7.7

The Temple was packed with barely room for everyone.

Every inhabitant of the village (except The Headman worn by the Veles).

All the footmen, Knights and staff of Rochford Manor (except Tsugotholan) also packed in with Jewel and her Family.

Braziers burned bright and hot, filling the room with the scent of smoke. Jewel and her family had entered first, partly as was due their station and partly so Jewel could get into position without having to wind through the crowd.

It begins with the priests.

Three of them stood at the ‘front’ before the packed crowd, along with Father.

An unlit bundle of herbs is held out to Father and his hand joins the Priest’s in holding them.

Then the song of the ritual begins.

Father’s voice rose deep and resonant, working over words Jewel still did not know despite hearing it every winter.

Mother and the women begin their chant next, soft calls that rise in sweeping answers with her while the men mirror father’s words.

Chanting in an almost tumbling wave of old words. Swelling up and down like drifts of snow in winter.

The women’s voices reminded Jewel of the howl of winds.

And all of it now joined by the sound of feet against the stone of the temple floor.

Slow and plodding steps that echo the stride through heavy snow and howling wind. The march through a blizzard.

The voices of the children join then and Jewel can feel the change in the air. The sensation of fauxfire stirring in their words, in their movement. In the fire of the braziers, in the stones of the temple walls.

Building up from the earth below and sinking down into the roof and timbres from the sky.

The darkest, longest night is filled with song. One of the priests shakes a metal bell now in time with the calls. Father let his voice settle down into a soft low hum while the eldest of the youth takes his place in the chant.

Mother’s voice and those of the women of the village and the maids sinks down into a soft buzz as well.

Now it was the time for the youth to carry the burden, to hold the song. Amidst the crowd, the other priests and their assistants tend to the braziers.

The chant continues and Jewel can feel the dark outside echoing in the fauxfire around her.

The presence of the cold and sharply empty winter sky was practically felt, even through the thatch and timbres of the temple’s roof.

The currents of the dirt and the even deeper stone rising up from it. Carried and drawn out by the voices and the marching feet.

Another bell chimes and the youth and children are given a chance to rest their voices, sinking into murmurs and soft heavy breaths as the women return, speaking the words now as the men raise their voices like flames consuming a pyre.

Jewel raises her voice now.

She had memorized the sound of the words as well as she could and she spoke them with the women as gently and softly as her throat could manage.

No one could tell her what the words meant, no one still living knew. But Jewel could feel an echo of them each year.

And after what she had learned in her march to Kaeketeh, something snapped into place.

The words, or rather the song, the chant, the ritual was about cold.

About Winter.

An ever enclosing, encroaching, squeezing crush of biting winter.

Smothering dark seeping down from the sky, reaching into the world from the beyond and taking with it warmth.

Light.

Heat.

Life.

She thought of the small family of brothers and sisters slain dead by cold in their sleep.

And felt that in the voices of her Family.

In the incomprehensible noises of the words she dutifully chanted.

And under and over that she heard the fire.

The flame that beat in every breast that sang.

In the legs trudging through the snow to bring fuel for the hearth.

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In the braziers kept lit by the priests and their attendant orphan assistants.

In Jewel.

In the still unlit torch of carefully woven herb, branch and wheat stalk.

Held by her Father and the Head Priest together.

Her first turn at speaking the words passed, and she let her voice settle down into the murmuring support.

The foundations of the ritual.

Making room for Father and the men to rise to the call.

To carry the chant again.

Their voices filled the room as the heat of the fire and the bodies filled it.

Building with the smells of their breath and the smoke of the braziers.

More Fauxfire was pulled up from the earth and bound and held with the thin vines and branches of it growing down from the winds.

When the turn for the youth came again, Jewel took up the call.

Tasted the hope in it and the danger.

Winter’s bite went deeper in the young.

When Mother and the Women took up the chant and the young retired Jewel continued, shifting her voice lower to match them.

When Father again led the men she released the tension in her throat even more and boomed with his words.

Again and again and around the cycle went.

Winding and binding the Fauxfire in the temple tighter and stronger till it was woven like spinning thread in a column on the torch held between Father and the Priest.

Until it was a column tightly wrought between earth and sky.

A tree of Fauxfire just as beautiful and glorious as it had been every year she had joined the ceremony.

Not seen or felt with flesh or eye, but present for her to witness all the same.

She could feel the chant that was the tree reaching and growing as they fed it on fire and voice and the beat of their hearts.

All the village together forging it as a spear and a shelter against the bleak and all consuming darkness of the longest night.

Building an Oath of determination into an Order of mortal man upon the unrelenting cold of the night.

Outside the temple, before the bonfire, The Old Man swayed with their voice and he played his fiddle to their chant.

Jewel could feel the current of him and the fire joining in theirs.

A strange shaping that wound around the temple’s from him.

Again and again the chant passed from Fathers to Children, From Children to Mothers.

Sometimes to Children again, Sometimes from Men To Women.

They did not need to decide whose voices needed to carry on for others. You could feel the strain in the voice and the muster to carry on.

But Jewel had stopped taking a rest, her voice continuing into the night, never stopping but only shifting to match the chorus that was yet carrying the burden of the words.

The Village sang against the dark and the terrible deathly grip of winter.

And at last in a searing flash within the current Jewel felt and saw the Torch light between Father and the Priest.

A single delicate spark of fire. Easily lost anywhere else.

But in that carefully wound bundle, it caught and smoldered.

The chant continued and slowly tongues of flame caught and spread.

Father and the priest raised the gently guttering flame of the torch high as the flame caught.

Letting all in the temple see.

And with that signal, every voice rose to fullness.

Child and Elder.

Man and Woman.

Jewel and Her family.

They sang together now as the torch took light in its fullness.

Father’s arm reaching higher than the priest’s could.

But that was not important.

Jewel could hear the sharp whine of the fiddle outside as The Old Man struck his tone with theirs.

And in a flare of fire the Torch was blazing.

And the Longest night was broken.

Dawn and Life returned.

They had done it.

Jewel nearly collapsed in the sudden wash of warmth coming undone from the tightly woven knot of Fauxfire in the torch.

She could see the wave of it spilling out over everyone in the temple.

Binding deeply in their bones. Filling their flesh as her own Flame did in hers.

The excess washing around them and rushing into the walls and timber of the Temple.

Then out into the soil and the fields beneath the snow.

The only thing left untouched was that of the Old Man.

The Veles stood alone like a stone in a brook.

Parting the wave of fauxfire around him.

He lowered his fiddle and bowed.

Then He stood tall and proud watching the temple.

Jewel could feel his eyes on her sharp and strong and deep as the earth.

Given that stare she could only look back at him, never mind that her sight did not pierce the stone of the temple walls.

She still met his eyes and acknowledged him with her nod.

He had never done this before in all her years, whether he was wearing the Headman or the elder before him.

He bent to place his fiddle carefully at his feet, the bow across it.

Gaze never leaving Jewel’s.

And then after his back had straightened once more he finally nodded in answer to her.

And then like one of those strange wooden contraptions that she had seen at the Festival of the Terrorboar last year, he collapsed.

Body crumpling like a discarded cloak.

And in that Jewel saw, in the wyrmfire, the last of his breath release.

She felt in the wind the heat of his body already sapping away.

The head man had passed on.

Taken by the Veles that he’d housed.

As his predecessor had been.