Untethered isle. Young Serib stood watching the floating city of Haven-o’er-Hadaeon, expecting any moment it would fall from the sky and all would panic. She blinked and was disappointed when the city did not vanish, as an illusion from the start. All this, to distract herself from a fear she kept secret.
∞
Unknown to her, a dwarven hunter in the distant trees - wearing the pelt of a werewolf - watched her through his spyglass. Even from such distance he could reckon her breathing. Sweaty from the journey her scent upon the wind - it helped him remember his prey from which he had been strayed by forces we have yet to meet, and further he knows Serib by her eyes that glow with tiny bronze zaps of lightning. A difficult soul to miss.
∞
He disappeared into the fabled woodlands of Gap’elyhond where oakenstone ruins were all, leaving behind him a young werewolf dead, scalped and alone. An apprentice shaman butchered.
∞
Standing on a steel pier reaching into the lake, shamanic apprentice Serib was drinking the salve-tea her master had given her from a small clay cup; the sort of thing shamans drink to enhance their journeys and in spirit achieve what flesh alone cannot:
To split their body from their spirit, and allow both to go walking - for the body to be more like the spirit, and the spirit to be more like the body.
∞
Her master had told Serib how the floating city of Haven once was buried deep inside the earth, a ruin of a far older age. A ruin many claimed could not be found, repeating the chants of the few. She wondered what myths the spires kept and took another warm sip, watching the reforged ruins soaring in conquered skies. The sun shone clear across the choppy Lake Arruikikn before her, the lightning-patterned robes she wore, and the steel pier hot under her bare feet. Hot as midday and as we shall see: a sun that will not set.
∞
She had never known a lake so large in her adventures with Master Gadail. The textured waves rolled almost to the horizon, where woodlands-after of Gap’elyhond carried on Nature’s eminent role. ‘Arruikikn’ being a word from a tower-lost language meaning ‘to leave’.
∞
Her eight heavy locks of hair she tied into a makeshift braid enjoying Spring's breeze on her neck. Some trees were still gaunt without their leaves across the lake, patches of Winter across the world.
∞
To either side near the edges of the sharp pier, angelic guards watched her. Even their wings were armoured - one feathered, the other shaped and patterned as a butterfly, both in steel wreathed. They avoided her eyes, instead staring at the tusks jutting from her mouth.
“Would you like to ask me something?” she stared one of them back.
“Not a werewolf, are you?” The eagle-winged guard kept their chest high.
“Is it true…” the butterfly-winged angel stepped closer to ask. “…you are a prophetess, and Far Sight is your gift?”
Serib heard footsteps thudding behind her on the cooler steel shaded by trees, and the guards rushed to each other. A mumble was all she heard from their broken stance and she knew not who they spoke of: ‘The prisoner…’
∞
Still holding her cup and sipping-spitefully her salve-tea, she turned away from the angels to see Master Shaman Gada’il to some, Gadail to others. His kind eyes and familiar limp calmed her. His straight tusks grew towards the sky over his rough cheeks from his lower teeth. His bulky clay armour was etched with ‘tattoos’ - scholars have for reasons unbeknownst been unable to agree on a clearer translation - the pigment-filled scratches depicted an effigy of himself against a dark spirit.
∞
Twigs lived happily sprouting roots in his madly unkempt hair, and two hammer-totems swung from his belt. Each hammer was Imbued.
∞
A totem without imbue is only a stick, you see - a trinket. For sticks, weapons and trinkets to be imbued is to be graced: is to be gifted a boon by an Ancestor of the elements after a long journey and deeper understanding.
A shaman-proper will go on four of such journeys towards the end of their training to understand Earth, Fire, Spacious and Wind. And so shall end their apprenticeship, thinking they have learned all there is to learn despite being told over and over: they will never learn it all. The lessons of Love and Reason are learned again and again over one’s life.
∞
A staff or a wand to a wizard, a spear or sword to a warrior, a totem to a shaman, so some sayings go.
When Serib has her totem, such imbues of grace she too shall seek for it. Tradition would have her start with an Earth totem upon which the remaining three elements can settle, and so the name of this first Act shall be.
