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24 - Trynfarin
Found a few continuity issues in older posts (from a previous campaign arc) but those don’t need to be resolved until I write the book.
Venla doesn’t know how much she’s asking as a reward! The twelve riders apprentice fee is about a fifth of all the silver in the town of Trynfarin.
Tao and Mazao came in from the fighting when they saw us looking out of the window. “We’ve won!” they shouted when still coming upstairs. “So have we, I think,” I said. “Oh good! Who is that? The mage? Is he dead?” “No, he’s asleep,” I said, “Amre gave him wine with strong sleeping stuff.” Then they made a litter from their staffs and a blanket to carry him on. “Pitiful little man,” Tao said. Yes, I agreed that he was pitiful, especially in this state but even before that.
When we left the house we saw that the whole Ayaglen camp was coming our way. Everybody crowded around us, even the children, except Jeran. “He’s sitting on the wagon guarding the letters,” Imri said. Of course! I’d asked him to do that in case I wouldn’t come back. I didn’t have time to tell him he didn’t have to do it any more because I was back, because Yatiyor had seen us and was asking for Dushtan to help him handle the surrendering Khas, “she’s clever”, and now people were coming from the town as well. In front there was a woman in grey, on a horse, with a helmet on her head, and I realised that I knew her, at least her mind: Hinla. Then another woman on a horse, a lot older and fatter, who had a bossy look about her, and several men and more women and young people and children. Everybody completely ignored me and Amre, because it was the fighters they wanted. Hinla and the old woman got off their horses and went to talk to Yatiyor.
The Khas soldiers were standing in front of their tents, legs apart and arms crossed, and didn’t even seem to notice that people were going into the tents and coming out with stuff: gold bracelets, clothes, and one small boy with a huge sword that he waved about in front of him. “Hey, don’t do that,” I said, and the boy said it was spoils-of-war and he was entitled. So I pulled at Yatiyor’s arm and asked “are people allowed to take things from the tents?” “No, of course not,” he said, but he didn’t do anything to prevent it but left it to me and Amre. We talked to the nearest soldier, “you should guard your tents, don’t let anyone in, don’t let them take anything, but even if they do try to take something don’t kill them, just chase them away.” He understood us —probably been fighting in Valdyas a lot— and then talked to his sergeant, and the sergeant gave an order in the Khas language and the soldiers all stood in front of the tent openings glaring at anyone who wanted to get inside. One woman said “but I just want to look how you live in those tents!” to the soldier we’d first talked to, and we let her put her head inside to look but watched carefully that she didn’t take something away after all.
The soldier said he was called Mar (and the sergeant turned out to be called Makane) and he brought us wine, “from Idanyas!” that we each took a sip from to be polite, but it was sour and tasted like old leather. He told us that they’d brought wine from home but they’d finished it in two seasons, and they were supposed to get supplies but those had never arrived.
This seemed to be solved, so I went to find Imri. “Do you see anyone you know?” I asked. “Yes, that’s Halla, she’s the boss,” —pointing at the old woman. “Do you see anyone who knows you?” and she pointed at a large person in trousers and a sheepskin jacket. “That’s Cynla,” she said. “Cynla has a bear! He’s called Meruvin like my father.” When Cynla saw Imri she stopped dead and her mouth fell open and then she rushed at us and took the girl in her arms, “Is it really you? I’ll take you to your father and mother! They’ve been so worried!” And we left Yatiyor talking to Hinla and Halla —and Dushtan had arrived too, who was being bossy but reasonable— to work out what to do with the captured Khas, and went through the town gate where nobody was keeping watch and Cynla took us across a large open space where sheep and goats and cows were grazing.
