Key went away from his home, in search of something divine.
Morning adventures like these were such sweaty things. Key did not care for them, but they brought quiet, solitude, and distance for it, so they had become his friend. He was a slight, breakable thing for his age, closer to a moon-eyed calf than the man he should’ve been. He had long, thick hair, tied up in two braids; covering his body was an upover, a heavy green shirt woven from skin and wool. Around his neck, he carried a bag made of tuskleather. While the cheers and hubbub of the Coldcoming sprang up behind him, he departed his land Goal’s peopled places, and favored, for a while, its empty ones.
The Sixbraid walked over the hills and pressed through the overgrown, brambled tracker trails of his oldest ancestors, which these seatless rounds only half-remembered. He tiptoed under the nests of cloudwings and trunkbreakers, and past the wooded burrows of tusked hearts. He walked over the coins, arrowheads, and bones that poked up through the soil, and sometimes retrieved the curiosities among these that found their way to him. Today, he came upon a flat patch of dirt, pruned by a stranger however many seasons past. In addition to a few sprouts and shoots of grass that had encroached on it over the years, it was host to a single, withering skypetal, whose root was protected by a mound of white stones. He took one and left the others undisturbed, along with the four other patches of soil aside it. Each was larger than the first.
He marvelled at the long-eared jumpers: the squat, grey-furred bundles who he could see shoot into the brush whenever he got too close. He walked through the cutset: a stripped and emptied reach of their beloved territory, chopped for the sake of some wheeled fire-slinger, or simply burned away by will of contest. The stumps and husks that comprised it now did not tell these stories, because they had no voices. They only sat in the ground and told of their being. The Lodge spoke of rulers who had once pronounced over water and wood; he supposed that this was a consequence of their ancient humiliation. Their place was an unwild, an empty brutality that few could find as valuable.
Key listened for a hint of life somewhere across the barrens. When he found there was none to hear, he sat down for a while, to ponder things that vexed him, and let the quiet ease his heart.
He was coming to the end of his road, where the monument of interest to him loomed. After exiting the cutset and coming to a steep thicket, he picked through a dense barrier of brush and leaves. He was especially careful not to make a sound, unsure of what he might alarm or incite. He reached the precipice that he sought, took cover behind a tree, and he set his eyes on the cage.
Inches from Key’s lofty perch, the ground plummeted down and gave way to the valley and water of the Sixbraids’ highest love. The river, half-dead with thirst, ran down from the mountains far to the East. It was collared now by a deadly power in their own division of the world. He had arrived at the thing that choked it.
Key had once asked his birthman how it was named, this steepled halt. He’d called it a block-building, which seemed too bearable a word for what it was. The shadow it cast, for the Sixbraids, was that of death. It had been wrought of the devolved and desiccated, and placed into the path of vital force. Its creators had come to the water and carved up the ground, torn up stones of all colors, and raised them up on its shore; then, they had swallowed up saps and saplings and put them against the current. They had stopped divinity and stoppered it up. The works of man baffled him.
On the watchtowers of the block-building Key could just begin to make out the grey-coatted men who kept watch over this perversion. To his surprise, he recognized the signs of a grander host being housed at the building’s base. From the distance at which Key observed them, he could not discern their features or count their number accurately, but their peopled sprawl had filled both banks of the river with tents and facilities of all kinds, and even nestled itself into the pits and alcoves closer to the river itself. A mass of quadrupeds, perhaps stonehoofs, watered themselves in a large makeshift pen. Tiny figures were in the process of unhitching wagons from them, filled with bundles of cord and wooden poles.
After he had gazed on these guests to his curiosity’s satisfaction, Key attended to his true objective. From his tuskleather bag, he brought out a flat piece of stone no larger than his palm, a stylus of cloudrock, and a cut of especially tender dried meat he had been saving.
Hear me, he scratched out onto the slate.
He looked toward the river’s water. A wind rose up in the trees and a cloudwing called.
Accept this gift my friend, he wrote. We keep the ways for you. Tell bata I miss him so.
Then he took the meat and the slab and cast them as close as he could to the river’s source. It landed a ways off from the water itself – but how close it was, to what had been, and all that would be! Perhaps it might be heard here.
He went down on his knees and put his lips and nose to the ground. Then he departed the cliff, and passed again through the brush and thickets of the rounds. He followed the wind and water, and returned to the home he came from.