∞
For now such elemental power slept in Gadail’s totem-hammers, as he did not wish to appear threatening to the angels, as for hubris they are known. Who else among Humanity would forge a city from Nature so far removed?
“Quell the storm in your eyes; let us not have another lightning related mishap.” He smiled sighing with his clay-armoured hand on Serib’s little shoulder, and with his other hand took her clay cup now empty. “I have two tasks for you that you will likely forget, my Tusker, as to Haven-o’er-Hadaeon we go. You’ll earn your totem yet. Hush and heed.”
“They keep staring at me.” She justified herself, and disliked being teased yet again for an old mistake: when summoning lightning - she could not yet control where it would strike, and had once or twice caused small forest fires.
∞
“You’ll learn the flame of your belly yet as well; where best to place its embers, what sticks are worth igniting. Flame misplaced can molten and muddy stone.” He spoke somewhat lifelessly his dusty mantras, mumbling though equally full of life knowing Serib was giggling at him, and he continued more in his own style:
“The angels would like to ask you how it all ends, that’s all, and who would not? Imagine always the position of others, and why they are their way - the bores of their geography and nuance of their history - all context for your measure. And from that our duty as shamans is to serve. Why?” he tested his apprentice.
“Shamans can see the grace - we have been taught how to.”
“In the future all children will be taught how and there will be very few shamans needed to maintain justice, courage, moderation and wisdom through grace. For now we are higher-than, and that is why we must serve. A flower grows crooked…”
“…against a stone displaced.” Serib recited in nod, and they smiled together in the sun.
“And away from the winds, yes. Enough of all that - my master was full of all that. The breeze is nice here, hmm? Where Spring most with Summer meets. A hard Winter we climbed through.” Gadail reached over the abrupt edge of the pier, and Serib’s clay cup from his hand crumbled into soil, returning to the shoreside earth.
∞
Serib asked him: “How is the keeper of this lake?”
“A troubled spirit, much in need of counsel. I have seen to them and you will be next, after all cycle and revolution to settle whatever mistakes I’ve just made that only Hindsight can see and repair.”
She listened, though she could not imagine him making a mistake. As Gadail chuckled through his guidance, Serib’s fear returned from all distraction and distance; the fear that her master would not always be there to travel with her. The same fear of change by her mother inherited or learned, the fear deep with settled roots long before her training under Master Gada’il.
∞
His laugh reminded her of all she would miss about him. Reminding her how Age had even changed his voice; shown to her by visitors - when younger he was quick with wit in recordings she had seen of his lectures - now more gruff and wise.
Reminded of one’s duty as a shaman-proper, an apprentice no longer she could eventually be, and all the fear that comes with that. Although she is far from there, she has been trained to be brave for it. She wanted to be ready.
∞
She wanted to be strong enough, to know how to go alone when he was gone. A quiet she could not imagine. And there she stood lakeside wishing that she could change it all.
As though reminded by her own lakeside fears, before starting her life with Master Gadail, Serib had glimpsed her mother sketching out the same wishes. Heard her sister planning with their mother, the two of them sleepless with obsession while Serib and her father watched the moon be nothing more than itself.
∞
“Fore-and-farsight are not our only eyes. You go all quiet when I speak of this, recently, of your responsibility.” Gadail knelt with a grimace and a groan, his knee having a small argument with him. “A bark for your burdens?” he offered Serib a dried strip of tree bark, to our eyes.
“You saved some?” she grinned excitedly, almost hopping on the spot in sunshine.
“Of course.”
Known as farbark, it matures in Winter’s cold and is peeled in Spring from certain trees of Ehl’yiteth, if one knows where and how. It makes fine nesting for birds when the bears have scratched themselves of hibernation’s dust, and thus the bark pried looser. Smoky and chewy stuff it is - not much liked by many at all who are strangers to or natives of Ehl’yiteth. Now and then, there are those who can little do without it.
