. After a while, she even found herself getting drawn into the celebratory atmosphere.

When the prayers had all be done, the apprentice Priest called for the wedding party to quiet down so that the next step of the nuptial tradition could be taken. The bride’s father brought a healthy, strong bull into the middle of the tables. Men from the village crowded around and helped him wrangle and soothe the beast, holding the animal in place with long rope leads, two or three men at each piece. The groom’s father stepped forward once the bull had been calmed and brought to kneel, a ceremonial dagger held high. He presented this dagger to his own son – a sign of him approving the union. His son took the blade and, very carefully, skirted to the front of the bull. He bowed his head low and said a small prayer in front of the animal, which Aroha did not hear from her seat but knew must be along the lines of thanking the beast for its sacrifice. He then slit the throat of the animal. The women of the bride’s family came forward with big wooden bowls and collected the animal’s lifeblood as it flowed from the wound until the beast was fully spent and dead.

Aroha knew this one, as they did the same thing in the Port. She had always thought it to be cruel and had disliked watching it when she had been younger, but today she sat enraptured at the performance. The bull was hefted away by a squadron of men and would be butchered, with the meat being equally divided amongst the two families joined together in union. The blood in the bowls was mixed with wine by the bride’s family and, starting with the bride and groom themselves, everyone would take a hearty gulp from one of them.

When it came time for Aroha to drink from one of the bowls, she was hesitant, but the expectant gazes of everyone around her made her unable to refuse. She fought her gag reflex and swallowed the bitter, metallic liquid heavily before thrusting the bowl into Rylan’s hands beside her. She tried her best to keep the vile concoction down but was wholly unable to. She scrambled out from her seat and ran away from the table to a small bush nearby where she proceeded to retch violently. Behind her, she heard a wild chorus of convivial cheer coming from the wedding party, followed by hearty laughter.

Wiping her mouth, she found the sweet girl she had been sat next to alongside her. The girl stroked Aroha’s back and smiled at her,

‘It’s considered great luck if someone in the wedding party gets violently ill. So, you kind of just blessed this union?’ she remarked with a laugh. Still smiling, she grabbed Aroha’s hand and led her back to the table where Rylan and Penelope were still laughing at her.

The serious traditions now out of the way, the bride and groom were seated and allowed to finally feast themselves, while some of the villagers who were able to play musical instruments brought them out and set up underneath the archway. It was a ragtag mix of harps and rebecs and lyres and lutes and flutes, and even a make-shift drum-set built out of wooden buckets. The sweet girl went up to join the makeshift village band and Aroha swore she never heard music as sweet as she heard that day. The girl started with a simple love song, but Aroha felt herself getting so absorbed into it that she could feel the tears of joy welling in her eyes and her heart crying from her chest.

By the time the second chorus came in, everyone at the party belted out drunkenly alongside the sweet girl,

Sing for me – sing for me – my darling,

A melody – a melody – of falling,

A symphony of burning love,

That’s heard o’er heavens, far above.

Sing for me – sing for me – my sweetheart,

A melody – a melody – of being apart,

A symphony of such magnitude,

The world shakes to take me from you.

So enthralled was Aroha that she was the first one up on her feet when the musicians started playing tunes that the guests could dance to. She grabbed a reluctant Rylan from his seat and dragged him into the centre of the tables and danced for what seemed like hours. Villagers flitted in and out of the dance and she had so many dance partners that they all seemed to blend into a single faceless, moving being by the end of it. Boys and girls and Rylan and Penelope and the sweet singing girl, they all became one endlessly dancing entity. She fell into its arms and spun around it and leapt into its warm, wine-addled embrace with a trust as if she had known it for all her life. She did not know where this furious vigour came from, but it possessed her wholly and completely and she danced and whirled and twirled with every cell of her being, so enraptured that the rest of the party faded to a blur in her eyes.

Rylan, for his part, while initially reticent to make a fool of himself, found himself spellbound by Aroha’s rhythm and energy. Soon he himself had become a mad, dancing whirlwind. He spied Penelope once or twice, dancing with some of the village boys herself, but, by the time the band had played their last tune, it was only he and Aroha in the dance still, being cheered and encouraged by the other guests who were too tired to match her frantic energy. He had never seen her laughing so fully, so gleefully, as long as he had known her. When the music came to a stop, she struck one last pirouette and then collapsed into his arms, vitality spent and still laughing. He helped her back to her seat, where she embraced the sweet singer girl warmly and laid wet kisses on her surprised cheeks.

The party started to die down after this. The guests, tired and happy and well-fed, cheered the groom on as he carried the blushing bride in his arms to a waiting horse cart. They climbed on to it and, with one last cheer, rode off back to town to their waiting marriage bed. The guests milled out after that, the younger villagers returning to town still singing and merry and trying to keep the party alive for as long as possible. The unified farm families were left to clean up and disassemble the wedding, as was tradition. They did so with much joy, even turning down Rylan and Penelope who offered their help while Aroha was nursing an already heavy head.

The elderly Priest Eduard found his visitors and introduced them to his apprentice, Traeger. ‘Come, come, young ones. We shall retire to the Temple for the time being. I’m afraid there is too much gaiety this day to call a successful village meeting to discuss what shall be done with you, so I shall give you a place to sleep off the wine and excitement in the meantime. We shall see to your needs and worries on the morrow, yes?’

Rylan thanked the Priest profusely and the party set off back down to the Temple. Aroha was feeling the effects of the wine considerably and Rylan was forced to carry her on his back as she continued singing sleepily, almost lulling him into a slumber as well. It was like this that the party arrived in the Priests’ dormitory thoroughly drained and eager for sleep. The elderly Priest gave Penelope blankets which she paired with the party’s own bedrolls to create a makeshift bed for everyone to sleep on in the front room, while the two Priests retired to their own bedroom.

‘I’m afraid I can’t offer you any of my herbal tea this time around. It is meant to invigorate the body, and I think you all need the rest more than you realize,’ Eduard commented before he left. ‘I hope you have a restful sleep. We shall be up and about in just a few hours.’

‘Thank you, Uncle. For everything,’ Rylan said.

‘Think nothing of it, young one.’

Penelope laid down next to Aroha and brushed her friend’s hair from her face. Aroha turned to lie facing her, but she lightly shushed her friend when she tried to speak. ‘Just close your eyes. I’m right here.’

‘Could you sing to me?’ Aroha asked drowsily. ‘Riario used to sing to me some nights, when things were bad or he had a nightmare… I miss him so much.’

She screwed her eyes closed and curled her legs up to her stomach. Penelope drew her closer and kissed her forehead gently. ‘You know I can’t sing, silly. I’ll hum you a tune.’

Like this, hugging each other tight, the pair fell asleep. Rylan watched them go to make sure they were alright before he climbed in next to his sister and drifted off to sleep himself.

For the first time since they had left Kaze Port, the trio slept soundly.