-
When the sun had dropped below the horizon, the Empty Houses came into view. Key thought this a cruel name for such a virtuous inheritance – the home of his birthmen, the shell-seat of the Sixbraids! His aching legs knew premature relief when he looked upon the clustered, ramshackle roundseats that were his world.
The Houses, if not Empty, did sometimes appear a thing that was emptying. He crossed over the trickling, half-empty tributary that looped around its southern perimeter and flowed further into the Blockwood. As much as he adored the shell-seat, he found its winding pathways even more beautiful in this nightfall state, when compared with those which would populate them with daylight and excitement.
He passed by the watchwalls, a group of Sixbraids standing guard over the East. All were clad in thick green wholeovers, woven from a thin, breathable fabric obtained from the wood of spottrees. At each man’s side hung a long length of wood, adjoined to sharp stones by way of Western rope. All were bored, and all were drinking from skins of spirits prepared for the Coldcoming; these fuelled their joy and laughter, and let them wrestle with one another.
“Aieee, it’s the Fragile Thing,” one of them slurred. “How many drymen has he cut?”
“The Fragile Thing returns!” another hiccuped. “Where was he, this time?”
“He was giving response. Don’t you know this one? Always on response – eating gapmen whole! A vicious and meat-hungry heart!”
“How many have you cut, Fragile Thing? Come, and speak! Tell us of your triumphs!”
They laughed and pulled at him, inviting him to their company. Key smiled back and said nothing, feeling the hiding rise up inside him. He evaded the Walls and moved quickly through the roundseats, at last until he reached the one which housed his family.
Key’s family consisted of a single, broad-chested fireworker; his hair, a short weave of white and brown, was twisted into four braids. He lounged at the foot of their stove, beneath the elaborately carved chair that sat before it, using a rock and an angled shaft of wood to beat lines and images into the side of their dwelling for a Statement, which might serve to coax in the rulers of the riversland. “Aie, bata,” Key called as he slipped inside the roundseat’s fireroom.
“Aie, gentle thing,” Peak said. He chipped away at the wall, sending a chunk of wood flying off onto a cloth he had placed beneath it. When he heard his son draw open the seat's cover, he draped a sheet over it. “Good night coming?”
“Good, bata,” he replied. “The air is clear, and so fresh.”
“That’s virtuous. We’ll be needing to replace the Table’s wind-catcher soon.”
Key sat down by the fire where his father worked and opened his bag, reviewing his finds. “Is it so urgent?”
“I could ask Horn to do it. But Horn does too much,” Peak said. “I fear he may exhaust himself.”
Key removed a scratched disc of cityrock from his bag. He rolled it around in his fingers and placed it atop the stove, where already sat a stone, an earring, and a clay statuette.
The riversland grew dark. All the lights were put out, and when Peak thought his son retired, he sat alone by their stove. There, the air was so thick with heat that it pressed against his temples, and slowed what it found. He laid wood on the fire and rested back in his chair, humming to himself. His throat was clutched by a hoofhair necklace; he reached to rub its central object, a ribbed black shell, with his thumb and forefinger.
A familiar shape slunk back inside his eyeline. “Key?” Peak asked. “What is it?”
Key put a hand on his arm. “I keep up, ba.”
Peak tilted his head.
“Will you show me the sounds?”
“You’re getting too old for that,” Peak said. “Soon you’ll have to go by silence like the rest of us.”
Key was crestfallen. Without missing a beat, Peak wrapped his hand around the stem of his three-string and stood up. “But not tonight.”
-
Key sat on his sleeping mat, under a set of blankets. His birthman sat by his side, adjusting his instrument.
“Do you want a new one,” Peak asked. “Or a sound that you’ve already heard?”
“The old sound, ba.”
“Very well,” Peak replied. He twisted a knob on the three-string’s head, and altered his grip. “The old sound.”
“Here I go, brave one; I go on now to Goal…”
“Here grows a strength of eighty thousands… here grows mind a thousand strong…”
“Here grows hands that lift the river… here grows words that storm the shore…”
“Here grows step that speaks of thunder… here grows lightning to scorch and score…”
“Here births such a mortal kindness… a good none can ignore… it is fine to look upon him… and bring him forth once more…”
“Here came the rain and the waters that first joined with the ground… when all hearts first emerged from their coupling… when came the first season and first flower. Here came rulers of riversland uncowed, unpushed by dry forces… here came an arrangement of peace, and all in the order of their land…”
“The Ruler in the River knows faults. The Ruler in the River feels the lines. The Ruler in the Ground is aloof; the Ruler in the Sun is proud; the Ruler in the Thought is strange. The Ruler in the River is close; The Ruler in the River is bountiful; The Ruler in the River is good.”