∞
There in the distant world of Hadaeon, which shares no stars with Ehl’yiteth, a taste of home was welcome for Serib. Having left its then-barren glades in Winter, it seemed that blowy season had followed them all along their journey here. Their journey through the stars unshared, where only shamans go, made possible by salve-teas such as the one she had just finished drinking. By bark enhanced no doubt.
∞
A long Winter chasing the sound of a bell and breathy horn through the cosmos, of the floating city crying out for aid. A long Winter when the early face of Spring she much prefers.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
∞
If she fears loss, then how can any of us wonder about her love of Spring? Spring when all that was taken returns to all.
∞
Chewing and waiting, Serib greater felt the hum of the earth with the smoky spell and smell of farbark wafting. So smoky as to be almost spicy, burning her nostrils clearer with deeper breaths. She thought the waters of the sunny lake moved with strange currents, a gravity misbehaved, a force swimming:
“Is there something in the lake? I feel a sharpness in its earthen bed… a wound.”
“You may be right - the bed of Lake Arruikikn was once a mountain peak, though Nature has its ways of ages and who can know what Human Nature may have buried in it. Let us return here if we can, and unearth what it is you sense. After our visit to angelic Haven. The salve-tea and our bark will help us see.”
“Can we trance without these?” Serib was curious, ‘trance’ being a shamanic state, of the line between body and spirit blurring.
“Without our salves and farbark? You know, I’ve never tried.” Gadail stood awhile measuring all that, thinking a shaman capable of, would be grace incarnate.
∞
The guards meanwhile had listened to every word and stepped apart from each other back to their positions as a glinting shape was approaching the pier slowly from azure skies: a disc of steel shining against midday light, flying closer over the sun-bright lake.
“Why are we waiting here for transport if you can fly us up there to the city?” While Serib wondered what methods made that disc fly in such ways, she was excited to visit a city of Courtdom, having so far seen only Townships such as Imirka and smaller settlements, visiting shops-remedial to replenish their salve-tea leaves.
“Ceremony and ritual are irreplaceable in Human Nature; when Humanity finds itself equal only to itself, then it has itself most to fear. That is why Truth must reign over all you desire. Know this - as many you shall advise.” Old Gadail paused before countering himself. “Vast as Courtdom has spread our Truthdom ways, you may discover changed symbols. Altered names. It is all the same to us that know History’s etyms, but not to all souls who may only see Now’s details. The future will see its generations better taught. For now, it is a sign of respect that I do not conquer their Winds.”
“Conquer?” Serib thought it a strange word, as she chewed her farbark. “A shaman would never…”
“Do not be so sure! There are wizards, you know.” Gadail shuddered. “Vampyric-those who could have been shamans, alas choosing Intelligence over Wisdom, and not Love aligned with Reason, but Reason to its end alone. As for me… these angels have been invaded before - from the trees and sky above them when Haven was upon and not o’er Hadaeon as it is now. Remember well the difference between upon and o’er. And now - their flying citadels fear an assault from the ground they long have left behind; I am told their world even appears to no scope nor scan that starships bear, so we can suppose from that - they even fear an attack from the stars. Their Hadaeon steel made them a target in The False Ages, when force and fraud were rife. All weapons of myth you have heard of were forged here from such materials. Your intention and mine would never be to conquer, but think historically as all things must be thought, how my mastery of Wind would be perceived; by a people long scarred.”
“And in the other arts of Nature you’re no novice.” Serib added.
Gadail shrugged unsure of that: “Intelligence would fly up there on a boulder without wishing harm, while igniting much of it.”
“Best if we take their transport, then…” Serib supposed as her master had. “…as we’ll be away from the ground, should I stand on the shoreline a while, before the vessel arrives?”
∞
“To centre yourself? Fine thinking - for who you were and are - not for who you will be.”
The apprentice frowned at her master.
“Hush will handle that, as comes along your next lesson. A shaman can remain grounded and connected to the element of Earth despite her distance from it. Tell me, where do you most know justice?”
“When surrounded by injustice.”
“You know more than you knew! That is grounding proper… not keeping pebbles in your pocket to remind you of home.” Gadail reached out his clay-armoured hand, and Serib reluctantly handed over the little stones she had been keeping since leaving Ehl’yiteth. “You have answered that you do not need them.”