Veh and Ailin came along in the cart with the Khas mage, who was still asleep. “Better take him to the temple now,” Ailin said. Tao and Mazao walked with Cynla, talking about animals. As soon as we were among the herds Cynla whistled and a large black thing came toward us. It looked most like a huge fat dog, with thick short legs, a small head, a short pointed snout and a mouth full of vicious sharp teeth. It ambled over to Cynla and flopped down at her feet— well, not quite down, because even lying down it was higher than her waist. She scratched it behind the ears. “That’s the bear!” Imri said excitedly. The Ishey all went down on their knees, no, on their faces, and hardly dared look up. That puzzled the bear no end, or at least that was what it looked like. “Bears are sacred to Mizran for them,” I said. Cynla nodded. “I can imagine. Since I’ve had him I’ve never lost a goat, not to wolves, not to eagles, not to thieves, not in the ravine. I found him in the forest when he was very small” —she made about the size of a cat with her hands— “and later I found a dead she-bear in the ravine, I think that was his mother.” “But he’s not tame!” Imri said. “No, not tame,” Cynla said, “but he’s never hurt anyone.”
At the edge of the town there was a small house, and two people came out of it who looked old and worried. When they saw us —especially when they saw Imri— they first stood as still as Cynla had, and then fell to their knees and Imri rushed at them and they took her into their arms. We stood with Cynla and watched them for a long time, until they reached out to us and wanted to hug and kiss us for bringing back their daughter. “This isn’t our house,” Imri said, puzzled. “What happened to our house?” And it turned out that the mill had burnt down, that the Khas had set fire to it, but this was Cynla’s house and she’d taken Imri’s parents there to live when they didn’t have a home any more. “We’ll build a new mill in summer,” Imri’s father said. “The mill burned down?!” Imri was in tears, and her parents held her in their arms and cried too.
Then we went into the house (but the bear stayed outside), and it was full of people at once, so small was it. There was a table and a bench and a chest, and a fire was burning, and some of us sat on the bench and some on the chest and the rest on the floor. “Let’s get the mage to the temple and go to the bath-house,” one of the boys said, and Amre called to Arin but he was busy and stressed, but Hinla came with Dushtan and her friends and the rest of our children. I gave the letters to Imri to guard, because she was about to get into a bath that her mother was filling and wouldn’t come with us. “But when I’m in the bath I can’t guard them!” she said. “I’ll guard them while you’re in the bath,” her father said, “and anyway, that bear is outside the door, nobody can come in to steal any letters.”
It was clear that Ailin was cut out to be a priestess— she was the only one practical enough to ask where the bath-house and the temple actually were. It was easy: go into town, turn right at the paved street, and everything important was on the main square, we couldn’t miss it. And no, the Temple of Naigha was hard to miss, it looked exactly like all the village temples we’d seen, even with the wall around the yard that was low enough to step over. There was a priestess there, a grey-haired woman called Senthi who immediately started bossing Ailin around, and telling her she was too young to already have snakes on her hands— that made me and Amre laugh, and the priestess raised her eyebrow but didn’t ask any questions. “Ailin looks like a beaten Khas,” Jeran whispered in my ear, and yes, she stood there with her arms crossed and her shoulders hunched just like the soldiers. Another priestess came, young (though not as young as Ailin) and much more friendly than the other one, called Jinla, and the girls together took the mage into a side-room while the rest of us went to the bath-house, next door. “Poor Ailin!” one of the boys said. “Her old mistress was a lot nicer!”
Then we went to the bath-house! It was so small that we filled it completely, and the bath-master said at once that of course the town would pay for everything. When he saw there were Iss-Peranian women he got his cousin to take care of us, a woman called Caille. When Veh said he’d like to wash out of sight of the women and the other boys agreed, the master hung up a leather curtain in front of a tub. There were two more tubs that we women shared, Dushtan and Amre and I in one, and Hinla and Roushan and Parandé in the other, and the little girls climbed in with them. Not before we’d all washed ourselves and each other with water standing ready in buckets, and Amre and I had each braided one little girl’s hair.