“There was a meeter, He was named Hone. Hone: cold in day, warm in shadow, Hone: afraid of biters and chewers and mountain beasts, Hone: womanless, sorrowless, Hone: meatless, tongueless, Hone: the keeper of petals and maker of friends.”
“Hone was the adoring thing. Hone was the carefree thing. The company of Hone was trees; the company of Hone was hearts; the company of Hone was the stars in the sky. Hone raised his roundseat at last light; Hone felled his roundseat at first light.
“‘Hone is gentle, and keeps all the old ways,’ spoke all the riverborn. And then they were kind to him, though he did not bring them gifts.”
“A great hunger attacked the land. The riverborn who had lain with him came to Hone, and cried out: there is shame in you, eld! For while your people grows hungry, do you while every moment in your hole!”
“Hone was pressed by their sadness, and in a feeling of great shame. Hone entreated the river: give me a gift, great ruler! Give me a gift for my people, who you have brought such hunger into!”
“The river, he thundered back: deliver into me a son, and such a gift shall be inherited!”
“So Hone was much afraid. But he took strength, and he laid down with the ground and the river, which flowed into him… the river’s torrent arrived, and flooded the land, and made shoots of shellplant rise up from the banks.”
“And the river, he thundered back: I am delivered a son, and you are delivered this token.”
“Hone returned to his roundseat, and the riverborn were joyous with him. Hunger was put away from Goal.”
“Here I go now, brave one; I go on now to Goal…”
“Here grows a strength of eighty thousands… here grows mind a thousand strong…”
“Here grows hands that lift the river… here grows words that storm the shore…”
“Here grows step that speaks of thunder… here grows lightning to scorch and score…”
“Here births such a mortal kindness… a good none can ignore… it is fine to look upon him… and bring him forth once more…”
“Here I go now, brave one; I go on now to Goal. Goal it is where man will pass… Goal it is where hearts will pass… Goal it is where sky will pass at long last, and dark forevermore… the land is all there is…”
“Go now in Goal’s way, brave one… lie now and pass… lie now and dream… lie now, and dark forevermore…”
Peak pried his fingers off the three-string, and looked at Key; he had fallen asleep a while ago, head leaned as it was against Peak’s oaken shoulder. Peak gently eased him onto the floor, placed a blanket over his chest, and kissed him on the brow. Then, he moved to his own place, and followed suit.
-
The night in Goal could turn miserable. The warmth of Peak’s home evaporated, and as the hours farthest from the sun and the noise of people drew near, he moved off of his bed and started to walk again.
Key was torn from sleep by a sudden, crushing grip. “Key,” a drowsy voice said to him, grabbing his shoulder and jostling it furiously. “Key, come with me.”
His eyes shot wide open, and he tried to speak, but he now existed in that plane on the edge of consciousness where words became slippery, and meaning a burdensome luxury.
“We have to go into the trees,” Peak was saying. Key’s arm was being suffocated by his right hand. In his left, Peak brandished the stem of his three string as a makeshift club. “We’ve got to run, Key. Beam says we have to run.”
“It has you, ba,” Key said. “The spirit has you.”
“Please, gentle.” It took a moment for Key to realize Peak was weeping. “We need to run. They’ve put the river on fire.”
“Please don't hurt me. I’m scared.”
“Beam says we have to run.”
“He’s gone.” Tears ran down Key’s face. Peak’s grip was very tight. “He is away. Please stop. Please, ba.”
“We have to go,” Peak said. He dropped the three-string, clumsily dragged Key up from his bed, and began stumbling out of the hut. As soon as the two of them reached the freezing night air, something in his mind dissolved, and he fell to his knees, clutching his son.
“Key?”
Key said nothing. He just kept crying into Peak’s chest. He held his son close, and he cried too. The early morning air made the water feel like ice on their cheeks. It melted through their skin.
-
Peak woke up late that morning.
Once again, he rose from his sleeping mat. He walked past Key’s, along with their living area, and dipped outside.
The sun was lighting up the horizon, although the sky after it had become grey with clouds, weighed down by water. He wondered how it would come with the cold, like snow or rain. Other shell-dwellers had emerged from the roundseats nearest their abode, already fed and attending to the first work of the day: gathering wood, paying courtesy to their neighbors, and warming their hands around an impromptu bonfire. All called out toward Peak in greeting.