When the angels were not looking, Gadail let the pebbles fall to the steel platform and they rolled gently off with life their own, returning to their shaded beds under the pier.
“Best if they don’t see that, either…” Serib smiled at the pebbles obeying Gadail’s palm, and the master shaman continued a lesson:
“Gathering and centring our runaway and scattered thoughts. Knowing emotion, giving Love a place in our compass, but never sole reign over Reason’s name. Nor should Reason’s eye rule without Love’s hand. With Hush enough you will be able to Heed what the floors and towers of Haven say to you about the Nature that made them, and the Nature they are carven from. A simple thing you can even see from here, but you will not realise what you are seeing, until you have been both far from the city and close to it. Only then can you know.”
Palm’s-shadow over her eyes against the glare, Serib stared hard at the gleaming metal form of Haven-o’er-Hadaeon, floating weightless through waves of clouds crashing into its hulls and bellies. She hoped to prove her master wrong and more quickly guess at worse or figure at best the answer before then.
∞
Having waited a while longer for the disc to arrive and watched the city drift on, Serib asked, chasing her words:
“Haven is always moving? Even away from us as we wait here. Fleeing… following the sunlight?”
Gadail waited for young Serib to answer herself:
“Suspicious and mistrusting - the angels with good reason, given their history of invasions.”
Her master smiled. “Almost. Fearful, I would say.” He added. “Clinging to what is already lost. Would you know anything about that? Your fingers cramping onto Spring when you know Summer is around all corners. Though why do these angels fear the dark particularly…”
Serib smiled sadly with him, looking at his old face. His strong though crooked stance that had once been even stronger. He assured her or tried:
“Lose yourself not in my aging but in your youth, and more than paradise you will regain.”
∞
The metal disc was enormous as it arrived, comprised of two halves. Serib concentrated on this, gritting her jaw tightly so as to keep strange tears away. The disc’s underside kept it spinning in obscure flight and the top half remained steady. The size suggested to Serib it was for welcoming either far larger groups of souls into the city, or souls of much greater size. Souls that could not fly their way to the angelic city that were otherwise welcomed or summoned. There were pillars jutting from it, from which broken chains hung swinging, rattling now as the disc spun towards stillness-almost, and she thought of what the guards had been muttering.
‘The prisoner…’
∞
The pillars were interesting to her - their peaks incomplete or cut off - as though a roof could have sat there once, and too there once were more pillars than still were standing, more akin to the bars of a cell:
“Did you take The Prisoner using this?” she asked one of the angels, not at all knowing who or what the prisoner was as the guards spoke with Gadail, escorting master and apprentice aboard bidding:
“Master Gada’il. Master Serib’il.”
Leaving the disc behind the armoured angels flew off with great speed towards the distant city, themselves shining against the sunlight. Militant with spear, shield and plated wing. Serib thought they looked too heavy to fly, and she could not imagine the strength their wings must rest:
“They think I’m a master?”
∞
Gadail encouraged her, finding a free space upon the disc among its debris that will soon be detailed. His clay-plated legs, inflexible, scraped on the stone.
“Or they misunderstand our custom. Though you have a presence to you…. better that we sit, my young provoker. To our senses the way is long, even with the winds and weirder things at our back.”
He knew there were other forces no longer at work, making longer the shorter journeys as shall be revealed.
∞
“The road has already been a long one.” Serib sighed and slumped, happy to be carried by the angel’s disc, soaking up the smoky smell of a bark far from home.
“Well…” Gadail’s lips smacked as he too enjoyed a thin strip of it he had been keeping. “What sense can you make of all this mess? What does your Far Sight tell you we most will meet above and ahead?”
‘Far sight’ is a shamanic term that has caused no small debate to Courtdom’s more modern minds. To some it means truly predicting the future, all in chants and premonitions without explanation. Others interpret it as being knowledgeable in History and other arts, the fractals that repeat, the belief in nothing new under the sun. A thing that can be trained.