Dushtan had a strained look on her face and I suddenly thought of something and asked Caille: “What’s a woman called who takes care of you when you’re going to have a baby?” “A midwife,” she said. Of course, I knew the word! I just couldn’t think of it. “I think she needs one,” I said, indicating Dushtan. Caille sent her son, who had been at the door looking in anyway, and he came back with an elderly woman with a kind face who turned out to be called Senthi too, just like the priestess. Dushtan was just out of the bath then, drying herself. “Ah, I see,” the midwife said. “Tell me, when women give birth where you come from, do they do it on a birthing-chair, or on a bed, or on their knees or what?” “Well, I’ve never done it before, but I remember that my mother squatted on the reed mat and held on to something, and there was a lot of blood and a lot of dirt and then she came out” —that was Amre— “and a lot more blood and dirt, and the aunts took her away to wash and I had to clean up.” “And when my little sister was born,” I said, “my mother sat on a kind of bucket without a front. But she died. My mother, not my little sister.” “Yes, that can happen,” Senthi said. “Well, as you aren’t used to anything, I’ll put you on the birthing-chair, that’s the thing like a bucket, because that’s what I’m used to. Been at it for fifty-five years, I should know what works.” She felt Dushtan’s belly and hummed to herself —midwives weren’t so different from doctors— and told her that it could be a quarter of an hour or two more days, but she’d better come and stay in her, Senthi’s, house because Senthi was too old to be called out in the middle of the night. “Are they all right?” I asked, and Senthi took my hand and let me look. “With your mind, silly girl,” she said, and I could see that one baby had his head far down, ready to get out, and the other was also upside-down but couldn’t get past his brother. Senthi showed Amre too, and then she sent everybody out —the boys had already taken the little girls away— except Dushtan and her friends.
Hinla had things to do, and Amre and I started to walk back to Cynla’s house. We got company from Caille’s son, Jilan. He was about fourteen, blond and good-looking and easy to talk to. He told us that there were twenty boys in town and only sixteen girls, not counting Imri who was too little, and were we staying? No, we said, we were travelling on to Valdis and then further to take the other children home. “Pity,” he said. “But you are coming to the dance tonight? It’s in your honour!” He kept telling us how beautiful we were, until he delivered us to the door of Cynla’s house as if we were great ladies.
We found the Ishey boys talking to Imri’s father —Meruvin— about rebuilding the mill. The boys said they could do it in a few days if they had enough people to do the woodcutting and things like that. Meruvin said that if they weren’t boasting, he’d give them each an axe! And because we’d been talking to Jilan about what he wanted to do —he wasn’t apprenticed with anybody yet, but he did know he wanted to make something, not be a farmer or a trader— Amre said, “perhaps he can use you, too!” And Jilan offered to ask as many of his friends as could spare the time and wanted to come, so they could all help. Then he went all bashful, and asked Meruvin if he wouldn’t need an apprentice when the mill was finished, too! “Hmm,” Meruvin said, “it’s true that Arin died, and I’m going to need help. Let’s get the mill built first, and once I know that you can work I might take you on, and waive the apprentice fee.” Jilan went away with a grin on his face, and looked back at us, “you will come to the dance, won’t you?”
Now Imri’s parents had more people to feed and they looked very poor! But we still had meat from Vestinay, and it had been so cold all the time that it was still good to eat, so I got out a package and we all had black pudding and salt pork, with cabbage that had already been in the pot when we came in, and some kind of seeds on top that didn’t taste of much but went with the cabbage somehow. “What are those seeds?” I asked Imri’s mother, and she said a word I didn’t know and haven’t remembered.
When we got to the town hall (the old village hall, and in fact a great big barn) Halla the mayor (if that’s the right word) was standing outside to greet us. She hugged us as if we were her long-lost children, gushing about how glad she was that we were at this gathering and it was all in our honour. All we wanted was to get inside and dance!