He grimaced. He would have to eat, of course, and they would understand; understanding was itself a holy way. But the crime was real, so the guilt could not be helped.
He lit up the stove in their fireroom. The only sounds were a few voices milling about outside, the crackle of the fire, and Key chattering away at the creatures in his sleep.
Peak let Key rest while he cooked, brewing a breakfast of grain and vegetables that he prepared in a hard stone pot. When he woke him again, he set him upright, and gently tousled his hair. “Aie,” he said. “Eat.” Key stirred and his eyes opened.
When he stumbled into the fireroom to see the sun shining in and Peak parcelling the stew into bowls, he balked. “Ba?”
“You need to eat.”
“But… the sun’s out.”
“You need to eat. This came by dry force. We’ll be drained all day. It’ll be much worse if you don’t fill your stomach.”
“Isn’t it wrong? Doesn’t it hurt him?”
“He’s been hurt before,” Peak said, “by less attentive men. Sit here and eat.”
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
With some hesitation, Key sat, and the two of them ate. As they chewed through their meal, they spoke of light and unimportant things.
“How did it go?” Key asked. “The party.”
“Okay,” Peak replied. “Your friend came by. He asked for you.”
“That’s nice.”
“Mm.”
Key picked at his food. He put a small bit of the mixture in his mouth, and when Peak wasn't looking, spit it out and stuffed it in his over.
“Soon I’ll need to learn about cold troubles, won’t I?” he asked.
“You already know about cold troubles.”
“In the way that you know them.”
Peak looked up. Then he looked down again. He swallowed a wad of stew.
“That time draws near,” Peak said. “But there are many purposes to be known. Some, sooner than others.”
He said no more.
“I visited the block-building, yesterday,” Key said.
“Did you?”
“There were drymen,” he said. “Maybe two hundreds of them. It didn’t look like they were there to stay.”
“There are always drymen,” Peak replied.
-
After Peak finished his meal, and after Key had secretly disposed of his, they set about to firework.
In almost every respect, the roundseat that Key and Peak inhabited was built in like fashion to its peers in the shell, with the exception of its size. In addition to its common area and dormitories, their home bore a large attached area for Peak’s labor, that the afraid and infirm might be parted from the ice and cold by an insulated leather shield, made ragged by time and its elements.
Peak and Key prepared themselves and their space to be received by the shell-dwellers. From atop the Fire Table, they retrieved a pair of heavy leather wholeovers, and each worked a dense, oily extract into the skin of them. Once they had finished, he and his father handed exchanged wholeovers, put them on, and stood before the Table in supplication.
The Table itself was a bed of coals and logs of wood wrapped in stone, set adjacent to a large cut of polished rock, a length of cloudrock, and a smaller platform covered with knives and a jar of oil. At the Table’s center burned a small flame, trailing a ribbon of smoke.
Peak took the oil and dripped it over the logs. Key took up the cloudrock, and wrote a word on the slate.
PAIR
Peak retrieved a long rod tipped off with a wick, reached out his arm over the table, and lit his instrument’s wick by the center flame.
PRIOR
He touched the rod to the oil. Flames jumped up from the Table, bathing Peak’s arm, and the wholeover surrounding it, in heat.
Peak pulled back both from the Table. Seeing that the fire had not attached itself to his father’s cloak or his father, Key looked down and wrote one final word on the slate.
HEART
With the Table prepared, they turned to the wallrock. Laid out in a row on the Table’s edge was an assortment of the last cutting metal in The Empty Houses. The knives, littlecanes, were small, delicate, and completely insufficient for any devious purpose, but they could bleed and break skin, and so they served the Table. Beside them was a mound of sharpening stones made rough by seasons of care for the Sixbraids’ wallrock. Kneeling beside each other at the foot of the Table, Peak and Key took up a stone and honed each littlecane’s edge.
Every so often, Peak would peek up from his blade to watch his son’s method. Key, engrossed in the tenderness and delicacy of the craft, reliably failed to notice.
“Much better,” Peak said. Key grinned silently. “Much better.”
Peak drew his knife across the stone one last time, placed it on the Table, and scratched Key’s head. “Finish up with that. Then bring anyone in.”
A small group of the needy – primarily itinerants, the sick, and injured laborers – had already formed a lumpen mass outside their residence, sporting various conditions.