∞
For a moment, Serib’s gut and centre were far below her as the disc broke inertia without warning, with technological ease. The grand disc then took them hurtling without hurtle through the air towards Haven - its pillars of chains swinging in strange chime - covered in signs of a battle. Broken weapons. Splintered wood and crumbled stone. In a slight dip of altitude, a broken spear tumbled across the disc and despite Serib reaching for it in instinct arcane to her, the broken thing fell from the edge. To fall in the lake below, she imagined.
∞
The world of Hadaeon grew barely smaller, and mythic Haven-o’er far larger drew close, seeming yet vaster than the sky it assailed and the earth from which it had arisen in once-counted aeons ago. Shining piers jutted from its crust similar to the one in the lake, heavily guarded by winged dots of angels, themselves gleaming in recovered steel.
“I fear that my Far Sight fails me…” Serib admitted, as her knowledge of what had been could not illuminate what was nor what ought to be.
Gadail encouraged her:
“Is that so? Well, that should tell you something, and you have other tools.”
The earth smaller, the city larger, the wind stronger. The apprentice spoke:
“It looks more like a prison from here than a city. Because I do not have wings, and could easily be trapped. And - the angels spoke of a prisoner… in a whisper away from us…”
“It was not always this way. While we are here, avoid that topic altogether… all words of incarceration. These Hadaeon’s need little to get them going. There will be moments when I cannot keep my eyes with yours, and you must not go looking about for the prisoner.” He smiled, knowing she would try.
∞
Smirking herself, Serib asked: “You’ll be speaking with… was it Ithuriya?”
Gadail nodded, sucking the bark from his teeth. “The current Wing Marshal. Before The Emancipation and Eradication of The Languages, her name meant Truth, being just one of many names for Truth. You’ll meet her and understand why we are called to advise and guide at all; particularly now. I may need to feign surprise at a thing unprecedented. We shall see.”
“You already know what she will speak of?”
“Yes… there was an event, and its aftermath has not quite hit us, but I know its echo, which has somehow arrived before the rest. A profoundness that leaves our words inadequate. You have already felt its ripple - as your Far Sight fades from you, ‘prophetess’.” He chuckled to himself and the breeze. “Memory leaves us to ourselves, and patterns seem as novelties. By night the closer stars are further away than they should be - their light travels faster and slower than light always has.”
∞
Having shown her master a strange look, Serib asked:
“Faster and slower? How can it be both? Or either at all? What are you saying?”
“How and what indeed. If only you knew as I do what was missing… missing. That word is my only clue for your next lesson. Hush and Heed as through Haven we go, to centre and ground yourself so far away from any earth you know, and to find what is missing: the earth under the earth. These are your tasks. Enjoy your bark and let the tea do its salving-work. You will find yourself open to the ages. I know that you are ready.”
∞
Serib knew this was a test by chance; little rest does a lord of Ehl’yiteth know. To accompany and learn from him on his many journeys was the path out of her apprenticehood and into shamanism. If that at all was what she wanted, as rode on those woven Seasons and with each she was closer to her old fears. Old for so young a soul.
‘Earth under the earth?’ she pondered her master’s words.
∞
The disc swam between Wind’s untouchable shores upwards to the clouds, and Serib dwelled on the sharpness she had felt; the wound in the lakebed. Sharp as a weapon in her thoughts, formidable as a totem.
∞
For all shamans have a totem, Imbued by the four elements. While Old Gada’il had his two hammers, Serib had heard of necklaces and other things. She wondered how her totem would be; granted to her if among the skies she could understand the Earthen left behind, better than being among its roots and rocks. Having been both far and close.
∞
Or so Gadail had promised her - it was custom-most that totemless shamans would meet with an ancestor of Earth to receive their first totem, though she could not picture such a soul giving Haven-o’er-Hadaeon their ancient, ethereal reside.
∞
‘What is missing?’ she asked the clouds without her words, seeing how some of them drifted down to the ground as sick birds might struggle, wreathing The Woodlands-old of Gap’elyhond in strange mist, or the clouds floated higher than they should away from their world and thunderous was their noise as they cracked hard, drifting frozen in the ink that soaks our finite stars.