It was a great big barn inside too, with a gallery around it. There were people sitting on the gallery, some making music and some just sitting and drinking and watching the people on the dance floor, who were mostly young and very boisterous. Jilan was there too, with his friend, Merain, and they danced with us, and then all the other boys wanted to dance with us too. The girls wouldn’t talk to us, they were so jealous! And all without cause because we weren’t going to take their boys away from them. For one thing, we were going away in a few days, and also getting married was something we really were too young for! (Though Amre would probably have been at least engaged to be married if she’d stayed at home.)
The Ishey boys weren’t at the dance: they’d gone with Cynla because the goats were having their young. (A baby goat is called a kid but you don’t say they’re kidding, though you do say that sheep are lambing.) They weren’t there when Jilan and Merain walked us back, but they came in much later, smelling of goat. Jeran climbed on top of me to sleep and he smelt of goat too! There were eighteen little goats, and one old mother-goat died (“we’ll make soup from her,” Cynla said) but another one had enough milk to feed her young as well. “That was a splendid night,” Mazao said.
In the morning we went to look at the little goats, they were very cute! The bear was looking after the herd, and now I dared touch him and stroked the thick fur on his shoulder. He looked at me with interested little eyes, and I could feel that he had spirit, more than a mule, perhaps more than a pig, there was a real mind in that small round head. “He’s getting on,” Cynla said, “just like me, we’ll die together. If he dies first I don’t know if I want to go on, and if I do there’s nobody else who can handle him safely.”
Arin spoke to us with his mind, calling us to the town office because Halla wanted to ask us something. All of us? Yes, the boys too. “All right,” Tao said. “but I’m not going to kiss her feet, no way!” I don’t know if he didn’t see her as a woman —like Cynla— or she just wasn’t respectable enough. When we got to the office not only Halla and Arin were there, but Dushtan as well —sitting in the mayor’s big carved chair, that Halla said had been made for the queen when she came to Trynfarin to make it into a town— and Yatiyor and Hinla. Dushtan looked very uncomfortable, as if she was pretending to Yatiyor that nothing was the matter with her, but I could see she was having a hard time.
First Halla wanted us to tell everything about the children, and the men who had taken them, and she wrote everything down as we talked. “We’ve got letters,” we said, “but they’re in a language we can’t read, it’s probably the Iss-Peranian court language. “But I went to school at court,” Dushtan said, “perhaps I can read them!” So I wrote a note to Imri, in large letters and easy words, which was the best I could write and the best she could read, that we were with the mayor and needed the letters. Veh went to take the note to her. As we were waiting, Halla asked some more questions and then called for two of her guards, “go to Old Jeran’s house and arrest him and anyone with him.” Then Veh came back with the satchel and with Imri as well, but Dushtan had forgotten how to read the court language! “When our children are bigger,” she said to Yatiyor, “I want to spend some time in town every year, or at least close to town, for them to learn their letters, I don’t want them to end up ignorant like me.”
Halla asked us what we’d like to have as a reward, “anything the town can give you.” It was clear that the boys had already thought about it. “A herd,” they said, “we can’t go the king without a herd. Ten goats each, that is if you pick them, or five if we get to pick them. Or seven if Cynla picks them.” If Halla was surprised she didn’t show it. “It will be done,” she said. “And you?” — turning to me and Amre. I’d been thinking too: “If you want to learn from someone you need to pay an apprentice fee, right? I’d like to have the apprentice fee to learn to be a doctor in Valdis.” That could also be done, it appeared. Amre didn’t really know anything she’d want to be rewarded with, but Halla said “shall we send a messenger to your parents?” and Amre liked that. And if a messenger was going anyway, they could go by Vestinay and the other village and bring salt! I said that to Halla, and she wrote it down with the rest.
As we left the town office we passed a smithy where Meruvin was just talking to the smith. “Hey, you,” he called when he saw the boys, “come and be fitted for an axe!” While they were inside, several town boys followed us. They were pushing one boy ahead of them, large and awkward and probably not very clever, goading him to talk to us. I remembered him from the dance and went up to him, “you’re Arin, right?” The other boys were crowding around Amre —she is pretty much irresistible— so I could talk to Arin even though he was slow. It turned out that he didn’t really want anything except to care for his animals, and he took me into the stable where he worked (pushing a bull aside with his shoulder) and showed me a newborn calf, just able to stand on wobbly legs and look around uncertainly. “Most animals are smarter than me,” Arin said, but for the work he did it didn’t matter anyway, he only had to be strong and kind.