Speaking to the sick was hard. Key had learned the sight of most of his neighbors since he was young, but he knew few of their names and had no experience with which to calculate their temperament. He did not know what spun around inside them, whether it was mortal or something else. So he tried to avoid it when he could. He tended to their immediate needs, bringing them fleece blankets and hauling over buckets of water from a nearby well. The groundwater smelled and carried a brown tint. Key grimaced as he handed it over to their visitors.
“Please tell me your intent,” he said to the lot of them, “So that I might tell the fireworker.”
They asked him to speak up.
“I need to know what’s wrong with you,” he repeated. “So when I come by you, please tell me.”
He returned to Peak, who was pressing his tools in the flames and saying secret words.
“There’s fifteen,” he said to Peak. “Four have signs of the waterspot heart. Five have overmuch heat, and four are losing heartwater. I think one of them might be struck. I don’t know what’s wrong with the other two.”
“How is their temper?” Peak asked. He held one of the knives in the fire, a littlecane of middling size, and uttered a special word.
“They were very lively. None of them are down.”
“Good,” Peak replied. “Separate the waterspots from the others. Don’t touch them.”
After they had worked through several of the more stable visitors, an older Sixbraid came. He was helping support his elderly mother with one arm, and carrying a basket in the other.
“Aie, Vigor,” Peak asked. “What is this, now?”
“Please, eldman,” Vigor said. “My birthwoman – something has gone wrong. We offer much to you.” He held the basket out to Peak, who brushed it aside and helped him bring her over to his work table. Vigor indicated her leg, where a large protrusion had been covered by a thin sheet of bedding, stained green by the fluid it had produced. Peak unwrapped the injury, and as it came loose, it produced a foul smell that elicited retching from Key. “This will need to be cut,” he said. “Key, get me shutwater from the dig. Quickly, please. Quickly.”
Key tore away the wooden door from their dig, where they had hollowed out the ground and insulated a crawlspace to preserve various components for Peak’s remedies. He grabbed the shutwater, kept in a jar sealed by paste right beneath the cellar’s entrance. Peak poured some out into a cup and brought it to her.
“I bid you drink this,” he told the woman. “That our edge may not hurt you so terribly.”
The woman moaned. “What do you take me for, fireworker? I am not some mewling infant. I am not like this one.” She gestured to her son, whose brow was furrowed in concern. “Just tear this trouble from me, and be done with it.”
“It is not only a good for you,” Peak explained. “If you shift strangely while we cut, our edge will touch the wrong thing, and you will be worse for it. I bid you drink this.”
“I beg you, bato,” Vigor pleaded. “Do as the eldman says. He is wiser than us.”
She turned her nose at the cup, but at last relented. She downed its contents in one long draught, spilling some over the edges of her chin. When Peak returned the cup to Key, she puckered drowsily.
“That taste… pit water!” she pronounced. She grabbed at Vigor, and babbled with excitement as the drink did its work. “Ih, gentle, don’t you mourn me. Don’t you mourn me. If your birthman returns, do not ever let him touch me. You thrash him off now. Thrash him off from me… I adore you, but don’t be an empty-head. I adore you. Send me the way the Walls go… send me to that easy place…”
As she faded, her panicked mumbling grew softer. Vigor held her hand and comforted her. “You’ll only shut, ba,” he insisted. “It’s only a shutting drink. You’ll be well, I promise. You’ll be well. Shut your eyes. You'll be well.”
After Key finished tying a strip of leather tight around her thigh and Peak had shoved a flat length of wallrock into the Fire Table, he handed Key the knife he had prepared.
“Just as you’ve practiced,” he said. “Be very still.” Key nodded, his hands sweating and shaking.
After speaking to the mind of the blade, he picked out a spot near the abcess’ edge he thought a good starting point, and began to excise the mass. Blood erupted from the wound Key made, dripping over his filthy hands. He ran a hand across his brow, smearing it across his forehead.
“Still,” Peak repeated. “Be still.” Again, Key nodded.
Just as he was about to finish the cut, Key’s fingers slipped and the knife fell. Peak’s hand shot out and caught it before it hit the ground. He gently moved Key out of the way and proceeded to finish the incision, removing the pus-filled growth. Key retrieved materials for a soothing wrap, and Peak retrieved his stick of wallrock to burn closed their cut.
