The children spent the morning foraging in the moonforest, barefoot and picking through sporegrass and little shiny ael ponds between the rootpaths. There were four of them: Kovaleska, Rakatl, Derra, Jhesmi, and an orsid to pull the cart. They found a grove of pink melons growing alongside sparkcap mushrooms and picked it clean and went on.
Around midday when Kova’s belly growled the children came back to Setrana. They wheeled their bounty to the eldmetal henge, a massive and weathered structure of the sacred silver-white metal, overgrown with vines and leaning.
Their fathers ate and drank at the wooden tables which had been set, among the men of the village. Kovaleska’s called her over when he saw her. The father darkling like the others, beard streaked with gray, hair reddish and curly and bound in warrior’s braids.
She sat beside him on a long bench and he shared barkpuff and drelnai pemmican with her. A fragrant steam bearing the thousand flavors was rising from the hollows.
“Is Ryfkha here yet?”
“I don’t hear his tune yet littleling. But be patient. The Sibling’s peak is foretold and marked. He is on his way.” Her father sniffed at her, then grimaced. “You are filthy. Go wash up before the feast.”
The filth was not much of a surprise. Children were often filthy. Most days, she and the others learned from the husk in the skyhollow, then afterward mucked about below the rootpaths until it was time for supper. Today was different. It was high hyrala. There would be dancing and feasting and—her favorite thing—the Kurasan bard, Ryfkharnu, with his stories and mirth. She stuffed the last of the barkpuff into her mouth then slipped away.
Not far past the village edge she found a likely pond. She agitated it with a stick to clear the flotsam and ael away. She stripped down and quickly cleansed herself. She wet the clothes then scrubbed and scraped with leaves to remove the mud and ael as best she could.
When she went back to the village the heady stew-smell, the bounty of the moonforest, was strong even from a distance. She felt the brightberries even with just a sniff. The village built into the moontree’s root structure, overgrown and overlapped, huts shambling and uneven but mostly woven into the flow of the ancient worldtree, some in gulleys and some lifted by huge roiled roots and those families living in tree and sky. The roots went down and down.
Her family’s hut was at the village edge, nestled into a promontory of swirled and shaped wood. She found the usual handholds in the gnarled bark, and climbed well above their house until she had a nice vantage over some of the smaller trees and cloudthresh. From here she could see the main rootpath toward Kurasant, and thought with any luck she’d see Ryfkharnu coming up.
A dracari flew up suddenly, wings buzzing, its three compounded eyes curious as it spun around the tree. She thought it was looking at her. It was a green-scale dracari, with a little stinger on its tail. Mostly they ate fruit that was poison to vensari.
Time drifting along, she kept thinking she heard a faint song within the woods or a nearby brook and strained her eyes to look for Ryfkha, but there was no sign of him. A quiet stream, quiet dreaming, an impression of her mother’s body in the night telling her hush, hush, sleep your soul root-child, now is not the time for dreaming, and she remembered her mother’s shadow but she knew it was not her mother’s shadow somehow. It was something else, crackling and ephemeral.
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She must have napped in the tree to the soft melody of flitting taroe and dracari, for when she woke the sky had phased to green and orange and she heard tones of music from a hard voice, and the plucking of strings. It was Ryfkha. They did not get many visitors. Even less that would sing and tell tales to entertain the children. It was said high hyrala in the holy city Kurasant was a festival like no other. The sea rises into the streets, and the people revel on long painted docks that go out into the harbor, and the bards pick out their tunes in the Sibling’s light, and they dance and play. They usually had one bard in Setrana for high hyrala, Ryfkharnu. In truth, he was their Judicator, but Kova knew he despised the title. Plus, before that he’d been a bard. She was grinning.
He rode his strange and graying drelnai into the village, a little cart pulled behind. Kovaleska slid and shimmied down the tree and observed silently as he pulled up on the drelnai’s reins. Many of the villagers had assembled to greet him. Even the more moveable elders had shambled out of the henge.
A mud-stained yellow cloak dripped down from the top of his head. Ryfkha drew back the cowl to reveal his visage. Weathered and wrinkled. A white bearded and wildlooking vensari. He stopped playing his lute and raised his free hand as a fist, the sunburst greeting of Kurasant.
“Stand in light.”
Her father signed return.
“Greetings, son of Kuras. Walk in truth.” Her father spoke the traditional greeting.
The bard sniffed the air, then swung down off his mount in one smooth motion. His drelnai had a mane of serpent heads that raised and lowered. Each had eyes and tongues and unique movement. It was not a true-threaded kher.
Last year, Kova’s father had taken her south with him into the moongorges where the old kingdom had once stood. Ghom. They plumbed ruins overgrown and broken by moontree roots and time, and found trinkets and curiosities: a dull green stone that glowed sometimes, some nicks of eldmetal, a multiweave shirt. One night on the way back, as they slept hammocked up a tree, she had awakened and seen through the hammock’s mesh a herd of drelnai picking silently along beneath them. Some had born crested horns. None of them had a snake-mane such as this.
Ryfkha smelled again. The drelnai too was excited, sniffing the air that bloomed with scent from the hollows where they cooked.
“In all my journeys, no one makes such food as this. Truly.” He cleared his throat. “In the cart there is the pledge of truefruit.”
The cart the drelnai pulled was old and worn. Ryfkharnu opened it up and gestured within. Two cartons of truefruit. It was less than usual.
Her father instructed Jhoir and B’renki, both young warriors on their third stripe, to take the truefruit to the lodge.
“Thank you,” he said to the bard. He led Ryfkha into the henge, most of the warriors falling in.
Kova followed them at a distance and when they arrived at the stony circle she was soon spotted by her mother and put to work turning spits of boiled threshfruit. That was all right. She could still hear the warriors talking over the crackle of flame.
Ryfkharnu spoke black news. He told them of the Witch King’s War. How King Kael of Essery and his magicians had used blue spirits to conquer Tarmeline in a single night. The rest of Medes set down their arms then. The West Horn Conclave had fallen as well. The Bloom there ransacked. The Esserians farmed their own produce and would not eat truefruit. Though Fenurog’s dragoons had not surrendered Kalt had been put to the blade, and Coblant was now occupied. They talked of readiness and she saw now how her father’s eldmetal hammer was casually slung across his back, and many of the warriors’ spears leaned not far away. They would soon enter this war.
Ryfkha asked how soon they could ride to Shadow Falls. They were gathering a force there. The Children of Kuras could not stand idle.
“We will fight.” It was her father. Looking evenly at the bard. “What of the Reavers?”
“I do not know.” Ryfkharnu shrugged. “I do not see them much. In truth, even when I do, they do not speak freely to me.” He hesitated. “Two vensari told me this a month ago in Marunne. Esserians that fled. They said Kael woke the Iccletian gods. The totems glow blue in the night now on the streets of Essery. What do you make of this?”
The threshfruits turned out rather blackened.