When I came back to Amre she was talking to one boy who had really been having trouble because of us, because his girl was so jealous that she’d blacked his eye! He believed that we weren’t her rivals, but she didn’t. “We’ll go and talk to her,” we said, and he took us to the dairy where she worked. “There aren’t enough girls to go round, and now there are the boys who came with you and they’re ever so handsome!” he said, but we could tell him that those boys were only interested in each other— well, Tao and Mazao were, and Veh didn’t seem to be interested in anybody yet. “But there are still not enough— well, there’s Hylti, and she’s nice enough but she wants to go back to where she comes from in the middle of nowhere and expects her man to go with her!” I knew which Hylti that was, of course, and could tell him that Vestinay might be in the middle of nowhere but it was still a good place to live, with excellent food, where we’d left a boy because he really wanted to stay there, and we’d have stayed for the winter ourselves if we hadn’t been in a hurry to take the children home and the letters to the king. “Would she have me?” he asked, and we thought she’d probably want any nice hard-working young man who was willing to come home with her. “She does have a little boy already,” I said, “he’s living with his grandparents, I think.” But our young man didn’t mind, “anything is better than Lyse!” And when we’d talked to Lyse, we could only agree— she was a silly goose!
When we told the Ishey boys what we’d been doing, they made a plan to have another dance, “only for black boys and white girls!” That pleased me and Amre a lot, because we were brown girls so we didn’t have to go. “We’ll teach those silly girls a lesson!” they said. They were boisterously happy anyway, because they now each had an axe, short (but not so short that they’d be too short if the boys grew any more) and heavy and serious-looking. Somehow I thought having an axe made them men much more than having a knife did, perhaps because an axe looked more like work.
Then we went to the temple of Naigha to see how Ailin was getting on, and how the Khas mage was. The old priestess wasn’t there; the young priestess Jinla said that she was drinking beer with Halla. “She does that a lot, and then she gets all hard and uptight, and she’s been getting worse! If I write a letter, will you take it to Valdis for me?” “Yes, of course,” we said, “we’ve got so many letters already that we can easily carry another one!” “And one to the queen too,” Jinla said. It turned out that she’d come to Trynfarin with the queen and stayed behind because the temple here needed her. She was getting on very well with Ailin, the girls didn’t learn much but they could help one another. “It’s much better when you’re not alone,” Jinla said.
The Khas mage was awake —he’d been awake before, and the young priestesses had washed him and trimmed his hair and beard and he’d eaten something and told them his name was Ruang and something else they hadn’t understood. When we went into his room he was scared, “witches! You should go in the fire!” “No, not at all,” I said, “not where we come from, or where we are now!” And Amre said “perhaps you need the fire, the fire of Anshen to burn you clean!” He seemed to think it was a good idea, “yes, clean, pure— where can I find that?” We’d have to take him to Valdis because that was where there was a large temple of Anshen, and also doctors and other people who knew how to take care of him. I just hoped we’d have an escort and that we didn’t have to guard a Khas mage all by ourselves!
Ruang asked after his brother, and it was a while until we understood that it was the captain. “Dead,” we said, “in a fight with the Plains captain.” He was relieved about it, “I never wanted to kill, not even to be a priest, but when the old priest died my brother cut off my balls and said that I was the priest! I’ve never had any interest in women since. He told me to kill Jeran, but I didn’t do it, he’s in the secret room behind the bed in the house.” And he took my arm and took anea from me to show us where. I promptly called Arin to tell him to rescue Jeran.