As Key dug through the cellar, searching for a jar of snaproots, Peak called down to him. “Key,” he groaned. When Key’s clattering continued, he yelled louder.
Key poked his head above ground to see Peak resting his ear against her chest.
Shortly after, his birthman left the roundseat to inform Vigor. Key did not know what they said; he heard yelling and then crying. He peeked out of the roundseat and saw Vigor clinging to Peak like a newborn. He stopped watching after that.
Key went up to the body. The lines of her brow, the wrinkles and folds of her chin and cheeks, the spots and hairs and lesions endorsing her skin – all these traced themselves into the back of his mind, knitting together a memoir of her. She was his first face.
Her mouth was open slightly, allowing him to see her teeth and tongue. This disturbed Key especially. It didn’t feel correct. He reached out with a hand to close it for her, before he felt a hand on his shoulder. He jumped in shock.
“What were you doing?” Peak asked.
“Her- she isn’t-” Key stammered.
“Go back to work,” Peak said. “I must prepare her for the Walls.”
Key went from the body, wondering what had pulled him in its direction. He was feeling sick, so he retreated to the dig, where he continued to gather the herbs he had been assembling anyway, in case she woke up.
A pair of men, dressed in the same manner as the watchwalls, arrived soon after Vigor had departed the Fire Table.
“We are here for Lastfarmer,” the Walls said.
Peak directed them toward Vigor’s birthwoman. They grasped her by the legs and shoulders, lifted her up, and passed out of the roundseat. Her limp arms flopped about as they huffed and grunted away.
Afterwards, Peak took a cloth to Key’s hands.
“There was nothing we could’ve done,” Peak said, wiping Lastfarmer’s blood from his palm. “She was deeply hurt. Her wound was the wrong color. She was gone long before she arrived at our table.”
Key said nothing.
“So it is not something you did,” Peak said. "It is not."
“I cut her wrong.”
“The cut did not do this. She hadn't lost enough heartwater. It may have been the shutwater, or something else.” He sighed. “She was weak from the pain, and fragile. A fragile thing breaks. That is what it is; that is what we all are. And that is beyond our control.”
Peak finished scrubbing the last of the filth from his son’s fingers. He folded up the cloth and slipped it into his upover.
“This craft,” Peak said. “It’s a bite. There are few who fit it. My birthman was no fireworker. And there are plenty of Walls who would be happy to learn instead. They don’t have much else to do.”
He put his hand on the back of his son’s head and squeezed it gently. “Sometimes, rule of a thing takes many seasons to arrive,” he said. “Sometimes it never arrives at all. It is not its wielder.” His eyes glazed over. “No, it is not. But you must find something to rule. Without it… there’s only pain, and no companionship. You will have nothing to offer. And nobody will see any way to need you.”
He shook his head. “For a while,” Peak said. “The while you have – be easy, gentle one. And be well.”
-
With the blood cleaned off their clothes, Peak and Key continued to address the troubles of the shell-dwellers, albeit with Key in a less hands-on capacity. This continued until noon, when for a short time there had been no callers to address or repair. Peak dipped down into the dig to get Key.
“It’s quiet enough,” Peak replied. “We’ll walk, now. I’d like to finish our Statement sometime tonight.”
Key nodded enthusiastically, long since prepared to flee from their work. Peak picked up a skin full of water sitting by his table. They shut up the place and began their walk through the Empty Houses.
Their walk brought them to all the shell’s inhabited corners. They passed through its bulk as they went from roundseat to roundseat, ensuring that the fire was being properly exercised by their dwelling’s craftsmen.
As they went about their work, many of their neighbors called out to Peak happily; he returned a perfunctory greeting, his countenance detached and somewhat absent. Key supposed they had not really left the Table yet. So, seeking a way from it, he turned himself to the world around them.
The sun had filled up the space between The Empty Houses with noise and activity. A strong-hoof - a four-legged heart, familiar to Key for its whining cry and short, fuzzy tail - passed by them with heavy bags of grain slung over its back, lead by the hand of a man with a scalp scarred by fire. A collection of men smoked and laughed raucously over the digging of a rubbish pit. Silent mothers and daughters travelled in groups of three, hauling water, baskets and tools from seat to seat, accompanied by Wallwomen. They came across a catchcutter and his sons bringing dead jumpers and larger hearts in from the rounds to be skinned and cooked. One of the boys stumbled and dropped his catch into the mud, leading their birthman to whack him hard on the cheek and shout at him.
Around they went: to the clay shapers, firing mud to work into dishes, to the cookers, lighting ovens with which to produce bread for eating, to the smokers, preserving the returns of the catchcutters, that they might sustain the sick and little children over the long winter ahead. They went to the empty forges, where the powers of moving and shaping wallrock had once produced useful buildings, and weapons of excellent strength. It had not been a minute before they exited that place.
They drew close to the Empty Houses’ Open. Here, running back and forth across a stripped patch of ground, a group of idle Walls contested a tight leather globe in a game of Fists and Legs. A few of the shell’s younger boys admired the warriors from afar, envying their height, triumph, and facility.
The Walls’ sport drove heels into the ground, producing clouds of dust. One side struck at the other with their hands; the other used only their feet and knees. Each shook snot and sweat and blood from the others, consecrating and reconsecrating the Open. The affair, if ancient and respectable, was a tilted one, and the Legs could never do very well for long. But what a thing a Legged victory was – what merits and character could one reveal to the world with that powerful distinction!
One of the Walls pummeled an opponent in the process of kicking the ball back toward his friends, snatching it off the ground and carrying it into their territory. “Triumph!” a watcher declared. “Triumph for the Fists!”
The Fists cheered and embraced one another, and the Legs kicked at the dirt in frustration.
“Come forward, empty-heads,” one Fist crowed, after they had returned to their starting positions. “Come forward and fall!”
“Fall down yourself!” one of his opponents shouted back. At that, they joined their combat once more, swapping tactics. The Legs relinquished all pretence and civility and descended on their opposition with impassioned hand-to-hand assault; Key looked away as they made the first real damage of the game. He cringed as one or two memories of being dragged into such things were dredged to the surface by the display, and a sense of relief crept in, that he had grown up in a time when such bloodlust was largely exhausted.
They were followed by the joyous laughter of the competitors as they arrived at the Speaking Place, where had been raised a circular mound directly adjacent to the river’s banks. It was populated by a large stone monolith, and the house of the River Lodge.
The monolith, stabbed into the center of their hallowed ground a decade ago, held an inscription of lines Goalish and Larun. Key lamented that he could only read the Goalish side; the other was longer, and seemed to have some extra parts. Nevertheless, read it he had.
“PLACE OF THE LARUN LODGE’S PROTECTION”
“GREATCATCHER SIXBRAIDS – MOVED SPEAKER – TELLS OF AND DOES GOOD FOR THIS POSSESSION”
“THE EMPTY HOUSES – THE SIXBRAIDS”
“WALL GROUP OF THE LARUNS”
“WATCHER – VAROM KNNEGUT – GROUP OF SEASONS 22 | 13 GIRDAN”
The piece had been defaced in a few places, but the only remnants of such vandalism had been chipped away. Its words troubled him. They did not make sense. How could one possess a people? It was not stone or dirt.
They proceeded past the mound, toward the Lodge’s residence, where lay the shell’s oracle and dedicated convocal. Given the opportunity to gaze on its grand shape, Key often wondered what sort of rulers had been hosted there, before his time. On an ordinary day, there would the Lodge be confronted by the trials, quibblings and daily crises of the Empty Houses, although on this day he was nowhere to be found. His Entrance Chair, a plain wicker stool inscribed with the sign of the Thought Ruler, sat vacant before the entrance to his family’s roundseat, the facade of which held their telling of the world and word. Key never tired of the sight of the carvings, which were many times more elaborate than those which adorned their own home and went so far as to record the griefs and victories of the shell’s every season.
They approached the estate. The Lodgeson Yawn – a scarred, wrinkling man of short hair and smaller eyes – stood guard at the doorway, drinking liquor from a clay jug.
“Aie, Yawn,” Peak greeted. “Is your birthman awake?”
“Aie, Peak,” Yawn said. He took a swig. “Aie, Key. He is with a visitor. I am not his keeper, but I would take care until she leaves.”
They pushed open the house’s heavy wooden doors. Before them, around the Thought Table, were two figures: the Lodge, and an elder named Wellborn. The Lodge was familiar to his eye – his wispy white beard, and the thick head of hair that clung to his scalp complemented his natural warmth, and Key was pleased to see him. Wellborn, the shell’s towering, barrel-chested voicewoman, was not.
“...struck the younger one in anger,” she was insisting. “With his own hand.”
“You cannot know a thing like that.”