All of this had tired Ruang so much that he fell asleep, and we went back to Ailin and Jinla. “I don’t think he’s a really evil man,” Jinla said. “Have you ever met someone who was really, completely evil?” “Orian in Albetire?” Amre said, but I didn’t think he’d been completely evil, just a small man who wanted power. “Ayran’s mate with the red hair, perhaps. I don’t think he really wanted anything except to hurt the children, he didn’t do it for money or even power, only to make bad things worse.” Then Jinla told us about a woman in town who had two lodgers who were always ill, and she was taking care of them but they never got better, as if she was putting something in their food so she could boast to the neighbours that she was doing good. “And nobody can prove anything, of course, that’s the worst thing about it.” We agreed that there were bad people everywhere, and that it was too much for any one person to try and stop them all, one could only try to stop those that were in reach, like we’d done with Ayran and his bunch. (Later Amre remembered Lyam, and both of us realised that we’d completely forgotten the emperor’s priest who had killed everybody before Mialle killed him.) “Good thing that there are really good people too,” Jinla said, “like Cynla, she took Meruvin and Halla into her house when the mill burnt down, and she doesn’t have much herself!”
We had tea with honey, and bread, and talked with Jinla and Ailin some more, and then Senthi came in —more than a little drunk— and asked us to take a letter to Valdis for her. “Just write it and we’ll carry it!” we said. Then she took us each by an arm and said that she’d had a dream about Dushtan, the babies had to come today or it would be too late. Jinla ran after us when we were already going out, to say that if Senthi said something like that it was for real, she really did have true visions. I nodded, because I’d already seen that somehow, and we went to the midwife’s house and told her what the priestess had said.
“Hmm,” said the midwife, “I thought she was holding it back,” and then everything suddenly became very busy, because of course Dushtan was staying in the midwife’s house with her friends, but so was Yatiyor and the midwife sent him away, “you go guard outside!”. Dushtan was so afraid she’d scream that I made a seal on the house that wouldn’t let sound through. “Is that strong enough?” Dushtan asked, and I said “I think I know two people who are better at this,” thinking of Raith and Erian. (And of course all three of our Ishey can make blanket seals, but I don’t know how well that keeps sound in.) Then Senthi made me and Amre and Roushan —because she was gifted too— look with our minds what she was doing, and told Dushtan to stop being silly and just let the boys be born. And they were— the first easily, and for the second Senthi needed to do something complicated because he’d become tangled in the cord but that went well too, and she handed one baby to me and the other to Amre and told us to hold them up by the feet and smack them on the bottom so they’d cry and get the water and slime out of their lungs. “Tell Yatiyor that they’re called Athal and Aidan,” Dushtan said, “because if they have Plains names they won’t be of my people, and if they have Iss-Peranian names they won’t be of his people, but Valdyas is everywhere.”
Yatiyor was still outside guarding, and half the tribe with him, and when we let him in he first hugged Dushtan, twins and all, and then took a baby in each arm —very carefully, more so than I’d thought he could— to show them to his men. “These are my sons! Athal and Aidan!” Then he gave them back to Dushtan and all the men went off to celebrate. Amre was staying the night, and this was so much something between the sisters that I went back to Cynla’s house alone —except that I met Tao and Mazao and Veh on the way, giggling because they’d done exactly what they’d set out to do, teach the silly girls a lesson! The girls were now fighting the boys in the street — I could hear them, but didn’t much want to go and look.
At Cynla’s house we found Arin with a boy about our age, thin and battered, clearly in the Guild of the Nameless. “Let me guess, I think you’re Jeran,” I said, and he was. The captain had broken his legs in three places, either to make sure he couldn’t run away or just for the sake of it, Jeran didn’t know, and then given him to the mage to kill but the mage had put him in the secret room instead. Imri’s mother gave him thin porridge, because he was famished but couldn’t eat much yet, and I looked at his legs but I was too tired to do anything right away, and I really needed Amre for that because we always did things three times as well when we worked together. So I ate —I’d forgotten that too, when helping the midwife— and found a place to sleep, and slept until morning.
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