She ignored him. “He was broken apart. I saw it with my eyes. There can be no virtue, none whatever, behind such terrible injury. He is his son, womanless or not.”
The Lodge sighed and buried his face in his hands. “I cannot tell him how to raise his fighters,” he said.
“If you do nothing about this, I will.”
“I know your anger, eldsister,” the Lodge said. “It lives in me, too. But there is hardly anything you or I can do. Even if I spoke… he will not listen to me.”
“I do not want you to speak. Is he the only power in this place?” Wellborn bellowed. “Remind me the drycanes he can muster. What bendrock sits at his command?”
“What sits at ours?” the Lodge hissed back. “What sits at mine? What do-” They turned to see Peak and Key, waiting by the door.
“This is an opened place,” he said. “We should talk later.”
“I think we shouldn’t,” Wellborn said, swiping her hand through the air. “Talk stays not bruises, nor scars.” She stalked away, giving Peak a half-nod as she threw open the room’s cover and returned to the shell. The Lodge sighed and tugged at his chin. Then he beckoned the two of them.
Peak tapped Key’s shoulder and they approached the Thought Table.
“Aie, Strongbuilder,” Peak greeted the Lodge. “A good morning, isn’t it?”
“A good morning, firebrewer,” he croned. He hobbled over to Peak, moving with the aid of a twisted wooden cane. “What is a sky without clouds? Clouds without rain? Rain without wind or ice or lightning?”
“Such a poor and lonely thing.”
The Lodge smiled and they embraced. “I know what it is you’re after. There’s no fire to work in this house. Coldcoming ended yesterday. Cold is come.”
“Perhaps today, we are only visiting a friend.”
“And perhaps today, I am younger than I once was,” the Lodge replied. “Aie, Key. A good night?”
“Yes, eldman,” Key said. He paid the Lodge courtesy, bending his torso until his hands touched his knees. “It is quiet under your roof.”
“You make me glad,” he said. “Though the night in your eyes does not.” He reached out and playfully thumbed at the heavy bags on his face that betrayed Peak’s episode.
“How is the voicewoman?” Peak asked. “Many troubles in the shell?”
The Lodge cringed. “She breathes. But there is always trouble in the shell.”
“Are you untouched?”
He looked downward. “She feels pressed to solve every problem in the riversland. I wish I held some power to relieve her of that burden.” He shook his head. “Enough of that. What of your troubles?”
“I have sent one to the rulers,” Peak said.
His face darkened. “Who? When?”
“This morning. Lastfarmer. Vigor’s birthwoman.”
“A bad motion,” the Lodge replied. “She lie still with that problem for eight seasons, now.”
“She was shut. The Walls took care of her.”
The Lodge nodded.
He looked between them. “Is that all?”
Peak jostled Key. “Tell him about your journey.”
“I walked down to the block yesterday, eldman,” Key told the Lodge. “There were men gathered by the river. Laruns.”
“It is a Larun place.”
“They were many times our number, eldman. I think they might not be there to stay.”
He stroked his beard. “What did they carry with them?”
“Stonehoofs, eldman. And rope. But that may not have been all. I was a long way off.”
The Lodge’s jaw tensed when Key mentioned the rope, as if it called up some profane memory. After a moment, he lit up again. “It’s good to know where the dryman is, but I expect it may not concern us, yonman. We are near one of their best paths; it’s altogether likely that they are simply going home.”
A pressure that had been binding up Key’s chest suddenly released. “I’ll tell a man to keep watch for such things,” the Lodge said. “In the meanwhile, go on to greater peace.”
Peak and Key moved away from the River Lodge, departing the room. Yawn held the door open for them and bid them farewell.
After they had left, the Lodge dropped to his knees. He began to breath heavily, and his ashy brow glistened with sweat. He clutched his chest, and clamped tight his walking stick.
“Ba,” Yawn exclaimed rushing over to him. “What is it? Speak. Tell it to me, ba.”
The Lodge shook his head.
“I should get him back?” Yawn asked. “Ba? Need you the fireworker?”
“No,” the Lodge gasped. “I stumbled. It’s just a bump. Only a bump.”
Yawn helped him to his feet. “I should get him back.”
“No,” the Lodge insisted. He patted Yawn’s shoulder. “Go back. Go to your work. It was just a bump. Just an old man’s bump.”
Yawn reluctantly exited the building, returning to his position.
“Just a bump,” the Lodge muttered to himself. “Just a bump.”